The X-Wing Series: Star Wars Legends 10-Book Bundle (Star Wars: X-Wing - Legends)
Author: Michael A. Stackpole; Aaron Allston
Date: 2016-02-15 16:00:00+00:00
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Rights: Copyright © 2015 by Michael A. Stackpole and Aaron Allston

Rogue Squadron, Wedge’s Gamble, The Krytos Trap, The Bacta War, Wraith Squadron, Iron Fist, Solo Command, Isard’s Revenge, Starfighters of Adumar, and Mercy Kill are works of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.

A Del Rey Ebook Omnibus Edition

Rogue Squadron copyright © 1996 by Lucasfilm Ltd. ® & TM where indicated.

Wedge’s Gamble copyright © 1996 by Lucasfilm Ltd. ® & TM where indicated.

The Krytos Trap copyright © 1996 by Lucasfilm Ltd. ® & TM where indicated.

The Bacta War copyright © 1997 by Lucasfilm Ltd. ® & TM where indicated.

Wraith Squadron copyright © 1998 by Lucasfilm Ltd. ® & TM where indicated.

Iron Fist copyright © 1998 by Lucasfilm Ltd. ® & TM where indicated.

Solo Command copyright © 1999 by Lucasfilm Ltd. ® & TM where indicated.

Isard’s Revenge copyright © 1999 by Lucasfilm Ltd. ® & TM where indicated.

Starfighters of Adumar copyright © 1999 by Lucasfilm Ltd. ® & TM where indicated.

Mercy Kill copyright © 2012 by Lucasfilm Ltd. ® & TM where indicated.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

DEL REY and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Rogue Squadron, Wedge’s Gamble, The Krytos Trap, The Bacta War, Wraith Squadron, Iron Fist, Solo Command, Isard’s Revenge, Starfighters of Adumar, were each published separately in paperback by Bantam Spectra, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, as follows: Rogue Squadron, Wedge’s Gamble, and The Krytos Trap in 1996; The Bacta War in 1997; Wraith Squadron and Iron Fist in 1998; Solo Command, Isard’s Revenge, and Starfighters of Adumar in 1999. Mercy Kill was published separately in paperback by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC in 2012.

ebook ISBN 9781101968758
randomhousebooks.com
v3.1_r4

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Rogue Squadron
Wedge’s Gamble
The Krytos Trap
The Bacta War
Wraith Squadron
Iron Fist
Solo Command
Isard’s Revenge
Starfighters of Adumar
Mercy Kill

Other Books by These Authors

About the Authors

Bonus Content

Star Wars Legends Novels Timeline

STAR WARS: ROGUE SQUADRON
A Bantam Spectra Book / February 1996

SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

All rights reserved.
®, TM & © 1996 by Lucasfilm Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Used Under Authorization.
Cover art by Paul Youll. Copyright © 1996 by Lucasfilm Ltd.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.

eISBN: 978-0-307-79621-9

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1745 Broadway, New York, New York 10019.

v3.1

Contents

Master - Table of Contents

Rogue Squadron

Title Page

Copyright

Dramatis Personae

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40

Epilogue

Dedication

Acknowledgments

DRAMATIS PERSONAE
ROGUE SQUADRON

COMMANDER WEDGE ANTILLES (human male from Corellia)

CAPTAIN TYCHO CELCHU (human male from Alderaan)

LIEUTENANT CORRAN HORN (human male from Corellia)

OORYL QRYGG (Gand male from Gand)

NAWARA VEN (Twi’lek male from Ryloth)

RHYSATI YNR (human female from Bespin)

BROR JACE (human male from Thyferra)

ERISI DLARIT (human female from Thyferra)

PESHK VRI’SYK (Bothan male from Bothawui)

GAVIN DARKLIGHTER (human male from Tatooine)

RIV SHIEL (Shistavanen male from Uvena III)

LUJAYNE FORGE (human female from Kessel)

ANDOORNI HUI (Rodian female from Rodia)

ZRAII (Verpine male from Roche G42)

M-3PO (Emtrey; protocol and regulations droid)

WHISTLER (Corran’s R2-D2 astromech)

MYNOCK (Wedge’s R5-D2 astromech)

ADMIRAL ACKBAR (Mon Calamari male from Mon Calamari)

GENERAL HORTON SALM (human male from Norvall II)

GENERAL LARYN KRE’FEY (Bothan male from Bothawui)

CAPTAIN AFYON (human male from Alderaan)

CREW OF THE Pulsar Skate

MIRAX TERRIK (human female from Corellia)

LIAT TSAYV (Sullustan male from Sullust)

IMPERIAL FORCES

YSANNE ISARD, DIRECTOR OF IMPERIAL INTELLIGENCE (human female from Coruscant)

KIRTAN LOOR, INTELLIGENCE AGENT (human male from Churba)

GENERAL EVIR DERRICOTE (human male from Kalla)

1

You’re good, Corran, but you’re no Luke Skywalker. Corran Horn’s cheeks still burned at the memory of Commander Antilles’s evaluation of his last simulator exercise. The line had been a simple comment, not meant to be cruel nor delivered that way, but it cut deep into Corran. I’ve never tried to suggest I’m that good of a pilot.

He shook his head. No, you just wanted it to be self-evident and easily recognized by everyone around you. Reaching out he flicked the starter switches for the X-wing simulator’s engines. “Green One has four starts and is go.” All around him in the cockpit various switches, buttons, and monitors flashed to life. “Primary and secondary power is at full.”

Ooryl Qrygg, his Gand wingman, reported similar start-up success in a high-pitched voice. “Green Two is operational.”

Green Three and Four checked in, then the external screens came alive projecting an empty starfield. “Whistler, have you finished the navigation calculations?”

The green and white R2 unit seated behind Corran hooted, then the navdata spilled out over Corran’s main monitor. He punched a button sending the same coordinates out to the other pilots in Green Flight. “Go to light speed and rendezvous on the Redemption.”

As Corran engaged the X-wing’s hyperdrive, the stars elongated themselves into white cylinders, then snapped back into pinpoints and began to revolve slowly, transforming themselves into a tunnel of white light. Corran fought the urge to use the stick to compensate for the roll. In space, and especially hyperspace, up and down were relative. How his ship moved through hyperspace didn’t really matter—as long as it remained on the course Whistler had calculated and had attained sufficient velocity before entering hyperspace, he’d arrive intact.

Flying into a black hole would actually make this run easier. Every pilot dreaded the Redemption run. The scenario was based on an Imperial attack on evacuation ships back before the first Death Star had been destroyed. While the Redemption waited for three Medevac shuttles and the corvette Korolev to dock and off-load wounded, the Imperial frigate Warspite danced around the system and dumped out TIE fighters and added bombers to the mix to do as much damage as they could.

The bombers, with a full load of missiles, could do a lot of damage. All the pilots called the Redemption scenario by another name: the Requiem scenario. The Warspite would only deploy four starfighters and a half-dozen bombers—known in pilot slang as “eyeballs” and “dupes” respectively—but it would do so in a pattern that made it all but impossible for the pilots to save the Korolev. The corvette was just one big target, and the TIE bombers had no trouble unloading all their missiles into it.

Stellar pinpoints elongated again as the fighter came out of hyperspace. Off to the port side Corran saw the Redemption. Moments later Whistler reported that the other fighters and all three Medevac shuttles had arrived. The fighters checked in and the first shuttle began its docking maneuver with the Redemption.

“Green One, this is Green Four.”

“Go ahead, Four.”

“By the book, or are we doing something fancy?”

Corran hesitated before answering. By book, Nawara Ven had referred to the general wisdom about the scenario. It stated that one pilot should play fleethund and race out to engage the first TIE flight while the other three fighters remained in close as backup. As long as three fighters stayed at home, it appeared, the Warspite dropped ships off at a considerable distance from the Korolev. When they didn’t, it got bolder and the whole scenario became very bloody.

The problem with going by the book was that it wasn’t a very good strategy. It meant one pilot had to deal with five TIEs—two eyeballs and three dupes—all by himself, then turn around and engage five more. Even with them coming in waves, the chances of being able to succeed against those odds were slim.

Doing it any other way was disastrous. Besides, what loyal son of Corellia ever had any use for odds?

“By the book. Keep the home fires burning and pick up after me.”

“Done. Good luck.”

“Thanks.” Corran reached up with his right hand and pressed it against the lucky charm he wore on a chain around his neck. Though he could barely feel the coin through his gloves and the thick material of his flight suit, the familiar sensation of the metal resting against his breastbone brought a smile to his face. It worked for you a lot, Dad, let’s hope all its luck hasn’t run out yet.

He openly acknowledged that he’d been depending quite a bit on luck to see him through the difficulties of settling in with the Alliance forces. Learning the slang took some work—moving from calling TIE starfighters “eyeballs” to calling Interceptors “squints” made a certain amount of sense, but many other terms had been born of logic that escaped him. Everything about the Rebellion seemed odd in comparison to his previous life and fitting in had not been easy.

Nor will be winning this scenario.

The Korolev materialized and moved toward the Redemption, prompting Corran to begin his final check. He’d mulled the scenario over in his mind time and time again. In previous runs, when he served as a home guard to someone else’s fleethund, he’d had Whistler record traces on the TIE timing patterns, flight styles, and attack vectors. While different cadets flew the TIE half of the simulations, the craft dictated their performance and a lot of their initial run sequence had been preprogrammed.

A sharp squawk from Whistler alerted Corran to the Warspite’s arrival. “Great, eleven klicks aft.” Pulling the stick around to the right, Corran brought the X-wing into a wide turn. At the end of it he punched the throttle up to full power. Hitting another switch up to the right, he locked the S-foils into attack position. “Green One engaging.”

Rhysati’s voice came cool and strong through the radio. “Be all over them like drool on a Hutt.”

“I’ll do my best, Green Three.” Corran smiled and waggled the X-wing as he flew back through the Alliance formation and out toward the Warspite. Whistler announced the appearance of three TIE bombers with a low tone, then brought the sound up as two TIE fighters joined them.

“Whistler, tag the bombers as targets one, two, and three.” As the R2 unit complied with that order, Corran pushed shield power full to front and brought his laser targeting program up on the main monitor. With his left hand he adjusted the sighting calibration knob on the stick and got the two fighters. Good, looks like three klicks between the eyeballs and the bombers.

Corran’s right hand again brushed the coin beneath his flight suit. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, then settled his hand on the stick and let his thumb hover over the firing button. At two klicks the heads-up display painted a yellow box around the lead TIE fighter. The box went green as the fighter’s image locked into the HUD’s targeting cross and Whistler’s shrill bleat filled the cockpit. Corran’s thumb hit the button, sending three bursts of laser bolts at the lead fighter.

The first set missed but the second and third blasted through the spherical cockpit. The hexagonal solar panels snapped off and spun forward through space while the ion engines exploded into an expanding ball of incandescent gas.

Corran kicked the X-wing up in a ninety-degree snap-roll and sliced through the center of the explosion. Laser fire from the second fighter lit up his forward shields, making it impossible for him to get a good visual line on the TIE. Whistler yowled, complaining about being a target. Corran hurried a shot and knew he hit, but the TIE flashed past and continued on in at the Korolev.

Time to write a new chapter for the book on the Requiem scenario. Corran throttled back almost all the way to zero and let the X-wing decelerate. “Whistler, bring up target one.”

The image of the first TIE bomber filled his monitor. Corran switched over to proton torpedo target control. The HUD changed to a larger box and Whistler began beeping as he worked supplying data to the targeting computer for a missile lock.

“Green One, your velocity is down to one percent. Do you need help?”

“Negative, Green Two.”

“Corran, what are you doing?”

“Making the book a short story.” I hope.

The HUD went red and Whistler’s tone became constant. Corran punched the button and launched the first missile. “Acquire target two.” The HUD flashed yellow, then red, and the pilot launched the second missile.

Numbers scrolled away to zero as the missiles streaked in at their targets. Two kilometers away the first missile hit, shredding the first TIE bomber. Seconds later the second missile hit its target. A novalike explosion lit the simulator’s cockpit, then melted into the blackness of space.

“Acquire target three.”

Even as he gave the order he knew the rate of closure between the bomber and his ship would make the last missile shot all but impossible. “Cancel three.” Corran throttled up again as the third bomber sailed past and brought his ship around. He switched back to laser targeting and climbed right up on the bomber’s stern.

The dupe’s pilot tried to evade him. He juked the double-hulled ship to the left, then started a long turn to the right, but Corran was of no mind to lose him. He cut his speed, which kept the bomber in front of him, then followed it in its turn. As he leveled out again on its tail, he triggered two laser bursts and the targeting computer reported hull damage.

The bomber’s right wing came up in a roll and Corran did the same thing. Had he continued to fly level, the X-wing’s lasers would have passed on either side of the bomber’s fuselage, giving the bomber a few seconds more of life. Keeping the bomber centered in his crosshairs, Corran hit twice more and the bulky craft disintegrated before him.

Pushing his throttle to full, Corran scanned for the fighter he’d missed. He found it two klicks out and going in toward the Korolev. He also found five more TIEs coming in from the other side of the corvette, eighteen kilometers away. Damn, the bomber took more time than I had to give it.

He brought the torpedo targeting program back up and locked on to the remaining fighter. The HUD seemed to take forever before it went red and acquired a lock. Corran fired a missile and watched it blast through the fighter, then turned his attention to the new TIEs.

“Green One, do you want us to engage?”

Corran shook his head. “Negative, Two. Warspite is still here and could dump another flight.” He sighed. “Move to intercept the fighters, but don’t go beyond a klick from the Korolev.”

“On it.”

Good, they can tie the fighters up while I dust these dupes. Corran studied the navigational data Whistler was giving him. The Korolev, the bombers, and his X-wing formed a shrinking triangle. If he flew directly at the bombers he would end up flying in an arc, which would take more time than he had and let them get close enough to launch their missiles at the corvette. That would be less than useless as far as he was concerned.

“Whistler, plot me an intercept point six klicks out from the Korolev.”

The R2 whistled blithely, as if that calculation was so simple even Corran should have been able to do it in his head. Steering toward it, Corran saw he’d have just over a minute to deal with the bombers before they were in firing range on the Korolev. Not enough time.

Flicking two switches, Corran redirected generator energy from recharging his shields and lasers into the engines. It took the acceleration compensator a second to cycle up, so the ship’s burst of speed pushed Corran back into the padding of his command seat. This better work.

“Green One, the Warspite has hyped. Are we released to engage fighters?”

“Affirmative, Three. Go get them.” Corran frowned for a second, knowing his fellow pilots would make short work of the TIE fighters. They would deny him a clean sweep, but he’d willingly trade two TIEs for the corvette. Commander Antilles might have gotten them all himself, but then he’s got two Death Stars painted on the side of his X-wing.

“Whistler, mark each of the bombers four, five, and six.” Range to intercept was three klicks and he had added thirty seconds to his fighting time. “Acquire four.”

The targeting computer showed him to be coming in at a forty-five-degree angle to the flight path of his target, which meant he was way off target. He quickly punched the generator back into recharging lasers and his shields, then pulled even more energy from his quartet of Incom 4L4 fusial thrust engines and shunted it into recharging his weapons and shields.

The resource redirection brought his speed down. Corran pulled back on the stick, easing the X-wing into a turn that brought him head-on into the bombers. Tapping the stick to the left, he centered the targeting box on the first of the dupes.

The HUD started yellow, then quickly went red. Corran fired a missile. “Acquire five.” The HUD started red and Whistler’s keen echoed through the cockpit. The Corellian fired a second missile. “Acquire six.”

Whistler screeched.

Corran looked down at his display. Scrolling up the screen, sandwiched between the reports of missile hits on the three bombers, he saw a notation about Green Two. “Green Two, report.”

“He’s gone, One.”

“A fighter got him?”

“No time to chat …” The comm call from the Twi’lek in Green Four ended in a hiss of static.

“Rhysati?”

“Got one, Corran, but this last one is good.”

“Hang on.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Whistler, acquire six.”

The R2 unit hissed. The last bomber had already shot past the intercept point and was bearing in on the Korolev. The pilot had the wide-bodied craft slowly spinning, making it a difficult target for a missile lock. The Korolev, being as big as it was, would present large enough of a target that even a rolling ship could get a lock on it.

And once he has that lock, the Korolev is so much space junk. Corran switched back to lasers and pushed his X-wing forward. Even though two klicks separated them, he triggered a couple of laser blasts. He knew his chances of hitting were not good at that range, but the light from the bolts would shoot past the TIE and give the pilot something to think about. And I want him thinking about me, not that nerf-vette grazing there.

Corran redirected all power back into the engines and shot forward. Two more laser blasts caused the TIE bomber to shy a bit, but it had pushed into target-acquisition range. The ship’s roll began to slow as the pilot fixated on his target, then, as Corran brought his lasers to bear, the bomber jinked and cut away to port.

The Corellian’s eyes narrowed. Bror Jace has got to be flying that thing. He thinks it’s payback time. The other pilot, a human from Thyferra, was—in Corran’s opinion—the second best pilot in the training squadron. He’s going to kill the Korolev and I’ll never hear the end of it. Unless …

Corran pulled all his shield energy forward and left his aft as naked as the shieldless TIE bomber. Following Jace through a barrel roll, he kept the throttle full forward. As they leveled out again Corran triggered a snapshot at the bomber. It caught a piece of one wing, but Jace dove beneath the X-wing’s line of fire. Here we go!

Corran shoved his stick forward to follow the bomber’s dive, but because his rate of speed was a good twenty percent faster than that of Jace’s ship, the X-wing moved into a broad loop. By the time Corran inverted to finish the turn off, Jace’s bomber came back up and banked in on the X-wing’s tail.

Before the bomber could unload a missile or two into his aft, Corran broke the fighter hard to port and carved across the bomber’s line of fire. Basic maneuver with a basic response. Without even glancing at his instruments, and paying no attention to Whistler’s squealed warning, Corran cut engine power back into recharging his shields. One more second.

Jace’s response to Corran’s break had been a reverse-throttle hop. By bringing the nose of the bomber up in a steep climb, then rolling out in the direction of the turn, Jace managed to stay inside the arc of the X-wing’s turn. As the bomber leveled off, it closed very quickly with the X-wing—too quickly for a missile lock, but not a laser shot.

The TIE bomber shrieked in at the X-wing. Collision warning klaxons wailed. Corran could feel Jace’s excitement as the X-wing loomed larger. He knew the other pilot would snap off a quick shot, then come around again, angry at having overshot the X-wing, but happy to smoke Corran before taking the Korolev.

The X-wing pilot hit a switch and shifted all shield power to the aft shields.

The deflector shield materialized as a demisphere approximately twenty meters behind the X-wing. Designed to dissipate both energy and kinetic weapons, it had no trouble protecting the fighter from the bomber’s twin laser blasts. Had the bomber used missiles, the shields could even have handled all the damage they could do, though that would have been enough to destroy the shields themselves.

The TIE bomber, which massed far more than the missiles it carried, should have punched through the shields and might even have destroyed the fighter, but it hit at an angle and glanced off. The collision did blast away half the power of the aft shield and bounced the X-wing around, but otherwise left the snubfighter undamaged.

The same could not be said of the unshielded bomber. The impact with the shield was roughly equivalent to a vehicle hitting a ferrocrete wall at sixty kilometers per hour. While that might not do a land vehicle much damage, land vehicles are decidedly less delicate than starfighters. The starboard wing crumpled inward, wrapping itself around the bomber’s cockpit. Both pods of the ship twisted out of alignment so the engines shot it off into an uncontrolled tumble through the simulator’s dataspace.

“Green Three, did you copy that?”

Corran got no response. “Whistler, what happened to Three?”

The R2 unit gave him a mournful tone.

Sithspawn. Corran flipped the shield control to equalize things fore and aft. “Where is he?”

The image of a lone TIE fighter making a strafing run on the Korolev appeared on Corran’s monitor. The clumsy little craft skittered along over the corvette’s surface, easily dodging its weak return fire. That’s seriously gutsy for a TIE fighter. Corran smiled. Or arrogant, and time to make him pay for that arrogance.

The Corellian brought his proton torpedo targeting program up and locked on to the TIE. It tried to break the lock, but turbolaser fire from the Korolev boxed it in. Corran’s HUD went red and he triggered the torpedo. “Scratch one eyeball.”

The missile shot straight in at the fighter, but the pilot broke hard to port and away, causing the missile to overshoot the target. Nice flying! Corran brought his X-wing over and started down to loop in behind the TIE, but as he did so, the TIE vanished from his forward screen and reappeared in his aft arc. Yanking the stick hard to the right and pulling it back, Corran wrestled the X-wing up and to starboard, then inverted and rolled out to the left.

A laser shot jolted a tremor through the simulator’s couch. Lucky thing I had all shields aft! Corran reinforced them with energy from his lasers, then evened them out fore and aft. Jinking the fighter right and left, he avoided laser shots coming in from behind, but they all came in far closer than he liked.

He knew Jace had been in the bomber, and Jace was the only pilot in the unit who could have stayed with him. Except for our leader. Corran smiled broadly. Coming to see how good I really am, Commander Antilles? Let me give you a clinic. “Make sure you’re in there solid, Whistler, because we’re going for a little ride.”

Corran refused to let the R2’s moan slow him down. A snap-roll brought the X-wing up on its port wing. Pulling back on the stick yanked the fighter’s nose up away from the original line of flight. The TIE stayed with him, then tightened up on the arc to close distance. Corran then rolled another ninety degrees and continued the turn into a dive. Throttling back, Corran hung in the dive for three seconds, then hauled back hard on the stick and cruised up into the TIE fighter’s aft.

The X-wing’s laser fire missed wide to the right as the TIE cut to the left. Corran kicked his speed up to full and broke with the TIE. He let the X-wing rise above the plane of the break, then put the fighter through a twisting roll that ate up enough time to bring him again into the TIE’s rear. The TIE snapped to the right and Corran looped out left.

He watched the tracking display as the distance between them grew to be a kilometer and a half, then slowed. Fine, you want to go nose to nose? I’ve got shields and you don’t. If Commander Antilles wanted to commit virtual suicide, Corran was happy to oblige him. He tugged the stick back to his sternum and rolled out in an inversion loop. Coming at you!

The two starfighters closed swiftly. Corran centered his foe in the crosshairs and waited for a dead shot. Without shields the TIE fighter would die with one burst, and Corran wanted the kill to be clean. His HUD flicked green as the TIE juked in and out of the center, then locked green as they closed.

The TIE started firing at maximum range and scored hits. At that distance the lasers did no real damage against the shields, prompting Corran to wonder why Wedge was wasting the energy. Then, as the HUD’s green color started to flicker, realization dawned. The bright bursts on the shields are a distraction to my targeting! I better kill him now!

Corran tightened down on the trigger button, sending red laser needles stabbing out at the closing TIE fighter. He couldn’t tell if he had hit anything. Lights flashed in the cockpit and Whistler started screeching furiously. Corran’s main monitor went black, his shields were down, and his weapons controls were dead.

The pilot looked left and right. “Where is he, Whistler?”

The monitor in front of him flickered to life and a diagnostic report began to scroll by. Bloodred bordered the damage reports. “Scanners, out; lasers, out; shields, out; engine, out! I’m a wallowing Hutt just hanging here in space.”

With the X-wing’s scanners being dead, the R2 droid couldn’t locate the TIE fighter if it was outside the droid’s scanner range. Whistler informed Corran of this with an anxious bleat.

“Easy, Whistler, get me my shields back first. Hurry.” Corran continued to look around for the TIE fighter. Letting me stew, are you, sir? You’ll finish the Korolev then come for me. The pilot frowned and felt a cold chill run down his spine. You’re right, I’m no Luke Skywalker. I’m glad you think I’m not bad, but I want to be the best!

Suddenly the starfield went black and the simulator pod hissed as it cracked open. The canopy lifted up and the sound of laughter filled the cockpit. Corran almost flicked the blast shield down on his helmet to prevent his three friends from seeing his embarrassed blush. Nope, might as well take my punishment. He stood and doffed his helmet, then shook his head. “At least it’s over.”

The Twi’lek, Nawara Ven, clapped his hands. “Such modesty, Corran.”

“Huh?”

The blond woman next to the Twi’lek beamed up at him. “You won the Redemption scenario.”

“What?”

The grey-green Gand nodded his head and placed his helmet on the nose of Corran’s simulator. “You had nine kills. Jace is not pleased.”

“Thanks for the good news, Ooryl, but I still got killed in there.” Corran hopped out of the simulator. “The pilot who got you three—Commander Antilles—he got me, too.”

The Twi’lek shrugged. “He’s been at this a bit longer than I have, so it is not a surprise he got me.”

Rhysati shook her head, letting her golden hair drape down over her shoulders. “The surprise was that he took so long to get us, really. Are you certain he killed you?”

Corran frowned. “I don’t think I got a mission end message.”

“Clearly you have too little experience of dying in these simulators because you’d know if you did.” Rhysati laughed lightly. “He may have hit you, Corran, but he didn’t kill you. You survived and won.”

Corran blinked, then smiled. “And I got Bror before he got the Korolev. I’ll take that.”

“As well you should.” A brown-haired man with crystal blue eyes shouldered his way between Ooryl and Nawara. “You’re an exceptionally good pilot.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The man offered Corran his hand. “Thought I had you, but when you shot out my engines, your missile caught up with me. Nice job.”

Corran shook the man’s hand hesitantly. The man wore a black flight suit with no name or rank insignia on it, though it did have Hoth, Endor, and Bakura battle tabs sewn on the left sleeve. “You know, you’re one hot hand in a TIE.”

“Nice of you to say, Mr. Horn—I’m a bit rusty, but I really enjoyed this run.” He released Corran’s hand. “Next time I’ll give you more of a fight.”

A woman wearing a Lieutenant’s uniform touched the TIE pilot on the arm. “Admiral Ackbar is ready to see you now, sir. If you will follow me.”

The TIE pilot nodded to the four X-wing pilots. “Good flying, all of you. Congratulations on winning the scenario.”

Corran stared at the man’s retreating back. “I thought Commander Antilles was in that TIE. I mean it had to be someone as good as him to get you three.”

The ends of Nawara Ven’s head tails twitched. “Apparently he is that good.”

Rhysati nodded. “He flew circles around me.”

“At least you saw him.” The Gand drummed his trio of fingers against the hull of Corran’s simulator. “He caught Ooryl as Ooryl fixed on his wingman. Ooryl is free hydrogen in simspace. That man is very good.”

“Sure, but who is he?” Corran frowned. “He’s not Luke Skywalker, obviously, but he was with Rogue Squadron at Bakura and survived Endor.”

The Twi’lek’s red eyes sparked. “The Endor tab had a black dot in the middle—he survived the Death Star run.”

Rhysati looped her right arm around Corran’s neck and brought her fist up gently under his chin. “What difference does it make who he is?”

“Rhys, he shot up three of our best pilots, had me dead in space, and says he’s a bit rusty! I want to know who he is because he’s decidedly dangerous.”

“He is that, but today he’s not the most dangerous pilot. That’s you.” She linked her other arm through Nawara’s right elbow. “So, Corran, you forget you were a Security officer and, Nawara, you forget you were a lawyer and let this thing drop. Today we’re all pilots, we’re all on the same side”—she smiled sweetly—“and the man who beat the Redemption scenario is about to make good on all those dinner and drink promises he made to talk his wingmates into helping him win.”

2

Wedge Antilles saluted Admiral Ackbar and held the salute until the Mon Calamari returned it. “Thank you for seeing me, sir.”

“It is always my pleasure to see you, Commander Antilles.” Without moving his head, Ackbar glanced with one eye toward the other man standing in his office. “General Salm and I were just discussing the impact of having Rogue Squadron back in the fleet. He feels you are all but ready to go. The unit roster is impressive.”

The brown-haired fighter pilot nodded. “Yes, sir. I wanted to speak to you about the roster, if I could, sir.” Wedge saw Salm’s face close up. “There have been changes made to the roster without my consultation.”

Salm turned away from the floating blue globe hanging in the corner and clasped his hands behind his back. “There are circumstances beyond your control that made those changes necessary, Commander Antilles.”

“I’m aware of that, sir. Lieutenants Hobbie Klivan and Wes Janson will do well bringing new training squadrons along.” I didn’t want to lose them, but that was a battle I lost a long time ago. “And I understand why half the slots in my squadron are going to political appointees …”

Ackbar’s head came up. “But you do not approve?”

Wedge bit back a sharp comment. “Admiral, I’ve spent a good deal of the two and a half years since the Emperor died touring worlds new to the Alliance because someone decided our new allies needed to see we had heroes—that we weren’t all the bandits the Empire made us out to be. I gave speeches, I kissed babies, I had holograms taken with more world leaders than I ever knew existed. I was there as our propaganda machine built Rogue Squadron up into the needle that exploded the Emperor’s Death Star balloons.”

The human General in command of the Rebellion’s starfighter training center at Folor smiled coolly. “Then you do understand why it is important that our allies have representatives within our most celebrated squadron.”

“Yes, but I know the difference between a real fighter squadron and the monster you’ve made Rogue Squadron out to be. The Empire isn’t going to lie down and die just because they see a dozen ships jump into a system.”

“Of course not.”

“But, General, that’s what our diplomatic corps is suggesting. The Bothans want a pilot in Rogue Squadron because they found the second Death Star and we killed it. And I understand why having two Thyferrans is important—we have to appease the two conglomerates that control bacta production …”

Ackbar held up a webbed hand. “Commander, a question to the point is this: Are the pilots selected inferior to other candidates?”

“No, sir, but …”

“But?”

Wedge took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Luke would be telling me that anger isn’t good. He’s right, because anger won’t get me any closer to what I want. “Admiral, I’m commanding a fighter squadron. We’re an elite squadron and the only thing I want to change about it is our survival rate. You’ve let me have the pick of the new pilots coming over to us, and I’ve got a fine group of them. With some more training I think I can make them into the sort of unit that will strike terror into Imperial hearts. And,” he added, nodding at General Salm, “I concur with the selection of all the pilots listed on the roster you have, except for two—Rogue Five and my Executive Officer.”

“Lieutenant Deegan is an excellent pilot.”

“Agreed, General, but he’s from Corellia, the same as me and Corran Horn. It strikes me that having Corellia overrepresented in Rogue Squadron is not politically wise.”

One of Ackbar’s eyes shifted slightly. “You have someone in mind to replace him?”

Wedge nodded. “I’d like to use Gavin Darklighter.”

Salm shook his head adamantly. “He’s just a Tatooine farm boy who thinks the ability to shoot womp rats from a speeder can make him a hero.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but Luke Skywalker was just a Tatooine farm boy whose ability to shoot womp rats from a speeder did make him a hero.”

The General snarled at Wedge’s riposte. “You can’t mean to suggest this Darklighter has Commander Skywalker’s control of the Force.”

“I don’t know about that, sir, but I do know Gavin has every bit as much heart as Luke does.” Wedge turned toward the Mon Calamari. “Gavin had a cousin, Biggs, who was with Luke and me in the trench at Yavin. He stayed with Luke when I was ordered to pull out. Biggs died there. Gavin came to me and asked to join my squadron.”

“What Commander Antilles is not telling you, Admiral, is that Gavin Darklighter is only sixteen years old. He’s a child.”

“You couldn’t tell it by looking at him.”

Ackbar’s barbels quivered. “Forgive me, gentlemen, but determining a human’s age by visual clues is a skill that has long since eluded me. General Salm’s point is well taken, however. This Darklighter is rather young.”

“Is the Admiral suggesting that someone, somewhere within the Alliance, won’t take Gavin in when we need to put someone in an X-wing cockpit? I don’t think Commander Varth would balk at bringing Gavin on board.”

“That may be true, Commander Antilles, but then Commander Varth is far more successful at keeping his pilots alive than you are.” Ackbar’s even tone kept the remark away from being a stinging rebuke, but not by much. “And, yes, I know Commander Varth has never had to face a Death Star.”

Rogue Squadron’s leader frowned. “Sir, Gavin came to me because Biggs and I were friends. I feel an obligation to him. Even General Salm will agree that Gavin’s test scores are very good—he’ll do his Redemption scenario in three days and I expect his scores there will measure up. I want to pair Gavin with the Shistavanen, Shiel. I think they’ll work well together.” He opened his hands. “Gavin’s all alone and looking for a new home. Let me put him in Rogue Squadron.”

Ackbar looked at Salm. “Aside from this nebulous age problem, you do not disagree with this selection?”

Salm looked at Wedge and bowed his head. “In this case—if Darklighter does well in his Redemption trial—I see no problem with letting Commander Antilles have his way.”

Which means my choice for XO gets opposed fully—not that I expected less. “You are most kind, General.”

Ackbar’s mouth opened in the Mon Calamari imitation of a smile. “Spoken with General Solo’s degree of sarcasm, I believe.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” Wedge smiled, then clasped his hands at the small of his back. “I would also hope the General would see his way clear to letting me choose my own Executive Officer.”

The Admiral looked at his starfighter commander. “Who is presently in that position?”

“Rogue Squadron’s XO is Captain Aril Nunb. She is the sister of Nien Nunb, one of the other heroes of Endor. She is every bit as skilled a pilot as her brother and worked extensively with him during his smuggling days. Sullust is providing us aid and having her in Rogue Squadron would definitely increase support from the SoroSuub government.”

“Commander, do you quarrel with this assessment?”

Wedge shook his head. “No, sir, not at all.”

“Then the problem is …?”

“She’s a wonderful pilot, Admiral, and I’d love to have her in my squadron, but not as my XO. In that position I need someone who can help train my pilots. What Aril does, what her brother does, is intuitive to them. They can’t teach it to others. As my XO she’d be frustrated, my pilots would be frustrated, and I’d have chaos to deal with.”

“And you have another candidate in mind?”

“Yes, sir.” Wedge looked at General Salm and braced for his reaction. “I want Tycho Celchu.”

“Absolutely not!” The explosion Wedge had expected from Salm did not disappoint him. “Admiral Ackbar, under no circumstances will I allow Celchu to be anywhere near an active duty squadron. Just because he isn’t in prison is no reason for me to want him in my command.”

“Prison!” Wedge’s jaw shot open. “The man hasn’t done anything that warrants confinement.”

“He cannot be trusted.”

“I believe he can.”

“Come on, Antilles, you know what he’s been through.”

“What I know, General, is this: Tycho Celchu is a hero—much more of a hero than I am. On Hoth he fought as fiercely as anyone and at Endor he piloted an A-wing that led a bunch of TIE fighters on a merry chase through the Death Star. He took them off our backs while Lando and I went in and blew the installation’s reactor. He fought at Bakura and went on subsequent missions with the squadron, then volunteered, General, volunteered to fly a captured TIE fighter on a covert mission to Coruscant. He got captured. He escaped. That’s it.”

“That’s all you want to see, Antilles.”

“Meaning?”

“You say he escaped.” Salm’s face hardened into a steel mask. “It could be they let him go.”

“Sure, just like they let him go at Endor.” Wedge grimaced, doing his best to banish the anger he felt growing in him. “General, you’re fighting ghosts.”

Salm nodded curtly. “You’re right, I’m fighting to prevent you and your people from becoming ghosts.”

“Well, so am I, and having Tycho with us to train my people will give them the best chance of survival possible.”

Salm tossed his hands up in disgust and looked at Admiral Ackbar. “You see, he won’t listen to reason. He knows Captain Celchu is a threat, but he won’t let himself see it.”

“I’ll listen to reason, sir, when I see the product of some reasoning.”

Ackbar held up his hands. “Gentlemen, please. Commander Antilles, you must admit that General Salm’s concerns are valid. Perhaps if there were a way to alleviate some of them, an accommodation could be reached.”

“I thought of that, sir, and I’ve spoken with Captain Celchu about it.” Wedge started ticking points off on his fingers. “Tycho has agreed to fly a Z-95 Headhunter in our training exercises, with the lasers powered down so they can only paint a target, not hurt it. He’s agreed to have a destruct device installed in the starfighter so that if he goes to ram anything or goes outside spacelanes to which he is assigned, he can be destroyed by remote. When not flying he has agreed to remain under house arrest unless accompanied by Alliance Security or members of the squadron. He’s agreed to undergo interrogation as needed, to have all his computer files and correspondence open to examination, and is even willing to have us choose what he eats, when, and where.”

Salm marched over and placed himself between Wedge and the Mon Calamari Admiral. “This is all well and good, and might even be effective, but we can’t afford the risk.”

Ackbar blinked his eyes slowly. “Captain Celchu has agreed to these conditions?”

Wedge nodded. “He’s no different from you, Admiral—he’s a warrior. What he knows, what he can teach, will keep pilots alive. Of course, there’s no way General Salm will ever let him fly in combat again.”

“That can be etched in transparisteel.”

“So serving as an instructor is the only way he can fight back. You have to give him this chance.”

Ackbar activated the small comlink clipped to his uniform’s collar. “Lieutenant Filla, please find Captain Celchu and bring him to me.” The Mon Calamari looked up at Wedge. “Where is he currently?”

Wedge looked down at the deck. “He should be in the simulator complex.”

“He’s where?!” Salm’s face went purple.

“You’ll find him in the simulator complex, Lieutenant. Bring him here immediately.” Ackbar turned the comlink off. “The simulator complex?”

“It was Horn’s turn leading the Redemption scenario. Tycho knows how to fly a TIE better than most pilots, so I decided to have him fly against Horn.”

Ackbar’s lip fringe twitched. “You’ve taken certain liberties concerning Captain Celchu already, it seems, Commander.”

“Yes, sir, but nothing that isn’t necessary to make my pilots the best. I’m being prudent in this, I think.”

“The most prudent course, Commander—if you cared to protect the rest of the trainees here, not just your own—would have been to keep Captain Celchu out of the simulator facility entirely!” Salm crossed his arms over his chest. “You may be a hero of the New Republic, but that doesn’t give you any authorization to jeopardize our security.”

Perhaps having Tycho fly today was a bit premature. Wedge glanced down penitently. “I stand corrected, sir.”

Ackbar broke the uneasy silence following Wedge’s admission. “What is done is done. Now using Captain Celchu in the scenario would have made it that much more difficult, would it not?”

A smile creeping back on his face, Wedge nodded. “Yes, sir—which is what I wanted. Horn is good, very good, and the trio of pilots flying on his side in the exercise are not bad, either. Overall, Horn or Bror Jace, the Thyferran, are the best pilots in the whole group. Jace is arrogant, which gets under Horn’s skin and keeps him working hard. Horn, on the other hand, is impatient. That’ll get him killed and the only way to make that apparent to him is by having someone shoot him up in exercises. Tycho can do that.”

The door to Ackbar’s office opened and a female Rebel officer led a pilot in a black flight suit into the room. “Admiral, this is Captain Celchu.”

Tycho snapped to attention. “Reporting as ordered, sir.”

“At ease, Mr. Celchu.”

Wedge gave the slightly taller man a reassuring smile.

The Admiral eased himself out of his chair. “You may leave us, Lieutenant.” The Mon Calamari waited for the door to close behind his aide, then he nodded toward Wedge. “Captain Celchu, Commander Antilles has told me that you have agreed to a remarkable number of restrictions on yourself and your activities. Is this true?”

Tycho nodded. “Yes, sir, it is.”

“You realize you will be flying a defenseless bomb, you will have no privacy and no freedom.”

“I do, sir.”

The Mon Calamari closed his mouth for a moment and stared silently at the blue-eyed pilot. “You will be treated no better than I was when I served as a slave to Grand Moff Tarkin. You will be treated worse, in fact, because General Salm here believes you are a threat to the New Republic. Why do you agree to such treatment?”

Tycho shrugged. “It’s my duty, sir. I chose to join the Rebellion. I willingly froze on Hoth. I followed orders and assaulted a Death Star. I volunteered for the mission that got me in all this trouble. I did all those things because that’s what I agreed to do when I joined the Rebels.” He glanced down. “Besides, even the worst you can do to me will still be better than Imperial captivity.”

Sweat gleaming from his bald head, Salm pointed at Tycho. “This is all noble, Admiral, but would we expect anything less from someone in his position?”

“No, General, nor would we expect anything less of a noble son of Alderaan.” The Mon Calamari picked up a datapad from his desk. “I am signing orders to make Captain Celchu the Executive Officer for Rogue Squadron, and to put this Gavin Darklighter in the squadron as well.”

Wedge saw Salm’s expression sour, so he suppressed his own smile. Even so he winked at Tycho. Two flights, two kills.

Ackbar glanced at the datapad’s screen, then looked up again. “Commander Antilles, I expect to be informed about any irregularities or problems with your unit or personnel. An M-3PO military protocol droid has been assigned to your office to help you make out reports. Use it.”

The Corellian rolled his eyes. “As you wish, sir, but I think that droid could be more useful elsewhere.”

“I’m sure you do, Commander, but those decisions are made by those of us who haven’t refused promotions time and time again.”

Wedge held his hands up. “Yes, sir.” I surrender, but you don’t fool me, Admiral. You like mixing it up in battle the same as I do, but you work with the big ships while I like the fast ones.

“Good, I am glad we understand each other.” Ackbar nodded toward the door. “You’re dismissed, the both of you. I imagine you have things to celebrate.”

“Yes, sir.”

“One last thing.”

Wedge looked up and Tycho turned around to face the Admiral. “Sir?” they asked in tandem.

“What did you think about the pilots in the Redemption scenario?”

Wedge looked over at his XO. “Did you get Horn?”

Tycho blushed. “Oh, I got Horn, but just not as much of him as I would have liked.” Smiling proudly, he added, “Admiral, if the pilots I flew against are representative of the rest of the people we have to work with, Rogue Squadron should be operational within a couple of months, and the scourge of the Empire not very much longer after that.”

3

Kirtan Loor struggled to keep a self-satisfied smirk from ruining the stern expression he had worked hard to cultivate. He wanted to appear implacable. He needed to be merciless.

He feared he would fail on both counts, but laid the blame on his eagerness to confront an old nemesis finally brought to heel. What had been a blot on his record would soon be expunged. More importantly, people who had ridiculed him would learn they had grossly underestimated him. And in doing so they had doomed themselves.

Kirtan held his head erect as he marched down the companion way on the Expeditious. The Carrack-class light cruiser had not been built to accommodate people of his height, so he felt some of his black hair brush against the ceiling. A more cautious man would have slumped his shoulders slightly and lessened the chance of bashing his head on a light fixture or bulkhead support. Kirtan, having once been told that he looked every inch a taller, younger Grand Moff Tarkin—from thinning widow’s peak and lanky frame to sharp features in a cadaverously slender face—did his best to emphasize the resemblance.

Even though Tarkin was nearly seven years dead, the resemblance still earned him some respect. On an Imperial naval vessel, respect for an Intelligence officer such as himself was in short supply, so he took what he could get. The military arm of the Empire clearly resented having the government being run by the Emperor’s former Intelligence chief, and they took their displeasure out on the least of her servants.

Kirtan ducked his head and entered the antechamber of the Expeditious’s brig. “I am here to interview the prisoner you took off the Starwind.”

The Lieutenant in charge glanced at his datapad. “He just got back from medical.”

“I know, I’ve seen the report.” Kirtan glanced at the hatchway leading to the detention cells. “He has been told nothing about the results?”

The soldier’s face darkened. “I’ve been told nothing about the results. If he has a disease, I want him out before he infects the …”

The Intelligence operative held a hand up. “Calm yourself, you’ll bounce your rank cylinder out of your pocket in a moment.”

The Lieutenant raised a hand to check his rank badges and when he found them in place he blushed. “Play your little games with Rebel scum, not me. I have serious work to do.”

“Of course you do, Lieutenant.” Kirtan flashed a smile that was more predator than comrade, then turned toward the detention cells. “Which one?”

“Holding cell Three. Wait here while I get you an escort.”

“I won’t need one.”

“You may not think so, but he’s listed as rating a four on the Hostility Index. That rating requires two officers to accompany an interrogator.”

Kirtan shook his head slowly. “I know, I gave him that rating. I can handle him.”

“Remember that when you’re in a bacta bath washing away his fingerprints.”

“That I shall, Lieutenant.” Kirtan grasped his hands at the small of his back and started off through the hexagonal companionway. His black boots made a solid clanking sound on the metal grating and he measured his steps carefully to keep the sound rhythmic and daunting.

The hatch to cell Three opened with a hiss of pressurized gas. Yellow light spilled out into the corridor and Kirtan folded himself halfway to double to fit through the opening. He paused inside the cell and stood tall. He narrowed his eyes, then immediately thought better of it. He always said it looked as if I were wincing in pain.

The older, heavyset man swung his legs around off the cot and levered himself up into a sitting position. “Kirtan Loor, I thought it would be you.”

“Did you?” Kirtan injected sarcasm into his voice to cover his own surprise. “How could that be?”

The old man shrugged his shoulders. “Actually, I rather counted on it.”

What? The Intelligence officer snorted. “You mean you thought no one but me would be able to puzzle out your whereabouts.”

“No, I mean that I thought even you could figure out how to find me.”

Kirtan rocked back slightly from the venom in the prisoner’s voice, bumping the back of his head on the top of the hatchway. This is not the way this is supposed to be going. Narrowing his eyes, he stared down at the old man. “You, Gil Bastra, are going to die.”

“I figured that the moment your TIEs started shooting at me.”

Kirtan slowly crossed his arms. “No, you don’t understand how desperate is your situation here. You thought you outsmarted me and the Empire. You were cautious, but not insurmountably so. You are dying even now.”

Bastra’s bushy grey eyebrows met in a frown. “What are you talking about?”

“When we took the Starwind I ordered a medical evaluation for you. You may have forgotten that I always remember what I have seen and heard, and in doing so you have forgotten how you ridiculed me for using skirtopanol to interrogate a smuggler working for the Rebellion. You told me then that he died during interrogation because his boss, Billey, had his people dose themselves with lotiramine. It metabolizes the interrogation drug and can induce chemical amnesia or, in some cases, death.”

Kirtan gave Bastra a cold smile. “Your medical scan shows elevated levels of lotiramine in your blood.”

“I guess you’ll just have to kill me the old-fashioned way, then.” Bastra smiled openly, flashing white teeth in a thick, stubble-coated face. “Since Vader was the last Jedi, I guess you’ll even have to get your hands dirty doing it.”

“Hardly.”

“You never were one to break a sweat doing any work on Corellia, were you, Loor?” Bastra slumped back against the bulkhead. “I don’t think you would have fit in even if you’d made an effort. You were always your own worst enemy.”

“I wasn’t meant to fit in. You were Corellian Security, I was Imperial Intelligence attached to your office.” Kirtan forced himself to calm down a bit and unknotted his fists. Lowering his hands to his sides, he tugged on the hem of his black tunic. “And now you are your own worst enemy. You have accelerated blastonecrosis.”

“What? You’re lying.”

“No, no I’m not.” Kirtan let pity slip into his voice. “The lotiramine is very effective in masking the tracer enzymes for the disease. Here, on this ship, our medical facilities are far superior to those you would find among Rebels. We were able to pick out the enzymes.”

Gil Bastra’s shoulders slumped and his grey head bowed. His hands came together around his bulging stomach. “The fatigue, loss of appetite. I thought I was just getting old.”

“You are. And you are dying.” The Intelligence officer idly stroked his sharp chin with a long-fingered hand. “I can do nothing about the former problem, but there are ways to cure blastonecrosis.”

“And all I have to do to be cured is turn in my friends?”

Looking down upon the grey lump of a man across from him, Kirtan felt momentarily embarrassed by memories of having feared Gil Bastra’s judgment of him and his work. Bastra had not been his direct supervisor, but he had been the one to assign officers to work with Intelligence, and Bastra’s lack of respect had been reflected through the personnel sent to work with Kirtan. Every time that Kirtan had felt in control and superior, Bastra had managed to undercut him and shame him.

Is this another of those times? Kirtan caught himself and nodded slowly. “There is more fight in you than you would want me to believe there is. I know you fashioned the new identities for your confederates and did a very good job of it, too. In fact, you only made mistakes in your own cover. Still I knew that you’d find yourself a freighter and hop around the galaxy, as your heart pleased. You were too old to change your lifestyle to something totally alien to avoid detection. You decided to gamble and now you have lost.”

The old man’s head came up slowly. Kirtan saw fire still smoldering in the blue eyes. “I’ll give you nothing.”

“Yes, yes, of course you won’t.” The Intelligence man laughed lightly. “You forget, I learned interrogation from a number of very good people, including yourself. I will get information from you. When I do—and you know I will—Corran Horn, Iella Wessiri, and her husband will be mine. It is inevitable.”

“You’re overestimating your abilities, and underestimating mine.”

“Am I? I think not. I know you well enough to know you’ll only break under extreme pressure. I can and will take you to the edge of your endurance, then float you in bacta until you are ready to continue interrogation.” Kirtan folded his hands together. “However, you are just one relay in the network that will bring the others to me. Corran Horn is too volatile to stay confined in any role you create for him. And I know that role had to be very constricting for him.”

Bastra’s chest heaved mightily with a sigh. “And how do you know that?”

Kirtan tapped his temple with a finger. “You think I have forgotten the falling out the two of you had? You decided to protect him because his father had been your partner when you started out, but you are a vengeful man, Gil Bastra. Whatever role you created for Corran would squeeze him every day, just to remind him he owed his life to a man he hated.”

Fat rippled beneath the prisoner’s grey jumpsuit as he laughed. “You do know me.”

“I do indeed.”

“But not well enough.” Bastra gave him a grin that was all teeth and defiance. “I am vengeful—vengeful enough to engineer things so a disgraced Intelligence officer would spend the rest of his career dashing around the galaxy trying to capture three people he once worked with. Three people who escaped out from under his hooked beak, and were able to do so because his nose was so up in the air all the time that he couldn’t notice the most obvious of mistakes they made.”

Kirtan used scorn to smother his surprise. “I caught you, didn’t I?”

“And it took you the better part of two years to do so. Ever wonder why? Ever wonder why, when you were about to give up, a new clue would surface?” Bastra surged forward and stood. Though the prisoner was nearly thirty centimeters shorter, than Kirtan, the Intelligence officer felt somehow dwarfed by him. “I wanted you following me. Every second you were on my trail, every moment I looked easier to catch than the others, I knew you’d come after me. And while you were coming after me, you wouldn’t be going after the others.”

Kirtan pointed a trembling finger at the old man’s face. “That doesn’t matter because you can and will be broken. I will have from you the things I need to find the others.”

“You’re wrong, Kirtan. I’m a black hole that’s sucking your career down into its heart.” Bastra sagged back down onto the cot. “Remember that when I’m dead, because I’ll be laughing about it for all eternity.”

This cannot continue. I will not be humiliated any longer! “I’ll remember your words, Gil Bastra, but your laughter will be a long time coming. The only eternity you’ll know is your interrogation, and I guarantee—personally guarantee—you’ll go to your grave having betrayed those who trusted you the most.”

4

Corran made a vain grab at the hydrospanner with his right hand as the tool slipped from the X-wing’s starboard engine cowling. His fingertips brushed the spanner’s end, sending it into a spin toward the ferrocrete deck of the hangar. A half second later, when his right knee slipped and unbalanced him, he realized having failed to catch the tool was the least of his problems. He tried to hook his left hand on the edge of the open engine compartment, but he missed with that grab, too, leaving him set to plummet headfirst in the hydrospanner’s wake.

Still trying to prepare himself for the agony coming from a fractured skull, he was surprised to find pain blossoming at the other end of his body. Before he could figure out what had happened, his flailing left hand caught hold of the cowling it had missed before, aborting his long fall to the ground. He hauled himself back onto the S-foil and lay there on his belly for a moment, considering himself very lucky.

As the pain in Corran’s rump lessened, Whistler’s scolding gained volume. Corran rubbed a hand back over his left cheek and felt a small tear in the fabric of his flight suit, prompting him to laugh. “Yes, Whistler, I am very lucky you were quick enough to catch me. Next time, though, can your pincer catch a little less of me and a bit more of my flight suit?”

Whistler blatted a reply Corran chose to ignore.

The pilot twisted around onto his seat with only mild discomfort. “So, do I still need the tool, or did the last adjustment do it?”

The droid’s tone ran from high to low in a fair imitation of a sigh.

“No, of course I still need it.” Corran frowned. “You should have caught it, Whistler, not me. I can climb back up here by myself. It can’t.” Even as he said that and slid toward the S-foil’s forward edge, it occurred to him that he’d not heard the hydrospanner hit the ground. That’s odd.

Peering over the edge of the wing, he saw a smiling, brown-haired woman holding the hydrospanner up in his direction. “This belongs to you, I take it?”

Corran nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”

She handed it to him, then climbed up on the cart he’d used to get up on top of the S-foil. “Need some help?”

“No, I’ve pretty much got it handled, despite what the droid says.”

“Oh.” She extended her hand toward him. “I’m Lujayne Forge.”

“I know, I’ve seen you around.”

“You’ve done a bit more than that. You flew a dupe against me in the Redemption scenario.” She leaned her slender body against the side of his fighter, bisecting the green and white wording that indicated the X-wing was the property of the Corellian Security Force. “You put the Korolev down.”

Corran tightened the hydrospanner over the primary trim bolt on the centrifugal debris extractor and nudged it to the left. “That was luck. Nawara Ven had already taken the shields down with his missiles. It was more his kill than mine. You still did well.”

Her brown eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “I guess. I have a question for you, though.”

Corran straightened up. “Go ahead.”

“The way you took that bomber after me, did you do that just as part of the exercise, or was there something more to it?”

“Something more?”

Lujayne hesitated, then nodded. “I was wondering if you singled me out because I was from Kessel?”

Corran blinked in surprise. “Why would that make any difference to me?”

She laughed and tapped the CorSec insignia on the side of the fighter with a knuckle. “You were with CorSec. You sent people to Kessel. As far as you’re concerned, everyone on Kessel is either a prisoner or a smuggler who ought to have been a prisoner. And when the prisoners and smugglers liberated the planet from the Imps, well, that didn’t change anything in your eyes, did it?”

Setting the hydrospanner on a safe spot, Corran raised his hands. “Wait a minute, you’re jumping to a lot of conclusions.”

“Maybe, but tell me, you didn’t know I was from Kessel?”

“Well, I did.”

“And tell me that didn’t make a difference to you.”

“It didn’t, honest.”

“I bet.”

The firm set of her jaw and the way she folded her arms across her chest told Corran she didn’t believe him. There was a fair amount of anger in her words, but also some hurt. Anger he could deal with—there wasn’t a smuggler or criminal who hadn’t been angry when he was around. The hurt, though, that was unusual and made Corran feel uncomfortable.

“What makes you think I hold your coming from Kessel against you?”

“The way you act.” Lujayne’s expression softened a bit, and some of the anger drained away, but that just let more anxiety and pain bleed into her words. “You tend to keep to yourself. You’re not associating with the rest of us—beyond a narrow circle of pilots you think are as sharp as you are. You’re always watching and listening, evaluating and judging. Others have noticed it, too.”

“Ms. Forge, Lujayne, you’re making meters out of microns here.”

“I don’t think so, and I don’t want to be judged for things over which I had no control.” Her chin came up and fire sparked in her eyes. “My father volunteered to go to Kessel under an Old Republic program where he taught inmates how to move back into society upon their release. My mother was one of his students. They fell in love and remained on Kessel—they’re still there, along with most of my brothers and sisters. They’re all good people and their work with inmates was designed to make your job easier by giving criminals other skills so they’d not return to crime when they were released.”

Corran sighed and his shoulders slumped. “I think that’s great, I really do. I wish there were thousands of people like your parents and kin doing that sort of work. The fact is, though, that even if I’d known that, I’d still have gone after you in the exercise.”

“Oh, my being from Kessel had nothing to do with it?”

He almost dismissed her question with a glib denial, but he caught himself and she clearly noticed his hesitation. “Maybe, just maybe, it did have something to do with my flying. I guess I decided that if you were from Kessel and could fly, you had to be a smuggler, and it was important for me to fly better than you could.”

She nodded once, but her expression did not shift from one of concern to smug triumph as he had expected it would. “I believe that, and I can understand it. Still, there’s something more there, right?”

“Look, I’m sorry if what I did made you look bad in the exercise, but I really don’t have the time to talk about this now.”

“No time or no inclination?”

Whistler hooted something in an utterly carefree manner.

“You stay out of this.” Frustration curled his hands into fists. “You’re not going to let this go, are you, Ms. Forge?”

With a smile blossoming on her face, she shook her head. “If you’d gotten this far in an interrogation, would you give up?”

Corran snorted a laugh. “No.”

“So, explain yourself.”

He definitely heard a request for more than an explanation of his conduct in the Redemption scenario in her voice. For a split second he flashed on the times at CorSec when his human partner, Iella Wessiri, had made similar demands of him. Iella had been a conciliator—always the one to be patching up the disagreements between folks in the unit. That’s what Lujayne is trying to do, which means I’ve managed to alienate a number of the other pilots trying to get into the unit.

“Concerning the exercise, I really just wanted to see how good you were. I’d been able to figure out where some of the other pilots stood in relationship to me, but I’d not flown against you. You know, you’re not bad.”

“But I’m not in a class with you and Bror Jace.”

Corran smiled quickly, then covered it with a frown. “True, but you’re still very sharp. I’d like to think the rest of the pilots are going to be at least that sharp. I’d even be set up to fly against that Gimbel kid in his Redemption scenario tomorrow but Jace volunteered before I could.”

“His name is Gavin, Gavin Darklighter.”

“Gavin, then.”

“And you didn’t want to be following Jace’s lead?”

“Would you?”

Lujayne smiled. “Given a choice, no, I guess not. Next to you, he’s the most standoffish person in the group.”

Corran felt uneasy inside. “I’m not as bad as he is.”

“No? At least he has the good graces to deign to join us in DownTime for some recreation. He’s a sliced and blown datafile compared to you.”

Corran turned to the left and pointed his finger at the astromech droid. “Don’t even start.”

Lujayne raised an eyebrow. “So your droid thinks you should get out more, too?”

Something halfway between a snarl and a growl came from Corran’s throat, but it lacked the power to make it menacing. “Whistler has the ability, from time to time, to be a nag. His problem is that in the time since I left CorSec I’ve been in situations where I’ve had to be very careful. I moved through a number of identities that didn’t allow me to be very open with people. For example, most recently, I spent over a year as the confidential aide to a succession of incompetent Imp officials governing a Rim world. One slip, one crack in my identity, and I’d have been caught. And when you get out of the habit of trusting folks and relaxing around them, well …”

“I understand.”

“Thanks.” Corran gave her a grateful smile. “On top of that, I’m learning a lot of new things here and I’ve been trying to concentrate on my flying. That’s not easy—there’s a whole new set of slang to get used to and people from species I barely knew existed that I now have to work with and even share living quarters with.”

“That is difficult—my roommate is a Rodian.”

“That’s rough, but I’ll bet she’s less idiosyncratic than my roommate.” Corran whistled at the Gand pilot entering the hangar. “Ooryl, come over here, please.”

The pilot’s grey-green flesh clashed with the bright orange of his flight suit, and the knobby bits of his exoskeleton poked bumps in odd places from beneath the fabric as he walked. “May Ooryl assist?”

“I’ve been curious about something since we were assigned the same quarters, but didn’t think to ask you about it until right now.” Corran frowned. “I hope you don’t mind—you might take it personally and I don’t mean to embarrass you.”

The Gand just watched him with multifaceted eyes. “Qyrgg would hope to avoid embarrassment as well, but you may ask.”

Corran nodded in what he hoped was a friendly manner. “Why do you speak of yourself in the third person?”

“Qrygg is embarrassed by not understanding your question.”

Lujayne smiled. “You do not seem to refer to yourself with the pronoun ‘I.’ ”

“And you alternate the names you use.”

The Gand’s mouth parts clicked open in what Corran had decided was a Gand’s best approximation of a human smile. “Ooryl understands.”

“And?”

Ooryl crossed his arms, then tapped his trio of fingers against his body’s deltoid armor plates. “On Gand it is held that names are important. Any Gand who has achieved nothing is called Gand. Before Ooryl was given Ooryl’s name, Ooryl was known as Gand. Once Ooryl had made a mark in the world, Ooryl was given the Qrygg surname. Later, by mastering the difficulties of astronavigation and flight, Ooryl earned the right to be called Ooryl.”

The woman frowned. “This still does not explain why you do not use pronouns to refer to yourself.”

“Qrygg apologizes. On Gand only those who have achieved great things are permitted to use pronouns for self-designation. The use of such carries with it the presumption that all who hear the speech will know who the speaker is, and this assumption is only true in the case where the speaker is so great, the speaker’s name is known to all.”

Corran found the system curious, but somehow satisfying. It always does seem that those who use I the most are the ones who have the least in the way of accomplishments to justify it. The Gands have formalized a system we should have come up with long ago. “So Ooryl is the equivalent of Corran, and Qyrgg is the same as Horn for me?”

“Exactly.”

“Then why do you sometimes refer to yourself by your family name, and sometimes by your own name?”

The Gand looked down for a moment and his mouth parts closed. “When a Gand has given offense, or is ashamed of actions, this diminishes the gains made in life. Name reduction is an act of contrition, an apology. Ooryl would like to think Ooryl will not often be called Qyrgg, but Qyrgg knows the likelihood of this is slender.”

Whistler tootled jauntily at Corran.

“People would know my first name was Corran even if we did use this system.” He rolled his eyes. “And any droid who wanted to keep his name would have run his little diagnostic program and told me if the extractor was adjusted correctly or not by now.”

Lujayne glanced over at him. “Trouble with the engine?”

“Nothing major.” Corran pointed down into the hole. “I had to replace an extractor a while back and keeping it trimmed up over the first fifty parsecs is important.”

Lujayne nodded. “Until it seats itself properly. Looks like you’re working on the housing when you really ought to be just putting a spacer on the axle.”

“You know about fixing these things?”

She shrugged. “Landspeeder repair was one of the trade skills my father used to teach. The T-47 uses virtually identical debris extraction systems for the engine. What you’re doing will work, but you’ll keep making adjustments for another six months. I can measure up a spacer and have it ground down to size for you in a half an hour or so.”

“Really?”

“Sure, if you want the help.”

Corran frowned. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“You’d owe me a favor and you’d have to trust me.”

Trusting someone he did not know did feel odd to him, but not so much so that he could not do it. “I see your point. I think, though, I can trust you.”

“We have a deal then.”

Ooryl looked up at Lujayne. “You will need a spacer and laser calipers? Ooryl will obtain them, if you wish.”

“Please.”

Corran leaned back on the S-foil. “I appreciate this help.”

She smiled slyly. “I hope you think that after you hear what my favor is.”

“Name it.”

“After we fix up your X-wing, you come with me to DownTime and get to know some of the others who are likely to make it into the squadron. We’ve all got the thing pretty well figured out—Gavin’s a wild card, but Bror Jace thinks he will probably knock him from the running. A few of us are at the lower edge of what we assume will be acceptable scores, but we hope to make it. Anyway, we congregate down there, swap stories, and get to know each other. Since you’ll undoubtedly be in, you should join us.”

Corran nodded. “Okay, I’ll do that, but that’s not the favor I owe you.”

“If that’s the way you want it.”

“Definitely.” Corran smiled at her. “I owe you for more than just helping with the engine. Asking me to become friends with folks I should already be getting to know isn’t a favor I’d be doing you, but one I’ll be doing myself. One thing though, I’m not going to have to get along with Bror Jace, am I?”

“Why should you be the first?”

“Good.” As Ooryl returned with the part and the tool, Corran winked at Lujayne. “Well, let’s get this engine working, then we can see if there’s a way to fix up my relations with the rest of Rogue Squadron.”

5

Corran Horn tried to kill his smile as he entered the white briefing amphitheater, then he saw all the other pilots who could smile were absolutely beaming. Not a one of the nervous expressions we were all wearing the other night in DownTime. The first message in the queue on his datapad had informed him that after breakfast he was to report for Rogue Squadron’s first briefing. The message itself had been neutral and routine in wording—even though it was the first official notification that he’d made it into the squadron.

He’d had a pretty good idea that he’d make it, but despite assurances from the other candidates, he’d never allowed himself to assume he would make it. In the past he’d been burned by making unwarranted assumptions. Granted those assumptions had eventually led him to join the Rebellion, which was not a wholly bad thing, but it took him well away from where he had imagined he’d be at this time in his life.

Even though he’d not allowed himself the luxury of believing he’d make the cut before he actually made it, he was proud of his being selected for the squadron. Corran had never been one to hold back. He’d gone into the Corellian Security Force Academy straight out of secondary school and continued the Horn family tradition by establishing new records in the training there. One of the last marks he surpassed had been set by his father, Hal, twenty years earlier, and Hal had beaten the record set by Hal’s own father.

And now I’m a Rebel, an outlaw. What would my father and grandfather have thought? A cold sensation raised goose bumps on his skin. Whatever, they would have thought much worse things if I’d become an Imp.

Rhysati Ynr waved Corran over to the bench where she sat. “We made it, we actually made it.”

“It was nice of Commander Antilles to agree with our group consensus.” He mounted the steps up to Rhysati’s row and slid in next to her. “It hasn’t sunk in yet in some ways.”

The Gand, sitting behind them, leaned forward. “Ooryl learned your Redemption run had the highest score of our training cycle.”

Corran flashed the Gand a big smile—he’d found exaggerating his expression did indeed help Ooryl catch its import. “Who came in second? Bror Jace, I bet.”

The Gand shook his head. “Gavin Darklighter beat the Thyferran.”

“The kid beat Jace?” Corran glanced over at where the tall, brown-haired pilot from Tatooine sat talking with the black-furred Shistavanen wolfman, Shiel. Corran, with years of experience in the spaceports and stations on Corellia, had spotted Gavin as being young despite his size. It’s in the eyes—the years just aren’t there but apparently the piloting skill is!

The Twi’lek sat down next to Ooryl, looping one of his brain tails back over his left shoulder. “Jace isn’t any happier about it than he was about losing to you. He volunteered to fly in an eyeball in Gavin’s exercise and got hit with a missile at range. He never had a chance.”

Corran nodded his head and looked up toward the front of the room where Bror Jace stood. Tall, slender, and handsome, the blond-haired, blue-eyed pilot had proven himself to be very good during the selection exercises. The Corellian thought he might even have liked Jace, but the man’s ego was as big as an Imperial Star Destroyer and likely to be just as deadly. The ego-cases Corran had known in CorSec had always burned bright but burned out early. At some point they got themselves into a situation they could have just as easily avoided had they been thinking clearly.

Corran smiled in Jace’s direction and caught a return nod from the black-haired woman to whom Jace was speaking. “Ooryl, how did Erisi Dlarit do in the exercise?”

“Middle of the hunt, after Nawara Ven and ahead of Ooryl. Lujayne Forge came in at the back of the group, with the others in between. The scores were still very good, but competition is stiff here.”

Wedge Antilles entered the room and marched down front to where the holographic briefing display grew from the floor like a mechanical mushroom. Joining him at the front of the room Corran saw the mystery pilot from the day before and a black 3PO droid with a nonstandard head. It looked more like the clamshell design seen on flight controller droids, where the concave upper disk overlapped the lower one, but left a facial hole. The unusual construction made sense, both given the lack of spare parts for droids and the fact that this droid was assigned to a fighter squadron. The little bit of a sagittal crest on its head made it look somewhat martial.

“People, if you would be seated. I’m Wedge Antilles, the commander of Rogue Squadron.” The green-eyed man smiled openly. “I’d like to welcome you here and congratulate you on being chosen for Rogue Squadron. I want to go over with you the basic criteria we used in making our selections and let you know what will be expected of you as your training continues and missions are assigned to us.”

Wedge looked out at his audience and Corran felt a bit of a shock run through him as their eyes met. His eyes have seen the years—have seen more than they should have. Corran knew of Wedge’s background because Hal Horn had been one of the investigators trailing the pirates who killed Wedge’s family at Gus Treta. Hal had kept his eye on Wedge and had pronounced him a lost cause when he started smuggling weapons for the Rebellion.

Wedge exhaled slowly. “You all know the history of this squadron. Even before we were formally created, we were given the job of killing the first Death Star. We did it, and lost a lot of fine pilots in the process. All of them were and are heroes of the Rebellion—they’ll be as famous as some of the old Jedi Knights in the years to come. Rogue Squadron saw a lot of action guarding convoys and raiding Imperial shipping after that. We covered the evacuation from Hoth, fought at Gall, and a year later, at Endor, we killed another Death Star. From there we went to Bakura and fought the Ssi-ruuk.

“After seven years of nonstop fighting, the leadership of the New Republic decided to rebuild and revitalize this unit. This was a wise choice because all of us—those who had survived—had seen a lot of new pilots come into Rogue Squadron and get killed in Rogue Squadron.” Wedge looked over at the mystery pilot. “All of the veterans wanted to see Rogue Squadron continue, but also wanted to see the pilots in it get the training they needed to survive.”

The TIE pilot nodded in agreement with Wedge’s statement. Wedge looked back at the new pilots. “About a year ago Admiral Ackbar, at the behest of the Provisional Council, presented me with the plans for re-forming Rogue Squadron. Rogue Squadron had become a symbol for the Alliance. It needed to live up to its legend and become once again an elite group of pilots who could be called upon to do the sort of impossible jobs Rogue Squadron has always managed to complete. As you know, we have interviewed and tested a lot of pilots—nearly a hundred for each of the dozen positions you now fill.

“The reason I mention all this to you is so that you’ll be aware of something that might not have sunk in during your selection process. You are elite pilots and you are more than just that, but no matter who you are, or how good you are, you’ll never be considered as good as Biggs Darklighter or Jek Porkins or anyone else who has died in service to Rogue Squadron. They are legends, this unit is a legend, and none of us are ever going to be able to be more than they are.”

Except for someone like you, Commander, who already is more. A grin blossomed on Corran’s face. And I can dream, can’t I?

Wedge opened his hands. “Truth be told, most of you are already better pilots than a lot of the men and women who have died in this unit. You are an eclectic bunch—two of you had death marks against you before you joined the Alliance and the rest of you will earn them as soon as the Empire learns who has been assigned to this unit. You were chosen for your flying skill and for other skills you possess because Admiral Ackbar wants this unit to be more than just a fighter squadron. He wants us to be able to operate independently if necessary and perform operations that would normally require a much larger group of individuals.”

Rhysati leaned over to Corran. “Baron-Administrator Calrissian had his own group of Commando-pilots back home. The idea’s got merit, even if they couldn’t stop Darth Vader from causing trouble.”

Corran nodded. “CorSec had its own Tactical Response Team. Wanting to make Rogue Squadron into something similar explains why some of us made it when others didn’t.” Corran still wondered what special skills Gavin was going to bring to the group, but he was willing to wait for an answer instead of assuming there wasn’t one.

The Commander continued his briefing. “Over the next month you’ll get the most intensive training you’ve ever had. Captain Celchu will be in charge of it. For those of you who do not know him, Captain Celchu graduated from the Imperial Naval Academy and served as a TIE pilot. He left Imperial service after his homeworld of Alderaan was destroyed. He joined the squadron shortly thereafter and participated in everything from the evacuation of Hoth to the Death Star run at Endor and more. He is a superior pilot, as some of you have already learned, and what he will teach you will keep you safe from the best pilots the Empire can throw at us.”

Wedge nodded toward the droid. “Emtrey is our military protocol droid. He will deal with all requisitions, duty assignments, and other administrative duties. You will be moving to a separate complex here to continue your training—Emtrey has your room assignments and initial craft assignments and will give them to you at the end of this meeting.

“So you’re all now part of Rogue Squadron. What you can expect of the future is this: endless amounts of boredom and routine punctuated by moments of sheer terror. As good as you are, statistical studies of fighter pilots indicate most of you will die in your first five missions. While survivability goes up after that, the odds are still not good that you will live to see the complete destruction of the Empire. The reason for that is that you will be there to see bits and pieces of it being lopped off. Rogue Squadron will be given tough assignments and will be expected to complete them, specifically because we are the best there is.”

Wedge rested his hands on his hips. “That’s it for now, unless you have any questions.”

Jace stood. “Will our training consist of more simulator work, or will we be given actual X-wings to fly?”

“That’s a fair question. Emtrey has informed me that our squadron has been assigned a dozen X-wings. We have possession of ten at this time, with two more expected inside the week. When those ships arrive we’ll start training in them. Until then, and as a supplement to flight training, we will use a lot more simulator exercises.”

The Commander smiled. “And, yes, we could have been assigned A-wing or B-wing craft, but we’re using X-wings. You may debate the merits of the various ships among yourselves, but Rogue Squadron has always been primarily an X-wing squadron, and shall remain so. Any other questions? No? Then you’re dismissed until 0800 hours tomorrow at which time we’ll meet again and begin molding you into a true fighting unit.”

Corran stood, intending to head down to thank the Commander for picking him for the squadron, but Jace approached Wedge first, and Corran refused to do anything that gave the impression he was following Jace. Later, I can thank him later.

Nawara Ven stroked his chin with his left hand. “So, two of us are already under death marks. I wonder who?”

Rhysati poked him in the ribs with her elbow. “You mean you aren’t, Nawara? You were a lawyer, after all.”

“Yes, and there are doubtlessly some of my clients still on Kessel who would love to kill me, but I’m not aware of having a death mark.” His red eyes narrowed. “The Shistavanen is a rough customer. I could see him as being wanted by the Empire.”

The blond woman frowned. “I’d taken his being one of them for granted. What about Andoorni Hui? She’s a Rodian and most of them tend to work with the Empire. Did she do something to anger her old employers?”

Ooryl blinked his big compound eyes. “Not her. Rodians are hunters who live and die by their reputations. Andoorni is a huntress who decided that joining the most celebrated hunting band in the galaxy—Rogue Squadron—is a way of furthering her reputation. Ooryl does not think she did anything to bring the wrath of her past patrons down on her head.”

Rhysati looked over at Corran. “What do you think?”

“Me? I don’t know. I don’t think I ever ran into her when I was in CorSec, but I have trouble telling one Rodian from another and I can’t speak their language. I do know she wasn’t on any apprehension lists I ever saw, so she didn’t have a death mark before I left the service.” He shrugged. “Shiel probably does have a death mark on him, on the other hand. A lot of the wolfmen were put out of the scouting business because of the Emperor’s restrictions on exploration. Some of them turned around and sold their services to the Rebellion and found havens like Dantooine and Yavin. I don’t think the Empire appreciates that sort of activity.”

“More correctly, Mr. Horn, Riv Shiel earned his death mark when he slew a stormtrooper team that tried to apprehend him, thinking he was Lak Sivrak.” The black protocol droid carefully ascended the stairs. “Forgive me for interrupting, and please allow me to introduce myself. I am Emtrey, human-cyborg relations and regulations with a military specialty. I am fluent in over six million languages and familiar with an equivalent number of current and historical military doctrines, regulations, honor codes, and protocols.”

The ends of the Twi’lek’s brain tails twitched. “As well as being familiar with the personnel files of everyone in the squadron?”

“Why, yes.” Golden lights glowed deep in the dark hollow of the droid’s face. “My primary function requires me to carry such data around with me. Without it …”

Nawara held a hand up. “So you could tell us who the other individual is with a death mark on him or her.”

“I could.” Emtrey’s head canted at an angle. “Shiel has made no attempt to conceal his death mark, but the other person has said nothing about it. Would revealing his identity be wise, Mr. Horn?”

Corran shrugged. “I stopped being a law enforcement officer a bit ago, so I don’t know if revealing that information would be a violation of the law. Counselor Ven might.”

The Twi’lek half closed his eyes. “Hardly. Death marks imposed by the Empire are meant to be a matter of public record. And, in this company, it is hardly a disgrace.”

“Who is it?” Rhysati asked.

“Nawara’s right, it’s more a badge of honor here than anything else.” Corran crossed his arms. “C’mon, Emtrey, say what you know.”

The droid looked at Corran carefully. “Are you sure, sir?”

Why ask me? “Of course.”

“Very well.” The droid righted its head again. “The other death mark was issued after the brutal murder and vivisection of a half-dozen people.”

Corran’s blood ran cold. “Who did that?”

The droid’s eyes burned bright. “You did, sir. You’re wanted on Drall, in the Corellian Sector, for the murder of six smugglers.”

6

Laughing so hard he had to hold his stomach, Corran sat down abruptly. He only partially landed on the bench, and ended up on the floor at Emtrey’s feet. “That’s nothing.” He swiped his hands at the tears streaming down his face. “I’d forgotten all about it.”

The Gand looked down at him. “Ooryl was not aware murder was seen as mirthful.”

Nawara Ven folded his arms. “It isn’t.”

About the time Rhysati stepped back, imposing Emtrey between herself and him, Corran realized he’d quickly destroyed what his previous socializing had accomplished. He scrambled to his feet and composed himself. “I can explain this, I really can.”

The Twi’lek lawyer twitched a brain tail at him. “I’ve heard that before.”

“Yeah, well, this is the truth, unlike what your clients were probably saying.” Corran looked at the droid. “Can you tap into registry files from here?”

“I am fully capable of a whole host of functions in that regard …”

“Good. See if you can pull up the death files for the names in the reports about the murders, then match them up with birth bytes.” As the droid’s eye-lights started to flicker, Corran turned back to his squadron mates. “The short form is this—at CorSec, in my division, we had an Imperial Liaison officer who had enough ambition to dream about being a Grand Moff, and just enough talent for dealing with regs and bureaucracy to be a severe problem. He wanted us to bear down on all Rebel smuggling in the system, but we were more concerned about hunting down the kind of pirates who actually hurt folks—glit smugglers and the like. Loor—that was the Intelligence officer’s name—threatened to bring us up on charges of aiding the Rebellion. The Imperials fleeing to Corellia after the Emperor’s death gave the Diktat a lot of support, and that meant Imperial officers suddenly had the muscle to back up their threats.

“My boss, Gil Bastra, decided to make up new identities for himself, my partner Iella Wessiri, her husband Diric, and myself, but he knew Loor would be suspicious of time we all spent together outside the office. Gil and I made up the records for these smugglers, put hints out that they existed and were very bad, and then put out reports that they’d been murdered. Loor saw all the reports—and reading them was the closest he ever got to a field investigation. In a staged scene in the office, Gil accused me of having executed the smugglers and I said I hadn’t and that he couldn’t prove it anyway. We had a public falling out and Loor assumed we never met with each other after that. We did and set things up so we could head out and away from the Empire.”

Corran sighed. “Loor and I did not get along at all. He threatened me with a death mark for those deaths if I ever got out of line. When I took off—when he set me up and failed to kill me—he followed through. That’s where the death mark comes from.”

The Twi’lek opened his hands and looked at the droid. “Do you have the records, Emtrey?”

“I do. They have birth bytes.”

“Gil did good work. Convert the time of their births to military time. Reverse values for minutes and hours, then compare that to the birth date of the next person in alphabetical order—using Basic, of course.”

The droid tilted his head to the right. “There is a progression. The birth time of one is the month and day of the birth of the next, but the pattern does not loop all the way around.”

“It does if you add in my birthday and birth time.” Corran smiled. “On top of that, the hospital where they were born doesn’t exist—nor does the town where it’s supposed to be.”

Rhysati emerged from behind the droid and patted Corran on the shoulder. “I’m happy to know you’re innocent, but couldn’t you have found something aside from death to use to fool your Imp?”

“Well, when you’re in CorSec, you see enough death that you have to joke about it or it grinds you down. Besides, watching Loor read the fictional reports and react to them was funny.”

“Then he would find Gil Bastra’s death file amusing, I take it?”

Corran’s jaw dropped open. “What?”

The droid’s head became level. “There is a notice of Gil Bastra’s death. It came when I asked for the data on all the names with the report.”

“That can’t be.”

“Oh, I’m afraid it is, sir.” Emtrey’s head tilted to the left. “It was appended to Imperial holonet transmission #A34920121.”

The pilot shook his head, wishing he didn’t feel so hollow inside. Gil, dead? “No, I don’t believe it. Gil can’t be dead.”

The Twi’lek eased Corran down onto the bench. “How reliable is the report of his death?”

The droid’s eyes flickered for a moment. “Answering that question could compromise intelligence-gathering operations.”

“What difference does it make, Nawara?” Corran rubbed both hands over his face. “It was reliable enough to be put out on the holonet.”

Nawara smiled carefully, though the sight of his sharp peg teeth carried with it a hint of menace. “No, Corran, the report of a death went out on the holonet. That says nothing about the reliability of the information upon which the report was based. That report could have been based on something your Gil did, or even something this Loor did to get at you.”

He’s right. “You must have been one grand lawyer to spot that sort of inconsistency.”

The Twi’lek slapped Corran on the shoulder. “You would have hated me if you were trying to make a case against one of my clients—whether he was lying about his innocence or not. So, Emtrey, how reliable is this report? Are there other reports that corroborate it?”

“I have no related reports.”

“It wouldn’t make any difference if you did, at least not any that came out of Corellian Security Force files. Gil had full access to the database. The same way he created new identities for my partner, her husband, himself, and me, he would have entered everything to make it look good. He really went all out—we had temporary identities that let us travel to the worlds where he had created solid identities we could hide behind. At my last destination he had me working as an aide for the local Military Prefect.”

Rhysati gave Corran a hard stare with her hazel eyes. “So are you saying you aren’t Corran Horn?”

“No, I am Corran Horn. I used the identities Gil made for me when I ran and hid, but I joined the Rebellion as myself.” Corran took a deep breath and sighed heavily. “Look, what I’ve told you about myself is true, but I haven’t told you everything. It’s not that I haven’t trusted you, but a lot of it I didn’t want to talk about. I …”

The blond woman reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “Hey, we all have bad memories.”

“Thanks, Rhys.” Corran’s chest felt tight, but as he spoke he could feel some of the tension ease. “There was a lot of bad blood between Loor and me, and knowing I was going to head out, I really started defying him. He decided to have me dealt with. On what I thought would be my last assignment I drew an X-wing from the pool of craft we’d captured and converted to CorSec use. I was supposed to pull a surprise inspection on small-time smugglers who were coming in-system. Whistler and I mounted up—the R2 had served as my partner in the field and had all the new identity files Gil had made up for me. Unbeknownst to Loor, Whistler also had already computed a number of jumps from Corellia since I had planned to take him with me when I left.

“Where the smugglers were supposed to be I found debris and two flights of TIEs looking for trouble. I illuminated a couple with my lasers, then jumped out. That’s the start of a long story about how and why I’m here now.”

Emtrey looked down at him, his eyes glowing like stars in his black face. “Sir, do you have copies of the identity files for Mr. Bastra and the others?”

“Nope. Gil was the only person with a complete set and I’m sure he destroyed them. I’ve only got mine and they’re stored in Whistler’s memory.”

“Perhaps, sir, if you could provide me with your files, I can search our databases and see if I can locate other files that were similarly sliced, thereby determining if Mr. Bastra’s new identity is known to us.”

“Ooryl sees the wisdom of this.”

Corran smiled over his shoulder at the Gand. “So do I. I don’t see how it can hurt.”

“Sir, if you will permit me then, I will make inquiries of your R2 unit and try to solve this mystery.”

Corran nodded. “Do what you need to do.”

“Yes, sir, which reminds me.” The droid passed each of the pilots a narrow piece of plastic with an embedded black magnetic strip on the back. “These are your room assignments. Mr. Horn and Mr. Qrygg will continue to be billeted together. Mr. Ven, you will room with Mr. Jace, and Mistress Ynr will share a room with Mistress Dlarit.”

The Corellian looked back at the Gand. “At least I know you don’t snore.” Heck, I don’t even know if you breathe.

The soft tissues just inside Ooryl’s mouth wobbled around for a second. “Ooryl does not believe you do either. Ooryl does not sleep in the same manner as most others, so your occasional production of rhythmic nocturnal sound is not a problem. Ooryl finds it somewhat soothing, in fact.”

“First time I’ve heard it described as ‘soothing.’ ” Corran blushed, then stood and patted the Twi’lek on the arm. “I don’t think you can describe anything about your roommate as soothing, my friend.”

Nawara’s red eyes darkened slightly. “Since I won’t be fighting with Jace for mirror space to preen, I think our conflicts will be minimal—I shall take solace in that fact. Rhysati, on the other hand, will have more trouble with the other Thyferran.”

“Why? You think I’m going to worry about my looks to impress the lot of you? No chance.” Rhysati folded her arms across her chest. “I’m going to be spending my time becoming the best pilot there is in this squadron, so romance is not high on my list of priorities.”

Corran smiled. “Besides, you don’t need to work to be beautiful, Rhys.”

“Sure. Just you remember that when I turn your X-wing into slag.”

“Oh, I hope you would not do that, Mistress Ynr.” A plaintive tone warbled through Emtrey’s words and his arms flailed. “The forms I would have to fill out, the court-martial and requisitions for new parts—the work would be endless.”

“Easy, Emtrey, I was joking.”

“Ah, oh, yes, of course you were.” The black droid’s arms settled back down to his sides. “If you have no further need of me, I will find this Whistler of yours, Mr. Horn, and see what I can do to learn more about the fate of your friend.”

“Thank you, Emtrey.” Corran suppressed a smile as the droid turned about with tiny steps, then headed for the door. “Nawara, did you have to deal with protocol droids in court?”

The tips of the Twi’lek’s head tails recoiled. “They functioned as paralegals, but none were allowed into court without restraining bolts. A judge once threw a gavel at one.”

“Not your droid, I take it?”

“No. I was not a welcome sight in Imperial courts, so any droid I could have afforded would not have been allowed in.”

Rhysati frowned. “But then there was no chance that the defense you offered your clients would be as strong as it should have been. That’s not just.”

“Law and justice are seldom served at the same time.” Nawara shrugged. “The quest for justice has brought us all to the Alliance, has it not? Rhys, you want justice for the dislocation of your family when the Empire made them flee Bespin. I am looking for the justice I could not get for my clients. Corran wants the justice denied to innocent people oppressed by Imperial officials.”

Nawara stopped and turned toward the Gand. “And you, my friend, what is the justice you seek?”

Ooryl’s armored lids closed for a second over his multifaceted eyes. “Ooryl does not believe you would fully understand what it is Ooryl seeks. The acceptance Ooryl has known here is indeed a welcome relief from the prejudice of the Empire. This shall suffice as Ooryl’s justice.”

“A noble quest indeed, Ooryl,” Nawara assured him.

Corran led the quartet from the briefing room. Their route to their new homes took them out of the main complex through a tunnel to a smaller warren of rooms and suites. The Rebel base had once been an extensive mine complex on Commenor’s largest moon, Folor. The Commenor system had been chosen because of the high level of shipping traffic that passed through it and because of its proximity to Corellia and the Core worlds.

Corran let his right hand trail over the smooth surface of the tunnel walls. “Are we really after justice, Nawara, or do we really want revenge?”

“Or is this a case, Corran, where revenge and justice are two aspects of the same thing? We are all committed to seeing the Empire brought down. The Emperor’s death advanced our cause, but not enough to bring the conflict to the conclusion we want. Three in ten worlds are in open rebellion and perhaps another twenty percent are nominally supportive of our fight, but half the worlds are still firmly allied against us. When the Emperor dissolved the Senate he gave the Moffs control over their provinces. While I do not believe Palpatine saw that action as a hedge against disaster, that is, in effect, what it has become.”

“I know. If not for some of the Moffs playing power games against each other, we’d be hard-pressed to keep from being driven away from the Core.” The Corellian frowned. “Then again, with Vader and the Emperor dead and the Death Stars destroyed, I wonder if the Rebellion hasn’t lost some of its fire.”

“I agree with that.” Rhysati moved to the front of the quartet, then turned to walk backward down the hallway and face them. “Vader was a symbol, just like the Emperor, and when they died the relief was palpable. I think a lot of folks believed the whole Rebellion was won there. I’m taking the revitalization of Rogue Squadron as a sign that at least Commander Antilles and Admiral Ackbar don’t share that belief.”

The Twi’lek looped one of his brain tails back over his left shoulder. “By defeating the Emperor at Endor, the Rebellion proved itself a legitimate power in the galaxy. Within a month after Endor the Alliance’s Provisional Council issued their Declaration of a New Republic. The Rebellion became a government—albeit one with very little in terms of real assets—and it presented an alternative to the Empire. Worlds joining the New Republic are doing so on their own terms, and those negotiations are far from joyous things. Destroying the Emperor did bring a lot of nations into the fold, but primarily those who felt most oppressed or most threatened.”

Corran thought for a moment. “What you’re saying is that the victory at Endor transformed a military insurgency into a political entity.”

“Not exactly, but close. Politics was always part of the Rebellion, but it remained largely dormant while the war was being fought. With the death of the Emperor it became more important because it allowed the Rebellion to bring in more worlds without having to resort to military conquest.” Nawara pointed vaguely back behind them with a taloned finger. “Commander Antilles’s victory tour shows how important politics was and is to the Rebellion—a key military leader was taken out of service and forced into diplomatic duty.”

“And there are all the stories about Luke Skywalker and the possibility of reestablishing the Jedi Knights.” Rhysati smiled. “Even though the Jedi had been wiped out by the time I was born, my grandmother used to tell me stories about them and the Clone Wars.”

“My grandfather fought in the Clone Wars.”

The Twi’lek stared at Corran. “Your grandfather was a Jedi?”

“No, just an officer with CorSec, like my father and me. He knew some Jedi Knights, and fought alongside them in a couple of actions near Corellia, but he wasn’t one. His best friend was, and died in the wars, but Grandpa never talked about those times very much.” Corran glanced down. “When Vader started hunting down all the Jedi, CorSec resources were used to find them and my grandfather didn’t like that at all.”

“The sort of resentment such Imperial action engendered among the people is precisely the means by which the Alliance is able to bring worlds in to join it. Princess Organa and the host of diplomats working for the Alliance have done more to strengthen the New Republic than the whole Katana fleet could do, if that legend were true and we had control of it. Even so, there is a limit to what the diplomats can do.”

“Hence the reconstitution of Rogue Squadron.”

“I think so, Corran.”

Rhysati frowned. “What am I missing?”

Corran jerked his head toward Nawara. “He’s saying that the diplomats have pretty much mined all the ore they can find. The worlds who want to join us have; those who don’t, haven’t; and those who aren’t sure will need some convincing. Thyferra, for example, is the source of ninety-five percent of the bacta in the galaxy. They’re neutral right now, and making grand profits selling to all sides, but we want them in our camp. Putting two of their people in Rogue Squadron sends a message to the Thyferrans that we value them. The same goes for having the Bothan in the squadron.”

“And the unit is commanded by a Corellian and has another Corellian pilot in it.” Nawara tapped himself on the chest. “I’m either a token Twi’lek or a token lawyer.”

Rhysati laughed. “I’m a token refugee, I guess.”

Ooryl snapped a trio of fingers against his billet datacard. “Ooryl is token Gand.”

“So, if this unit is a symbol that’s filled with symbols, the supposition is that we have to do something very symbolic to get more worlds to join the New Republic.” Corran smiled. “As long as that means I get to bring justice to a bunch of Imperial pilots, I’m all for it.”

“Oh, I think you’ll have that opportunity, Corran.” The Twi’lek’s rosy eyes darkened to the color of dried blood. “I’d guess Rogue Squadron will have the greatest of that sort of opportunity.”

“You think you know what target will be coming up next, Nawara?”

“It’s only logical, Corran.” Both of the Twi’lek’s head tails twitched in tandem. “Before too long we’ll be going after the biggest symbol of all. Let’s hope they train us very well because Rogue Squadron is bound to be the tip of the spear the Alliance stabs into the heart of the Empire.”

A chill ran down Corran’s spine. “Coruscant?”

“The sooner it falls, the sooner the Empire falls apart.”

“I never wanted to go to Coruscant.” The Corellian pilot smiled. “But if I have to go, doing it in the cockpit of a Rebel X-wing will make the visit just that much more memorable.”

7

Wedge Antilles killed his proud smile as he began his walking inspection of his X-wing. He brushed his fingers along the underside of its smooth nose cone. “Newly refinished, good.” He emphasized this judgment with a firm nod of his head so those who could not hear him could determine what he was saying and thinking.

Throughout the cavernous hangar the pace of work had slowed as he came to inspect his ship. His squadron had already cleared the area and waited for him on the dark side of Folor, leaving him alone with the technical staff. Aside from his X-wing, three other X-wings being worked on, and a scattering of other broken-down fighters, there was little to occupy the attention of the crews. While they made a show of rolling up cables and sorting tools, they watched him and his reaction to their work.

He continued on around to the starboard side of the craft, noticing how clean the crew had gotten the proton torpedo alleys. Another nod. The background hum of conversation picked up in volume and speed, but Wedge ignored it and continued his walk-around.

He could have cited dozens of reasons for doing a preflight inspection of his fighter, and all of them would have been good and right and militarily proper. The starfighter had seen him through seven years of pitched battles with a minimal amount of failure. The inspection allowed him to spot anything that might be trouble before he got out into space—and that would save him a long cold wait for a rescue crew.

More importantly than that, his taking a tour around his ship set a good example for the rest of Rogue Squadron. He wanted to fight the belief that because they were elite pilots they were above the mundane sort of duties all other pilots had to endure. Most of his people weren’t like that, but he didn’t want laziness by one person to slowly spread to the rest of the squadron. While they weren’t there to see him, he knew news of his inspection would get back to them. And if I do this right, they’ll be sorry they missed the show.

He paused for a moment and looked at the rows of TIE fighters, bombers, and Interceptors painted on the side of the ship. Big Death Stars bracketed the collection of smaller ships on either side, and Ssi-ruuk fighters had started a new row, right at the top of the red stripe bisecting the fuselage. It has been a long fight. And will be longer still.

Behind him Wedge heard some chittering that Emtrey translated. “Master Zraii apologizes for not being able to fit all your kills in the space allotted. The ships rendered in red are meant to represent a squadron worth of kills—meaning a dozen.”

Wedge frowned as he turned to face the droid. “I have a vague idea how many ships there are in a squadron, you know.”

“Yes, of course, sir. I know that, but given that the Verpine normally count in base six and humans use base ten, twelve, which to a Verpine is known as ‘four fists,’ the potential for confusion warranted explanation.”

The human held his hands up in surrender. “Fine. Just tell him that he can group kills by dozens or gross lots. It makes no difference to me.”

“Gross lots, sir?”

“A dozen dozen, Emtrey.”

“One hundred and forty-four? Four wings?”

“Yes, forty-eight fists in Verpine.”

Emtrey looked from Wedge to the brown insectoid trailing behind them. “Sir, if I knew you were fluent in Verpine …”

“Enough, Trey. I’m not fluent in Verpine, but I have a head for figures. Let me finish this inspection.” Wedge took in a deep breath and slowly let it out again. I’m going to have to talk to Luke and find out how he puts up with his 3PO unit—wait, that won’t work. I don’t have a sister around here to foist the droid off on.

He walked back to the starboard engines and inspected the cooling vanes and what little of the centrifugal debris extractor he could find. After looking over the engines he examined the lenses for the deflector shield projectors and saw new ones had been installed. Shields gave the X-wing its major advantage over TIE fighters and contributed to the X-wing’s reputation for being able to take a lot of damage before it went down. Even though the lasers were being powered down for the training exercises, seeing the deflector shield equipment in good repair pleased him.

He paid very careful attention to the twin laser cannons mounted on the ends of the ship’s stabilizer foils. He pulled down on the bottom one and felt a slight shift before the unpowered actuator prohibited movement. That was good—more play than a couple of centimeters meant the lasers might shift out of alignment during use.

“Emtrey, ask Zraii what range he zeroed these lasers at?”

A click-buzz exchange took place between tech and droid. “He says he zeroed them at 250 meters, Commander.”

“Good.” When they had flown against the Death Star the X-wings had been reconfigured so their zero—the point where the four beams converged—was nearly half a kilometer. That allowed them to be employed very effectively in knocking out stationary ground targets. In space combat, where ranges shrank and targets moved quite a bit, keeping the focal point closer increased the chances of scoring lethal hits on the enemy. While the lasers could still hit another fighter at a range of more than a kilometer, the lasers were at their most powerful at the close ranges common in dogfights.

The cannons’ barrels, flashback suppressors, gate couplers, and lasing tips seemed in good shape. Ducking beneath the cannons, he swung around to the aft of the X-wing. Power couplings, deflector generators, exhaust ports, and power cell indicators all seemed in order. The inspection of the port S-foils and cannons showed them to be in good repair.

His inspection ended with his return to the nose of the craft, he bowed his head to the Verpine tech. “It looks as good as new, if not better.”

Emtrey translated and the Verpine started buzzing. Wedge couldn’t figure out what was being said, but the friendly pat on the arm by the insect-man told Wedge the enthusiasm he heard was positive. “Emtrey, what did you tell him?”

“I told him that you think this ship is superior to what it was in its pre-molt stage. That is high praise. He is saying that he has a passion for restoring antiques like this and has taken the liberty to make minor adjustments that will enhance performance.”

“Oh, wonderful.” Wedge smiled and kept his tone light. The Verpine, with their fascination for technology and with eyesight that allows them to spot microscopic details—like stress fractures—without magnifying equipment, made for some of the best tech support in the galaxy. They were also known, however, for tinkering with the ships for which they cared. Wedge had never had a problem in that regard, but stories abounded about ships where the controls had been reconfigured into what a Verpine found would be a much better alignment—not realizing most pilots did not have microscopic vision or didn’t think in base six.

Continuing to smile, Wedge mounted the ladder an assistant tech ran up against the side of the X-wing. Poised on the edge of the cockpit, the pilot looked at his astromech. He didn’t recognize it beyond realizing it was one of the flowerpot-topped R5 droids. Though the R5 was a newer model astromech droid, Wedge actually preferred the dome-topped R2 astromech droids like the one Luke used because of the lower target profile they offered an enemy. “Then again, if they’re close enough to hit you, you’ll take the shots before they hit the cockpit, won’t you?”

The droid’s panicked hooting brought a smile to his face. “Don’t worry, the shooting is not going to start yet.”

Wedge dropped into the pilot’s seat and got a pleasant surprise. One of Zraii’s improvements had been a refurbishing of the padding in his ejection seat. This will make those long hyperspace jumps more comfortable. He strapped himself in, then brought his systems up. All the monitors and indicators came to life as expected. “Weapons are green and go.”

The R5 unit reported all navigation and flight systems were working, so Wedge pulled on his helmet and keyed his comm unit. “This is Rogue Leader requesting departure clearance from Folor Traffic Control.”

“Rogue One is clear for departure. Have a good flight, Commander.”

“Thank you, Control.”

With the flick of a switch he cut in his repulsorlift generators and feathered the throttle so his fighter rose from the hangar deck in a deliberate and firm manner. Using the rudder pedals to keep the lift generators in tandem, he killed roll and yawing. He wanted there to be no doubt in the minds of anyone in the hangar that his was a steady strong hand on the controls. His performance, he knew, would be pulsed out through the base’s rumor network and become fodder for every idle conversation until something truly worthy of discussion displaced it.

Adding some forward thrust, he moved the X-wing into the magnetic atmospheric containment bubble and through it to the airless exterior. Once outside, he kicked the Incom 4L4 Fusial Thrust Engines in at full power and rocketed away from the craggy grey lunar surface. He rolled the X-wing and brought the nose up slightly, sending the fighter into a gentle arc toward the horizon.

The datascreen in front of him reported the engines were working at 105 percent of efficiency—an increase he put down to Verpine tinkering. Throttling back to 70 percent, then 65 percent, he dropped his speed and flipped a switch above his right shoulder. The stabilizer foils split and locked into the cross pattern that had given the X-wing its name.

He glanced at the upper left corner of the screen and saw his R5 unit had been designated “Mynock.”

“Are you called Mynock because you draw a lot of power?”

Urgent whistles and tweets were translated to a scrolling line of text at the very top of the screen. “A pilot once said I screamed like a mynock when we were in combat. A slander, Commander.”

“I can understand that. No one likes to be thought of as a space rat.” Wedge shook his head. “I need you to adjust the acceleration compensator down a bit. I want .05 gravity.”

The astromech droid complied and Wedge immediately began to feel more at home in the cockpit. To combat the effects of negative and positive gravity because of maneuvers, the starfighter had a compensator that created a gravity neutral pocket for both the craft and pilot. It prevented a lot of problems with blood flow and black- or red-outs in pilots, but Wedge felt it insulated him from the machine and left him out of touch with his situation.

Flying with all gravity negated felt, to him, like trying to pick up grains of salt while wearing heavy gloves. It might be possible, but it would be a lot easier without the interference. Flying required use of all the senses and the compensator cut out most kinesthetic sensations.

And that kills pilots. Wedge was convinced that some pilots had died unnecessarily because they couldn’t feel where they were. Jek Porkins, a heavyset man who always had his compensator on at full, had plowed into the first Death Star while trying to pull out of a dive. His repeated assurances of “I can hold it, I can hold it” died in a burst of static as his X-wing slammed into the Emperor’s toy. Had Porkins not been compensated, he could have realized he wasn’t pulling up and he might have had time to do something else.

Flying without full compensation is just one more thing we need to teach these kids. Wedge laughed at himself. Aside from Gavin the whole crew in Rogue Squadron was almost his own age or older. He thought of them as kids because they hadn’t seen the sort of duty he and Tycho had. And with what we’ll teach them, maybe they’ll survive longer than the rest did.

Wedge rolled the X-wing again as he hit the terminator line and daylight flopped into darkness. Punching a console button he changed his screen over to a tactical scanner and picked up a dozen other traces. The screen reported and tagged eleven X-wings and one Z-95XT Trainer—the benign version of the X-wing’s little brother.

He switched his comm over to the tactical frequency he shared with Tycho. “Everyone green and running, Tycho?”

“Affirmative. Systems are go. There’s been some grumbling about feeding at the pig trough, however.”

“No surprise there. Shifting to Tac-One.”

“I copy.”

Flipping the comm over to the frequency shared by the rest of the squadron, Wedge caught the last of a comment by Rogue Nine, Corran Horn. “… blind, wallowing pigs, and slow.”

“I’m sure, Rogue Nine, your comrades who fly Y-wings will be pleased to know what you think of their ships.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Good.” The unit commander throttled back and fed his repulsorlift generators enough power to counter the moon’s gravity. The reference to Y-wings, their slow speed and the underpowered nature of their sensors, had been heard in Rebel camps since the earliest days of the fight against the Empire. The B-wings had been developed to counter the flaws with the Y-wing and replace it in service, but production had yet to meet demand, so plenty of Y-wings still saw service.

Their reputation as “wallowing pigs” had led to the naming of the Folor gunnery and bombing range the “pig trough.” Alliance command had originally designated it the “Trench” as a memorial to the pilots who had died running the artificial canyon on the Death Star, but pilots saw no reason to stand on ceremony. Y-wings practiced their bombing runs in the twists and turns of the lunar canyon while fighter pilots preferred the rolling and looping demanded of them in the satellite field circling the moon.

“Today I want you all to do some basic work on the gunnery range. Laser targets have been set up to provide you a number of flying and targeting challenges. Your run will be graded for accuracy and speed, and if you get hit, you’ll lose points. If you suffer an equipment failure, pull out and you’ll get another run after things are fixed. We don’t want to lose you or the equipment, so try not to do anything stupid. Any questions?”

Horn’s voice squawked through the helmet headset. “Sir, our lasers are zeroed at 250 meters, which is a little short for ground attack missions.”

“I guess, then, you’ll have to be very good and very quick in shooting, won’t you, Mr. Horn?”

“Yes, sir.”

Wedge smiled. “Good, then perhaps you’d like to go first. Mr. Qrygg will fly your wing.”

“Yes, sir.” The enthusiasm in Horn’s voice matched the energy in the roll and dive his X-wing executed. “Shifting to ground attack mode.”

“Good luck, Mr. Horn.” Wedge killed his comm unit. “Mynock, pull a sensor feed from Horn’s R2. Shoot it to Captain Celchu on Tac-Three.” He popped his comm over to Tac-Two. “Captain, you’ll be getting a datafeed from Rogue Nine.”

“It will be interesting to watch. He’s going in hot.”

“That he is, Tycho, very hot. He wants to set a mark the others can’t possibly hit.” Wedge nodded slowly. “I think he needs to get a different lesson today. Here’s what we’ll do …”

8

Corran pulled out of his dive and skimmed the surface of Folor. He aimed the nose of his snubfighter at the paired mountains that marked the opening of the pig trough. A line of red lights burned on and off in sequence, seeming to send the light from plains to the peaks of the grey mountains. Below him the rough rims of countless craters flashed past.

“Nine, should Ten shift shields forward?”

“Negative, Ten. Even them out. We’ll probably have targets at our backs.” Corran glanced at his datascreen. “Whistler, can you boost my forward sensors? Screen for background formations and pick out what’s anomalous. Yes, yes, take care of your communications link first, but just do it. Thanks.”

After a couple of seconds the astromech droid complied with the request and the image on the datascreen refined itself. The mountains appeared in a light shade of green and likely targets—in this case the lights on the mountains—were translated into red circles that began to blink when he had a clear shot at them. From past experience he knew Whistler would turn the circles into diamonds if they proved to be hostile.

The fighter shot forward into the trench. Tall, jagged walls rose tall on either side of him. Unlike canyons carved through stone by the relentless flow of water, this one boasted sharp walls that would grind a fighter into dust. It seems as if I’m flying between teeth, not stones.

He guided the fighter up over a small rise and then down into a valley where two red circles became diamonds. His cannons tracked left and lit up the first target while laser fire from the Gand hit the second. “Nice shooting, Ten.”

“Ooryl was anxious. Ooryl will wait for clearance to fire in future.”

“Not at all. Two more targets. I’ve got them.” Corran let his fighter drift to the right. “Pick up what I drop.”

“As ordered.”

Corran pulled back on his stick and climbed sharply to get at the first target. He shot it before its laser could depress enough to shoot back at him. Rolling his ship to the left, he moved back to the center of the canyon, then finished the roll with an inside loop that brought him down to target the second diamond. It hit him once before he took it out, but the shot from the target did not penetrate his shields.

Climbing back up, Corran stood the fighter on its right S-foil and arced around a corner in the trench. Coming up to let his sensors read the valley beyond a steep rise, he took laser fire from two bunkers nearly a kilometer distant. He pushed the stick forward and brought the X-wing down to the deck, then worked his way back up to the rise. “I’ve got the one on the port side, you take starboard.”

A brief, high-pitched whistle came through the comm to signal Ooryl’s understanding of the order.

The X-wing streaked over the ridgeline and immediately started taking fire from the target on the left. Corran dipped below it, intending to repeat his steep-climb run from before when Whistler started wailing. A threat light burned in the aft position. “Full shields aft, Whistler!”

Laser bolts shot past the X-wing as Corran jinked to the left. He punched the right rudder pedal, vectoring thrust to kick the tail of his fighter into a bit of a skid to port. Doing that took him out of line with both guns, while allowing him to keep his nose on his intended target. He triggered four bursts of fire, hitting with the second and third.

He rolled the fighter to present its belly to the mountain wall that had housed the gun he’d silenced, then he cut in his repulsorlift generators. They created a field that bounced him off the wall and pushed him back toward the center of the canyon. Rolling back down to starboard, he killed the repulsorlift generators and dove to pick up a little speed. In doing so he came out beneath Ooryl and still had laser bolts popping past him.

Whistler shifted views of the canyon for a moment and showed Corran what had been happening in that section. An emplacement had been located on the reverse slope of the rise. Had Corran not ducked his ship back down when he took fire the first time, his sensors might have picked up its location.

I would have come up, looped, hit it, then rolled out and picked up the right side target. Ooryl could have nailed the left target and we’d have been set. “Forward view again, Whistler.” Seeing the array of targets upcoming, Corran trimmed his speed back to allow him more time on target. “It’s going to get busy.”

Whistler hooted something about understatement.

Targets came fast and seemed to get more accurate the deeper he ran into the trench. Corran tapped his lucky charm once, then forced himself to concentrate. He analyzed target locations and plotted angles of attack. Rolling his fighter, diving and climbing, he wove his way through the gunnery course. He didn’t get every target he shot at, but fewer of them hit him.

Two thirds of the way through the course Corran and Ooryl approached another ridge like the one that had hidden a gun position on its back slope. “Drop back, Ten. Let me draw fire from any back slope guns, then you can roll in and nail them.”

A squeal answered him. Corran sailed up over the rim prematurely and snapped a shot off at the guns to the left. Rolling wide to the right, he sideslipped out of fire from below. “Midslope down, Ten.” Without waiting for confirmation Corran corkscrewed his X-wing around and lased the starboard target. The port target still fired at him, but he dove below its line of bolts and cruised farther into the canyon.

“Ooryl got it, Nine.”

“Congrats, Ten.”

Coming around the last sweeping turn Corran saw a narrowing of the canyon down toward the deeper part of it. Above that crevasse four laser targets had a perfect field of fire for blowing any X-wing out of the sky, but they couldn’t shoot down into the split in the rocks. “Whistler, give me the width of the crevasse.”

The droid mournfully reported it was 15 meters on average, 12.3 meters wide at the most narrow point.

“Good. The walls will cover me.” Behind him, anticipating him, Ooryl had already rolled his X-wing up on its starboard S-foil. Corran smiled and dipped toward the crevasse while keeping his wings parallel to the ground.

“Nine, you need to roll.”

“Negative, Ten. It’s wide enough—a meter to spare on each side.”

“If you go dead down the middle.”

“If I don’t I’ll be dead.” Taking a deep breath, Corran focused on an imaginary point about ten meters off the nose of his fighter. He kept his hand gentle on the stick and steered for that point. He kept it in the middle of the crevasse, floating left and right as sections of the wall jutted out from one side or the other.

The choke point closed with him. Easy, easy. He drifted to port for a half meter and suddenly the tight spot was behind him without his having left any paint on either side of it. The walls streaked by, black and grey blurred together. Corran found himself steering the ship almost effortlessly. He knew he could have handled the run at full throttle and not had a problem.

It almost feels as if I have kilometers off each S-foil, not a meter or two. The bright line marking the end of the crevasse yawned open before him. And now I’ve got targets.

Swooping up and out of the rock slit, Corran’s X-wing spat fire. He started with the lowest target, hit it squarely with the first shot, then tracked his fire up and to the starboard with a roll and climb. He blasted the second target, then continued his roll until he was inverted. Firing two controlled bursts got him the third gunnery station and Ooryl, threading Corran’s loop, tagged the last one.

Corran came down, around, and shot past Ooryl as they headed out of the range. Hauling back on the stick, he stood his X-wing on its tail and rocketed away from Folor. Rolling out into a long loop, he traded distance for time and pulled up on Ooryl’s wing as they both headed in toward where the rest of the squadron orbited.

Commander Antilles’s voice filled Corran’s helmet. “Very impressive flying, Mr. Horn. Your score is 3250 out of a possible 5000. Quite good.”

Corran smiled broadly. “Hear that, Whistler? Rogue Leader was impressed.” He activated his comm unit. “Thank you, sir.”

“You can head back to base now, Mr. Horn. Your participation in this exercise is at an end. Consider yourself at liberty for the rest of the day.”

“Yes, sir. Rogue Nine heading home.”

Yeah, I was at liberty—liberty to be humiliated. Muscles bunched at the corners of Corran’s jaw as he ground his teeth. He’d waited in the hangar for the others to come back to base, hoping to hear his mark had stood through the rest of the exercise. He knew he was looking for congratulations on his great flying, but not in the egotistical way Bror Jace would have been. He didn’t want to lord it over the others, but he did want to know they thought he was good.

The others had come back in pairs and, for the most part, had tried to avoid him. Lujayne Forge and Andoorni Hui had been the first to return. As he saw their ships come in his smile became broad. He knew he had blown past any score they could set. They’re good pilots, but I was really flying out there. They couldn’t touch me today.

Andoorni had remained silent, possibly brooding—but who could tell with Rodians? Lujayne had been almost apologetic. “I got 3300, Corran. Andoorni hit 3750.”

“What?”

Lujayne hesitated, tucking a strand of brown hair behind her left ear. “It was just our day to fly well. You inspired us, really.”

“Inspiring, Horn.” The Rodian’s ears rotated toward him, then back again as Andoorni wandered away.

Lujayne gave him a sympathetic smile. “Want to head to DownTime and get something to eat?” The tone of her voice suggested strongly that he wanted to take her up on her offer to spare himself from what was headed in his direction.

Despite the unspoken warning, he’d shaken his head. “Thanks. Maybe I’ll see you at the tapcafe later.”

Corran continued to wait for the rest of the squadron to return. Peshk Vri’syk and Ooryl came back together. The ruddy-furred Bothan took great delight in reporting a score of 4200. The Gand had been very quiet and when he finally spoke he said, “Qrygg scored 4050.”

That answer told Corran something very strange was going on. In reverting to calling himself by his family name Ooryl had shown himself to be ashamed of his score, but Corran knew he should have been ecstatic about it instead. The fact that Ooryl clearly didn’t want to speak with Corran, and only relented after Corran insisted, meant that whatever Ooryl was ashamed of had to do with Corran.

The others in the squadron didn’t say much of anything except to report their scores. Each pilot had scored better than Corran and most had done so by over 1000 points. That didn’t seem possible to Corran. He knew he had flown that course as best as he could. On subsequent runs I might score up in that range, but not first time out. That’s not possible. Unless …

Corran jogged over to where Whistler had plugged himself into a recharging outlet. “Whistler, at the start of our run, you set up a communications link with someone. Who?”

The droid’s holographic projector began to glow. A miniature image of Wedge Antilles floated between them.

“You sent him my sensor data, right?”

Sharp scolding whistles followed an affirmative tone.

“I know I didn’t prohibit it.”

A curt squawk made Corran wince. “Yes, Whistler, I did approve your action. Never again give out that sort of data without my permission, got it?”

The little droid piped demurely, then shifted to the singsong tone he had used to warn Corran when Loor had entered the CorSec office. The pilot turned and saw the Headhunter Trainer come through the magcon bubble, followed closely by Rogue Leader. Purposely ignoring Whistler’s bleats, Corran watched the ship land.

“Time to get some questions answered.”

Corran felt a tug at his flight suit leg as Whistler’s pincer attachment closed on the cloth. He pulled away, tearing the material. “You betrayed me once here, Whistler, don’t compound the problem.”

The droid’s mournful tones played out in time with a funeral march as Corran closed with Wedge’s X-wing. He ducked beneath the nose and snapped to attention as Wedge descended the ladder. His throat thick with anger, Corran saluted and held his quivering hand in place until Wedge returned the salute.

“Do you want to speak to me about something, Mr. Horn?”

“Yes, sir.”

Wedge tugged his gloves off. “Well?”

“Permission to speak frankly, sir?”

“Knock yourself out, Mr. Horn.”

Corran’s hands convulsed into fists. “You gave everyone else my targeting data. I flew my heart out and flew that course as good as anyone possibly could on his first time through. You turned that data over to the others, so they were making a run based on the things I had done. You gave them my score as a base and they built on it.”

Wedge’s brown-eyed gaze did not waver as he met Corran’s stare. “And?”

“And? It’s not fair, sir. I’m one of the best pilots in this squadron, but it looks like I’m the worst. The others appear better but they’re not. I’ve been robbed.”

“I see. Are you finished?”

“No.”

“Well, you should be, or you can be. Do you understand me?”

The icy tone in Wedge’s voice filled Corran’s guts with frozen needles. “Yes, sir.”

Wedge nodded past him toward the exterior of the base. “You need to examine why you’re here, Mr. Horn. You’re part of a team and have to act like it. If I need you to shoot a trench like that and feed your data back to a Y-wing squadron coming through, I’ll have you do it. How good you are means nothing if the rest of the people in the squadron get killed. You might be the best pilot in the squadron, but the squadron is only as good as the worst pilot in it.

“Today the others learned to use data from a reconnaissance flight to help them through deadly territory. You learned that you’re not more important than anyone else in this squadron just because you’re a gifted pilot. I’m pleased with those lessons having been learned by my people. If you’re not, I’m certain there are other squadrons who would love to have Rogue’s washouts.”

Corran’s cheeks burned and his stomach turned itself inside out. He’s right—he saw the same thing Lujayne did and found a way to point out how serious a problem it can be. I’ve been an idiot. He swallowed hard. “Yes, sir.”

“Yes, what, Mr. Horn?”

“I’m happy learning what I learned, sir. I want to stay with the squadron.”

Wedge nodded slowly. “Good, I don’t want to lose you. You’ve got the makings of a superior pilot, but you aren’t there yet. You have the skills you need, but there is more to being part of this squadron than flying well. The training you get will be a bit different from the others, but your need to learn is just as great. Do you understand?”

Corran nodded. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Wedge handed his helmet and gloves to an astrotech. “And just so you know, you’re right to be angry. Remember this, though, giving in to that kind of anger in battle will get you killed. I don’t think you want that any more than I do.” The leader of the squadron tossed him a sharp salute. “You’re dismissed, Mr. Horn.”

Corran returned the salute, spun on his heel, and marched stiffly away, deeper into the hangar. He threaded his way through the fighters, stepping over power cables and around tool carts. He purposely steered himself away from where Whistler was recharging—the little R2 unit had perfected an “I told you so” whistle that Corran realized he’d heard far too often since his father’s death.

“Mr. Horn.”

Corran stopped and blinked away the gathering clouds of dark memories. His hand rose in a salute. “Captain Celchu.”

The blue-eyed man returned the salute, then crossed his arms over his chest. “Still walking and talking?”

“Sir?”

“Either Commander Antilles is losing his touch in dressing down recruits or”—Tycho smiled lopsidedly—“you’re made of sterner stuff than I might have otherwise imagined.”

9

Corran’s green eyes narrowed. “I don’t think the Commander cut me any slack, sir.”

Tycho held a hand up. “Forgive me, Mr. Horn, that did not come out the way I wanted. From your CorSec record and the way you tend to excel in scenarios where you act alone, you have struck me as a loner. Loners don’t tend to like it when they’re made to be a team player.”

But that’s not how I am. Is it? Corran frowned. “I can work with others, but I know I can only rely on myself when things fall apart. I can’t help that attitude because it kept me alive in tough times.”

Tycho pointed toward the passage deeper into Folor base and Corran fell into step with him. “The problem with that attitude, Corran, is that it keeps others away. It makes it more difficult for them to help you when you need it. It keeps them uncertain that you will help them when the time comes that they need you.”

“Hey, I’ll never leave a buddy in trouble.”

“I don’t doubt that, but you define buddies on your terms. Others may not see themselves as your friends.” The taller man pressed his lips together in a grim line. “It’s clear that being here is not easy for you.”

That’s an unwarranted assumption. I’ve adjusted as well as anyone. Corran glanced to the right at Tycho. “Why do you think that, sir?”

“You were with the Corellian Security Force and spent a good deal of your time hunting down people who are now your allies. That transition isn’t something you can make overnight.”

“It couldn’t have been any easier for you, sir. You were an Imperial pilot.”

Tycho did not reply immediately and Corran sensed a window of vulnerability that had opened, then slammed shut almost immediately. He knew it with the certainty he’d known when he’d hit on lies suspects told him during interrogation. He wanted to pounce and push, but the hint of pain he saw flash through Tycho’s eyes stopped him.

“Let’s just say, Corran, that my situation was quite different from yours.” Tycho’s face slackened into an emotionless mask. “Different time, different circumstances.”

Corran heard pure honesty in Tycho’s words and decided against pushing. That honesty cleared his mind and punched through walls he didn’t realize he’d erected. “You may be right, sir. Looking around here I see the sort of smuggler’s hideaway my father and I ached to bust wide open. Just looking at this place I know it had to have been used by smugglers before the Alliance turned it into a base. If I’d known then what I know now …”

“You would have been even more convinced that the Rebellion was wrong.”

“Yeah, I guess I would have.” Corran slapped his own belly with his right hand. “I remember being in the CorSec Academy when the Imperial warrants for Han Solo and Chewbacca were issued. They were charged with the murder of Grand Moff Tarkin—no word about the Death Star, of course. I remember thinking that if I were already in CorSec I’d have gotten Solo. I thought he was a blot on Corellia’s honor.”

The hint of a smile tugged at the corners of Tycho’s mouth. “And you still do.”

Corran winced. “He smuggled spice for a Hutt. I understand that he made some choices that made his life fall apart. I can sympathize with his freeing Wookiee slaves—no one on Corellia liked the idea of slaves—but he sank pretty low after that.”

Tycho nodded. “When your life disintegrated, you didn’t sink that far, so he shouldn’t have?”

“Something like that.” Corran stopped just before they entered the corridor out of the hangar. “Is that your assessment of my opinion, or your assessment of Solo in relationship to your leaving Imperial service as he did?”

Tycho’s smile broadened. “Interesting insight. I think there was a time that Solo, who had bound his conception of honor to his service to the Empire, forgot that honor could exist outside Imperial service. This seems to be a misconception that has been corrected.”

“And correcting it won him fame, glory, and Princess Organa.”

“True, but what’s important is that he knows honor exists inside you and can only radiate out. What goes on outside can’t change it or kill it unless you abandon your honor. Too many folks give it up too easily, then do whatever they can to fill the void in their hearts.” Tycho shook his head. “Forgive me this little lecture. I’ve had an unfortunate amount of time to think about this sort of stuff.”

Two Alliance Security officers walked over to where Corran and Tycho stood. The female Lieutenant spoke with a calm, even voice. “Captain Celchu, are you ready to return to your quarters now?”

The taller man suddenly looked very fatigued, as if his skeleton had just become one size smaller so his flesh hung loosely from it. “Yes, I believe so. Thank you for this conversation, Mr. Horn.”

“You’re welcome, sir.”

Tycho nodded to the woman. “After you.”

“No, sir,” she said, “after you.”

Her tone struck Corran as all wrong. He had assumed she had been offering to escort Captain Celchu to his quarters as a courtesy, but the edge in her voice transformed her words into an order. Why would they be forcing him to return to his quarters? I don’t understand. She’s treating him like a criminal.

He stared after them, trying to reconcile the Security officer’s action with a need to protect Tycho from some threat. He couldn’t imagine anyone in the Alliance base who would begrudge Tycho actions taken before he joined the Rebel cause. Becoming a Rebel was like starting over—the datascreen was wiped and the past forgotten. Yet I still have reservations about Han Solo. Even so, I don’t want to murder him, so he doesn’t need protection.

He realized he was attempting to rationalize why Tycho was being escorted by armed guards, and the most simple answer was because Tycho presented a threat to the Alliance in some way. The obvious ludicrousness of that idea shone like a supernova because if Tycho was a threat of any sort, no one would trust him to be teaching pilots how to fly. Then again, he is assigned a Headhunter Trainer.

“There you are.”

Corran’s head came up at the sound of the woman’s voice. Just a bit taller than he was, but slender and walking on very shapely long legs, she entered the hangar from the corridor and stared right at him. Corran turned and looked behind himself to see who she was addressing, but when he looked back at her, she had stopped right in front of him. “I was wondering where you were.”

“Me?” Corran raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure you were looking for me, Erisi?”

She nodded confidently. Sympathy played through her big blue eyes. “I was sent to find you. The rest of us are in DownTime, going over what happened out there.”

“Not enough laughs, so you wanted me to join you?” He shook his head. “Thanks anyway, some other time.”

“No, now.” Erisi took firm hold of his left elbow. “We do want you there. So we can apologize.”

Corran hesitated, covering his surprise. She sounded sincere, but she was from Thyferra and almost always in Bror Jace’s company. He tried to figure out if she was setting him up, but the gentle way her short black hair lay against the nape of her long neck distracted him. “I’m not sure I’d be good company.”

“You must come.” She tugged him gently toward the corridor. “Look, we all used your data because Commander Antilles told us our exercise involved doing just that. It wasn’t until we made our runs that he told each of us what had happened—what he had done to you. He ordered us to say nothing to you except to report our scores. None of us felt good about what happened and we want to make it up to you.”

He nodded and started walking with her. “So how did you get the job of coming after me? You pick the sabacc card with the lowest value?”

Erisi smiled at him, her eyes dominating a delicately sculpted face with high cheekbones and a strong jawline. “I volunteered. Nawara Ven and Rhysati Ynr are trying to talk some sense into Bror and I had to walk away.”

“You’d abandon a fellow Thyferran to a conversation with a Twi’lek lawyer?”

Her laughter echoed faintly through the dim corridor. Strip illumination ran along the edges of the tunnel where the floor met the walls and gave them enough light to travel by, but most of the people in front of them were shadowed silhouettes.

“Bror Jace is from a family that owns a significant portion of stock in Zaltin. His people are known for being rather haughty and obstreperous.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“I would have thought you a keener observer than that.” She gave his arm a squeeze. “Besides, Bror has noticed you. He sees you as his chief rival for supremacy in this squadron.”

“He’s forgetting the Commander and Captain Celchu.”

She shook her head. “No, he’s not, he’s just ignoring them. As Commander Antilles said, those who have served with Rogue Squadron before are legends, and Bror doesn’t think it’s possible to defeat a legend. Become one, yes, but best one, never.”

“Erisi, I appreciate your candor, but I’d hardly expect you to be speaking of a friend in such uncomplimentary terms.”

“What gave you the impression we were friends?”

“Perhaps the fact that you spend a lot of time with him.”

“Oh, that?” Erisi chuckled politely. “Better the Moff you know than the Emperor’s new Envoy. I could never truly be friends with anyone who grew up in the Zaltin corporate culture. My people are with Xucphra, the true leader in bacta production and refinement. My uncle was the person who discovered the contamination the Ashern introduced into Lot ZX1449F.”

“Really?”

The woman glanced sidelong at him, her face frozen for a millisecond, then she smiled and playfully slapped his left shoulder. “You! I know Thyferran corporate politics is boring, but it’s the lifeblood of my people. Though there are thousands of Vratix who actually grow alazhi and refine bacta, the ten thousand humans who run the corporations are really the people who make bacta available to the galaxy. Since we’re such a small community—and, I’ll admit, a fairly affluent one—we set great store in the accomplishments of our relatives.”

Corran nodded as they stepped onto an escalator that took them down deeper into the heart of Folor. “Choosing one of you from each corporate family was meant to keep things even?”

“Were that possible, of course.” Erisi winked at him. “More of us would have been sent, I suspect, but strong involvement with the Alliance is a thing of fierce debate on Thyferra. Benign neutrality seems to be the course our leaders are choosing.”

Playing both ends against the middle means big profits for the Bacta Cartel. “But you felt strongly enough about the Rebellion to volunteer to join it?”

“There are times one must place higher ideals over personal safety.”

At the bottom of the escalator they stepped off and walked across a small chamber to a dark opening carved in smooth-melted stone. Beyond it lay a noisy stone gallery with next to no visible light—unless the bright colors of strobing neon tracery were to be considered adequate for lighting. Voices from dozens of alien throats croaked below or shrieked above the booming din of human conversation. The heavy, moist air stank of sweat; acrid, cloying smoke; and fermented nectars from hundreds of Alliance worlds and not a few Imperial strongholds.

Corran paused on the threshold of the makeshift tapcafe the Rebels had named DownTime. If I were still in CorSec, I’d be calling for backup before setting foot in a place like this.

Erisi, taking his hand in hers, led him into the room. As if she could see things he could not, she guided him between hologame light tables and knots of pilots and techs. Back in the corner a holoprojector had been set up. It appeared to be projecting a sporting event being broadcast down on Commenor, but the exoskeleton padding the players wore and the curiously spiked ball they tossed back and forth weren’t from any game Corran recognized. Aside from a quartet of Ugnaughts sitting right at the edge of the projection ring and staring up at the towering figures, no one appeared to care about the game.

The rest of Rogue Squadron had gathered in a corner of the tapcafe. Corran spotted Gavin first—both because of his size and his nervousness. The youth stared at all the different aliens as if he’d never seen them before. That surprised Corran because he thought, with Mos Eisley being on Tatooine, Gavin would have had his fill of aliens. Then again, I doubt the kid spent much time there. He’s as green as the foam on Lomin-ale.

Over on the right Bror Jace and Nawara appeared to be deep in conversation. Shiel slipped past Corran and handed Gavin a mug full of a steaming liquid that smelled sweet. Lujayne, seeing Corran, smiled at him and rapped the heel of her mug on the table around which they stood.

“Corran’s here.”

The Bothan’s reaction to his arrival appeared to be relatively apathetic, but everyone else seemed to be pleased to see him. The Twi’lek pointed toward Corran with the tip of a head tail and Bror Jace managed a tight smile. Stepping forward, the Thyferran pilot offered Corran his hand. “I want you to know I would not have flown with your data had I known. I’ll be the first to sign the letter of protest to General Salm.”

“Letter of protest?”

Nawara looked a bit exasperated. “Some members of the squadron feel that a protest of Commander Antilles’s treatment of you is in order.”

Corran looked Nawara in the eyes. “You don’t think so?”

The Twi’lek slowly shook his head. “I don’t think it will be effective and I believe, quite honestly, that this incident is really fairly minor.”

Corran smiled. “I’m glad to see someone hasn’t lost a sense of perspective here.”

Bror’s blue eyes narrowed. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean, my friends, we’re part of a military unit involved in an illegal insurgency against a government that controls the vast majority of planets in this galaxy. We’re all volunteers here, and we’ve all come because we expect to win freedom and liberty for all sapient species by overthrowing the government. We’re all willing to make the ultimate sacrifice if it comes to that, yet we’re going to protest how one of the most decorated and revered leaders conducts training exercises? I don’t think so.”

Gavin gave Corran a wide-eyed look of confusion. “But what he did to you wasn’t right. It was nasty and cold and meant to hurt you.”

“I’ll agree it was nasty and cold, but it wasn’t meant to hurt me.” He looked around at the rest of the squadron. “Commander Antilles had a point to make with me, and he made it. And he made one with you. Your being here like this, your discomfort with what happened, and your desire to protest my treatment means I know you’re going to be there when I need you to be. And you know I’m willing to do what I need to do to make sure our squadron can do its job. If that means I go in alone or with Ooryl or whatever to get information, I do it.

“The thing we all have to remember is this: There’s nothing Commander Antilles can do to us that will be worse than what the Empire has already done on hundreds of worlds. They destroyed Alderaan. They destroyed the Jedi and they’ll destroy us if they can. Because of what he did today, Commander Antilles knows he can count on me, and I hope the rest of you do, too.”

Erisi raised Corran’s left hand above his head. “I think Corran’s correct. He might not have been the best pilot on the course today, but he’s probably the one who learned the most.”

Lujayne stood and gave Corran a firm hug. “As the second worst pilot today, I say thanks—both for your skill and your wisdom here.”

Corran blushed slightly, freed his left hand from Erisi’s grip, and extricated himself from Lujayne’s hug. “Thanks to all of you, but just so you don’t think I’m this cool-headed all the time, I have to admit that I had a discussion with Commander Antilles in which he pointed out most of these insights.”

The wolfman growled in a low voice. “Yelling? Punches?”

“No. Just some clear and concise conversation.”

Shiel bared his teeth and Gavin laughed. Lujayne fished into her flight suit’s thigh pocket and produced a handful of oddly shaped credit coins. She held them out to the Twi’lek who cupped them in both hands and smiled avariciously. He flicked at a couple with taloned fingers, then looked up and froze as if caught bloody-handed.

Corran knit his fingers together and let them rest against his belt buckle. “And those credits are for?”

“Winning the pool.” Nawara carefully slipped them into his pocket. “I said you’d be reasonable.”

Rhysati elbowed him. “You took reasonable because you got the best odds with that wager.”

The Twi’lek looked offended. “I hold opinions, I don’t bet them.”

Corran laughed. “Who had ‘will challenge Commander Antilles to an X-wing death duel’?”

Erisi raised her hand. “It was an even-odds bet, too.”

“Nawara won by betting what was in my brain, but you bet what was in my heart.” Corran pointed to the bar. “In honor of your insightfulness, I will buy you that which your heart desires.”

She took his left hand again. “And if it doesn’t have a price?”

“Then I’ll buy you a drink and we’ll talk about how else to make you happy.”

Bror Jace bowed from the waist in Erisi’s direction. “To make her happy you would have to make her family’s corporation yet more profitable.”

“And to do that means I’d have to be boosting the use of bacta, right?” Corran opened his hands and took in the whole of the squadron. “And since the Empire buys bacta and we’ll be shooting at their pilots, I don’t think that’ll be hard to do at all.”

10

The shuttle’s pilot looked back over his left shoulder. “Agent Loor, you’ll probably want to strap yourself in. We’re coming out of hyperspace.”

Kirtan began to fumble with the restraining harness, then brought his head up quickly, embarrassed that his lack of coordination betrayed his nervousness. “Thank you, Lieutenant, but I’ve traveled this way before.”

“Yes, sir,” came the pilot’s oily reply, “but I’d bet this is your first time to Imperial Center.”

Kirtan wanted to snap some sharp reply that would sting the man, but a sense of utter and complete disaster washed over him. He had waited for two full weeks before reporting Gil Bastra’s death to his superiors. In that time he furiously analyzed and tried to expand upon any leads Bastra had offered during his interrogation. They all seemed to be dead ends, leading nowhere, but he knew, he just knew, they would put him on Corran Horn if he had enough time to figure out their greater significance.

In his report he had tried to stress the positive, but within hours of the report being sent on up the line, he had received his summons to Imperial Center, formerly known as Coruscant. He was ordered to make his way to the Imperial capital as quickly as possible. As luck would have it—luck he in no way saw as benign—passage had been arranged on a series of ships with a minimum of difficulty. This last ship, a shuttle on loan from the Aggressor, effortlessly carried him to his doom.

The wall of light visible through the viewport dissolved into a million million points of light as the ship left hyperspace. Imperial Center, a clouded grey world ringed by Golan defense platforms, seemed even more forbidding than he had imagined. He had expected to see that the world that had become a city would be as dead and cold as the Emperor who had ruled from it. Instead, with boiling clouds burned white by flashes of lightning, the planet’s true nature lay cloaked and hidden, as did his future.

“Imperial Center, this is shuttle Objurium requesting clearance for entry on the Palace Vector.”

“Transmit clearance code, shuttle Objurium.”

“Transmitting now.” The pilot turned back toward Kirtan. “This code better be good. We’re well within the range of the two nearest Golan stations.”

“It is good.” Kirtan blanched. “I mean, it is the code I was given with my orders.” He started to go on to explain further, but saw the pilot and copilot exchange a quick wink and realized he was being teased.

“Don’t worry, Agent Loor, the days of the Empire blasting one of its own shuttles apart to kill an Intelligence agent are long past. Can’t spare the ships right now, which is what makes me a bit more secure.”

Kirtan forced an edge into his voice. “And how do you know, Lieutenant, that I am not here solely to monitor and report on your attitudes?”

“You’re not the first man I’ve ferried to his death, Agent Loor.”

“Shuttle Objurium,” the comm squawked, “clearance granted. Align course for beacon 784432.”

“Understood, Control, Objurium out.” The pilot punched the beacon number into navigation computer, then gave his copilot a more somber glance.

“What?” Kirtan tried to stop himself from blurting the question out, and began to brace for some stinging jibe from the pilot, but he got none.

“We’re heading to Tower 78, level 443, bay 2.”

“And?”

Kirtan saw the pilot’s Adam’s apple bob up and down. “Sir, the only other time I’ve been given that vector is when I had the pleasure of shuttling Lord Vader to the Emperor. It was after the disaster at Yavin.”

Kirtan felt a chill slowly pour into him and move up his spine bone by bone. Did Lord Vader fear retribution for his actions as I do? Perhaps the Emperor had meant to kill him, but Vader redeemed his life by bringing news of the existence of another Jedi to his master. Kirtan’s fist hammered his right thigh. If I had just a little more time I could have delivered my quarry.

Ahead of the shuttle Kirtan saw lightning flare from the clouds upward toward space. It hit and spread out, faintly illuminating a hexagonal area hanging above the clouds. “What is that?”

“Defense shield.” The pilot punched a couple of buttons on his command console. A miniature model of the world materialized between pilot and passenger, then two spheres made up of hexagonal elements engulfed the world. The spheres moved in opposite directions around the world, constantly shifting, with the hexes in the upper layer covering more area than those below. “Imperial Center, for obvious reasons, has the most sophisticated system of defense shields in the Empire. A small portion of it will come down to let us in, then that section will be reinforced behind us, while another one will open below.”

“Nothing can get in without clearance.”

The pilot nodded. “Or out. More than one Rebel agent has been caught trying to race back out while ships are coming in. It’s a gamble, but not one that pays off very often.”

The copilot pushed a glowing button on the console. “We’re through the first shield.”

“Our next opening comes two degrees north, four east.”

“Course set, sir.”

“Not much longer until we’re down, Agent Loor. Only thing that could go wrong now is a cloud discharging and trying to hit the upper shield through our opening.”

“Does that happen?”

“Sometimes.”

“Often?”

The pilot shrugged. “The power for the upper shield comes through openings in the lower shield. This tends to ionize a lot of atoms, making lightning travel that much faster along those routes. However, doesn’t look like our hole served as an energy conduit very recently, so we should be safe.”

Turbulence hit the shuttle as it pierced the layer of clouds. Kirtan tightened some of the belts restraining him, then clutched the back of the copilot’s chair with white knuckles. He wanted to blame his growing feeling of nausea on the way the shuttle bounced down through the atmosphere, but he knew that was not its only cause. The world beneath these clouds is the last thing I will see before I die.

The shuttle broke through the vapor shell around the planet and the pilot smiled at him. “Welcome to Imperial Center, Agent Loor.”

Despite his fear, Kirtan Loor looked out at the dark world below and felt overwhelmed by the panorama. Instantly recognizable, the Imperial Palace stood tall, like a volcano that had thrust itself up through the heart of the metropolis that dominated a whole continent of Coruscant. Towers festooned it, as if spires on a crown, and thousands of lights sparkled like jewels set in an incandescent mosaic on its stone hide. Beneath it, dwarfed into insignificance, lay Senate Hill. Its tiny buildings—raised as monuments to the justice and glory of the Old Republic—seemed frozen with fright that the Palace would grow out and consume them.

Spreading out from that central point, brilliant neon lights in all manner of colors pulsed as if nerves carrying information to and from the palace itself. Kirtan followed one river of light as it shifted from red and green to gold and blue, from the heart of the world out to the horizon. As the ship swooped lower, he saw depths to the lightstreams, where buildings had accreted, sinking the streets into twisted, broken canyons. He knew the light could not reach all the way down, and his imagination had no difficulty in populating those black gashes with nightmare creatures and lethal danger.

But the lethal danger I face dwells above all this. Kirtan sat back as the shuttle banked and the nose came up a bit. The pilot leveled the Objurium off while the copilot flicked a switch above his head. A red square appeared on the shuttle’s viewport and surrounded the top of one of the palace’s towers. Lights blinked around an opening far too small to admit the shuttle, even with its wings folded up.

“We can’t be going there. Where will we land?”

“It looks small, Agent Loor, because we’re still three kilometers away from it.”

Kirtan’s mouth hung open as his brain fought to put everything he was seeing in perspective. The streets below, which he had taken to be narrow tracks, had to be the size of major boulevards. And the towers, they were not slender, needlelike minarets, but massive buildings designed to house hundreds or thousands of people on each level. And the structures on the surface, they armored the planet with layer after layer of ferrocrete.

Kirtan shuddered as he realized how deep the warrens had to run on the planet, yet he doubted anyone had set foot on the soil beneath Imperial City for centuries.

It all struck him as impossible that a world could house that many people, but this was Coruscant. It was the heart of an Empire that boasted millions of known worlds. If each one required only a thousand people to deal with it and its problems, Coruscant would have to be home to billions of people. And to see to their needs, billions more would have to be in residence, working, building, cleaning.

Suddenly he went from wondering how Coruscant could house so many people to wondering if even billions of individuals were enough to oversee the Empire. Or what’s left of it.

The Objurium swept in closer to the tower. The opening appeared to be a black hole waiting to suck him down and rend him atom from atom. Though logic argued against expending the money it cost to bring him to Coruscant just to kill him, he knew that Death hovered close and would be seeking him out. He had failed and the price the Empire demanded for failure was dear indeed.

Kirtan ran a finger around his collar to loosen it. Arguing against his death, aside from the wasted expense of his travel, was a thought that proved utterly ludicrous to him. The only way he would stay alive was if he had something the person who had summoned him here found valuable. But he was just one person. The only thing he imagined he possessed that was not duplicated by ten or a hundred or a thousand other people on Coruscant was his life. I have nothing else that is unique.

The opening loomed close enough for Kirtan to see figures moving around in its shadows. The pilot punched a button on the command console. The shuttle’s wings rose and locked up while the landing gear descended. The shuttle drifted forward, easing into the hangar, then slowly settled to the deck. It landed with only a slight bump, but Kirtan’s nerves magnified it until it felt as heavy as the blow of a vibroblade on his neck.

Steeling himself for the worst, Kirtan slapped the buckle against his breastbone and slid free of the restraining harness. “Thank you, Lieutenant, for your efforts on my behalf.”

The pilot watched him for a moment, then nodded. “Good luck, sir.”

Kirtan pulled on a pair of black leather gloves and flexed his right hand. “Smooth flight back to the Aggressor.”

The Intelligence agent stood slowly, letting his legs get used to the planet’s gravity, then walked back from the cockpit and down the egress ramp. At the base of the ramp four Imperial Guards, resplendent in their scarlet uniforms, stood at attention. When he stepped into their midst, they turned as one and marched him toward the doorway at the far end of the hangar.

The few people Kirtan saw in the hangar did not look at him directly. Even when he turned his head, seeking to catch one of them from the corner of his eye, they paid him no heed. Have they seen so many people come this way and not return that it is no longer remarkable to them? Or do they think undue attention paid to me would find them being drawn along in my wake?

Being as tall as he was, he could almost see over the red dome of the guards’ helmets. As nearly as he could determine, the four guards were identical in height and other physical dimensions, but their cloaks shrouded them sufficiently well that details that might have differentiated them one from another were lost. Because of that they appeared to be identical to all the holograms he had seen of Imperial Guards, with one minor exception.

Their cloaks had been hemmed with a black ribbon. In the dim light it had not been easy to pick out and its presence almost made it appear as if the guards walked a few centimeters above the floor. The officially mandated year of mourning had ended over a year previously—except, of course, on worlds where notification of the Emperor’s death had arrived late or, worse yet, inspired open rebellion. Here on Coruscant that was not a problem, so Kirtan took the ribbon as a sign of the guards’ continued devotion to their slain master.

They passed through the doorway and into a small corridor that seemed to extend on forever. Kirtan thought he noticed a slight arch to the floor and a tremble in the structure that suggested to him they had entered one of the bridges between the tower and the Palace proper. The close passageway had no windows and any decorations on the walls had been covered with meter after meter of black satin.

Through the far end and along another corridor, the guards brought him to a doorway where two of their number stood. His escorts stopped when the other two guards turned and pulled open the doors before him. He stepped through them into a large room, the far wall of which was constructed entirely out of glass. A tall, slender woman stood in silhouette before it, though the backlight from the planet’s surface outlined her in red.

“You are Kirtan Loor.” It came not as a question, but a statement full of import.

“Reporting as ordered.” He had tried to keep his voice as even and vital as hers had been, but he failed. A nervous squeak punctuated his sentence. “I can explain my report.”

“Agent Loor, if I had wanted your report explained, I would have had your superiors go to great pains to extract that explanation from you.” She turned slowly toward him. “Do you have any idea who I am?”

Kirtan’s mouth had gone dry. “No, ma’am.”

“I am Ysanne Isard. I am Imperial Intelligence.” She opened her arms. “I rule here now and I am determined to destroy this Rebellion. I believe you can aid me in this task.”

Kirtan swallowed hard. “Me?”

“You.” Her hands returned to her sides. “I hope my belief is not unfounded. If it is, I will have gone to great expense to bring you here for nothing. Accounts will have to be balanced and I don’t believe there is any way you can pay what you owe.”

11

Wedge Antilles smiled when Admiral Ackbar nodded. “I think you’ll see, sir, that the squadron is coming along quite well.”

The Mon Calamari looked up from the datapad on his desk. “Your performance figures and exercise scores are commendable. Your people are better than some operational line units.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Their level of discipline is not that of line units however, Admiral.”

Wedge looked over at General Salm. The irritation in his voice matched the sour expression on the small man’s face. Having come up through the ranks of Y-wing pilots, Salm had not been pleased when the Rogues staged a training attack on a full wing of Y-wing bombers. Though he had approved the exercise and had flown lead in one of the squadrons, he clearly had not expected things to go so badly for his trainees. The Rogues had lost four of their own fighters, but had destroyed all but six of the Y-wings. Salm was one of the survivors, which Wedge felt was a good thing and would have asked his pilots to leave Salm alone if he had thought of it beforehand. Despite that, the nearly eight-to-one kill ratio had been better than even Wedge had imagined possible and had made Salm furious.

“I appreciate the General’s assessment of my squadron, but these are elite pilots. I think making allowances for their high spirits promotes high morale.” Wedge lifted his chin. “My people have a lot to live up to …”

“Right now,” Salm sniffed, “they’re living down to the squadron name.”

“Begging your pardon, General, I think you’re judging Rogue Squadron too harshly.” And it’s because we made your Guardian, Warden, and Champion squadrons look as if they were Lame, Sick, and Dying! The fighter pilot looked at Ackbar. “Sir, there have been no incidents, aside from the exercise in which General Salm was a willing participant, in which Rogue Squadron has done anything untoward.”

The Mon Cal military leader set the datapad down. “I think General Salm has legitimate concerns about modified computer code being downloaded into his Y-wings’ computers. I understand it painted your squadron crest on their primary monitor after they were shot down by your people.”

Salm’s eyes blazed and Wedge fought to keep a smile off his face. Gavin Darklighter had created the crest and with Zraii’s help had linked a digitized image of it into the start-up and communications packages in the squadron. The crest, which featured a twelve-pointed red star with the Alliance crest in blue at the center, had an X-wing at each point of the star. Though the image was not sanctioned by the Alliance, astrotechs had started painting it on the squadron’s X-wings and Emtrey had requisitioned unit patches that featured the design.

Wedge had been unable to determine if it was Corran, Nawara, Shiel, Rhysati, or some combination thereof who had talked the Verpine chief tech into adding the image to the Target-Aggressor Attack Resolution Software package, but he did know that Horn’s R2 unit had done some of the code-slicing. When the TAARS package informed the downed Y-wing pilots of their status in the exercise, as Ackbar noted, the Rogue crest showed up to annoy the bomber jocks.

“I undertook an investigation into that situation, sir, and have restricted the unit’s recreation time until I find out who did what in this whole thing.”

Salm scoffed at that explanation. “You have arranged for your squadron to use the recreation facilities exclusively. They get more time in the gymnasium now than they ever did before, and the squadron briefing room has more recreational equipment than the Officers’ Lounge here. Lujayne Forge spends more time as a social secretary for your brood than she does training.”

“General, I’m building a squadron that will be given difficult missions, which means I need them to trust each other. If that means they have to be cliquish, then so be it.”

Ackbar rose from his chair and walked over to where a blue globe of water hung suspended in a repulsorlift cage. The apparatus negated gravity, allowing the water to form a perfect globe. Within it a school of small fish with neon blue and gold stripes flashed this way and that. The Mon Cal studied it for a moment, then inclined his head toward Salm.

“It does not strike me, General, that your earlier complaints about the TAARS tampering involved how Rogue Squadron spends its recreational time.”

“No, sir, but all of this is indicative of the difficulties the Rogues are creating. I have three squadrons of bombers training here as well as two other fighter squadrons. The morale of my troops suffers as the Rogues get rewarded for ignoring operational rules.”

Ackbar gave Salm a wall-eyed stare. “Your specific complaint about TAARS?”

Salm’s brown eyes smoldered. “Rogue Squadron’s ability to alter Top Secret and proprietary software packages has serious security ramifications, especially with Tycho Celchu serving as the Executive Officer of that unit.”

Wedge’s jaw dropped. “Admiral, Tycho had nothing to do with the incident, in the first place, and second, Tycho has done nothing to show himself to be a risk.”

Ackbar clasped his hands together at his back. “I agree to both of your points, but you would acknowledge that General Salm’s concerns are valid?”

The Rogue Squadron’s leader hesitated, never voicing the hot denial he had prepared as he heard the question. While he did not doubt Tycho’s loyalty, he could see that taking chances was not wise. “Yes, sir.”

“Good, because I am going to make an extraordinary request of you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m making Rogue Squadron operational within the week.”

“What?” Wedge felt as if he’d been snared by a Stokhli stun-net. “It’s only been a month since the roster was finalized, sir. Advanced training takes six months normally—four if it’s rushed. We’re not ready.”

Ackbar returned to his desk and tapped the datapad. “That is not what your numbers suggest.”

“Admiral, you know there is more than just numbers to a unit. My people are good pilots, but they’re still green. I need more time.”

Salm folded his arms. “Rogue Squadron has gone into battle before with less training.”

“Yes, and I lost a lot of good men and women because of it.” He opened his arms and appealed to Ackbar. “Admiral, I’ve not even run any hyperjump exercises with these pilots.”

“Ah, but I thought all the pilots were pre-screened for being astronav capable.”

“They are, but …” Wedge was going to protest that Gavin Darklighter needed more work with astronavigation, but Lujayne had been tutoring him and reported Gavin was a natural. Just like his cousin. Dammit, I don’t like this. “I would still prefer having time to take them through more drills.”

“We would all like that luxury, Commander, but we don’t have it.” Salm frowned. “I’m taking my Y-wings—the wing you so neatly chewed up—operational in two weeks.”

Wedge fell silent. My people are far closer to battle-ready than Salm’s. As always, the needs of the Rebellion outweigh the needs of its people—but this we knew going in. “Admiral, can I at least run some astronav exercises to get my people working together when they come out of hyperspace?”

“By all means, Commander. In fact, I have the perfect assignment for you to use in that regard.” Ackbar touched his datapad screen in two or three locations and the lights in his office dimmed. As they did so, a swirling disk of stars appeared suspended between ceiling and floor. It tipped up on edge and a green circle slowly zoomed in on Commenor, locating it just outside the dense Galactic Core. “I will be moving Rogue Squadron from here to Talasea in the Morobe system.”

Even before another green circle could appear and pinpoint the new system, Wedge’s eyes narrowed. “That’s Coreward of here.”

Ackbar nodded. “There has been much debate in the Provisional Council about how we should proceed in the war against the Empire. Much of what we have discussed has been paralleled in the conversations held by the vast majority of citizens, Rebel and Imperial alike.”

“We’re going after Coruscant? Imperial Center?”

Ackbar’s chin fringe twitched. “We are given little choice, really, if we wish to overthrow the last remnants of the Empire—that goal being an exercise that may well take generations to complete, mind you. Many of the Moffs are adopting a wait-and-see attitude about the New Republic. Others, like Zsinj, have proclaimed themselves warlords and are doing what they can to consolidate their holdings with those of weaker neighbors. Any of these warlords could decide to turn his forces toward Coruscant and, by taking it, proclaim himself heir to Palpatine’s throne.”

“So we have to get there first.”

“Or at least appear to be bent upon that goal, discouraging others from usurping our place in the galaxy.” Salm tried to keep his voice even, but his desire to see the Rebels in power hurried his words. “These pretenders will learn that we have not labored so long just to give them an opportunity to rape and pillage whole systems.”

Wedge agreed with the General’s sentiment, but he knew breaking Coruscant open and taking the world would be far from simple. “It almost seems to me that an expedient alternative is to let some Moffs push themselves forward and have Iceheart deal with them.”

“Your opinion was also heard in our councils. It was decided that leaving anyone to her tender mercies was a crime of grand proportion.”

Ysanne Isard had risen to fill the power vacuum left by the Emperor’s death. The daughter of Palpatine’s last Internal Security Director, she came of age in the Emperor’s court. Wedge had heard rumors that she had been the Emperor’s lover for a time, but he had no way of verifying that story. What he did know was that she had betrayed her father to the Emperor, claiming he was going to defect to the Alliance. Her father was put to death immediately and it was said she triggered the blaster shot that killed him. The Emperor elevated her to replace her father and in his absence she did a remarkable job in holding the core of the Empire together.

The Mon Calamari warrior pointed to the galactic display. “From Talasea, Rogue Squadron will provide escort to ships pushing even deeper, setting up safe worlds and supply depots. You will be but one unit of many probing the central Imperial defenses.”

“You want to see how hard Iceheart will hit back. Gauge strength based on speed and the nature of response?”

“Yes, as well as determining supply routes for possible disruption.”

That made perfect sense to Wedge. Though space provided a limitless number of ways to get from one point to another, some simple basic rules governed how and where ships traveled. A ship attained speed and direction before jumping to light speed, and then maintained velocity in hyperspace. A ship moving fast enough could skirt phenomena like black holes, cutting parsecs off a more conservative and safer route.

Because objects with mass—stars, black holes, planets, and Imperial Interdictor-class cruisers—exerted influence over hyperspace, they had to be navigated around. Their presence could abort a hyperspace flight and, in the case of a black hole or a star, could spell disaster for any ship that traveled too close to them. Making a trip through hyperspace required precise calculations that took advantage of a ship’s speed and mass to get it safely to its destination.

Because hazards to navigation diminish the number of calculable routes between places, trade tended to move through predictable corridors. Since traveling between stars was not inexpensive, merchants chose routes that allowed them to visit the most profitable systems along the way. These routes, including systems where ships leave hyperspace to change their travel vectors, were well known and piracy was not uncommon.

Disrupting Imperial supply routes would have a double effect for the Rebellion. Not only would it deprive Imperial garrisons of needed matériel for making war, but it would provide those same matériels to the Rebellion. While the New Republic and the Empire used different starfighters and capital ships, supplies like blasters, rations, and bacta could easily be employed by either side.

Wedge ran a hand along the edge of his unshaven jaw. “I understand the mission, and I appreciate the urgency for it. I do have a question, though.”

Ackbar nodded. “Please, Commander.”

“Rogue Squadron will do the job, but I was wondering if we were advanced for it because we’re the unit that can do the job, or if we’re being used as a symbol.”

“Frankly asked.” The Mon Cal’s coloration brightened to a salmon-pink on the dome of his head. “I argued against employing you this soon, but others aptly pointed out that if you were not put in place now, our operations might not have time to succeed. Rogue Squadron is a symbol in the Alliance and by positioning you to drive against the Empire we show we have made a commitment to liberating everyone in the Empire.”

Wedge’s mouth became dry. “But the only way our use can function as a symbol is if our use is well publicized. And that publicity must get out to the warlords you expect to be frightened off by our presence.”

Ackbar’s shoulders slumped every so slightly. “Your words are ripples of my discussions with the Council. Borsk Fey’lya is quite persuasive and he has Mon Mothma’s ear in many things.”

Wedge looked at Salm. “And you’re worried about Tycho being a security risk!”

“Tycho Celchu did not risk his life to get the Alliance the location of the second Death Star.”

“No, he only risked his life to destroy that Death Star.”

Ackbar stepped between his subordinates. “Please, gentlemen, if I want petty bickering I can go to more Council meetings. It is important for you to air your grievances, but I will not have you fight and refight the same battles over and over again.”

“Sorry, sir. My apologies, General.”

“Accepted, Commander. I beg your pardon, Admiral.”

Ackbar nodded slowly. “Commander Antilles, in an effort to minimize damage done by the public profile being given your mission, we will keep your destination secret. This means your pilots will not know where they will be stationed and they will only be told that they are going on an extended training exercise. Logistics and Supply Corps staffers have prepared lists of equipment that cover anything your unit might not carry with it on the trip. We have an Imperial shuttle that Captain Celchu will use to bring supplies on your journey.”

“Nav data will be fed out to my pilots prior to each jump?”

“Exactly. You should give your flight leaders numerous routes for which they will compute navigation solutions, then you choose the appropriate one and have it communicated to your squadron at each change of course.” The Mon Cal pointed at the representation of Talasea on the display and it zoomed in. “The Morobe system is a red-yellow binary and Talasea is the fourth planet in orbit around the yellow primary. The world is cool and moist with indigenous insect and reptilian life. There are mammals there as well—feral descendants of the animals brought in for an early farming colony. Your base is on the largest of the island continents. The atmosphere is thick, fog is common, but the world is safe.”

“What happened to the farming colony?”

“Over the centuries most of the children emigrated to worlds where they could see the stars and didn’t have to work so hard. The last group of them made the mistake of harboring a Jedi after the Clone Wars. Lord Vader destroyed them as an example. Settlement ruins are on your island but our people have reported there was nothing of interest left behind there.”

“Home Sweet Home.” Wedge smiled. “When are we to be on station?”

“A week from now.”

“That’s not much time.”

“I know.” Ackbar shrugged his shoulders. “It was all I could buy you. May the Force be with you, Commander Antilles. I hope you won’t need it.”

12

Kirtan Loor clutched his hands at the small of his back so they would stop trembling. “I am in your debt, Madam Director, and at your service.”

“How kind of you to say so, Agent Loor.” Ysanne Isard thumbed a small device. The lights in the room slowly brightened while shields descended over the windows. The rising illumination revealed the room to have a tall ceiling, with dark wooden beams curving up from the four corners to meet in an apex above the center of the floor. The walls and carpet shared the same deep blue, though a strip of carpet the same bright red as worn by Imperial Guards bordered the floor at the edge of the wall. In the far corner he saw a desk and chairs that were elegant yet far from ornate—in keeping with the general spartan nature of the room.

It struck him as odd that a large room that was all but empty could seem so decadently opulent. The only thing the room seemed rich in was wasted space. Then it struck him. On a world that is so crowded with so many people, wasting this amount of space is the height of luxury.

Isard’s predatory pacing in the center of the room snatched his attention away from the subtle messages of the architecture and appointments. She wore an Admiral’s uniform, complete with boots, jodhpurs, and a dress jacket, though the garments were red. A black armband circled the upper part of her left arm and the jacket bore no rank insignia or cylinders at all. Yet even without the external signs of rank, her intensity and the deliberation with which she moved radiated power.

Though he would have put her age at a dozen years older than his own, he found her attractive. Tall and slender, she wore her black hair long, and the white streaks descending from her temples made her seem more exotic than middle-aged. Her face appeared classically beautiful to him. A strong jaw, sharp cheekbones, a high forehead, a gracefully small nose, and large eyes were all the elements that most women would have killed to possess, or would have paid to have given to them.

Even as he catalogued all the bits and pieces of her that should have triggered some sort of lust in him—and the aura of power surrounding her was terribly exciting—fear overrode any glimmerings of carnal desire. When she looked at him, with dark brows accenting her eyes, he knew where the menace dwelt in her. One eye was ice-blue—as cold as Hoth and as cruel as a Hutt in a sporting mood. The other eye, the left one, was a molten red, with golden highlights that flashed with fiery determination. The left eye told him that any effort by him that was not fully devoted to her service would be met with the bloodless retribution promised by her cold right eye.

Kirtan shivered and she smiled.

“Agent Loor, your personal file has a number of interesting inputs. You are rated as having a visual memory retention rate of nearly one hundred percent.”

He nodded. “If I read it or see it, I remember it.”

“This can be a useful tool, if applied correctly.” Isard’s expression lost some of its hardness, though this in no way made Kirtan feel as if he were any safer. “In the report about Bastra you mentioned not using skirtopanol during his interrogation because he had been dosing himself with lotiramine. This was a precaution you learned to take because of a case on Corellia where doing just that had negative effects, yes?”

“The suspect died.”

“Your report says you used the fact that the lotiramine masks the presence of blastonecrosis to confront Bastra with his own mortality. When that did not prove effective, you began conventional interrogation.”

Kirtan nodded. “Sleep deprivation, protein starvation, coercive holographic and auditory illusions taken from what I knew of him. It all proved quite promising until the blastonecrosis began to make his whole body septic. I then initiated treatment for the condition.”

“And this treatment killed him.” Her eyes became mismatched slits. “Do you know why?”

“He had a reaction to the bacta used to treat him.”

“Do you know why?”

Kirtan was about to offer her the explanation the Emdee-five droid had given him when Bastra died in the bacta tank, but he knew that she would not accept it. “I do not.”

Isard hesitated for a second and Kirtan knew he had escaped punishment by being truthful. “What does ZXI449F mean to you, if anything?”

He instantly recognized the number, but held back his answer until he could sort out the details and put them in a coherent form. “That is the lot number of a batch of bacta that was contaminated by the Ashern rebels on Thyferra. It made its way to Imperial Center and infected nearly two million soldiers and citizens. It rendered them allergic to bacta.” Kirtan frowned. “But Gil Bastra never was on Imperial Center.”

“You do not know that for a fact. Perhaps he was here.” She shook her head slowly. “It does not matter, because he could have run into that batch of bacta almost anywhere. It was ordered disposed of, and I saw to it that much of it was funneled to the black market. That, however, is not important. What is important is this: Blastonecrosis is a condition that affected roughly two percent of the people who were dosed with that particular lot of bacta. An Emdee droid would have inquired of a patient if he had been dosed with bacta in the last two years.”

“But because I ordered treatment and didn’t recognize the significance of the disease, Gil Bastra died.”

“No!” Isard’s eyes hardened. “Gil Bastra committed suicide.”

“What?”

“His reports about you are in your file. Your slicer was able to excise them from the Corellian records, but not my records. A man is best evaluated by his enemies.”

Kirtan’s stomach slowly collapsed in on itself. “Those evaluations were prejudiced against me.”

“Perhaps, but Bastra was amazingly perceptive. He wrote that you rely on your memory too much—trusting that retention of information can somehow compensate for an insufficient amount of analysis. Because you know so much—like the obscure fact about the fatal interaction of lotiramine and skirtopanol, you didn’t look beyond Bastra’s obvious line of defense to see how much deeper things had gone. If you had, you would have known about his possible bacta allergy and he might still be with us.”

She slowly exhaled and tugged at the hem of her scarlet jacket. “Bastra knew you well enough to know he’d be dead soon. That gave him enough hope to feed you useless information. He held out as long as he could because he was playing for more time for his confederates to further sever ties with their past.”

The Intelligence agent realized right then that the display of bravado Bastra had provided during their first meeting on the Expeditious had not been a false and hollow thing. Kirtan’s face burned as he heard again everything Bastra had said, this time with the man’s mocking tones intact and brutal. What I had seen as my brilliance in ferreting out his errors had been him playing to my sense of superiority, leading me on after him like a nerf eager for slaughter. For two years I’ve been a fool.

A revelation hit him strongly enough to make him tremble. “I’ve been fooled for even longer than the two years I’ve chased them down, haven’t I?”

“Very good, Agent Loor.” Isard’s expression lightened slightly, as if she were on the verge of smiling, but she did not. “The responsibility for your deception is not wholly your own. Our training and indoctrination tends to make agents and soldiers believe in their own infallibility. This has proved to be a detriment to the Empire. You were not alone in falling prey to it—even the late Emperor had his blind spots.”

Kirtan decided to avoid the invitation to question the Emperor’s wisdom, or lack thereof, and instead followed up on his previous question. “The ‘falling out’ Bastra and Horn had was faked. I thought the reason for it was stupid, and assumed they were stupid for being at odds over it.”

“This is even better, Agent Loor.”

“I feel as if in realizing how badly I was used, I can see more depth to things.”

“A blind spot is eliminated, letting you see more of what goes on around you.” She ran an index finger along her jaw. “If you had read Bastra’s evaluations of you instead of having them destroyed, you would have been able to come to this epiphany sooner.”

He nodded confidently. “And I would have had them by now.”

“And you were doing so well.” Isard’s face contorted into a snarl. “Don’t backslide.”

Kirtan blushed. “I’m sorry.”

“More’s the pity that you are not. You assume superiority where there is none.” She folded her arms across her chest. “The Emperor likewise assumed that if he destroyed all the Jedi Knights that his Jedi Knight—and a handful of Force-trained special agents—would be sufficient to control the galaxy. He did not see—though I tried to warn him—the impossibility of proving that all the Jedi had been destroyed and that no other Jedi could rise against him. His obsession with the Jedi blinded him to the real threat posed by opposition leaders who are no more intelligent or remarkable than you are.

“As a result the Empire is falling apart and the Rebels are threatening to supplant the Empire with their own New Republic.”

Kirtan nodded. “And you wish to restore the Empire.”

“No.” Her denial came cold enough to freeze carbonite. “My goal is to destroy the Rebellion. Imperial restoration can only be accomplished if the Rebels are eliminated and that can only be accomplished if we blunt their military, sorely stress their administration, and crush their spirits. These goals are interwoven and I have operatives, like you, working on all levels to bring my plans to fruition. Can you withstand the pressure of so vital a mission?”

Kirtan slowly nodded. “I can. How may I serve you?”

This time she did smile and Kirtan wished she had not. “Your target is to cut the heart out of the Rebellion. You will be the death of Rogue Squadron.”

“Excuse me?” Kirtan frowned, wondering if he had heard her incorrectly. “I am no fighter pilot. I know nothing about Rogue Squadron.”

“Ah, but you have the expertise I want and desire. You served on Corellia and the unit’s commander is Corellian.”

“Wedge Antilles, I know.” Kirtan raised his hands. “But that is not to say I know him. I don’t. I don’t even know anything about the squadron.”

“But you can learn.”

“Yes, I can learn.”

“And you shall learn.” She nodded slowly toward him, then brought her head up abruptly. “You will also find you have a personal stake in this.”

Kirtan aborted a wince. “Yes?”

“Our source within the squadron tells us that a friend of yours is a flight leader of remarkable skill.”

One of Isard’s earlier statements ran through his mind again. A man is best evaluated by his enemies. “Corran Horn.”

“You see, you already know more about them than you thought you did.” Ysanne Isard gave him an even stare. “Do you accept being the instrument of Rogue Squadron’s destruction?”

“With pleasure, Madam Director.” Kirtan smiled to himself. “With the utmost of pleasure indeed.”

13

Corran forced himself to relax. Though Commander Antilles had cast the trip as an exercise in astronavigation and hyperspace jumping, deep down in his gut Corran thought a lot was being left unsaid. He was certain that if they had been going out on a formal patrol or escort mission Wedge would have told them so. The fact that he hadn’t said anything conflicted with the mission requirement of packing up and stowing their personal gear in their X-wings. This left Corran thinking something more than an exercise was taking place.

Because of his training exercise scores, Corran had been promoted to Lieutenant and given the command of Three Flight. As an officer he had expected Wedge would trust him enough to let him know what was really going on. Even so, with his background he had great respect for security, and that put a brake on his uneasiness.

Those concerns don’t matter. Getting through the drill does. Heading outbound from Folor’s scarred grey surface, Corran flew lead for Rogue Squadron’s Three Flight. Ooryl was back to starboard while Lujayne and Andoorni were off to port, similarly staggered front and back. Within the unit they had comm unit call signs of Rogue Nine through Twelve respectively, though for this exercise they would be operating as a semiindependent flight.

“Let’s keep it close, Three Flight. Whistler will send you all our jump coordinates and speed parameters. Have your R2s double-check it, then lock the route.” He checked his datascreen for the positions of the first two X-wing flights and Tycho Celchu bringing up the rear in a captured Lambda-class shuttle, Forbidden. “We follow One Flight on this leg, then Two Flight on the next one. After that we’re leading, so let’s be prepared.”

The members of his flight signaled their readiness to jump, so Corran keyed his comlink over to the command frequency. “Three Flight ready to jump on your mark, Rogue One.”

“Good. All flights, five seconds to mark.”

With Wedge’s reply Whistler began counting down for the five seconds. Corran watched the seconds click off the digital display. When it read 00:00 he engaged the X-wing’s hyperdrive and sat back as the stars filled the viewscreen. Just as the color threatened to overwhelm him with its intensity, his snubfighter leaped into hyperspace and moved beyond the ability of the light to abuse him.

The first leg was to take them about an hour and had them flying along the plane of the galactic dish, moving against the swirl of the galaxy itself. The course brought them in ever so slightly toward the Core, which was good because the databases containing information about navigation hazards got progressively better as they headed toward the Core.

And Coruscant.

Corran knew the Imperial capital was not their intended target—at least not for this flight—but he felt certain they would get there eventually. His more immediate concern, however, was plotting the course for the third leg of the jump. While he had not been told their final destination, Commander Antilles had given him a list of twenty starting and ending points, and he had calculated the best courses he could see for making those jumps. The direction, speed, and duration of the first leg allowed him to eliminate all but two of the courses given to Rhysati for solution for the second leg and that narrowing down of ending points meant he only had two plans of his own to refine.

The first course of his, which would take the flight further along the disk and outside the most populated and advanced section of the galaxy, had been plotted pretty tightly. Several black hole clusters narrowed leeway as far as that course was concerned. He glanced at it again and decided it couldn’t be refined any more.

“Whistler, bring up the course for the Morobe system.”

The astromech droid hooted at him as numbers and graphics scrolled up on the screen.

“Yes, I know you did the best you could on this plotting. Freeze output there.” He tapped the glass on the monitor. “At the Chorax system you have us skirting it by .25 parsecs. There’s only one planetary mass in that system and the sun isn’t that big. Since the Chorax system comes up so early in our leg, if you pull us another tenth of a parsec closer we should come out of hyperspace close enough to Morobe’s habitable planets that we won’t need to make an in-system jump to find gravity if we need it.”

The astromech wailed at him.

Corran laughed. “You’re correct, the data you used to compute the course indicated giving the system a wider berth, but that’s because you’re using merchant data and they’re afraid of pirates and smugglers working the system. We’re a squadron of X-wings. We have nothing to worry about.”

With astronavigation and hyperspace jumping being so tricky a business, courses were plotted as often as not to brush by inhabited systems, even if they were inhabited by social misfits and undesirables. If a hyperdrive went out in midflight, or refused to engage after a course correction between jumps, being within hailing distance of worlds from which help could easily be summoned was a blessing. Trying to find a ship that had misjumped to some random location in the galaxy was next to impossible—as all those who hunted after the fabled Katana fleet had learned since its disappearance.

The first leg of the journey ended uneventfully. Two Flight, with Rhysati flying lead, took over from One Flight and brought the squadron around on its new heading. Just before they made the jump to light speed, Commander Antilles shot Corran the coordinates for the third jump.

“So, it’s Morobe after all.” Corran called the flight plan up for one last time, ignoring Whistler’s disgusted wail, and went over it. The course appeared as nearly perfect as possible, given the ships they were using. A ship capable of greater speed could have trimmed even more distance off the run by getting closer to the Chorax system. The greater speed would allow it to resist the influence of the star’s hyperspace mass shadow. Without the resistance the ship would be dragged back into realspace in the system and, more likely than not, would be unable to escape the sun’s gravitational grasp.

“Fortunately X-wings have enough power to get us through.” Corran glanced at his reactor fuel level readings. The hyperdrives barely sipped fuel, while the sublight engines gulped it. Running up to a lightspeed jump burned a lot of fuel, though not as much as maneuvering through a dogfight, but nothing they had done on their journey so far had been that taxing on the engines or fuel supply.

By the time we make my jump we’ll still be at eighty-seven percent of a full load. More than enough to make it to the Morobe system and back home again.

The squadron came out of hyperspace and Corran eased his stick to port. “Squadron, come about to a heading of 230 degrees and depress 12 degrees. Flight plan on its way to you.” He pushed his stick forward until the X-wing’s nose dipped slightly. “Jump to light speed in five.”

The jump to hyperspace for his leg seemed somehow smoother and more effortless than the previous two. He knew that sensation was an illusion and he wondered about it for a moment or two. It occurred to him that the reason he was more at ease with his jump was because he had been in control of it. Mistakes made in calculating a hyperspace jump could be fatal and Corran had never been good about putting responsibility for his life in another person’s hands.

“But I don’t have to worry about a mistake on this leg, since I did the calculations.” A keening whistle from his astromech made him smile. “Fine. You did the calculations, with no help from me at all.”

Whistler’s hooting became more urgent. The astromech started scrolling sensor data over the cockpit screen, but none of it made sense to Corran. “There’s another stellar mass in the Chorax system. That’s impossible, unless …”

Before he could broadcast a warning to the other members of Rogue Squadron, the automatic safety cutout on the hyperdrive kicked in. The snubfighter burst through an incandescent white wall and into the outer reaches of the Chorax system.

And right into the middle of a running lightfight.

Corran threw the stick hard to port and pushed it forward. “Rogue Eleven, break up-star.” He trusted Ooryl would follow him moving down and to the left, which cleared the way for the rest of the squadron to enter the system. “Lock S-foils into attack position.”

He reached up and flipped the switch with his right hand. “Whistler, have you IDed those ships yet?”

The little droid shrieked urgently back at him.

“Anything you can give me.” The big ship, Corran knew immediately, was an Imperial Interdictor cruiser. Its quartet of gravity well projectors allowed it to create a hyperspace shadow roughly equivalent to that of a fair-sized star. The Interdictors had proved effective in ambushing smugglers and pirates—and the presence of one of the six-hundred-meter-long triangular cruisers in the Chorax system was not wholly unexpected.

It hadn’t been there to trap them, however. Running from the cruiser, which Whistler identified as the Black Asp, was a modified Baudo-class star yacht. About three times as long as his X-wing, the yacht had a broad, triangular shape to it that was softened by the gentle down-curve of the wings. It looked almost organic in origin, as if it should have been swimming through space instead of rocketing along on its twin engine’s ion thrust.

Corran had seen plenty of modified yachts in his time with Corellian Security, and this one even looked vaguely familiar. Most often the yachts were modified to haul contraband. While he had no love for smugglers, he had even less for the Empire. Enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Whistler bleated sharply. Corran glanced at his screen, then keyed his comm. “TIEs. Squints—I mean Interceptors. Looks like a dozen of them.” He looked up through his cockpit canopy and felt panic when he couldn’t see with the naked eye what his instruments showed so plainly on his monitor. “Rogue One, what are your orders?”

Wedge’s voice came back cool. “Engage them, but watch the cruiser’s guns.”

“I copy that. Rogue Ten, on me.”

Ooryl double-clicked his comm, indicating understanding of Corran’s order. That action seemed, like Commander Antilles’s order, to betray no nervousness at all. The bitter taste slicking Corran’s tongue surprised him because he’d flown against Imps in real life and endless simulator battles. He’d never been this bad before—nervous, yes, but not edging toward losing it.

Pull yourself together, Corran. His hand snaked up and touched the coin he wore. Your squadron mates and the folks in that yacht are counting on you.

Because the break they’d executed had taken them down, the Interdictor and its TIEs were coming in above their line of sight. Pulling back on his stick, Corran thumbed a switch that put all power in the forward shield.

“All power to forward shield, switching to proton torpedoes.” A targeting box appeared on the heads-up display and Corran maneuvered the X-wing to drop the sight on the lead Interceptor. The range indicator dropped numbers and digits as the X-wing closed on the Imperial fighter.

Easy, easy. Let yourself go, just like in training. He nudged the flight stick to the left and framed the incoming squint perfectly. The box went red and a strident beep filled the cockpit. Corran hit the trigger and the first torpedo sped in at its target.

Another torpedo streaked past him and raced toward an Interceptor. Both of the Imperial ships broke hard, but Ooryl’s torpedo reduced his target to fire and scrap metal. Corran’s missile missed his intended target, so he switched back to lasers and evened his shields out.

“Good shot, Ten. Scratch one squint!” Fingering the coin he wore beneath his flight suit, Corran swallowed hard, then keyed his comm unit. “Cover me, I’m going after mine.”

Ratcheting the throttle up to full, Corran swooped the X-wing up on its port stabilizers, then corkscrewed down through a roll that brought him out on the Interceptor’s tail. He linked his offside lasers so they fired two at a time and triggered a burst that burned armor from the Interceptor’s bent wings, but failed to destroy it.

The squint drifted to the left, then came up in a roll that brought it around and over Corran’s line of flight. If he continues that roll, I’ll overshoot him and he’ll end up on my tail. Corran pushed the stick to the left, making a wide turn to port that opened distance from the Interceptor, but still let the Imperial ship slip in behind him.

“Ooryl cannot get him, Nine.”

“I know, Ten, not to worry.”

Keeping one eye on the rangefinder, Corran kept his X-wing on the long loop. Come on, you know you want me. If you had proton torps I’d be freespace ions, but you don’t! “Yes, Whistler, I know what I’m doing.” Feeling some of his confidence returning, he shrugged. “At least I’m pretty sure I do.”

The Interceptor pilot came up fast and flew in a straight line to get quickly to the same point in space where Corran could get slowly with his great loop. Seeing his prey close in fast, Corran centered and hauled back on his stick, tightening his turn considerably and jamming his body down in his seat.

The X-wing shot across the TIE’s line of flight barely twenty meters behind the ball-and-wing craft. Yanking the stick to starboard, Corran rolled the fighter 180 degrees. He pulled the stick back to his breastbone, bringing the X-wing’s nose up in another turn that reversed his previous course. Leveling the fighter out, he sailed in right on the TIE’s tail—his long S-turn having allowed him to let it overshoot him by a fair distance.

A lethal distance. Corran lined the Interceptor up in the sights and blew it apart with two laser blasts. As pieces of the disintegrating ship whirled past him, he keyed his comm unit. “Ten, report.”

“Cover Ten. Heading 90 degrees.”

“I have your wing, Ten.” Guiding the stick to the right he saw Ooryl’s X-wing shoot ahead of him and into the ion wake of an Interceptor. The Gand’s first shot struck sparks and armor from the fighter’s central ball. One more, Ooryl, and you have him!

“Nine and Ten, break hard port! Get out of there!”

Ooryl’s compliance with Wedge’s order came immediately. His sharp turn took him across Corran’s line of flight, forcing Corran to yank back on his stick and roll to starboard. He leveled out and started a turn to port, but Whistler’s shrill whine filled the cockpit. The stick slammed back into Corran’s chest, pinning him in his ejection chair as the droid brought the X-wing’s nose up. Red crept into the corners of Corran’s vision and the stick’s pressure against his breastbone made breathing hard.

The vast expanse of the Black Asp’s bulk filled his viewscreen. By all the souls of Alderaan! A blue bolt of ion-cannon energy sizzled in and battered down the X-wing’s shields. Whistler yowled and the stick went slack for a moment, allowing Corran to act.

He slapped the stick hard to port, bringing the X-wing up in a snap-roll that put the Interdictor beneath his feet. He started to pull back on the stick, to show the cruiser his stern and rocket full away from it, but he felt a tingle run through him as another ion blast partially caught the starboard stabilizer foils. The astromech’s screams died abruptly and Corran was slammed against the left side of the cockpit.

Even without seeing the stars swirling around him like dust motes in a Tatooine sand tornado, he knew what had happened. The ion blast had knocked out his starboard sublight engines, leaving the pair on the port side of the ship operating at full power and without competition. This put him into a flat spin, with his stern chasing his nose, completely out of control.

But at least I’m hard to hit.

The ion blast, in addition to shutting Whistler off, had killed all his cockpit electronics and acceleration compensator. The only thing he could do, he knew, was to shut his engines down and go for a restart. Until he had some sort of power, or until that cruiser slaps a tractor beam on me, the X-wing would spin like a gyroscope. Gotta power down.

That was easier said than done. The emergency shutdown panel had been placed on the right side of the cockpit. Mashed against the opposite side by centrifugal force, it remained just beyond the reach of his outstretched fingers. Gritting his teeth, Corran levered himself off the cockpit wall with his left elbow and tried to hit the panel.

The stick slammed him back into place pinning him. Corran caught it with his right hand and tried to pry it forward. Pain radiated out from where the stick had jammed his medallion into breastbone. So much for that being terribly lucky. The stick made it painful to breathe, adding one more unnecessary complication to his predicament.

A sense of urgency boiled up in him, overriding panic instead of boosting it. “Let. Me. Go!” He redoubled his effort to move the stick. It resisted at first, but Corran refused to be daunted. Concentrating with every fiber of his being, he pushed and the stick yielded. Centimeter by centimeter he forced it away from himself. Yes, I’m free.

Corran shoved the stick as far as it would go to the left, then used it to pull himself away from the port side of the cockpit. With his left hand on the top of the stick, he brought his elbow up, inch by inch, scraping it past various switches and knobs that had died with the rest of the ship. When his arm came up above the top of the stick, he lunged to the right, letting the stick slip beneath his armpit, and hit the shutdown panel with his right elbow.

The thrumming of the port engines died, leaving him alone with the sound of his own breathing in the cockpit. The ship still spun and showed no signs of slowing, but without friction or other resistance in the vacuum of space, it would continue to spin forever. Corran relaxed slightly in relief at cutting the engines off, and was rewarded by being bashed back against the port side of the cockpit. His helmet hit a hard stanchion, leaving him a touch dazed. Along with the spin-induced nausea, it made him hope someone would shoot him and end his misery.

That flash of despair lasted for a moment until another spark of pain spread out from his breastbone. Kill us they might, but I’m not going to make it easy for them. He slid his right hand across his chest, past the medallion and his left shoulder, and tipped three switches up. A bit farther along, he lifted a plasteel plate that covered a recessed red button, then punched that button and hoped for the best.

What he wanted to hear was the return of the engine thrum, but what he got was nothing. Ignition circuits must be fried. There has to be something else I can do. Without the engines, he had no power. The primary power cells and the reserve power cells for the lasers probably had enough energy in them to at least give him communications, attitude control jets, and limited sensors, but getting at it from inside the cockpit presented him a problem. It’s not like I can just land this monster and do some manual cross-wiring.

Corran laughed aloud. “No, but I can manually land this thing.”

He brought his left leg up and hooked a small tab on the cockpit wall with his heel. It flipped out a small bar that sat in a groove. Corran centered his foot on the bar and pumped it down. It came back up beneath his foot and he pushed it down again and again.

From the nose of the fighter he heard metallic pops and clicks. The bar was connected to a small generator that put out enough current to deploy the fighter’s landing gear. Extending them did nothing to affect the spin, but the payoff Corran hoped for wouldn’t come until the gear locked into place.

With a shudder he felt throughout the ship, the landing gear snapped into their fully deployed positions. The monitor in the cockpit lit up again and the stick began to feel alive in his left hand. Laughing aloud, Corran took the stick in his right hand and tugged it over to the starboard side of the cockpit. The spin began to slow.

He fingered the medallion with his left hand. Because no-power landings would be seriously harmful to most lifeforms, extending the landing gear on the fighter opened a circuit that allowed the primary and reserve power cells to drive the S-foil impeller jets for simple maneuvering and to kick in the repulsorlift drives. The power cell tap tended to be used primarily by techs for moving the ships around in repair and maintenance facilities, because running the fusion engines up for full maneuvering power in enclosed places is generally considered harmful to most living creatures.

Corran tried his restart again, with the same results as before. Diagnostics told him he’d lost one of the starboard Incom phi-inverted lateral stabilizers and the engine just wouldn’t start with power levels fluctuating all over the place. No engines, but maybe I have sensors and communication.

He brought those systems on-line but got nothing from sensors and a lot of static covering voices on the comm. “This is Rogue Nine. I could use some help here.”

Waiting for a reply, he flipped on the proton torpedo launch circuits. Without sensors, his ability to hit anything was nil, but at least he could get a shot or two off. And I’m probably going to need it.

Above and to starboard he saw the Black Asp. Rogue Squadron had regrouped to form a screen between the Interdictor and the smuggler. He couldn’t tell how many Rogues were left, and the occasional glint of sunlight off TIE Interceptors’ Quadanium solar panels told him a few of the squints still existed, but there seemed to be far more Rogues than there were TIEs, and that was a good sign.

The Interdictor ventured in close to the fight, its lasers and ion cannons blazing away with green and blue bolts. The energy streams filled space with tangles and knots as the gunners tried to target the elusive X-wings. Though he had been hit fairly easily, he knew his collision-avoidance maneuver had kept him in one place long enough for the gunners to hit him, and that only because he’d ventured far closer to the Interdictor than he should have.

He half heard a command crackle in over the comm, but he couldn’t make sense of it. Out beyond his ship’s nose he saw a series of proton torpedo launches from the X-wings. They came in at the large ship from a multitude of angles. While the power in each of the torpedoes was hardly a threat to the Interdictor, the combined damage of a volley like that was enough to batter down its forward shield. The concave energy wall glowed a sickly yellow before it imploded and Corran thought certain he saw several torpedoes explode against the Interdictory hull.

“Yeah, Rogues!” Corran laughed aloud. “Oh, Whistler, you’re going to be sorry you missed this.”

The Interdictor brought its nose up to pull the vulnerable bow away from the X-wings. It could repair the damaged shield by pumping more energy into it, but that would require the shutting down of the gravity well projectors. That, in turn, would allow the X-wings and the yacht to escape, turning the whole engagement into a draw. If you don’t count the vaped squints.

The big ship executed a roll that combined with the loop to reverse the cruiser’s course. “He’s running. They’ve driven it off! Yes!”

His jubilance died as he realized that meant the cruiser was heading back in his direction, and the surviving TIE Interceptors were flying along in its wake like fledgling mynocks chasing a slow freighter. “Whistler, you’re lucky you’re not seeing this. It’ll be ugly.”

“Rogue Nine, do you copy?”

“I copy.” Corran didn’t immediately recognize the voice. “I’m on partial power. Whistler’s dead and I’m blinder than a Y-wing.”

“This is Rogue Null. You have squints coming your way. I mark two.”

“Oh, more good news. Thanks, Null. Be my guest.” Corran craned his neck to see where Tycho and the shuttle were, but he couldn’t see it. “I’m naked here, so please get them off me.”

“Not possible, Nine. Clear your sensors to 354.3.”

“What?” Corran frowned as he saw the TIE getting closer. “I’m a sitting Hutt here.”

“So you have indicated, Nine. Clear your sensors.”

Corran punched the frequency code into the keypad under his left hand. “Done, Null.”

“Happy hunting, Nine.”

Corran’s targeting display came back alive and his monitor showed targeting telemetry data from the Forbidden. Beyond the display Corran saw the TIEs juke to try to shuck the shuttle, but Tycho managed to keep his sights locked on the lead Interceptor, despite flying a slower, less agile craft.

The HUD went red and Corran hummed an imitation of Whistler’s target tone. He squeezed the trigger on his stick twice, sending two torpedoes streaking out at the lead Interceptor. “Lead’s gone, Null, give me number two.”

The display flickered, then Corran nudged the X-wing around and launched two more missiles at the Interceptor boxed in red on his tactical display. So intent had the Imperial pilots been on losing the shuttle behind them, they had no chance to react to the missiles shooting in at them.

The first pilot died without being able to execute even the most basic of evasive maneuvers. The proton torpedoes blasted through the cockpit ball, ripping the craft to bits and igniting the ion engine fuel into a swollen ball of fire. The second set of missiles lanced through that fireball and blew one wing off their target. That squint careened away, somersaulting and twisting wildly through space. Bits and pieces of it flew off into the void, then it exploded brilliantly, blotting out the image of the Interdictor going to light speed.

“Great shooting, Nine.”

Corran shook his head. “Greater flying, Null. I did the easy part.”

“The kills are yours, Corran. Three confirmed—the best today.”

The Corellian pilot shrugged. “Maybe today wasn’t so unlucky after all.”

“Glad you feel that way, Nine.”

“Why, Captain?”

“You had the most kills. When we get where we’re going, all the drinks are on you.”

14

Corran happily popped the cockpit canopy seals on his X-wing after the yacht killed its maneuvering jets and the thick fog descended over the ships. At Chorax the yacht had come back and picked him up, using landing claws to capture the X-wing’s landing gear. This left his ship clinging to the dorsal hull of the yacht like a dauber-wasp on the back of a bird. He didn’t particularly like the situation, but it was a long walk from Chorax to Talasea in the Morobe sector and he liked the idea of leaving his fighter and Whistler behind even less than being carried into port.

He’d shut down all systems except for life support, so he had no communication with the yacht’s pilot. Corran had been impressed with how smooth the landing was at the primitive spaceport. A dense fog hid almost everything, and what little he could see in the backwash of maneuvering jets seemed overgrown with dark green ivy. He saw dim shapes that resembled buildings, but most of them were covered with sufficient plant life that he wondered if the New Republic hadn’t grown the base instead of building it.

He stood and stretched, then doffed his helmet and gloves and put them on the seat of his command couch. Vaulting from the cockpit, he landed heavily on the yacht’s hull. More gravity here than I expected. Corran looked for a ladder to let himself down, but couldn’t find one. Instead he walked along the curved wing and jumped down to the ground from the lowest point.

His knees buckled with the impact and he went down on all fours. “Either there is more gravity here than I expect, or that fight really wrung it out of me.” As he straightened up and scraped mud from the knees of his red jumpsuit, he knew both of his assumptions were probably correct. I’m lucky to be alive.

A hatch opened with a hiss on the underside of the yacht and a boarding ramp slowly descended. Corran turned toward the ramp, wiping his hands off on his thighs. A Sullustan descended first, followed by an insectoid maintenance droid of Verpine manufacture. Corran nodded a salute at them, but they ignored him as they waited at the base of the ramp.

Corran assumed they were waiting for the captain of the ship—a person he had assumed to be male since very few of the independent smugglers were female. As the captain descended the ramp, Corran had his assumption exploded by his first glimpse of shapely long legs encased in boots and a form-fitting, dark blue jumpsuit. A gunbelt encircled her slender waist and long black hair fell to midback. She grabbed the ramp’s forward support and swung around to face him in a carefree manner, and Corran was very taken with the smile lighting up her beautiful face.

He wiped his hands again on his jumpsuit. “Thanks for the ride back here.”

She returned his smile as she shortened the distance between them. “Thanks for the save back there.”

“My pleasure.” He extended his hand to her. “I’m Corran Horn.”

Something dangerous flashed through her brown eyes. “Are you any relation to Hal Horn?”

“He is … was my father. Why?”

“Because he hounded my father and had him sent to Kessel.” She poked him in the chest, right where the flight stick had bruised him. “If I’d known who you were I’d have left you there.”

Corran recoiled in surprise and for the first time saw the patch on the shoulder of her jumpsuit. It showed a Corellian sea-ray that had a bar where its eyes should have been. Because of the polarized thread used to embroider the black eye-bar, a little vertical white line passed through it, running side to side. I know that crest—I knew this ship was familiar! “This is the Pulsar Skate. If I’d known Booster Terrik was bringing me in, I’d have stayed out there.”

“I can see you two have already met?”

Corran whirled around and quickly saluted Wedge. “Yes, sir.”

The woman planted her fists on her narrow hips. “You didn’t tell me who this pilot was because you knew I’d not have transported him, right?”

Wedge smiled easily. “I suspected there might have been some friction. How have you been, Mirax?”

“Paying for spare parts and fuel, Wedge.” Mirax kissed Wedge on the cheek. “I’ve also been collecting stories about you from all over the galaxy. Your parents would have been proud.”

Wedge nodded solemnly. “I’d like to hope so.”

Corran’s green eyes narrowed. “Sir, you realize the Pulsar Skate is a ship with a well-documented history of smuggling and that Booster Terrik is one of the more notorious smugglers who ever flew out of Corellia.”

Corran’s commander smiled. “I know all about the Skate, Lieutenant Horn. I was about fifteen years old when I helped replace the fusion chamber on that starboard engine. Mirax’s father regularly used my parents’ fueling station for repairs and refueling.”

“But, Booster used to smuggle glit …”

Wedge cut him off with a scowl. “He also helped me track down the pirates who destroyed the fueling station and killed my parents—pirates who destroyed it while fleeing Corellian Security and whom CorSec never caught.”

“And that makes it all right?”

“No, Lieutenant, it just puts things in perspective.” Wedge gave Mirax a hug around her shoulders. “Mirax isn’t her father. Ever since he retired, she’s been running a lot of supplies for the Alliance.” He then turned and gave her a hard stare. “And Corran isn’t his father, either. If he’d not made some last-minute adjustments to the course we were taking, we’d not have ended up in the Chorax system to save you.”

Mirax glanced down at the ground. The anger in her expression eased slightly, aided and abetted by the color rising to her cheeks. “You’re right, Wedge. I’m still bleeding off the stress of being jumped like that. The Black Asp came out of hyperspace right on my exit vector and gravved me in place. Someone sold me out.”

Corran snorted. “No honor among thieves.”

Wedge frowned at him. “More like Imperial credits buying more loyalty than the promise of Alliance credits.”

Mirax shrugged her shoulders. “Some of us find those promises more safe than letting the Empire get their hooks into us.” She extended her hand to Corran. “I want to apologize for my behavior, Lieutenant.”

Corran shook her hand. “Apology accepted, and I apologize as well. I’m still rattled after getting fired upon by a cruiser. My R2 is down and I’m a bit worried …”

She smiled and some of the tension in his chest eased. “I understand. If I can help in any way.”

“I appreciate the offer.” Corran looked over at Wedge. “I should probably see to getting the X-wing unloaded and Whistler’s getting repaired.”

“In a moment, Lieutenant, I want to speak with you first.” He jerked a thumb at the Pulsar Skate. “Mirax, do you know where your shipment was going?”

“I was supposed to rendezvous with a ship for transfer or coordinates.” She shrugged. “According to the manifest it was a lot of basic stuff for setting up a base. You could probably use most of it here.”

“I don’t doubt it.” Wedge fished a cylindrical comlink from a pocket of his flight suit and flicked it on with his thumb. “Antilles to Emtrey.”

“Emtrey here, sir. I’ve been trying to reach you since we landed …”

Wedge rolled his eyes skyward. “I’m sure you have. No time to talk now. I need you to get a salvage crew with a lift crane over here to get Horn’s X-wing and R2 unit. You also need to get the ship’s manifest from the Pulsar Skate. Find out where that shipment of supplies was going and see if you can’t arrange for what we need to remain here.”

“Yes, sir. As I was saying, sir …”

“Antilles out.” Wedge turned the comlink off and shoved it deep into his pocket again. “Tycho said he didn’t have any trouble with the droid on the trip out here, but why not I can’t imagine.”

Mirax arched an eyebrow at Wedge. “So you send him out here to talk with me?”

“Believe me, he’s not the worst protocol droid on our side, not by a long shot.” Wedge winked at her. “Just give him the datacard, retreat to the Skate, and threaten to shoot him if he comes aboard.”

“Make sure you shoot twice.”

“I’ll remember that, Lieutenant.” Mirax sighed. “Wouldn’t it be easier if I just downloaded the manifest to your central computer?”

Wedge winced. “Right now he is our central computer.”

“True, this isn’t exactly Coruscant Rimward. It makes the Outlier worlds look civilized.”

“I’m glad you understand.” Wedge tossed her an abbreviated salute. “We will talk more later, Mirax. Lieutenant, if you’ll follow me.”

Corran fell in step with his commander. “You wanted to say something to me, sir?”

“It’s never again going to be quite like that first time.” Wedge smiled. “Taking on fighters is one thing, but fighting in the shadow of a capital ship, that’s enough to get to anyone.”

Maybe that was the difference between this time and the others. “I appreciate the perspective, sir.”

“I also wanted to congratulate you for the way you recovered yourself out there. You were in a very difficult position and you got yourself out of it rather handily.”

“It was more luck than anything else, sir. If that second blast had caught me square on, I would have been on that Interdictor and Talasea would be under assault.”

“Call it whatever you like, Mr. Horn, you did well.” Wedge shook his head. “Getting those two Interceptors after your systems were down was very impressive.”

“As I told Captain Celchu, he did the hard part, I just pulled the trigger. If they’d broken his lock, I would never have hit them.” The younger man frowned. “That brings me to a question, sir.”

“Yes?”

Corran stopped and grey mist swirled between the two of them. “Captain Celchu was able to get a torpedo lock on those two Interceptors. Why didn’t he shoot them himself?”

Wedge hesitated, instantly putting Corran on his guard. “The Forbidden is being modified for training purposes to simulate the profile of an assault gunboat. While it has the sensor package for concussion missiles, it doesn’t carry any and couldn’t shoot them if it did.”

“Then why didn’t he take them with his lasers? Lambda-class shuttles have lasers.”

Wedge’s reply came tight and laced with frustration. “The Forbidden does not.”

Corran glanced down at the ground. “Commander, I saw Alliance Security escorting Captain Celchu around on Folor. He’s never had fully powered weapons on his Z-95 Headhunter and you’re telling me his shuttle had the lasers removed despite our travel through contested sectors of the Core? What’s going on here?”

Wedge took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Have you told anyone else about the security escorts?”

“No, I …”

“Lieutenant, I want you to understand two things: First, I have the utmost trust and confidence in Captain Celchu. I have no reservations—none—about him, his service, his skills, or his commitment to the Alliance. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Second, the matter to which you allude is a private one, concerning Captain Celchu alone. Because of it he has agreed to have limitations placed upon himself. Discussion of it is up to him, but both he and I believe bringing the issue up will only serve as a distraction to the squadron.”

As if not knowing will not distract me. “Does this mean I can’t ask him about it?”

Wedge folded his arms across his chest. “Corran, you were a law enforcement officer, so suspicion comes easily to you and trust does not. Ask yourself this question—if you could trust him to help shoot those two Interceptors, don’t you think you can trust him all the way around? He didn’t have to save you, but he did, knowing full well he was as dead as you were if the Interceptors turned on him.”

“I see your point, sir.” Corran nodded slowly. “Doesn’t mean I may not ask, unless you order me not to, but I won’t tell anyone else about it. And if the Captain refuses to answer my questions, I’ll have to let it go, I guess. He saved my life. I owe him that much at least.”

“Good.”

“One more thing, sir.”

“Yes, Lieutenant?”

Corran looked back toward the Pulsar Skate. “Back there you mentioned that Corellian Security never caught the pirates who destroyed the Gus Treta station and killed your parents. My father got that case and worked hard on it. He didn’t give up, he just didn’t have your connections on the other side of the law.” He swallowed hard. “I think, if my father had known about Booster Terrik helping you find them, he’d have cut him some slack and Booster wouldn’t have done time in the spice mines.”

Wedge reached out and slapped Corran lightly on the shoulder. “Booster clearly wasn’t a Jedi, nor was he Sithspawn, and the time on Kessel got him out of the business. In a more candid moment, Mirax will probably admit the five years he spent in the dark was good for her father.”

“I doubt she and I will share many candid moments, sir.”

“Really? I think you two would get along quite well together.”

“Our fathers openly hated each other, sir. Not the best foundation for a lasting friendship.” Corran shook his head. “Besides, she’s your friend …”

“But just a friend. More like a sister, since she stayed with us when her father was on dangerous runs.”

Like a “sister” to the commanding officer, now there’s incentive to get to know her. Corran smiled. “I’ll take that under advisement, sir.”

“Do that, Lieutenant. Having friends never hurts.”

“Sir, sir!”

Both men looked up as Emtrey materialized out of the Talasean fog. His dark color on this dim world—I don’t envy the Commander trying to avoid dealing with the droid here.

Wedge looked over at Corran and in an instant Corran knew they had been thinking the same thing. “Emtrey, good, I’ll leave you to discuss the condition of his X-wing with Lieutenant Horn. Find me after that.” Corran read an “if you can” in Wedge’s smile as the leader of Rogue Squadron turned and walked away.

“As you wish, sir.” The droid aborted a salute, then shuffled his feet around to face Corran. “About your X-wing. Sir, the damage is not that extensive.”

“What about Whistler?”

“Ah, your R2 unit.” The droid canted his clamshell head to the side ever so slightly. “Your Whistler will be fine. He shut himself down before the ion blast could do it—this by virtue of the near miss. I must say, sir, that I thought …”

“Yes, Emtrey, I appreciate that, but he’ll be fine?”

“I should think so, sir, though it was a near thing.”

“Near thing?” Corran asked, instantly regretting his invitation to Emtrey to explain.

“Well, sir, a power coupling was negatively polarized, precluding an auto-restart. Many would consider this a minor problem. The coupling will have to undergo thermo-reconditioning, but we have the facilities for that here since the colonists used to use agrodroids and this world has some fierce thunderstorms in the rainy season.”

“Fascinating, really, Emtrey.” Corran smiled easily. “You should ask Commander Antilles to let you brief the squadron on the climatology of this world.” Use me to escape the droid, will you? “Demand it, really.”

“Demand? Oh, my.”

“Insist absolutely. Fifteen or twenty minutes of reasoning with him should convince him of its necessity.” Corran nodded solemnly. “Now, about my X-wing. I blew a phi-inverted lateral stabilizer.”

“That is correct, sir.” Emtrey handed Corran a datapad. “I have downloaded the requisition forms for the part into this datapad. If you will fill them out, along with an incident report, I’ll get Captain Celchu to review the forms and get Commander Antilles to sign off on them. We’ll relay the information back to General Salm. We should have the part in a month or two at the most.”

Corran’s jaw dropped. “A month or two?”

“Provided they have the part and you don’t get pushed back in the priority list.”

“Priority list?”

“Yes, sir. You brought your X-wing with you and have never formally signed it over to the Alliance. To prevent individuals from using the Alliance as a maintenance depot, regulation 119432, subsection 5, paragraph 3 states ‘Non-Alliance craft that are allied with or working under the command of an Alliance leader will be provided with parts and maintenance at the discretion of the commanding officer and/or the senior officer in charge of parts and supply for said craft. If said craft are damaged in any actions that were not planned or sanctioned in advance (see Sec. 12, para 7 for a list of exceptions), all damage is considered non-Alliance related and to be repaired only after authorized repairs to sanction-action-damaged craft have been completed.’ Now the exceptions …”

“Hold it, Emtrey.” Corran massaged his temples. “Is this the only way to get a new stabilizer?”

“Sir, I am conversant in the regulations of over six million different military and paramilitary organizations and there is nothing that …”

The pilot rapped a knuckle against the droid’s black breastplate and that stopped the litany. “Emtrey, there have to be more phi-inverted lateral stabilizers in existence than we have in all the Alliance ships and stores. Z-95 Headhunters and Incom T-47 Airspeeders both use the part. There’s probably a wrecked T-47 out here somewhere, in fact.”

“There might be, sir.” The droid rotated his head around in a circle to scan the whole area. “I’ll prepare the forms requesting a general survey of the local sector.”

Dropping the datapad, Corran reached out and grabbed the droid’s head in both hands. He pulled Emtrey’s facial opening toward him. “You’re missing my point, Emtrey. Forms and requests will take time. Without that part, I can’t fly. If I can’t fly, I’ll be stuck in this fog and on the ground and that will make life miserable for me and I don’t want that. There are parts to be had …”

“And regulations to be observed.”

“Regulations be damned!”

The droid pulled back a step and the condensation on his head let him slip away. “Sir, of all the members of Rogue Squadron, I would have thought you would appreciate adherence to regulations!”

Corran sighed. “Regulations have their place, but not when they hurt. Can’t you just scrounge the part or something?”

The droid froze in position, the flashing light in his eyes being the only indication he was still working. The pilot luxuriated in the cessation of the droid’s chatter, but it went on far longer than he’d heard before in the droid’s presence. The eye-flashes became asynchronous, and this worried Corran a bit.

“Emtrey?”

The droid’s eyes went dark for a moment, then his limbs and head jerked as if he had been struck by lightning.

“Emtrey?”

The eyes lit up again and Corran would have sworn they were a bit brighter. “Scrounging protocol engaged, sir.” The droid bent down and smoothly retrieved the datapad. He glanced at the datapad, then shook his head. “I’ll shoot a requisition up through channels, but I think I can find you something sooner than anything we get from Command. You’re a pilot, and my job is to keep you flying. Consider it done.”

Even the voice sounded different to Corran. “Emtrey, are you all right? Is the moisture getting to you?”

“I’m fine, sir. The moisture is no problem.” One eye-light flashed on and off. “Touch of a virus, maybe, but nothing to worry about.”

Did that droid just wink at me? “Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir.” The droid saluted smartly. “If you have nothing further, sir, I’ll get on this right away. And I’ll have your gear sent around to your billet, sir.”

“Thank you, Emtrey.” Corran returned the salute. “Dismissed.”

The droid turned sharply on his heel and walked away. Corran stared after him, then shivered.

“Ooryl did not think it was so cold here.”

Corran spun and saw the grey-green-colored Gand standing behind him. Another who blends in with this fog. “Not cold, Ooryl, just fatigue. It’s been a long day, full of surprises.”

“Qrygg wanted to apologize for abandoning you.” The Gand Findsman clutched his hands together penitently. “Qrygg was too busy dodging Interceptors on Qrygg’s tail to see you were not there.”

“You followed orders, just as I would have.”

“Qrygg would give you a sign of Qrygg’s sorrow.”

Corran threw an arm around the Gand’s exoskeletal shoulders. “I tell you what. Guide me back to my billet and let me get a solid eight hours of sleep, and we’ll call it even. Will that assuage your Gand guilt?”

“Ooryl finds this acceptable.”

“Good.” Corran swept his left hand through the fog. “Lead on, Ooryl, and this time I promise I’ll follow right behind you.”

15

The officious, bulbous officer stared laser bolts at Kirtan Loor. “I can see your orders are all properly drawn, but I have never appreciated Intelligence operatives meddling in fleet affairs.”

“I appreciate your concern, Admiral Devlia, as well as your willingness to return from retirement to Imperial service, but Imperial security must take precedence at this time which, I believe you would agree, is most critical.”

The little man brushed his grey moustache with a finger and his expression eased. “Just so we understand each other.”

“Of course.” Kirtan cared little for the Admiral’s concerns, but the Interdictor cruiser Black Asp was part of Devlia’s command. Its report of being ambushed by a squadron it identified as Rogue Squadron had brought Kirtan all the way from Coruscant to Vladet in the Rachuk system to speak with the Black Asp’s Captain Uwlla Iillor. He suspected a great chunk of Devlia’s discomfort with his visit came because it forced the Admiral to deal with Iillor, one of the women who had risen to command to fill the gaps left in the Imperial Navy after the Endor debacle.

The Intelligence agent found himself anxious to meet Captain Iillor. He had read her file, as well as that of Admiral Devlia and most of the senior command staff during his journey out from Coruscant. The files were a welcome departure from tracking the various rumors about Rogue Squadron, but her record especially intrigued him. In studying it he caught hints of how forceful she had to have been to have risen in the Imperial Navy as far as she got before the Emperor’s death.

Devlia stood and smoothed his grey jacket over his round belly. “And I’ll tell you here and now that I’ll stop any questions I think are off the mark.”

“I understand that, sir.” Dream all you want, Admiral.

Devlia led Kirtan from his spacious office down a narrow hallway in the mansion that housed the command staff. The Admiral preceded him into a small study that had been converted into a conference room through the addition of a big table that dominated the room. Boxes full of datacards still lined the built-in shelves and Kirtan judged it a larger library than he would have expected to find on a planet like Vladet.

Devlia secured himself the chair at the head of the table, then waved a hand toward the woman standing at the far end. “Captain Iillor, this is Agent Kirtan Loor. He wants to ask you some questions about the ambush.”

“Yes, sir.” The brown-haired woman looked at Kirtan without a trace of the hunted look most people acquired when told Intelligence wanted to question them. “I’ll help if I am able, Agent Loor.”

Her voice had an edge to it that backed up the challenge in her dark eyes. Kirtan assumed her lack of fear came after years of being on the Navy’s NhM track—Non-huMan. The Empire’s bias against aliens and women reached an unprecedented level of refinement in the Imperial Navy. Iillor had been sent to serve under Colonel Thrawn and a host of other alien superior officers before she had been given a ship of her own. She would have been stuck on that Carrack-class cruiser had not the defeat at Endor made the need for competent officers so great that the command staff’s survivors reevaluated personnel and awarded commands according to some semblance of merit.

“I’m sure you will, Captain. I would like any reports you have filed about this action, as well as any holographic records of it, along with any communication intercepts.” He walked around to the left side of the table, then turned back toward Devlia. “With the Admiral’s permission, of course.”

The old man nodded.

“Very well. If you don’t mind, please tell me what happened.”

“May I sit?”

“By all means.” Kirtan smiled but remained standing. “Make yourself comfortable.”

Captain Iillor sat and turned her chair so she gave Devlia her profile. “We had information that a smuggler running supplies to the Rebels was expected in the Chorax system at a particular time, and would be departing after picking up some supplies there. I sent a shuttle in to monitor the smuggler’s situation while I put the Black Asp on the fringe of the system. When the Pulsar Skate started to head out of the system, I jumped the Black Asp in and brought my G7-x gravjectors up.”

Kirtan frowned. “Intra-system jumping is a rather unusual tactic, isn’t it?”

Iillor shook her head. “I’ve seen it used with great success out in the Unknown Sector. It worked at Chorax, too, because the Skate had no idea where we came from. It took them nearly six seconds to begin evasive maneuvers. I took the liberty of closing to use our ion cannons on the Skate during that time. Then a dozen X-wings came into the system.

“I deployed my Interceptor squadron, but none of the pilots are Academy material. They would have been eaten up, so I brought the Black Asp in and managed to disable one X-wing. By then, however, the remainder of them screened the Skate and hit my forward shield with a volley of proton torpedoes. The shield came down and I lost two laser batteries. I had to choose between reinforcing my shields or keeping the gravjectors operational. I made the former choice, recovered five Interceptors, and went to light speed.”

Devlia leaned forward. “They were waiting for the Black Asp. They came out of hyperspace right on top of her.”

Kirtan stroked his chin. “I don’t see that one thing establishes the other. I see no evidence of an ambush.”

Iillor’s head came up. “That’s what I’ve been telling the Admiral.”

“You’re both blind.”

“I think, sir, with all due respect, you are making unwarranted assumptions.” Kirtan began to pace around the edge of the table, passing behind the Admiral and back again. “Interdictor cruisers are designed to pull ships out of hyperspace. Of course, only where the route is known in advance can they be positioned in such a way that doing that is possible. In this case, since the Black Asp was in the Chorax system specifically to prevent a ship from entering hyperspace, you have chosen to discard one of its primary functions.”

“Preposterous!”

Which is precisely the kind of mistake I would have made previously. Kirtan allowed himself a slight smile. “Check your thinking. If you chose to ambush an Interdictor cruiser, would you do so with a single squadron of X-wings?”

Devlia’s face reddened. “Perhaps I would not, but I have training most Rebel officers do not.”

“Granted, sir, yet the Rebels are not without wise leadership.” Kirtan left allusions to Yavin and Endor unvoiced, but he saw by Devlia’s expression the man had caught them anyway. “I might ask why the Rebels would waste their time attacking an Interdictor cruiser at all? No disrespect intended to you, Captain Iillor, or your ship, but the action of Interdictors is hardly crippling to the Rebellion. Our main battle fleets are garrisoning key worlds, like Corellia and Kuat, so even predation on Interdictors is unlikely to draw them out.”

Iillor did not smile, but her nod was not as stiff as before. “My assumption was that we had suffered the misfortune of pulling a convoy out of hyperspace, but the Admiral found such coincidence unlikely.”

Kirtan smiled. “The Admiral, despite this misjudgment, is formidable enough that I should think the Rebels utter fools to operate in his command sector.”

Devlia had opened his mouth to protest the first half of Kirtan’s statement. The second half, which Kirtan had added as a sop to the man’s vanity, killed the Admiral’s comment and clicked his jaw shut.

The Intelligence agent again focused on Captain Iillor. “How did you identify them as Rogue Squadron?”

“Communication intercepts used ‘Rogue’ call signs. Visual data is not very good, but there is a unique unit crest painted on the S-foils. Preliminary searches correlate it with a crest said to be that of Rogue Squadron. Also the Pulsar Skate is a ship with Corellian connections, just like Wedge Antilles. And the pilots were hot—they took off seven of my Interceptors, with the last two falling to an X-wing that was dead.”

Devlia leaned back. “Interesting, but circumstantial, as I am sure Agent Loor will agree.”

“Circumstantial, yes, but persuasive.” Everything she had said about the squadron that attacked the Black Asp did seem to point to Rogue Squadron. Kirtan doubted any other unit in the Rebellion would sport Rogue call signs, and the crest data would have to be checked. Still and all it was not conclusive. It is, however, a start.

“Captain, did your shuttle stay in-system and monitor the squadron for outbound vector and speed?”

Iillor scowled. “No, and Lieutenant Potin has been reprimanded for fleeing when not threatened. I do have entry vector and velocity data, and it is triangulated with the data from the shuttle.”

“That’s something, then.”

“I will make certain you have it in time for your return to Imperial Center, Agent Loor.” Devlia stood. “Assuming you want nothing else here.”

“I do want to speak to the pilots who flew against the X-wings as well as review any data recorded from the Interceptors that were destroyed.”

“I’ll see the interviews are arranged right away.”

“Take your time, Admiral. The next two or three days will be soon enough.”

The old man’s expression soured. “Staying that long are you?”

“Longer, I suspect.” Kirtan smiled broadly for the Admiral. “If Rogue Squadron is operating in this area, and I believe it is, I’ll leave only after we’ve found them and destroyed them, and not a moment sooner.”

16

In only two weeks, while the official request for a new phi-inverted lateral stabilizer languished in red-tape limbo, Emtrey found a pair of phi-inverted lateral stabilizers that the Pulsar Skate dropped off on its second run to Talasea. The Rogues’ Verpine tech used the new parts to replace the older, damaged parts. In synchronizing them, Zraii managed to smooth things out so Corran noticed a five percent increase in power at full throttle, with a three percent reduction in fuel consumption.

Corran throttled back slightly, matching his speed to that of Ooryl. “Three Flight to lead—we’re all in formation, sir.”

“I copy, Nine. Stand by.”

“As ordered, Lead.” Corran smiled broadly in spite of himself. Back when he was with CorSec he had hated escort duty, but after two weeks on the ground he would have volunteered to go after Death Stars even if they were strung around a system like pearls on a necklace. Even during his time on the run from Corellia he’d managed to fly at least once a week, even though that was well outside the profile of the identity Gil Bastra had created for him.

He turned and looked back at Whistler. “Has Emtrey come up with any information based on his analysis of the ID Gil made up for me?”

A mournful hoot came in reply as the word “No” appeared on his display.

“Yeah, I don’t like the idea of never seeing Gil again, either.” He glanced at his sensor monitor. “Twelve, trim it up a bit there, you’re slipping behind. Trouble?”

“No difficulty. Compliance.”

“Good. Keep close. This mission should be easy enough that a nerf-herder could do it, but the other side will be shooting back, so we have to be careful.”

Despite the light tone in his voice he knew things could get nasty. Alliance operatives had been conducting surveys of Core worlds to assess the political climate and determine the strength of Imperial forces protecting them. On one run back toward their operations base—known to the pilots only as “Black Curs Base,” with no location specified for security reasons—they ran into the Strike cruiser Havoc. The Rebels went to ground on a small jungle planet in the Hensara system. They sank their ship, a modified Imperial Customs frigate, in a deep lake and lacked the equipment needed to repair damage that would allow them to move it again.

The Havoc grounded an Imperial walker and two scouts along with two platoons of stormtroopers. While their reported progress in searching out the Rebels had been slow, they started relatively close to the lake, so the ship’s discovery was a matter of time. The Alliance had reconciled itself to the loss of the ship and had intended a covert extraction of the operatives, then the Havoc left the system, providing a window for repair and escape of the frigate Battle of Yavin.

Wedge sent the squadron the coordinates for the trip to the Hensara system. To cover the location of their base, the journey would be undertaken in three parts. The first jump, a short one, would take them to their first transit point, an uninhabited star system not far from the Morobe system. From there they would jump back out Rimward to the second transit system and back in to the Hensara system.

While the multiple jumps and changes of direction would add hours to the flight time, obscuring their point of origin was vital. The Alliance had learned that spreading out its forces meant it was all but impossible for the Empire to land a deathblow to the Rebellion. But for the efforts of a courageous few on Hoth, the Rebellion’s headquarters would have been destroyed and the Rebellion along with it. Without taking precautions, they would pinpoint the location of their base and invite retaliation.

They made the first jump on Wedge’s mark and came out in the fringes of the transit system all in one piece. The X-wings maneuvered around to the exit vector quickly, then had to mark time as the Skate and the Corellian corvette Eridain came about. Corran nudged his throttle back a notch, shortening the gap between him and the Gand.

The larger ships reported they were ready, so the whole convoy shot into hyperspace and came out in the second transit system intact. The course adjustment there was not as radical as the one from the first system, so they headed out quickly and arrived in the Hensara system just outside the gravitational tug of the third planet.

Corran heard Tycho’s voice come through the comm. “Rogue Leader, Captain Afyon reports a clean scan of the system. You’re clear for your run.”

“Copy, Control. Three Flight, you fly CAP. Two and One, on me.”

Corran let a low snarl resound in his throat. Flying Combat Aerospace Patrol meant his flight would remain at the edge of Hensara Ill’s atmosphere against the possible incursion of any Imperial forces. The other eight fighters in the squadron were going to escort the Skate down and strafe the Imperial mudbugs and the durasteel dogs they had hunting Dirk Harkness and his compatriots on the planet. Strafing runs against ground troops—even stormtroopers—wasn’t much in the action department, but it was better than skipping across atmosphere, shooting at nothing.

He shrugged. “Maybe slagging an AT-AT will sweeten Jace’s disposition.”

Whistler gave a stuttered chirp that sounded as close as the droid could manage to a laugh.

Corran matched it with some laughter of his own. “Jace clearly figures that because his name rhymes with ‘ace’ he should be one. He can’t understand why TIE pilots don’t just line up for him to vape them all in one pass.”

Tycho’s urgent comm call cut off Whistler’s trilled comment. “Control to all Rogues. We have a Strike cruiser that just jumped in-system. Profile matches Havoc, but two fighter bays have been added. TIEs are launching.”

“Three Flight, lock S-foils in attack position.” Corran glanced at his sensor display. “Come to a heading of 272 degrees.”

“Control here. I have thirty-six, repeat, three-six TIEs launched. Six Interceptors, six bombers, and twenty-four, repeat, two-four starfighters. Eridain beginning evasive maneuvers. Wait. Confirm, bombers are heading to ground.”

“We copy, Control.” Wedge’s voice came through strong despite being nibbled upon by static. “Rogues Three and Four, the bombers are yours. The rest are ours. Keep them off the Eridain.”

“As ordered, Rogue Leader.” Corran shoved his throttle full forward. “Go all out, Three Flight. Into the middle, shoot at anything that isn’t an X-wing. Call if you need help.”

Under normal circumstances Corran knew that flying into the teeth of an enemy formation would have been suicidal, but odds of thirty-to-four weren’t all that conducive to long-term survival anyway. Since running wasn’t an option, doing what the enemy didn’t expect would buy him a second or two of surprise, and that would keep him alive just that much longer.

Hauling back on his stick and canting it ever so slightly to the side, he brought the X-wing up into a lopsided corkscrew maneuver. While the jerky motion of the ship’s nose meant he didn’t have a flame’s chance on Hoth of hitting anything, he was that much harder to hit himself. He pumped more power into his shields, then shot through a flurry of laser bolts before he penetrated the Imperial formation.

He hauled back on his stick, killing the weaving flight and arrowing his ship up into a flight of TIEs. He lined one starfighter up in his sights and let it have a quad blast of lasers. As the eyeball exploded, he cut the stick hard to starboard, then rolled out into a level line that continued his original course, with a half-kilometer cut to the right thrown in. As the TIE formation collapsed in after him, he cruised out the other side of it.

Inverting his X-wing, he pulled the fighter into a loop that brought him around in the TIEs’ wake, though slightly below their formation. Keeping the nose up, he headed back in again. He picked up on a TIE Interceptor that had broken right while its wingmate had broken left. Ooryl continued on the tail of the latter squint. The other Interceptor tightened its turn into a teardrop loop designed to bring it onto the Gand’s aft.

Corran’s quad lasers shredded the Interceptor’s starboard wing and blew apart one of the twin ion engines. The other, operating at full power, sent the squint spinning away. Corran winced in sympathy with the pilot, then drove into the middle of the TIE formation.

The X-wings plunging and wheeling through the middle of the TIEs had an unanticipated advantage in that they had a very high target-to-comrade ratio to shoot at. Moreover, because the X-wings had shields, even a shot taken in haste at another Rogue would not likely prove fatal. The same could not be said of the TIEs—one burst from their lasers could cripple or kill a fellow pilot.

Corran snapped a shot off at one starfighter and watched it disintegrate. A warning warble from Whistler and he mashed his right foot down on the etheric rudder pedal. The X-wing’s stern slew around to the left, swinging him out of an Interceptor’s line of fire while pointing his nose right at the ship as it sailed past him. He punched the X-wing over ninety degrees, hauled back on the stick, then completed the inversion and dove down onto the Interceptor’s tail. He sent kilojoules of scarlet energy into the ball cockpit and watched the craft explode.

“Nine, break left.”

Without thinking Corran slammed the stick hard to port and caught the green highlights of laser bolts shooting through where he had just been. More red laser fire chased back along those same lines and something exploded out there.

“Thanks, Commander.”

“No problem, Nine.”

Corran eased his stick forward and dove down to stay clear of the mass of starfighters. With the arrival of the rest of the squadron he knew there was no way he could track all the ships and sort friend from foe. Even as he came back up he saw less laser fire permeating the cloud of fighters than there had been when the forces were less evenly matched. “So much twisting and turning going on in there, no one can find a target and stick with it long enough to dust it.”

Pulling up to continue his loop around the fringe of the battle he saw one X-wing break free with a starfighter on its tail. His sensors told him Gavin was at the stick of the Alliance ship. Measuring Gavin’s line, Corran rolled his craft and looped down at a tangent to it. “Rogue Five, break hard right.”

Gavin’s fighter rolled up on its starboard S-foil crisply and pulled away at an angle that cast doubt on the existence of inertia. The starfighter following him tried to imitate his maneuver, but neither the pilot nor craft were up to it. As the TIE rolled, Corran swooped and fired. His quad-lasers burst the spherical pod like a bubble, sending the hexagonal wings slicing off through space.

Before he could even smile, his X-wing jolted forward. His instruments indicated heavy damage to his aft shield. “Whistler, get me a lock on that TIE.”

Corran inverted and dove, then pulled back on the stick to power up through a teardrop and onto the TIE’s tail. Instead of being where he expected it, the TIE, an Interceptor, showed up off his port S-foil, going away at a right angle to his course. Corran stood on his left rudder, then did a snap-roll that gave him a view of the planet above his head and the Interceptor racing away from him.

Just as he feared it was going to run far enough for Tycho or someone else on the Eridain to blast it, the Interceptor pulled its own loop planetward and started back at him. Head to head—he knows what he’s doing. As Wedge and Tycho had pointed out countless times in training, the majority of kills took place in head-to-head engagements. But so do I.

“Watch our tail, Whistler.” Corran kicked his shields full forward and drove in straight at the Interceptor. The rangefinder on the targeting monitor scrolled numbers off with blurred speed. His crosshairs went green and he fired, but couldn’t see how much damage he’d done because of the light show produced by the Interceptor’s lasers eating away at his shields.

Corran stabbed the right rudder pedal with his foot, swinging the ship around a full 180 degrees. Punching his throttle to full, he killed his momentum, then dropped the engines to zero thrust. With his thumb he popped his weapons control over to proton torpedoes and got a solid tone when he trapped the fleeing Interceptor in the targeting box. His finger tightened once on the trigger and a single torpedo shot away on a jet of blue flame.

The torpedo caught up with the Interceptor quickly enough, but the TIE pilot, confirming his possession of the skill Corran had willingly granted him before, juked his Interceptor out of its path at the last second. Unfortunately for him, his maneuvering and run at Corran had taken him to the outer edge of Hensara’s atmosphere. While not particularly dense, impact with it at the speed the Interceptor was traveling proved devastating. The starboard wing shattered and the Interceptor ricocheted away in a wobbly somersault.

“Control, this is Skate. We’re on our way back up. We have company that wants to go home.”

“Good job, Skate. Rogue Leader, mission accomplished.”

“I heard that, Control. Rogues, regroup for egress.”

Corran smiled as he heard Gavin’s voice over the comm. “Leader, there are two getting away.”

“Let them go, Five. Flight Leaders, check your flights.”

“Whistler, give me feeds on my people.” A tracking chart replaced the targeting data on Corran’s screen. Nine, Ten, Eleven, and Twelve. “Three Flight is all here.”

“Control to Rogue Leader, I have a dozen X-wings in-system, two Interceptors on recovery vectors, and two deployed shuttles on pilot recovery missions.”

Corran clapped his hands. “We didn’t lose anyone?”

“Are you complaining, Nine?”

“No, sir, Commander, not at all. It’s just …”

“Yes, Nine?”

“This is Rogue Squadron. I thought most of the pilots didn’t survive Rogue missions.”

“That was when there was still an Emperor, Nine.” The grim tone in Wedge’s voice gave way to one somewhat lighter. “I guess that’s the difference. Let’s head home, Rogues. This is one victory we can celebrate without having to toast dead comrades and I, for one, like the change.”

17

Wedge sat with his back against the thick wall of the Grand Room in what had once been Talasea’s Planetary Governor’s Palace. The title sounded much more important than the building and room it described. Built with heavy beams made of the dark native wood and plaster slathered over wooden slats, it reminded him of the sorts of reconstructions he’d seen in museums on Corellia. This is about as primitive as it gets.

The incongruity struck him as he watched his pilots sitting around a couple of central tables, using their hands to describe the twists and turns they went through in what they had taken to calling the Rout of Hensara. They could have downloaded their sensor packets and played them out on the wide-screen holoviewer in the corner, but that device remained black. By telling the stories themselves they shared not only what they did—which the sensor data would have shown in exacting detail—but how they felt about it.

And in doing that they’ll know they’re all the same. Wedge tipped his chair back against the wall. He glanced at two Alderaanians who shared his table with him. “They did a good job out there today.”

Tycho smiled broadly. “They did better than good—they were spectacular. We recorded thirty-four kills out of a possible thirty-six with no losses. If I hadn’t been there, I’d think it was propaganda.”

Afyon looked up from a barely touched tankard of the local lum equivalent. “You know as well as I do, gentlemen, they were awfully lucky. They may be the hottest pilots going, but vaping TIEs won’t Coruscant take. That’s going to take an operation that will need more than snubby jocks to make it go.”

Wedge lowered his lum mug. “Captain, I’ve been in this Rebellion for as long as you have. I remember the fighting at Endor and I know the Eridain fought hard.”

“I appreciate that, Commander Antilles, but it was you who got paraded around the New Republic as the hero who saved the Rebellion.”

Tycho’s blue eyes narrowed. “He did blow the Death Star, you realize, and survived the previous Death Star run.”

“I know, and I know you were there, too.” Afyon sat back and frowned. “Look, I’m not saying you don’t deserve your recognition, and I’m not saying your people don’t deserve their little party here. Strapping yourself into a fighter isn’t the easiest thing to do, and more fighter pilots die than do the folks I have crewing with me, but our contribution to this Rebellion is just as important as yours is.”

Wedge nodded slowly. “I know that, Captain, and if the Eridain hadn’t been there today to make the Havoc think twice about closing with us, we would have been blind-jumping out of the system.”

Afyon shook his head. “Don’t take me for a stormie, Antilles, I don’t believe everything I’m told. You’d have gone in after the Havoc itself. What’s a Strike cruiser to a crew that turned two Death Stars into black holes?”

The Corellian brought his chair down onto all four legs. “The New Republic might promote me and this squadron as immortal and immune to danger, but I know better than that. Two of us, just two, survived Yavin. A half dozen survived Hoth and just four of us lived through Endor. As far as I’m concerned the Death Stars lived up to their names.

“Well now, this squadron has to live up to its name. The New Republic is using us as a symbol because it’s easier to blind people to the blood-cost of war when you get to celebrate the heroic efforts of a half-dozen people. Luke Skywalker is easy to admire and want to follow. Han Solo is a man who rose from nothing to become a hero and consort with royalty. Me, I’m the quintessential soldier who does his job very well. But what is that job? Two things: neutralizing Imperials and, the part I take most seriously, keeping my people alive.”

Wedge raked fingers back through his brown hair. “It doesn’t matter if we were good or lucky out there today—and I’d rather the former than trust in the latter. What does matter is that we all survived, and that’s as close to a miracle as I ever expect to see in my lifetime. The key thing to remember is that I can’t trust in our luck or skill. I can’t allow myself to believe we were that much better than the opposition and I can’t let my people believe it. If they do, they’ll die taking chances they should never take.”

Afyon sucked on his teeth for a second. “You’re right. I guess I just remember the Clone Wars and how the ‘hero’ labels were handed out. You’d think a dozen Jedi and two dozen snubby jocks won the whole thing. Even all the years I spend pulling for peace—same as most of the rest of the folks on Alderaan—never dulled that feeling of injustice I had concerning credit for the war. Weird, eh, wanting peace enough to agree to disarmament of my home planet, yet still burning about getting credit for my part in a war?”

The other Alderaanian at the table shook his head. “One of the problems we all have is that we try to think of ourselves in general terms, and that smoothes over some of the inconsistencies that make us who we are. We see all Imperials as rancors and they see all of us as nerfs. The very fact that we see them as a united front is ridiculous, just the same as we’re not all united—as this discussion proves.”

Afyon smiled. “I’ve not heard that kind of philosophy since, you know, our world …”

Tycho nodded solemnly and squeezed Afyon’s shoulder with his right hand. “I do know.” He smiled and looked over at the knot of pilots in the center of the room. “I’m afraid this group does not inspire that much philosophy. I appreciate being able to share some with another Alderaanian.”

Wedge glanced at his pilots, then tipped his chair back up against the wall as the Twi’lek stood. Nawara Ven flipped one of his brain tails around and over his shoulder as if it were a scarf, then stumbled slightly. Wedge wasn’t sure if it was the cavalier way he tossed his brain tails around or the drink that made the pilot stumble. The lum brewed up by the ground crew had the potency of Corellian brandy and the piquant bouquet—according to Gavin—of a Tatooine dewback in heat.

Nawara remained almost completely upright as he wove his way through tables to where Wedge sat. “Forgive me, noble leaders, but we require your esteemed personages to act as a tribunal to adjudicate a question.” The Twi’lek pressed a hand to his own chest. “Owing to my legal background, I have been appointed a neutral advocate to present the cases to you.”

Wedge couldn’t keep a smile from his face. “Please proceed, Counselor.”

“Thank you, sir.” Nawara turned back toward the other pilots. “First we have the case of the worst pilot in the unit. May I present Gavin Darklighter, who won this award by virtue of the fact of not getting anything out there today.”

Easier to read than the scowl on Gavin’s face was the open relief on the faces of Lujayne Forge and Peshk Vri’syk. Wedge knew the award had to sting Gavin badly, but he was young. The rest of the squadron had been willing to cut him a lot of slack because of his youth, but that latitude would last only so long. In Wedge’s opinion Gavin wasn’t the worst pilot by far, but his lack of kills allowed his squadron mates to rib him a little.

Nawara gestured at Gavin. “The accused will stand.”

Gavin remained seated.

Bror Jace grabbed him by the shoulder of his flight suit and hauled him up out of his seat. “Here he is, the worst we have. Just like the TIE pilots, he got zero kills.”

The edge in Jace’s voice provoked a snarl from Gavin’s wingmate, Shiel. Color flooded Gavin’s face and muscles bunched at his jaw as he ground his teeth. Jace laughed and tugged on Gavin’s shoulder, like a puppeteer manipulating a marionette.

The Twi’lek, seemingly oblivious to Gavin’s discomfort, smiled at the tribunal. “We have determined there should be a punishment of some sort, to encourage an improvement in performance.”

Wedge turned his head to face the other two members of the tribunal. “Ideas, gentlemen?”

Tycho held a finger up. “Strikes me that apprenticing Gavin to the best pilot, having him run errands and the like for him, might provide the perfect situation for Gavin to learn how to be better.”

I like that, Tycho. Corran won’t be too hard on him and the added responsibility will give Corran something to think about other than your situation. Wedge nodded. “I think that is a good idea. Captain Afyon?”

“Sure. I know I’d love to have an aide to draft the performance reports for the Eridain.”

Captain Afyon’s suggestion brought a groan from the squadron, so Wedge catalogued the threat of report preparation for future disciplinary use. “I believe, Counselor, you have your judgment rendered.”

The Twi’lek bowed and straightened up slowly, then turned back to his compatriots. “Gavin Darklighter, you are sentenced to serve as aide to the best pilot in the squadron until such time as you are no longer judged the worst pilot.”

Bror smiled broadly and gave Gavin’s flight suit one last tug. “Good, you can start your service by getting me more lum.”

Wedge frowned. “How is it that you, Mr. Jace, are considered the best pilot? You only had five and Mr. Horn had six. If we average them over the last two engagements, then Mr. Horn has four and a half, with you, Mr. Qrygg, and me each at two and a half. You fare no better when we total them.”

Nawara smiled, flashing pointy peg-teeth. “You have hit upon the crux of the matter, sir. Mr. Jace argues that percentages tell the true story. He killed five of the six bombers he faced, meaning he downed eighty-five percent of the TIEs he engaged.”

Gavin sat down and snarled, “And they were big, lumbering bombers—no one could have missed them.”

The Twi’lek clucked at Gavin, then continued his explanation. “Mr. Horn, on the other hand, shot only six of thirty, giving him a kill percentage of twenty percent.”

Wedge shook his head. “This is ridiculous. Percentages have no place in this.”

“If you don’t mind, sir”—Corran stood up and glared over at Bror—“I’m willing to let things be figured by percentages.”

“Go head, Mr. Horn.”

Corran folded his arms across his chest. “You want a real contest, Jace?”

The Thyferran raised his head and glared down at the shorter man. “It’s an easy offer to be made by the man in the lead.”

“I’m willing to make it even, and I’ll even concede this round to you—declaring you the best pilot until our next mission.” Corran opened his arms and rested his right hand on Gavin’s shoulder. “What I’m willing to do is average Gavin’s kills in with mine. The one he got at Chorax adds to my nine, then we split that in half. That puts us even at an average of five kills. You and I are both aces and now so is he.”

“Don’t do this, Corran.”

The small man winked down at Gavin. “I trust you, kid. You’ll do fine.”

“We start even?” the Thyferran asked.

Corran nodded. “We go straight kills from here on out, or average them, your choice.”

Bror raised a blond eyebrow. “You are still willing to average the kid’s kills in with yours?”

The Corellian nodded again and patted Gavin’s shoulder. “You willing to take the challenge?”

Wedge watched conflicting emotions ripple over Bror Jace’s face. He clearly wanted to go one-on-one with Corran, to prove he was better free and clear, yet the rules Corran was offering him played in his favor. Any kill Corran got would only count half. Unless Corran excelled—killing two for Bror’s one—or Gavin started on a tear, Bror would win easily. The difference between their skill levels was not significant enough to give Corran a real chance of winning.

Bror’s blue eyes thinned to arctic slits. “We’ll average things, just to keep Gavin in the game, but you and I can go head-to-head whenever I choose.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“And you and I, because we did have the most kills at Hensara, will share the best pilot crown until our next outing.”

Corran smiled. “Done.”

Wedge nodded once to Corran, then looked up at the Twi’lek. “So, by this settlement, Bror and Corran are co-best pilots, and Gavin has five kills, correct, Counselor?”

The Twi’lek nodded. “If you so agree, members of the tribunal.”

The three judges agreed and Nawara smiled. “It is done, then.”

“And the worst pilot is still apprenticed to the best pilot?”

Nawara nodded. “The worst pilot is still bound by that agreement.”

“Good.” Wedge stood and slapped the Twi’lek on the back. “Then since Gavin has five kills to his credit, that makes you, with only one kill, the worst pilot.”

Nawara’s pasty complexion became ghostlike. “No appeal?”

Wedge smiled. “To you there probably is not, but the idea of a lawyer getting the sentence instead of his client has some appeal to me.”

The Twi’lek frowned and caressed one of his brain tails. “Perhaps it is true that a lawyer who has himself as a client is a fool.”

“Which is why you’re a pilot now, Mr. Ven.” Wedge laughed lightly. “Consider your sentence suspended, at least for the duration of this celebration. Today we proved how good we can be—tomorrow we go back to training to make sure we know how we did what we did, so we can continue doing it in the future.”

Kirtan Loor scratched at the reddish raw patch of flesh behind his right ear. Rachuk roseola was a virus, he was told, that got to everyone who came to the world. Scratching it didn’t appear to make it worse, and nothing but time made it better. It annoyed him because he found it distracting, and at this late stage in his calculations, distraction was the last thing he needed.

He pored over the data from Hensara again, correlating figures and sensor tracks with known performance parameters for X-wings. All the ships in the squadron appeared to be operating within two standard deviations of the mean of Rebel specifications. This told him that the ships were in good repair, which meant the Rebels were expending considerable resources on that squadron to keep the ships working.

That little factoid combined with the spectacular kill ratio led him to believe Rogue Squadron had been at Hensara. Visuals were of generally poor quality, but crests and fighters appeared to match those images recorded by the Black Asp, confirming the squadron’s presence at Chorax as well. He had no objective confirmation about the squadron being Rogue Squadron, but one communications intercept had included the name “Wedge” and Kirtan thought he heard some faint trace of Corran Horn’s voice in other messages. The end-for-end swapping maneuver that led to the damaging of one Interceptor had been vintage Horn, providing Loor all the evidence he needed to label the X-wings as Rogue Squadron.

Admiral Devlia had not been convinced, but he had agreed to send units out to find the squadron’s base, if Kirtan could isolate it. Admiral Devlia had made the offer in a voice that suggested providing such information would be impossible.

It should have been impossible, and for most people it would have been. However, Kirtan Loor remembered a wealth of things that might be trivia to others, but proved to be useful to the search for the Rogues’ base. He had to make a few assumptions about them and the force they arrived with, but his calculations could be run with a number of variables factored in, then all that data could be correlated with known system locations and Rebel preferences for bases.

Because several of the X-wings entered the atmosphere of Hensara III, they left significant traces of ionized fuel in the atmosphere. Spectral analysis of those trails provided an amount of thrust that gave Kirtan an indication of the quantity of fuel used per second of operation with sublight engines. This proved consistent with the known specifications of the X-wing. Since the performance of sublight engines had not been modified, he assumed the hyperspace engines were similarly standard.

The forces on the ground on Hensara provided some basic entry vector and velocity data for the Rebel force. Back-plotting was not terribly difficult and suggested to Kirtan that the force had begun their last jump from the Darek system. Using the fuel consumption figures for an X-wing’s hyperspace engine, he was able to subtract from the weight of the ship the appropriate amount of fuel.

Thrust output, vector, and velocity data provided him with changing weights for the X-wings as they burned up fuel in their flight. The ending weight and fuel consumption seemed consistent for known performance profiles. Precluding refueling stops along the way, the amount of fuel he calculated for them determined the range to their base.

He had to assume, of course, that they had started with a full load of fuel, and the same had to be assumed for the Pulsar Skate and Eridain, as well as the Lambda-class shuttle at Chorax. Working out the fuel consumption and range limits for those ships had shown them to be far more fit for distance travel than the X-wings, as would be expected of larger ships, but few ships like to travel beyond range of their escorts.

Even limiting the trip to the range of the X-wings gave each flight the capability of traveling a considerable distance. He further reduced the range by assuming the Rebels would keep sufficient fuel in the X-wings for a dogfight or rearguard action to allow the other ships to escape. This cut the range roughly in half, and when given a spherical plot on a map of the galaxy for each of the squadron’s sightings, the spheres intersected in a relatively small area of space.

Five hundred known systems existed in that overlapping slice of space. Kirtan discarded all truly loyal worlds from the list. He also removed the openly rebellious worlds because Intelligence had enough spies of their own in hotbeds of Rebel support to inform him if Rogue Squadron had been seen. While the Alliance was willing to draw volunteers and support from such worlds, they chose not to jeopardize them by basing operations on them.

Inhospitable worlds were shuffled onto a secondary list. While the base on Hoth had shown the Rebels were willing to hide almost anywhere, post-invasion breakdowns and evaluations of the Hoth operation showed the Rebels had trouble modifying equipment to work there. In fact, had the Rebels not been reeling from the defeat at Derra IV, they probably would have bypassed Hoth altogether.

Being the opportunists they were, the Rebels did tend to prefer worlds that already had structures on them that could be converted into installations. It appeared that the more benign and abandoned the world seemed, the more likely the Rebellion was to choose it as a base. Kirtan doubted the Rebels themselves realized they had this predilection for taking over ruins for their own use, and he imagined it had to do with a subconscious desire to renew the Old Republic. The very thing that drove them against the Empire demanded they embrace things older than the Empire to give their movement a legitimacy it lacked itself.

The final list of primary worlds contained only ten names on it. Kirtan subjected this list to the final selection process—one that had come to him as inspiration upon waking from a dream that included visions of Ysanne Isard metamorphosing into a scarlet ghost of Darth Vader.

The X-wings, in arriving at Chorax, had not expected to be dragged out of hyperspace. That meant their entry vector, if drawn as a line through space, would point out their intended destination. Kirtan plotted that line through his data model and then asked the computer to sort the candidate worlds according to their proximity to any world on that line.

One world had a perfect correlation with that line. Kirtan smiled. “Talasea, in the Morobe system.” He downloaded his result into his personal datapad and headed off for Admiral Devlia’s office. “We know where you are, Rogue Squadron. Now we will crush you.”

18

Corran’s eyes snapped open. He knew from the chill of the air and the deep darkness that it was still night. The fog drifting in through the window of the small cottage seemed to amplify the silence of the night. He knew that nothing, not light nor sound had awakened him, but he also knew something was wrong.

He glanced over at Ooryl’s cot and saw it was empty. That wasn’t much of a surprise. He’d learned that Gands needed only a fraction of the sleep humans did and appeared to be able to store it up for times when they could not sleep. He would have loved to know what set of evolutionary pressures had given the Gands this ability, but Ooryl remained decidedly private concerning his species and Corran hadn’t pressed for details.

Corran’s sense of unease didn’t center itself on Ooryl. It remained a feeling that something was wrong, and this sensation was one with which Corran had a lot of experience. He’d felt it when preparing for meetings with criminals or during undercover work when his cover had been blown and enemies were waiting to hurt him. His father had nodded sagely when Corran told him about that feeling, and had encouraged him to heed it when it occurred.

He threw open his sleeping bag and shivered as the cold air hit his naked flesh. Well, Father, I’ll “go with my gut.” Corran pulled on his flight suit and discovered that its synthetic material retained the night’s chill better than his flesh retained heat. He stepped into boots that were also rather frigid. He would have run in place for a moment to warm himself up, but a wave of malignancy washed over him.

Corran crossed to the cottage’s open doorway and crouched in the shadows. He’d have given his right arm for a blaster, but he stored his personal sidearm in Talasea’s flight center, along with his helmet, gloves, and other equipment. In my days with CorSec I wouldn’t have been caught dead without a gun of some sort. I don’t even have a vibroblade. Either I’m going to be very lucky here or very dead.

Any advantage he might have came from the basic appearance of the cottage itself. With an open doorway, unglazed windows, and sagging roof, the cottage hardly looked like the sort of place anyone, let alone pilots, would choose to live in. Unfortunately Ooryl and Corran had no choice since a windstorm had knocked a local kaha tree through the wall of their room in the pilots’ wing of the flight center. Unpowered and barely visible from the center of the compound, the cottage might go unnoticed.

Unless someone is being very thorough.

The unmistakable squish of mud beneath boot alerted Corran to the presence of someone just outside the cottage. Looking up he saw the snout of a blaster carbine poke through the doorway. A left leg encased in the slate-grey armor worn by stormtroopers on commando missions followed it. The gun’s muzzle moved to the right, away from Corran, and began a slow sweep of the room.

Corran exploded up from his crouch and slammed his left fist into the stormtrooper’s throat. Using his own body as a weapon, the Corellian smashed the stormtrooper against the doorjamb. Hooking his right hand through the armpit of the soldier’s armor, Corran spun and flung the man into the center of the cottage. Taking one step forward, Corran leaped up and landed with both knees on the Imperial’s stomach.

The stormtrooper retched and vomit squirted from beneath his helmet. Corran pulled the man’s blaster pistol from his holster, tucked it up beneath the trooper’s chin, and pulled the trigger once. A muffled squeak accompanied the reddish light flashing through the helmet’s goggle-eyes, then the body beneath him went limp.

Corran winced. He who carries a blaster set on kill dies by a blaster set on kill. He tossed the blaster pistol to the floor beside the carbine, then slid off the dead man’s abdomen. He unbuckled the dead trooper’s ammo belt. Tugging it free of the body, he noticed, in addition to the erg-clips for the blasters, a number of pouches, half of which were bulging. Opening one of them he saw compact silver cylinders and a new shiver ran through him.

Explosive charges! Some must already have been set.

A noise in the doorway made Corran spin. A stormtrooper stood there, staring down at him. Corran’s right hand groped for the blaster pistol, but he knew he’d never make it in time. Then he noticed the stormtrooper’s hands were empty and, more importantly, the man’s feet were two inches off the ground.

Ooryl cast the body aside and it crumpled to the floor. The Gand took a look at the stormtrooper on the ground, then nodded once. “Ooryl apologizes for having left you undefended. Ooryl was out walking when the presence of these interlopers became apparent.”

“How many?”

The Gand shook his head. “Two less. Ooryl saw four others at various points on the perimeter.”

“And our sentries?”

“Gone.”

“Not good. Stormtroopers travel in squads of nine—let’s figure two dozen with the crew of whatever brought them here.” Corran refastened the ammo belt and slung it across his body. Reholstering the blaster pistol he noticed that Ooryl had similarly appropriated his trooper’s weapons. “Is your boy dead?”

The Gand nodded and rolled his trooper onto his stomach. The trooper’s helmet had a blood-smeared hole in the back of it. The hole itself looked odd, and Corran knew that was because of its shape, not just the jagged outline from where the armor crumbled. Kind of a diamond shape …

He looked up. “Did you hurt your hand?”

Ooryl folded his three fingers into a fist with the wound’s peculiar shape. “Ooryl is not impaired.”

“Well, I am, by the night and the fog. You’ll be in the lead. We have to assume the others are rigging the flight center to blow.”

“No alarm?”

Corran hesitated. By rights raising an alarm would be the smart thing to do, but there were no troops to fight against the stormtroopers. Waking everyone up would be inviting them to get slaughtered as they ran about unarmed. The pilots would head toward their ships and the stormtroopers in the flight center would cut them down in seconds.

“Have to go silent on this one. We want to approach the flight center from the blind side.”

The Gand nodded and led Corran out into the misty darkness. Clutching the blaster carbine to his chest, a legion of conflicting thoughts and emotions flooded through him. With each step a new plan presented itself to him. There had to be better ways to handle the situation than slipping blindly through the night to go hunting stormtroopers. They had every advantage over him. Not only would their armor protect them, but the helmet enhanced their vision and the built-in comlink meant they could coordinate any efforts to hunt him down and kill him.

Thoughts shifted and ambition sparked dreams of glory. He saw himself as a hero of the Alliance for foiling the stormtrooper raid, yet that dream died quickly. As Biggs Darklighter and Jek Porkins had shown, most heroes of the Alliance were made heroes posthumously, and posthumous was the most likely outcome of the expedition. This did not suit Corran, but the sense of menace radiating out through the night made it hard to deny.

At the same time the knowledge that he was surely dead provided him with a sense of freedom. His goal shifted from staying alive to making sure his friends would stay alive. He wasn’t fighting for himself, he was fighting for them. He was the shield that would prevent the Empire’s evil from touching them. In this idea he found a haven from the sense of doom grinding in on him.

Ooryl stopped him with a hand pressed gently to his chest. The Gand held up one finger, then pointed straight ahead. He made a fist with his right hand, then signaled with his left in a looping motion.

Corran nodded and sighted the carbine along the line where Ooryl had pointed. The Gand slipped to the left and immediately disappeared in the fog. The Corellian waited, willing himself to be able to see through the fog to his target. He knew the chances of hitting anything were minimal, and he expected to aim at the source of any blaster fire he saw. Even so, he allowed himself to believe he could feel the soldier in a hard carapace standing twenty or so meters in front of him.

A wet crunch drifted to him through the fog. Corran moved forward, carefully pushing his way through the leafy plants and curtains of tendril-moss at the fringe of the compound. About where he had expected his target to be he found the Gand crouched over a prostrate stormtrooper. The helmet looked decidedly flattened on top and now rode low enough to hide the man’s throat.

Ooryl unfastened the last of the catches on the breast and stomach armor, then pulled it from the dead man’s body and handed it to Corran. “You shall have exoskeleton, too.”

The human pilot smiled. He removed his gunbelt and slipped the armor on. It was much too big for him, but he tightened the flank straps as much as he could and got a vaguely reasonable fit. Adding the trooper’s ammo belt to his own helped hold the armor in place, though the weight of two blasters—one on each hip—made him feel slow.

Ooryl hefted the other carbine in his free hand, then headed off into the night. Corran followed and quickly enough they came to the side of the flight center that faced away from the central compound. They made good use of the hole the kaha tree had made in the wall to slip back into the building. Light shone in beneath the edge of the door into the hallway and Corran took this as a good sign.

He pointed to it. “If the troopers were in this wing, they’d have killed the light because leaving it on means they’ll be silhouetted when they enter a darkened room. Gavin and Shiel are in the next room. Let’s get to them.”

The Gand nodded and opened the door a crack. He peered out, then waved Corran forward. Corran shut the door behind him and followed Ooryl through the next door down the hallway. The Gand crossed to where the Shistavanen lay while Corran approached Gavin’s bed. Shifting the carbine to his right hand, he crouched down and laid his left hand over Gavin’s mouth.

He felt the boy start. “Gavin, be quiet. It’s me, Corran. Be still.”

Shiel awoke with a low growl, but after taking a couple of healthy sniffs of the air, he stopped making any noise. He sat up, then slipped from the bed and crouched along with Corran and the Gand at Gavin’s bedside. “Troopers. Blood.”

Corran nodded. “We have stormies here in the base. They’re rigging it to explode—they’re in the hangar now, I think. We have three down and we’re guessing there were two dozen total.”

Ooryl handed the Shistavanen wolfman a carbine. “You know how to use this?”

Shiel’s whispered laugh sounded like a growl. “Death marks don’t come with the rain.”

Corran stripped off one of his gunbelts and shoved it at Gavin. “You can fire a blaster?”

The youth nodded, his face pale in the light from beneath the door. “Don’t know if I’ll hit anything, though.”

“Point and shoot. And shoot. And shoot.” Corran looked over at the two aliens. “Since you both can navigate in the dark, and since your coloration makes you hard to spot, I think you should head out and around to the hangar.” He passed Shiel two of the spare clips from his belt. “We’ll work our way in through the center here and try to attract their attention. If you get a clue to where their ship is …”

The hall light went out.

“Uh-oh.” Gavin shucked the pistol from its holster and the power selection lever clicked.

“Leave it on kill, kid.” Corran pointed to the window. “Go, you two. Flank them.”

Wordlessly Corran turned and scuttled over to the door. Reaching up he turned the knob and opened it a crack. He couldn’t see anything in the dark, but he did hear the squeak of hinges farther along the hallway. He touched the medallion he wore once for luck, then pulled open the door, stepped into the hallway, and fired a burst.

Two bolts caught one stormtrooper in the chest and tossed him backward into another trooper. The dead man’s finger jerked his carbine’s trigger, sending a line of bolts down the hallway. Corran dove to the right, slamming his shoulder into the wall avoiding them. Red light flashed back out of the doorway near the head of the hall, reminding Corran of the flare in the eyeplate of the first trooper he had killed. In an instant the Corellian knew the room contained a third stormtrooper and that at least one of the squadron’s pilots lay dead in bed.

Corran’s second burst knocked down the stormtrooper emerging from beneath the Imp corpse. Corran thought he went down hard enough to be dead, but the little votive fires lit in the floors and walls by the stray blaster bolts didn’t supply enough light for him to be certain. Then the trooper in the room at the head of the hallway emerged and, as if the trooper’s mirror image, Gavin came through the doorway of his room.

“Gavin, no!”

The farm boy triggered one shot while the trooper filled the hallway with a steady stream of fire. Corran hit his trigger and scythed the muzzle back and forth across the hallway. He heard Gavin grunt and fall behind him. His own shots cut the legs out from under the stormtrooper. The last bolt blasted through the square eyeplate and bubbled the armor at the back of the man’s head.

The doors all along the hallway swung open. Nearest to him Corran saw the Twi’lek. “Gavin’s down. Help him. Stormtroopers are here in the base.”

Nawara Ven stared at him. “How did they find …”

“I don’t know. The place is rigged to blow. Get everyone clear.” Corran sprinted down the hallway, leaping over the trio of dead stormtroopers. He stripped the power pack from the carbine and slapped a new one into it. As he neared the hangar he heard plenty of blaster fire. The semitransparent plastic strips hung over the doorway showed a lot of shots heading out to converge on two points in the darkness, which told Corran that Shiel and Ooryl had attracted plenty of attention with their flanking maneuver. Shooting coming from either side of the door, too.

Corran fished one of the explosive cylinders from a belt pouch and set the timer for five seconds. He punched his thumb down on the arming button. Glancing up he located what he saw as the largest concentration of shots heading out at his comrades. Six. Looks good to me.

Corran stepped through the plastic curtain and let the arming button come up, starting the timer. He slid the explosive cylinder across the smooth ferrocrete surface toward the knot of commandos. Three, two, one!

The explosion scattered the soldiers, casting two up and over the generator cart they’d been using as cover. Before they hit the ground, Corran turned and thrust his blaster carbine at the stormtrooper hunkered down to the left of the door. The burst of laser fire burned through the torso armor, blasting the man out from behind a breastwork of crates.

Spinning, Corran sprayed scarlet blaster darts over the stormtrooper on the other side of the doorway. The shots hit him in the chest and legs, somersaulting him back through the plastic sheet and out of the hangar. Continuing his spin, Corran snapped shots off at various muzzle flashes, backing and turning, picking up speed and allowing himself to drift almost at random.

He knew he should be terribly frightened, but since he had decided he was as good as dead before, fear could find no purchase on his soul. He viewed his situation with an emotional detachment that surprised him. It allowed him to see his entry into the hangar much as he had seen diving into the cloud of TIEs at Hensara. I can shoot at anyone—they have to take care.

Corran’s gun came up and the muzzle tracked strobing laser fire over the silhouette of a stormtrooper up on the hangar’s catwalk. The trooper straightened up and twitched, then slowly began a backward spin toward the floor that Corran found incredibly graceful. His landing, which was all broken and herky-jerky, ruined the beauty of his fall and brought Corran back to the hideous reality in which he was enmeshed.

A laser bolt caught him in the right breast and pitched him into the shadows. He landed hard against a wall of wooden crates and stars exploded before his eyes when his head hit something solid. He heard wood and glass break and a gurgle of a vessel emptying. He hoped it wasn’t his body emptying of blood, but the shooting pains in his chest and the fire radiating out from the wound all but guaranteed he was the source of the sound. A sickly sweet scent mixed with the stink of burned flesh and Corran knew he was dying.

That smells like Corellian whiskey. His mind flashed back to the endless rounds of drinks at his father’s wake. Each one punctuated a toast or a testament to his father by members of CorSec, from the Director on down to Gil and Iella to the rookies his father had taken under his wing. At that time Corran had thought having such a wake would be the grandest sendoff possible. And now I hallucinate the smell of it.

A jolt of pain left him a moment of lucidity in its wake and Corran clung to it. His vision cleared and he saw laser bolts burning in all directions through the darkness. He tried to lift his own carbine, but he couldn’t feel its weight in his hand. He decided to draw the blaster pistol, which was when he discovered his right arm wasn’t working so well.

That realization came a second or two before the laser fire silhouetted a stormtrooper seeking cover nearby.

Corran willed his body to sink into the ferrocrete, but nothing happened.

The stormtrooper swept something aside with a foot and Corran heard the clatter of the carbine against an unseen crate. He tried to lever himself up with his left arm, but the pain in the right side of his chest stopped him. He found himself short of breath. My lung. Collapsed.

The stormtrooper lowered his carbine, giving Corran a good view of the muzzle. “It’s over for you, Rebel scum.”

“You, too, little stormie.” Corran raised his left hand but kept his thumb pressed on the end of the explosive cylinder he’d eased from the pouch on his belt. “I die and it blows.”

The stormtrooper hesitated for a second, then shook his head. “Nice try. You’re holding the wrong end.”

Blaster whine filled the crate-lined cul de sac and Corran flinched involuntarily. He thought flinching was a bad way to die, then he realized that the dead are seldom that vain. Above him the stormtrooper’s body wavered, then buckled at the knees and crashed down beside him. The hole in the back of his armor sparked and smoked.

Wedge came running up and dropped to one knee beside Corran. “How are you doing, Mr. Horn?”

“Parts of me don’t hurt that much.”

Wedge smiled. “Hang tight. The stormies are withdrawing. Medic!”

“Bombs.”

“I know. We’re finding and disarming them.”

Corran smiled and tried to take a deep breath. “Gavin?”

“Bad, like you. We’re already getting set to evacuate.”

“I’m as good as dead.” He winced. “I’m so far gone I smell Corellian whiskey.”

“You do smell Corellian whiskey, Corran. You’re lying in a puddle of it.” Wedge frowned. “The crate that broke your fall is full of Whyren’s Reserve.”

“What? How?”

Wedge shook his head as Emdee droids toddled over. “I don’t know. Consider solving that mystery your assignment while you recover from your wounds.”

19

Wedge Antilles watched as Gavin Darklighter and Corran Horn floated all but lifeless in bacta tanks. Seeing them there brought back memories of the time he had spent in such a tank—it hadn’t been aboard the Reprieve but on Home One, Admiral Ackbar’s flagship at Endor. He’d been barely conscious during his time in the tank, which he saw as a blessing. Being awake and thinking while being able to do nothing would have driven him insane.

“Your pilots have improved, Commander Antilles?”

Wedge turned and blinked his eyes in surprise. “Admiral Ackbar? What are you doing here, sir?”

The Mon Calamari clasped his hands at the small of his back. “I read your report and found it disturbingly clinical. I decided I wanted more information.”

Wedge nodded. “There wasn’t much time to prepare the report.”

“And you have never really liked datapadding.”

“No.” Wedge rubbed a hand over his face and discovered a fair amount of stubble on his chin and jaw. How long has it been since I slept? “You could have requested a supplemental report, or asked me to report to you aboard Home One and saved yourself the trip.”

“I thought of that, but I knew another report from you would be light in bytes and that you would refuse to leave your people, so I chose to save myself the annoyance.” Ackbar stared through the viewport at the two men in the tank. “Besides, the tone of the Provisional Council meetings is beginning to wear on me. The fate of Rogue Squadron is important enough that I was able to slip away without being accused of running.”

The Corellian looked over at his commander. “Are things that acrimonious?”

“I probably exaggerate. Politicians tend to view soldiers like their pet Cyborrean battle dogs.”

“And soldiers don’t like to be considered pets.”

Ackbar’s barbels twitched slightly. “Since we are the ones who get bitten and bleed and die, we tend to resist plans that are politically expedient but militarily suicidal.” He tapped his hand against the viewport. “Is the picture of what happened there any more clear?”

“Not yet. The basics are the same—three pilots seriously wounded, one dead, and all six sentries dead. A number of others have cuts and scrapes. It should have been much worse but it looks as if the stormtroopers wanted to plant the explosives, withdraw, then arm and detonate them by remote. Had they just put them on timers we would have lost equipment and people before we found them all. A full platoon was operating on Talasea. We got all of them and captured the Delta DX-9 Transport they came in on.”

“Hardly worth the cost, but a good thing, nonetheless.”

Wedge nodded. “The ones we captured—two stormtroopers and all five of the transport’s crew—refuse to talk. I have them in detention, isolated from each other. I’ve had an Emdee-oh and Emdee-one droid engaged in postmortems of the troopers we killed. With luck something will give us an idea where they came from.”

“And Talasea was evacuated?”

“Yes, sir. We expect Imperials to come looking for whatever got their people, so we set up some booby traps and other surprises for whoever follows us in there.” Wedge sighed heavily. “I have a list of what we left behind in case we ever have cause to go back.”

The Mon Calamari nodded slowly. “What is the mood of your unit?”

Wedge turned and pressed his back against the cool transparisteel. He just wanted to close his eyes and go to sleep, and he feared he’d do just that if he did close his eyes. “We’re all stunned and exhausted. Losing Lujayne came as a shock. She wasn’t the best pilot in the unit, and not one to take chances, so none of us had her pegged as someone who would die first. Corran or Bror or Shiel were easy to picture going out in a blaze of glory—and Corran almost did. Lujayne was a fighter, so having her die in her sleep was, well, it just made it worse. She was murdered, not killed in combat, and I guess I thought we were somehow immune to that sort of ignominious death.”

He shook his head. “That makes no sense, of course.”

Ackbar patted him on the shoulder. “It does make sense. We know war is barbaric, but we try not to be barbaric in waging war. We hold ourselves to a high standard that demands we only attack legitimate military targets—not civilians, not medical frigates. We would like to see this honor we demand of ourselves reflected in the actions of our enemies.”

“But if they were as honorable as we are, we’d not be fighting this war.”

“And in that, Commander Antilles, you have the core of the whole problem.” The Mon Calamari paced away from the viewport. “When will your people be out of the tanks?”

Wedge glanced down at his chronometer. “Twelve hours more for Horn and Darklighter, another twenty-four to forty-eight for Andoorni Hui. I’ve been told it has something to do with her metabolism, but she was hurt worse than they were, too. I want to hold a memorial for Lujayne fairly soon.” He rubbed his eyes. “Gavin will be crushed—she’s been helping him sharpen his astronavigation skills.”

“It seems, then, nothing can be done until at least twelve hours from now.”

Wedge shook his head. “Nope, we just have to wait.”

“No, you just have to sleep.”

The Corellian turned and looked at Ackbar. “I can rest later.”

“But you will rest now. Consider that an order, Commander, or I will order a Too-Onebee droid to sedate you.” Ackbar’s chin came up as he spoke and Wedge knew he’d carry out his threat. “In fourteen hours I want to see you and your XO on Home One. General Salm will have arrived by then.”

“If I’d known I could look forward to a dressing down by him, I’d have let the stormtroopers shoot me.”

“Yes, he can have that effect, can’t he?” Ackbar’s mouth hung open in a silent laugh at his joke. “The purpose of this meeting is not a reprimand, however.”

“No?”

“No.” Ackbar’s voice became calmer, yet more intense. “Someone in the Empire struck at one of my forward bases. If we don’t strike back, and strike back hard, they might feel emboldened to continue such activity. I don’t want this to happen. General Salm’s bomber wing should be sufficient for exacting retribution.”

“If you want Rogue Squadron to fly cover for such a mission, you have us.”

“That was the reaction I expected from you, Commander. Now, go get some sleep.”

“Yes, sir.” Wedge saluted. Sleep it is, and dreams of retribution will be very pleasant indeed.

Corran wasn’t certain what was worse: the sour taste of bacta in the back of his throat or feeling like he was still bobbing up and down in the tank. To him bacta tasted like lum that had gone flat, gotten stale, and been stored in the sort of plastic barrel that lent it an oiliness that slicked his tongue. Because the blaster bolt had punctured his right lung and collapsed it, a little bacta had been circulated through the lung, bringing the fluid’s cloying bouquet to his nose every time he exhaled.

Other than that, he felt pretty good. He still had a reddish spot on his chest where he had been shot. The mark on him was about half the size of the mark on Gavin. Corran realized that armor had saved his life by absorbing some of the power of the bolt—how Gavin survived taking a shot to the naked abdomen he hadn’t a clue.

Gavin rolled onto his side on the next bed over. “Never done that before.”

“Blunder into a lightfight or spend time in a bacta tank?”

“Neither.” The youth frowned. “I didn’t think I was blundering …”

“You weren’t.” Corran shook his head and swung his feet around so he could sit up. “I should have realized you didn’t know to wait until I signaled the hall was clear. I didn’t think, which is why you went down. It was my fault you got shot.”

Gavin covered the reddish area on his stomach with his right hand. “It hurt a lot, then I guess I fainted.”

“You’re lucky that’s all you did. That shot should have killed you.”

“I know I shot back at the stormtrooper. Did I get him?”

“I don’t know, Gavin. Unless you have a holo of a lightfight, trying to reconstruct it after the fact is all but impossible.” Corran slid from the table and found his legs supported him with only a few minor tremors. “He and his buddies died, and that’s all that counts.”

“Were any of us killed?”

Corran remembered the impression of death he’d had in the corridor, but he shook his head. “I don’t know, Gavin.”

The med-center hatch opened and Wedge Antilles stepped through it. His smile broadened at first, then shrank slightly. He paused and returned the hasty salutes Gavin and Corran managed. “Good to see both of you hale and hearty.”

“Hearty, perhaps, sir, but hale will need some work.” Corran worked his right arm up and around in a circle. “A night’s rest ought to make it all right.”

“And you, Gavin, how do you feel?”

“Fine, sir. I could fly right now if you need me.”

“That’s not necessary right away.” Wedge’s expression darkened. “We’ve abandoned Talasea and evacuated it cleanly. We got the stormtroopers and captured their transport ship. Forensic analysis of the bodies has given us a good indication of where they came from. I’m meeting with Admiral Ackbar and General Salm to consider a counterstrike against their base.”

“I’m in.”

“Me, too.” Gavin hopped off the bed. His knees buckled, but he caught the edge of the bed and remained upright. “I want to go and repay them.”

Wedge nodded and Corran knew he was getting to the worst part of the report. “In the raid we gave better than we got—but we had casualties. Six of our sentries died. You two and Andoorni were severely wounded.” Wedge glanced down at the deck, then over at Gavin. “Lujayne Forge was killed.”

Gavin leaned heavily on the bed. “Lujayne is dead?”

Corran sat abruptly on the floor. He’d felt her die, he knew she had died, yet he couldn’t believe it any more than Gavin could. She’d always been the member of the squadron who was concerned with the welfare of the others—not just their physical welfare, but how they felt. She formed the heart of our unit, bringing us together. There’s no way she should have been the first of us to die.

He stared down at his empty hands. She never even collected on that favor I owed her for fixing my X-wing and now she’s gone.

Gavin shook his head. “She can’t be dead. She’s been tutoring me in astronavigation. She …” The youth balled his fists and hammered them against the edge of the table. “Dead …”

Wedge sighed. “It’s never easy to lose a friend, Gavin.”

Gavin raised a fist as if he wanted to smash it down again, but let it slowly drift back to his side. “This is the first time anyone I’ve known has died.”

Corran raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“He’s only a kid, Corran.”

“I know, sir, but his cousin …”

Gavin shook his head. “I’ve met people before who later died. I remember Mr. Owen and Aunt Beru—that’s what I called them on the couple of times Biggs let me tag along when he visited Luke at the Lars farm. When they died, my father took the farm over …”

Wedge frowned. “I thought Luke had given it to an alien.”

“Yes, Throgg was his name. He worked it for a couple of seasons, but my uncle wanted to add that farm to his holdings, so he got the Anchorhead Municipal Council to pass an alien landowner tax which would have broken Throgg to pay. My father didn’t hold with his brother’s tactics, so Dad bought the farm from Throgg, paying him what it was worth instead of letting Uncle Huff buy it in a tax auction.” Gavin shrugged. “Growing up on that farm I could remember having seen the Larses, but I never really knew them. I was a kid, a real kid. They were nice to me, but …”

“But you didn’t know them.” Corran drew his knees up to his chest. “I understand. Still, your cousin, Biggs …”

“Biggs was eight years older than I was. There were times he liked having me around and times he didn’t. I couldn’t understand why not then.” Gavin shrugged. “I’ve grown up since then, so I kind of understand now but, still, I didn’t really know him. And not seeing his … him or Luke’s aunt and uncle after, well, it’s not like I know they’re gone. I do, but, you know …”

“I do know.” Wedge folded his arms across his chest. “I was there when Biggs died. I got hit and pulled up out of the trench on Luke’s orders. Your cousin and I both knew we were really there as an added set of shields to keep Luke safe, but we didn’t regret that. We knew he’d have done the same thing for us and we also knew he had to blow the Death Star. Biggs stayed there, keeping the TIEs back, and died there. And even though he died, he bought Luke the time he needed to destroy the Death Star.”

The Rebel commander’s eyes nearly shut as he stared off into space. “I flew with Biggs before Yavin and he was really good. It seemed like he could read the minds of TIE pilots. He knew when to break, when to shoot, and did everything necessary to stay in their ion exhaust and blast them to bits. He was proud of his record and his skill, but not arrogant.”

Gavin smiled. “He had that smirk, the one he’d give you when he’d done something you couldn’t.”

Wedge chuckled. “I used to hate that smirk, but I didn’t have it directed at me all that often. In his first mission we went against an Imperial convoy, right after they’d started assigning Nebulon-B frigates, just like the Reprieve here, to jump cover for the convoys. It launched two dozen TIEs at our squadron. Biggs lit and vaped five, making him an ace, but another pilot claimed his number-three kill. That kill made the other pilot an ace—I think he was on his fifteenth mission at the time. Biggs gave the guy the smirk and let him have it. And thereafter when Biggs got five of something, he’d give this guy the third one. He wasn’t nasty about it, but he didn’t let the guy forget.”

Gavin nodded. “Biggs was like that—he’d needle you with your own little foibles until you did something about it, or it didn’t bother you anymore.”

“It was his way of making everyone toe the line and push themselves to be the best they could. That’s why he used to get after Luke about going to the Academy. He didn’t want to see anyone waste themselves when they could be doing more.” Wedge scratched the back of his neck. “If he’d survived Yavin, we’d be reporting to him now.”

Corran raised a finger. “Did the third-kill guy ever redeem himself?”

The curve of Wedge’s smile flattened out. “The guy, Karsk was his name, Amil Karsk, took the third of five scheduled patrols for Biggs. It was an easy job—nursemaiding a blockade runner on a courier mission. It even promised a couple of days of rest and recreation. It was a plum assignment, but Biggs let him have it and was willing to call it even. That mission and that courier took Karsk to Alderaan. He was on the ground when the Death Star appeared.”

“Ouch.” Corran reached up and hauled himself to his feet. “Biggs was lucky he let the mission slide.”

“Yeah, but luck runs out eventually.” Wedge’s brown eyes hardened. “Ours hasn’t, not entirely, yet. I’m glad you’re both back with us. I’d prefer not having to add you to the list of friends I’ve lost to the Empire. The list is too long already.”

Gavin swallowed hard, once, then extended his hand to Wedge. “Thank you, sir. I feel like I know Biggs a bit better now.”

Wedge shook the youth’s hand. “Thanks for giving me the chance to remember the good things about Biggs. Too much of war is remembering the loss—the point at which people cease contributing to this life. Biggs, Porkins, Dack, Lujayne—they all need to be remembered as more than just casualties. I don’t do that often enough.”

Their commander glanced at the chronometer on the ship’s bulkhead. “I’m due to meet with Admiral Ackbar shortly. You’ve got about four hours before we’ll have a memorial for Lujayne and the other people we lost on Talasea. And after that, Ackbar willing and Salm being sanguine, we’ll bleed some Imperials pale of luck and let our dead rest just that much easier.”

20

Emtrey’s uncharacteristic quiet on the flight over from the Reprieve to Home One had started Wedge wondering if the galaxy hadn’t changed around him while he’d been sleeping. The droid hadn’t wheedled, cajoled, begged, or bored him with details about the need for him to travel to Home One—he just showed up and said he had things to take care of on board the Rebel flagship.

Tycho had shrugged, so Wedge agreed. The droid seemed uncharacteristically quiet, but that didn’t seem sinister and really was quite welcome. As he piloted the Forbidden on the run over to the Mon Calamari Star cruiser he realized he’d not seen much of Emtrey during the time on Talasea, and he’d heard even less from him. He’d heard even fewer complaints about the droid, and this he took as a good sign. He felt caring for pilots was tough enough without having to worry about droids, too.

The smile on General Salm’s face as Wedge and Tycho entered Admiral Ackbar’s briefing room increased the Corellian’s sense of dislocation with the galaxy. “Good to see you, Commander Antilles, Captain Celchu. It was very kind of you to have your M-3PO droid send that gross of new flight suits to Defender Wing. We accept your apology and look forward to working with you on this mission.”

Wedge looked at Tycho, but his XO gave his head a nearly imperceptible shake. If it makes Salm happy, do I really need to know what’s going on? “You’re welcome, General. We’re all on the same side, after all.”

Ackbar’s face shifted from Wedge to Salm and back again. He blinked, then clasped his hands together. “Clear water, gentle waves, good.” The Mon Calamari seated himself and pushed a button on the chair’s arm. “Our droids have double-checked the findings of the forensic team working on the stormtroopers you brought up from Talasea. They confirm the rash on three of them as being Rachuk roseola. DNA analysis of the virus shows a variation from the sequencing reported there two years ago, and given the spontaneous mutation rate, this would be the most recent strain.”

Wedge nodded. “So they came from Rachuk.”

Ackbar pointed to the computer-generated holographic image growing up in the middle of the group. It showed a relatively small world with a scattering of jungle islands. “The Rachuk system itself is unimportant except that its central location means a great number of ships pass into and out of it as they conduct trade. The Empire located a base on Vladet to discourage piracy and they were relatively successful in doing so. The Chorax system is within the sector controlled from Rachuk, as is the Hensara system, so it is logical to assume that the sector commander decided Rogue Squadron needed to be eliminated.”

“But how did they know where we were?”

Salm’s face darkened slightly. “The presence of a spy in your midst cannot be fully discounted.”

Wedge glanced at Tycho but saw no reaction to the remark at all. A better man than I not to shoot back. “No spy at all would leave the same evidence as a very good spy—one in so deep we couldn’t find it.”

“That is still no reason why we shouldn’t look for a spy.”

Tycho shook his head. “Security at the base was tight. We had no unauthorized messages going in or out.”

“That you know of.”

“No, sir.”

“Or,” Salm smiled, “that you’re choosing to report.”

“General, Captain Celchu is reporting the results of checks I performed myself. There were no leaks from Rogue Squadron.”

Ackbar waved the discussion away with a flip of his hand. “It is more than likely that the Empire planted a number of passive sensor devices in the buildings there after Vader killed off the colony. If such sensors gathered data and then sent it out on a delayed basis, or in a format we would not easily recognize, we would miss it. While we did have teams sweep the area, detecting passive devices is not easy.”

“It also could have been blind luck.”

Salm looked at Tycho. “What do you mean, Captain?”

Tycho raked brown hair back from his forehead. “Imperials tend not to be subtle. If I’d been in command and I knew where Rogue Squadron was, I would have brought in everything I had. We know Rachuk command has an Interdictor and at least one Strike cruiser that can carry three squadrons of TIEs. Since all of that didn’t show up, I suspect they just sent out stormtrooper platoons to recon uninhabited systems in the sector—assuming, of course, that they have spies in most of the inhabited systems. One platoon found us and the commander decided to be ambitious and destroy us himself.”

Ackbar nodded. “Another logical conclusion drawn from the evidence at hand. There has also been a fair amount of traffic by small trading ships into and out of Talasea.”

“Yes, sir. Emtrey can give you the data on them.”

“He already did and they all appear to be clean, Commander, but one misstatement by one crew member and your security would be compromised. Ultimately, though, the reason the Talasea base was discovered is less important than our discovery of the source of the stormtroopers. It has been two standard days since the stormtroopers died, so chances are very good that their absence has been noticed.”

Wedge folded his arms. “Standard Imperial response would be to move in, secure the planet, and prevent us from using it again.”

“We expect the Havoc and the Black Asp to be used to prevent Rogue Squadron from making a quick hit and run on the Talasea expeditionary force; they won’t be defending Rachuk.” Salm reached out and touched the holographic world. The island he selected grew up in place of the world of which it was part. As the image expanded the computer added buildings, mountains, ion-cannon batteries, and other details of military importance. Two steep mountain chains—the edges of an extinct volcano’s crater—enclosed the base like parentheses. “We have other information about the locations and patrol routes of the Rachuk sector’s ships. We believe Vladet should be open to a reprisal strike, and Grand Isle here is the place to hit.”

Wedge took a step closer to the holographic island floating in midair. “Defense shields?”

Salm smiled and Wedge was pleased that predatory leer wasn’t directed at him. “Not if they want to fire their ion cannons. The island, as you can see, is part of an old volcano. The generators are geothermal and old and not up to the strain of raising the shield and powering the ion cannons.”

“And if they choose to go turtle instead of trying to shoot?”

The bomber pilot traced a circle around what would have originally been the edge of the crater. To the south the wall had broken down almost completely and much of the base had been built on the flat stretch of land that linked the volcano and the bay. On the north side of the crater the wall had begun to erode, but it was just a small divot compared to the gap to the south.

“The shield generator has to cover everything from the beach to the tops of the mountains. On the north side it should be possible to blast through the mountain and open up enough of a gap to let our bombers in. Once we’re under the shield, the generators go and it’s over.”

It looks like it should work. Wedge rubbed a hand over his chin. “Are we hitting and running, or moving in?”

“We want to cripple Vladet so the Empire will have to move new forces in.” Ackbar hit another button on the arm of his chair and the island vanished. “The Rachuk sector is immaterial at the moment, except as a symbol and a wound the Empire must stanch. We want this raid to go off in twelve hours. What will Rogue Squadron’s operational strength be then, Commander?”

“I’ll be down two pilots. I could give Captain Celchu Forge’s X-wing.”

“No.” General Salm shook his head adamantly.

Ackbar opened his mouth in a smile. “What General Salm meant by this is that we will be using the Eridain as a command and control center. Captain Celchu will operate there to coordinate Rogue Squadron and Defender Wing. This is at Captain Afyon’s request.”

Wedge frowned at General Salm. How is it that you will trust Tycho to direct all our forces, but won’t trust him in the cockpit of an X-wing? Isn’t it obvious where he can do the most damage? “Is that acceptable to you, Captain?” He put enough of an edge in his voice that he felt certain Tycho knew he’d fight Salm if Tycho wanted to fly in the raid.

“Yes, sir. I’ve not logged enough time in an X-wing to be mission qualified anyway, Commander, so I’ll be happy to do flight coordination and control.”

Salm tugged at the hem of his blue coat. “I’ll have my own flight controller on the Eridain. You’ll work with him.”

“Of course, sir.”

And your man will decide whether or not to relay orders. Wedge nodded to himself. “We’ll make it work.”

“Good.” Ackbar closed his eyes for a moment and Wedge took that as a sign of appreciation for his cooperation. “You are returning to the Reprieve for the memorial service?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you don’t mind, General Salm and I will fly over with you in the Forbidden to attend ourselves.”

Wedge smiled, more at the Admiral’s offer than Salm’s clear look of surprise. “We would be honored, sir.”

“And we will honor your dead.” Ackbar turned to the bomber pilot. “And you will want your Defender Wing pilots there, too, yes, General?”

Salm hesitated, then nodded. “Perhaps if we mourn together before we fly together, our units won’t have so much to mourn after we hit Vladet.”

Kirtan Loor ducked involuntarily as he felt the tremor rip through the soil. A muffled report reached his ears a second later. The comlink clipped to his lapel hissed with static, then calmly reported, “Four-Eighteen and Four-Twenty are down.”

The Intelligence agent shivered, and it wasn’t the cool Talasean night that shook him. The stormtrooper making the report had reacted as if the Rebels’ little booby trap had killed droids, not people. Of course, stormtroopers are hardly people, are they? Brought up to be fanatically loyal to the Emperor, most of them seemed slightly distracted by his death. While this did not dull their efficiency, it did seem to make them care less about their own lives.

On Talasea care for one’s continued well-being seemed to be a required skill. The Rebels had rigged up a lot of explosive surprises for whoever followed them to Talasea. Just who that would be was not difficult for them to figure out.

Loor straightened up. “Not that it matters how many stormtroopers die. There must be a factory that stamps them out.”

He started to smile at his own whispered comment, but a cold dagger of fear plunged into his guts. Two stormtroopers in white armor emerged from the fog like wraiths risen from the grave. They stopped directly in front of him, but neither one bothered to crane his neck back to look up at Loor’s face. “Agent Loor.”

Kirtan nodded and did his best to wear a mask reminiscent of pictures he’d seen of Tarkin. “Yes?”

“Priority message relayed from Vladet. You are ordered to return to Vladet immediately and await further orders.”

“What does that idiot Devlia think he’s playing at?” Kirtan had been furious when he learned Devlia had sent a single stormtrooper platoon to check Talasea. He had recommended using a probe droid and then following it with a full-scale attack. Devlia had ignored his recommendation and had sent stormtroopers because they were, in his words, “a renewable resource.” The same could not be said for probe droids.

Nor could it be said of stormtrooper transports. Kirtan stared down at the stormtrooper. “Send a message back to Admiral Devlia and tell him I will return to Vladet when I am finished with my survey of this base.”

“Sir, the message came from Imperial Center, not Admiral Devlia.”

He purposely, slowly, raised his head and stared off above the white domes of their helmets. He knew his efforts to hide his shock and fear were useless. I suspect stormtroopers smell fear the way animals do. “A ship has been sent for me?”

“You’re to take one of the shuttles, the Helicon, directly to Vladet. It is waiting for you in the landing zone.”

“Thank you for relaying the message.” His voice carried no conviction with it. “Carry on.”

The two stormtroopers marched off through the swirling mist, leaving Kirtan to be assaulted by cold air outside and cold dread inside. Iceheart must have already gotten my message about this fiasco. If she’s looking to place blame for this disaster, it won’t be on my head. He forced himself to smile and bolstered his effort by visualizing a trembling Admiral Devlia. “Tremble you shall, little man. In ignoring me, you have angered my mistress and I suspect her anger can be decidedly lethal.”

The seven caskets lay atop a repulsorlift platform, each one draped with white cloth to which had been affixed a blue emblem. For six that emblem was the Rebel crest. Lujayne Forge’s shroud bore the Rogue Squadron crest with one of the dozen X-wing fighters cut away. The caskets had been laid out in the center of the starboard fighter bay aboard the Reprieve, with Lujayne’s in the middle.

Directly behind them stood all the members of Rogue Squadron save one. Andoorni Hui had been allowed out of the bacta tank for the duration of the ceremony but she was still too weak to stand unaided. She lay back in a hoverchair, her dark eyes half-lidded and her limbs nearly lifeless. She looked, to Wedge, the way he felt inside—all crushed down by the squadron’s loss.

Behind the pilots stood the techs and crew who had been evacuated from Talasea. Flanking them were the men and women of Salm’s Defender Wing, as well as some of the crew and medical personnel on the Reprieve. The gathering reminded Wedge of the assembly held on Yavin 4 to honor Luke, Han, and Chewbacca for their destruction of the Death Star. I only wish this occasion were as happy a one as that had been.

Wedge stepped out from between Admiral Ackbar and General Salm, looked down at the caskets, then back up again. “Over seven years ago many of our brethren were gathered together in the aftermath of a great battle to commemorate the heroism of our friends. None of us thought, at that time, of how desperate our situation was, or how long our battle against the Empire would continue. The future was, for us, the next minute or hour or day or week. Life expectancy, especially among pilots, was measured in missions and seldom were multiple digits involved in the calculations.

“At that gathering, on Yavin 4, we were able to celebrate our victory as if, with the destruction of that one terrible weapon—the first Death Star—we had brought the Empire crashing down. We knew it wasn’t true—we knew we would abandon Yavin shortly thereafter—but for that time we were able to forget how desperate and difficult our fight for freedom would be.

“We could forget how many more of our friends would die pursuing the common dream of freedom for all people, all species, within the galaxy.”

Wedge swallowed hard against the lump thickening in his throat. “That dream still lives. Our fight continues. The Empire still exists, though its strength ebbs, its tenacity slackens, and its grasp on its worlds weakens. Dying though it is, it can still inflict death and these, the bodies of our comrades, make that fact abundantly clear.

“I will not tell you that Lujayne or Carter or Pirgi or the others would want you to keep fighting, or that your fighting will make their sacrifice worth it. That’s trite, and our friends deserve more than trite. They have given up what we fight to preserve. Our duty, and their silent charge to us, is to continue to fight until the Empire can never again strip life from those who want nothing more sinister than freedom for all.”

He stepped back, then nodded to a technician near the launching bay’s external port. At his signal the repulsorlift platform gently rose and floated toward the vast opening. The ranks of pilots and ground crew parted to let the bier drift past, then closed up again as the platform entered the magnetic containment field around the external port. Once outside the ship, the platform dropped away from beneath the caskets and they hung there, surrounding by stars and vacuum.

The technician used a tractor beam to impel the caskets, one by one, on a gentle course toward the red dwarf burning at the heart of the star system. Off on a final convoy … As the white shrouds picked up the sun’s red highlights, the string of seven caskets took on the appearance of laser bolts, traveling in slow motion, on a looping arc that would stab them into the distant star.

Ackbar rested a hand on Wedge’s shoulder. “It is never easy to let your people go.”

“No, and it never should be.” Wedge gave the Mon Calamari a firm nod. “If it is, then we’ve become the enemy, and I’m not going to let that happen.”

21

Corran’s first glimpse of Vladet after coming out of hyperspace revealed a blue ball streaked with white and stippled with dark green. “I think we ought to take it and keep it, Whistler. It looks a lot more pleasant than Fog-world ever did.”

The astromech piped agreement, then brought the tactical screen up on Corran’s monitor.

Corran glanced at it, then keyed his comm. “Three Flight is negative for eyeballs.” He raised his left hand and flipped a switch above his head. “S-foils locked in attack position.”

“I copy, Nine. Stand by.”

“Standing by, Control.” Ahead of him, speeding in at the planet, two of Defender Wing’s Y-wing squadrons flew with an escort of four X-wings each. Because his flight was two ships shy of full, he and Ooryl were assigned to Warden Squadron. Champion, with General Salm flying lead, and Guardian squadrons were to go in first and soften things up so Warden, with its “understrength” defenses, could sweep through unmolested.

From the briefing Corran knew the base on Grand Isle would be no match for two squadrons of Y-wings. In addition to two laser cannons, the Y-wings sported twin ion cannons and two proton torpedo launchers. Each ship carried eight torpedoes, which meant either of the squadrons packed enough firepower to turn the lush, verdant landscape of Grand Isle into a black, smoking mass of liquid rock.

“Rogue Nine, continue to follow Two Flight, then orbit at Angels 10K.”

“As ordered. Call us if you need anything.”

“Will do, Control out.”

Corran thought he caught a hint of his own frustration reflected in Tycho’s voice. The orders he had just given Corran were being relayed to the members of Warden Squadron by Salm’s own controller. The dual command chain was supposed to guarantee good command and control during the operation, but Corran doubted it would do anything of the sort. In CorSec, when we were working a joint operation with Imperial Intelligence, the dual control became duel control, and that didn’t work well at all.

The ride down through the clear atmosphere got a little bumpy, but having a little resistance to fight with the controls felt good after six hours of doing nothing during the hyperspace run. Corran leveled the X-wing out at ten kilometers above the surface of the planet. “Control, Three Flight on station. Can you send me tacvisual from below?”

“Here you go, Nine. From Rogue Leader—returning the favor.”

Corran’s cheeks burned as he recalled his sensor data being used by the rest of the squadron on Folor. “Relay my thanks.”

The visual feed from Wedge’s X-wing showed four Y-wings swooping in at the northern face of the volcano’s crater. From about a kilometer out, each of the slow craft launched a pair of proton torpedoes, then peeled off. The blue balls streaked out toward the mountainside. They exploded against it at a point where the abundant rains had already eroded and weakened the rock.

The rippling series of explosions cast smoke, rock, and burning plants into the air. The visual feed went vector, with green grids representing the land hidden by the smoke. Where there had been a gentle, curved dip in the crater’s rim there now existed a sharp, jagged rift that looked as if some titanic vibro-ax had been used to chop the rock away. As Corran watched, the gap grew larger and he suddenly realized it was because Wedge was going in.

“Tighten it up, Deuce.” Wedge’s X-wing plunged through the smoke. “Mynock, make sure Control is getting a topo-scan of this trench.”

The smoke cleared almost instantly, showing him a bristle of shattered volcanic rock a dozen meters off each wing. Wide enough for the bombers, but not much room for error. He nudged his throttle forward, distancing himself from the Y-wings following in his ion wash, and emerged from the split rock faster than any prudent pilot would have flown.

The laser shots from a quartet of TIE starfighters illuminated the air behind him as he came into the crater beneath the shield’s protective dome. He immediately inverted and dove toward the base of the crater. Wind whistled from the S-foils. He rolled 180 degrees, filling his cockpit canopy with sky and pulled back on his stick to level the X-wing out.

The astromech behind him shrieked a warning.

“I know, I have two eyeballs on my tail.” In the vacuum of space the presence of two TIEs behind him would have been very serious because their superior maneuverability made them difficult to shake. In atmosphere, however, their less-than-aerodynamic design and the turbulence produced by their twin engines’ exhaust meant they had significant yaw problems. This made them no less deadly in a dogfight, but it did open up a myriad of strategies for dealing with them.

“Deuce, help here.”

“On my way.”

Bror’s voice crackled through Wedge’s helmet. “Three, on me. I have them.”

Okay, time for me to gouge at least one of the eyeballs. Wedge brought the left wing up at forty-five degrees, then feathered his throttle back. The lessened thrust and atmospheric drag slowed him enough that his X-wing slid fifty meters down and twenty to the right.

The TIE pilot tried to follow him and remain at his back, but the hexagonal wings killed the sideslip. The drag slowed the TIE considerably, and it started to dip toward the jungle carpeting the crater floor. The pilot did the only thing he could to avoid a stall and crash. Diving his ship, he picked up speed and shot ahead of Wedge’s X-wing, but not so far in front to allow Wedge to sideslip left and come in behind.

Not that I wanted to do that anyway. Wedge punched the left rudder pedal down and slewed the fighter’s stern around to the right. Goosing the throttle straightened the ship out, then Wedge’s crosshairs spitted the TIE and burned green. He hit the trigger and the quad lasers converged to blow bits of TIE fighter all over the Grand Isle landscape.

“Vaped one.”

He saw a smoking TIE slam into a crater wall. “You’re clear, Leader.”

“Thanks, Deuce. Report, Three.”

Nawara Ven’s voice seemed tinged with some disgust. “Four got a pair. Island is blind to my sensors.”

“Rogue Leader to Control, Champion is clear to run.”

“Relaying that message now. Nine sends thanks for the feed.”

Wedge smiled. He would have preferred to have Corran more involved in the action, but resistance was expected and until they could bring a new pilot in for Lujayne Forge, his flight would be vulnerable—in spite of the skills both Corran and Ooryl exhibited. General Salm had suggested leaving Three Flight to oversee Warden Squadron—Defender Wing’s least experienced squadron. They’d all get mission experience, but nothing too life-threatening.

“Control to Rogue Leader, Champion and Guardian squadrons beginning their runs.”

“I can see them, Control.”

Through the gap lumbered the Y-wings. Never an elegant craft, they appeared to have the atmospheric flight characteristics of something between a TIE starfighter and a big rock. All of the Y-wings dove to pick up speed, but they leveled out with little apparent trouble and started in on their strafing and torpedo runs.

They may be slow and awkward, but Salm’s pilots do know how to do their jobs!

“Control to Rogue Leader, we have trouble.”

“Go ahead, Control.”

“Two ships. Carrack-class cruiser and a Lancer-class frigate are in our exit vector. Eridain is beginning a withdrawal.”

Wedge felt his stomach begin to fold in on itself. “Control, confirm Lancer-class frigate.” They’re rare, maybe this is a mistake. Please, let it be a mistake.

“Confirm Lancer-class frigate. Orders?”

Lancer-class frigates had been the Imperial Navy’s solution to the problem of snubfighters and the threat they posed to capital ships. All of 250 meters long, the boxy ships were studded with twenty gunnery towers, each one sporting a Seinar Fleet System Quad laser array. With its speed, which was exceptional for a big ship, and those weapons, the Lancer-class ships were rancors amid a nerf herd. While the Eridain’s turbolasers could have driven it off, the Carrack-class cruiser outgunned the blockade runner, leaving the Lancer free to pounce on the fighters.

The X-wings were fast enough to elude the Lancer, but there was no way the Y-wings could outrun it or fight it. The Lancer’s guns made it the equivalent of eighty TIEs. Wedge glanced at his fuel monitor. He didn’t have enough fuel remaining for a long fight with the Lancer and the run home. I don’t have enough fuel to let the Eridain run for help. The best chance the Y-wings had was for the X-wings to engage the Lancer while they ran.

Before he could reply to Tycho’s request for orders, General Salm’s voice came over the comm. “Rogue Leader, screen Warden and Guardian squadrons and get them out of there. Champion will buy you the time.”

“Negative, General. Champion will die that way, Rogue may die if we hit the Lancer and you break out.”

“I’m making this an order, Antilles.”

“Rogue Squadron takes its orders from Admiral Ackbar, General.”

“Rogue Leader, this is Nine.”

“Not now, Nine.”

“Commander, I know how we can get the Lancer. Worst case, we lose one ship.”

“What is he babbling about?”

“Easy, General. Go ahead, Nine.”

“Ships have to close to two and a half klicks to get a firing solution for a proton torpedo. The Y-wing getting that close to the Lancer will be vaped. An X-wing can get in and send targeting data to the Y-wings, increasing the range for their solution. Same thing Captain Celchu did in the Forbidden at Chorax. The proton torps will home for thirty seconds, which means they can hit a target at just over fourteen and a half klicks. That will keep them safe from the Lancer.”

Wedge frowned as he worked through Corran’s plan. A weaving X-wing might be able to get in close to the Lancer.

General Salm saw the flaw in the plan at the same time Wedge did. “A weaving X-wing won’t be able to get a targeting lock on the Lancer, Antilles. This is nonsense.”

Corran’s voice came back strong. “The X-wing doesn’t need to get a targeting lock, he just needs to get in close. The Y-wings will be targeting the X-wing’s homing beacon. Time it right, put the Lancer between the missiles and the X-wing, and you can scratch one Lancer.”

“That just might work.” Wedge pulled back on the X-wing’s stick and started up toward space and the waiting Imperial ships. “I’ll make the run.”

“Negative, Antilles.”

“General …”

“Rogue Leader, this is Nine, outbound. Release Warden Squadron to me.”

Salm’s fury sizzled over the comm. “Under no circumstances! Stop now, Rogue Nine.”

“Release the squadron to me. I’m outbound and I’m going to play tag with that Lancer.”

“This is treason, Nine.” Salm’s voice cracked with anger. “I’ll have you shot.”

“As long as it’s Warden Squadron that’s doing it, I don’t mind a bit. Nine out.”

“Antilles, do something!”

“He’s got the altitude, General.” And the attitude. “Release the squadron to him.” Wedge let a deep breath out. “Then form Champion up on me, just in case his run doesn’t do the trick.”

Corran keyed his comm. “Okay, Wardens, this is how we become heroes. Link your torpedoes so you’ll be shooting two. You’ll shoot them on my mark. Timing is critical here—go too early and you won’t hit anything. Go too late and I’m … look, just don’t go too late. Ten, I need you to match their speed and don’t let them get any closer than eight and a half klicks from me. And not much farther either. My homing beacon will be on 312.43. Use that as the frequency for the target lock on the torpedoes.”

“Got it, Nine.”

“Control, Nine here. Be prepared to scatter the Wardens with evasive maneuver plots in case the Lancer gets aggressive once the torpedoes are away.”

“On it, Nine. Good luck.”

Corran’s hand strayed to the medallion he wore. “Thanks, Control. Nine out.”

“Okay, Whistler, we have our work cut out for us.” The pilot hit switches that pumped the full output of the fusion engine into propulsion. He ran all shield power to the forward shields. “I’m going to be trying to weave in at that monster. I want you to route my stick commands through a randomizer that adds or subtracts portions of five degrees in all dimensions from my commands. Don’t let the Lancer get out of a twenty-degree cone of my nose, but in that cone I want to be jumping around, got it?”

The droid replied with a sharp, affirmative whistle.

“And at the Lancer, I want to invert and pull a tight loop scraping right over the top of its hull and down the other side. We should be going away at ninety degrees to our current line and back toward Vladet’s atmosphere.” Corran sighed. “If we make it that far.”

Whistler squawked reprovingly.

“Sorry to get you into this.” Corran punched the console button that enabled the droid’s ejection system. “Maybe your next pilot won’t be so stupid.”

The green light above the button went out.

Corran hit the button again. “And maybe your next ship won’t have shorts.”

The light died again.

The pilot turned and looked back at the droid. “You got a death wish?”

Whistler brayed derisively at him.

“I am not looking at taking all the glory for myself.” Corran swallowed past the lump in his throat. “Thanks for hanging in. My father died alone. Doing that doesn’t recommend itself.”

The droid gave him a scolding whoop.

“Okay, you do your part and I’ll make sure we don’t die.” Corran looked at his scanner. Sensors put him eighteen klicks out from the Lancer. “Whistler, check my math. At full power I’ll do six klicks in the time it takes the missiles to catch me. That means they have to shoot when I hit the six klick mark. They have to be inside fifteen klicks from the Lancer. Looks like we’re all lined up and ready to go.”

The droid chirped triumphantly and a countdown clock started in the upper corner of the sensor display. “Nine to Wardens, forty, four-oh, seconds to launch.”

“Whistler, cut in the randomizer when I hit two and a half klicks from the target.” The Lancer’s weaponry, because it was taken from TIE bombers, suffered the same range limitations as the fighters. “Also map how the towers are working and send that data back to Control and Rogue Leader. If the Lancer has any weak points, any guns that aren’t shooting well, they need to know.”

The timer counted down to ten seconds. Corran rubbed his medallion one more time, then settled his right hand on the stick and smiled. “Here goes Rogue Nine, following the unit’s tradition of accepting suicide missions with a smile. Wardens, on my mark. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Mark. Launch torpedoes!”

The comm came alive with fire reports. Corran couldn’t make sense of the babble, but as the clash of voices died, he did hear “Warden Three, torpedoes away.”

He glanced at the timer, which had started scrolling off seconds until impact. Two seconds late. Probably not a problem. “Whistler, you want to kill the volume on the missile lock warning siren? I am aware they’re incoming.”

The background noise in the cockpit died. He watched the seconds slowly count down. It seemed to take forever for him to pass from the launch point to halfway in on the Lancer. As his ship streaked in he could see strings of green laser bolts begin to stretch out toward him. They began to curve and curl as the gunners tried to track his ship. The closing speed made all of their initial shots go long.

Twelve and one-quarter seconds from impact, Whistler brought the randomizing program into play and Corran felt the stick begin to twitch. A tiny spark of fear ran through him as he imagined he had lost control of the ship. In its wake he found a calm that felt all too familiar from the last night on Talasea. Well, I didn’t die then. Maybe, just maybe …

Easing the stick back and to the left he tossed the X-wing into the weave. Wave after seemingly solid wave of green laser energy lashed out from the Lancer, yet his snubfighter sliced through the troughs and curled around the crests, flirting with their deadly caresses. Light flashed against his shields, partially blinding him, but those glancing hits neither slowed nor deflected him.

There was no missing his target. The Lancer-class frigate—Whistler identified it as the Ravager—swelled into a hard-edged, spiky rectangle with an up-bent prow and a bulbous engine assembly. Green backlight from the quads splashed color over the ship’s Imperial-white exterior. Corran nudged the X-wing in line, more or less, with the ship’s middle deck, then the X-wing whirled out of his control.

In compliance with the instructions he had given Whistler before, the droid rolled the fighter hard to starboard. The stick bashed Corran’s right hand against the side of the cockpit, but before the pain could begin to register, the stick tore itself free of his grasp and smacked him solidly in the chest. With the stick pinning him back in his command chair, Corran could only look up and watch the Ravager’s hull blur as it flashed past.

The torpedoes had been within half a second of catching the X-wing when it snapped up and around the Ravager. While fully capable of making the same maneuver the fighter had, because of their greater speed, the torpedoes needed more space in which to make it. Even as they started to correct their courses to follow Corran, they slammed into the Lancer and detonated.

The first half-dozen explosions produced more energy than the shields could absorb. The shields went down, leaving the frigate open to the rest of the torpedo swarm. Blast shields buckled and transparisteel viewports evaporated as the torpedoes detonated. Titanium hull plates went molten, flowing into globules of metal that would harden as perfect spheres in the frozen darkness of space. Decks ruptured and the growing fireball at the center of the ship consumed atmosphere, equipment, and personnel with a rapacious appetite.

All but two of the torpedoes fed into the roiling plasma storm raging in the heart of the Ravager. In bisecting the ship, the torpedoes cut all power and control links between the bridge, in the prow, and the engines at the stern. Automatic safeguards immediately kicked in and the engines shut down. All laser fire from the Ravager died and the stricken ship keeled over. It began to lose a tug-of-war with the planet below and slowly tumbled down into Rachuk’s gravity well.

Corran, in an X-wing sprinting away from the Imperial frigate, could see none of the damage the torpedoes did to the Ravager. He stared down his sensor monitor and smiled as the sensors reported, line by line, the deaths of twenty-two torpedoes that were following him.

Twenty-two? But there should have been twenty-four. He pried the stick off his chest. “Whistler, where are those last two missiles?”

The sensor array shifted. The torpedoes had shot under the Lancer, reacquiring his beacon when he cleared the frigate’s far side. Almost here. I have to break hard!

The stick twitched and jerked of its own accord. Horror trickled electricity through Corran’s guts. “Whistler, cut it out!”

The stick still bucked and fought against his grip. Corran realized, in one painfully crystal-clear moment, that in having used the indefinite pronoun it in his last command he had made a mistake equal in magnitude to still having all shield energy in his forward arc. He started to rectify both of those errors, but the proximity indicator reporting the location of Warden Three’s torpedoes told him his time had run out.

22

Kirtan Loor’s shuttle came out of hyperspace a second before the spread of proton torpedoes hit the Ravager. Hanging nearly ten kilometers above the distant Lancer, all Kirtan saw was a cone of green laser light stabbing off into space, then a brilliant light dawning at the base of the cone, illuminating the frigate in which it burned. Subsidiary blasts surrounded the ship with fire, then it slowly started to drift away as escape pods shot in all directions away from it.

“What in Sith happened there?”

The shuttle’s pilot shook his head. “I don’t know, but I’m reading a Corellian blockade runner out there and a number of Alliance fighters. I’m taking us in to the Expeditious now!”

The fear in the man’s voice almost overwhelmed Kirtan’s sense of mission. “While you’re running, Lieutenant, get me as much comm chatter captured as you can. I want all of it. Do you have any survey probes? Launch one.”

“Sensors are telling us all we need to know about the dead frigate, sir.”

“Not it, you moron, launch it at the runner and the fighters.” Only because he couldn’t fly the shuttle did Kirtan refrain from throttling the pilot. “If you had lasers for brains you couldn’t melt ice with them.”

“Probe away.” The pilot glanced back at him. “Anything else, or can I land us on the Expeditious and get us out of here?”

“Are the fighters a serious threat to us?”

“Probably not, they’re all too far away, but I don’t want to chance it.”

“Very well, do your docking maneuver, but keep data flow constant from that probe.”

“As you command, my lord.”

Kirtan ignored the mocking tones in the man’s voice and sat back to think. The tiny rocket probe would provide little solid data. It was designed to be used to sink into a planet’s atmosphere and provide a shuttle with wind and atmospheric data that would affect flight and landing. It also had basic communications scanning capabilities and some visual sensors that might provide him data about the blockade runner and the fighters.

All of that would only confirm what he knew inside already. The fighters, or part of them at least, were from Rogue Squadron. Their need to strike back after the raid on their base was obvious, as was the Rebellion’s need to punish Admiral Devlia for daring to strike at them.

Kirtan pressed his hands together, fingertip to fingertip. “Lieutenant, is there any signal from Grand Isle?”

“Automatic warning beacons and faint homing locators from TIE wreckage.”

Good, then Devlia got what he deserved.

Kirtan had assumed Rogue Squadron and the Rebellion would exact retribution for the raid even before he had deduced its location. This was why he had wanted a mechanical probe to be followed by a full-scale assault. Destroying Rogue Squadron would have hampered Rebel operations in the Rachuk sector and clearly would have prevented the loss of the Ravager, as well as Grand Isle. If it had been done my way Admiral Devlia would be a hero instead of just dead.

Kirtan closed his eyes and summoned up all the information he had about troop strengths and locations in the sphere of space that surrounded Coruscant. Corellia and Kuat both were located in the most thickly populated portion of the galaxy and were heavily defended because of their shipyards. Their sectors had limited Rebel activity, largely because of the Imperial presence. The Rebels, while arrogant enough to think they could destroy the Empire, were not stupid. Hitting the Empire where it was strong was not a good way to win the war.

Sectors like Rachuk were weak links in the perimeter, but were not the keys to winning the galactic civil war. Industrialized warfare called for the destruction of a force’s ability to wage war. Conquering primitive worlds that produced very little of what contributed to the war effort was not a way to do that. The ease of delivering forces to strike at Rachuk from other Imperial garrisons meant it would be difficult to hold, therefore he assumed the Rebels would not try to hold it.

By leaving it in our hands we have to devote forces to holding it, further diluting our strength.

The ideal choice for a Rebel strike would be in a sector of space where travel was limited because of black holes, clouds of ionized gases, and other gravitic anomalies that made hyperspace travel unpredictable and dangerous. It would also be outside the most solidly inhabited areas of the galaxy to minimize the amount of support the Empire could devote to it, but it wouldn’t be so far outside that same area that the Alliance, which also drew a lot of support from the Empire’s populous worlds, could not supply and support it.

From his encyclopedic memory Kirtan dredged up the names of a dozen candidate sectors, and he knew there had to be four times that number that he did not know about. He purposely refrained from allowing himself to select a target. Assuming the veracity of a working hypothesis is the sort of mistake that caused Gil Bastra’s death. I cannot afford another such mistake.

The pilot flipped a switch on the shuttle’s command console and the wings retracted. The Lambda-class shuttle settled down on the dorsal hull of the cruiser. Retraction clamps clicked into place. A tremor shook the shuttle as the docking tunnel bumped the ship from below and formed an airtight seal around the shuttle’s exit ramp.

Kirtan freed himself from his restraining straps. “Lieutenant, download all the feeds and probe data onto separate datacards, then wipe this ship’s memory.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kirtan left the cockpit and descended the ramp into the Expeditious. Captain Rojahn greeted him with a curious light in his eyes. “Welcome back aboard, Agent Loor. Your timing was rather precise. We were not waiting long.”

“I don’t imagine the Ravager’s crew has the same perspective on our timing you do.”

The shorter man shook his head, then adjusted his grey cap. “Perhaps not. We might ask them about that if we are allowed to recover escape pods.”

“ ‘Allowed’ to recover them?”

“Most are going toward Vladet, but some are heading out into space. They probably assume the Rebels will take the world.” Rojahn shrugged his shoulders. “I would recover them, but I have strict orders to head out to the Pyria system the moment I have you aboard.”

The Pyria system was one of the candidate systems Kirtan had pinpointed. Borleias was the name of the inhabited world in that system. The Empire maintained a small base there overseen by General Evir Derricote. It was unremarkable, except that it was on his list of target systems for the Rebels.

Kirtan raised an eyebrow. “The orders came from Imperial Center, from Director Isard?”

Rojahn nodded. “There are sealed orders awaiting you in your cabin.”

Kirtan thought for a second, then nodded. “Take us out of this system. If we pick up some escape pods before we jump, I have no problem with that. You will have to plot an evasive course to our destination. If the pods can concentrate themselves in our exit vector, they are all yours.”

The Navy captain smiled. “Thank you, sir.”

“No thanks are needed, Captain. We are all in this together.” Kirtan refrained from smiling despite the feeling of power growing in his chest. I trade time for loyalty—something I did not know to do on Corellia. With every lesson I learn I become more deadly to the Rebellion.

Finally he did smile. And the more deadly I am to the Rebellion, the more useful I become within the Empire. That usefulness translates into power, and in the Empire, power is the very stuff of life.

23

Corran pushed himself back on his bunk, leaning against the bulkhead and drawing his knees up. “What brings you guys here?”

Rhysati, sitting down at his feet, frowned. “We just heard you were confined to quarters and could be facing a court-martial. How are you doing?”

The Corellian shrugged. “I’m fine.”

Erisi Dlarit brushed black bangs away from her face as she sat on Ooryl’s bed. “Aren’t you angry? To be treated like this, after what you did.”

He hesitated before answering her. Upon their return to the Reprieve Wedge had pulled him aside and said General Salm intended to bring him up on charges of insubordination, disobeying direct orders, and pirating a squadron of bombers. Wedge had said he thought he could get the charges quashed in light of how things went at Vladet, but until then he wanted Corran to consider himself confined to quarters. In disciplining him in private, he gave Corran the chance to keep the matter private until it was adjudicated.

“I guess I’m not angry.” Corran was surprised to hear himself saying that, but he didn’t feel the throat-constricting rage that had characterized how he felt after his father’s murderer was turned loose without so much as an arraignment. “General Salm has no choice but to prefer charges. What I did was pretty stupid and very risky—and I put one of his squadrons in jeopardy.”

The Twi’lek let one of his brain tails drape itself over Rhysati’s shoulder and lightly stroke her throat. “If the General didn’t report Corran’s actions, military discipline would break down. Any pilot with a crack-brained scheme—not to characterize what you did as crack-brained, mind you—could disobey orders and, most likely, get himself killed.”

Erisi leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. Corran noticed that her flight suit was unzipped far enough to give him a fair view of her cleavage. “But Corran didn’t get himself killed …”

Corran smiled. “But it was a near thing. One of the pig-drivers shot his torps late. They lost my signal, then picked it up again when I was heading away from the Ravager. When I noticed they were coming after me I realized that Whistler hadn’t killed the jiggle program he had running to randomize my flight as I headed into the Lancer’s light. I wanted to break hard, but he had me locked in on a twenty-degree cone, so all I could do was fly straight.”

“Then how did you …?” Even a puzzled frown couldn’t detract too much from Erisi’s beauty.

“I told Whistler to cut it out. I was thinking the jiggle code when I said it. Whistler, being a bit more direct in his problem solving, just cut the homing beacon the torps were using to track me. They lost their target, couldn’t reacquire it, and exploded. The second or so it took them to do all that took me outside their blast radius.”

Rhysati smiled and gently patted Nawara’s brain tail. “Well, we’re happy your R2 unit takes such good care of you. And I, for one, want to thank you for doing what you did out there. That Lancer would have killed a lot of us if we had tried to take it out the normal way.”

The Twi’lek nodded. “The traditional Rogue Squadron way—leaving bits and pieces of X-wings scattered around.”

The blue-eyed woman from Thyferra frowned at Nawara. “We have a new tradition now, and Corran’s action is a glorious part of it. We’ve had three missions and we’ve lost none of our pilots—and this when Commander Antilles told us our first five missions would kill a bunch of us off.”

“Erisi, we have lost a pilot.” Corran scratched at his chest where he’d been shot. “We almost lost three more on Talasea. Don’t start thinking we’re invulnerable. The missions we’ve had so far have been relatively simple.”

“I know that, Corran. I don’t think of us as leading charmed lives.” Her eyes tightened slightly, but Corran sensed no ire in the changed expression. “In reading about the unit’s history, it has always flown well on simple missions. Even so, our kill rates and repair rates are better than ever before. I don’t doubt we’ll have missions that will push us to the limit, but if statistics have any truth in them, we’ve not been burning up all our luck on our missions.”

“Speak for yourself.” Corran winked at her. “At the Bank of Luck, I’ve hit my credit limit.”

Nawara jerked a thumb at the cabin’s closed doorway. “Well, there’s a wing of bomber jocks willing to make payments on your account. Right now they’re settling for buying the Rogues a couple of rounds down in the recreation center.”

“They’re toasting Bror for picking up two eyeballs over Grand Isle.” Rhysati rolled her eyes. “They’d rather be buying drinks for you.”

“He’s the hot pilot from the run. Two is more than I got.”

Erisi frowned at him. “But you got the frigate.”

Corran shook his head. “No I didn’t.”

“What?”

The Twi’lek explained. “If Corran had so much as shot one laser burst at the frigate, then he would have gotten a piece of the kill, but fractions below a half are not recognized as being worthy of being recorded. Warden Squadron got the frigate—Corran is able to verify it, but he gets nothing for it.”

“That’s not fair.” Erisi looked from Nawara to Corran and back again. “He should get credit for the kill.”

“Erisi,” Rhysati began, “if you’re shooting at some squint and he jukes and your shots illuminate an eyeball, would you want the squint to get credit for your kill?”

“I see your point, but I do not think it is fair.”

“I’ll survive it.” Corran shrugged. “What’s not fair is the three of you spending time here with me when you should be downstairs having fun and billing it to Defender Wing. Go on, have a good time.”

Rhysati stood and slipped an arm around Nawara’s waist. “We’ll be going, then. We’ll let the others know you’re doing fine.”

“Thanks.”

Rhysati looked at Erisi. “Coming?”

“In a minute.”

“All right.”

The two of them left and the hatch slid shut, then Erisi crossed the narrow room and took Rhysati’s place at the foot of the bed. All of a sudden it seemed to Corran that the cabin, which was none too big to begin with, had become much more close and tiny. He would have used the word “intimate” to describe it, but the way Erisi laid a hand on his knee gave him the impression she had that word in mind as well, and for some reason that made him feel a bit uncomfortable.

“Corran, I just wanted to let you know that I felt … feel I owe you a debt it will be very hard to repay. When the report of a Lancer being in our exit vector came through I knew …” Erisi hesitated and pressed her free hand lightly against her throat. “I knew I wasn’t going to make it. I’m not the best pilot in this unit and I was certain I would die fighting against the frigate. And then you did what you did and I felt as if a great crushing weight had been lifted from me.”

She shook her head, bringing dark bangs down to half hide her blue eyes. “I know this is sudden and … well, I just feel very close to you now.” Leaning forward, she rested both her hands on his kneecaps and laid her chin on top of them. “Do you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, probably better than you think.”

She blinked her eyes, then smiled. “You feel it, too?”

“I’ve felt it.” Corran sighed. “A huge hunk of what you’re feeling comes from the downside of the emotional spike you hit during the run. I know what that’s like. In CorSec I was partnered with a woman, Iella Wessiri. She was pretty—not as pretty as you are, but no Gamorrean either. We raided a glitterstim dealer’s warehouse and a rather nasty lightfight erupted. One guy had me centered in his sights when she took him out. I’d thought I was dead and she saved me.

“In the immediate aftermath of that I thought I was in love with her—or in lust, at least. Before then we’d just been friends, like you and I are. Maybe there were some core sparks of something but nothing we’d noticed or acted on. And that night, well, we both felt it.”

“What happened?”

Corran scowled. “The Imperial liaison officer took the two of us into custody for debriefing. Two days later we saw each other again. The heat of the moment had passed and we laughed about it, but never did anything. That fear, and having been so closely brushed by death, made us want something positive to counteract it.”

“Is that bad?”

“No, it’s not bad, Erisi.” Corran shifted around so he sat beside her and held both of her hands in his. “It’s also not genuine. And, I must admit, I’m not sure about the wisdom of getting involved with someone inside the unit.”

“Rhysati and Nawara don’t seem to have trouble with it.”

“I know, and I think they’re good for each other.”

Erisi raised his right hand to her mouth and kissed his palm. “I think you may be right, Corran, but I need to ask you something. You said you and your partner had sparks at some basic level, and that led to your attraction to her. Do we have those sparks?”

“Perhaps, I don’t know.” Feeling uncomfortably warm, Corran tugged at the collar of his flight suit. “For the past several years, both before and since leaving CorSec, my emotional life has been a bit unstable.”

“Is there someone else? Do you still care for your partner?”

“No, there’s no one else, not Iella, not anyone.”

Erisi pursed her lips for a moment, then nodded. “I accept what you’re saying.” She stood and stretched languorously. “Of course, you don’t know what you’re missing.”

Corran let out a deep breath, then rose from his bunk. “I wish I didn’t. Right now, though, I’m exhausted enough that I’d be no good to either one of us.”

She laughed and kissed him lightly on the mouth. “Corran, I really do appreciate your concerns over my feelings.” Erisi backed away from him toward the opening hatchway. “Have sweet dreams.”

She turned in the open hatchway and came face-to-face with Mirax Terrik. The smuggler’s daughter smiled politely. “Excuse me, I didn’t realize I was intruding.”

“Not at all, Miss Terrik.” All the warmth drained from Erisi’s voice. “I was just leaving so Lieutenant Horn could get some rest. He’s confined to quarters and I don’t believe that order allows civilian visitors.”

Mirax tapped the datapad riding in a sheath on her left forearm. “I have permission to visit from his commanding officer. We can check with Emtrey if you wish.”

Erisi looked back at Corran and he would have preferred being under the Ravager’s guns again to her stare. “It’s okay, Erisi. I’m sure Miss Terrik won’t be staying long. Thanks for the talk.”

“You’re most welcome, Lieutenant.” Erisi turned and nodded curtly to Mirax. “Miss Terrik.”

“Later.” Mirax watched Erisi walk away, then added under her breath, “Much later.” Turning back around she caught Corran staring after Erisi. “Flyboys—all you think about is sex.”

“What?”

She shoved the plastic case she was carrying into his stomach none too gently, then walked past him into the cabin. “The smallest smuggling hold on the Skate is bigger than this.”

“The Reprieve wasn’t built for pleasure cruising or smuggling. I’m looking forward to grounding at a new base.” Corran stepped back out of the hatchway and let it close. Hefting the box he asked, “What’s this?”

Mirax flopped down on Ooryl’s bed. “Wedge said you might be down—but then he didn’t realize the bacta queen would be here. I figured you might like some stuff from home so I got this little package together.” She shrugged. “I intended it as something of a peace offering, I guess.”

Corran sat on the edge of his bed and undid the case’s two latches. He opened the box and smiled. In it he saw a half-dozen datacard issues of magazines from Corellia, as well as two tins of spicy, smoked nerf and a bottle of Whyren’s Reserve whiskey.

“Wow. This is more stuff from Corellia than I’ve seen in the past two years.”

Mirax rolled up on her right side and rested her head on her right hand. “Below the whiskey is a ryshcate. I had to substitute some ingredients but I think it turned out pretty good.”

Corran pulled the whiskey bottle out of the case and set it down beside him. Beneath it, wrapped in clear plastic, sat the dark brown sweetcake that was traditionally reserved for birthdays, anniversaries, or other celebrations of momentous occasions. “Last time I had ryshcate was after my father died, after the funeral. Where’d you find the vweliu nuts to put into it?”

“Around.”

“Around?”

“Yeah, around. There’s a thriving black market in Corellian goods out there. A lot of us are out here and with the Diktat in place the Imps still control our space. This means we have a big demand with a restricted supply, so it pays to move the merchandise.” She scowled at the hatch. “That blasted protocol droid of yours has—er, had—two cases of Corellian whiskey and has been doling it out to me in one and two bottle lots. I could have gotten an old Customs ship to replace the one that got left in that lake in the Hensara system for the whole case, but he’s holding back on me. Getting two bottles out of him cost me a hyperdrive horizontal booster and a case of l’lahsh mixes that came from Alderaan before it died.”

Corran raised an eyebrow. “Emtrey had the whiskey?”

“I got two bottles from him. One’s beside you and one’s in the ryshcate.” She sat up and their knees almost touched. “You going to arrest the droid for smuggling?”

“No, just let him off with a warning, I guess.” The fighter pilot smiled. “Do you want some of the ryshcate? You made it, so you should have some of it.”

She hesitated, then nodded her head. “A small piece, but only if we can think of a reason to celebrate.”

“How about being alive?”

“Good enough for me.”

Corran punctured the plastic wrap with his thumb and broke a corner off the moist, flat cake. He split it in two and handed her the larger of the pieces. In keeping with the tradition he said, “We share this ryshcate in the same way we share our celebration of life.”

“To the celebration of life.”

They each bit into the cake and Corran clumsily caught crumbs in his left hand. The cake itself was delicious. The sweetness softened the woody bite of the whiskey, and the vweliu nuts just melted in his mouth. He swallowed and smiled. “This is wonderful!”

“Even if it was made from smuggled ingredients?”

“Even more reason to eat all the evidence.” He shook his head. “As a peace offering, I can’t think of anything better.”

“Good.” Mirax stood and ruffled his brown hair with her hand. “When this Alliance finally gets around to going after Coruscant, I’ll make another ryshcate and you can carry it to whoever thinks they’re in charge. Make the war shorter.”

“This ryshcate might have been able to turn Darth Vader into a Jedi again, but I’m not sure it would work on old Iceheart.” He set the case on the bed. “Sure you don’t want more?”

“Thanks, but I need to go back to the Skate.” She looked at her datapad. “I have about six hours until I pull a run Coreward.”

“Are we going to fly cover for you?”

“Nope, I’m using my wits and guts to get me through.”

Corran frowned. “No slight intended, but isn’t that dangerous?”

Mirax shook her head. “I’ve been ambushed once and you Rogues have been ambushed twice. Right now I suspect traveling without you might be a bit safer than traveling with you, but this is a simple run anyway.” She kissed him on the cheek as the hatch opened. “Thanks for your concern. See you when I get back.”

The hatch eclipsed her as it closed. It struck him that while he had been relieved when Erisi left, he wished Mirax had stayed. He knew he didn’t lust after her—though she didn’t surrender much, if anything at all, to Erisi in the way of looks. With her, because of their common world of origin, he had a connection that he and Erisi would never share. Even the fact that their fathers had been enemies somehow strengthened the bond between them.

He shook himself. “Snap out of it, Horn. You’re fixing on her the way Erisi fixed on you. Booster Terrik’s daughter and Hal Horn’s son might be able to be friendly enemies—maybe even friends—but nothing more than that. Remember, first, last, and always, she’s a smuggler. There’ll come a point when you’re not cost effective and she’ll cut her losses.”

He heard his words and knew there was a lot of truth in them. He also heard a lot of his father in them, and that gave him pause. He popped the other half of his piece of ryshcate into his mouth. There are better things to do with my mouth than give voice to speculations that dishonor her gift. We can be friends and will be friends. Out here, with the Empire cutting us off from our home, what we have in common is more important than any differences that might drive us apart.

24

Wedge’s feelings about the briefing on Home One had started bad and quickly went to worse. It hadn’t helped that he had no time to pull Admiral Ackbar and General Salm aside to work out some sort of compromise on Corran’s case. Leaving him hanging is more of a disservice than disciplining him. Given the Admiral’s apparent distraction with the briefing, Wedge assumed he would get no chance to make a case in support of Corran.

Though he was a Commander, he was the most junior officer in attendance at the meeting. He recognized several people besides Admiral Ackbar and General Salm but by no means knew who all those in attendance were. He noticed a knot of four Bothans—a General, two Colonels, and one Commander—up toward the front of the room, but could not name any of them. Clearly, though, they were in charge of the briefing—a point made abundantly clear when the junior officers moved through the room, downloading information from their datapads into those of the other officers.

The Bothan General took the podium at the front of the room and the lights above his audience dimmed. The Bothan’s white fur became almost dazzling and his golden eyes appeared to be made of liquid metal. Wearing an Alliance Army uniform and clutching a telescoping silver pointer in both hands at the small of his back, he began speaking in a soft voice that did not lack for intensity.

“I am General Laryn Kre’fey and I am now going to brief you on the mission that will open the way to Coruscant for our valiant forces. If you will look to your datapads, you will see the basics on the installation we are to hit. You do not need to know where it is right now, but suffice it to say possession of this base is the key to the Imperial Core.”

Wedge did his best to follow the briefing. The world—codename Blackmoon—was normal and habitable, not unlike Endor save that it had no native lifeforms akin to the Ewoks. Initial survey teams, sent out under the Old Republic, had rated the world poor in mineral or otherwise exploitable wealth. A small base had been created there because the system proved useful as a plotting point for runs to the Corporate sector and beyond, but being a crossroads in space was insufficient to spur much growth and commerce. Other than some experimental attempts at development—all of which failed when exotic research no longer earned generous investment tax credits under the Empire, the world was left largely alone.

“The Empire did expand the base and provide force shield projectors but only so the Rebellion would not find it an inviting target for transition into a sanctuary so close to the Core.” General Kre’fey gestured with an open hand. “The base also supports four heavy ion cannons and has two squadrons of TIE fighters available to it.”

Wedge frowned. The defenses struck him as odd—too much for an out-of-the-way world, but too little for a world that would put them perilously close to Coruscant. Vladet, a sector headquarters, had only had four TIEs on the ground, two ion cannons, and a set of shields, but not enough power to bring both cannons and shields on-line at the same time. Wedge didn’t get the feeling that Blackmoon was some sort of Imperial trap, but he did think it was tough enough that the Imps on the ground might be able to summon help from other worlds nearby and hold on until it arrived.

The Bothan General went on and described his proposed mode of attack. It consisted of using the Emancipator—one of two Imperial Star Destroyers that had been captured at Endor and repaired by the Alliance—to batter down the shields. General Salm’s Defender Wing would then go in to pound the Imperial facilities and defenses, with Rogue Squadron keeping the TIEs away from the bombers. Once ground resistance had been weakened, troop transports would land Alliance troops and complete the conquest of the world.

General Kre’fey concluded, “I expect to be operational in two weeks, with conquest completed within fifteen standard days from now.”

General Salm looked past Wedge to Admiral Ackbar. “This plan is already approved?”

Ackbar, who had a silver Mon Calamari Admiral—Ragab of the Emancipator—on his other side, wore a pained expression on his face. “Yes, General Salm, this plan …”

Kre’fey interrupted him. “Forgive me, Admiral Ackbar, but I believe I can answer that question myself.” The Bothan brushed the white fur on his face with his left hand, bringing the fur down to a point at his chin. “Yes, General, the Provisional Council has approved this plan. Would you be objecting to their exercise of wisdom in this matter?”

“I would never do that, General Kre’fey, but two weeks to prepare for an assault is a very short time.”

“If your pilots are not up to it, General, there are other Y-wing squadrons in the fleet.”

“My people will be ready.”

No love lost between those two. Wedge raised his hand. “If I might, I do have some questions about the operation.”

The Bothan opened his hands indulgently. “Please, proceed, Commander.”

“The deflector shields—your report shows them vulnerable to bombardment when they are projected far enough to cover nonessential satellite facilities on the ground. What if the commander just shrinks the diameter of the coverage?”

“It would not matter. The base has insufficient generating capacity to bring up shields that could withstand our bombardment.”

“Even if the ion cannons are not on-line?”

That question brought a moment’s hesitation before it was answered. “It would make no difference.”

Wedge didn’t like the faint confidence in Kre’fey’s voice. The success of the operation was predicated on bringing the shields down. While Wedge didn’t want to think General Kre’fey was being stupid, his reliance on bombardment from space seemed remarkably shortsighted. The Imps had chosen to use a ground assault on Hoth to bring the shields down. While bombardment had worked elsewhere in the past, the Hoth solution seemed to work the best. And the presence of ion cannons on the ground meant the ships doing the bombarding could be disrupted, slowing their schedule and raising the specter of help coming in from another system in time to beat back the assault.

He raised his hand again.

“Yes, Commander Antilles.”

“I don’t see a breakdown of the TIEs on Blackmoon. Are they eyeballs, squints, dupes, or brights?”

The Bothan’s eyes hardened. “I beg your pardon?”

General Salm translated. “He wants to know if the fighters are TIE starfighters, Interceptors, bombers, or advanced models.”

“Ah, starfighters mostly, and some others.” Kre’fey looked around the room for other questions, but no one had any. “To maintain operational security you will not be given the actual coordinates of your destination until you head out. The simulation packages you are given will fill your needs for detailed information. Ysanne Isard has stepped up her counterintelligence efforts against us and without surprise, this mission will suffer.”

Without surprise, our people will suffer. Wedge shook his head. “I don’t like this.”

The Bothan General’s eyes narrowed to golden crescents. “Your likes and dislikes are immaterial, Commander. The Provisional Council has approved this plan, and that is enough.”

The Corellian pilot bristled at the rebuke. “They may approve of it, but they’re not going to be flying this mission, General.”

“But I will be there, Commander, in the first transport, leading the way down to take Blackmoon.” Kre’fey’s nostrils flared as if he were sniffing about for prey. “I trust you do not doubt Bothan courage.”

How could I when you Bothans take every opportunity to remind all of us that your people captured the location of and information about the second Death Star? “No, sir, I do not. I trust you do not doubt the courage of my people. They’ll do the mission, but I feel I have an obligation to them to make sure they’re going to come home from it.”

Kre’fey’s lip curled in a sneer. “An obligation you have acquitted so well in the past, Commander Antilles.”

Wedge felt a fist tighten around his heart. The faces of all the friends and comrades he had lost throughout the Rebellion flashed through his mind. It struck him that each one of them had become posthumous heroes specifically to allow idiots like Kre’fey the opportunity to make more Rebels into posthumous heroes. The ranks of the dead seemed endless, and inside a heartbeat the fire Wedge would have turned on Kre’fey was snuffed by the void that had claimed those he remembered.

Ackbar stood abruptly. “I believe, General Kre’fey, that Commander Antilles’s concerns are valid. I am surprised your normally painstaking precision in matters of intelligence gathering has been allowed to flag here. If you will, you have told us the hour the tide will be high, but some of us need to know the minute and the second. You have it within your ability to provide us this information and you will.”

The Bothan glared at the Mon Calamari. “Or?”

“Or I will see fit to cancel the operation.”

“But the Council approved it.”

Ackbar’s chin came up. “The Council is a political body that makes political decisions. Unlike a battle where the outcome cannot be reconsidered, political decisions can be recalled and revised endlessly. The Council did decide that a move toward Coruscant needed to be made, and your assault met the parameters they set forth. This does not mean it is the only plan that might do that.”

“We shall see whether or not this assault goes forward, Admiral. I will distribute simulator packages to all the commands so they may begin training.”

The Mon Calamari rested his fists on his hips. “You’ll get that data, or I shall destroy all your simulator packages myself.”

The Bothan nibbled his lower lip, then nodded to his staff. “Fine, we will get you the information you want, if it is obtainable.” He snapped an order in Bothan to his aides and they trailed him from the room.

The room emptied rather quickly, leaving Wedge, Salm, and Ackbar alone before the illuminated podium. The Mon Calamari lowered his head and peered down into Wedge’s face. “You have my sympathies. That was uncalled for.”

Wedge still felt like he’d been gutshot. “Why is it that everyone gives the Bothans credit for locating the second Death Star and announcing the Emperor would be on it? Has everyone forgotten the Emperor lured us to Endor to exterminate us? The Bothans were had, yet they wear their deception like a badge of honor.”

The Mon Calamari nodded slowly. “I have heard others voice your opinion—mostly those in the Council who have found themselves between a Bothan and some mote of power. Bothans would tell you that the Emperor only conceived of the ambush after the information was stolen and he became suspicious. We only have the Emperor’s word that he fooled the Bothans and while Luke would never knowingly lie to us, I cannot trust the Emperor in anything.”

Wedge sat forward and scrubbed his hands over his face. “I’m sure you are correct, Admiral. I guess I just see that doubt as the shadow lurking behind the unbridled self-confidence the Bothans exhibit. They may have been right about the Death Star, and Kre’fey may be right about this Blackmoon, but if he isn’t, lots of people will die.”

“I share your concern, Commander. You will get your information.”

The Corellian nodded. “Can you tell me where this Blackmoon is anyway?”

Ackbar hesitated. “Need to know, Commander, and right now you don’t need to know. Before you go, however, you will have all the data you need. The Blackmoon system is located in a dense sector, with limited ways in and out. Computing astronav solutions will be simple since there are so few. It makes ambushes easier, too, so the information will be provided when you need it, not when you want it.”

Wedge mulled that over, then nodded. “I do understand the need for security. I don’t like the limitations it imposes, but I understand them.”

The Mon Calamari’s mouth opened in a low chuckle. “We have progress. You’ll be moving from the fleet to a world called Noquivzor and you will stage from there. Several other units will join you there, including Defender Wing.” He clapped his hands together. “So, I imagine you would like to discuss the charges General Salm will bring against Corran Horn?”

Wedge sat back up. “If we’re going to be living together I think it would be for the best. Do you concur, General?”

Salm nodded his head. “I agree, but let’s save the trouble. Forget the charges.”

“Excuse me?”

The balding bomber pilot held his hands up. “If I push for a court-martial of Horn for his actions, I’d be a fool and he’d sit out this assault on Blackmoon.” Salm’s brown eyes contracted with disgust. “I still think the whole of Rogue Squadron is out of line, but I think things are going to go badly at Blackmoon. With Horn and the rest of your pilots there, maybe things won’t end up becoming the nightmare that I’m afraid is going to haunt me for the next two weeks.”

25

That General Derricote managed to refrain from sweating in the steamy atmosphere of Borleias did not surprise Kirtan Loor too terribly much. The good General was toadlike enough in his demeanor that the Intelligence officer imagined it saved him from melting in the heat and humidity. The bloated, lumpen commander of Imperial forces in the Pyria system fitted his face with a smile—the abrupt curve of his mouth imitated by the sweep of the two chins jiggling beneath it.

“I am pleased to see, Agent Loor, that the past week and a half here on Borleias have not appeared to have taken their toll on you.” The man pressed stubby-fingered hands against the dark wood of his desktop. “You found everything you needed for your survey of our defenses?”

Kirtan nodded once, then froze and stared down at the Imperial officer for a second without saying anything. He waited, silent and unmoving, until the corners of the man’s smile began to quiver. “My security review proved satisfactory. Everything is as it should be here at the installation. Your shield generators are in good repair, your two squadrons of TIE fighters are being maintained at a high level of readiness, and your training schedule has your pilots logging enough time for twice their number.”

“Preparation is the price for constant vigilance, Agent Loor.” Derricote’s voice remained blasé, but his bovine, brown eyes began blinking a bit more rapidly than they should have normally. “We are here to stop the Rebellion, so we must be prepared.”

Kirtan smiled easily, then leaned forward on the man’s desk. “And you are prepared. You have done very well to keep this base secure, and in fact, your computer security is tighter than anything I have seen outside Imperial Center itself. You also work harder than any other officer I have seen since the Emperor’s death.”

“I am all for the Empire.”

“You are all for yourself.” Kirtan tapped the datapad built into the man’s desk. “I took the liberty of visiting your office when you were not here and I pulled the secret files from your datapad. You truly are an artist. You duplicate requisitions, append intricate routing tags to them, and send them off to multiple commands, each of which believes you are under its care. You have successfully drawn enough fuel and ordinance to maintain four squadrons of TIE fighters. Since only two are here, I have to assume the others are at the Alderaan Biotics site.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I sincerely doubt that, General. I have read your file. You studied at the Imperial Naval Academy, but concentrated on biological and botanical subjects. While you are fully qualified to oversee a military installation such as this, you are uniquely suited to making the Biotics site operational again.” Kirtan smiled. “And profitable?”

Derricote’s face became ashen, but his smile did not fully erode. “This has not been unanticipated, Agent Loor. I do have resources.”

Kirtan raised himself to his full height, then looked back down at Derricote. “This does not surprise me, General. The Alderaan Biotics hydroponic facility was barely more than a tax loss for the parent corporation before the tax laws changed. It was abandoned to the care of maintenance droids and forgotten. Then Alderaan was disciplined and the market for goods from Alderaan blossomed. My conservative estimate, based on data about twelve months old, is that if you’ve been operational for two years you should have cleared two million credits.”

“We have been at our fullest production capacity for only fifteen months, but our overhead is low, so we have actually made 2.75 million credits—though much of this is tied up in inventory maintained off-world.”

“Your overhead is low because the Empire is subsidizing your operation.”

The General steepled his fingers. “Think of it as our operation.”

“I could think of it as my operation, General.” Kirtan folded his arms across his chest. “I do not think I could hold it for long, however. In going back over your security system I noticed evidence of what could have been Alliance tampering with holonet messages.”

Derricote’s eyes grew hard and he sat up straighter at his desk. “Bothans. They make runs at all holonet communications. I feed them data and it keeps them happy.”

The edge in the man’s voice surprised Kirtan, as did the physical transformation. Just by sitting up and raising his chin, Derricote had shifted from being a noodle-spined sycophantic failure to the sort of man who could engineer the deception that made his covert agricultural enterprise possible. He showed me what I wanted to see so I would underestimate him.

Derricote touched the screen on his datapad. “Frequency of hits and length of contact is up. Should I correlate that to your visit, Agent Loor, or shall I just assume the Alliance and Empire taking an interest in my little home is a coincidence?”

Kirtan’s eyes narrowed. “The Pyria system is one of a number that fits a profile for being a conduit into the Core for the Alliance.”

“It fits because they don’t know about my defenses.”

“Two more squadrons of TIE fighters will mean little to them.”

“Ah, so there are some things you don’t know about Borleias. Imagine that.” Derricote smiled. “I tell you what, son: You leave the defenses here to me. You’re an Intelligence officer, not a military genius.”

Kirtan pointed to the General’s private datapad. “I saw nothing in there to indicate you’re a military genius, sir.”

Derricote tapped the side of his head with a thick finger. “That’s because I’m smart enough to know that the only data that is safe is the data stored up here. I’ve anticipated a move against Borleias ever since I found the Biotics station in working order, and I’ve planned accordingly.”

The Intelligence officer heard the confidence in the man’s voice and isolated another component in the tone he used. Eagerness. “You’re looking forward to this.”

“I may have my business on the side here, Agent Loor, but I am a loyal son of the Empire.” The large man shrugged. “Besides, I was at Derra IV. I learned to enjoy killing Rebels there, and have formed my plans here to make Borleias just as deadly to the Alliance.”

“A convoy died at Derra IV, General. A laudable event, but it was not a military force.” Kirtan shook his head. “You’ll get their best here, including Rogue Squadron, I do not doubt.”

“Their best or their worst, it does not matter.” General Derricote smiled easily. “They’re expecting to snuff a candle here at Borleias, but when they come, they’ll get burned by a nova.”

26

Corran’s X-wing came out of hyperspace in the shadow of the Emancipator. The Imperial Star Destroyer’s daggerlike profile stabbed deeply into the image of the world he knew only as Blackmoon. Beyond the Emancipator he saw the Eridain and two modified bulk cruisers. The Mon Valle was home to Salm’s Defender Wing while the Corulag was the launching platform for the eight assault shuttles that would ferry down the Rebel ground troops.

The Emancipator remained in position to safeguard the fleet’s exit vector from the system. While none of the briefings had supplied Corran the name of the system and world, he did know jumping out would be difficult. General Kre’fey, in giving them a final briefing, had emphasized the need for security concerning the operation and had promised that while they did not know the name of the world at which they were going to fight, future generations would, and would laud them for having been there.

At the time Corran had thought Kre’fey had enough confidence to take the world by himself, but that failed to banish the bad feelings he had about the mission. The briefings had all been longer on morale building than they had on facts. While the simulator runs had let everyone get comfortable with their roles in the assault, something just felt wrong as far as Corran was concerned.

Keep your eyes open and fly your best—that’s all you can do right now. Whistler brought up Corran’s tactical screen. “Rogue Leader, I have no enemy ships on scan, but the base does have a shield up.”

“Thanks, Nine. Rogues, form up to escort Defender Wing.” Wedge’s voice came cleanly through the speakers in Corran’s helmet. “Fly high side on the Emancipator.”

Corran pulled back on his stick and kicked the X-wing over in a lazy roll that brought him up above the Star Destroyer. All at once the capital ship started pulsing out salvo after salvo of turbolaser and ion cannon shots. Red bolts would merge into sheets of energy burning down through the atmosphere to slam into the Imperial base’s shielding. The bloody-red color would soak down into the shield, obscuring the installation beneath it.

As it faded to pink, a cerulean blanket of ion cannon energy would drop over it. The blue fire fragmented and sizzled over the energy dome with hundreds of lightninglike tendrils. Some of them bled off the dome and buildings outside its sanctuary exploded and melted. The surrounding jungle began to burn, ringing the base with fire. Makes for a perfect target, though the fire will make flying tough down there.

“Whistler, get me a general track on air currents groundside. Also monitor the size of the shield. When it shrinks, it’s coming down.”

Wave after wave of energy poured down through the rising column of smoke. The energy slammed into the shields with a thunder crack that sent vibrations deep enough to shake the command bunker where Kirtan stood. The relentless pounding had made him flinch at first and fear for his life, but now the sounds merged into one unending rumble. The few working monitors in the command center showed satellite views of the attacking fleet and the fiery circle on the planet’s surface.

Derricote turned toward Kirtan. “Hard to believe anyone could survive down there, isn’t it?”

The Intelligence officer nodded. “It does tax credulity, General.”

“And the Rebels are so ready to be credulous.” The military man looked over at one of the technicians at the shield controls. “Status, Mr. Harm.”

“Still at one hundred percent, sir.”

“Good. Begin a step-back in random percentages of power—randomize from seven. When you hit seventy-five percent, cut to fifty. When their salvos slacken, go down to twenty, then five, then zero.”

Kirtan felt fear trickle through his guts. “You are confident they won’t level this place? They took Vladet down to the foundations.”

“Which is why we are below the foundations, Agent Loor.”

Kirtan cringed as a particularly powerful blast shook the ground. “I trust you know what you are doing.”

“As you have no choice, I appreciate your confidence.” Derricote rubbed his hands together. “The Rebels want this place to use for future operations, that’s the only reason they’re attacking. If they want it, they’re going to pay my price to get it.”

Whistler’s squawk made Corran focus on the tactical screen. The shields over the base had begun to contract. As they began to come down, the Emancipator slackened off with turbolaser fire and concentrated on using the ion cannons. While they did slightly less damage than the lasers, if the shields came down unexpectedly quickly, an ion salvo wouldn’t destroy what General Kre’fey intended to capture.

Corran brought his X-wing in beside Warden Squadron and killed his thrust. “Three Flight on station.”

“I copy, Nine. Stand by.” Tycho’s voice clipped off abruptly as the flight controller switched channels.

Corran flipped his comm unit over to the tactical frequency he shared with his flight. They still had not gotten a pilot to replace Lujayne so Three Flight remained one pilot light. That was just one element of the operation that Corran didn’t like. He knew pilots were not easy to come by, but he knew Tycho could have easily flown Lujayne’s X-wing, and he thought the man would be a lot more valuable in a fighter than inside the Eridain directing traffic.

“Ten, Twelve, we hold here.” Corran glanced at his tactical screen. “Their shields are failing fast. We’ll be going in next.”

Whistler’s triumphant bleat heralded the collapse of Blackmoon’s shields. Corran started to smile, but something nagged at the back of his brain. He couldn’t identify it, but it nibbled away at his smile and started bile burning in the back of his throat. He keyed his comm. “Control, Nine still shows the enemy to be blind.”

“Got it, Nine. Rogues, stand by.” An uncharacteristic hesitancy echoed through Tycho’s words. “Rogues, this is direct from General Kre’fey. You will escort the assault shuttles down to the planet.”

“Say again, Control?” The disbelief in Wedge’s voice resonated through Corran. “Defender Wing is ready for its sweep.”

“Rogue Leader, Kre’fey sees that as an unnecessary delay. The Y-wings have been ordered home. You are to escort his shuttles in. Resistance on the planet is ended.”

“Control, what about the ion cannons?”

“If they could have shot, they would have done so by now.” General Kre’fey’s voice growled through the comm channels. “Resistance is ended. It is time to claim our prize.”

Static punctuated the silence that followed Kre’fey’s declaration, then Wedge came back on the frequency. “Rogue Leader to Rogue Squadron, form up to screen the escorts.”

Corran’s stomach flip-flopped. “I don’t like this.”

“Nine, this channel is for military use, not opinions. Let’s save commentary for the debriefing.” Wedge’s voice lost some of its edge as he continued to speak. “And let’s fly well enough that there is a debriefing.”

“That’s my intention, Rogue Leader.” Corran eased his throttle forward and hit a switch. “S-foils in attack position.”

The Emancipator rose away from the planet, taking up a position so it could screen the force from any interloping Imperials. Corran felt even more naked as it withdrew. While the Star Destroyer was not built to deal with starfighters, its overwhelming firepower could interdict TIEs and perhaps even destroy their launching facilities on the ground.

Of course, Kre’fey would forbid them from doing that, since he wants the real estate intact. Corran’s sense of unease grew as he closed with the boxy assault shuttles dropping away from the Corulag. The eight shuttles each carried forty commandos and would make three round-trips between planet and the Corulag to bring the whole force down. Though they were slow, the shuttles were sufficiently armed to hold TIEs at bay long enough so the Rogues could pick them off.

His tactical screen still showed nothing in terms of fighter opposition. The base’s shields were down. The operation seemed to be going better than expected and that realization started a cold chill working up Corran’s spine. He knew it was silly for him to feel fear when everything seemed normal, but part of him couldn’t accept the good fortune.

His left hand pressed unconsciously to the medallion he wore. Things were going this perfectly when my father died. We anticipated trouble, found none, and I relaxed. He died because I relaxed—I watched it happen and I did nothing. I didn’t see it coming, but it did, just like it will here. What is wrong here?

The answer to the question came to him a nanosecond before the first azure ion bolt lanced up from the ground and hit the first assault shuttle. The blue energy snared the Modaran and enmeshed it in a web of electrical discharges. Flashes of silvery light marked explosions in the weapons system and engines. With smoke pouring from a dozen hatches, the shuttle began a slow rolling tumble through the atmosphere and the ground below.

It never hit the planet. A full kilometer above the ground it crashed into a renewed energy shield. The shuttle exploded. Bits of debris struck sparks from the shield as they skipped across its surface.

Whistler wailed out a warning. The tactical screen showed multiple fighter contacts heading up out of launch tunnels around the shield dome perimeter. It also reported that while the shield had grown no larger in diameter, its power level was two hundred percent higher than before, easily half again more powerful than possible, given the power generation estimates in the briefings. All that and ion cannons, too.

“Control,” Wedge ordered, “pull the transports out, now!”

“Rogue Leader, you have multiple fighters. Two squadrons, eyeballs and squints.”

“Got them, Control. Rogue Squadron, keep the Imps off the shuttles.”

Corran shook his head. “Seven shuttles, two dozen Imps, and eleven X-wings. Piece of ryshcate.”

Whistler’s mournful keen matched Corran’s feelings more than his words. He keyed his comm. “Three Flight, hang together. Squints are coming our way.”

“Ooryl has them, Nine.”

Andoorni likewise reported in. “Twelve has acquired targets.”

Corran punched up a graph and had it overlaid on the track of the incoming Interceptors. Coming at us rather obliquely. Their funeral. “Three Flight, switch to proton torpedoes and lock a target in. If they want to play …”

A trio of ion blasts shot up from the planet’s surface. One sliced in at Three Flight, cutting through the vector the squints should have been using to engage the X-wings. The second hit the Emancipator and played out over it like a thunderstorm on a prairie. The third lanced up at one of the shuttles, but never reached its target. Corran saw the blast diffuse ever so slightly, as if it had hit a shield, but its dissipating ball left no debris behind.

“Two, report.”

Dead air answered Wedge’s call.

“Rogue Leader, we have no contact with Rogue Two.”

Damn, Peshk caught that one. He’s gone.

“Full evasive, Rogues. Control, get the shuttles dancing.”

“Stay alert, Three Flight.” Corran’s aiming reticle went red and a target-lock tone filled his ears. He tightened on the trigger and launched a torpedo at an approaching Interceptor. Switching to lasers, he linked all four, then picked another target. As his torpedo hit the first, he flashed into range on the second and let it have a full burst of laser fire.

The glare of lasers against his shields hid the results of his shooting, but Whistler reported one Interceptor destroyed and another damaged. In seconds he shot past the line of Interceptors, then hauled back on his stick, rolled, and dove back in at them. The squints, reduced from eight to six, split up into flight elements and moved to engage single X-wings. As two started to circle around toward him, Corran inverted, dove, and came back up and around to go head-to-head with them.

He boosted power to his forward shields, then pulled a snap-roll that stood the X-wing on its port S-foil. That narrowed his profile and allowed the first volley of laser fire from the squints to pass on either side of himself. At the last second he selected a proton torpedo and let it fly at point-blank range. Even though it never got a solid target lock, it nailed the lead TIE dead on and tore it apart.

Corran nudged the stick and shot through the center of the fiery explosion. Clear on the other side he lost the Interceptor’s wingman, but a more immediate problem captured his attention. “Twelve, break to port, now!”

Andoorni’s X-wing juked left, but the squint riding her exhaust stayed with her.

“Break harder, Twelve. Climb.”

“Not do. Lateral stabilizer gone.”

“Weave, Twelve.”

The Rodian started her X-wing in the corkscrew maneuver and the Interceptor’s first shots went wide of their mark. Then the aft end of the ship came back around and the squint’s fire ripped up through the engines. Fire blossomed on the right side of the ship, shredding the S-foils. A second later the whole fighter shook and its skin split from the inside out. Argent flames burst free, converting the ship into a miniature sun, then the roiling ball of gas collapsed into its own black hole.

Bloodlessly Corran vaped Andoorni’s killer. Part of him wanted to cheer at having exacted revenge for her, but he overrode those emotions. He could no more allow himself to luxuriate in the death of an Imp than he could afford to mourn his comrade. There would be time for that later—if there is a later. Anything that distracted him from the job at hand would kill him, so he pushed it all away and concentrated on the battle around him.

“Three Flight, shuttle Devonian has four Interceptors inbound.”

“Ooryl copies, Control. Ooryl has them.”

“I’m on your back door, Ten.”

The Interceptors had re-formed into two flights and had selected one of the assault shuttles as a target. Ooryl brought his X-wing in behind the lead pair and throttled back to match their speed.

“Ooryl using torpedoes.”

“Shoot straight, Ten.”

The TIEs broke formation and split out in four directions. “Ten, go to lasers, they must have lock-threat warning systems.” A fighter with that equipment would provide the pilot with an indicator light when another ship had a torpedo lock on him. By jinking sharply it was possible to break the lock before the torpedo was launched. The Interceptor pilots ahead of them clearly knew their business. Only very good pilots survive to become veterans in TIEs, making them far deadlier than the pilots the Rogues had yet faced.

Corran rolled the X-wing up on the starboard stabilizers and started the long turn that would bring him in behind one of the squints. Whistler anxiously hooted a warning about another Interceptor moving to swing onto Corran’s tail, but the pilot did nothing to lose the fighter. He pressed his attack, sharpening the arc of his turn to trim distance from his target.

Whistler became more insistent and Corran smiled. “Kill thrust.” As the droid complied with that order, Corran punched the right rudder pedal with his foot. That swung the aft end of his ship up, a maneuver that further corrected his course for the ship in front of him. It also provided a tantalizing broadside shot for the squint following him.

“Counterthrust, now.”

Whistler brought the engines back up to power as the X-wing’s aft completed its 180-degree arc. The engines thrust against the line of the ship’s flight, effectively killing its momentum and, for a split second, freezing it in space. For the barest of moments it lay dead in the sights of the Interceptor.

But the Interceptor pilot had already begun his roll and turn to keep his guns trained on where the X-wing should have been. Corran feathered his left rudder pedal and tracked the nose of his fighter along the squint’s flight path. The quad lasers loosed two bursts of red darts that perforated the port wing and stabbed through the cockpit.

That Interceptor slowly spiraled out of control. More ion bursts from the planet coursed through the dogfight. The Emancipator took two more hits and the Mon Valle took another. Corran didn’t see any more fighters get hit, nor shuttles, but a string of green laser bolts slicing across his flight path distracted him.

“Ooryl hit!”

Corran punched the throttle and whipped the X-wing up and over in time to see his wingman’s ship break apart. “Ooryl!”

The X-wing disintegrated. The engine pods spun off in different directions and the cockpit canopy exploded into a million glittering fragments. He saw Ooryl float free of the stricken ship, and saw the Gand wave his arms. Corran hoped it was more than random reflex, then a piece of the fighter’s S-foils sliced through the pilot’s right arm, taking it off above the elbow. The body began to tumble through space, but it remained otherwise unmoving.

“Control, Ten is extra-vehicle. Get someone down here to get him.”

“Nine, Emancipator reports the zone is too hot for rescue operations.”

“Convince them, Control.”

Wedge’s voice came on to the frequency. “Control, I have Three and Eight EV. We need help here.”

“I’m on it, Rogue Leader. It’ll be done.”

Three and Eight, that’s Nawara and Erisi! Two dead and three more out of the fight.

A new voice came through Corran’s headset. “Control here, Rogues. Good news: Your rescue’s on the way. Bad news: We have two squadrons of squints coming in from planetary north. ETA two minutes. Shuttles are heading to hyperspace now.”

Corran watched as the assault shuttles started the runs to light speed. The Corulag had already vanished, as had the Y-wings, leading the way out of disaster. Two ion blasts caught the Mon Valle, stopping it dead in space. The Eridain was beginning to move and the Emancipator had begun to drift toward planetary north but, in doing so, oriented itself for entry into hyperspace as if Admiral Ragab could not decide whether he was going to run or fight.

Run. No reason to stick here.

A sharp whistle from his astromech made Corran invert his ship and dive. A pair of squints flashed past, then one exploded as Rogue Four shot by on its tail.

“Thanks, Four.”

“Thanks for playing bait, Nine.”

The remaining TIEs broke away and headed toward the incoming fighters flying over the planet’s polar cap. “Do we pursue, Rogue Leader?”

“Negative, screen our people until pickup.”

Corran keyed his comm. “Rogue Leader, two squadrons of squints against a half dozen of us is going to be ugly.”

“Nine, if you can’t handle your four, I’ll take them.”

Corran ignored Bror’s jibe.

“Trim it, Rogues. We’re here protecting our own.” Wedge’s voice carried a confidence with it that buoyed Corran’s spirits. “Focus on your mission and let the rest take care of itself.”

“Control to Rogues. Squint ETA is thirty seconds. EV Three is recovered.”

Corran smiled and looked up. In the distance he could see the white triangular hull of the Forbidden motionless in space. The pilot had brought the ship in close to where Nawara Ven had been floating, then used a rescue tractor beam to pull the pilot inside the emergency hatch in the hull.

The Corellian brought his X-wing up and around, then flew toward where Ooryl hung in space. “Ten is here, Forbidden.”

“Thanks, Nine, I have the coordinates. On my way.”

Corran blinked. That’s Tycho’s voice. “Cap, is that you?”

“Guilty, Ten. You have four squints closing on your position. Deal with them before I get there, please.”

“You got it.” Corran shivered. The only thing he could think of that was more stupid than engaging four Interceptors with a single X-wing was flying an unarmed shuttle into a hot zone to pick up pilots. A smile slowly crept across his face. It’s only stupid if we die doing it, otherwise it’s heroism. “And I can be a hero today.”

Corran jumped his throttle full forward and shunted laser energy into his engines. That pushed his speed up toward maximum. Adjusting the stick and tapping the pedals he made his ship jump, cut, and dive. He flipped his weapons over to torpedoes and tried to get a lock on the lead squint, but it juked out of his sights. The others took shots at him, but his evasive maneuvers made them miss.

His fighter flew past them and two of the Interceptors started loops to come after him. Their turns took them high and away as they throttled up to match his speed. Increasing their speed meant their loops became wider than they might have preferred. They outnumber us enough that being a bit sloppy can’t hurt.

Corran chopped his throttle back to half and pulled his X-wing through a tight turn. “Forbidden, paint one with a missile lock.”

Punching the throttle full forward, Corran shot his ship back along the vector that had carried him through the squint formation. One of the Interceptors broke off on its run at the shuttle, so Corran concentrated on the other. He centered the ship in his aiming reticle and waited until he got a missile lock. When the reticle turned red, he hit the trigger and sent a proton torpedo speeding out toward the Interceptor.

The Interceptor pilot juked up and starboard, which pulled him out of the shuttle’s forward firing arc. While that maneuver would have carried him away from any torpedo the shuttle had launched, Corran’s missile had to make little more than a minor course correction before it hit. The torpedo cored through the Interceptor’s ball and exploded, spitting shrapnel out in all directions from an incandescent cloud.

Knowing he was pushing his luck, Corran rolled the X-wing and dove after the first Interceptor the Forbidden had scared off. Throttling back he tightened a turn and came up inside the arc of the squint’s loop. With a flick of his thumb he snapped weapons control over to lasers. The squint began to juke and twist, but Corran stayed with him.

Whistler screeched a warning about the return of the other two Interceptors, but Corran ignored it. He triggered one burst of lasers and clipped one of the squint’s wings, but it sailed on. Pushing more power to his engines, Corran started to close with it, but the astromech whistled insistently at him.

The pair of Interceptors had closed to inside a kilometer and were firmly on his tail. “Nine here, I could use some help.”

“I’m on it, Nine. Ten on the way. Break to port on my mark.”

Ten? That’s Ooryl, but not his voice. What’s going on?

“Mark.”

Left rudder, then a snap-roll onto the port stabilizers pulled him wide out of his previous flight path. He saw blue bolts shoot back toward the ships following him and for a half second Corran felt utterly disoriented. Blue beams meant ion cannon shots, but the planet had been behind him, not in front of him. And the ion cannons on the ground wouldn’t be shooting at TIEs in any event.

“You’re clear, Nine.”

Corran brought his ship around and suddenly everything became clearer. Defender Wing’s Y-wings dove and climbed through the dogfight, blasting away at Interceptors with wild abandon. What the slow ships lacked in grace they made up for in sheer firepower. Their entry into the fight destroyed or disabled a half-dozen Interceptors.

“They’re running!”

Salm’s voice came through the comm. “No celebrations. With them clear the ion cannons will open up again.”

“Forbidden to Control, I have all EV pilots.”

“Forbidden, you are clear to hyperspace.”

Four ion blasts from the planet stabbed up and again struck the Mon Valle. The modified bulk cruiser began to break apart. Escape pods shot out from around the bridge and away into space, while the rest of the ship began to slowly drift back down toward Blackmoon.

“I hope it hits the installation.”

“Control to all fighters, you are clear to hyperspace.”

“Control, does Eridain need cover for getting the escape pods?”

“Negative, Rogue Leader, they’re on our way out and the Interceptors are heading home.”

“Thanks, Control.” Wedge’s voice seemed filled with weariness. “Back to base for us, Rogues.”

“Got it, Rogue Leader.” Corran took one last look at Blackmoon, then pointed his fighter toward the stars. “Back to base for most of us he means, Whistler. Two months of prep and in ten minutes the squadron is cut in half. Someone made some very bad mistakes here, and our friends paid for them. Never again.”

27

Corran stared out the window of the Noquivzor base recreation center. Rolling hills and treeless plains stretched out for kilometers in all directions from the building. Gentle and warm breezes washed in waves over the golden grasses and tickled the back of his neck. If Erisi weren’t over in the med center floating in her family’s finest stock, I’d take her on a long walk out there and just enjoy the countryside. As beautiful as it is, though, it’s hard to think of enjoying anything right now.

He forced himself to smile as a man in an infantry uniform set a mug of lum down on the table in front of him. “Thanks, Lieutenant.”

The man nodded. “Call me Page.”

Corran shoved the chair on the other side of the table out toward Page. “What’s the lum for?”

“Drinking usually.” Page sat. “Me and my people were on the Devonian. You and your wingman scattered the squints coming in our direction. We owe you.”

The pilot lifted the mug and drank a mouthful of the fiery ale and let it burn its way down his throat. “I appreciate the drink, but you’ll have to buy one for Ooryl when he comes out of his bacta dip.”

Page nodded. “Gladly. How badly was he hit?”

“Lost half his right arm. The suit shut down around the wound so he didn’t suffocate, but he got very cold.” Corran put the frosted mug down and shivered. “Bacta is for exposure—all the EV pilots are getting a dunking, though none of them are as bad off as Ooryl. The Emdees don’t know about prosthetics for him—they’ve never done Gands before and don’t have appropriate limbs to use for replacements.”

“Rogue Squadron got hit hard.”

“Two pilots dead, three EV, and one was flying wounded.”

“I heard about him, the Shistavanen.”

“Very tough individual.” Corran nodded. “Shiel wasn’t going to report for medical care but Gavin forced him to go. Net result, we’re at two-thirds strength, but only if we can find X-wings to replace the ones we lost. If not, we’re below fifty percent.”

The infantry officer looked around the crowded, above-ground pavilion, then leaned forward and lowered his voice. “This mission was vape-bait from before Kre’fey ordered the Y-wings home.”

“No kidding.” The pilot glowered at the mug. “About a second before the cannons took the Modaran apart I realized that just because the cannons hadn’t shot didn’t mean they couldn’t shoot.”

“That occurred to all of us, I think, except for General Kre’fey. He was blind to that possibility.” Page shook his head. “We all knew he wanted Blackmoon so the Council would give him command of the Coruscant invasion. In three weeks the planet’s orbit takes it through an annual meteor shower. I wanted to use that as cover to bring my commandos in to do a ground recon of the base. We would have taken the ion cannons down.”

“That makes sense. Why didn’t he approve it?”

“The world’s only moon—the Blackmoon that gave the system its codename—would be in our entry and exit vector. It would act as a natural Interdictor cruiser, which could make things a lot more dangerous.”

Corran shrugged. “The ion cannons made things dangerous enough, thanks.”

“No kidding.” Page smiled. “We would have taken them down. And we would have found the base for those squint squadrons that came in late to the fight.”

“The Bothans didn’t even know they were there.”

The infantryman winced. “And they should have. They’re very good at worming their way into Imperial networks.”

“So this time they failed.” Corran hesitated as an idea occurred to him. “Or records of those forces aren’t part of the official garrison.”

Page frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Working with CorSec I was involved in a sweep of a smuggler’s headquarters. She was very sharp and had always distanced herself from glitterstim stores, so we couldn’t pin anything on her. This one time, though, we found a couple of kilos of glitterstim in a warehouse she owned. She said she knew nothing about it and accused us of planting it. Turned out that she didn’t know anything about it. The glitterstim had been skimmed from shipments by one of her aides and hidden there until he could find a way to move it himself.”

“You’re saying the Empire doesn’t know those Interceptors were there?”

“A squadron is a rounding error for Imperial bookkeepers.” Corran leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “And the Bothans didn’t know about whatever power source was used to boost the shields back up after we took them down. Whoever is in charge of wherever Blackmoon is might be running some operation his Imperial masters know nothing about.”

Page nodded slowly. “The data on the covert operation is kept away from the Imperials, so the Bothans had no way of discovering it.”

“Not without being on the ground.”

“We had intel on the vislight from the galaxy, but we got jumped by the IR and UV.” Page rapped his knuckles on the plasteel tabletop. “If we’d been given proper background on Blackmoon, we might have been able to guess at the kind of information we really needed.”

“I understand the need for operational security—but you can bet now the true location of Blackmoon won’t be declassified until we’re all dead and gone.”

Page nodded. “Still, the simulations of an assault are only as good as the databases from which they are constructed. Bad intel gets people killed.”

Corran ran a hand over his face. “Well, now we have an inkling of what we don’t know about Blackmoon. At least two squint squadrons and a power generator are hidden there somewhere—hidden from us and Imp officials.”

“The information in the official Imperial survey files is clearly useless.”

“Right. And that means …” The chirp of the comlink on the table cut off Corran’s comment. He picked it up and opened the channel. “Horn here.”

“Emtrey here, sir.”

“Something wrong with Ooryl?”

“No, sir.”

“Is Erisi coming out of the bacta?”

“No, sir.”

Corran frowned. “Then why did you call me?”

“Sir, Whistler asked me to inform you he has completed the calculations of the wind currents you requested.”

“Wind currents?”

“On Blackmoon, sir. He said he has found some very interesting things.”

“We’ll be there in a second. Horn out.” Corran looked up at Page. “It may be raising the shields after the base had been strafed, but I’m up for learning a little more about the world we just ran from. How about you?”

“I had friends on the Modaran. I didn’t like seeing them die.”

“Good, let’s go.” Corran shot him a smile. “Maybe, just maybe we can find a way to go back in and make the Imps pay.”

Wedge wasn’t certain he had heard General Salm correctly. “Did you just say it was just as well that we failed to take Blackmoon?”

Salm nodded slowly and pointed with a glass of pale blue Abrax cognac at the datapad on his desk. “Intelligence reports that the Imperial Star Destroyer-II Eviscerator left the Venjagga system on a course that would have put it in at Blackmoon within six hours after we launched our operation. Its six squadrons of TIEs would have matched our fighters and the Eviscerator would have pounded on the Emancipator. Chances are very good we would have lost our strike force and Blackmoon.”

The Corellian’s jaw dropped. “The mission was a go with a Impstar-Deuce within six hours of the target? How did that happen?”

“I don’t know. Iceheart has been shifting some resources around, and some Admirals move them even further to avoid her control. It could be the Eviscerator was moved at random.”

Wedge frowned. “Or Iceheart anticipated where we were likely to strike.”

“Or”—Salm looked at Wedge over the rim of his glass—“someone told Iceheart where we were going to be.”

“Tycho was in the dark about our destination as the rest of us were—and he was out there without any lasers or torps pulling in EV pilots.”

Salm held up his open hand. “Easy, Commander, I wasn’t accusing your XO. I don’t trust him, but I know he was innocent this time.”

“You checked the monitor logs on him?”

“I checked the logs on everyone. There were more call-outs than I like, but nothing incriminating. Now I didn’t know where we were going before we pulled out, so I assume no one else did, but there are always leaks.” The General set his cognac on his desk, then walked over to the small bar in the corner of his quarters. “Would you like a drink, Commander Antilles?”

“I’d prefer it if you’d call me Wedge.”

The smaller man seemed to consider that for a moment, then he nodded. “Very well, Wedge. A drink?”

“How old is the Abrax?”

Salm smiled. “I don’t know. My aide obtained it from the black market so your guess is as good as mine. The bottle does have Old Republic tax holograms on it, though.”

Wedge shrugged. “I’ll chance it, then, thanks.”

The General poured him a generous dollop of the aquamarine liquid. “Please, be seated.”

The General’s quarters were as sparsely furnished as his own, with munition cases and old ejection seats being about the best thing available to use as tables and chairs. Salm’s liquor cabinet had been built out of a plasteel helmet case with foam inserts to keep glasses and two bottles safe. Wedge appropriated one of the ejection seats and raised his glass of cognac. “Thank you for coming to our rescue out there.”

“Defender Wing pays its debts.”

Glasses clinked as they touched and both men drank. The liquor’s spicy vapors opened up all of Wedge’s nasal passages. He let the liquid pool on his tongue for a moment more, then swallowed it. A warmth started in his belly and pulsed out to ease some of the fatigue in his limbs.

The General hunched forward, cupping his glass in both hands. “I want to ask you what you intend to put in your report about what I did out there.”

Wedge made no effort to cover his surprise. “You saved my unit. I thought I might recommend review for the Corellian Cross. Since I’m not your commanding officer I can’t put you in for it, but …”

Salm shook his head. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“What, then?”

The man’s brow furrowed. “I disobeyed a direct order to leave the system.”

Wedge blinked in confusion. “If you had returned to the Mon Valle, your entire wing would have been killed.”

“We know that now, but we did not know that at the time the order was given.” Salm swirled the cognac around in his glass. “General Kre’fey and I had often been at odds with each other—you may have gathered that from the briefing. I felt, when he ordered me out, that he wanted to rob me of any credit for the operation. I started us on an outbound vector, but came in close to the Emancipator so I could claim its mass prevented us from making the jump to light speed. I didn’t want to leave and closing with the Star Destroyer made for a convenient excuse, but datafeeds from the onboard computers will reveal the truth.”

“And so you were in position so the Emancipator could screen you from ground sensors and the incoming squints.” Wedge shrugged. “If I’d been given that order and thought of that trick to let me stick around, that’s what I would have done.”

“I know.” Salm stood and began to pace. “That’s the problem, Commander Antilles: What I did is exactly what you would have done.”

“It worked.”

“It doesn’t matter that it worked. I’m not you. My people are not your people.” Salm’s face became a mask of frustration. “The only thing that keeps my people alive out there is rigid adherence to discipline, and this discipline is instilled through consciously constructed drills that build them into a unit. My people lack the native talent in your squadron, but we make up for it because we cover for one another and watch out for each other.”

“As you watched out for my people.”

“Yes, I did that, but only by disobeying an order from a superior officer. And you have to write it up that way.”

Wedge shook his head. “I don’t want to see you taking slugs for something that wasn’t wrong.”

“But that’s not up to you, Wedge. You can excuse something one of your pilots does, but only Ackbar and the High Command can forgive me for this mutiny.” Salm tossed off the last of his cognac. “So, don’t give the Admiral a single byte report—tell him what happened.”

“What, and pretend I understand it?” Wedge sat back in the padded chair. “Interceptors came out of nowhere and the base suddenly developed more power than even the worst case allowed. If the Eviscerator had showed up and dumped two wings’ worth of fighters into the battle, we would have lost all our ships. With the Star Destroyer-II in the area, of course, Blackmoon won’t fall.”

“You’re probably right, though the presence of an Impstar-Deuce is not insurmountable.” Salm splashed some more cognac into his glass. “Stripped of their fighters, they are vulnerable to TRD.”

Wedge waved away a refill and smiled. TRD was Alliance slang for Trench Run Disease, or the tactics that had destroyed the first Death Star. The Empire had developed Lancer-class frigates to prevent TRD from claiming any capital ships. While attacks by snubfighters had proved relatively insignificant in hurting Star Destroyers, TRD was something Imperial officers feared and took great pains to avoid.

“Fine, I’ll head out with my half-dozen pilots and we’ll vape the Eviscerator’s TIEs so you can waltz in and give it a dose of TRD.”

“It would be my pleasure, Commander, but High Command is going to want a lot of questions asked and answered about Blackmoon before more operations are conducted in that sector of space.”

A tone sounded at the door, but before Salm could say anything, the door retracted and Corran Horn rushed in, followed closely by an infantry Lieutenant. “Commander, you wouldn’t believe …” The enthused smile on Corran’s face died as he saw Salm.

Both men snapped to attention. “Begging the General’s pardon.”

“At ease, Lieutenant Page, Lieutenant Horn.” Salm clasped his own hands behind his back. “What’s the meaning of this?”

Corran’s gaze darted back and forth from Wedge to Salm. “Emtrey just said Commander Antilles was here, sir. He didn’t mention these were your quarters, sir.”

Salm looked at Wedge. “Your officers barge into your quarters uninvited?”

“Not so far. Perhaps, General Salm, I need to institute some of the discipline you were speaking about earlier.” Wedge stood and gave Corran a hard stare. “News of our compatriots in the medical unit?”

“No, sir.”

Wedge could see Corran was fit to burst. “This had better be good, Mr. Horn.”

“Yes, sir.” Corran looked at Salm. “With the General’s permission.”

Salm nodded. “Proceed.”

Corran’s smile blossomed again. “If we want Blackmoon, we’ve got it.”

“What?”

The junior officer nodded. “Whistler, my astromech, collected a lot of data while we were out there and has been running it through the programs he used to analyze smugglers’ bases so CorSec knew where to hit them.”

Salm’s face hardened. “This is an Imperial base, not some bandit’s hideout.”

Page shook his head. “Begging your pardon, sir, but the droid found a lot of parallels to smugglers’ bases, and that gives us some new options. Whistler also pinpointed Blackmoon from a star chart and is pulling up more data than we were given in our briefings. It can fall.”

Wedge shook his head. “Good work, gentlemen, but there’s an Imperial Star Destroyer Mark II we have to figure into the scenario. That changes everything.”

Salm held a hand up. “Perhaps not, Commander.”

“No?”

“Not entirely.” Salm folded his arms. “Who knows about this information you have?”

Horn thought for a second, then answered, “As nearly as I know, just Page, my R2, the unit’s 3PO, and me.”

“I want you to confirm that. You two are hereby sworn to secrecy. If any word about this gets out I’ll have you flying solo missions against Ssi-ruuk strongholds, got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

Wedge smiled. “Being a bit lenient there, aren’t you, sir?”

“Perhaps I am, but I think they know I’m serious.” Salm smiled confidently. “Now let’s see what you have, gentlemen. Blackmoon was picked as our best, closest step to Coruscant yet. No reason we should abandon our quest if we don’t have to.”

28

Kirtan Loor raised a hand to ward off the dust storm raised by the shuttle’s landing jets. The Sipharium settled down easily, its landing lights strobing brightly in the Borleiasian evening. The hum of the engines filled the air, drowning out the sound of the gangway being lowered from the belly of the ship.

The Intelligence agent smiled at General Derricote as the base’s commander crested the stairs to the landing platform. “Come to see me off? I’m honored.”

Derricote returned the smile. “Your visit was not as onerous as you might imagine, Agent Loor.” The older man held a bottle out to him. “A memento of your visit.”

Kirtan took it. “Corellian whiskey, Whyren’s Reserve, no less.” He looked closely at the cap and the holographic tax seal. “It looks genuine. Is it, or have you prepared this so I can poison myself and eliminate a problem for you?”

Derricote opened his hands. “If you want to open it and lumguzzle, I’ll join you. It is genuine, and quite costly, but I have connections that make it possible for me to obtain it. It’s not poisoned because it is given by way of thanking you. Had you not come here the Rebels might have taken me by surprise. I think the result would have been much the same as it actually turned out to be, but one can never know. Your use of influence to transfer a squadron of TIE starfighters from the Eviscerator until my fighters can be replaced was also appreciated.”

The General’s openness surprised Kirtan. “You do not feel my being ordered back to Imperial Center is a threat to your operation here?”

Derricote shrugged. “I am too much a realist to imagine I could keep this operation secret forever. I trust you will use your knowledge of it to your own gain, which means I will not be sacrificed casually. This operation, of course, has uses. I would think that Ysanne Isard would find it more valuable than any object lesson she could provide others by destroying it and me.”

The man’s eyes hardened. “Besides, if I saw you as a threat, you would have died during the Rebel attack.”

Truly spoken. Kirtan nodded slowly. “I accept your gift in the spirit in which it is given.” But I will have it tested before I drink.

“I hope, also, you will view this invitation in the spirit in which it is given.” Derricote spread his arms wide to encompass the planet. “The Empire is dead. What will rise to replace it, I don’t know, but the Core will be heating up and Imperial Center is going to be roasted alive. Rebels, warlords, either could do the job. Old Borleias here, it’s been through its time of fire. I’ll be here when Imperial Center isn’t. If you need a haven when things break apart, remember that I’m here.”

Kirtan brought his head up. “Thank you, General. I shall remember you. I hope I won’t have to avail myself of your invitation, but if I do, I know where to find you.”

“Have a good trip to Imperial Center, Agent Loor.”

Kirtan raised the bottle in a salute. “Until we meet again.”

Wedge felt a giddy anticipation in his belly the like of which he’d not known since Endor. He glanced over at General Salm. The man sat on the other side of the briefing table with his eyes closed, nodding to himself as he rehearsed what he would say to Admiral Ackbar. The plan they’d concocted over the last week could work, but it was risky and highly time-dependent.

The door to the briefing room opened and Ackbar entered the room. He nodded to both men, then settled down in the chair at the head of the oval table. “What have you woven together?”

Salm smiled and punched keys on his datapad. The small device fed information to the holographic projection disk in the center of the table and a starfield began to sparkle and slowly spin above it. “We have found a way to take Blackmoon.”

The Mon Calamari sat back. “I do not recall your having been told which world Blackmoon was.”

Wedge shook his head. “We weren’t. As per orders, coordinates were downloaded to and erased from all of our astromechs and navigational computers before and after the operation. Unfortunately for operational security, one of my unit’s astromechs has a special criminal investigation and forensics circuitry package. It gathers evidence and, in this case, included a star chart of the area in it.”

Ackbar’s barbels quivered. “Something will have to be done to correct that situation.”

“Agreed, Admiral, but this droid in Commander Antilles’s squadron has provided us with invaluable information that points out why we lost the fight and how we can take Borleias.”

“And more, sir.” Wedge pointed at the starfield. “Computer, isolate the triad.”

The starfield grew and stars bled out of the edges of the image. In the center three stars intensified in radiance and faint green lines stretched out to link them. A small arrow pointed down and away from the lowest point of the triangle indicating the direction of the Core and Coruscant.

“These three systems are, in descending order, Mirit, Venjagga, and Pyria. The center one, Venjagga, is home to the Eviscerator. It is using Jagga-Two as a base and is there to protect the concussion missile production facilities. While the output is considered small by Imperial standards, the fact that the world is actually producing missiles makes it worth protecting.”

Salm indicated the uppermost system, the one on a virtual straight line with Borleias. “The Mirit system is home to Ord Mirit. The Empire abandoned that base shortly after Endor and shifted the garrison all the way over to Corellia to help hold the shipyards there. Ord Mirit is really too far away from anything substantial for us to use it as a base, as we have done with Ord Pardron. Still, it is part of the sector the Eviscerator is tasked to defend.”

“Finally we have Borleias.” Salm hit a button on his datapad and the starfield dissolved into the image of the planet. “When we were there before we discovered the estimates of power generation for the planet were low by at least half and two squadrons of fighters—Interceptors no less—showed up without warning. All of the data we had about the planet had been stolen from Imperial files by Bothan slicers. Unfortunately for us, that information was incomplete.”

Wedge nodded. “We went back and pulled old data files on Borleias and they’ve provided the answers to questions that were never asked before the first operation. Back before the Empire existed, Alderaan Biotics set up a research facility on the far side of the planet. It included a geothermal generation station and a local spaceport. Because everything was located in the northern part of the planet, the facilities were built underground to avoid complications from the harsh winters. A series of scan surveys of the planet would be required to locate the sites from space.”

“What Commander Antilles says is true, sir—and the effort to locate these bases from space would have revealed our interest in the planet to the Empire.”

The Mon Calamari acknowledged Salm’s comment with a nod. “Why was there no information about this place in the Imperial files, General?”

“The facility was shut down years ago. We suspect that the current base commander, Evir Derricote, refurbished it and has it operating to produce goods—foodstuffs mostly—that are sold to the refugee Alderaanan population via the black market. At the very least his Imperial superiors would see this as giving aid and comfort to the enemy, so hiding knowledge of it from them makes sense.”

“So you suspect this facility and its generator was the source of the power used to reinforce the base’s shields?”

“Yes, sir.” Wedge pointed to a faint red line linking the military base and the Biotics facility. “A tunnel that runs about one and a quarter kilometers beneath the surface of the planet links the two facilities. There is a rift valley where a ferrocrete conduit links the tunnel one side to the other. This is the weak link—the generator is too deep to blow with proton torpedoes and destroying it makes no sense if we intend to take the planet.”

Ackbar nodded, then tapped his lower lip with a flipperlike hand. “If you sever the connection with the military base, you bring us back to the original Bothan estimates of the defenses. If we bring our ships back in, we should be able to bring the shields down as we did before. We could take the base, but then the Eviscerator would come and destroy it.”

Salm shook his head. “Not if the Eviscerator arrives too late. Our plan in this—we stage a feint at Jagga-Two. The Emancipator and the Liberator arrive in-system, just at the outer edge of the gravity well created by the seventh planet, a gas giant. They deploy my Defender Wing and another wing of fighters, matching the Eviscerator’s complement of TIEs. The Eviscerator will deploy its fighters and move out behind their screen to engage our ships.

“Even at full speed, it will require two hours for our ships to engage each other. Our snubs won’t be traveling at full speed, and our Star Destroyers will be pulling back. It will appear to the Eviscerator that we’re running from it or, at the very least, are reluctant to engage it. When the Eviscerator moves into position within the system to engage us, our ships will go to light speed. The Star Destroyers will head for Ord Mirit while the fighters will head for Borleias. The Eviscerator will be unable to follow our Destroyers immediately because of its position in the system and the presence of planets that act as natural Interdictor cruisers.”

Ackbar’s eyes half shut. “Then the Eviscerator goes to Borleias.”

“Without her fighters?” Salm shook his head. “The TIEs cannot enter hyperspace by themselves the way our fighters can. They will have to be recovered and that will take time. Borleias can take care of itself, and the feint at the Venjagga system will be obviously intended to keep the Eviscerator away from Ord Mirit.”

The Admiral gave Salm a wall-eyed stare. “Why would the captain of the Eviscerator believe there was anything of value at Ord Mirit?”

Wedge smiled. “We were thinking that there are some Bothan slicers who seriously want to redeem themselves. We want them to plant information in the Imperial networks that suggest a newly discovered, previously secret facility on Ord Mirit may possess the key to finding the Katana fleet.”

He felt a shiver run down his spine as he saw the effect of his words on Ackbar. The Katana fleet had once been real enough, but back before even the Clone Wars it had passed into legend. Over a hundred ships that were slave-circuited together, the fleet had jumped into hyperspace and had never been seen again. With the Empire crumbling, possession of that fleet would make its owner the power in the galaxy. If the Alliance found it, the New Republic would become invincible. If an Imperial officer found it, a new Emperor would be born.

“No sane officer could truly believe the Katana fleet could be found.” Ackbar’s mouth gaped open in a grin. “But no sane officer could refuse to take the chance that it could be found. The Eviscerator would have to go to Ord Mirit and Ord Mirit is, what, twelve hours at flank speed to Borleias?”

“Add the four from Venjagga to Ord Mirit and we have sixteen hours at the very least to take Borleias.” Wedge nodded solemnly. “The beginning of the raid on Borleias will be very simple. Rogue Squadron goes in and blows the conduit. Going in and coming out we expect to attract a lot of attention because while we’re fighting, Lieutenant Page and his commandos, as well as a number of similar units, are going to use the conduit to get into the Borleias base and disable it. They’ll also hit the Biotic station’s spaceport. If they do it right, the TIE pilots sent up to engage us won’t know there’s been a change in ownership until they come home. Once the commandos are down and in, my people head out home.”

“The arrival of my Defender Wing and the other fighters from Venjagga will provide the Borleias base with enough of a distraction that Page’s people can take things down in short order, without having to damage anything we’ll need to use to defend the base.”

Ackbar’s barbels twitched. “Security will need to be very tight for this return to Blackmoon.”

“Yes, sir, but we have some advantages here. Derricote won’t think we’ll be coming back because the moon is in position to block our escape route. We are preparing a simulator package that hides the identity of our target. The run across the lunar surface will be disguised as a run through an asteroid belt, leading our people to believe we’re moving against a ringed planet.” Wedge smiled. “This time our pilots will not know where they’re going, but they won’t be in the dark about that they will face when they get there.”

The Mon Calamari nodded. “You will have to hide your location from your XO.”

“I know, so does he. He’s not part of the operation, so he accepts not knowing.”

The Mon Calamari stood slowly. “I think this plan is a good one, and can be made better. I do have one concern, however. It concerns your Rogue Squadron, Commander Antilles, and the commandos.”

“Sir?”

“If the operations are launched simultaneously—and I must assume they will be so an alarm raised by the Eviscerator will not put Borleias in a heightened state of alert in time to disrupt your effort—there will be at least four hours before we have more forces arriving at Borleias. Flight suit life support lasts for three hours. Anyone left behind will die.”

“I know that, sir.”

“Do your people know that?”

Wedge shook his head. “They will before they go. I’ve got six operational ships. This will be a volunteer mission.”

“And a very bold one.” Admiral Ackbar nodded solemnly. “Let us go over it again and guarantee the gain will be worth the likely cost. Right now I believe I could sell it to the Provisional Council, but some modifications will make this a certainty. And if things go well, the way to Coruscant will finally lie open to us.”

29

Corran half hid his face behind his left hand, daring only to stare that the floating hologram of the mythical world of Phenaru Prime with his left eye. Aside from the addition of an asteroid ring, an ocean where the southern continent was, and some adjustments to the coastlines, it looked exactly like Borleias. The computer-projected world slowly spun above the cylinder in the well of the pilots’ briefing room. It looked calm and almost peaceful, especially without the air-current overlays Whistler used to project onto it.

As peaceful as it looks, it’s not where I want to die.

Wedge continued his briefing. “Our objective is a ferrocrete pipe roughly four meters in diameter and forty meters long. It’s reinforced and has suspension cables helping to support the weight. A single proton torpedo should be able to destroy it, but we’re not sure how well it’s going to show up on the targeting computers. If we get a lock, it’s likely to be at point-blank range.”

Nawara Ven stroked the tip of one of his brain tails. “Run up this rift valley and hit something the third of the size of an X-wing, without the benefit of a targeting computer? That’s impossible.”

Gavin shook his head. “That’s nothing. Back home in Beggar’s Canyon …”

The youth’s voice trailed off as Wedge raised an eyebrow in his direction. “I don’t think any pilot from Tatooine ever found a mission tough, especially when it involves racing through a canyon.”

“Well, the target’s not really that small, sir.”

Corran laughed. “It is the size of a reclining Hutt, give or take a couple of meters. The conduit can probably move faster, too.”

Even Wedge laughed at the comment, but Corran knew it wasn’t because of the weak humor in his statement. Everyone in the room, the nine surviving pilots from Rogue Squadron and Tycho Celchu, knew the mission being presented to them was difficult. Their laughter came from the nervous tension of staring death in the face and knowing death was likely to win this one.

“The real sticking point on this mission, people, is time-over-target. We’ll be coming in and using a meteor shower as cover for our insertion to the atmosphere. This means we’ll have to maneuver through the asteroids to get into Phenaru and get out again. We also have a long run up to light speed so we can make the jump out of the gravity well. All this means we’ve got a half hour over the target. If we burn too much time and fuel fighting, we don’t get out.”

Bror Jace scratched at the pale stubble on his chin. “That’s cutting it rather fine, isn’t it? The valley run should take a third of that. If only six of us are going in, that’s one pass per flight element.”

“He’s right, Commander.” Rhysati frowned. “Can’t we get auxiliary fuel pods for our T-65s?”

Wedge glanced over to where Emtrey stood. “Last check of our inventory didn’t show we had any and a check of the Alliance requisition system shows a backlog of requests. That’s what you said, wasn’t it, Emtrey?”

“Yes, sir.” The droid raised a hand and tilted his head to the side. “However, sir, we now have some.”

“What?” Wedge frowned. “I thought you characterized requisitioning them as an exercise in futility.”

“I did, sir.” The droid shrugged in a most un-mechanical manner by bobbing his head up and down on his neck. “I saw we needed them, so I scrounged ’em.”

“Scrounge?”

“They cost a couple suits of the stormtrooper armor we had left over from Talasea, the cold weather gear we are not using here on Noquivzor, and some spare parts for which we have little use.”

The squadron’s commander stared at the droid for a moment. “How many did you get?”

“A half dozen.”

Wedge shook his head. “All that only got you six auxiliary fuel pods?”

“Sir, when scrounging merchandise you can get it fast, in good condition, or cheap: pick two.” The droid’s clamshell head righted itself again. “They’re here and Zraii is ready to fit them on ships. He’s fitting them with a quick release so you can jettison them when they’re empty. It’ll kill the drag when you’re fighting the squints. These pods give you half again the time-over-target.”

Forty-five minutes sounded like forever, and in some ways it was. In atmosphere the engines gobbled a lot more fuel than they did in space because of the friction and drag. X-wings were a better fighter in atmosphere than TIEs, but the two squadrons on the ground outnumbered the Rogues four to one. Long odds and we ran through the last of our luck on the previous visit to Blackmoon.

Rhysati raised a hand. “Any defenses in the rift valley?”

Wedge shook his head. “None that we know of, but it’s possible there are some. Whoever goes in first has got to be careful. First run probably won’t nail the prize.”

“I can believe that.” Corran scratched at the back of his neck. “Are Page’s folks coming down while we make our runs?”

“If they were, Lieutenant, the answer to that question would be classified.” Wedge hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “It’s a logical assumption to make, though. Regardless, any of us who gets left behind will be in severe straits—out of fuel and out of luck long before the assault for which we’re doing the prep work will hit.”

Bror Jace slowly nodded. “This is a suicide mission.”

“No, I want it to be anything but a suicide mission. The facts do point to this being very dangerous.” Wedge folded his hands together. “We’ve got six ships and eight pilots. I’m sorry, Ooryl, but without a proper prosthetic fit, I can’t consider you healthy enough for this mission.”

Corran’s wingmate sagged a bit in his seat. The Emdee droids had fitted him with a odd device that capped his stub with what looked—and smelled—like a boiling pot of bacta. Below it a rudimentary prosthetic arm ended in a pair of pincers that snapped open and closed. “Qrygg offers apologies for Qrygg’s failure.”

“Your feelings are understood, Ooryl.” Wedge folded his arms across his chest. “Three of you are fit to fly but you don’t have a ship. We do have Lujayne’s X-wing ready to go. If all of you volunteer for this mission, I’ll choose one of you at random to fly that ship. If anyone else opts out, you’re up. Do you all want to go?”

All three of the pilots nodded.

“Emtrey, randomize a choice here.”

The droid hummed for a moment. “Nawara Ven.”

Shiel growled and Erisi shrugged in Rhysati’s direction.

Wedge smiled. “Welcome aboard, Mr. Ven. You’ll fly with Mr. Jace, assuming he volunteers.”

The Thyferran shot a quick glance at Erisi, then nodded. “It shall be my pleasure to bring glory to the Thyferran people as their representative on this mission.”

“Mr. Darklighter, this isn’t Beggar’s Canyon …”

“I know, sir. It’s bigger and this won’t be for fun.” Gavin smiled slowly. “I’m in.”

Wedge looked over at Rhysati. “And you, Ms. Ynr.”

“Someone has to break up the boys’ club.”

Wedge turned to Corran. “Need I ask?”

“You want to know if I’m willing to fly to an enemy-held planet where I’m to race through some eroded ditch and pop a sewer pipe with a proton torpedo while Interceptors are swarming around, and do all this with no hope of rescue if I slip up?”

Wedge’s reply came cold and calm. “That’s what I want to know.”

Corran’s mouth soured and his stomach tightened. Despite Gavin’s protest, Nawara Ven had been correct—the mission was impossible. Performing any one of the feats mentioned might have been possible, but doing them all would push every pilot to his or her limit. Failure by some was inevitable—only who and how many were in question.

They all knew that. They knew it as well as he did, yet each one of them had volunteered without a second thought. The mission needed doing, and they were going to do it. It wasn’t a question of survival, but a question of how best to make certain the mission succeeded. Each of them decided they were up to the task and now it was up to him to come to the same conclusion.

“Overwhelming odds, tough target, scant chance of survival—business as usual for Rogue Squadron.” Corran nodded. “I’ll go on one condition.”

“Go or stay, Mr. Horn, no special deals.”

“Then think of this as a tactical consideration.” Corran sat forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “I’m first into the valley.”

Wedge shook his head. “That position’s already filled.”

“You need a wingman, Commander.” Corran jerked a thumb at the other pilots. “They’ve had practice using someone else’s telemetry to make a run, I haven’t. We’ll make the first run together.”

Wedge looked away for a moment, then back at Corran. “Glad to have you with us, Mr. Horn. Shiel, Ms. Dlarit, you’ll work with Captain Celchu and provide opposition for us while we do the simulator runs on the operation. You’ll have to do your best to kill us before we go. If you can’t, maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to come back and thank you for your hard work.”

30

Corran leaned against the body of the simulator and gave Wedge a weak smile. “We got it that time, boss, but only just barely.”

“That last cut is very sharp. Banking is the only way to make it, but leveling out for the torpedo shot is tough.”

The junior officer nodded. The one time he had tried to make the last turn to the target by applying rudder and skidding around the turn, his X-wing slammed into a canyon wall. Making that turn and escaping a crash required very fine manipulation of the throttle. He could do that, but by the time he had negotiated the turn and recovered, he was past his target.

“I like the idea of popping up over the last turn and gliding on down in, but that might attract some of the TIEs the bacta boy is lighting up.”

“I agree that going up and out of the valley to avoid that last turn is probably the most simple way of handling the problem, but we go in first to provide the data for others to make their runs. Mr. Jace and Mr. Ven will decide if they want to hop past the last turn or go through the valley.”

Bror Jace came out from around the corner of Corran’s simulator with his wingman. “Valley, I think, unless our fuel estimates are lower than expected because of dogfighting.”

Corran winked at him. “Don’t worry, we’ll keep them off you while you squirm your way into the tunnel.”

“I’ll do the job.”

The Twi’lek laid a hand on Bror’s shoulder. “We’ll do the job.”

Wedge smiled. “Only because our near misses will weaken the structure for you.”

“Of course, Commander.” Bror looked at Corran. “Even clean misses must ionize the air and do some harm.”

The Corellian Lieutenant levered himself away from the simulator. “Last I looked, I’ve hit more targets than you.”

Gavin and Rhysati joined the group. “If not for me not holding my end up, Corran would be winning your contest, Bror.”

The Thyferran waved that comment away. “Corran has one more kill than I do. If this simulation is at all accurate, I will eclipse his mark by three kills.”

“So it’s just you and me, head-to-head?”

Bror looked down at Corran. “Just you and me. Head-to-head. As it has always been.”

Wedge stepped between them. “At ease, gentlemen. Let me remind you of two things. First, Gavin’s got the best record for hitting the tunnel, which means the second flight didn’t do so well. Second, that tunnel is our target, not all the eyeballs and squints flying around.”

He rested a hand on each man’s shoulder. “I’ve not discouraged this contest because there’s no way to stop you from keeping score. It’s given you a competitive edge which is good—neither of you has allowed the other to become complacent or bored. A bored pilot gets overconfident, careless, and, rather quickly, dead. And, in spite of planning and promoting this difficult mission, I don’t want to see any of us die.”

Wedge took a step back and folded his arms. For the barest of moments he looked far older than his twenty-seven years. Corran saw the weariness as Death’s fingerprints. Death’s never gotten Wedge, but it’s been close enough to leave marks on him. There’s undoubtedly a nightmare for every pilot Rogue Squadron has lost, and I bet he runs through them far more regularly than he’d like.

The squadron commander forced a smile onto his face. “Back when I first welcomed you to this squadron I told you that most pilots die during their first five missions. We were very lucky in our first three, but it all caught up with us on the run at Blackmoon. Looking at the numbers there is no reason to assume it will go any better for us this time.”

Corran nodded and fought the shiver coursing up his spine. In the first run they had eleven ships to take against Blackmoon’s fighters. They engaged two squadrons then and would likely face that much opposition this time. While the best pilots in Rogue Squadron were going in on the mission, fuel considerations limited their ability to perform.

“I want you people to know I’ve flown with the best the Alliance has to offer. Luke, Biggs, Porkins, Janson, Tycho, all of them. I don’t feel their lack here. This isn’t a Death Star we’re going after, and this mission doesn’t have that sense of urgency. That’s because back then we were fighting for the very survival of the Rebellion.

“The fact is, though, this mission is just as important as either of the Death Star runs.” Wedge glanced down at his hands, then back up. “This time we’re fighting for the future of the Rebellion and all the people who want freedom from the Empire. That’s a lot less immediate than what we fought for in the old days, but in many ways it’s far more noble a goal.”

Corran smiled in spite of himself. The nagging sense of doubt and doom that had been grinding away at his consciousness didn’t go away, but it became muted. Wedge’s words muffled it. Fear and insecurity were issues about himself, but their mission was about others. He was going off to make the future a bit brighter for people like Iella Wessiri and her husband and Gus Bastra and his family. And even folks like Booster Terrik.

The realization that this blow struck at the Empire would make life easier for the sorts of criminals he and his father and grandfather used to hunt didn’t tarnish the mission. He’d never believed the “virtuous bandit” myth most criminals like to wrap around themselves—raiding the affluent to give to the destitute was a pattern often claimed, but he’d seen no evidence of it. Still he couldn’t deny the contribution of folks like Han Solo or Mirax Terrik to the Rebellion. And how could one compare the minor evil of a Hutt with the grand evil of a government that would conceive of, build, and utilize weapons that could destroy planets?

If we cap the wellspring of evil, cleaning up all the little puddles it leaves behind will be that much easier.

Wedge looked at all of the pilots. “This mission isn’t going to be easy, but I know we can do it.”

Corran nodded to him. “If it was easy, it wouldn’t be a Rogue Squadron mission.”

“And if it wasn’t given to Rogue Squadron,” Bror added, “it would have no chance of being accomplished.”

“If ego could power shields, you’d be invincible.” Wedge shook his head. “You’ve got twelve hours to kill before you hit the line. No drinking and definitely get some sleep. You can’t use the holonet for obvious security reasons, but if you want to record some messages for friends and family and leave them with Emtrey, he’ll see to their disposition in the worst case. Get going, I’ll see you at 0800 on the line.”

“We’ll be there, Commander.” Corran tossed him a quick salute. “Nervous as Sithspawn in the glow of a Jedi’s lightsaber, but ready for whatever the Empire throws at us.”

Wedge watched his pilots walk away and saw both Shiel and Erisi catch up with them. He turned and smiled at Tycho. “Nice flying in the sim. You wouldn’t have bagged me if that belly pod hadn’t slowed my climb.”

The Alderaanian pilot shrugged. “Fifth time’s the charm.”

Wedge pointed toward the retreating knot of pilots. “Do they ever seem like kids to you—kids who shouldn’t be in this at all?”

“Gavin, yes, and Ooryl because of the insular life he’s led. The rest of them only surrender a year or two to us.”

“I know that, but it seems like the Emperor’s death was the end of an era. They’ve all joined after the New Republic was established. Before that we were outlaws fighting the legitimate government. Now we’re a movement that is bringing freedom to countless worlds.” Wedge shook his head. “Sometimes I think they’ve joined us because of the romance of the Rebellion’s having struck a blow against the Empire. We brought down Darth Vader, killed the Emperor, and destroyed the Death Stars.”

Tycho brushed a lock of brown hair from his forehead. “I hope you’re not heading toward the idea that they don’t really know what they’re getting into. I seem to recall hearing that same speculation about the new pilots in the squadron before Endor. Back then you saw the destruction of the first Death Star as what marked the end of an epoch.”

Wedge had memories flood back. “Yeah, I guess I did think about that then, didn’t I? The situation was different, though.”

“No it wasn’t. Look, Wedge, none of us have been through all you have. I joined up after Yavin, so I’ve been here for a long time, but for me Biggs and Porkins and the others are just legends. For you they’re memories—friends you’ve lost.” Tycho threw an arm across Wedge’s shoulders. “These guys have lost friends, too. There’s not a one of them that doesn’t know the odds of surviving this run are about …”

Wedge held up a hand. “Don’t give me odds. You know Corellians have no tolerance for odds.”

“Which is why you so willingly play sabacc.”

“And why so many of us are part of the Rebellion.”

The two of them laughed aloud and Wedge felt a lot of his tension bleeding away. As he wiped tears from his eyes he saw an Alliance Security Lieutenant come walking over. “Yes, Lieutenant?”

“Forgive the intrusion, sir, but I just wanted to remind Captain Celchu this area is restricted when he’s not actually involved in an exercise.”

“That’s all right, Lieutenant, he’s with me.”

“Yes, sir.” She glanced anxiously back toward the doorway. “I’ll wait out there.”

“I’ll be along presently, Lieutenant.”

Wedge frowned. “I’ll take responsibility for Captain Celchu, Lieutenant. You’re dismissed.”

“Sir, my orders come from General Salm.”

“I know. Log your protest with him.”

“Yes, sir.”

Wedge looked over and saw a frown on Tycho’s face. “What’s the matter?” He glanced at the Security officer’s retreating form, then back at his friend. “Have you become involved with her? Did I break something up here?”

Tycho shook his head. “No, nothing like that. She’s very nice, and lived on Alderaan for several years, so we can talk about places we’ll never see again. And she works with two enlisted men, one of whom watches me all the time. I do find her intriguing, but I’m not of a mind to begin a new relationship without knowing if the old one is over or not.”

“I can understand that.” Wedge recalled the woman Tycho had fallen for a couple of years earlier. She worked in Alliance Procurement and Supply and spent most of her time on covert missions directing operations on enemy worlds designed to liberate matériels from the Empire. Because of the importance and sensitivity of her work, learning anything about her from Intelligence was impossible, and Tycho’s status raised that difficulty level by an order of magnitude.

Tycho poked a finger against Wedge’s breastbone. “I think you’re changing the subject on me to avoid the real issue that prompted your earlier question.”

Wedge raised an eyebrow. “Oh, and that is?”

“You’re afraid you’re getting too old for what we’ve always told ourselves is a young man’s game.”

“If you think that, you’re as confused as a Gamorrean placed between two full mugs of lum.” The Corellian frowned. “First off, you’re a year older than I am.”

“Nine months.”

“Which is rather close to a year, my friend.”

“True enough, but years aren’t the only measure of time.” Tycho tapped the rank insignia at the collar of Wedge’s flight suit. “You’re a Commander. Luke was a General before he abandoned his rank. Han Solo and Lando Calrissian are Generals. Most of the officers who have been with the Alliance for as long as you have are at least Colonels.”

“You’re only a Captain, Tycho.”

“And there I will stay, if Salm has anything to say about it.”

“Well, I’ve had my say about my rank, and I’m happy where I am. I like leading a squadron.”

“I know that.” The Alderaanian shrugged and folded his arms. “You can’t help but wonder, though, if refusing those promotions was the right decision to make or not.”

“True.” Wedge looked up at his friend. “So, am I too old to be doing this?”

“Wedge, over the last four months I’ve flown against—and shot down—every one of the kids you have going on this mission. So have you.” Tycho let a low chuckle rumble from his throat. “If you’re too old for this, the New Republic might as well give up now. Barring a squadron of Jedi Knights winging their way in here, you’re the best we’ve got. That may not impress you, but there are plenty of Imp pilots out there who don’t sleep the whole night through because of dreams about you being on their tails.”

31

Corran smiled as Erisi caught up with the group. “You did well in the sim, Erisi.”

“It felt strange trying to shoot you down.”

“Emphasis on trying.” Bror flashed a predatory grin at her. “You had no more success than they will tomorrow.”

Nawara Ven glowered at his wingman. “If you have found a way to shunt ego into your shields, I wish you would share it with me.”

Rhysati shook her head. “Just have him expand his shields to cover us all. There’s ego enough there.”

Bror turned to Corran. “The mewing of our inferiors grows tiresome, don’t you think?”

The Corellian’s mouth hung open for a second. He wasn’t certain if he was more surprised with Bror’s put-down of the others or his own elevation into Bror’s peer group. “I wouldn’t call it ‘mewing’ and I don’t see them as our ‘inferiors.’ Everyone here has worked hard and come through a lot. Gavin and I have both been wounded, as has Shiel, and only you and Rhysati have avoided personal or ship damage. We might have a few more kills than they do, but things will average out over time.”

The Thyferran looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded. “That is something to consider, certainly. And I did not mean my comment as a slight against any of you, though clearly it was taken as such. I respect you all and believe you all capable of more. I will be honored to fly with you tomorrow.”

“On that note …” Nawara Ven bowed his head to his companions, allowing his brain tails to hang down over his shoulders. “I shall see you all in the morning.”

“Wait a moment.” Rhysati held her hand out to him. “I’ll head off, too. Get some sleep—we’ll need it.”

Gavin smiled, then stretched and yawned. “I want to record a message for my parents. Biggs never got the chance and that kind of ate at Uncle Huff.”

Corran winked at the kid. “You’ll make them proud, Gavin.”

Bror bowed slightly. “I, too, shall record a message for my parents.”

They all departed, leaving Corran alone with Erisi. “Well.”

“Well, indeed, Corran.” She reached out and took his left hand in hers. “I wish I were going with you tomorrow.”

“We’d be thankful for the help.” Corran allowed her to gently pull him along toward the accommodations she shared with Rhysati. “Given how things are working out, you may be lucky that you’re not going.”

“Don’t say that.” Her voice dropped to near a whisper and a tear formed in the corner of her right eye. “Worse than dying on this mission will be surviving it here. If the mission fails, if you don’t come back, I’ll be left wondering if I could have made a difference.”

“Dying out there might be less emotionally trying, but I don’t think it’s the lesser of two evils here.”

She brushed the tear away. “You’re correct, of course, and I’m being selfish.” Erisi stopped and turned to face him. “Doesn’t it bother you that you don’t even know the name of the world where you could die?”

Actually, I do know the name of the world. Wedge and I are the only ones, though I don’t think that makes this mission any easier. “To be honest, Erisi, I hadn’t given it that much thought. The Imps there want me dead, and I don’t feel too friendly toward them, either. Where we end up fighting isn’t all that important to me.”

“It’s important to me.” She began walking again. Her hand moved up to the inside of his elbow and guided him forward. “If things go badly I thought I would visit or make sure a memorial was raised. I …”

Erisi’s voice broke and Corran felt a shudder run through her. “Hey, Erisi, it’s all going to be fine. Remember when the Commander warned us that we’d never be able to be greater heroes than the folks who have already died in service to Rogue Squadron?”

“Yes,” she sniffed.

“Well, he was wrong. We can be bigger, but only by living longer and doing better than they ever did. As he was saying just now, in those days they fought for survival. We’re fighting for the future. If we do this right, Biggs and the rest won’t be remembered as Rogue Squadron’s greatest heroes, but the predecessors to Rogue Squadron’s greatest heroes.” Corran gave her a strong smile. “I’m planning on sticking around to make that prediction come true.”

Erisi smiled, but the corners of her mouth trembled. “You probably will do that, Corran. I hope it is so. I just wish I knew where the rest of you were going. You aren’t the least bit curious?”

“Maybe for my memoirs, sure.” Corran reached up and wiped tears from her cheeks. “They’ll declassify the operation in fifty years or so—just in time for me to include the location in my autobiography.”

“Even if I had to wait fifty years, I’d have a memorial built for you.” Erisi paused before the open door to her quarters. “Corran, you know Rhysati isn’t going to be coming back here this evening. You can stay here, if you wish.”

“I shouldn’t, Erisi.”

“Are you certain?” The disappointment in her voice twisted into forced levity. “Think of it as a chapter for your memoirs.”

“I have no doubt it would take two chapters.” Corran sighed heavily. “I’m afraid I’d get no sleep. That would kill me. I’d die happy, but I’m afraid our compatriots would not.”

Erisi nodded slowly and looked down. “I understand.”

I’ve got to be insane. I’ve said “no” to one of the most desirable women I’ve ever met. Corran smiled. Of course I’m crazy, I volunteered to go back to Borleias.

“Why the smile?”

Corran stroked her cheek. “I was thinking you’re ample incentive for me to do everything I can to return.”

Erisi leaned down and kissed him on the mouth. “Then if you do not return, I shall feel horrible for the rest of my life.”

“I can’t have that, can I?”

“Certainly not.” She kissed him again, then slowly pulled away from him. “Sleep well tonight, Corran Horn, and fly the best you ever have tomorrow.”

The door to her quarters closed and Corran turned to backtrack to the hallway leading to the billet he shared with Ooryl. Though with Ooryl staying in the med station so they can monitor his arm, I’ll be all alone.

A jolt of fear ran through him and he almost turned around and went back to Erisi. Since his father’s death he had spent a lot of time alone. It wasn’t that they had been in each other’s constant company, but just knowing he could speak with his father, and that his father would understand his problems, meant he didn’t have to face them without help. Unlike most of the folks he knew, he got along well with his father. They had their occasional fights, but nothing that ripped apart the fabric of their relationship. That relationship, strengthened by mutual grief when Corran’s mother died, weathered all adversity and just grew stronger.

They’d always been like paired banthas yoked to the same gravsledge. Together there had been nothing they could not accomplish. He realized that since his father’s death, he’d been trying to go forward as much as possible, but without his father being there, he had a hard time figuring out exactly which way was forward. Gil Bastra had tried to help him out, and had been very effective, but since leaving CorSec, Corran had been without a moral compass. Actually, I’ve had the moral compass, but I was so used to checking it against my father’s feelings on things, that I’m not certain it’s still calibrated correctly.

Deep down he knew his father would have supported his decision to join the Rebellion, but his approval would have been harder to earn. Corran felt fairly certain he could have earned it, too, but death prevented him from knowing his father was still proud of him. He knew his father would have thought the mission to Borleias was stupid and needlessly dangerous, but he would have also been one of the first to volunteer for it.

“I guess, old man, you really aren’t gone.” Corran fingered his medallion. “I’ve got your sense of duty and your good luck charm. Definitely puts me ahead of the game.”

Corran opened the door to his quarters and hit the light switch. He’d already unzipped his flight suit from throat to navel before he noticed the blanket-shrouded lump on Ooryl’s bunk stir. “How did you get in here?”

Mirax sat up and scooped long locks of black hair out of her face. “Your Gand friend let me in.”

“Where did you run into him?”

“Med-station. Coolant pump went in the Skate and flooded the ventilation system. My droid is locking it down, but I got a lungful. He was there and recognized me. The Emdees declared me healthy, but I couldn’t go back to the Skate, and with you staging for an operation, there’s scant free space here. Since he’s staying with the doc droids, he offered me his billet.” She yawned. “I agreed since I assumed you’d be spending the night with the bacta queen.”

Corran blinked at her. “You did?”

“I saw the look she gave you when I showed up on the Reprieve. She could teach the average Hutt a thing or two about possessiveness.”

He didn’t like the smug tone in her voice. “You must have gotten more coolant than you thought.”

“How do you plot that?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Hey, Corran, I’d be the first to say Hal Horn’s boy was smarter than Erisi is pretty.”

“But you thought I’d be with her.”

“Everyone makes mistakes, and you’d have been making one if you’d stayed with her.”

Corran shot Mirax a wry grin. “She’s possessive and you’re, what, being protective?”

“There are only so many of us out here, Corran.” Mirax plucked at the shoulder of her sleeveless tunic. “She wouldn’t be good for you.”

“And who would? You?”

“In your dreams, CorSec.”

The look of surprise on her face coincided with the remark’s sting in his heart. He wouldn’t have thought so automatic a response, tossed off with the speed of a reflex that had been well exercised, could have bothered him. In his previous career he’d heard the same line delivered hundreds of times, with more and less vehemence, by every creature that ever tried to get its mouth around Basic words. He’d shrugged it off without really hearing it more times than he could count.

The surprised expression she wore told him that she hadn’t meant to speak without thinking. She seemed to be second-guessing her comment as much as he was wondering about the effect it had on him. The automatic dismissal hurts because I expected to merit something more than that. And she shot back so sharply because I dared suggest she wouldn’t be better for me than Erisi—and her own reaction surprised her!

Corran crossed over and sat at the foot of Ooryl’s bunk. “Look, Mirax, it’s been a long day and tomorrow is going to be tough. I meant no offense.”

“I know. I was picking on someone in your unit. I’m a little mad at the Thyferrans right now. The price of bacta is going up—they’re blaming an Ashern attack on a processing plant. I used to turn a tidy little profit on shipments, but I can’t raise the money to buy a lot. I’m left running foodstuff and parts, which is not the way to get rich.”

“I wish I could help.”

“Sure you do.” She shook her head, all the while smiling. “If I wanted to kill my father I’d send him a holo and tell him Hal Horn’s son said he wished he could help me make some runs.”

“Somewhere in orbit between Corellia and Selonia my father’s ashes are trying to recoalesce to stop me.” He smiled and patted her blanketed knee. “I do mean it, though.”

“I believe you. Wherever you’re going tomorrow, if you run into anyone on the ground who can sign an exclusive import/export deal, think of me and get it on a datacard.”

“If I’m on the ground tomorrow, the only thing that will get exported is me, and I’ll be exported to Kessel.”

“I’ll make you a deal on the spice you dig up.”

“You’re all heart.”

She drew her knees up and hugged them to her chest. “It’s going to be nasty, is it?”

“About the only thing we have going for us is that they don’t know we’re coming.”

“That’s something, then.” Mirax reached out and touched the medallion he wore. “Is that what I think it is?”

“I don’t know. It was my father’s good luck charm.” Corran took it off and passed it to her, complete with the gold chain. “It’s a coin in a collar that lets me put it on a chain. My father used to keep it in his pocket, but I lose things too easily like that. So what is it that you think it is?”

Mirax turned it over and back in her palm and peered at it closely. “It’s a Jedcred.”

“What?”

She frowned. “Jedcred is what my father used to call them; it comes from Jedi credit. It looks like a coin but was really a commemorative medallion struck when a Corellian Jedi became a Master. A dozen or so would get minted and distributed to family, close friends, the Jedi’s Master, and favored students.”

Corran raised an eyebrow. “How do you know so much about it?”

She smiled sweetly. “Have you forgotten, my dear, that I make my living by bringing that which is ordinarily rare to those who want it? Collectibles like these can fetch a fine price, especially since the Emperor cornered the market on Jedi Knights. How did your father get it?”

“I don’t really know.” He thought for a moment. “I know my grandfather liaised with the Jedi, to coordinate their actions with CorSec and had a good friend among them, but that was back before the Clone Wars. I guess this guy was someone he knew. He did say the only Jedi he knew well died in the Clone Wars.”

She handed it back to him. “I hope it’s a better luck charm for you than it was for the Jedi whose face is on it.”

He refastened it around his neck and relished the sensation of its weight against his breastbone. “You’re not alone in that hope.” He stood and smothered a yawn with his hand. “Sorry, that’s not from talking with you.”

“I know. It’s late and the day’s been exhausting.”

“I’ll get up early to record some messages, but right now I need my sleep.”

“So do I.”

“I’m just going to go over there and lie down.”

“So I imagined.” Mirax lay back down and pulled the blanket up under her chin.

Corran walked over to his bed, sat down, and kicked off his boots. He started to pull off his flight suit but stopped when he noticed she was watching him. “I thought you were going to go to sleep.”

“I am, but I was just wondering …”

“Yes?”

“Do you think you’ll be warm enough tonight?”

Corran peeled his flight suit down to his waist, then snaked it down over the lower half of his body. Her question sounded innocent enough, but the inflection in her voice filled it with all sorts of innuendoes and invitations. Visions of the two of them entwined together in his bed flashed through his mind.

He was tempted. In her arms he could find sanctuary from the loneliness and fear he felt, but what they would be doing he would be doing for himself. That wouldn’t be right.

“Yeah, Mirax, I think I will be warm enough.”

“Oh, good.” Mirax smiled at him as he pulled his sheets over himself. “I just thought I’d ask.”

“Thanks.” He hit the light switch and the room went black.

“Corran?”

“Yes?”

“Are you sure you’ll be warm enough?”

“Quite sure,” he said, regretting each syllable.

“Good.” Mischief shot through her voice. “Then you wouldn’t mind tossing me your spare blanket, would you?”

“Not at all.” He laughed lightly and tossed the blanket from the foot of his bed off into the darkness. “Good night, Ms. Terrik.”

“Sleep tight, Mr. Horn. Tomorrow will be all clear skies and easy shots for you.”

32

Wedge pressed his thumb against the datapad screen offered to him by the Verpine tech, Zraii. “Thanks for getting the auxiliary fuel pods on so quickly. It’s going to mean a lot on this mission.”

The insectoid technician buzzed something at him, prompting Wedge to smile and nod, since he had no idea what the tech was saying. He assumed it had something to do with the ablative sheathes fitted over the nose of the X-wings. It would burn off as they entered Borleias’s atmosphere, giving the snubfighters the appearance of meteorites burning up on entry to observers on the ground. “A very good job, Zraii.”

Over the top of the tech’s head he saw Mirax walk into the hangar with Corran. She gave him a kiss on the cheek, then the pilot ran off toward his own green and white X-wing. Mirax watched him go, pulling a Rebel-issue flight jacket more tightly over her shoulders.

Mirax and Corran? Perhaps opposites do attract. It struck him that their attraction to each other seemed as improbable as that of Princess Leia to Han Solo. The thought caused a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. If they have as many ups and downs as those two …

Mirax walked over to him and watched him through slitted eyes for a second. “Are you borrowing trouble, Wedge?”

“Are you reading my mind?”

“Huh?”

“Nice coat—looks better on you than it does on Corran.”

Mirax smiled, but didn’t blush. “We’re friends. Ooryl offered me his bunk last night and I accepted. Corran and I talked. Nothing happened.” She glanced to the side and noticed Erisi’s approach. “It’s a good thing Corran doesn’t snore—I was able to get some rest.”

Wedge shook his head. “We’re heading out, Mirax. I left a message behind for you and your father, if I don’t make it back.”

“You will, Wedge. You’ve gobbled up the best the Emperor had to offer—no reasons to imagine the crumbs will choke you.” Mirax gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll see if I can find enough paint to be able to decorate your T-65 with the new kills.”

“Thanks, Mirax.” He turned to Erisi. “You have something for me, Ms. Dlarit?”

“Mission Control says Case Green is in effect.”

“Good. We’re clear to go.” Wedge whistled loudly and circled his right hand over his head. The Rogue Squadron pilots looked at him for a second, then pulled themselves into their cockpits. “Sorry you’re not going with us, Ms. Dlarit.”

“Not as sorry as I am. May the Force be with you.”

Wedge smiled. “Thanks. Stay out of danger, the both of you.” He pulled on his helmet and climbed up into the X-wing’s cockpit. He strapped himself into the ejection seat, then punched the ignition sequence into the computer. The engines came up with only a trace of a whine. He closed the cockpit canopy, then glanced behind himself.

“Are you ready, Mynock?”

The R5 unit beeped at him and Wedge projected a trace of fear into the reply’s tremolo. Wouldn’t be a mission if we didn’t feel that way.

“Rogue Leader to Mission Control, requesting liftoff clearance.”

“Control to Rogue Leader, you and your squadron are clear for takeoff. Be strong in the Force. And shoot straight.”

“As ordered, Tycho. See you in ten hours.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

Wedge gave Tycho’s silhouette in the control center’s window a thumbs-up, then he slowly cut in the repulsorlift drive. The X-wing rose from the ground and, with a light foot on the rudder pedals, turned left toward the hangar door. Easing the throttle forward he applied thrust and started out. He let his nose dip a bit to give himself a better view of the area through which he flew, retracted his landing gear, and cruised out into the open.

All around him the golden savannahs of Noquivzor spread out, the long grasses teased by gentle breezes. His ship seemed immune to the wind, just as it was immune to the peace of the planet. Off in the distance brown specks flowed together into a dark flood as a mossy-horned herd of wildernerfs invaded the valley. In one huge tree, the only one visible to Wedge, a pride of taopari waited for the prey to drift closer before they would start their hunt.

Tycho was right—I’m not too old for this game. I have, however, been playing it for far too long. When I get back, I’m going to get out and walk across these plains and drink in a little life, a little peace. He nodded slowly. It’s no good to keep fighting if I allow myself to forget why I’m fighting.

Corran’s voice crackled through the helmet speakers. “Rogue Squadron assembled, sir.”

Wedge brought the nose of his fighter up. “Thank you, Rogue Nine. Full speed to the jumppoint, people. We’ve got an appointment to keep and it won’t do for us to be a minute late.” Wedge punched his throttle full forward, leaving wind-whipped grasses and roiling clouds as the only sign he had been on the planet.

And Noquivzor erased those traces effortlessly.

Mirax shivered and hugged her arms around herself. As she turned away from the hangar opening, she saw Erisi staring ion bolts at her. Now I know why I felt cold. She put her arms through the sleeves of the jacket and pulled it taut at her waist so Corran’s name tape could be read over the breast pocket. “I think they’ll do fine.”

“I know it.” The Thyferran glared at her. “Of course, your antics with Corran could doom the mission. He needed rest.”

“And he got it.” Mirax met Erisi’s stare openly. “Corran and I are friends, nothing more. His father knew my father.”

“His father hunted your father.”

“And got him, so you can rest assured that nothing could develop between us.”

“Good. See that it doesn’t.”

The implied challenge got beneath Mirax’s skin. “And if I don’t?”

Erisi’s blue eyes sparked anger. “You are a smuggler. I have it within my power to see to it that you never are able to handle bacta shipments. I can guarantee that anyone who wants to handle bacta shipments will never deal with you. In short, I can end your career here and now.”

The Thyferran’s expression eased, but the energy in her eyes did not diminish. “Conversely, you can be rewarded for leaving Corran alone. The very influence that I could bring to bear against you can be made to work for you. We can be friends, and you will find that a very good thing.”

Mirax killed the desire to haul off and smack the smug grin from Erisi’s face. She was adrift in space and isn’t on a mission with her squadron—she’s bound to be muddy in her thinking. “I’ll take that under advisement. Even if I felt something more for Corran, well, I make my living selling all sorts of things I might like for myself. In fact, I should be seeing to business right now. If you will excuse me.”

“Of course.” Erisi smiled sweetly, but it failed to cut the venom in her eyes. “We’ll speak again.”

Mirax mirrored her smile, then stalked off toward the Pulsar Skate. She headed up the gang-ramp and sniffed the air for traces of coolant. She smelled nothing, which should have made her happy, but the abbreviated conversation with Erisi left her uneasy. And, she realized, it’s because of more than the imperious way she spoke to me.

Mirax had learned to handle all manner of client attitudes toward her, but that had been easy since it was business, not personal. Erisi was giving her orders concerning her personal life. She even threatened business pressures to make Mirax change her personal life. While what Erisi offered was indeed very tempting, the practical result would be that Mirax would be selling a piece of herself and that was something she had long ago vowed never to do.

She wanted to convince herself that her upset came from the principle of the whole thing, but she couldn’t dismiss the nascent feelings she had for Corran. It wasn’t love—of that she was pretty certain—but it could have moved toward it. At the very least Corran represented something from her past that provided an illusion of constancy to life.

She knew she could have hated him as easily as liked him, and she’d expected more negative feelings for him, but they just weren’t there. In bringing him the ryshcate and the black-market goods she’d expected an angry reaction from him. That would have been reason enough to think poorly of him, but he’d been gracious in accepting the gifts. She’d started to soften toward him that night, which is why she fled.

Mirax admitted to herself that she’d accepted Ooryl’s offer to get another shot at kindling negative feelings. She’d been prepared to sleep with Corran, and hate him in the morning if he’d seduced her with some “and tomorrow I may die” line. The fact that he hadn’t tried to seduce her, and had deftly sidestepped invitations to keep her warm in the night, confirmed what she had known all along—he was a bit more complex than the stereotypical CorSec officer.

She shivered. I don’t need or want involvement with anyone, much less the son of the man who sent my father to Kessel. I also don’t want some bacta queen ordering me around.

Her head came up as she realized her Sullustan pilot had spoken to her. “What?”

Liat Tsayv, the mouse-eared pilot, chittered at her again.

“No, I don’t know where we’re going because I don’t know what we’ll be hauling.”

The Sullustan canted his head to the side and muttered reprovingly.

“Well, for your information, I didn’t sleep with a pilot, and even if I had slept with him, he isn’t the unit’s quartermaster. Have you thought of pulling a unit want list from Emtrey? No?” She pointed at the communications console. “Do it now.”

Liat punched up a comm frequency, then squeaked and squealed through a headset. Mirax hit another button and a holographic list featuring icons and dual buy/sell prices grew up from the holoplate in the middle of the Skate’s cockpit. She scanned the list quickly and saw most of it was military equipment, which was paid for with promises and brought a very low profit margin into the equation. Still, she was willing to bring it in provided she had some high-value cargo to make a run worth her time.

The consumer goods list began and she found it much more promising than the military list. Then some odd products started showing up. “Liat, ask for confirmation on the prices for fifteen through twenty-five inclusive.”

The Sullustan complied with the order, then nodded and rubbed his hands together greedily.

“Damn, this is not good.” Mirax smacked her hands together. “Tell the droid we’ll buy all he has of fifteen through twenty-five. Yes, all.”

Liat chirred angrily.

“I know we can’t fit it all in here. Negotiate an exclusivity contract with him. Give him whatever he wants. A partnership even. Just do it.” She snatched a comlink from the recharging port in the cockpit wall. “When you have it locked, call me. I’ll be out looking for Wedge’s XO. We have a problem, a big problem, and if I can’t head if off, I’ve got friends who are on their way to die.”

33

Wedge keyed his comm as the squadron came out of hyperspace and prepared for the second and final leg of their run into the Pyria system. He adjusted the power output for the comm so the signal would become weak and garbled outside the kilometer sphere in which the ships moved. Even though the comm would scramble the transmission and make it all but impossible for the Empire to decrypt, he wanted to take the further precaution of making the signal all but impossible to pull in.

“This is Rogue Leader. There is one final refinement to our plans that you should know about. There is no system codenamed Phenaru. We’re going back to Blackmoon.” Wedge waited for comments and protests, but only silence came in over his headset. He took that as a vote of confidence in him by his people and that brought a smile to his face.

“The mission as simulated was exact with the following exception—the simulated run through the asteroid belt to get into the planet was based on a run through the canyons on Borleias’s sole moon. We come in to the system behind it, swing around on its surface, and take a direct shot at the nightside of the world. The moon is what will make leaving tough, but coming in it will shield us from unfriendlies on the world. Cometary fragments are causing meteor showers, so planet-based detection stations should have a hard time picking us up. Any questions?”

Bror’s voice growled through the speakers. “You’re saying, Commander, we’re getting another shot at the squints who escaped us last time?”

I was under the impression we were the ones who escaped last time … “That’s about the size of it. And there will be friendlies in the area, but not in fighters and they’ll be mute. Our mission is to hit the conduit and get back out. The fuel limitations are exactly what they were in the simulator.” Wedge hit a button on his console. “Speed and coordinates for the jump to hyperspace sent now. We’ll be three hours to Borleias, so use the time to review the run.”

The squadron went to light speed and Wedge checked his fuel level. Given mission parameters, distance from the moon to target, and expected fuel consumption rates he was in fine shape. On the run from the moon to Borleias he would begin burning fuel directly from the belly pod and begin to use it to refill what little fuel the escape from Noquivzor and the hyperspace jumps had burned from his main tank. The double duty would allow him to drain the pod more quickly and jettison it shortly after the end of the run to the target. The others would be following the same procedure, though the second and third flights would ditch their pods before they began valley runs.

Wedge felt confident his people would succeed in destroying the tunnel. That would allow the commandos, who were arriving in the system from a different direction and at a different time, to get in and do their jobs before Defender Wing arrived. The exact timing of the commando operation had been kept from him, though Ackbar had said that if his people could help, it would be appreciated. He took that to mean the commandos and their arrival would overlap with Rogue Squadron’s operation, but the only help the Rogues could realistically offer would be to scatter the local fighters, and that was something he knew he could not possibly prevent his people from doing anyway.

“We’re good, we’re trained, and we know we have to succeed.” Wedge smiled and brought up a visual simulation of the valley run. “With a little luck and a lot of heart, there’s nothing that can stop us from succeeding.”

“But, Captain Celchu, you must tell me where they are.” Mirax waved a datapad at him. “I think the mission has been compromised.”

Tycho shook his head. “It’s impossible.”

She jerked a thumb at the door to his quarters. “Sure, and the Security officers standing guard over you told me it was impossible for me to speak with you, but I’m here aren’t I?”

“There are degrees of impossible, I guess.” Tycho raked fingers back through brown hair. “The thing of it is that I can’t tell you where they’re off to—I don’t know.”

“How’s that?” Mirax watched him carefully. “You’re the unit’s Executive Officer. You must know.”

“Sorry.”

“Who does know?”

“Here? Emtrey.”

“Get him here.”

“Ms. Terrik, I know you’re a friend of Commander Antilles, and I know he sets great store by you, but …”

Mirax held a hand up. “Look, I wouldn’t be here except that I think their mission has been compromised and they may be walking into a trap. Get the droid here, because I think he’s part of it. I’ll explain by the time he gets here, and if you don’t like the explanation, kick me out and send him on his way. Please. I don’t want your friends and mine to die.”

“All right. Please, sit down.” Tycho fished a comlink from his pocket. “Captain Celchu to Emtrey, please report to my quarters. This is urgent.”

“On my way, Captain.”

Mirax sat in a simple canvas campaign chair and cleared a stack of datacards from the proton torpedo crate Tycho used as a low table. She set her datapad down. “Do you have a holoplate to project data?”

He shook his head and scooped another pile of datacards from the table to the foot of his bed, then sat down beside them. “I’ve got a good imagination. What have you got?”

She glanced at the datapad and organized her thoughts. “Right after they jumped out of this system, I had my pilot pull a trade list from Emtrey. It has a lot of military items and some black market stuff. There were new additions to the normal list and all of those products were native to Alderaan. They’ve become quite rare over the last five years, but all had ridiculously low sell prices.”

Tycho’s blue eyes narrowed. “It’s not like they’re being made anymore.”

“Right.” She leaned forward for emphasis. “Get this—none of them had buy prices. I’ve seen enough people price their goods over the years that this pattern tells me Emtrey has uncovered a source for these materials that means he’s getting them for little or nothing. Now since no one in Rogue Squadron has mentioned finding or recovering some lost trove of Alderaanian goods, and this list is current, I’m thinking the droid is projecting the availability of products following this mission.”

Tycho sat back and scowled. “I can see how you made that assumption, but …”

“Couple it with this: There’s been a rumor floating around about a new source for Alderaanian goods, but the prices have been prohibitively high. I assumed the Empire was releasing stockpiles to soak up credits being held by Alderaanian expatriates, denying the Rebellion a source of needed money. If there is a source, be it an Imperial storehouse or something else, I think Rogue Squadron is headed toward it. And it doesn’t take much brains to see such a place would be a prime target for the Alliance, given how many Alderaanian nomads would love another piece of their world.”

“Count me among their number. Such a storehouse would be an inviting target for a raid, and a logical site for an Imperial trap.” Tycho rubbed his hands over his face and sighed heavily. “This doesn’t look good, does it?”

“I’ve arranged to take all of these items that Emtrey can provide, so the list is clear right now. No one else can get access to it. No one else knows of it, as nearly as I know, so the leak should have stopped there.”

“Still, there is a chance that the information could have gotten out.”

“Exactly.” Mirax popped up out of her chair as the door opened and Emtrey came in.

“Good morning, Captain Celchu, Ms. Terrik. How may I be of service?”

Mirax grabbed the droid’s left arm. “You have to tell me where Rogue Squadron is going.”

“I’m afraid, Ms. Terrik, that information is classified. Neither you nor Captain Celchu are authorized to know that information. To provide it to you would be to compromise …”

“Emtrey, that list you gave me this morning already compromises the location.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

Tycho boosted himself up off the bunk. “Where are you getting the Alderaanian goods you’re offering for sale?”

The droid twitched and the tone of his voice shifted slightly. “If I reveal my sources, you’ll cut in on my action. No way.”

Mirax stared incredulously at the droid, then turned back toward Tycho. “Can you believe this?”

“No, in fact, I can’t.”

“I’m just protecting my profit margin here.”

“Emtrey, this is a matter of life and death.”

“Sure it is, Ms. Terrik, the death of my business.”

Tycho stood abruptly. “Emtrey, shut up.”

The droid looked at him strangely, tilting his head. “I wasn’t saying anything, sir.”

“His voice has changed.”

“I notice.” Tycho’s eyes narrowed. “Shut up.”

“I beg your pardon, sir.”

“Shut up.”

The droid’s arms snapped to its sides so quickly that Mirax lost her grip on him. The clamshell head canted forward, making the droid bow its head until its chin touched its chest. At the top of its neck, previously hidden by the head, Mirax saw a glowing red button.

“What’s going on, Captain?”

Tycho half shrugged. “I’m not certain, really, but the droid is in a wait-state, it seems. I discovered this little trick when I was ferrying him to the Talasea system and we came across your ship. We were in combat and he wouldn’t stop nattering. I ended up yelling at him to shut up and after the third time, this happened. He remains like this until roused. What’s important right now is that until we hit the red button and reset him, he’s little more than a remote with access to all Emtrey’s memories.”

“That’s dangerous for a droid doing military work.”

“It’s not a standard modification for obvious reasons. There are a number of things odd about this droid, not the least of which is the voice shift when you start to press him on requisitions. I can check that later, though. Right now this override should get us what you want. Emtrey, I require the name of the system in which Rogue Squadron will be operating.”

“Pyria system, Borleias, fourth planet, one moon, home to an Imperial fortress and various failed and abandoned industrial and agricultural ventures.” The voice changed slightly. “Location of agro-manufacturing facility for Alderaanian agricultural products with high covert trade value.”

Mirax’s blood ran cold. “Emtrey, the list of products available from that facility—how many people have had access to it?”

“Yours was the only access, Ms. Terrik.”

“Could a copy have been made by a slicer without your knowledge?”

The droid did not reply for a second or two. “Impossible to determine an answer to that question.”

Mirax looked over at Tycho. “The Empire could have been warned. We have to do something.”

“What? If we send a message out it could warn the Empire they’re coming as easily as it warns our people of an ambush.”

“So we go there. I can get us there fast. Maybe even before they arrive.”

“And have our presence tip the Empire about the raid?” Tycho shook his head. “Any comm message could be intercepted, even if we are in-system and try to tight-beam it to them. That’s no good.”

Mirax balled her fists and hammered them against her thighs. “We have to do something. We can’t just sit around and do nothing.”

“Yes, but what we do has to be the right thing.” Tycho slowly smiled and reached for the button on the back of Emtrey’s neck. “And I think I know what it is.”

34

When the squadron reverted to realspace, the dark craggy ball hanging in space before them reduced Borleias to a slender blue-green crescent streaked with white. The moon’s thin atmosphere blurred Borleias’s image, making it beautiful—which was definitely not how Corran had remembered it. Corran inverted his X-wing, then reached up with his right hand to hit the switch that brought his S-foils into attack position. Ahead of him Wedge’s X-wing similarly spread its wings, twisting around and bearing down on the moon.

The X-wings maintained comm silence as they leveled out and skimmed the black lunar surface. Corran brought his snubfighter in behind and to the left of Wedge’s fighter. With their scanners in passive mode to avoid detection, they’d only register threats that had scanners up and seeking targets. As a result visual scanning by pilots and astromech droids became the primary defense against ambush.

“Not that much should be here.” While the simulations had represented this run as threading their way through an asteroid ring around a planet to remain hidden, all the parameters used were taken from Borleias. As nearly as they knew the Imperials had not stationed fighters or remote detection units on the moon. Still, that possibility did exist, so the squadron did all it could to keep their presence a secret.

Volcanic glass teeth lined gaps in crater walls. They reflected scant little starlight, but strange shapes did appear in silhouette against the starfield. Whipping along at near maximum speed in the pitch-darkness of the moon’s nightside did seem reckless and foolish, but no more so than the rest of the mission. They raced through the blackness, heading toward a point on the ever-changing horizon.

When the horizon appeared as a white crown, Wedge’s X-wing pulled up and shot away from the moon. Down on Borleias the moon only appeared to be half full and the Rogues made their approach against the background of the moon’s dark side. They plunged down into Borleias’s gravity well. They let the planet draw them in, but before they hit the outer edges of the planet’s atmosphere, Corran brought his ship around in a looping turn to starboard and inverted to have Borleias’s dark face above him.

Pulling back on the stick, he eased the fighter’s nose into the atmosphere. The ablative shell Zraii had applied to his fighter began to glow red, then came apart in a shower of sparks that momentarily blanketed his cockpit canopy. Once the fiery cloud passed, he pulled back even more on the stick and started a sharper descent into Borleias’s night.

The ablative shell had given his ship the appearance of yet one more of the Versied meteors streaking through the night sky. Corran checked his scanners and had no indication of hostile sensors directed at him. Entry is clean. Glancing at his instruments, he came around to a heading and chopped his speed back so he would reach the rendezvous point exactly on time.

Flipping a switch, he engaged the fuel pod pump so it would start to refill his onboard fuel tank. A red-lined error message scrolled up on his main screen. “Whistler, the T65-AFP pump isn’t working. Is there anything you can do?”

A negative hoot replied to his question.

Corran shrugged. I have to run with the pod a little longer. No big deal.

Suddenly Nawara’s voice crackled over the helmet speakers. “Leader, twelve, repeat one-two, eyeballs coming in from the west, angels ten. On intercept for run. Patrol formation.”

Corran felt his stomach clench. Lucky bastards. He smiled. Or very unlucky.

“Two Flight, Three Flight, pounce on them. Nine, we’re to the deck and in. Are you ready?”

“Telemetry feed started, you are lead.” Corran tightened his grip on the stick and shoved the fighter over into a steep dive. “This is it, Whistler. Keep your domed head down and enjoy the ride.”

Wedge flipped his scanners into active mode and swooped his X-wing into the narrow end of the rift valley. The computer used muted greens to impose holographic highlights on the canopy that corresponded to the terrain outside. Nudging the stick to port and starboard he sliced his craft through the sleeping canyon. He rolled up on his port wing to slip through a narrow passage, then noted that behind him Corran had remained level to make the same run.

“No need to be fancy, Nine.”

“Yes, sir.” Corran’s voice drifted off for a second. “Lead, I have two hostiles coming in behind us.”

Wedge hit a switch on his console. “Power to rear deflector shields.”

“Done.”

“Mynock, bring up data on the trailers.” The monitor flashed images of two TIE starfighters. We should be faster than they are maneuvering through atmosphere here, but I’d rather they weren’t there.

Wedge keyed his comm. “Four, we have two down here. Can you help?”

Bror answered immediately. “Negative, Lead. Our plates are full, and long-range scans indicate squints coming in.”

“Copy, Four.” Wedge frowned. The intervention by Interceptors was not good. If both of the squadrons that showed up at the end of the last battle were to scramble against Rogue Squadron, no one would make it home. But that’s not the objective of this mission—blowing the conduit is.

“Nine, push your speed.”

“As ordered.”

The X-wings came out of the canyon leading into the rift valley. To the right grassy plains stretched out through the darkness. On the left a striated escarpment rose up nearly a thousand meters. Its craggy surface reflected enough moonlight to let Wedge see Corran’s X-wing in silhouette as the fighter drew almost parallel to his port stabilizer. Twenty-five kilometers farther on the valley narrowed again and five kilometers beyond that point lay their target.

Verdant laser bolts sizzled past, splitting the space between the Rebel fighters. Wedge juked up and to the starboard, while Corran’s ship sank out of sight on the left. Rolling his ship and letting it move back toward the center of the valley, he saw one TIE dive, its lasers gouging up great chunks of the valley floor in front of Corran’s jinking X-wing.

Wedge hauled his throttle back to half power and pulled a hard turn to port. Punching the throttle forward again, he rolled the ship onto its right S-foil and yanked it back in another hard turn. Leveling out to the left, he slipped into the aft wash of the TIE that had been on his tail. His finger tightened down on the trigger and scarlet laser fire exploded the Imperial fighter.

“Nine, report.”

“Go, Lead, punch it. I’m coming behind.”

“Status.”

“I’ll be good to go in a second.”

Kicking the X-wing up on the starboard stabilizers, Wedge stabbed his fighter into the narrow northern end of the valley. A brilliant flash of light painted shadows against white rock with skeletal clarity. The X-wing bucked a bit as the explosion’s shock wave caught up with it, but Wedge’s steady hand kept the fighter clear of the canyon walls.

“Nine, what was that?”

“Fuel pod exploding.”

“One more time.”

“Misses on the deck kicked up debris that hit my belly pod and I had a slow leak. I jettisoned it. The tank exploded and the guy behind me got an eyeful.”

Wedge looked at his fuel indicators. His fuel pod was still a quarter full. “Fuel status.”

“I’m okay.”

“How much?”

“Three-quarters.” Anger in Corran’s voice transmuted into resolution. “Enough to do the job.”

“Copy.” One run, then you’re out of here, Corran. You’re into your reserve. Wedge clicked his weapons control over to proton torpedoes. “One klick, arming two.”

“Got it. Armed two. Is that light up there?”

Wedge slowly nodded. “Be alert. Power to forward shields.” Banking hard starboard he brought the fighter around the final turn before the run to the conduit. Yanking the stick to the left he snap-rolled the X-wing level, then hit the right rudder pedal and started the fighter skidding to the left. Laser bolts exploded against his forward shields.

He pulled the trigger, sending two proton torpedos sizzling out, but even as he did so he knew they would miss high. As they exploded against the canyon walls beyond the ferrocrete tunnel, Wedge snapped his repulsorlift drives on and bounced his fighter up and out of the canyon. Jamming his throttle full forward, he hauled back on the stick and shot skyward.

He saw the flashes of two more explosions below him as he rocketed away from Borleias. “Nine, report.”

“Mine went low. That was a Juggernaut assault vehicle down there providing that fire.”

“And it looked like they were reinforcing the conduit.”

“I saw that. I nailed a ferrocrete mixer.”

Wedge checked his scanners. “We have a squadron of Interceptors headed in our direction.”

“What do you want to do? I’m good for another run.”

“Another run would be suicide, Nine, and you don’t have the fuel to play.”

“Sir, I’m good for another run.”

Wedge shook his head. “You’re heading home while you can still get there.”

“No.”

“That’s an order, Nine, not an invitation to debate.” Wedge could feel Corran’s disappointment. It’s exactly what I felt when Luke ordered me out of the trench on the first Death Star run. “Get clear, Corran. You can’t do any more good back there.”

Dejection filled Corran’s voice. “As ordered, sir. What are you going to do?”

“Blowing the conduit is our mission and the others can’t break off to do it.” Wedge Antilles slowly smiled. “What the Imps have set up there will stop almost any pilot. I’m going to remind them that in Rogue Squadron we don’t take just any pilot.”

35

Kirtan Loor fussed with the hem of his tunic and adjusted his cap with a tug on the bill. He wanted to feel confident about his recall to Coruscant, but he did not dare allow himself that indulgence. His mission had been the destruction of Rogue Squadron. While half of it had died at Borleias, the other half lived, with Wedge Antilles and Corran Horn still flying. In fact, the unit had amassed a considerable list of kills while it was his to destroy, so he could not imagine Ysanne Isard would be in a pleasant mood.

He cracked a smile. I cannot imagine her ever being in a good mood.

The door to her office slid open and Kirtan’s smile died. Isard again wore her scarlet Admiral’s uniform, complete with the black armband on her left arm. Her hair had been drawn back and fastened at the nape of her neck with a black clasp. She gestured invitingly, but the mannerly nature of her greeting only played through her hand. Her mismatched eyes prophesied doom, but he thought it might be deferred instead of immediate.

“Please, Agent Loor, do come in. I trust the journey from Borleias was not too tiring.”

He shook his head, doing his best to hide any trace of fatigue. “I apologize for not being here sooner. My original agenda was disrupted, hence the week’s delay in my arrival.”

“I know about it. Another operation demanded some resources that I had planned to use for your return.” She casually waved away concern over the delay—something Kirtan found mildly annoying since she had caused it and his week on Toprawa. “I trust you spent your time on Toprawa well?”

“Well?” Toprawa had been a Rebel transfer point for the stolen data about the first Death Star. As punishment for their complicity in the Rebellion, the population saw its world reduced to a pre-industrial state where banthas were the swiftest form of travel and fire was the highest level of energy production available to the native people. Imperial forces lived in gleaming citadels that remained lit like beacons throughout the night, becoming visible monuments to what the people of Toprawa had lost through their perfidy.

“You studied their suffering, yes?” Her dark brows arrowed together. “You saw what they have become.”

Kirtan swallowed hard. “I have seen, yes. They are wretched and pathetic.”

“And you witnessed one of their festivals?”

He nodded slowly. The “festival” involved a company of stormtroopers driving a cart laden with sacks of grain into the center of a village. To receive the grain the villagers were required to squirm on their bellies, worming their way forward, all the time weeping and wailing lamentations over the Emperor’s death. Food was doled out based on some trooper’s belief in the sincerity of the mourning. Kirtan had no doubt that many of the people had come to believe they truly did regret the Emperor’s death.

“Those people, Agent Loor, conspired with the Emperor’s murderers. They have learned that their actions have consequences, and they regret their past disloyalty.” Her eyes tightened at the corners. “In their previous arrogance they dared believe the Empire was superfluous and could be replaced. Now they know this is not true. All that is good in their lives comes from the Empire. They have been shown the truth and now live for a chance to be allowed back into our brotherhood.”

“I saw. I remember.”

Isard’s harsh expression slackened slightly. “I recall your visual retention rate.”

Toprawa must have been meant as a lesson in contrition. Kirtan raised his chin slightly, exposing his throat. “Madam Director, I regret deeply not having completed my mission.”

“You do?” Isard opened her hands and surprise widened her eyes. “How is it you believe you have failed?”

“You sent me out to destroy Rogue Squadron.” Kirtan’s head twisted slightly to the side. “I have failed to do this.”

“It is true that Rogue Squadron still exists, though for how much longer is in serious debate. The attack on Borleias hurt them badly. Your report made this quite apparent.” She smiled and Kirtan had to suppress a shudder. “More important than that was the information you provided about General Derricote’s private enterprise on Borleias. You could not have hidden it from me, of course, since it was key to the defense that sent the Rebels away without a victory.”

Kirtan Loor bowed his head to her. “I am glad you were pleased.” As he looked back up her expression changed again and it did not speak to anything even approximating pleasure on her part. It also missed mild discomfort by a wide margin, turning his mouth into a desert and his stomach into a home for a Sarlacc.

What did I do? When he swallowed his larynx scraped in his throat as if both were made of stone. What did I fail to do?

“I had expected something more of you, Agent Loor. Can you imagine what that is?”

He shook his head. “I cannot.”

“No, indeed you cannot. And do you know why you cannot?”

“No.”

Her hissed words echoed through the nearly empty chamber. “It is because your imagination has atrophied to the point of lifelessness. Recall, if you will, what Gil Bastra thought of you.”

Kirtan’s face burned. “He felt I relied on my retention of knowledge too much and used it to compensate for a lack of analysis. I remember this, and I have tried to change my ways. I had done an analysis of probable Rebel strategies and I isolated a number of worlds where I felt they would strike after they hit the Hensara system. And I was right, because Borleias was on that list.”

“And how did you come to be at Borleias?”

“You sent me there.”

“I sent you there.” She held her right hand out to her side, then brought the left hand into the same position with a similar gesture. “Therefore you concluded?”

“That your analysis of Rebel strategy paralleled mine, hence you sent me to Borleias.”

She brought her hands together, interlacing her fingers. “You began analysis, found what you thought was corroboration for it, and then, instead of further testing your analysis and this corroborating evidence, you stopped thinking. Consider the utter absurdity of your conclusion.”

“What?”

“Kirtan Loor, are you so simpleminded to assume that if I could predict where the Rebels were going to strike I would send you and you alone to be there and observe their attack? I assure you, I do not think so highly of your martial skills.”

The Sarlacc in his stomach grew restless and began gnawing its way free of his belly. Borleias should have fallen, and did not only because Derricote had hidden resources available to defend it. If she were able to predict where the Rebels would show up, she would have opposed them with significantly greater force and have struck a solid blow against them.

“From the beginning, Agent Loor, the difficulty with the Rebellion has been in locating them. Since the Emperor’s death, they have been able to spread out and diversify their bases, making them more difficult to destroy. Your effort against the base at Talasea was commendable—had Admiral Devlia not been stupid, Rogue Squadron might have been eliminated. The importance of that example, however, is to show you the vast problem we have had in finding the Rebels we want to kill.”

Ysanne Isard clasped her hands at the small of her back. “Borleias is but one of two dozen worlds that provides the Rebels access to the Core worlds and even Imperial Center herself. Defending against those attacks is nearly impossible and utterly ridiculous if one bears in mind that the destruction of the Rebellion is the only way the preservation and restoration of the Empire can take place. This I do have utmost in my mind, and it is this consideration that sent you to Borleias.”

Kirtan concentrated for a moment. The only thing I did at Borleias was discover Derricote’s covert operation. But if she had known about that previously she would have dealt with him herself. “You sent me to spy on General Derricote?”

Isard nodded almost mechanically. “He has skills that are useful to me. The fact that he had managed to repair and make operational the old Alderaanian Biotics facility indicated that his skills had not atrophied. After I received your report I sent for him, and left my own people in charge of Borleias. In fact, he is here, now.”

“My passage was delayed because you used ships meant for me to fetch him away.”

“Very good, Agent Loor. Your report indicated he had the resources needed to resist a casual invitation. The arrival of a Super Star Destroyer proved enough to convince him to join me here. I have my people safeguarding his operation for him, tightening defenses and the like.”

His facility is held hostage against his cooperation. Kirtan closed his eyes for a moment, hoping all the confusion and conflicting thoughts in his mind would sort themselves out.

They did not. He opened his eyes and saw her studying him as a scavenger would study carrion. “Forgive me, Madam Director, but I’ve lost track of your mission for me.”

“Your mission, Agent Loor, is the same as it has always been—destroy Rogue Squadron. The fact that I choose other missions for you from time to time should not deflect you from your primary duty.”

“Then you will be sending me back out into the galaxy to pursue them?”

“No, you will remain here and work with General Derricote.”

Kirtan opened his mouth and started to ask a question, then closed it. He watched her for a moment, then bowed his head. “As you wish, Madam Director.”

“No, as it must be.” She turned away from him and faced the windows that looked out over Imperial City. “There is no need to send you in their pursuit. You see, soon enough, they will be here. And when they are it will be quite the welcome you have prepared for them.”

36

“Get going, Nine. Defend yourself if you can’t run, but get out of here.” Wedge rolled his fighter to give himself a final look at Corran’s X-wing. “You’ve done good.”

The other pilot gave him a thumbs-up. “I’ll be waiting for the rest of you to get outbound.”

“See you then.” Wedge pulled the X-wing back over past vertical and saw the planet descend to fill his canopy. While the four proton torpedoes he and Corran had loosed at the conduit had not destroyed it, the burning ferrocrete mixer did mark the target rather nicely. Knowing surprise had been irrevocably lost, Wedge brought his fighter down in a spiral that put him five kilometers out from the target at just under four klicks altitude.

As Han once told me, “Stealth and subtlety work well, but for making lasting impressions, a blaster does just fine.” He brought his X-wing around on a heading that paralleled the valley, dropped the nose so it pointed at the fire burning in the distance, and started his dive. I definitely want this to be a lasting impression.

Green laser bolts from the Juggernaut vehicle lanced up through the night at him. Mynock whined, but Wedge just dropped the fighter below the line of fire, or bounced up above it, constantly forcing the gunners to adjust their sights up and down or side to side. Shooting at a fighter means you have a lot more movement to account for. Very few land vehicles can dance around this much.

And none of them can do what I have in mind.

The range-to-target indicator on his console scrolled meters off by the hundreds as he dove in on the conduit. A peace washed over him despite the Imperial fire being directed toward him. He knew he wasn’t slipping into some Jedi trance—as much as he admired Luke he knew he’d never master his friend’s mystical skills. The sense of serenity seemed born of a conviction that he had to succeed in destroying the conduit and, more importantly, a lifetime of experience that told him the forces on the ground couldn’t stop him.

One kilometer out from the target, Wedge pulled his throttle back and reversed the engine’s thrust. As the Juggernaut’s laser batteries brought their beams together to burn him from the sky, the X-wing dropped like a rock. In virtual freefall, it hurtled down toward the canyon floor. The Juggernaut’s gunners, perhaps believing they had in fact hit the fighter, or perhaps horrified at its uncontrolled descent, stopped shooting.

Not that it would have mattered. A hundred meters from the ground Wedge clicked in the repulsorlift engines and their whine drowned out Mynock’s terrified scream. The fighter’s fall ended abruptly in a bouncing, bobbing hover barely five meters from the canyon’s sandy floor. Dust billowed up around the X-wing and the lasers in the boxy Juggernaut’s forward turret began to track down. Behind the vehicle, visible in the red and gold light of the burning mixer, stormtroopers and masons began to scatter.

Running his engines to zero thrust, Wedge ruddered the X-wing’s nose in line with the Juggernaut and pulled the trigger on his flight stick. A single proton torpedo jetted out at the assault vehicle. The coruscating blue energy projectile pierced the Juggernaut’s windscreen. It immolated the cockpit crew and melted its way into the vehicle’s main body. There it detonated, swelling the Juggernaut with energy and rounding out its sharp corners before blasting it apart. Armor shrapnel sprayed throughout the area. It made the X-wing’s shields spark for a moment, but through them Wedge could see the aft end of the vehicle tumble back up and over the conduit to fall on the other side.

Its burning hulk silhouetted the conduit.

Wedge thumbed his weapons control over to lasers and pulled the trigger. Using the rudder pedals he rocked the fighter back and forth, peppering construction vehicles and plasteel forms with scarlet energy bolts. Scaffolding collapsed and semifluid ferrocrete oozed from burning forms. Stormtroopers darted back and forth, seeking any cover they could find. He made no attempt to target them specifically—using a starfighter’s weapons to kill an individual was akin to using a lightsaber to trim loose threads from a garment. It would do the job, but there were easier ways that were far more economical.

He switched back to proton torpedoes and armed two. Focusing his aiming reticle on the ferrocrete pipe, he hit the trigger, then punched power to the repulsorlift drives to vault his ship into the air.

The paired torpedoes blasted into and through the conduit in a shower of sparks. Ten meters beyond the pipe itself they exploded, igniting a rogue star right there in the canyon. The shock wave rocked the fighter. It disintegrated the pipe, shearing it off at both ends, then rolled on with such force that it snuffed the fires burning in the vehicles. The canyon walls shook, starting rocks and dust tumbling down. The explosion’s harsh glare gave Wedge one last glance at the complete destruction of the target zone, then the fireball imploded, plunging the canyon into complete darkness.

He allowed himself the hint of a smile. “Conduit’s gone. Now we start working on my objective.”

Wedge punched his throttle full forward and jettisoned his empty fuel pod. “Rogue Leader here. Mission accomplished.”

“Four here, Lead. All eyeballs blinded, all Rogues are safe. Squints and Rogues inbound your position.” Bror’s voice stopped for a moment. “We’ll be there before they are.”

“Time to head home, Rogues. Let’s outrun them.” Wedge brought his fighter around on a course that would link up with the other four fighters in the squadron. “Nine is leading the way out and will report trouble.”

“Negative, Lead.” The anxiety in Nawara’s voice sank like ice through Wedge. “I’ve checked. Nine is nowhere on my forward scan.”

Angry with himself, Corran considered violating Commander Antilles’s order and shadowing him anyway. That thought survived about as long as Peshk had in the first fight for Blackmoon. He’s right. Your fuel reserves are down. He’s given you a mission, and you’re to complete it. Head out and make sure the run is clear.

“Whistler, boost my sensors. I want as complete a picture of the theater here as you can give me. Full threat assessments.”

The astromech droid chirped happily. His first list of fighters showed only three eyeballs left in the dogfight with Rogue Squadron. A full squadron of squints was inbound, but their threat assessments were in decimal points. They were no threat to him, and scant little threat to his squadron mates. While he could not ignore them, there was no reason they would interfere with his run out of the system.

The numbers on two of them climbed slightly higher. “What’s with those two?”

Whistler splashed a tactical display on Corran’s monitor. Two of the squints had broken off to run a flyby and possible intercept on a body moving through the atmosphere. The numbers Whistler used to describe that falling object showed its fall to be controlled, and Corran was fairly certain that little fact would not have been lost upon the TIE pilots.

“Whistler, do you think they’re closing on one of our assault shuttles?”

A crisp note answered him as Whistler tagged the shuttle as the Devonian.

“Yeah, I thought so.” Yanking his stick back to his breastbone, Corran brought the snubfighter over in a big loop. “Page, you’re going to owe me big time for this one.”

The droid tootled at him with low tones.

“Yes, I do know what I’m doing. If I let my dive drive me instead of burning up fuel, we’ll be fine.” Corran eased his throttle back. “And, no, I don’t want you to calculate the odds on this. I’ve never asked for the odds before, and I don’t want them now. Odds only matter when you’re engaged in games of chance, and if Page’s people are going to have any chance, this can’t be a game.”

Corran’s dive was bringing him high, hot, and on an angle at the rear arc for the Interceptors. He focused his attention on the second squint. He couldn’t switch over to proton torpedoes because a target lock would warn them of the threat they faced. If he was going to succeed, he needed things to be fast and that meant the first Interceptor had to die on his first pass.

Just over a kilometer out, Corran pushed his throttle forward and leveled out to come straight in at the Interceptors. A bit more angle and maybe I can get both of them at the same time. He switched his weapon over to lasers and linked them so they would fire in tandem. He dropped his targeting crosshairs on the rear ship and when they flashed green, he pulled the trigger and kept it down.

Four pairs of red energy darts perforated the slant-winged Interceptor. The first hits on the right wing started the ship rolling, then it jinked up into Corran’s line of fire. Four laser bolts converged, puncturing the cockpit and filling the interior of the ship with fire. A roiling explosion blasted the squint apart and forced Corran to roll and dive to avoid the worst of the debris cloud. Snapping back to his previous orientation, he looked up at where the other Interceptor should have been. He didn’t see it, but before he could even begin to wonder if it had somehow died, too, laser fire carved into the strength of his aft shield.

Great, all I need is some Sithspawn hotshot pilot in that squint! He reinforced the aft shield, rolled, then hit the left rudder and slewed his ship around to try to give him an angle on the Interceptor. He couldn’t see it on his forward or rear scope, so he hauled back on the stick and started a climbing loop.

The Interceptor appeared dead-center in his aft scan and again laced his aft shield with green fire.

Who is this clown? Corran came over, rolled up onto the port S-foil, then chopped his throttle back and let the X-wing drop toward the planet. “Whistler, comm to one klick radius. Tell the transport to go to ground as soon as possible because this guy is good. I want room to operate.”

A harsh whistle stung him. A question appeared on his display.

“Yes, of course I’m better. I’m toying with him. Now reinforce those shields and hang on.”

The Interceptor began to close on Corran’s tail. Pulling back on the stick, Corran leveled his ship out and the Interceptor swooped in behind him. The Corellian waited until the Interceptor closed to five hundred meters, then sideslipped his ship to starboard. Hitting hard left rudder and bringing his throttle back up, his X-wing’s nose swung back toward the squint.

Though more maneuverable than their vertically winged predecessors, the Interceptor’s broad wings still gave them yaw problems. The squint’s sideslip came slow and presented Corran with a wonderful target. His first shot hit solidly on the starboard wing, lasing two angry holes in it. The squint began to roll and Corran shot again, but the scarlet bolts shot fore and aft of the ball cockpit.

The Imperial pilot finished the roll and dove. Corran kicked the X-wing up on the port S-foil and dove after the Interceptor. The pilot in front of him let his ship jerk and juke back and forth, but the drag from the damaged wing’s solar panels made all moves to the right quicker and harder to recover from.

Corran dropped his targeting reticle just to starboard of the stricken fighter. The Interceptor drifted to the right and he fired. The lasers took the right wing clean off. The squint immediately whirled off into a flat spin to port, uncontrolled and unrecoverable. Corran pulled up before he saw the Interceptor crash and part of him hoped the pilot had the intelligence to eject before he died.

He glanced at his monitor and angled his ship onto an intercept for the rest of the squadron’s outbound course. “Nine to Rogue Leader, I’m still here.”

He heard plenty of anger pulsing through Wedge’s reply. “You’re supposed to be leading, not following, Nine.”

“Copy, Lead. I was getting clear, but two squints made a run.”

“So you made a run.”

“Avenging General Kre’fey.” Corran figured Wedge would catch the reference and realize the Interceptors were closing on a transport when he picked them off. He looked at his fuel indicator. “Lead, I have a problem.”

“I know, Nine, your astromech just answered an inquiry I sent.”

The Twi’lek’s voice broke into the frequency. “Lead, another dozen squints have launched and are following the wave behind us.”

“Lead, this is Four. Let’s stay. It’s only twenty-two of them.”

“Lead, Five here. I’m game.”

Corran smiled. “Thanks, guys.”

“Quiet. This isn’t a democracy and what we want to do doesn’t matter. We have orders and others are depending on those orders being obeyed.” Static filled the speakers for a moment, then Wedge spoke again. “We do have some leeway in obeying them, though. Change in plans. We’ll go sunside and draw the Imps with us. Nine, you will go in on the dark side and go to ground. The atmosphere is thin, but your life-support equipment can concentrate it enough for you. If you can avoid them, we’ll be back for you.”

“I’ll do my best, Lead.” Corran brought his X-wing into position with the rest of the squadron. “Four, how many did you vape?”

“I got six. You?”

“Three, if we count the one in the canyon.”

“It counts, Nine. Unconventional, but it counts.”

“Thanks, Commander.”

Rhysati broke into the conversation. “What did you do, Nine?”

“It’s complicated. I’ll explain it later.” Even as he pronounced the word “later,” it turned to dust in his mouth. “I’m only at seventeen. You’re plus two on me, Four. I’m going to count the ones I get on the dark side in our contest.”

“I would not have it any other way, Nine.”

Nawara Ven spoke. “Nine, Gavin’s an ace now.”

“Never doubted it for a minute. Good going, kid.” Borleias’s moon loomed large overhead. “Welcome to the club.”

“Ten seconds to break, Rogues. Nine, don’t feel you have to be a hero.”

“Have to be? I’m a Rogue. I thought hero came with the territory.”

“It certainly does, Nine. Break now.”

Corran banked off to the left as the rest of the squadron went right and filled his aft sensor scope. “Later, my friends.”

If there was any reply it didn’t make it over the horizon to him.

Corran throttled back and took the X-wing down close to the lunar surface. He cut off his comm unit and flipped his sensors over to passive mode. “Okay, Whistler, it’s just you and me. Let’s find us a hole to crawl into. No, not one to hide in, but one to ambush out of. The Commander knew as well as we did that this split wouldn’t fool all the Imperial pilots. They’ll come for us eventually. I’ve never had a desire to die alone, and taking a bunch of them along will suit me just fine.”

37

As certain as taxes and as slow as paperwork they come. With his X-wing nestled in a frozen lava tube on the side of a volcano, Corran watched as paired Interceptors flew search patterns over the lunar surface. They’d pushed enough power to their sensors that even with having them focused directly downward, enough energy bled off to register on his passive receptors.

Whistler had detected differences in the energy signatures of each sensor unit and had isolated a dozen different Interceptors. That means ten squints didn’t make it back from their pursuit. Given that the Rogues had only fifteen minutes to play, that’s very good work.

He reached up and tapped the transparisteel at the rear of his cockpit. “Whistler, they’ve been at this search stuff for nearly half an hour. Have you got the solution worked up yet?”

The droid piped a jeer at him.

“Hey, just asking.” Corran started his engines and shunted power to the weapons control. He armed two proton torpedoes. “Ready when you are.”

A countdown clock appeared on his console and slowly started running down. The squints continued their back and forth grid search pattern, moving ever closer to his position. From the second he saw what they were doing he asked Whistler to time the runs. They remained constant for speed and duration, which told Corran the pilots had done exactly what he would have—they programmed the search pattern into their navigational computers and let it run on autopilot.

Which means we know where they’ll be in thirty-five point three seconds. He nodded grimly. I’m dead, but you’ll be dead sooner, and that’s a bit of a victory, to be sure.

It occurred to Corran that he was angry about dying. That emotion seemed, on the surface, to be rather logical, but emotions rarely were. Had someone described his current situation to him and asked him how he’d feel, he would have told them he’d have been scared out of his wits. The fact was, however, that the anger overshadowed the fear.

He took a deep breath and forced himself to relax. Fear and anger aren’t right here. He knew that going out to bring the Interceptors down just so he’d take more of them with him when he died was wrong. He didn’t know if the pilots were clones or volunteers or conscripts or mercenaries—and who they were didn’t really matter. The only reason he had for fighting against them was the same one he’d had for going after the squints down on Borleias.

I want to stop the Empire from taking lives. I’m not an avenger; I’m here to protect others. He smiled. Somehow it seemed right that he, son and grandson of men who protected others in CorSec, had followed them into CorSec and had ended up here, with the Rebellion. His life, his father’s life, his grandfather’s life, had all been devoted to safeguarding others. And now the guys on the ground and Salm’s bomber jocks will get protected.

The timer went to zero.

Corran hit the trigger.

Two proton torpedoes streaked out from the launch tubes on either side of the X-wing. Because they were programmed to reach a certain point at a certain time, Corran did not need a target lock on the pair of squints flying past. A kilometer separated them from the X-wing and the torpedoes went from launch to target in under half a second.

The first torpedo stabbed through the closest Interceptor and detonated. The explosion vaporized the squint, reducing it to its component molecules. The second torpedo actually overshot its target, but went off when it reached its programmed range. The blast crumpled the starboard wing. The Interceptor began to roll through a tight downward spiral, then slammed into a basalt monolith and exploded.

Shoving the throttle forward, Corran held the stick steady as his snubfighter shot from the lava tube. Once clear he hauled back on the stick and climbed. He saw other Interceptors break their search patterns, but none of them immediately moved after him. Their sensors are still oriented toward the ground.

He flipped his weapons controls over to lasers and set them on quad fire. It would slow his overall rate of fire, but a solid hit was a kill and he needed all the help he could get. Inverting the X-wing he took a quick look at the Interceptors as he flew past the volcano’s crater. Spotting a pair of targets moving toward where the first squints had gone down, he rolled the fighter up on the starboard S-foil and came around in a wide curve.

He dove and leveled out in a small valley between the volcano and a meteor crater. Climbing at the last second, he rose up over the broad lunar plain and sent two bursts of laser fire into the belly of a squint. The starfighter obliged him by melting into a metallic fog that instantly condensed and rained down on the moon.

Whistler hooted proudly.

“Darned right, Horn pulls ahead of the bacta boy.” Corkscrewing his ship into a weave, Corran avoided the retribution of the squint’s wingman. He leveled out for a second, then cut the fighter hard right. Ninety degrees from his original track, he leveled out again, then climbed and did a wing-over to port that pointed him straight back at the Interceptor that had tried to stay on his tail. Corran rolled, shot, melted some armor from the squint, and broke hard right again.

He shook his head in response to Whistler’s question. “No, I didn’t think I killed it. Burned him a bit, though.”

Corran rolled the X-wing through inversion and hit the left rudder to again carry himself back across his own trail. Green spears of laser light crisscrossed through the moon’s thin air as the Interceptors converged on his ship. Whistler toted nine up on the monitor and made the closest ones flash red on the screen. Static hissed through Corran’s helmet as occasional hits weakened his shields, but energy shunted from lasers reinforced it quickly enough.

He glanced at his fuel indicator. “As much as we could teach them something about flying, it’s time we change some of the rules here.” He broke left and climbed, then came over, inverted, and pointed his fighter at the volcano’s cone. “We’ll see if these guys are such hot stuff in the place where hot stuff used to spew!”

The astromech droid splashed a message on console.

“Yes, inviting them into the caldera will be fine. The enclosed area will hurt them more than it does me, just like it hurt the TIEs that Wedge nailed on Rachuk.” Corran brought the fighter down into the crater and throttled back to zero thrust. He cut in the repulsorlift engines and powered them up so he hung suspended in the middle of the obsidian arena.

As he pointed the fighter’s nose toward the sky, he glanced at Whistler’s reply to his earlier statement. “Yeah, nine to one odds are hardly fair.”

The X-wing shook violently, as if a titanic child had grabbed it in an invisible fist. Whistler hooted anxiously and Corran felt his stomach turn inside out. Tractor beam! It’s all over.

The astromech droid wailed piteously.

Corran read the message on his console and shook his head. “Hey, it’s not your fault. Your telling me the odds isn’t why they evened them.” He brought his torpedo control up again as the first Interceptors streaked over the lip of the volcano’s crater.

“Sensors forward, Whistler. Time to remind them that trapping a Rogue doesn’t make him dead, just deadlier.”

38

Locked in the silence of hyperspace, Wedge glanced back over his shoulder and frowned. “Are you absolutely certain about the timing on this search pattern thing?”

Mynock spun his head around and bleated imploringly.

“Fine.” The droid’s numbers indicated that a standard Imperial square-klick search pattern would take two and a half standard hours to scour the dark side of the moon. If Corran managed to stay ahead of them and slip over to the light side, then they’d have to search it, too. That means he could still be hiding from them. If not … Wedge glanced at his fighter’s chronometer. If not, they found him a minimum of an hour and a half ago.

Frustration balled Wedge’s hands into fists. He knew they’d done everything they could within mission parameters to help Corran. The first set of ten Interceptors had caught up with them because they had throttled back and waited. The five Rogues had easily dispatched their foes, but the dogfight took them to critical fuel levels. They went to light speed, leaving a dozen squints to hunt for Corran.

At the first transit jump he’d ordered everyone to spend the trip into Noquivzor working up plans to go back and get Corran out. For the past three hours he’d put together a rescue operation and had figured out all sorts of contingencies depending upon what intelligence they could get from Borleias. Defender Wing would not yet have arrived at Borleias by the time the Rogues landed at Noquivzor, but there was an outside chance that Page’s people could have some news and have tapped into the Imperial holonet to deliver it.

That was a long shot, but getting information from the holonet was not. Borleias would certainly have reported being under attack, and that report might contain details that would indicate Corran’s status. The second he reverted to realspace he’d have Emtrey search out the latest information from Borleias. I need to know what to expect when we go back.

His core plan was risky, and he knew Ackbar would never approve it. The mission risks had been pointed out in advance. Corran had volunteered to go. He would be missed, but jeopardizing other people to effect a rescue that probably would not work would be foolish.

As much as he knew Ackbar would be right in pointing all those things out, he also knew he couldn’t abandon one of his people. I’ve lost too many friends to the Empire not to do everything I can to save others. He knew his insistence on Tycho Celchu’s inclusion in Rogue Squadron was just such a rescue. He smiled wryly. And saving him from Salm was tougher than pulling Corran out of Borleias ever will be.

At Noquivzor the Rogues could be refueled and head back out inside a half hour. He assumed their return trip would actually go off in an hour because he recalled that being the minimum amount of time techs needed to put the lasers back in the Forbidden. With Tycho flying the shuttle and the X-wings as escort, they’d be more than a match for the dozen Interceptors in the Borleias system.

Dozen? I’ll bet Corran will leave us half that number.

Wedge sat back for a moment. He realized he thought of Corran as Corran, not Lieutenant Horn. The distance he had placed between himself and Corran had collapsed in on itself. He’d purposely chosen to distance himself from all the new recruits to maintain authority over them. As loose as Rogue Squadron was, that detachment was necessary if they were to follow him.

Even so, he suddenly realized, he had insulated himself from them for his own protection. Having lost so many friends, having felt the pain of their deaths, he had been reluctant to let anyone else get close. Not befriending them meant he could blunt the pain of seeing them die. He regretted Lujayne Forge, Andoorni Hui, and Peshk Vri’syk dying, but he had not been as deeply hurt by their deaths as he had when Biggs or Porkins or Dack had died.

Emotional distance is armor for the heart. That armor was necessary because without it the overwhelming nature of the fight against the Empire would crush him. After seeing how many had been slain, it would have been easy to assume all was for naught. But if we did assume that, the Death Stars would be ravaging planets and the Emperor would still rule the galaxy.

Corran had earned the friendship Wedge felt for him, and not just through his skill in an X-wing. He had taken to heart the things Wedge had told him about becoming part of the unit. Corran had clearly known that to go after the Interceptors closing on an assault shuttle was to be left behind. He had made that choice because it was really no choice at all. The rest of the unit would have made the same choice, too.

And they’ll want to go back to get Corran. By jumping straight from Noquivzor to Borleias, without making a side jump first, they could reach the world in under three hours. Doing that would expose Noquivzor to discovery by Imperial forces, but Wedge expected Page’s people to be giving them other things to think about. Even so, a jump to the outer edge of the Borleias system and then another jump in closer would bring them out of hyperspace from a direction that would hide their point of origin. I hope.

A green button started blinking on the command console. Wedge punched it and hyperspace melted into the Noquivzor system. He immediately keyed his comm. “Rogue Leader to Emtrey.”

“Emtrey here, sir. I have an urgent message for Bror Jace.”

“It’s not as urgent as my orders, Emtrey. Get Zraii set up to refuel us and get techs mounting lasers on the Forbidden. An hour from now, at the most, we’re heading back out.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And contact Intelligence. I want any holonet data coming out of Borleias.”

“Yes, sir.” The droid sounded agitated. “Sir, we do have some information from Borleias.”

“You do?” Wedge’s heart started to pound inside his chest. “What is it? Is it about Corran?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Give it to me.”

“It’s a hologram.”

Wedge frowned. “Have the computer mash it to two dimensions and send it.”

“You may want to wait, sir.”

“Emtrey!”

“Transmitting now, sir, at your request.”

The monitor resolved itself into an image of Corran Horn. Wedge shook his head. What?

“If you’re seeing this, Commander Antilles,” Corran said solemnly, “I know I was left behind …”

39

Corran popped one proton torpedo off and watched the lead Interceptor evaporate. Thumbing his weapons control over to lasers, he started to track the next TIE. The tractor beam limited his ship’s range of motion, but a heavy foot on a rudder pedal started turning him in the right direction. Just a bit more …

The Interceptor exploded as red laser bolts ripped through the cockpit.

Corran looked down at his hand and couldn’t recall having hit the trigger.

More laser fire transformed another TIE into a fireball. What in the Cloak of the Sith?

Whistler started hooting frantically.

Corran hesitated, not comprehending, then flipped his comm unit back on as his fighter began to rise through the volcano, picking up speed.

“… repeat, is your hyperdrive still operational?”

He recognized the voice. “Mirax?”

“Yeah. You ready to get smuggled out of here?”

“Hyperdrive is a go.”

“Key it to my signal.”

“Whistler, do it.”

Corran didn’t afford himself the luxury of looking back at the ship that had tractored his fighter—the forward view had more than enough to entertain him. Borleias’s moon was receding quickly into the starfield, as were the squints. Green lancets of laser fire reached out toward him, but they splashed harmlessly against his shields. His return fire scattered the TIEs and one more fell prey to Skate’s gunner.

Whistler piped a warning at him, then the starfield stretched into columns and they entered hyperspace. A second or two later they came back out again at a point well below the Pyria system’s elliptic plane.

“Corran, bring your fighter around and come up into the hold.”

“Gladly, Skate” He complied with the order and found his twelve-and-a-half-meter-long fighter fit snugly in the hold. He waited for Mirax to repressurize the hold after closing the loading bay doors, then he popped his cockpit canopy open and vaulted from the X-wing. He landed on the deck with a thump, then smiled as the hold hatch opened.

“Permission to come aboard, Captain Terrik.”

“Promise you won’t tell my father?” Mirax smiled and strode boldly across the deck to him. “He’d die if he could see an X-wing with CorSec markings in the belly of his ship.”

“And if my father hadn’t been killed years ago, having my ship here would have gotten him, too.” Corran enfolded Mirax in a hug. “Your secret is safe with me.”

“Likewise, Corran.”

He didn’t let his arms slacken until he felt her hug loosen first. “And I commend you on your shooting. You popped three Interceptors in no time.”

Mirax pulled away from him and pointed toward the hatchway. “He did it, not me.”

The silhouette in the hatchway shrugged. “The Skate is a fairly stable gunnery platform. And the squint pilots weren’t the Empire’s best.”

Pulling off the helmet, Corran crossed the hold and offered the man his hand. “Still and all, Captain Celchu, it was superior shooting.” With skills like that, I can’t imagine why you’re not flying with us. Commander Antilles said not to ask, and now is not the time, but I want to know the answer.

Mirax patted Corran on the back and let her hand linger there for a moment—a sensation he relished. “Come on up to the bridge. We’ll go to hyperspace and get back to Noquivzor before the others do.”

“We will?”

Mirax slapped the nearest bulkhead. “The Skate can push .6 past light speed—not as fast as the Falcon, but definitely better-looking. With our speed we can trim time off the trip back to Noquivzor and fly a course that’s shorter. We’ll beat them by an hour, just as we did getting here.”

Corran frowned. “But how could you get here since no one was supposed to know where here was? Commander Antilles didn’t tell the others until our second jump.”

The smuggler smiled sweetly at him. “Not my fault you talk in your sleep.”

Tycho laughed. “Mirax discovered a possible security breach. We arrived and went to ground on the dark side of the moon. We monitored Borleias control traffic and didn’t notice unusual activity down there, so we maintained comm silence when the squadron arrived.”

Corran sat down across from him. “If you told us you were there you might have alerted the Imperials.”

“Exactly.” Tycho followed Mirax into the Skate’s cockpit and dropped into one of the jumpseats. “Since the squadron was running with weak comm system transmissions, we couldn’t hear what Wedge had planned when he went sunside, but we figured things out from Imperial intercepts—the Verpine droid here has slicing skills that broke the Imp scrambling quite quickly. We stayed hidden when the squints started to search, assuming we’d break and run when they reached the volcano.”

Mirax looked back at Corran. “Then you arrived with them on your tail, we grabbed you and pulled you out.”

Corran chuckled as he strapped himself into the seat. “I thought I was dead.”

“I imagine that is what the rest of the squadron will be thinking when they reach Noquivzor.” Tycho slapped Corran on the knee. “Won’t they be surprised?”

“Yeah, I imagine they will.” Corran’s eyes narrowed. “And I’ve got an idea which means we can have some fun with them.”

Mirax tapped the console and smiled at her Sullustan pilot. “Get us going, Liat, and fast, too. The Pulsar Skate will be the first ship ever to smuggle a man back from the grave, and I mean for us to do it in record time at that.”

40

“… on Borleias’s moon,” Corran’s image continued. “I know the decision to leave me behind wasn’t easy.”

Wedge’s eyes narrowed. “… on Borleias’s moon?” How could he have known? Wait a minute!

“I want you to know I harbor no ill will concerning my abandonment. To prove this to you, I pried some Whyren’s Reserve away from Emtrey and a ryshcate should have finished baking by the time you land.”

“Wahoo!” Gavin’s voice echoed through the comm.

Wedge keyed his comm. “Horn, if you aren’t dead, you will be.”

Corran’s image broke into laughter. “I’m happy to see you, too, Commander. Welcome home.”

Wedge sat back in his chair and held the half-full tumbler up so the light from the center of the recreation room made the amber liquid in it glow. Its chemical warmth, aided and abetted by seeing Corran alive and unhurt, had chased the chilly dread from his belly and melted the stress in his shoulders and neck. Putting his feet up on the table, he actually began to relax for the first time in conscious memory.

In retrospect Corran’s message was rather funny. He watched his green-eyed lieutenant cut the warm ryshcate and hand it out to the other pilots in the squadron. They were all giddy with their success and his survival. Wedge knew they all had been as horrified as he had when the message began to play in their cockpits, but no one was more relieved than he had been when the truth of it was revealed to them.

As jokes go, Corran, it was good. You’ll pay for it, of course, but it was good.

Wedge glanced sidelong at Tycho. “I can’t believe you let him send that message.”

The Alderaanian shrugged. “The shocked expression on your face was even better than I imagined it would be.”

“I won’t forget that, Captain Celchu.”

“Besides, I can’t wait to see how you’re going to get back at Corran.” Tycho took a swallow of his lum. “I trust you’ll make it good.”

“You can be assured of that.” Wedge sipped a little more whiskey and let it sit on his tongue for a moment. Sucking air in through slightly parted lips let the crisp, woody aroma fill his head, then he swallowed and smiled. “Corran comes back from the dead and I understand you were resurrected, too. Three squints?”

Tycho nodded solemnly. “Two were at point-blank range—Emtrey could have shot them. The third was at range—decent shot.”

“Of course, the Alliance Security team is a bit upset at having been detained in your quarters.”

“No, they weren’t very happy when we took them prisoner.” His Executive Officer winced. “The problem was we had a possible security leak, but explaining everything we would have had to explain would have made it impossible for us to get to Borleias in time to warn you, if that’s what we needed to do.”

“Easier to ask forgiveness than permission.” Wedge chuckled. “I was planning the same sort of thing for the return trip to Borleias. You’ve got the security problem under control?”

“I think so. Locking this thing down will mean a lot of time being spent with Emtrey.”

“Put Corran on it.”

Tycho shook his head. “Eew, that’s nastier than even I assumed you’d be.”

“Well, leading a unit isn’t a young man’s game, after all.” Wedge swung his feet to the floor and set his tumbler on the table as Corran approached with two pieces of ryshcate. “Smells good.”

“Mirax made it.” Corran handed the other piece to Tycho. “Corellians use it for celebrations.”

Wedge hefted his piece of the sweetcake. “Getting you back from Borleias is worthy of celebration, as is having the Alliance’s hottest new pilot being a member of the squadron.”

Corran looked surprised. “Me?”

“No.” Wedge smiled past him at the man arriving late to the celebration. “Congratulations, Bror Jace. The trio of kills you got on the Interceptors following us out of the Pyria system puts you at twenty-two kills. You beat Lieutenant Horn by one.”

The Thyferran beamed, his blue eyes alive with pride. “Thank you, Commander.” He glanced down for a second, then accepted a piece of the cake from Mirax. “This is good news and helps offset what I have just heard.”

Wedge set his cake down next to the glass of whiskey. “And that is?”

“The message waiting for me was from Thyferra. My great uncle, our patriarch, is dying. The Emdees give him two weeks at best. Even bacta cannot cure old age.”

“I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Jace, Bror.” Wedge glanced at his XO. “Tycho, can you …?”

“No problem, Wedge.” Tycho stood up. “Compassion leave won’t work, but if we send our pilot home on a recruiting run, I think the diplomatic corps will back us up. You’ll be on your way as soon as you can pack your X-wing, Mr. Jace.”

“Thank you.”

Corran offered Bror his hand. “I’m sorry to know your uncle is ill. I’m also sorry to lose to you, but I’m not sorry about how well you did.”

“Nor I about your performance.” Bror pumped Corran’s hand. “I would give you another chance at such a contest, but I do not want even the slightest hint of division within this squadron.”

“I concur.” Corran nabbed a small piece of cake from the serving tray on the table and popped it into his mouth.

Everyone followed Corran’s lead and as he chewed, just for a second, Wedge felt himself back on Yavin 4, catching a hasty last meal before he and his friends went off to attack the Death Star. He knew it wasn’t the taste of the ryshcate that brought the memory back—on Yavin 4 there had been no time and no ingredients to create something so indulgent. No, it’s the sense of unity that takes me back. The core spirit, it was there before Rogue Squadron was ever formed. It was the squadron’s soul and it’s still here. This is Rogue Squadron, not reborn, just continuing as it should.

“I’d like to offer a toast, my friends, if I may.” Wedge raised his glass and the others joined him. “To Rogue Squadron, to the friends we’ve lost, the battles we’ve fought, and the utter fear our return will bring to our enemies.”

Epilogue

Kirtan Loor dropped to one knee before Ysanne Isard’s life-size hologram. “Please forgive my disturbing you, Madam Director, but you said you wanted to be informed immediately on any developments.”

She frowned impatiently at him. “I have seen General Derricote’s requisition request for more Gamorreans. Has there been a breakthrough?”

“I am not certain.”

“But you approved the request.”

“Yes, Madam Director.” Even though she was projecting her image from her tower office nearly three kilometers above and away from his cramped workspace, the distance did not insulate him from her ire. Somehow her eyes seem to project venom through the holonet. “You will forgive me, Madam Director, but General Derricote is still upset about the loss of his facility on Borleias. He said you promised him it would be returned to him if he completed his work within your parameters.”

“And so it shall. The Alliance stewardship of Borleias will be of little consequence in the grand scheme of things.” Isard’s image stared hard at him. “So, there is no breakthrough with Derricote?”

“None to my knowledge, Madam Director.”

“Then what would have prompted your call to me, Agent Loor?”

“Our agent in Rogue Squadron has provided us with some useful information. Rogue Squadron will be moving to Borleias and the base will become a major staging operation for a move Coreward.”

Isard tapped her teeth with a fingernail. “This was not unanticipated.”

“It was also reported that the best of the new pilots, Bror Jace, will be returning to Thyferra to visit his family.” Loor reached back and pulled a datapad from his desk and glanced at it. “Given the precarious balance of loyalists and Rebel sympathizers on Thyferra, it seems to me that having a hero of the Rebellion visit will not be a good thing. Since his course of travel has been communicated to us, I have prepared orders for the Interdictor cruiser Black Asp to intercept and destroy him.”

“Very good thinking, Agent Loor.” Isard nodded slowly, her eyes focusing distantly. “Amend the orders to have him taken alive if possible. I have a facility that is most successful in convincing ardent Rebels they really should be on our side. I have room at Lusankya for this Jace. He will prove very useful in the future.”

“I have the intercept set for a system where enough smuggling goes on that the Black Asp’s presence makes sense. An increase in general interception activities will hide our foreknowledge of Jace’s course.”

The ruler of Coruscant looked quizzically at him. “Do you truly think so?”

“I do not follow your meaning.”

“Don’t you think your Corran Horn will be suspicious?”

He thought for a moment, then bowed his head. “He will be, but he is not so single-minded that he cannot be distracted.”

“That concurs with my reading of his datafile.” She smiled slightly. “But it would take information of sufficient import to distract him, yes?”

“Yes, Madam Director.”

“Good.” She clasped her hands behind her back. “I have let slip the information that you killed Gil Bastra.”

“What?!”

“And it includes data that suggests you are, in fact, here on Imperial Center.”

Kirtan’s jaw dropped. He’d seen Horn angry more than once, and knew the man to be relentless in pursuit of those who had slain other members of CorSec. Horn had even found a way to capture his father’s killer, the Trandoshan bounty hunter Bossk. Kirtan had taken great delight in releasing Bossk, citing the Trandoshan lack of manual dexterity to explain why Hal Horn had been killed in a spray of blaster fire meant to kill the smuggler to whom he was speaking. Since Bossk was working under a valid Imperial warrant, Hal Horn’s death was an unfortunate bit of collateral casualty.

“Madam Director, didn’t you say the Rogues would be coming here, to Imperial Center?”

“Indeed, I believe I did.” Her smile grew. “And I believe my prediction will be proven true.”

“Then Horn will come here.”

“And will be looking for you.” Isard licked her lips. “More distraction from his main mission for Lieutenant Horn, and more motivation for you to succeed in Rogue Squadron’s destruction.”

In this case I’m not sure those ends justify the means at all. “I see, Madam Director.”

“I’m sure you do, Agent Loor. Spare me future reports about General Derricote’s tantrums. I want results, and I want them to be successful results.”

“As you will it, Madam Director,” he found himself saying in the darkness resulting from her termination of the communication.

He rocked back and sat on the floor. For a half a second he longed for a return to the days when he and Horn were adversaries at CorSec. They had hated each other, especially after the Bossk incident, but the tension had not yet become lethal. Then he realized he harbored no real fear of Corran Horn’s retribution. His success would mean release from her clutches. If he knew that, of course, Horn would find a way to clone me, so he could have the pleasure of killing me and forcing me to work for Ysanne Isard forever!

“Yes, he could be that cruel, but he would hold himself back. Therein is his weakness.” Kirtan Loor grabbed the edge of his desk and pulled himself upright. “Here on Imperial Center, in Isard’s domain, I have neither the compunction nor need to restrain myself. Do come to Coruscant, Corran. Bring your friends and your hidden enemy with you. Imperial City is undoubtedly the last place you ever thought you’d visit, and I will do all I can to make certain it is the last place you visit.”

DEDICATION

To George Lucas

The universe he created is so vital and magical that I remember not only when and where I first saw the film, but when and where I first saw the trailer for the film. If someone had told me then I’d be writing in that universe now, I’d have told them they were insane.

Once again, Mr. Lucas, you make dreams come true.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank the following people for their various contributions to this book:

Janna Silverstein, Tom Dupree, and Ricia Mainhardt for getting me into this mess;

Sue Rostoni and Lucy Autrey Wilson for making it so easy to work in this universe;

Kevin J. Anderson, Timothy Zahn, Kathy Tyers, Bill Smith, Bill Slavicsek, Peter Schweighofer, Michael Kogge, and Dave Wolverton for the material they created and the advice they offered;

Lawrence Holland and Edward Kilham for the X-Wing and Tie Fighter computer games;

Chris Taylor for pointing out to me which ship Tycho was flying in Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi;

My parents, my sister Kerin, my brother Patrick and his wife Joy for their encouragement (and endless efforts to face my other books out on bookstore shelves);

Dennis L. McKiernan, Jennifer Roberson, and especially Elizabeth T. Danforth for listening to bits of this story as it was being written and enduring such abuse with smiles and a supportive manner.

STAR WARS: WEDGE’S GAMBLE
A Bantam Spectra Book / June 1996

SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of
Bantam Books,
a division of Random House, Inc.

®, ™, & © 1996 by Lucasfilm Ltd.
All rights reserved. Used under authorization.
Cover art by Paul Youll.
Copyright © 1996 Lucasfilm Ltd.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: Bantam Books.

eISBN: 978-0-307-79622-6

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

v3.1

Contents

Master - Table of Contents

Wedge’s Gamble

Title Page

Copyright

Dramatis Personae

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46

Epilogue

Dedication

Acknowledgments

DRAMATIS PERSONAE
ROGUE SQUADRON

COMMANDER WEDGE ANTILLES (human male from Corellia)

CAPTAIN TYCHO CELCHU (human male from Alderaan)

CAPTAIN ARIL NUNB (Sullustan female from Sullust)

LIEUTENANT CORRAN HORN (human male from Corellia)

LIEUTENANT PASH CRACKEN (human male from Contruum)

OORYL QRYGG (Gand male from Gand)

NAWARA VEN (Twi’lek male from Ryloth)

RHYSATI YNR (human female from Bespin)

ERISI DLARIT (human female from Thy ferra)

GAVIN DARKLIGHTER (human male from Tatooine)

RIV SHIEL (Shistavanen male from Uvena III)

ZRAII (Verpine male from Roche G42)

M-3PO (Emtrey; protocol and regulations droid)

WHISTLER (Corran’s R2 astromech)

MYNOCK (Wedge’s R5 astromech)

ALLIANCE MILITARY

ADMIRAL ACKBAR (Mon Calamari male from Mon Calamari)

ALLIANCE INTELLIGENCE

GENERAL AIREN CRACKEN (human male from Contruum)

IELLA WESSIRI (human female from Corellia)

WINTER (human female from Alderaan)

CITIZENS ON CORUSCANT

ASYR SEI’LAR (Bothan female from Bothawui)

INYRI FORGE (human female from Kessel)

FLIRY VORRU (human male from Corellia)

ZEKKA THYNE (human/alien male from Corellia)

CREW OF THE PULSAR SKATE

MIRAX TERRIK (human female from Corellia)

LIAT TSAYV (Sullustan male from Sullust)

IMPERIAL FORCES

YSANNE ISARD, DIRECTOR OF IMPERIAL INTELLIGENCE (human female from Coruscant)

KIRTAN LOOR, INTELLIGENCE AGENT (human male from Churba)

GENERAL EVIR DERRICOTE (human male from Kalla)

1

Even before his X-wing’s sensors had time to scan and identify the new ship, Corran Horn knew it was trouble. That knowledge was not based on the ship’s unscheduled, unannounced reversion to realspace in the Pyria system. In the month since the Rebel Alliance took the planet Borleias from the Empire, more ships than Corran cared to remember had popped in for a quick survey of the place. Some were on diplomatic missions from worlds that had already joined the New Republic coming to inspect the latest conquest of their forces. Other ships had been sent by the rulers of planets who wanted to separate fact from propaganda before they decided if they wanted to shift allegiances in the galactic civil war.

Still others had been Imperial vessels on reconnaissance missions, and a goodly proportion of the rest were Alliance ships with legitimate business in the system. All of them had to be checked out, and the hostiles discouraged, but the patrols had produced no serious incidents or fatalities. This spawned a complacency among the pilots that was not conducive to long life, but even Corran had found it hard to keep his edge when no serious threats presented themselves.

The new ship’s arrival slashed away his peace of mind like a vibroblade. The sensors reported a modified freight cruiser that had started life as a Rendili Star Drive ship—not in the Neutron Star-class of bulk cruiser, but something roughly a quarter that size. That in no way made it remarkable or unusual—dozens of ships built on the same design had been through the system since its conquest. The name, Vengeance Derra IV, followed the naming convention common among New Republic ships of recalling some event in the course of the civil war. It had even entered the system on the course and at the speed the Rebels had dictated for freighter traffic.

Still, something is not right here. During his brief career with the Corellian Security Force, hunting down smugglers and other criminals, he’d learned to trust his gut feelings about things. His father, Hal, and even his grandfather—both CorSec officers themselves—had encouraged him to follow his instincts in dangerous situations. The sensation frustrated him with its elusiveness, as if it were no more tangible than the faint scent of a flower teasing his nose and defying identification.

It’s enough that I know something is odd. Exactly what isn’t important at this point. Corran keyed his comm unit. “Rogue Nine to Champion Five, you handle the challenge. Wait here with Six. I’m going to go out and do a flyby.”

“I copy, Nine, but we are supposed to expedite all shipping in this area. They aren’t in the challenge zone yet.”

“Humor me, Five.”

“As ordered, Nine.”

The system patrols had been broken up to cover four zones around the planet of Borleias. The plane of the ecliptic split the system up and down, with sun side and out splitting it core and rim. Corran and two Y-wing pilots from General Salm’s Defender Wing had up-and-out, which was by far the busiest sector because the planet’s moon had moved out of it and sunward two days previously.

“Whistler, see what you can do about boosting our sensors to pick up any anomalous readings from that freighter.”

The green and white R2 astromech blatted harshly at him.

“Yes, fine, there’s likely to be lots of things wrong with that freighter.” Corran frowned as he nudged his throttle forward and the X-wing started off toward the freighter. “I was thinking about inappropriate weapons or other odd things.”

As Corran’s fighter came in closer he began to get a visual feed on the ship. All of 150 meters long, it had the gentle curves of smaller ships, or the larger Mon Calamari warships. The bridge was a bulge on the top of the bow that tapered back and down into a slender midship. Two thirds of the way back toward the stern the ship’s body flared out again to accommodate the star drives. A communications array sat right behind the bridge, and quad laser turrets bristled off the bow and in a ring around the middle of the ship.

Whistler splashed a report on the ship onto Corran’s primary monitor. It was a Rendili Star Drive’s design, from the Dwarf Star-class of freighter. It shipped roughly fifteen hundred metric tons of equipment, ran with a crew of four hundred, and had nine quad lasers as well as one tractor beam that could be used to pull salvage into the belly storage area. The guns and carrying capacity made it a favorite for short-haul traders who were willing to work in areas of the galaxy where authority had broken down, or Imperial entanglements could be a problem.

“Champion Five here, Rogue Nine.”

“Go ahead, Five.”

“I challenged the Vengeance and it answered with a code that is good.”

That surprised Corran because he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong with the ship. “Did they get it on the first try?”

Five’s comm unit didn’t filter the surprise out of his voice. “No, second pass. Why?”

“I’ll tell you later. Stay where you are, but get someone to lift from Borleias in an assault shuttle. You and Six be ready for trouble.”

“As ordered, Nine.”

Whistler chirped an inquiry at Corran.

“Yes, I think it’s exactly like the doubletaker case.” Back on Corellia he and his partner, Iella Wessiri, had investigated a series of burglaries where things had been stolen from houses, but there were no signs of forced entry. All of the security systems were manufactured by different companies, and installed and monitored by different agencies. The key to cracking the case was that the ROMs used in the security systems all came from the same manufacturer. An employee had sliced the code that got burned into the chips so when a particular password was used on the locks, the system would spit out the correct password. On the second try the thief would enter the correct code, get in, and rob the place.

The Y-wing fighters the Alliance used were old, but still vital, and most of them were a patchwork of new and old systems. Spare parts were not easy to come by, and whatever were available were used quickly to keep the fighters in service. It was conceivable that a sensor/comm unit integrator had been fitted with odd chips that gave away codes when checking them. Arranging for such things would not be beyond the Empire’s Director of Intelligence, Ysanne Isard, especially if it would help prevent the Rebel Alliance from taking Coruscant away from her.

Corran punched his comm unit over to the frequency the freighter was using. “Vengeance Derra IV, this is Lieutenant Corran Horn of Rogue Squadron. Stop now. Stand by for boarding.”

The freighter did not even slow, much less stop. “Is there a problem, Lieutenant?”

Corran shifted the targeting crosshairs of his heads-up display over to lead the freighter, then sent a quad burst of red laser fire across the ship’s bow. “Vengeance, stand by for boarding. There will only be a problem if you make one.”

“Standing by.”

The freighter began to roll to port, exposing its top toward Corran’s ship. Not good. “Five and Six, prepare proton torpedoes. Link fire and lock on the freighter.”

“Nine, they’ve done nothing.”

“Yet, Five, yet.”

Swinging up and around from the belly of Vengeance, four TIE starfighters raced in toward Corran’s X-wing. Without waiting for them to start shooting, he slapped the stick to the right and brought the fighter up onto its starboard S-foil. The TIEs started their own turns to port and began to dive, anticipating his escape maneuver. Corran punched his left foot on the etheric rudder pedal, skidding the stern of his ship to starboard, then shot off straight in the opposite direction from his pursuit.

“Nine, we have two TIE bombers deployed.”

“Five, fire on the Vengeance, then take the dupes. I’ve got the eyeballs. Let Borleias base know we have trouble.” He knew the Y-wings would have little trouble outflying the dupes—pilot slang for the double-hulled bombers. If he could keep the TIEs occupied, they wouldn’t be in any position to harass the Y-wings. If the missiles the Y-wings launched at Vengeance were enough to take down the forward shields, the freighter’s captain would have to think about running, which would distract the TIE pilots, since without him, they were stuck in the Pyria system.

Lots of ifs there. Time to make some of them certainties. He used a snap-roll to bring the fighter up on the starboard stabilizer again, then dove into a long loop that took him down to where Vengeance’s bulk hid him from the TIEs. Rolling his ship and applying some rudder, he arrowed straight in at the freighter. This put him in position to watch as the quartet of proton torpedoes launched by the Y-wings nailed the ship’s bow. Each missile exploded against the shields like a star going nova.

The astromech droid whistled up a requiem for Vengeance’s bow shield.

Corran tightened on the trigger and sent a quad burst of fire toward the ship’s bridge. Without waiting to see if it hit or did damage, he barrel-rolled to port, moving toward the middle of the freighter, and pulled back on the stick to bring the fighter’s nose up. His targeting crosshairs hung just above the horizon of the freighter’s hull.

A TIE starfighter, shying from the series of explosions against the forward shield, streaked over the freighter’s edge and right into his sights. Corran triggered a quad shot that caught the eyeball on the port side quadanium steel armored solar panel, slicing the hexagon into a dozen or more pieces. A secondary explosion suggested a failure in one of the ion engines that the fighter’s subsequent careening off through space confirmed.

Corran rolled up on the left stabilizer foil and drifted to port for a heartbeat before snapping over onto the starboard S-foil and hauling back on the stick. The maneuver allowed him to evade the fire coming in from Vengeance’s lasers. It also put him on the vector the TIE had used coming in over the freighter’s hull. Adding a bit more to the starboard roll and pulling back on stick again took him out past the ship’s damaged bow and let him swoop in on the tail of another TIE.

The eyeball broke back left, but Corran rolled his ship through a corkscrew that kept him on target. He fired twice. The first quad shot missed, but the second tagged the ball cockpit full on. The lasers blew through the engine, then an explosion ripped the fighter apart. Corran dove into and flew through the expanding ball of incandescent gas, then rolled and dove again.

“Five, report.”

“One dupe dead, one sleeping.”

Corran laughed aloud. “Nice shooting, Five. Good thinking.” The Y-wing pilots had shown the presence of mind to engage one of the bombers while using their ion cannons. The weapons were inferior in power to lasers, but they had the advantage of knocking out a ship’s electronics by overloading the electrical system. The ion cannons could render a ship inoperable, allowing the pilot to be picked up later.

Chances are, though, this Imp pilot will kill himself to avoid capture. Still, the ship might teach us something.

“Nine, the freighter is turning to run. Do you want help with the eyeballs?”

“Negative, Five.”

Whistler scolded him with a harsh blatty sound.

“It’s not that I think I’m that good, Whistler, it’s that I know they aren’t.” Refusing assistance to deal with enemies that outnumber you was usually ascribed to unending egotism or terminal stupidity, but Corran had a third reason in mind. The Y-wing pilots, while enthusiastic and decently trained, were insufficiently experienced in dogfighting to be much help to him. If they entered the fight, he’d have to worry about hitting them. Without their intervention, his only possible targets were Imperial ships, and that fact gave him some freedom.

“Nine, we’ll take Vengeance.”

“Negative, Five, definitely negative.” If they go in on the freighter it will pick them apart. “Hang off there and try for torp locks on the TIEs.”

Glancing at his sensor displays, he marked the positions of the Y-wings, then rolled his ship and dove. Angry green laser bolts slashed through the blackness in front of him, but neither of the TIEs’ shots hit. The sensors reported the last two eyeballs had just pulled through a crisscross maneuver and were looping up and around to make another pass on him. That told him the last two pilots were good enough to have survived more than one fight in their ships.

They rolled through their double-helix maneuver and Corran shot through the center of their spiral. Rolling out to the right he cut in front of one, inviting a hastily snapped shot. The TIE pilot took it, splashing lasers against the X-wing’s aft shield. Ignoring Whistler’s shrill shriek, Corran reinforced the rear shield, then rolled and began a dive.

The eyeball rolled and started after him. Corran chopped his throttle back, then rolled and dove sharply. He remained in the dive for a couple of seconds, then rolled again and climbed. Rolling back out onto his original course, he popped in behind the TIE that had previously been on his tail and took a shot of his own.

The eyeball juked at the last second, so the four laser bolts only clipped the top of one of the solar panels. The TIE starfighter began to whirl away, but it never exploded. Damaged as the ship was, it would be an easy target to follow and finish, but the last TIE sprayed laser fire against the X-wing’s shields, giving Corran a more immediate threat to deal with.

Because it was coming in from the left, Corran rolled right, then cruised down through a diving turn that aimed him back along its inbound course. The TIE looped up, then rolled and came down through an inverse loop to cut across Corran’s tail. Corran let the X-wing sideslip right, but not before the eyeball had taken a shot at him. Whistler screamed, then a bank of lights started flashing on the fighter’s command console.

Sithspawn! My shields are down. Corran stomped on the right rudder pedal, swinging the X-wing’s nose in that direction, then rolled up on the port stabilizer and pulled back on the stick. As the ship started to climb, another snap-roll to the left broke it off at right angles to the climb and away from pursuit. “Whistler, get the shields back up, fast.”

A counter appeared on his main screen and began counting down from one and a half minutes.

“Not good, not good at all.”

The major advantage an X-wing had over a TIE starfighter was shields. The two fighters matched each other in speed and the TIE actually had the edge in maneuverability. Shields allowed the X-wings to survive more hits during a fight, and in dogfighting, the goal was surviving to the end and beyond. Corran felt he could outfly the TIE pilot, but engaging in combat while naked was not something that made him feel at all confident.

He punched the throttle to full and pushed the fighter through a series of twists and loops that carried it away from the TIE, but no closer to the Y-wings. Time seemed to be passing very slowly to Corran, with each second on the counter seeming to take a minute to click off. The TIE pilot seemed content to circle around, trying to close with Corran, then he broke off and streaked in toward the Y-wings, coming up from beneath them.

“Heads up, Five. Invert, you have incoming.”

The Y-wings executed the flip in good order as Corran allocated power that would have normally gone to shields over to propulsion. That provided him a bit more speed, which let him close the gap with the eyeball.

“Nine, I have missile lock.”

“Shoot, Six, shoot.”

The Y-wing let a proton torpedo go at point-blank range, but it shot past the eyeball and would have hit the X-wing had Corran not rolled fast. “Break outside, Champions!”

The Y-wing pilots complied with Corran’s order, but did so slowly. The TIE spun in on Champion Five, pouring verdant laser bolts into its shields. The Y-wing pilot continued his roll and dive, and the TIE corrected to follow him, allowing himself to fly a level arc as he pursued his quarry.

You’re mine, now. Corran eased back on his stick, millimeter by millimeter centering the Imperial fighter on his targeting crosshairs.

Whistler shrilled a warning.

Behind me? Who? He glanced at his sensors and saw the other TIE closing in on him and he wanted to break away. Can’t, Five is history if I do.

Corran hit his trigger, tracking ruby energy darts along the TIE’s flight path. Even as he saw the lasers hit the eyeball’s wings and cockpit, he braced for the other TIE’s lasers burning through his ship. He saw his target explode and knew, as green laser bolts scythed down toward his ship, he was a dead man.

He prepared himself for nothingness.

He was not wholly disappointed.

Nothing happened.

Corran rolled left and climbed. “Find him, Whistler.”

The droid gave back a negative report.

“What about Vengeance?”

Whistler reported it had gone to lightspeed.

At least we’re clear there. Corran felt a shiver run down his spine. His left hand rose up and, through the fabric of his flight suit, touched a gold medallion he wore. It appears all my luck has not run out.

“Five, Six, what happened to the other eyeball?”

“I got him, Nine.”

“With what, Six?”

“The missile I launched.”

It took Corran a second to make sense of the reply, then he remembered the missile that had almost hit him as he had come in on the TIE starfighter. “Six, you were aiming at the second TIE?”

“Yes, sir, Lieutenant. Did I do something wrong?”

Corran wanted to yell at him about choosing targets that have a higher threat factor—by virtue of being closer and, therefore, more likely to hit their target—but he stopped before he gave in to temptation. “Not wrong, Six, but it could have been more right.”

“Yes, sir,” came a sheepish reply that remained full of nervous energy. “Next time, sir.”

“Yeah, at least we can all be thankful there will be a next time.”

Whistler tootled triumphantly as the X-wing’s shields came back up.

Corran smiled. “Yes, I do appreciate your shaving seven seconds off the estimate, Whistler.” He keyed his comm unit. “Five, Six, mark the coordinates of your sleeping dupe, then we head in. We’ll have reports to fill out but the fact that we can fill them out means this has been a very good day.”

2

Wedge Antilles shook hands with both of the pilots standing in his office. “Sorry to keep you waiting but we apparently have had another probe of the system by Imperial forces. The Imps didn’t make much of a fight of it, but we almost scrambled the rest of the squadron.” He walked around to his side of the transparisteel-topped desk, then waved the two of them to chairs. “Welcome to Rogue Squadron.”

Both pilots smiled and thanked him.

Wedge looked first at the Sullustan female. “Captain Nunb, I hope you do not think the fact that you were not selected to join Rogue Squadron six months ago reflects in any way a lack of respect for your skills as a pilot.”

Aril Nunb shook her head, the slender plait of brown hair lashing one shoulder and another. “I harbored no such thought, Commander.”

“But you were aware that I chose Captain Tycho Celchu to be my Executive Officer, not you?”

A red-purple light flashed in her big garnet eyes. “Rumors to that effect were easily heard, but more easily ignored, sir.”

Wedge smiled. Frank and practical, this I like. “Those rumors were true, Captain. My reasons were …”

“Excuse me, sir, but you have no need to explain yourself to me.”

“I think you will find, both of you, that Rogue Squadron is full of very good pilots. Our discipline is a bit more lax than in other units, and I tend to explain orders when I can because we rely on each other very heavily. No one shirks duty here, no matter how dangerous. I think it is important that every member of the squadron knows where he or she stands.”

The mouse-eared Sullustan nodded her head. “Yes, sir.”

“I’d heard stories about you and your brother, especially concerning your exploits on behalf of the Alliance in stealing supplies from SoroSuub Corporation and turning them over to us. I saw firsthand how well your brother flies when he piloted the Millennium Falcon into the second Death Star and enabled Lando and me to blow the reactor and control structures. I saw then, and later in reviewing your performance tests, that the both of you have a native ability in a fighter that wasn’t learned and can’t be taught. Since the rebuilding of Rogue Squadron involved training pilots to higher and higher levels of efficiency, I didn’t think you were well suited to a role with us in such a training period.”

“I understand, sir.”

What she left unsaid told Wedge that she understood a lot more about the situation in the galaxy than she cared to mention. Rogue Squadron had lost four pilots, a full third of its strength, in the last six months. Under normal circumstances new pilots would be brought in and trained up to the squadron’s level of efficiency, but such training required time. Events in the galaxy did not give the New Republic’s forces much in the way of time, so the replacement pilots were being drawn from the best available candidates who expressed an interest in joining the unit.

Wedge turned to the redheaded man seated next to the Sullustan. “I was surprised, Captain Cracken, to see your name appear on a list of candidates willing to replace pilots in Rogue Squadron. You’ve got your own flight group out on the Rim and you’re used to flying an A-wing, not an X-wing. Won’t you find us a bit slow for your tastes?”

“I hope not, sir.” Pash Cracken frowned slightly.

Wedge thought for a moment that the question had irritated the young pilot, but the reply had come in a voice that maintained its emotional neutrality. Cracken was the son of General Airen Cracken, one of the Alliance’s legendary leaders and the New Republic’s answer to Ysanne Isard. Airen Cracken had fabricated an identity for his son that allowed Pash to enter the Imperial Naval Academy. On his first assignment after graduation, Pash led his entire TIE wing in defecting to the Alliance. They became known as “Cracken’s Flight Group” and their killing of a Victory-class Star Destroyer had made them and their leader legendary as well.

“If you don’t mind my asking, why do you want to leave your people behind and join us?”

Cracken’s frown deepened and he shifted uneasily in his chair. “It’s a kind of hard to explain, sir.”

“But your reasons must be strong because you’ll have to take a reduction in rank to Lieutenant to join us.”

“I know that, sir.”

Wedge opened his hands. “You may share as little as you want with the others in the squadron, Mr. Cracken, but I really do need to know why you want to be a Rogue.”

Aril Nunb leaned forward in her chair. “Perhaps if I were to leave, sir?”

Pash shook his head. “No, that’s not necessary.” Breath hissed in through clenched teeth. “This is going to sound odd.”

“Perhaps, but we won’t know until you get it out.”

“Yes, sir.” Pash sighed. “Pretty early on, because of time I spent fooling around with old Z-95 Headhunter simulators, my father realized I had a bit of a talent for flying. He encouraged my interest in flying and made all sorts of opportunities available for me to use simulators and then real starfighters. I soloed before I hit puberty and simulator battles had me beating some fairly good pilots. I knew I was good, but I didn’t know how good because I thought people praised my skill to get in good with my father.

“When I went to the Academy I got a handle on how good I was. I was better than most of my instructors when I started, and by the time I graduated none of them could touch me. We were flying TIE starfighters and my squadrons weren’t losing a single pilot. I graduated right up at near the top of the class, and the guys who finished ahead of me were the guys in my squadron that I’d forced to leave the simulators and work on their academic studies.”

Cracken’s hands curled into fists as strain entered his voice. “When we defected, when we killed the Exsanguinator, all my people followed my lead and most of us survived. Attrition has worn the unit down, that’s why we’re now part of Commander Varth’s wing, but the people that have been with me all the way along think I lead some sort of a charmed life. They think I won’t fail them, that I can’t be beaten. Those who have died along the way are accused of having done the wrong thing at the wrong time, and in some cases they’re right, but I have sent people to their deaths.

“The new kids coming into the squadron are inculcated into this myth of my invincibility. My pilots are getting careless, and that’s going to get people killed. I know that happens, but because of the legend they’ve built me up into, I can’t get my people to listen to me or do the things I need them to do. If I stay there and some Imp outguesses me, everyone will follow me down in flames.”

Wedge sat back and nodded slowly. Rogue Squadron’s unit roster had a lot of names on it, and save for a Jedi Knight, a couple of pilots assigned to training squadrons, and a few pilots who had left for other pursuits, anyone who wasn’t active duty was dead. Biggs Darklighter, Jek Porkins, Dak Ralter, and Bror Jace were all among the most talented and famous pilots the Empire had killed, but Wedge could attach faces to all the names on the roster, and knew the details of how each of them had died. That they had perished under his command did overwhelm him at times, so he found it very easy to understand Pash Cracken’s dilemma.

“I would say, Lieutenant, that a change is due for you. Your unit will have to reassess how it operates in your absence, and that will certainly be a good turn of events.” Wedge tried to read Cracken’s expression, but he could not. “It strikes me, however, that there are plenty of other fighter units in the Alliance that would welcome a pilot of your skill—and most of them are A-wing units.”

“Yes, sir, true, but they’re not Rogue Squadron.”

“Why is it that important that you join Rogue Squadron?”

Cracken’s shoulders slackened slightly—not so much that Wedge would have said he slumped in his chair, but Cracken had clearly decided he would withhold nothing from his answer. “Any other unit would put me in command and that would solve nothing. You see, because of my previous situation, I no longer have a perspective on how well I fly. I’m beginning to question myself and my performance, and that means I’m a hairsbreadth from doubting myself. If I’ve lost something, I need to know I’m not flying as well as I can, but if I lose my confidence, I lose everything.

“Here, in Rogue Squadron, I’ll be measuring myself against the best our side has to offer.”

Wedge pressed his hands together, fingertip to fingertip. “What does your father think of this change?”

Cracken’s face slackened for a moment, then fire flared in his green eyes. “My father had nothing to do with this decision.”

“But you have spoken to him about it?”

“Yes.”

“And he approved?”

Cracken’s head came up. “He has nothing but the utmost of respect for you, Commander Antilles.”

“That’s good to know.” Wedge frowned, drawing brown brows together to hood brown eyes. The conquest of the Pyria system had required two operations because Alliance Intelligence had failed to uncover some information about the Imperial installations on Borleias. The idea of Imperial operatives or traitors having set the Rebels up for their first defeat could not be ignored and any investigation of such allegations would fall to General Cracken and his people.

While Wedge had absolutely no reservations about any of his people, his trust was not shared by others in the Alliance. General Salm, the leader of Defender Wing, had long been suspicious of Captain Tycho Celchu. While Salm had admitted to Wedge that he knew Tycho had not leaked information concerning the first Pyria assault to the Empire, he believed Tycho was an Imperial agent who would betray the Alliance at the worst possible moment.

The conquest of the Pyria system had opened the way for the Rebel Alliance to strike at Coruscant, the Imperial homeworld. Taking Coruscant would confer upon the New Republic a legitimacy it had not yet earned in the eyes of much of the Empire’s citizenry. Those who were aware of the state of the Empire could find little to differentiate the Rebels from the Imperial warlords who were carving their own little realm out of the Empire. Though they might not believe assurances from Coruscant that the threat presented by the Alliance or people like Warlord Zsinj was minor, they did not yet see the Empire as a cadaver waiting for scavengers to carve it up.

Coruscant was the key to establishing the New Republic as the new ruling force in the galaxy. Taking it was a bold step—a serious gamble that required thousands of factors to fall into place to win. Since Admiral Ackbar had ordered Wedge to attend the Provisional Council’s deliberations on the project, he knew Rogue Squadron would be heavily involved in the campaign. Airen Cracken had to be aware of that eventuality, too.

In his place I’d consider planting an agent in Rogue Squadron to watch for any suspicious activity. But would I use my own son? Wedge looked at the younger Cracken for a moment and read disappointment on his face, not outrage or wounded pride. I’d be angry and indignant, fighting the implication of being a spy with an appeal to honor. Pash is not. Is he innocent, or just very much his father’s son?

The Corellian leader of Rogue Squadron sat forward and rested his forearms on the desktop. “Trust is the key to this unit, but that doesn’t mean you have to tell your fellow pilots your deepest, darkest secrets. The people here are the best and I’m sure you’ll both fit in. Again, welcome to the unit.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Wedge handed each of them a small strip of plastic. “The facilities here are a bit more comfortable than we’ve been used to—Evir Derricote ran this operation until we took it away from the Empire. He was devoted to a certain level of creature comfort. Captain Nunb, you’ll have your own quarters. Lieutenant Cracken, you will share a room with Nawara Ven, a Twi’lek pilot. I think you’ll like him.”

Pash took the strips and handed one to Aril.

Wedge glanced at his datapad, then frowned sharply. “I’ve only got an hour until I have to fly out to rendezvous with Home One. I will be taking our Lambda-class shuttle since I’ll be bringing General Salm with me. Lieutenant Cracken, you may use my X-wing for the time being—we should have one of the others up and repaired inside a week for you. Captain Nunb, I’ll introduce you to Captain Celchu. Because of his status, you’ll actually be in command of the unit in my absence. Tycho will help you with anything you need.”

He stood up. “Is there anything else we need to discuss?”

The Sullustan shook her head. “No, sir.”

Wedge looked at Pash. “Anything?”

“No, sir.”

“And if I see your father at the meetings?”

Pash smiled. “Just tell him he was right about the grilling he said you’d give me, and let him know I passed.”

“It will be my pleasure, Lieutenant.” Wedge kept a smile on his face as he led them to the door. “I think you both will find the trials of being a Rogue a bit more difficult than any interrogation I’ll give you, but I have no doubt, being as how you are Rogues, you’ll survive and then some.”

3

Corran welcomed his visitors to the small suite of rooms that he and his wingmate, the Gand named Ooryl Qrygg, had been given on Borleias. Since the Rebel assault had severely damaged most of the surface buildings in the Imperial installation, the New Republic occupation force housed itself in the underground warrens that formed the foundation for the base. Aside from the occasional blaster scars and a couple of blown-out walls, the facility was in fairly good repair.

Corran’s suite had two bedrooms that had been built on to either narrow end of a rectangular room. The walls had been painted an Imperial grey. That color, combined with the deep blue of the carpet, made the room fairly dark. Corran had countered the color scheme by bringing in as many lights as he could find and rigging a small holoprojector to flash up images of other worlds and cover a huge chunk of the longest wall.

He’d begged, borrowed, and bartered for the furnishings installed in the room. Most of the functional surfaces were the tops of spare parts crates. He’d managed to keep one of the couches that had originally been in the room and swapped the one with the blaster-burn hole for two Y-wing ejector seats. A small refrigeration unit doubled as the holoprojector stand and, though filling the room with an occasional rattle or wheeze, managed to keep beverages cold and food from spoiling.

A slender, brown-haired man entered the suite first and smiled as an image of Alderaan appeared on the wall. “It has been a long while since I saw Wuitho Trifalls.” He pointed at the promontory from which a river fell in three spectacular waterfalls. “I visited there with my family the week before I went off to the Imperial Academy. NovaCom maintained a repulsorlift cabin in the area, so that’s where we stayed. It was as beautiful as that picture, but without the roar of the water, it seems …”

Dead, Corran didn’t need to see the sorrow and pain on Tycho Celchu’s face to know what word had gone unspoken. Save for the coldest-hearted Imperialist among the survivors of Alderaan, the Alderaanians had suffered a deep, emotional wound when their homeworld had been destroyed. It crushed some but others, like Tycho and Princess Leia Organa, seemed to be driven by that loss to forever put to rest the Empire and its evil.

“I apologize for that, sir. The projector chooses images at random.”

Tycho’s face brightened. “Don’t apologize. I may miss my home, but that does not mean I like seeing holograms of it any less. The planet may be dead, but its beauty lives on in images like that.”

The second visitor shuffled through the doorway, then took a hop forward as it shut behind him. The black droid had the body of a 3PO unit, but the crested clamshell head of a spaceport control droid. “Good evening, Lieutenant Horn. May I say I was pleased to receive your invitation to visit this evening because I am finding Captain Nunb a bit brusque for my tastes …”

Corran flicked a green-eyed glance at Tycho. “Do you want to do it or should I?”

“Do what? May I help?”

Tycho smiled. “We couldn’t do it without you, Emtrey. Shut up.”

“Sir, I must protest …”

“Shut up.”

“But I …”

“Shut up.”

With Tycho’s third repetition of the command, the droid’s arms snapped to its sides and its head canted forward sharply until its chin almost touched its chestplate. At the base of its skull, back at the top of its neck post, a glowing red button became visible. Emtrey shook once as if hit by a blaster bolt, then stood still and, most remarkably, silent.

“Every time I see that little routine I’m amazed.” Corran shook his head and waved Tycho to the couch. “I think I’ve gotten to the bottom of what’s going on with him, though.”

“Great.” Tycho sat down and turned to face away from the picture wall. “Tell me what you’ve got—or at least as much as you can.”

“Sure.” A shiver worked its way down Corran’s spine. A month previously Tycho had reported that Emtrey, Rogue Squadron’s M-3PO unit, had exhibited odd behavior when told to shut up repeatedly. The droid had been acting strangely for a time before that, but no one had complained because he was talking less and had managed to cobble together some excellent exchanges on the black market and within the Alliance’s quartermaster corps to get the Squadron needed supplies. That behavior Corran had been able to trace to his suggestion that the droid “scrounge” some parts to fix his X-wing.

“I managed to track records back to right before the evacuation of Hoth. Emtrey was there working for a Lieutenant in the Quartermaster Corps. Her name was Losca or something like that. Anyway, she was having to work hard to try to build up stores after the losses at Derra IV and she wasn’t having much luck. At that point in time the defeat made things look bad for the Rebellion, so resources began to dry up.”

Tycho nodded. “I remember. We had a difficult time getting our equipment to function in the cold because we didn’t have the proper conversion kits.”

“It appears this Lieutenant Losca was getting killed on negotiations and wasn’t getting the job done to her or Alliance Command’s satisfaction. She wanted to create a database that would allow her to function like a commodities trader, but computer resources were limited and tied up coordinating things like defenses. Apparently the Alliance leadership wasn’t too high on the idea of becoming a commodities exchange, so they forbade her from doing anything that ambitious and urged her to keep doing what she was doing.”

“The Hoth base was supposed to be top secret.” Tycho frowned. “Setting it up as some sort of marketplace would have led to its discovery even earlier than Vader’s tactic of using probe droids surveying worlds.”

“That may be true, but this Lieutenant Losca appeared to think that without some sort of trade, the Rebellion would run out of supplies. The base would remain hidden, but be out of everything that made it possible to rebel. In desperation she had some techs cobble Emtrey together out of spare parts. She sliced some commodities-brokering code together and burned it into some chips which were implanted into Emtrey. The brokering chips give him a second personality that operates without the normal 3PO personality being aware it exists. The scrounger can be brought to the fore by asking it to scrounge something, or telling it to shut up, as you discovered. When you use that latter technique, the droid becomes a simple terminal that gives you access to all its data.”

The man from Alderaan leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “What were the security precautions Losca took with the droid?”

“I don’t know, and I can’t ask because she died on Hoth during the assault. Emtrey got off the planet and has been kicking around from unit to unit until we got him. No one else learned about his secret until we ran across it. I had Whistler do a basic diagnostic scan of Emtrey and the scrounging circuitry is the only unusual stuff in there. I don’t think he’s a security risk.”

“That’s good.” Tycho smiled. “And it was good work getting the data from Hoth. Most of those files are still classified, aren’t they?”

“All of them are, but Whistler’s got slicing code that can get him through low-level security stuff.” Corran shrugged. “Those files are easy to break—unlike the routines used to seal portions of your record.”

Tycho barely missed a beat. “Good. I doubt there is much damage that could be done by people learning details about Hoth. My adventures, on the other hand, could cause problems.”

Corran made no effort to hide the surprise at Tycho’s words. “Aren’t you angry with me for trying to crack your file?”

Tycho smoothed his light brown hair at the back of his neck. “Anger isn’t going to do me any good, is it? I might be a little disappointed, but not angry.”

“Why disappointed?”

“If there was something you wanted to know, you could have asked.”

“Would I get a straight answer?”

Tycho blinked. “Why would you think I’d lie to you?”

Corran jerked a thumb toward the closed door. “There are two Alliance Security officers at my door, correct? They’re waiting to escort you back to your quarters, right?”

“Yes. So …?”

“So General Salm thinks you’re some sort of threat to the Alliance. Shouldn’t that make me wonder about you?”

“It could.” Tycho shrugged his shoulders. “Then again, you could think about what you know about me and decide for yourself if I can be trusted or not.”

Corran sat back and folded his arms across his chest. In his career with the Corellian Security Force, Corran had questioned all manner of people—humans, aliens, and even the occasional droid. He’d always had a sense about who was telling the truth and who was lying to him. He’d gotten used to following that feeling, playing his hunches to find the chinks in the stories suspects used to build.

From Tycho he was getting no sign of deception, but what he didn’t know about the man seemed to outweigh what he did know. There was no question that Tycho Celchu had been a valued and valiant member of Rogue Squadron from before Hoth until after Endor, Bakura, and dozens of other little battles. He flew an A-wing in the assault on the second Death Star and managed to draw pursuit away from Wedge and the Millennium Falcon. Well after that he had volunteered for a classified mission and all trace of his records up to six months before he rejoined Rogue Squadron had been encrypted. The gap only amounted to three quarters of a year, but it marked the end of trust in him by a host of Alliance figures. It seems Wedge Antilles was the only person who still had faith in him.

Corran had only known Tycho for six months, but in that time Tycho had repeatedly flown an unarmed shuttle into dangerous situations to recover pilots who had been shot out of their ships. On one of those occasions he had saved Corran’s life by providing him a datafeed that let him target incoming TIE Interceptors. It had been a brave thing to do, and one that could have gotten Tycho killed, but he took the chance to keep Corran alive.

Despite owing Tycho his life not once but twice, Corran still had reservations about him. Tycho had been secretive about the gap in his record. Corran could have easily ignored that, but the ease with which Tycho had overpowered his security detail and slipped away from supervision on the second occasion when he saved Corran’s life made Corran wary. He knew his suspicion was the residue of having been a CorSec officer whose father and grandfather had also served CorSec, and he’d hoped learning the truth about Tycho would ease his mind.

The problem was that the only place he could learn the story would be from Tycho who, for better or worse, had to be considered somewhat unreliable as a narrator. Still, it’s better than unfocused suspicion.

“Sir, I have trusted you in the past, and I’ll go on trusting you in the future because I’ve not seen you do anything wrong. And I apologize for trying to slice out your file. I guess having worked with CorSec has just honed my sense of paranoia. Not knowing why Salm has you under guard has that sense working overtime.”

“But you’d still like to know what happened to me two years ago?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Fine.” Tycho shrugged with resignation, but his voice carried with it some relief. “It’ll be good to share this with someone else, but it goes no further, right?”

Corran held his hand up. “On my honor.”

Tycho fixed him with a crystal-blue stare for a second, then nodded. “I volunteered to fly a TIE starfighter into Coruscant. The Alliance impounded it at Bakura and modified it heavily to fill it with sensor packages. In coming in I made several orbits of the planet and picked up all sorts of interesting data on the Golan space fortresses, the defense shields, the orbital solar collection mirrors, the skyhooks, the dry docks and ship factories, and everything else orbiting the planet. I then took the ship in, landed on Coruscant, and the data was downloaded. It was shipped out by various routes and within two weeks I was asked to fly the eyeball back out, taking readings as I went, then hook up with a freighter and return to the Alliance. I knew getting out would be tough, but we had all the proper codes to get out, so I chanced it.”

“And the Imps got you.”

“They did. Two ion-cannon blasts shorted every system I had in the ship, including the self-destruct. A Star Destroyer pulled me on board and I was captured. They hit me with a Stokhli stun spray and I was out. When I finally awakened again I was on a transport coming out of hyperspace. We grounded and I found out I’d been taken to Lusankya.”

“Lusankya?!”

“You know it?”

“Only by the most vague and nasty of rumors. It’s supposed to be Iceheart’s own private prison. Weird things happen to people there.”

Tycho nodded. “The guards, when they deign to speak to a prisoner, take great delight in noting that no one leaves unless Ysanne Isard is through with them.”

Corran shook his head. It was easier for him to believe that the Katana fleet existed than it was to accept the existence of Lusankya. Corran had first heard the word mentioned after a rival of Corellia’s Diktat had been murdered by a trusted aide. The aide had been taken away by Imperial authorities about a year before the murder, but had been returned three months later. After he killed his boss he was reported to have repeated the word “Lusankya” over and over again. After that incident Corran had heard of a dozen other, similar situations where a seemingly normal person had turned on friends and family, betraying them or performing some hideous act of terrorism against them. Each of these incidents had a link to Lusankya in some way or other, but that link only became apparent after the crime had been committed.

Corran frowned at Tycho. “People who come out of there are human remote bombs. They do horrible things when the Empire activates them.”

Tycho’s hands convulsed into fists. “I know, I know. What’s worse, no one has ever mentioned Lusankya before they have acted. The clues are always found later. But with me, after three months of interrogation and detention, I guess they decided I was useless. I was in bad shape—catatonic for most of my time at Lusankya so I remember almost nothing, then I was let go. They shipped me to Akrit’tar. After three months I managed to escape from the penal colony there and made my way back to the Alliance. I was debriefed for two months but they couldn’t find anything wrong with me.”

“And they hadn’t found anything wrong with the other people who had been to Lusankya either, right?”

“No. The only difference between me and them was that I remembered having been there. It is the opinion of General Salm and some others that I was allowed to retain my memory, and that my escape was engineered, just so I could return to the Alliance and betray it.”

Without any evidence to prove he was a sleeper agent, the Alliance couldn’t imprison Tycho without seeming as much of a heartless entity as the Empire itself. Even so, Corran reminded himself, lack of evidence was not evidence of lack. Salm’s suspicions about Tycho could be one hundred percent correct, and the utter lack of evidence pointed to the skill of Ysanne Isard and her people.

Corran’s eyes narrowed. “So, you don’t even know, really, if you are an Imperial agent waiting to happen or not?”

“I know I’m not.” The Alderaanian’s shoulders slumped. “Being able to prove it is something else again.”

“But being constantly under suspicion, that’s got to wear on you. Why put up with it? How can you put up with it?”

Tycho’s expression drained of emotion. “I put up with it because I must. Enduring it is the only way I can be allowed to fight back against the Empire. If I were to walk away from the Rebellion, if I were to sit the war out, I would have surrendered to the fear of what Ysanne Isard might, might, have done to me. Without firing a shot she would have made me as dead as Alderaan, and I won’t allow that. There’s nothing in what I have to live with on a daily basis that isn’t a thousand times easier than what I survived at the hands of the Empire. Until the Empire is dead, I can never truly be free because I’ll always be under suspicion. Living with minor restrictions now means someday no one has to fear me.”

Tycho slowly opened his hands and scrubbed them over his face. “I don’t know if any of that sets your mind at ease, but that’s all there is.”

Corran shook his head. “It helps, a great deal. Whether you are or are not an Imperial agent in a Rebel uniform, the fact is that you’ve saved my life twice. That definitely counts for something—a great big something, in fact.”

“Good.” Tycho pointed at the droid. “What do we do about him?”

“I don’t think he’s much of a security risk, provided he doesn’t trade in futures for commodities that are present on whatever targets we’re heading out to hit. Whistler’s already modified his purchase parameter programming to cover that situation.” Corran smiled. “I don’t think General Salm will think Emtrey any less of a threat than he considers you, if we report on his scrounging personality. As long as we don’t activate it, except in very specific cases, we should be safe.”

“So you think we can reactivate him?”

“Yeah, I suppose so.” Corran stood and walked over to the droid. “Brace yourself.”

He hit the button on the back of the droid’s neck.

Emtrey’s head snapped back and locked in its proper position. The droid looked around for a moment or two during which his elbows crept out away from his body. “I don’t know what got into me. Please, forgive my rudeness.” The droid’s head tilted to the right and his eyes brightened. “Did I miss anything?”

Corran slapped him on the shoulder. “Nothing you’d find useful, Emtrey. We were just swapping gossip and repeating rumors that had no substance to them at all.”

4

At first the giddiness bubbling up inside him surprised Wedge, then gratified him as he slipped into his chair behind Admiral Ackbar. They’re actually here, the Provisional Council. I never thought I’d see the day. He felt the same excitement inside him that he’d known as a child when some alien or famous Corellian had come to his parents’ refueling station. Had he been asked he would have assumed that being in the same room with the leaders of the New Republic would not seem that special, but it was and made him think that the war hadn’t burned all of his innocence out of him yet.

Mon Mothma, still looking strong and serene despite the traces of grey creeping into her hair, stood at her place at the circular table. “I call this meeting of the Provisional Council to order. Councilor B’thog of Elom sends regrets at being unable to attend, but we have a quorum, so we will be able to proceed. Councilor Organa, if you would be so kind as to update us on your attempts to open a dialog with Warlord Zsinj.”

The woman at Mon Mothma’s right hand stood. Though she wore a pale green gown gathered loosely at the waist with a silver belt, Wedge couldn’t help but see Princess Leia ready for battle, the way he had seen her so many times before. It struck him as odd that a martial image could so easily replace the elegant vision before him, but he was reading the fight in her eyes and the fire in her spirit. Those qualities had made her one of the Rebellion’s most respected leaders, and clearly sustained her in her governmental activities.

“I have attempted through numerous channels to make contact with Warlord Zsinj, but have been rebuffed every time. It appears he believes his possession of the Super Star Destroyer Iron Fist has made him into a force to be reckoned with in the galaxy. What little of his Imperial career we know about indicates he is a man who embraces the idea that the ends do justify the means. He is a survivor, and shows cunning at playing his enemies off against each other. The leadership vacuum in the Imperial Navy post-Endor allowed him to rise further than was previously reasonable, then declare himself a Warlord and begin his drive to take control of the Empire.”

Borsk Fey’lya’s cream-colored fur rippled as he stood. “Councilor Organa, it would seem that this Zsinj, if he is as cunning as you suggest, would be open to negotiations. How have you approached him?”

A trace of weariness tightened the flesh at Leia’s eyes. “We have tried contacts at various levels within his organization. Messages sent via the Imperial HoloNet have gone unanswered, though your people have assured me they have been collected by Zsinj. More light escapes from a black hole than information that comes back out from him and his fleet. I suspect he wants to see how truly strong we are before he begins any negotiations with us.”

The Bothan’s violet eyes narrowed. “If there is no information coming out of his organization, how do you know he is seeking data on us?”

Admiral Ackbar nodded to Leia. “If I might answer that, Councilor.”

The hint of a smile on her lips banished the fatigue from her face. “Please, Admiral.”

Ackbar remained seated and waited until the Bothan sat back down before he spoke. Borsk’s fur rippled again, this time quickly, which Wedge took as a mark of irritation. “A little less than a standard week ago a freighter appeared in the Pyria system. It was challenged and responded with the proper passage codes, but a member of Rogue Squadron chose to do a closer check. The freighter launched six TIEs, four starfighters, and two bombers. The freighter fled and all but one of the smaller ships was destroyed. The one that survived was a bomber that had been disabled by two Y-wings. Examination of it and interrogation of the pilot indicates the ship was sent by Warlord Zsinj to confirm our conquest of Pyria and, if the opportunity presented itself, to strike at the base.”

Borsk’s face hardened. “And your people let the freighter escape?”

Ackbar’s lids drifted down for a moment. “Councilor Fey’lya, the freighter was fully armed and deployed six fighter craft. On post we had two Y-wings and one X-wing. Despite being outnumbered, our forces eliminated the six fighters and damaged the freighter, driving it off. The freighter fled before the fighter screen was eliminated, but even if it had not, engaging it would have been suicidal.”

“I thought such missions were Rogue Squadron’s specialty.”

Wedge felt color rising to his face. The last time that was suggested, it was another Bothan who did the suggesting.

Admiral Ackbar opened his hands. “I would point out that to so easily dismiss Rogue Squadron’s sacrifices is to denigrate the sacrifices made by all peoples who have died in service to the Rebellion.”

The Bothan councilor sat back and Wedge’s admiration for Ackbar grew. The Admiral’s veiled reference to sacrifices echoed the oft-heard Bothan lament about the number of Bothan agents who had died to secure the information about the second Death Star. Because the Bothans did not possess a strong military—as opposed to the Mon Calamari fleet forming the backbone of the New Republic’s Armed Forces—they used the sacrifices of their people as their justification for sharing power in the New Republic. If Fey’lya devalued Rogue Squadron’s contribution to the Rebellion, he likewise eroded his own basis of power.

Doman Beruss, a flaxen-haired woman who represented the Corellian exiles on the Council, stood. “I believe we are heading toward the focus for this meeting, but I would prefer to cut directly to it instead of watching my colleagues scratch and claw their way there. Zsinj knows, as do we, that whichever force is able to wrest Coruscant from the grip of the Imperial government will be seen as the legitimate, or at least strongest, claimant to governance. The Pyria system was taken to be a stepping stone to Coruscant, and Zsinj now knows we do have it.”

The Wookiee and Sullustan representatives nodded in agreement with Doman. Mon Mothma looked up. “Admiral Ackbar, if you are prepared to give your presentation.”

“I am.” Ackbar stood and General Salm, a small, balding, thickly built man, slipped into the chair the Mon Calamari had vacated. Salm linked his datapad into a jack on the edge of the table. Above the mirrored plate centered on the table the holographic image of a world appeared.

“This is Coruscant. It was the administrative center of the Old Republic and retained that function when the Emperor seized power. Palpatine made an attempt to rename it Imperial Center, but it is known as such only in Imperial decrees. Coruscant is still seen as the heart of the galaxy and many look to it as the center of order and authority, no matter who controls it.

“After the Emperor’s death, a government was formed under the leadership of Sate Pestage. His suzerainty lasted six months until a coup by a coterie of other Imperial advisers forced him into exile. It appears that his ouster was organized by Ysanne Isard—she was definitely behind Pestage’s hounding and death. She deftly undercut the bureaucrats she had used to vanquish Pestage and took control of the Empire for herself. While she maintains her title of Director of Intelligence, and has suggested she is holding the planet in stewardship, there is no doubt that she is in full control.”

As Ackbar spoke, the planet dissolved into an image of Isard. A tall, slender human woman, she still seemed possessed of the vitality that the Rebellion had begun to sap from Mon Mothma. Isard wore her hair long. Except for white sidelocks, her hair was as black as night and served to accentuate her severe beauty.

Her most striking features became apparent as the image shifted to a close-up of her face. Her eyes were mismatched. The right one was an icy blue that had contributed as much as her demeanor to her nickname of “Iceheart.” By contrast the left eye was a molten red. Wedge felt a shiver run down his spine just looking at her hologram—and he had no desire to make a closer acquaintance with her.

Ackbar continued. “Despite her not being from a military background, she has, in no way, allowed the defenses of the Imperial homeworld to slacken. Outermost we have Golan Space Defense stations. They are comparable in power to a Star Destroyer. They are not mobile, so eliminating them from a section of the sky over Coruscant will give us an area in which to operate, but eventually all of them will have to be neutralized.

“In addition to these defense stations, there are approximately seven Victory-class Star Destroyers on station at Coruscant. There are ground-based fighter groups as well as the fighter wings stationed in and around the ships, shipyards, and orbital factories. The orbital mirror stations and low-orbit skyhooks may also have been armed.”

Ackbar clasped his hands behind his back. “As formidable as all that is, the primary problem in taking Coruscant is the overlapping defense shields.”

The image of the world had long since returned. As the Mon Calamari had described aspects of the defense, representations of them appeared in orbit around the planet. With his mention of the defense shields, two spheres constructed of hexagons appeared to encase the world. One moved in the direction of its orbit, the other moved in the opposite direction. The neon-blue latticework shrouded Coruscant and occluded any good view of it.

“To take Coruscant we must eliminate the shields. There are a number of ways to do this, but none of them is simple. A direct assault would cost us more dearly than both Death Star battles combined. I think the only reasonable approach to taking Coruscant is to blockade the world. It is hardly self-sufficient—even the defense stations only carry three standard months’ worth of provisions. Faced with dwindling supplies, a negotiated surrender would be possible.”

Mon Mothma frowned. “The problem with a blockade is twofold. The first is that it would keep our fleet at one place for an extended period of time. This would allow Isard to recall the Imperial fleet to drive us off.”

Ackbar nodded. “Or it could encourage naval officers in far-flung regions to sever their ties with the Empire, breaking it up further.”

“Giving us many warlords like Zsinj to worry about.” Borsk’s words came so softly they seemed almost purred. “Pinning our fleet in one place would also allow Zsinj to prey upon New Republic worlds.”

Ackbar opened his hands. “Yes, what you suggest might happen.”

Mon Mothma raised a hand and cut him off. “The second problem with a blockade is that the people of Coruscant will suffer. My friend, you visited Coruscant when you were with Grand Moff Tarkin. You know there are vast populations of outcasts who dwell deep in the shadowed canyons of that metroworld. They barely survive as it is. If supplies are cut off to Coruscant, they will suffer the most and we cannot afford to be responsible for their suffering.”

“This I know very well, Chief Councilor Mothma, but you face me with an impossible task.” Ackbar pointed a hand at the floating hologram of Coruscant. “You want the world taken, but the means that will deliver it to us with the minimum of bloodshed is one that is unacceptable. It is possible to batter our way in there. I cannot say there will not be a significant amount of collateral damage—damage that may harm people as much as any blockade. Yet, even if that sort of damage is more acceptable from a diplomatic and political point of view, it leaves us with a reality that is militarily unacceptable: the world we take will be a world we cannot hold.”

Wedge nodded. To bring the shields down on a planet, standard doctrine dictated that the shields were to be probed for weaknesses, such as places where an atmospheric anomaly was causing a disruption. That weakened sector would be targeted and a hole would be punched through it. The gap would then be used as a hole through which shield projectors would be destroyed by bombardment or laser fire. While that would bring the shields down and allow for a planetary assault, it would leave the planet defenseless until the shield generators could be repaired or, most likely, replaced.

“What you ask of me and my troops is not possible.” Ackbar shook his head. “Coruscant, if taken in haste, will fall to another just as quickly, and all we have fought for in this Rebellion will be for naught.”

5

Wedge opened his arms wide and stretched. Standing on the patio of the Noquivzor facility’s only aboveground building, he looked out over rolling hills carpeted with golden grasses. The breezes that stirred eddies and currents into them warmed him and began to take the chill out of his clothes. He pulled off his jacket and slung it over his shoulder. I need an hour or two of sun and warmth before I head back in there.

After the morning Council session had adjourned, Wedge and Salm had returned to Admiral Ackbar’s quarters and discussed the problems with conquering Coruscant. Because of Noquivzo’s arid climate, Ackbar’s quarters had been fitted with a humidification system that made the environment more comfortable for the Mon Calamari. For Wedge and General Salm, the humidity thickened the air to the point where it seemed to drag on them and tire them out.

Wedge smiled as he watched a herd of wilder-nerfs spread out and over a far hill like an inky black stain on the golden carpet. He recalled a promise he had previously made to himself to return to Noquivzor and take some time to relax. He had wanted to remember what he was fighting for, and this world had seemed the sort of place where he could find some peace. Now I’m back, but there’s no peace to be had.

“Would that some of this tranquillity would sneak into our deliberations.”

Wedge spun around. “Highness.”

Leia smiled at him. “Wedge, please, not so formal. We’ve known each other for too long to stand on ceremony.”

He nodded sheepishly. “I know that, but things have changed. Look at you. I can still see the Leia Organa who waited anxiously for Luke’s return from the Death Star at Yavin, but the others, they all see you as Alderaan’s representative to the Provisional Council. I have no intention of seeming familiar or disrespectful.”

“Things may have changed, Wedge, but not us.”

“I don’t think I can agree with that idea entirely.” Wedge hung his jacket over the back of a metal chair and leaned heavily upon it. “Yavin was over seven years ago. I’ve gone from being a pilot who thought he was very good to someone who leads a squadron of hotshots and aids an Admiral in planning assaults on the Imperial capital.”

Leia nodded and drew a chair up beside the one upon which Wedge leaned. “Back at Yavin we didn’t have any Admirals.”

“We barely had any ships at Yavin. We had General Dodonna, but he’s gone.” Wedge seated himself beside her. “You’ve gone from being the youngest person ever to be elected to the Imperial Senate to the fusion reactor for the whole Rebellion. Mon Mothma may lead us, and Admiral Ackbar may fight for us, but you’re the one who keeps all the disparate parts of the New Republic working together. How you do that, I can’t even begin to guess.”

She laughed lightly and Wedge smiled in response to the sound. “Keeping Han and Luke out of trouble has often been far more easy, to be certain. There are times it feels as if this Rebellion could be measured in decades, not years.”

“I was thinking centuries, but your point is well taken.” Wedge shook his head. “Are all the Council meetings this difficult?”

“Some are. This one in particular is prickly. Borsk Fey’lya has some issues he wants dealt with and he has taken steps to see to it that he gets his way.”

“I think Admiral Ackbar is holding his own.”

“That’s because Fey’lya is playing for a longer game. He has things well thought out, and he is a stickler for details.”

“What do you mean?”

Leia looked at him with a mixture of surprise and pity in her eyes. “Oh, Wedge, you wouldn’t believe how well Fey’lya has orchestrated things to work against Admiral Ackbar.”

“Try me.”

“You’re on.” Leia swept a hand out to take in the nearly treeless landscape. “Fey’lya arranged for this meeting to be held here, on Noquivzor. He is right at home here—these savannahs closely resemble his home range on Bothawui. Mon Mothma, you, me, and the other humans find the climate and setting pleasant enough that we are at ease. Kerrithrarr, the Wookiee Councilor, does not like a world with wide blue skies and a lack of trees. Asking him to live underground is to come within millimeters of violating his personal honor, and you know how touchy Wookiees are about that.”

“Yeah, now that you mention it, Noquivzor and Kashyyyk have very little in common. Admiral Ackbar and the other Mon Calamari don’t like the dry air here.”

“Sian Tevv and his Sullustans find it a bit hot here.” Leia shrugged. “As a result, most of those who oppose Borsk Fey’lya are ill at ease here. It will be easy for tempers to flare and people to decide someone …”

“Admiral Ackbar …”

“Right, someone is being stubborn. This could influence votes and could go against Ackbar and his plans.” The Princess sat back and smoothed her gown against her thighs. “Of course, Ackbar knows all this, which is why he advanced the blockade plan. He knew it would not work, so now if he retreats from that position, he shows himself to be reasonable and willing to compromise. This means the other side must compromise, too.”

Wedge frowned because until after the meeting, when Admiral Ackbar had explained these things to him, he’d completely missed the significance of what Leia had just indicated was blatantly obvious. “I think finding enemy ships and shooting them up is easier than this politics stuff.”

“Possibly, but it’s a matter of scale. You lead your people against several dozen Imperials at a time. Each of us represents millions and billions of individuals and our goal is the overthrow of billions. We cannot afford to be so direct or free.”

“Once upon a time we could.”

“True, but then we were all self-elected members of an outlaw movement. Now we speak and act for whole worlds.” Leia reached over, took Wedge’s hand, and gave it a squeeze. “Back in those days I scarcely dared dream we’d have these problems to deal with in the future.”

Wedge patted the top of her hand. “Yeah, in those days it seemed as if our children and grandchildren would still be fighting the Empire.”

“Indeed.” She laughed again. “So, Wedge Antilles, any prospects on the horizon for you contributing to the Rebellion’s next generation?”

“Me? I have all the children I need in my squadron.” He saw sadness wash across her face. “It’s not that bad. I have friends, I just don’t have the time to go courting. You found someone, and you weren’t even looking. It seems to happen that way, so I’m not terribly worried. Now what about you and Han?”

“We’re happy, when we get to see each other. It’s kind of rough on a woman to finally admit you love someone and then have him frozen in carbonite for the better part of a year. Then again, during that time he didn’t find little ways to irritate me.”

“That’s his nature, though—he’s chaos incarnate.” Wedge smiled. “Han Solo, you have to love him …”

“… or freeze him in carbonite, I know.” Leia stared wistfully off into the distance. “He’s a good man. Even with his quirks and rough edges, I don’t think I can find better in this galaxy. And I’m not really interested in looking, either, but there are times when I wonder ‘Why him?’ ”

“If you ever have doubts, serious doubts, come see me. I can give you a dozen reasons to answer that question.” Not the least of which is that it takes a guy as fast and sharp as Han Solo to keep up with you, Leia. Wedge let go of her hand and stretched again. “What about Luke? How is he doing?”

“He’s doing well. He’s continuing his Jedi training. He’s also been traveling around the galaxy trying to recover any artifacts or documents that will fill in the background of the Jedi Knights. The Emperor’s attempt to exterminate the order was very effective. Only the histories written at his order remain and they’re long on fabrication. Luke says they have nothing serious to offer by way of instruction for a Jedi, though a couple of the texts suggest exercises that are designed to lure a potential Jedi over to the dark side.”

“That’s nasty, and rather typical of the Emperor.”

“He was evil and, just as bad, quite thorough in his methodology.” Leia sighed. “Luke has designed a regimen of exercises and has convinced me to start training. I do them when I can, but a Jedi is supposed to be tranquil and at peace when she acts, and the frustration inherent in my position often keeps me away from the proper frame of mind.”

“I can imagine. The next time you see him, or speak with him, tell him he’s welcome to fly with Rogue Squadron whenever he wants. I’ve got a good bunch of people—a solid core group to which I’ll be adding new people as they become available.” Wedge sat forward. “We’ve rebuilt the squadron by filling it with good pilots who also have other skills. Ackbar wanted and we’ve now got an elite group that can handle everything from pitched battles to covert entry and scouting operations. Adding a Jedi Knight into the mix wouldn’t hurt a bit.”

“I suspect Luke would like flying with you again, but the responsibility of being the last or, rather, the first new Jedi Knight weighs very heavily on him right now. He’s busy discovering as much as he can about the tradition to which he has become heir. I will give him your message, though.”

“Thanks.”

A comlink bleeped and Leia produced it from within the sleeve of her gown. “Councilor Organa here.”

“Leia, it’s Mon Mothma. If you have a moment, I have some things to discuss with you.”

“On my way.” Leia snapped the comlink off, then leaned over and gave Wedge a kiss on the cheek. “You may be right—we have changed, but I’m thankful that it’s not so much that I can’t sit with an old friend and relax for a minute or two. I’ll see you later, Wedge.”

“Good-bye, Leia.” Wedge stood as she departed. Change we have, Leia, but change for the better, I think. Seven years is a long time, but I think we can handle seven more. He smiled. And maybe another seven after that.

A man came out onto the patio and turned in Wedge’s direction. Though white hair dominated the red on his head, his green eyes and sharp cheekbones made the resemblance to his son unmistakable. Wedge snapped to attention and saluted.

The man stopped and returned the salute, then offered Wedge his hand. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Commander Antilles.”

“Likewise, General Cracken. Is there something I can do for you?”

The General pointed Wedge back to his chair. “If you have a moment.”

Wedge resumed his place. “Go ahead.”

“I wanted to thank you for taking my son in as a member of your Rogue Squadron.”

“Thank me?” Wedge chuckled. “There are very few parents that would consider their children joining Rogue Squadron a good thing.”

“I think you will find I am rather unlike most parents, Commander.” The elder Cracken had the same general build as his son, though he had thickened a bit in the middle and jowls were just beginning to form on him. “Many other commanders would have rejected him just because of his connection to me. They would assume I was using him as an agent to audit their activity.”

“Are you?”

“Should I be?”

Wedge shrugged. “I don’t think so, but General Salm has concerns over the security of my unit.”

“I’m aware of the Celchu situation but I am not overly concerned by it. I trust you will report any problem in that regard.”

“Of course.”

“I expected nothing less.” Cracken rubbed his hands together. “Pash is a very talented man—I say this as his father and as a New Republic officer. His early success put him in a position where it was difficult for him to do anything else of apparent consequence, which meant he would have to push himself above and beyond his abilities to succeed. While I have no doubt he has not yet found the upper range of his talents, clearly his people could not keep up with him. His desire to do more was tempered by his knowledge that he could easily get them killed. It was a situation that would end up with him hating himself—either for having done nothing, or having gotten his people killed.

“By joining you he will be challenged. You’re a good man, Antilles. You don’t take chances when you don’t need to, but you don’t shrink from doing the jobs that need to be done. You’ve found the balance my son needs to find for himself. I don’t expect you’ll get him killed, but if he does die as a Rogue, I know he’ll have been doing the best he could to do the best for the Rebellion. I’d hate to lose him, but if he has to go, doing so in that way isn’t bad.”

“I hope Rogue Squadron will live up to your expectations.”

“I’m sure it will.”

The confidence in Airen Cracken’s voice made Wedge’s stomach tighten. “Should it concern me, sir, that the head of Alliance Intelligence has just told me that his son will find his time in my unit challenging?”

“ ‘Concern’ you, Commander?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, I should think so, Commander Antilles.” Cracken nodded solemnly. “Very much so, indeed.”

6

Whistler’s warble made Corran look up at the timer on his green and white X-wing’s main display. “Five minutes until we come out of hyperspace, thanks.” The countdown marked the end of a two-leg run from Borleias to Mrisst that took a total of five hours to complete. Taking the precaution of hitting a transit system before arriving at Mrisst struck Corran as unnecessary, if the intelligence they were reacting to was correct. Our target already knows where we live.

Mirax Terrik had arrived at Borleias aboard her ship, the Pulsar Skate, after a trade run that had included a visit to Mrisst. Being a smuggler of no small amount of skill, she had pulled a copy of the local system traffic reports from Mrisst control to see who was operating in her area and might prove to be competition. One of the ships on the list was a freighter by the name of Vengeance Derra IV. When she arrived on Borleias she asked Emtrey for any information he had on the ship, and that resulted in their recon flight.

Corran fought to clear his mind and focus on the mission. That was not an easy task because of two bits of information the squadron had received a couple of hours prior to the mission being planned and launched. The first was confirmation by Thyferran officials of Bror Jace’s death. He had been the hottest Rogue pilot in the squadron’s first five missions, amassing twenty-two kills to eclipse Corran’s mark by one. Upon his return from his last mission, he was called back to Thyferra because of a relative’s impending death, but he had never arrived at his destination. Everyone had feared the worst, but until Thyferran officials backtracking his intended route had found debris from a destroyed X-wing, everyone had hoped for the best.

Though Corran and Bror had been rivals, they had also understood each other. Without that understanding, Corran probably would have accepted news of his death as easily as the others did. The Thyferrans reported that an Imperial Interdictor cruiser had been working in that general area, so the scenario appeared to be that Jace had been pulled out of hyperspace a bit prematurely and jumped by TIEs and destroyed. It seemed plausible to Corran except that no one reported finding any TIE fighter debris.

If I got jumped, I would have taken some of them with me. Corran did admit to himself that Bror could have been surprised and killed with a lucky shot or two, but that struck him as unlikely. If his ship had malfunctioned or something else had gone wrong, then Bror would have been helpless. The problem with that theory was that the unit’s chief tech, a Verpine named Zraii, kept the X-wings in prime condition. Unless someone had tampered with the ship, the chances of a malfunction were slim and none.

The Interdictor cruiser had been reported to be the Black Asp. It might have been coincidence, but the Rogues had fought against that ship in their first engagement. Corran had come as close to dying in that fight—one where they had been dragged out of hyperspace by accident—as he ever wanted to get again. If not for Tycho Celchu’s intervention he would have been dead or, worse yet, a guest at some Imperial penal colony.

He would have been inclined to let the Black Asp’s appearance pass for coincidence except for the second bit of information that came through to him. Emtrey had been trying to locate information on Gil Bastra, the man who had been Corran’s superior at CorSec. Gil had been the one to fabricate the identities under which Corran, his human partner, and her husband had fled from Corellia. Corran had asked the droid to look for information because of a spurious report indicating that Gil had been caught and killed by Imperial authorities.

Emtrey had found a report that confirmed the original death notice, but this one elaborated on the cause of death. Gil had been killed during a botched interrogation by Intelligence Agent Kirtan Loor. Loor had been the Imperial Liaison to Corran’s CorSec division and no love had been lost between them. I never liked him even before he let my father’s murderer walk free.

A lump rose in Corran’s throat. He rubbed at it with his right hand, the heel of which pressed his medallion against his breastbone. His father had kept the medal as a lucky charm. It was the only memento of his father he had left since he fled from Corellia and Mirax had identified it as a commemorative medal struck to mark a Corellian Jedi Knight’s elevation to the rank of Master. The feel of the gold medallion helped him remember the good times with his father, and that eased the tension in his throat.

Corran knew it was a fallacy to think that two facts linked by time had a causal relationship, but he could not shake the gut feeling that Kirtan Loor had been involved somehow with Bror Jace’s ambush and death. The report about Gil’s death had indicated Loor had been summoned to Coruscant and assigned “new duties.” Corran had no doubt that no matter what Loor was supposed to be doing, he would continue to look for a way to get back at Corran for eluding capture at Corellia. If Loor found out that I was with Rogue Squadron, he’d do anything he could to strike at me, even if he could only kill my friends.

Corran bounced his helmet back against the ejection seat’s headrest. “Think about Loor later, now you have a mission to run.” He glanced at the cockpit chronometer. “Ten seconds to reversion to realspace. Hang on, Whistler, we’re going in hot.”

The wall of light outside the cockpit exploded into a million pinpoints of light as Rogue Squadron burst into the GaTir system. Their jump had been plotted with spectacular precision—exceeding even that for which Sullustans were renowned—so they appeared below the planetary plane, heading in toward Mrisst via the south pole. Pash Cracken had suggested that approach since the austral-polar continent was known to be too geologically unstable for the Mrisst Trade and Science Academy to have set up any astronomical observation posts.

Rogue Squadron had not expected to arrive unnoticed, but they wanted as little data about them collected for as long as possible. If Vengeance was monitoring the same sort of traffic control reports that Mirax had pulled, the arrival of eight X-wings would attract attention. The arrival of eight mongrel snubfighters—for that was what Rogue Squadron’s navigational beacons proclaimed them to be—would barely be noticed.

Data collection from stations on the planet would eventually be collated with the traffic data and point out that the “Uglies”—to use the Corellian nickname for such rebuilt craft—were performing like X-wings in good repair. With sufficient luck this anomaly wouldn’t be noticed until after the mission was over. Corran was willing to settle for it being overlooked until they’d found Vengeance.

The X-wings swept up and around the fringes of Mrisst’s atmosphere and caught their first glimpse of Vengeance glinting in sunlight. “Whistler, what’s the ship next to Vengeance?”

The droid chittered for a moment, then displayed the answer on Corran’s secondary monitor. The ship was a medium-sized transport calling itself Contruum’s Pride. Whistler appended to his identification a criminal behavior code that Corran recognized as meaning the ships were moving in tandem, remaining steady to facilitate the transfer of cargo. This is just like spotting smugglers back with CorSec.

Before Corran could key his comm unit and let the others know Pride was in league with Vengeance, Pash Cracken’s voice filled the comm channel. “Twelve, Pride is bad.”

“How do you know that, Four?” Captain Nunb asked.

“Contruum’s my homeworld. Naming conventions for ships restrict virtues to capital ships. Transports are named for beasts of burden and rivers.”

Corran keyed his comm unit. “Four is correct, Twelve. Pride is transferring cargo to or taking it from Vengeance.”

“We have two for the taking, then. S-foils in attack position.”

Corran reached up and hit the appropriate switch. The fighter’s stabilizers split and locked into the position that gave the X-wing its name. Off to the starboard side of his ship he saw the four fighters in Two Flight move out under Cracken’s command. Corran served as Captain Nunb’s wingman, with Rhysati Ynr and Erisi Dlarit in Rogues Seven and Eight completing One Flight.

Captain Nunb’s voice filled the comm channel. “Starships Vengeance Derra IV and Contruum’s Pride, this is Captain Aril Nunb of Rogue Squadron. You have violated New Republic space. Stand down. Drop your shields. Prepare to surrender your vessels.”

Corran’s green eyes narrowed as the ships began to move apart. “Be alert, Rogues. They’re moving and the one thing we know Vengeance needs more of is TIEs.”

As if summoned by his words, a dozen TIE starfighters and interceptors boiled out of the gap between the two ships.

“They needed pilots, too, Nine.”

“Which they apparently got, Four.”

“Cut the chatter. Two Flight, take Vengeance. One Flight, we have cover.”

“As ordered, Twelve.” Corran flexed his right hand, then took firm hold on the flightstick. He thumbed his lasers over to dual-offset mode that fired them in pairs. Doing that meant each shot packed less power, but he got a faster rate of fire. In the sort of wheeling, twisting dogfight the eyeballs and squints promised, rapid fire was devoutly to be desired. “I have your wing, Twelve.”

No sooner had he said that than Nunb’s ship sideslipped to port, then dove toward the planet. Corran had no idea why she’d done that, but he followed her as best he could, remaining off her starboard stabilizer and back a bit. As he started to follow her as she pulled up and out of the dive, he saw her lasers flash and the lead eyeball exploded.

“Nice shooting, Twelve.”

Her only reply came in a snap-roll up onto her port stabilizer that she quickly reversed. The stern of her ship slid to starboard as she applied rudder, swinging the nose of her craft to port. It tracked along the course of the TIE that had taken her snap-roll feint. Nunb’s quad shot clipped the port wing on the eyeball and sent it spinning off into space.

“You have lead, Nine.”

“As ordered, Twelve.” Corran glanced at his scanner and found a pair of Interceptors angling in from above. He pulled back on his stick, rolled, and acquired his first target. He set up for a head-to-head pass, then cut his throttle back. Bringing the port stabilizer up, he let the fighter sideslip to the right, then he applied port rudder and repeated Nunb’s tracking shot on the lead squint.

It took him four shots to do what she had done in one, but the effect was no less spectacular. The scarlet laser bolts burned a line of holes in the Interceptor’s canted port wing. It began to tear away from the front and smashed into the ball cockpit. When the top half of the stabilizer finally ripped free, the port wing twisted. The Interceptor began to gyrate and spin, then shook itself apart. Finally the twin ion engines exploded, one after the other, sowing ship shards on the Mrisst atmosphere.

The second squint kept coming and Corran’s maneuver had left him presenting his profile to it. Whistler whooped a warning, but Corran felt no panic at all. He rolled the ship over onto its top, then hit more left rudder. This reversed the effects of his previous move and left him going nose-to-nose with the squint. Corran centered the Imp in his targeting cross and when it went green, he tightened up on the trigger.

The laser bolts perforated the cockpit and filled it with fire. A secondary explosion shredded the squint. The wings sailed away from the fiery red and blue ball, then the ion engines blew, engulfing the remains of the ship in a silvery cloud. It imploded and tiny bits of debris struck sparks from Corran’s shields, but did no damage.

On ahead Corran spotted Vengeance because of the sheer volume of laser fire coming from its bow and waist lasers. The green darts formed striated cones of fire that spiraled around as the gunners attempted to hit their targets. While the freighter’s guns had not been intended as antifighter weapons, the tight spirals meant the gunners were having a very difficult time tracking their targets.

Apparently Lieutenant Cracken can fly very well.

Corran saw four pairs of proton torpedoes head in at the waspy freighter from widely disparate angles. Even if the gunners had been good enough to actually shoot the torpedoes out of the void, covering all the shots would have been difficult. Some shots were going to get through, the only question remaining was how many.

All the torpedoes hit, bringing down Vengeance’s forward and aft shields amid a storm of brilliant explosions. Vengeance began to rotate in space, exposing a gaping hole in the port side. Escape pods shot out in all directions. The freighter continued to move away from Mrisst, but it was clearly drifting and would eventually succumb to the planet’s gravitational pull.

“Nine, break starboard.”

Corran rolled his ship to the right hard, but still caught a couple of green laser bolts on his aft shield. He shunted power from his lasers to the shields, then evened their strength out. Back where he had been, a TIE starfighter swooped through a dive, and one of the squadron’s X-wing’s flashed past, hot on its tail.

“I can’t shake this squint on me.”

“Twelve is on the way, Eight.”

Erisi has one on her and Captain Nunb is on her way to help. Corran saw two TIE starfighters streak down and past him, coming in on an oddly angled vector. He wondered what they were doing until Whistler put a track up on his screen that showed them to be on an intercept for Rogue Seven, the ship that had called for him to break. Her target is pulling through a tight loop and she’s following, while the two garrals try to cut across the circle and nail Rhysati. Not if I can help it.

“Seven, watch your aft. I’m coming, but be prepared to break up and right if I call.”

“I copy, Nine. Almost have him.”

Corran rolled the ship to port, then hit enough rudder to stand the X-wing on its nose. He punched the throttle full forward and angled in at the two fighters following Rhysati’s ship. He switched his targeting system over to proton torpedoes, but didn’t target the TIEs immediately. Some models have a target lock warning system. If I give them a chance to dodge, they will. He took a quick breath, blew it out, then let his range on the lead TIE drop to one kilometer. Nudging his stick forward, he impaled the eyeball on his targeting crosshairs. The HUD went red, Whistler sounded a solid tone, and Corran hit his trigger.

The proton torpedo lanced out and hit the lead eyeball dead on. It pierced the starfighter’s port wing, then exploded right in front of the cockpit. The central ball crumpled as the wing disintegrated. The bulk of the craft went tumbling off down Mrisst’s gravity well.

Corran switched back to lasers and sideslipped right. He snapped a quick shot off that dinged the other TIE’s starboard wing, but failed to get enough of it to do significant damage. The TIE broke hard to port, so Corran rolled the X-wing to the port, applied some rudder, and cut his speed back to remain on the TIE’s tail.

The eyeball rolled right, then climbed sharply. Corran started to climb, then the TIE came over to complete a loop. Corran snapped the X-wing over on its right S-foil, presented his port side to the TIE. The starfighter’s first shots passed wide on either side of the snubfighter, but the eyeball started to roll to correct his aim.

Corran hit hard left rudder, then rolled ninety degrees to starboard to face the eyeball head on and give him the worst targeting profile possible. With a flick of his thumb he brought the torpedo targeting program up and immediately got a tone from Whistler. Ignoring the hail of green laser bolts hammering his forward shield, Corran squeezed the trigger.

The proton torpedo tore the TIE’s starboard wing off, sending the starfighter into a flat spin. Whistler reported the ship’s thrust had cut in half. Corran would have put that down to damage done to the starboard engine, but the spin began to slow. The pilot had clearly shut down the port engine so he could counter the spin. Restarting the port engine would give the pilot maneuvering power, but an explosion on the port side of the fighter showed the restart had not worked as intended. Blue lightning played over the fighter, then it burst into a fireball that streaked in toward the system’s sun.

“Whistler, targets.”

The droid displayed an image of Contruum’s Pride on the scope, but it wasn’t going anywhere. Corran hit a few buttons on his console, shifting around to see if there were any more fighters available, but he found none. Whistler’s negative bleat chastened him for doubting the droid.

“Just checking.”

Whistle rebleated his comment.

“Yes, perhaps I should know better.” Corran keyed his comm unit. “Nine is clear, Twelve.”

“I copy, Nine. Come to a heading of 173 and orbit Vengeance at three klicks. Four has convinced Pride that it wants to help stabilize Vengeance so it doesn’t do an atmosphere dive. Mrisst Disaster Control is scrambling for recovery operations.”

“As ordered, Twelve.” Corran smiled. “And, Captain?”

“Yes, Nine?”

“Impressive flying out there. Welcome to Rogue Squadron. You’re definitely one of us.”

“Thanks, Nine. It’s nice to be home.”

7

At the sound of her voice a jolt ran through Kirtan Loor. He whirled away from his workstation and dropped to one knee before the towering holographic projection of Ysanne Isard. “Madam Director, I am at your service.”

“That was my impression.”

The chilly tone in her voice warned him that her mood was not one in which she would tolerate mistakes. He couldn’t think of any he had made, but he killed the stirrings of anger that being unjustly accused started in him. You have been accused of nothing. Her mood may not have anything to do with you or your service. “What would you have of me, Madam Director?”

Some of the venom in her varicolored stare survived transmission from her office kilometers up and away from his work space in the bowels of the Imperial Palace. “I would have of you the best effort you can produce.”

“Always, my lady.”

“Your report on the incompetence of the Black Asp’s flight coordinator in the Bror Jace matter was quite thorough. I wanted Jace alive so I could utilize him at Lusankya. Your report makes it quite clear that Major Wortin knew this, but took no steps to guard against a kill. And you were correct in pointing out that his insistence that the ship blew up by accident was nothing more than a sham.”

“Thank you.”

“I did not need your editorializing in the conclusion you drew. It is true that in the past Major Wortin would have been executed, but we cannot afford to squander our personnel with such abandon anymore. I have approved your suggestion that he be transferred to the Inexorable. Under Thrawn he will learn lessons he should already know, or he will die.”

“Yes, Madam Director.”

“I have received another request from General Derricote for subjects. This time he wants Quarren?”

Loor brushed a hand back over his black widow’s peak, then looked up at her. He had often been told he looked like a young Grand Moff Tarkin, but he was fairly certain Tarkin would never have let Isard intimidate him. Tarkin had real power, almost as much as Iceheart wields here on Imperial Center. I have only the little bits I have assembled. I must wait and accumulate more.

“Yes, Madam Director, that is his request. General Derricote’s cadre of scientists have made the initial breakthrough in their research on Gamorreans. The virus has an incubation period of a month and is fatal in seventy-five percent of the cases.”

“The incubation period is too long. It must be faster.”

“Yes, they know that.”

“How long are the subjects contagious?”

Loor reached back and pulled his datapad from the desk. “Four days, during the final throes of the disease. Transmission occurs through bodily fluid and can survive in contaminated water supplies for almost a day. It can be frozen and survive indefinitely.”

Isard’s expression hardened. “It cannot be made airborne?”

“The current theory is that the same genetics that would make it transmissible by air would greatly facilitate a spontaneous mutation allowing it to affect humans.”

“Unacceptable.”

“As I have told them, Madam Director.” Loor glanced at his datapad again. “Derricote believes part of the incubation period problem is tied to the sluggishness of the Gamorrean metabolism. Quarren are not as good a platform to guarantee cross-species susceptibility, but their metabolic rate is higher than that of Gamorreans.”

“Very well, give him what he wants. Organize sweeps in the undercity for Quarren. There should be enough of them in the warrens to suit his needs.” Isard rubbed at her eyes with slender fingers. “Collect extras—Derricote’s estimates of what he will need are always conservative.”

“Yes, Madam Director.”

“And tell Derricote I want the incubation period cut to a week, and I expect that breakthrough in a month, no more.”

“I saw the reports of Zsinj’s forces showing up near the core. Do you think he is coming here?”

Ysanne Isard laughed aloud and Loor decided he’d heard more pleasant sounds during difficult interrogations. “Zsinj? Never while I am here. He knows I would pluck out his heart and fling it into the streets from the highest tower in the Palace. The only way he will come here is after someone has taken the world away from me, and he can slink in like the coward he is and take it away from them. No, his probes are to evaluate my defenses and the Rebellion’s strength. He will compare them, then put himself into a position to become the victor after the Rebels and I exhaust ourselves in the fight for Imperial Center.”

Despite having only read it once, Kirtan Loor recalled very clearly the details contained in Zsinj’s Imperial datafile. Everything there correlated well with the conclusion that the man was an opportunist, though Loor hesitated at deciding such a label defined the man completely. I would have done that before my association with Iceheart, but I have been made painfully aware that relying on conclusions I had drawn was the source of the difficulties in my life.

“If it would please you, Madam Director, I can arrange for efforts to discourage Warlord Zsinj’s scouting missions.”

“No, absolutely not. The man may not be terribly brave, but he compensates for this by being venial and vengeful. Strike at him and he will feel compelled to strike back.” Isard’s expression grew distant as her voice trailed off. “No, we must concentrate on the Rebellion. All must be ready for them when they decide to strike at Imperial Center.”

“As you wish, Madam Director.”

“You had better hope so, Agent Loor. If Derricote does not have his distraction for them available then, I shall have to take drastic steps to assure that anyone connected with his project does not fall into Rebel hands.” She smiled coldly. “And if I were you, the implications thereof would frighten me to death.”

8

Wedge dried the palms of his hands on his thighs as he watched Admiral Ackbar rise in response to Mon Mothma’s invitation. “Thank you, Chief Councilor. My staff and I have spent a considerable amount of time since yesterday’s session reviewing and analyzing all pertinent files concerning Coruscant. While we are still of the opinion that a blockade of the world is the preferable course of action from the military point of view, we are willing to concede that other factors may make this option unavailable to us.”

Mon Mothma smiled with genuine pleasure. “I appreciate your efforts in this regard, my friend. Have you discovered another way to approach this problem?”

“We have identified a number of them, Chief Councilor.”

Borsk Fey’lya tapped a button on the datapad in front of him. “A more logical course would have been to identify the greatest problem preventing our conquest, would it not?”

The Mon Calamari nodded solemnly in the Bothan’s direction. “We have done this as well. Clearly the overlapping planetary shields are the primary impediment to achieving our goal.”

The large black Wookiee seated to Princess Leia’s right growled a question that Leia’s gold 3PO unit translated. “Oh, my, Councilor Kerrithrarr wishes to know if you have found a way to bring the shields down?”

The Wookiee snarled and the gold droid’s arms flapped for a second. “I conveyed the meaning of your message, Councilor, without using the colorful analogy you suggested. For clarity, sir.”

“I understand the question.” Ackbar held a hand up to forestall further elaboration from the Wookiee. “In reply, perhaps an analogy is appropriate in that Coruscant can be likened to the first Death Star.”

Borsk Fey’lya barked a quick laugh. “You suggest we let Skywalker and Rogue Squadron fly in and destroy the planet with a well-placed proton torpedo?”

“I am terribly sorry to disappoint my esteemed colleague from Bothawui, but I was thinking to the prior visit to the Death Star, when Obi-wan Kenobi succeeded in sabotaging the facility to allow the Millennium Falcon to escape.” Ackbar pressed both of his hands against the tabletop. “The overriding problem we have in deciding how to approach Coruscant is determining exactly what is where. Huge construction droids are constantly grinding up old buildings and creating new ones. While we do have agents on the ground who are trying to supply us with as much data as possible, most of it comes from assets placed within the Imperial administration. While this has allowed us to react to things the Empire is doing off-planet, these resources are poorly positioned and trained to provide us with the sort of military data needed to enable us to effectively plan for conquest.”

Doman Beruss looked over at Ackbar. “You want to send a team of military specialists to Coruscant as a prelude to moving on the world?”

“It is a stormy sea, but this venture is the first stroke in calming it.”

Doman looked over toward Mon Mothma and beyond to one of the Chief Councilor’s advisers. “General Cracken, this sort of intelligence operation falls into your area of expertise. Are you prepared to handle it?”

“Councilor Beruss, I have reviewed the general guidelines for the operation and I approve of them. I am prepared to use the assets I have developed on Coruscant to aid Admiral Ackbar’s effort. However, the general division of labor within the Alliance—a division caused by our limited resources—means most of my people lack a prime requisite for being able to carry out this operation.”

The Bothan craned his neck around to look at Cracken. “That requisite being?”

“None of my available people are fighter pilots.” Cracken gestured in Wedge’s direction. “Admiral Ackbar has suggested, and I agree, that Rogue Squadron is a natural choice for the operation.”

“Rogue Squadron?” Borsk Fey’lya made no attempt to cover his surprise, and Wedge thought he might have been exaggerating it a bit for dramatic effect. “Here your analogy to the Death Star comes back to haunt you, Ackbar. Rogue Squadron may have worked miracles before, but they could not possibly succeed in rendering Coruscant defenseless.”

“Rendering the planet defenseless is not the purpose of the mission, Councilor Fey’lya.” Ackbar turned and pointed at Wedge. “In rebuilding the squadron care was taken to choose the best individuals possible—both in the area of their flying skills and for a host of other skills. Rogue Squadron is uniquely qualified for this mission.”

“Do you think this as well, General Cracken?”

“I do, Councilor Fey’lya.”

“You would risk your son’s life in this?”

“That is a question that has been answered many times over.”

The Bothan’s creamy fur rippled along his shoulders. He fixed Wedge with a violet stare. “You accept this mission, Commander Antilles?”

Wedge waited to answer until after he got a nod from Admiral Ackbar. “In principle, yes. The details are still being worked out.”

“Do you think you could be effective on the ground there?”

Wedge thought for a moment before answering. “Given the parameters of the operation, yes.”

Leia casually raised a hand. “Perhaps you could explain what you mean by that, Commander Antilles?”

“Of course, Councilor Organa.” Wedge gave her a smile in thanks for breaking up Fey’lya’s interrogation. “Because of the virtually total urbanization of the planet, Coruscant presents some unique problems for an incoming force. As we saw at Hoth, the Imperials correctly took our shield generators down first, then worked on other targets of military importance. On Coruscant we need to be able to pinpoint power plants, communications centers, and other sites that we can hit to disrupt Imperial command and control functions. We need to pull the shields down, then make them deaf and blind. If we give them no power to operate their defensive weapons, we further guarantee our success.”

Leia nodded thoughtfully. “You said you needed to pinpoint targets. In what way does your piloting skill enhance your ability to do this?”

Easy questions with important answers—hitting Coruscant should be this simple. “Councilor, it is one thing to identify the locations we need to hit, but hitting them is another thing entirely. As a pilot I can identify and evaluate the possible approaches to a target. I can also help determine how much in the way of firepower will be necessary to eliminate it.

“I should also point out that we really do need to be running a precision operation because we have to take into account the possibility of Warlord Zsinj or some other Imperial leader trying to take Coruscant from us while we are trying to bring its defenses back up. For example, hitting a power conduit is preferable to hitting the reactor creating the power it carries because the conduit is much easier to replace.”

The Bothan smoothed the fur on his chin with his left hand. “Bribing a custodian to shut the power down would be much easier, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, sir, but handling that sort of thing is outside my area of expertise.”

“I see.” Borsk Fey’lya sat forward and clasped his hands together. “Despite my reservations about this mission, I do agree with my Mon Calamari compatriot that the gathering of information is necessary if the conquest of Coruscant is to happen. I would also vouchsafe that any interim disruption of normal Imperial functions on Coruscant by Rogue Squadron, or General Cracken’s people, would not be seen as a negative.”

Ackbar blinked once, slowly, then clasped his hands behind his back. “Disruption is not necessary, but it could be effective and even helpful.”

“I would think it could be very helpful, especially if it served as a distraction for Imperial authorities who might be working against Rogue Squadron.” Fey’lya opened his hand. “That seems reasonable, does it not?”

Ackbar nodded. “Perhaps.”

Wedge sensed in the slow delivery of Ackbar’s reply an extreme reluctance to grant the Bothan his point. Leia suggested Admiral Ackbar would have to compromise, and he has retreated from the blockade. It would seem Borsk Fey’lya wants him to concede more.

“Good, for I have a little operation that I think will function very well as an adjunct to what you want to do.”

“And that is?”

Fey’lya hit a button on his datapad and the holoplate in the middle of the table displayed a small, dirty red ovoid planet whose atmosphere escaped into space like smoke drifting from dying embers. A single large moon orbited it, plunging in and out of the wispy tendrils of atmosphere trailing from the planet. Wedge didn’t recognize the world until the Bothan sigils running down the edge of the image area resolved themselves into Basic letters and strung themselves together at the planet’s southern pole.

Kessel! Wedge shook his head. He knew that the Empire had maintained a penal colony there and used the prisoners as slave labor to harvest spice. One of Rogue Squadron’s recruits—the first of the new members to be slain—had come from Kessel and still had family there who worked as educators. After the Emperor’s death, the inmates had overthrown their masters and had taken control of the planet. They administered the mines and the vast atmosphere factories that freed enough oxygen and other gases from the rocks to let people exist on the surface using nothing more elaborate than a rebreather. It was a brutal existence with very little in resources being available to the residents—that the world was considered viable was more a testament to the tenacity of the residents than any measure of scientific analysis.

Borsk Fey’lya stood. “Kessel was one of the detention centers the Empire used to house dissidents as well as hardened felons. When the inmates took control of the center they chose a Rybet by the name of Moruth Doole to administrate. He was a minor official at the prison and appears to have been connected to the spice trade, hence his easy alliance with the prisoners. The Imperials and the political prisoners were sent to work in the spice mines. A few of each have been released, but only after off-world friends and family have paid a substantial ransom.”

Threepio again translated for the Wookiee Councilor. “Kerrihrarr wishes to know what criminals and Kessel have to do with Coruscant?”

“Coming to that point directly.” The Bothan smiled, but Wedge read a hint of threat in the toothy grin. “On Coruscant there are substantial remnants of the Black Sun organization. As did many of you, I thought Prince Xizor’s grab for power was doomed from the start, but it was the Black Sun organization that allowed him to contemplate opposing the Dark Lord of the Sith. I propose selecting and freeing certain Black Sun officers from Kessel and bringing them into Coruscant. There they would bring the disparate parts of Black Sun together and work to sabotage the Empire.”

Ackbar sat down slowly and gave Fey’lya a wall-eyed stare. “You want to revive the scourge of the Black Sun?”

“Not revive, just focus. The enemy of our enemy is our friend. Isn’t that the principle behind Councilor Organa’s approaches to the Hapans? That certainly was the principle that guided our alliance with Imperial forces at Bakura to fight the Ssi-ruuk.” Fey’lya stared incredulously at Ackbar. “By granting selected felons their leave of Kessel—in effect taking Doole’s obvious rivals for power off his hands—we can also ransom some of our people who are trapped there. And to guarantee Black Sun’s compliance with our wishes, we can trade them more of their people when they perform as we want them to.”

“I don’t like this.” Ackbar shook his head adamantly. “You are talking about unleashing thieves and murderers on Coruscant.”

“To let them steal Imperial goods and kill Imperial officials, or do you want to reserve the killing for your people, and the dying, too? Shall that be a privilege reserved for the military, or will you take help where you can find it?” Fey’lya crossed his arms. “You have already admitted that added distractions could be a help to Rogue Squadron’s mission. Certainly having an army of irregular troops at your disposal to disrupt Imperial operations when the invasion begins would reduce bloodshed.”

Doman nodded. “It seems Councilor Fey’lya is merely suggesting you fight fire with fire.”

The Mon Calamari half closed his eyes. “I do not like fire analogies. As we say on Mon Calamari, ‘Frolic in the surf and get drowned by the undertow.’ ”

Leia stood. “I would agree, as one Corellian has put it, if you anger a Wookiee, you shouldn’t be surprised at having an arm torn off, and it may well be that in the future we regret any sort of alliance with the remnants of Black Sun. On the other hand, I think none of us can truly comprehend the difficulty of neutralizing the Imperial forces on Coruscant. Indeed, as you have said, Admiral Ackbar, until you have Rogue Squadron on the ground to assess the situation, we cannot be a hundred percent certain what taking Coruscant will entail. The fact is, however, that winning the goodwill of at least part of Coruscant’s underworld cannot hurt us.”

Mon Mothma nodded. “I would also point out that some of our greatest leaders were thought to be nothing but ruffians, confidence men, and spice smugglers. In being given the opportunity to join us, they have managed to redeem themselves.”

“But if they are the exceptions that prove the rule?” Ackbar slapped his hands impatiently against the table’s surface. “I do not like this operation at all, but I believe many of you see merit in it where I do not. If this Kessel run is to be authorized, I want to go over every detail to make certain what we want to happen is what actually happens. No one, not even an idiot like Zsinj, has been foolish enough to free the dregs of the galaxy from Kessel. I do not want a situation to arise where my people are taken hostage and our equipment is converted to the use of the criminals. This will be a strictly military operation and I will not have it turn into the sort of disaster we faced on Borleias.”

Councilor Fey’lya’s fur rose on his neck and formed a crest between his ears before he smoothed it back down. The first assault on Borleias had been planned and led by General Laryn Kre’fey, a Bothan who, according to scuttlebutt, was distantly related to Borsk Fey’lya. The mission had gone from bad to worse, costing General Kre’fey his life and putting almost half of Rogue Squadron out of commission. Had General Salm not violated a direct order, all of Rogue Squadron would have been destroyed and the Rebel Alliance would be in no position to even consider a mission to Coruscant.

Fey’lya’s voice began soft and low, causing Wedge to strain to hear him. “Far be it from me to wish a repetition of Borleias on anyone. You are the military leader here, Ackbar—I have no wish to supplant you. You should handle the military details, but I have prepared a list of people I think should be our targets. I have appended full files to my list so you may determine what efforts and precautions need to be taken.”

“Your understanding in this matter is most appreciated, Councilor Fey’lya.”

“Good. We really are on the same side here, Admiral. I want the conquest of Coruscant to proceed as swiftly and efficiently as you do.” Fey’lya smiled, but Wedge found no warmth in the expression. “I would hope you will use your best people to see that this mission comes off perfectly. Perhaps if you were to employ Rogue Squadron as part of the operation, their efforts will establish a rapport with those they free and that will work in their favor.”

“I will take that suggestion under advisement, Councilor.”

Wedge leaned forward in his chair and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Sir, freeing criminals from Kessel is not a mission Rogue Squadron wants to perform.”

The Mon Calamari turned his head enough to watch Wedge with one eye. “And Ysanne Isard does not want to surrender Coruscant to us. We all have to do things we don’t want to do, Commander. Let us hope we can just make the best of them.”

9

Wedge hit a button on the datapad, causing the holoprojector in the center of the pilot’s briefing room to recreate the long-distance view of Kessel he’d first seen at the Provisional Council meeting. “All right, people, let’s get this briefing under way.”

The various members of Rogue Squadron took their places. Wedge noticed that Corran Horn and Nawara Ven, a Twi’lek who had been a lawyer before he joined the Rebellion, were sitting together in the back. When going over the initial planning stages of the operation with Captains Nunb and Celchu, he’d anticipated the greatest resistance to the operation coming from those two. One sent people to Kessel; the other tried to keep them from being sent there. They’ve both got connections to the population there, and that could mean some complications for me.

Wedge shifted his shoulders around to loosen them, then began. “This operation is going to be accomplished in three distinct parts. Each one has to go according to plan or we abort the whole thing. Admiral Ackbar is leaving the decision to proceed or stop to me. I may not like what we’re being asked to do—and I don’t—but the Provisional Council wants this done, so we’re doing it. But we’re doing it our way.”

He pointed to the moon orbiting Kessel. “The Imps used to keep a base on that moon. It is supposed to be abandoned, but we don’t know what the Imps may have left behind in the way of automated defenses or booby traps. Our first step is to run a flyby on the base, neutralize automated defenses, and knock down anything launched at us from there. Lieutenant Page and his commandos will then come in and secure the base. Alliance Security will follow up and relieve his troops. That’s phase one. Everyone got it?”

The pilots before him all nodded with degrees of enthusiasm going from great to none.

“Phase two is a repeat of phase one, but it takes place on Kessel. We do a flyover and clear a landing zone for Page’s people. The commandos will secure the LZ. When they do, Horn, Ven, and I will land. Captain Nunb will be in charge of the rest of you and you’ll fly cover for the LZ and for Tycho. He’ll be using the shuttle Forbidden to ferry our people from Kessel to the moon. On the moon the people will be processed, then shipped out on a number of different ships for insertion into Coruscant, or for repatriation to their own worlds or exile communities.

“The processing and out-shipping is phase three. It will run concurrently with phase two. Trouble with outbound people will cause the termination of the operation.” Wedge crossed his arms. “Two key points here. The first is that this is an extremely sensitive and dangerous mission. The people we are dealing with will be very dangerous. Our rules of engagement will be simple: We offer a general warning when we come in, then we use whatever force we need to preempt problems.

“The second point is this: We’re getting some of the good along with the bad. We have our want list of scum, but they won’t know who it is that we want. Our job is to ransom as many people from political lists as we can for those on the criminal list we’ll be taking away. Doole is the key to this strategy working. We’ll be taking his enemies away and lowering the general population. This will ease his resource strain and increase his control over the spice operation. He’ll see this plan as better for him than it is for us.”

In the back Corran raised a hand. “Commander, what will we do in the very real situation of some of these people threatening to kill innocents if we don’t take them? Lujayne Forge had … has family on Kessel. The people sentenced to Kessel are likely to do anything to get off that rock. For all we know, Doole wants to leave, too.”

“That’s all possible, but there are contingency plans to prevent that from happening. You’ll note in the supplemental material in your briefing bytes I have a list of strategic sites on Kessel. They include the atmosphere plants and, most importantly, a list of spice storage facilities. Moruth Doole has supplies hidden away so he can meet demand well into the future. I will make it very apparent to him that if he cannot exert control over his people, I will be forced to destroy his storehouses. Since greed seems to drive the local economy there, I think he’ll see his way clear to working with us.”

Corran nodded. “When persuasion fails, coercion works.”

“I hope so, Lieutenant Horn.”

Nawara Ven sat forward, letting his brain tails dangle over his shoulders. “Commander, I’ve reviewed the list of ransom candidates. Am I mistaken, or do I notice a significant portion of them are Bothans?”

“Is there a problem with that, Lieutenant Ven?”

“On the surface of it, no, sir. On the other hand I noticed that a number of people—many of whom were my clients, in fact—people who truly are political prisoners, have been left off the list. I don’t mean that there was any campaign to keep my clients from being pulled off the planet, just that the list of ‘good’ people has some people on it who could easily be on the other list, and some very deserving, innocent people have been left off the list.”

Wedge smiled, a response that seemed to surprise his pilots. “I’m glad you pointed that out. In presenting this plan to the Provisional Council Admiral Ackbar made very clear that we’d have to be dealing from a position of strength. Councilor Fey’lya provided some deal packages indicating who should be asked for in exchange for this or that person on the ‘bad’ list. With your help and experience in negotiations, Lieutenant Ven, I intend to win more people for each of our prisoners than the Council suggested we might. I do have clearance to supplement my lists to account for marriages and children. I intend us to exploit that latitude as much as possible.”

He looked around. “Any other questions before I deal with Lieutenant Horn’s next objection to the plan?” No one said anything, so Wedge nodded to Corran. “Be my guest, Lieutenant Horn.”

“Not really an objection, sir, but a question—can we exclude any of the people on our ‘bad’ list?” Corran winced. “There are a few on here who really shouldn’t be allowed off Kessel, unless we’re going to dump them in the Maw on our way out of there.”

The image of spacing any number of the criminals into the black hole near Kessel brought a smile to Wedge’s face, but he killed it quickly enough. “These are the people that have been determined to be useful to us. Who did you have in mind?”

“Zekka Thyne—he’s also known as ‘Patches,’ but not to his face. He’s on Kessel because my father and I got him on a smuggling pinch, but he’s been tied to the murders of nearly a dozen people—all of them rivals of Black Sun. Patches was being groomed as Prince Xizor’s man on Corellia. Xizor tried to slice some files to get Thyne shifted back off Kessel but he couldn’t because Corsec’s Imperial Liaison, Kirtan Loor, had accidentally altered the structure of the files with Thyne’s information. But for that bit of incompetence, Thyne would have been long gone from Kessel—it was the only good thing Loor ever did.”

“If we’re lucky, Lieutenant Horn, Thyne will be dead.”

Corran smiled. “We could see to it that he is.”

“Murder, Lieutenant Horn?” Wedge frowned. “Even if he is as bad as you say …”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Corran held his hands up as everyone turned to stare at him. “I’d be the first person who would be glad to dance on his grave, and if he steps out of line at all, I’d be happy to vape him, but I’m not suggesting murder. It does strike me, though, that we could slice some files and report some deaths that prevent us from taking certain people.”

Corran’s suggestion sorely tempted Wedge. The list of criminals Borsk Fey’lya had supplied did scan like a directory of organized crime. Wedge had no love for the Empire, but it had been fairly ruthless at dismantling the upper levels of Black Sun. Black Sun was a cancer. The Empire hadn’t been able to cut it all out, but they had forced it into a pretty serious remission. Reviving it to distract the Empire had some merit, and Corran’s suggestion offered a possible way to excise some of the more malignant elements from the group.

The spark of hope burning in Wedge’s mind died very quickly as reality set in. “The purpose of our mission is to take from Kessel and insert into Coruscant the people who will complicate the lives of Ysanne Isard and her people. The guys who are the most vile are also the ones who can cause the most trouble. We’re going to be making the most out of the confusion they create.”

Pash glanced back at Corran. “If we make Black Sun too weak, the Empire squashes it.”

“Sure, but if we make it too strong, we lose the trust of the folks Black Sun hurts and we might find ourselves having to compete with them for the ownership of Coruscant.” Corran shook his head. “Xizor would have deposed the Emperor if he could have, and Zekka Thyne will make a run at Isard if he has the chance.”

Wedge shrugged. “Sounds like he is just the man Councilor Fey’lya wants to have on Coruscant.”

“And the last person most of us should want there.” Corran’s eyes narrowed. “Can we put him on the list of strategic targets to take out?”

“I’ll trust your judgment in that matter, Lieutenant Horn. That’s why you’ll be with me down on the planet. If Zekka Thyne is a problem there, we’ll deal with him there.” Wedge looked around. “Anything else? No overall objections? Lieutenant Horn?”

Corran shrugged, but not fluidly enough to convince Wedge he was without objections. “It’s a mission, sir.”

“But I would have thought freeing criminals would have caused you to have reservations.”

Corran smiled. “I’m not saying I like it, sir, but in CorSec we made deals with criminals on a daily basis. The goal then, just as it is now, is to trade a lesser evil for a greater one. I’d just as soon use Zekka Thyne and some of this other scum as rancor bait, but if they’ll help bring Iceheart down, I guess my reservations don’t really mean that much. I’m good to go with this, Wedge. I think I’ll be fine.”

Wedge nodded slowly. He has a point, though I don’t think he likes this any more than I do. But it’s a mission and we’re Rogue Squadron, so we’ll get it done. “Last-minute questions, anyone?”

No one had anything to ask, so Wedge killed the projection of Kessel. “We’re mission go in twelve standard hours. You’ll want to get some sleep, but before you do, give Emtrey a list of your belongings. While we’re on the Kessel run, our headquarters will be relocating back to Noquivzor. We’ll be operating from there for the immediate future.”

Pash looked surprised. “Afraid of reprisals by Warlord Zsinj?”

Wedge just smiled. “Those are the orders, straight from the Provisional Council, the wisdom of which, I am certain, will make itself clear once we finish the mission to Kessel.”

10

Kessel’s weak atmosphere slowly smothered the fires burning amid the ruins of the two concussion missile launchers on the ridge overlooking the landing zone. A little smoke and even more dust rolled in a lazy mist down the escarpment, pouring like a vapor stream across the unpaved roadway carved from its face. The mist dissolved before it hit the flat of the plain, leaving a clear field of fire for Page and his people as they set up a perimeter around the hillock at the center of the plain.

Whistler hooted in a low tone.

“Looks pretty clear to me, too.” Corran began a long turn to starboard that took him out over the main mine complex. The only surface features visible were the administration buildings and some storage sheds for surface vehicles. One track led off to the north on a nearly direct line for the nearest atmosphere plant. The other major track led south to the hills and the plain where he would be landing.

“Nine is clear, Rogue Leader.”

“I copy, Nine. Come in and land. Don’t forget your breathing mask.”

“Thanks, Lead.” Corran brought the X-wing about and flew back to the plain. He eased his throttle back and cut in the repulsorlift generators. The X-wing glided down gently and hovered five meters above the ground. Using the rudder pedals, Corran swung the nose around and positioned his fighter so it formed the third point of a triangle with Wedge’s and Nawara’s fighters. His covered the southern defensive arc of the Rogues’ position and left enough space for Tycho to easily bring the Lambda-class shuttle down in their midst.

Corran extended the landing gear and brought the ship to rest, then killed the repulsorlift generators and engine. “Whistler, remember, shoot first if you have to, then go for an engine start to give you more laser energy. If you have to, hover out of reach until the rest of the squadron comes and covers you.”

The droid keened mournfully.

“No, nothing will happen, I promise, but I want you to be careful.” He missed a chunk of Whistler’s reply, but took it that the annoying tone carried the meaning of the missing content. He doffed his helmet, drew the blaster from his shoulder holster, checked it, took it off safe, and reholstered it. Finally he pulled on a breathing mask and a pair of goggles, then popped the release on his cockpit canopy. It slid up and he crawled out.

Corran jumped down and found Kessel to be just a bit lighter in gravity than Borleias or Noquivzor. He ran over to where Wedge and Nawara stood beside an orange, mushroomlike tent that the commandos had assembled. “How did your conversation with Moruth Doole go?”

Wedge frowned slightly. “I think I got my points across, but he’s right on the edge of paranoia, and it doesn’t take much to push him over.”

“Doole’s probably a glit-biter.”

The Twi’lek twitched a head tail in Corran’s direction. “I don’t believe I’ve heard that term before.”

“CorSec slang, sorry. Glitterstim is the most potent form of spice—the stuff most people get is cut and diluted so heavily that the most they get from using is a little euphoria. Glit-biters are taking the real thing and it seems, in some folks, to punch up their latent mental abilities. They can read minds, or so they think, and they assume any mind they can’t read is closed because the person is plotting against them. Doole probably forgot he was seeing a hologram of you, Commander. You were hostile, he couldn’t read you, hence he figured you really had it in for him.”

Lieutenant Page, a dark-haired man of medium height and build, came over and pointed toward the horizon. “Landspeeder coming down the road.”

Wedge hit his comlink. “Lead to Twelve. How does it look?”

“One vehicle, Lead.”

“Thanks, Twelve.” Wedge turned to Page. “It’s coming alone. If you clear it, let it come in.”

“As ordered, sir.” Page went running off in the direction of the big, boxy landspeeder and a squad of folks fell in behind him. The landspeeder slowed, then stopped, and a door opened. Page spoke through the open door with someone while his people checked in and around the vehicle. Apparently satisfied with the inspection, Page closed the door and jumped back off the vehicle’s running boards. He waved it forward and it headed in.

Other commandos stopped the landspeeder about a hundred meters beyond the perimeter at a point where it remained under the guns of Wedge’s X-wing. Two people got out and a trooper escorted them forward toward Wedge. The man stood very tall and seemed to Corran to be painfully thin. What little hair he had left on his head was white and wispy enough that Kessel’s weak atmosphere could make it float. The woman came up to the man’s shoulder and had deep brown hair. Corran guessed from the way she moved she was younger than the man, but her face was deeply enough scored with wrinkles that he would have matched them in age were he looking at still holograms.

The commando moved the two visitors into and through the tent’s simple airlock, then Corran and Nawara followed Wedge through. Once inside they were able to remove their breathing masks, though the acrid stink of hot plastic almost made Corran put his back on. Resolving to breathe as little as possible, Corran joined Nawara in front of some folding camp chairs.

Squeezing past the table with the holoprojector on it, Wedge extended his hand to the man. “I’m Commander Wedge Antilles, New Republic Armed Forces. I lead Rogue Squadron. I knew your daughter.”

The man shook Wedge’s hand firmly and kept a brave expression on his face, but the slight tremor in his lower lip betrayed his true emotions. “I am Kassar Forge. This is my wife, Myda. I want to thank you for the hologram you sent after Lujayne …” He fell silent for a moment and his wife rubbed his back with her hand. “She always said she wanted to be a hero and show something good could come from Kessel.”

“She succeeded.” Wedge turned back toward his own people. “This is Nawara Ven and Lieutenant Corran Horn.”

Kassar shook their hands as well.

Corran didn’t release the man’s hand, forcing himself to smile as he looked up into Kassar’s dark eyes. “Your daughter really was a hero. She kept the unit together. She told me about what you do here, about teaching people so they don’t have to return to crime. She spent a lot of time teaching all of us, too.”

“Thank you.”

“No, thank you.” Corran patted the back of the man’s hand. “I owed her a big favor I never got a chance to repay. If there’s anything I can do for you, please, don’t hesitate to ask.”

Kassar nodded, then freed his hand from Corran’s grip and turned back to Wedge. “I guess I have to ask what it is I can do for you, Commander? I’m sure all this wasn’t just so you could say hello. Your strike on the moon base caused a lot of excitement, and Doole is not happy about losing his missile launchers.”

“If Doole wants to be happy, today will not be his day.” Wedge ran a hand along his jaw. “We’re here to take some people away from Kessel—some very bad people. We are also going to take as many of the good people from here as we can. On the top of my list is you and your family, if you want to go. And go or stay, I want you here to point out people who should be on the list but aren’t.”

The tall man clasped his hands together against his stomach and stared at the orange fabric floor for a moment. “I came here by choice a long time ago—well before any of you were born. Back before the Clone Wars even. I don’t know if I have done much good here, but I think I’ve done very little evil. I’ll stay. Myda?”

Her hand grasped the back of his neck and shook him gently. “I didn’t come here willingly, but I did stay because I wanted to be with you. We will stay, and our family will, too.” Myda’s voice took on an edge at the last of her statement and Corran saw her exchange a sharp glance with her husband.

Kassar nodded slowly. “I am willing to help you, Commander, but I don’t want to make decisions about who goes and who stays. I’ll offer what I know.”

“If you are afraid of reprisals …”

“No, no, I’ve long since been judged harmless by everyone here. You’re taking them, the decision is yours to make.”

“I understand. Lieutenant Ven has my list of the good folks that we want to get out. I’d like you to review it with him.” Wedge twisted around and touched the holoprojector. “I’ve left Moruth Doole with the impression that this is very much a rogue operation. He thinks I’m setting myself up as the middleman in this hostage operation. I’ve told him I am willing to transport prisoners off Kessel—prisoners he’ll be well rid of—in return for getting my people off. That’s an accurate description of what will happen, but not my focus in this project. Still, Doole has to think I’m willing and able to kill his prisoners, blow up his stores of spice, and toss him into the Maw.”

Myda looked over at Wedge and Corran with a piercing stare. “Are you capable of doing that?”

“Capable, yes,” Wedge nodded, “and not particularly reluctant to do so.”

She smiled. “Good. Fear is as much a part of life on Kessel as spice or air. Control it and you’ll do fine.”

Wedge hit the power switch for the holoprojector. An image of Moruth Doole the size of a pilot’s helmet glowed to life. The batrachian Rybet hopped impatiently from one foot to the other, then stopped and clapped his webbed hands together. He twisted his whole body around to peer closely with his good mechanical eye at the holocam in his dark office. The green of his flesh melded with the similar hue of his jacket, while the tan tracery on his flesh looked as if he’d been drizzled with paint. Because of the way he leaned forward to get near to the holocam, his head swelled out of proportion with his body and nearly made Corran laugh.

“Is that you, Antilllles?” The Rybets voice jumped sharply between octaves and added more l’s into the center of Wedge’s name than necessary.

“It’s me, Doole. I’ve got my first exchange to offer you.” Wedge looked over at Nawara Ven and the Twi’lek nodded. Wedge smiled tightly at the holoprojector. “I have a group of ten Sullustans. For them I’ll take Arb Skynxnex.”

“No!”

“No?”

“I am selling them to you, I decide what I am paid. Skynxnex is mine—he does not leave.” Doole hopped up and down angrily, then searched around until the metal and glass mechanical eye again spotted the holocam. “For these Sullustans I will give you Zekka Thyne.”

The name didn’t surprise Corran, but Kassar’s reaction to it did. The old man shuddered and Myda clung to his arm. They look as afraid of Thyne as Doole sounds. Corran raised a hand and Wedge hit a mute button on the holoprojector. “Commander, he’s too anxious. He wants to be rid of Thyne. We can get more for him.”

Wedge nodded, then unmuted the communications device. “Thyne isn’t of interest to me. I’d have to be mad to let someone like that leave this rock.”

“You will take him, or you get nothing else.”

Wedge pulled a comlink from a pocket in his flight suit and held it up where Doole could see it. “Rogue Leader to Twelve, you’re free to fire on warehouse number one.”

Doole’s image capered away from the holocam, then hunched itself over, as if the Rybet was looking at a monitor built into an unseen desk. Doole reeled back, then ran to the holocam. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“No?”

“Twelve here, Lead. I have acquired the target. Commencing run now.”

“Antilles!”

“You have something you want to say to me, Doole?”

“The Sullustans and more …”

“Twelve, abort the run, but don’t clear your targeting data.”

“As ordered, Lead.”

Doole’s thick purple tongue played out over the thin line of his mouth. “The Sullustans you can have. What else?”

Wedge turned away from the projector as if giving the problem due thought. Nawara held up fingers to indicate which of the target groups he thought should be added to Thyne’s ransom. Wedge nodded, then turned back. “We’re sending you the data on a group of five Bothans, including Esrca Plo’kre.”

“Plo’kre.” Doole’s mouth snapped shut, then he bowed his head. “Done. And Thyne brings with him another.”

“Who?”

“His cutter.”

Wedge looked back at the Forges, but they gave no sign of even having heard Doole, much less understanding him. “Corran?”

I know I’ve heard the term before. He thought back, then nodded. “It’s a spicer term, used a lot of years ago when Thyne was still on Corellia. A cutter is someone who prepares spice for use or sale. It came to mean someone close enough to a person that they could be trusted with cutting their spice. He probably means aide.”

Kassar’s head came up. “He means lover.”

Corran shrugged. “That, too.”

Wedge nodded. “Do you know who it is?”

Kassar hung his head and Myda answered. “We do. Her name is Inyri.”

Corran checked his datapad. “I’ve got nothing on anyone by that name.”

“You wouldn’t. She’s done nothing wrong.”

Something is not right here. Corran frowned. “You don’t get sent to Kessel for nothing. How well do you know this Inyri?”

“I thought I knew her very well.” Myda swiped at a tear rolling down her cheek. “She’s our daughter.”

11

“Is it a deal, Antilles?”

“Send them out.” Wedge hit another button that froze the transmission. On the other end Doole would only see a holographic representation of Rogue Squadron’s crest. He turned toward the Forges. “Say the word and we’ll make sure they are separated. We’ll find her a place to stay, away from Thyne.”

“Do it!” Myda reached out and clutched one of Wedge’s hands in her own. “Please, don’t leave her with him.”

Kassar’s hands settled on his wife’s shoulders and drew her back. “Myda, we can’t do that. She has made her decision.”

“But it is a bad one.”

Inyri’s father slowly shook his head. “And so this means we can deny her freedom? Making bad decisions is not a crime, not even under the Empire.”

“But I’ve seen plenty of people end up headed for Kessel because of making bad decisions.” Corran saw the pain in Myda’s eyes, and saw no small amount of it reflected in her husband’s expression. “I know Thyne—he is as bad as they come. Your daughter’s choice will land her in trouble.”

Kassar straightened up. “Only if she acts on it.”

“But she’s leaving with him.”

Kassar shrugged helplessly. “She has found something to value in him. Perhaps she can save him from himself.”

Corran winced. “Thyne’s pretty much a black hole as far as saving is concerned.”

“My whole life has been spent here training people how to live away from Kessel. That is all I can do, though. I cannot make their choices for them. I cannot live their lives for them.” Kassar looked down and wiped tears from Myda’s face. “We gave our daughter—all of our children—all the love and support we could. We trust them. Just as we trusted Lujayne to go off and join the Rebellion, we must trust Inyri.”

Corran shook his head. “I’m not liking this at all, Commander.”

“It doesn’t thrill me, either, Corran, but it’s not our fight and not one we can win, not right now anyway.” Wedge looked down at his fists, then opened them slowly. “Perhaps she will serve as a brake on him.”

“And when the brake burns out?”

“I expect you to have something arranged to cover that contingency.”

“As ordered, sir.” Corran started going through the list of criminals on his datapad. The original list had been drawn from Imperial files and annotated with rankings that determined the value of each individual to the Rebellion. Out of thousands of convicts, only seventeen had been identified as useful by New Republic officials. Those seventeen—now reduced to sixteen since Doole had eliminated Arb Skynxnex from consideration—clearly had been rising stars in the Black Sun organization. While none of them had achieved upper-level status, they had shown the sort of initiative and drive that made it clear, had their careers not been interrupted by arrest and conviction, the best of them would have been on a rough par with Jabba the Hutt in terms of power and influence.

Corran remembered his father having complained about the changing nature of organized crime. Once upon a time Black Sun had been an honorable organization—with its own morality, of course, but with a code that its members lived by. Black Sun had always been ruthless—dump a load of spice and blaster-packers would worry about collecting the cost, or its equivalent, from the smuggler in question. Members who informed on others would be killed in a most grisly manner, and law enforcement officers were legitimate targets for reprisals, but these things were all done on an individual basis.

The new breed was willing to use a bomb in a crowded cantina just to get one individual. The idea of killing an informer and his family became standard. The spice that started to be sold was stronger than ever before and the assassination of political figures who opposed the crime cartel became the rule, not the exception. Hal Horn had assumed the Rebellion’s success in defying the Empire had contributed to a general easing of moral standards that carried into Black Sun and allowed savages like Zekka Thyne to thrive.

Three silhouettes appeared on the other side of the airlock’s translucent inner seal. The soldier inside the tent opened the airlock and tugged Thyne through first. The hobbles on the man’s feet made him stumble, but Thyne managed to recover his balance despite having his arms bound behind him. He shook off his breathing mask, then held his head up defiantly. “I am Zekka Thyne.”

Five years on Kessel hadn’t done anything to Thyne but make him a bit leaner and, as the hateful glow in his eyes suggested, a whole lot more malevolent. It’s as if the years here have distilled him down to his core essence. Only a couple of centimeters taller than Corran, Thyne had a wiry build that made him seem somehow even taller. Clean-shaven and bald—he appeared to be congenially hairless—his head and exposed flesh gleamed like polished leather.

More remarkable than in its glow, Thyne’s flesh came in two shades of color. Most noticeable was the light blue because it seemed to have been layered on over the whitish-pink color, as if he had been splashed with midnight-blue dye that never quite washed out. The biggest splotch cut right down along the bridge of his nose, then back under his cheekbone to his left ear and on up to the midline of his skull again. It gave the impression that he had one massive black eye that was slowly fading.

Aside from the color, his sharply pointed ears, and black, equally sharp serrated teeth, his eyes separated him from the realm of the wholly human. The orbs were red throughout, the color of arterial blood, except for where a slender diamond pupil bisected them. Flecks of gold outlined the black diamond and, in the dark, would reflect a little light. Those diamonds had betrayed him on Corellia, letting Corran and his father send him on his Kessel vacation.

Wedge raised an eyebrow. “It is truly him?”

Corran nodded. “It’s Patches all right.”

“Horn, here?” Thyne hissed. “Perhaps you never got the message I sent you?”

“What message was that?”

“Your father’s dead, isn’t he?”

The venom in the man’s voice combined with the surprise of the question to make it feel as if Corran’s heart had been slammed back against his spine. He wanted to shout something back at Thyne, but first his breath, then words failed him. Thyne had always been full of threats and intimidation, but Corran and his father had refused to acknowledge them. Thyne had not been the first criminal to threaten him, nor the last.

And not the first to be blamed for my father’s death. With a moment of thought Corran realized that Thyne had probably heard of his father’s death and decided to claim responsibility just to get at him. Corran thought Thyne more than capable of ordering a murder, and Black Sun more than capable of carrying that order out, but Hal Horn had been killed over a year and a half after Thyne had arrived on Kessel. Black Sun preferred things a bit more immediate than that, as I recall.

Corran’s eyes became green slits. “I suppose you could have been the one who had my father killed—after all, you threatened us both and left the whole job undone, which means it’s in keeping with your usual sloppiness.”

The riposte had no visible effect on Thyne. He looked away from Corran, then watched Wedge for a moment. “Are you the Jedi?”

“No, I’m just the man who decides if you leave here or not.” Wedge jerked a thumb toward Corran. “That wasn’t a good start.”

“Oh, forgive me, I’ve forgotten the Rebels are all sweetness and light. That’s what they tell us, you know, all the pols who were sent here.” Thyne smiled carefully. “Then again, you’re here taking someone like me away from this place. Expediency wins over purity, it would appear.”

The commando at the airlock brought Inyri Forge through and Corran saw the resemblance between her and Lujayne the second she removed her breathing mask. They both had the same brown eyes and trim bodies. Inyri wore her brown hair longer than her sister had and had dyed a forelock the same shade of blue as Thyne’s patches. She appeared shocked to see her parents, but her face closed up quickly as she turned away from them and rested her hands on Thyne’s left shoulder.

Wedge studied the woman for a moment, then looked up at Thyne. “The New Republic has authorized me to give you transport from Kessel to a destination you will learn later. You will be given tasks to perform. If you succeed in performing them to our satisfaction, the New Republic will grant you a conditional pardon for your crimes. Do you understand?”

“What if I decide to accept your offer, then I just go away.”

Wedge smiled openly. “We’ll hunt you down and bring you back here.”

“The galaxy is a big place.”

“You might think that, but it’s getting much smaller all the time.” Wedge shrugged nonchalantly. “The Emperor couldn’t hide from us, don’t assume you could.”

Corran nodded. “You weren’t that hard to find before, Patches, you won’t be again.”

“You don’t scare me, Horn.”

“I’m not interested in scaring, just catching, Thyne.” Corran bent down, retrieved Thyne’s breathing mask, and shoved it onto the man’s face. “No matter where you go, I’ll find those double diamonds of yours, just like last time. Count on it.”

Wedge nodded to the guards. “Take him outside and prep him for shuttle transport.” Inyri started to follow, but a guard stopped her in response to Wedge’s hand signal. “Ms. Forge, I’d like to speak to you alone.”

Inyri turned slowly and stiffly. “We’re hardly alone.”

“You’re not required to go with Thyne.”

She glared at her parents, then looked at Wedge. “I’ve made my choice to be with him. Leave it alone. It is no one’s business but my own.”

“Look,” Corran began, holding a hand out toward her, “we can protect you from him.”

“Oh, like you protected my sister?”

Corran’s hand dropped back to his side. The same horrible sensation he’d felt when Lujayne had died rippled through him. He knew the pain in Inyri’s voice had triggered the memory, but he felt he was also sensing the part of her that had died when she found out about Lujayne’s death. Asked to choose between the memory or Inyri’s pain, he couldn’t have decided which hurt him more, but the inability to redress either frustrated him like nothing else.

“I did, we did, everything we could to protect Lujayne.” Corran tapped a hand against his chest. “We didn’t know her as long as you did, nor as well, but you know what your sister was like. You know how good she was at making people feel welcomed and at ease and valuable. She did that with us, too.”

He pointed at the airlock. “It may not be my business what you do with Zekka Thyne, but I’m certain your sister wouldn’t have wanted you to go with him. Lujayne’s gone, but that’s no reason for the people who loved her and respected her to let you get into trouble. Thyne is everything your sister was not.”

“You don’t know him.”

“And maybe you don’t either.” Corran held his hand out to her again. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I do.” She folded her arms resolutely. “I am.”

Wedge shook his head. “You will have time to reconsider—up to and including your final drop-off.”

“Is that all?”

Wedge frowned. “You might want to say good-bye to your parents?”

“Why? That didn’t keep Lujayne safe.”

“It didn’t get her killed, either.”

Wedge’s reply seemed to soften Inyri for a moment. Her gaze flicked toward her parents, and for a heartbeat, Corran thought she was going to come to her senses. Then her eyes hardened and she fitted the breathing mask back over her face. Without a word she turned on her heel and stepped into the airlock.

Wedge turned and looked wordlessly at her parents.

Kassar hugged his wife. “You tried, Commander. That is all we could ask.”

The rest of the exchanges went fairly smoothly. Wedge resorted to threats a couple of times when Doole balked at giving him the people he wanted, but by the end of things they had managed to pull 150 political prisoners from Kessel in exchange for picking up sixteen of the most hardened and despicable criminals the galaxy had ever known.

And by the end of the process Corran had found someone they could use to keep Thyne in check. Wedge suggested a deal to Doole but the pretentious Rybet dismissed it as one where he got nothing. Wedge had suggested he consider it goodwill and after a flyover by the airborne portion of Rogue Squadron, Moruth Doole decided it was in his best interest to play along.

“And this is the last time I deal with your Rebellion. Kessel stands alone from now on!”

Wedge smiled at Doole’s image. “Then we won’t come back, unless we’re returning some of your friends to you.” He disconnected the transmission before Doole’s howl rose to painful levels.

Ten minutes later two commandos escorted the last prisoner into the tent. The human was old, though not frail. The holograms Corran had seen of him had not had flesh quite so loose or sallow, but the dark eyes still sparked with life. While smaller even than Corran, the man exuded a certain power. A full shock of white hair crowned him and granted him some of the dignity his dirty jumpsuit stole.

Even Wedge seemed impressed. “Moff Fliry Vorru, I am Commander Wedge Antilles.”

Vorru smiled graciously. “Charmed. Do I detect a trace of Corellia in your Basic?”

“You do.”

“A loyal son come to free me from this prison?”

“Perhaps.”

Corran had never met Moff Vorru before, but his grandfather had told stories of the man. As the administrator in charge of the Corellian Sector under the Old Republic, Vorru had turned a blind eye to smuggling activities, which made Corellia a center for smuggling and gave it a reputation that had not changed over the years. When Senator Palpatine declared himself the Emperor, he found Vorru to be a rival of sorts. Prince Xizor betrayed Vorru to the Emperor, but the Emperor did not slay him. It was thought that Vorru had ransomed his life by causing his datafiles about others in the Imperial Senate and throughout the Empire to be doled out to the Emperor bit by bit.

Though it had been decades since Corellia operated as an open sector under Vorru, many criminals thought of Vorru’s Corellia as a shining utopia of unparalleled prosperity. Vorru had become a legend in the Imperial underworld and at CorSec there always were new rumors about an attempt by someone to raid Kessel and free Vorru.

The ex-Imperial Moff shrugged as much as his bonds would allow. “What do you want me to do for you?”

“Do you know Zekka Thyne?”

Vorru sighed. “I do. Aggressive and intelligent, though aggression is his default setting. Surprise him and he strikes out. Unpredictable beyond that.”

“We’re going to use him against the Empire, but we do not want him to become excessive and hurt others.”

The old man smiled slowly. “Using strategic weapons to gain a tactical advantage is a sign of desperation.”

“These are desperate times.” Wedge nodded toward Corran. “Lieutenant Horn thinks you can control Thyne.”

“Control him, no.” Vorru closed his eyes for a moment. “Control those he needs to be able to go too far, yes, I can do that for you.”

“Will you?”

“Gladly.” Vorru’s confident smile carried on up into his reopened eyes. “It will be dangerous, but seeing Imperial Center again will be worth the risk.”

Corran blinked and looked at a stunned Wedge. How did he know he was going to Coruscant?

The old man read the surprise on their faces, then laughed. “Don’t be astonished I was able to figure out where I would be used, rejoice in that fact. Were that simple a deduction beyond me, I would have no chance of fulfilling the mission you have given me.”

12

Walking through one of the long dark corridors built beneath the Imperial Palace would normally have depressed Kirtan Loor, especially as he was on his way to a meeting with General Evir Derricote. When Derricote had summoned him the General had seemed quite manic—a state Loor had seen crumble into a tantrum filled with demands on previous occasions, yet even that prospect could not dampen his mood.

Corran Horn was on Kessel freeing prisoners. Loor allowed himself a laugh that echoed sinisterly through the passage. Over the past two weeks the freed criminals had been filtered back into Imperial Center. The Rebels had been careful in their insertion efforts—security was maintained at normal levels, which meant a substantial bribe could make almost any datafile look like it had never been sliced. Had he not been tipped to their arrival, Loor would have missed their reentry into Coruscant’s underworld.

Loor even allowed himself to admire the Alliance for its plan. Criminals had a penchant for making themselves highly visible targets. The Empire did need to maintain order on the capital world, but their resources would only extend so far. By bringing to Imperial Center the people they did, the Alliance managed to breathe life back into the corpse that was Black Sun, causing some fairly alarmist reports to start filtering up from the constabulary.

Somehow, though, even their dire predictions amounted to nothing against Loor’s mind’s-eye image of Corran Horn helping to escort criminals from Kessel. Three of those on the list had actually been arrested on Corellia during Horn’s time with CorSec. It must have killed him to let someone like Zekka Thyne escape justice. What I wouldn’t have given to be there and see it.

Kirtan Loor forced himself to laugh again and willed himself to remain feeling triumphant, but could not. His basic fear of Corran Horn undercut his sense of superiority. Corran Horn, Gil Bastra, and Iella Wessiri had managed to deceive him long enough on Corellia that they were able to escape before he could have them arrested and jailed. He had found Gil Bastra after over a year and a half of searching, but Bastra maintained that’s because he had given clues to draw Loor after him. Prior to that he had thought he was close to Corran once, but that had been a mistake, and Loor had no idea where Wessiri or her husband was.

The fact that they had been able to fool him once meant he had to assume it was possible for them to fool him again. In the old days, before Ysanne Isard had summoned him to Imperial Center and pointed out his penchant for making unwarranted assumptions, he would have assumed he could not be fooled again. That would have guaranteed his being deceived. And that would have doomed me.

Because he worked to no longer allow himself to assume too much, he had reassessed Corran Horn. From this reassessment his fear had grown. Loor had always known Horn was capable of being a killer, and he had labored under the assumption that Horn had actually murdered a bunch of smugglers in cold blood. When it became apparent that those murders were a sham—Loor’s face still burned as he realized he had based his assumptions about those murders only on reports created by Gil Bastra—he saw Corran Horn as someone capable of using violence, but also as someone who could control his temper. Horn emerged as more cunning and that trait became more dangerous when coupled with his relentlessness.

To “motivate” Loor in his supervision of General Derricote’s project, Ysanne Isard had released the fact that Loor had killed Bastra into channels that would carry that data to the Rebel Alliance. She also let it be known that Loor was on Imperial Center. She had said at the time that she hoped such information would serve to distract Horn from looking into other matters very closely, but Loor knew it would just draw Corran to Imperial Center like vice draws Hutts.

I will have to be very careful when he gets here. If he gets to me it will be because I want him to, but on my terms and to my benefit.

As Loor neared his destination, the door to Derricote’s lab opened to an inrush of air and the General himself stood there beaming. Though cadaverously slender, there was no way Loor could squeeze past the General’s rotund form and enter the lab with the man just standing there. “I thought you wanted me to see something in the lab, General.”

Derricote brushed a hand back over his thinning black hair, then clapped his hands. “I do. The Quarren were very helpful, very helpful.”

“Put it in a report, General.”

“No, you must come see for yourself.”

Loor hesitated. The holograms appended to the first of Derricote’s reports had been enough to make him queasy. The idea of looking at experimental subjects in person did not appeal to him in the least. Well, perhaps just a bit, but only out of morbid curiosity.

“Lead the way.”

Derricote stepped out of the doorway and Loor entered the lab. Unlike the majority of suites in the Imperial Palace, the laboratory had stark, functional appointments. Bright lights reflected from white and silver surfaces and the only things even approximating decoration were red and yellow signs warning of biohazards, live wires, and operating lasers. Glass walls allowed them to peer into a labyrinth of rooms where white-smocked individuals appeared to be taking creatures apart or putting them back together with the help of surgical droids of various configurations.

The door closed behind them, with the air whistling in as the opening narrowed. Derricote glanced back. “It sounds like that because we are under negative air pressure in here. That way if something breaks out it will not be carried by a draft out of the lab.”

“I thought humans would be immune to this plague.”

“No, that’s not exactly correct.” The General smiled and Loor knew the man just loved exposing any weakness in Kirtan’s knowledge of the project. “We are starting from a number of viruses for which aliens show a high susceptibility. It is possible that spontaneous mutations could change it enough that humans could be affected by it. The chances of that are very limited, primarily because the genetic sequences we’re using would have to be massively altered for humans to fall sick. It is possible, of course, that this might happen, but at the average mutation rate, it would take a thousand years before that would happen.”

“But you could make a vaccine, couldn’t you?”

“Building up immunity to a virus is not all that simple. It could take years to perfect a vaccine for this disease.” Derricote smiled casually, as if talking about an inconsequential amount of time. “It could be done, but it would take a concentration of resources that would exceed these by ten or twenty times.”

At least, then, the Rebels won’t have a chance at doing it since they don’t even have this facility. Loor lowered his voice. “You can cure it, yes?”

Derricote nodded. “Bacta.”

“Is that all?” Bacta was the treatment for everything from a simple cut to severe combat trauma, from a sniffle to the virulent Bandonian Ague. “If Bacta will cure your disease, the disease is useless.”

“Hardly. The more severe the case of the disease, the greater the amount of bacta needed to cure it.” Derricote’s dark eyes glittered in a way Loor found rather unnerving. “In the very late stages of the disease bacta can hold the disease at bay, but some organs and extremities may be so damaged that they will require cybernetic replacement. Come and see.”

Derricote led him deeper into the laboratory complex and through a doorway into a stainless-steel corridor. Transparisteel windows lined the walls and gave them views of detention cells with one or two individuals in them. On the left were piggish Gamorreans—naked, as were the squid-headed Quarren on the right side—looking miserable in their clinically spare environs. Those nearest the doorway through which they entered appeared relatively normal—though they were such a sight that Loor couldn’t bring himself to study them in any great detail.

“You will notice the transparisteel windows are triple-paned. That central sheet is reflective on their side, so they cannot see us. The walls between the cells are soundproofed. We found that necessary to maintain order.”

“I see,” Loor said, but he really saw no need for security precautions. The first few Gamorreans were placid, though they did seem to know people might be observing them through the windows, so they sat in such a way that they preserved their modesty. Farther along they appeared to be in some sort of a stupor. Their black eyes had become quite glassy and fixed on one point. They just lay there, barely moving, in whatever position they seemed to find themselves, no matter how uncomfortable.

Loor did notice a splotchiness on the Gamorreans’ flesh. Angry black boils seemed to radiate out a spider’s web of lines that connected them one to another. One creature had a boil on his tongue and several others showed them on the bottoms of their feet. Loor assumed the boils were painful since what little movement he did see seemed to be an attempt to relieve pressure on them.

He also noticed these Gamorreans seemed very dry. Mucus and saliva did not decorate their faces the way it normally did. Clearly the creatures were sick, but Loor somehow took that to be the most telling sign of their disease.

Then he saw the final-stage patients.

The boils had broken open and the Gamorrean’s flesh had cracked along the spiderweb lines. Black blood oozed from the wounds and the Gamorrean left bloody footprints everywhere it wandered. And wander it did, darting left and right, backward and forward, dancing as if the floor were made of molten lava. The creature slammed into walls, leaving runny silhouettes of itself on the transparisteel, then it would rebound and fall to the ground. There it thrashed around, vomiting up liters of thick black fluid, then somehow clambered back to its feet and hurled itself around the room again.

Loor reeled away as the Gamorrean he was watching splattered himself against the window. The Intelligence agent fell to his hands and knees, fighting valiantly to keep from vomiting. He forced himself to breathe in and out through his nose and the nausea passed. “That’s horrible.”

“I know.” Derricote slapped him on the back. “The Quarren go black all over, then their autoimmune system goes insane and liquefies their bones. They become a sack of fluid just teeming with Krytos.”

“Krytos?”

“My name for the virus—it is a combination of the world names for the viruses I’ve combined here.” He sighed and Loor could tell he was savoring the vision of the dying Gamorrean. “A milliliter of an end patient’s blood is sufficient to infect an adult. The incubation period is falling slowly, but the period from first symptoms to final stage is remaining fairly constant. I doubt we will improve on that.”

“Why not?”

“What you saw, the boils and the bleeding out, part of the whole process. The virus is replicating itself in the host body. Once it has filled a cell with virus, that cell explodes and those next to it are infected. The circulatory system carries the virus throughout the body. Cell by cell the creature dies, and the process escalates until you get the end stage. By then the pain is incredible—did I mention the virus doesn’t seem interested in destroying pain receptors? Most remarkable, really.”

Loor reared back onto his haunches, then stood. He focused his gaze on Derricote and consciously ignored the movement he caught out of the corner of his eyes. “How long from onset to final stage?”

“There are seven stages. One for each day of the disease.” Derricote pointed to the right side of the corridor but Loor refused to look in that direction. “The Quarren die more gracefully, if liquefaction can be seen as graceful.”

“How much tinkering did you do to make the disease jump species?”

“Not much. With the Quarren version we should be able to attack the Mon Calamari population. I will need other subjects, of course, to test other crosses. I was thinking a raid of Kashyyyk might …”

“Kashyyyk?” Loor looked at Derricote to see if the man had finally lost the last of his sanity. “I will check with Madam Director Isard, but I think eliminating a species that proved useful as slave labor before would be unwise. I suggest you and your scientists should compare the known susceptibility of alien species and try to group them so you can tailor a virus that will do the most harm to the largest number.”

“We could do it that way, though it would be more elegant to engineer a specific …”

“There is nothing about your Krytos that is elegant.”

Derricote took a step back and blinked. “What? Not elegant?”

“Don’t take that the way it sounded, General, take it the way I meant it.” Loor forced himself to smile. “Your work is most impressive, utterly unforgettable.” The image of billions of aliens falling down and dissolving into fetid puddles in the canyons of Imperial Center almost made Loor sick. “The Rebels are coming here to take the center of the Empire. What they will get is a world of death and they will be powerless to save it.”

13

Corran Horn waited behind the transparisteel blast shield until the Pulsar Skate’s repulsorlift drives had shut down and the gangway started to descend. The modified Baudo-class yacht looked a lot like its namesake, primarily because of the long, gentle curving lines of the wings. He realized he thought of the ship as quite beautiful, and that surprised him because both he and his father had worked hard to put the Pulsar Skate and its skipper out of commission.

Its old skipper, he reminded himself. Booster Terrik and his father had been each other’s bane. Booster had a facility for hauling all sorts of contraband, not just spice, and enough of his cargo was made up of things that powerful people wanted that he made a number of influential friends. Booster easily could have become a broker of goods, but he loved flying too much. Eventually Hal Horn caught him and Booster did five years on Kessel.

Booster’s daughter, Mirax, was unbraiding her long black hair as she came down the gangway. She stopped when she saw Corran and smiled. The fierce rivalry their fathers had known gave them a link—a link strengthened by the fact that they also were both raised on Corellia—and that link had allowed them to avoid inheriting their father’s enmity.

Corran returned her smile. “How was your run?”

“No Imperial complications.” She rolled her brown eyes. “On the other hand, having two dozen utterly jubilant Sullustans aboard the Skate for a week is sufficient to remind me why I prefer moving inert cargo.”

“Eat their weight in rations?”

“Yes, but that wasn’t the problem. They’re rather perky when they’re happy, and perky can wear on you pretty fast.” She jerked a thumb back toward the bridge of her ship. “Liat wasn’t any help. He fell instantly and madly in love with one of the refugees. She seemed thrilled, as did the others. I think there may even have been a wedding in the hold, but I’m not sure.”

Corran shrugged. “I don’t know anything about Sullustan customs. We could ask Captain Nunb.”

“That’s a possibility.” Mirax’s smile slackened just a bit as she reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Any bad effects from the trip to Kessel?”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “A lot of good people made it off Kessel, but I know some real rancor bait had to have been let free to win their release. After all, I don’t think the guy running Kessel is going to take New Republic promissory chits in exchange for prisoners. Doole doesn’t do anything for nothing.”

“Unlike some smugglers?”

Her smile brightened again for a moment. “I’m counting on you and Wedge to finish this Empire off so I can begin collecting what I’m owed.”

“And if we don’t?”

“Then just like that Jedcred you wear, the chits will become collectible and I’ll make the money back later.” Her hand shifted from his shoulder, allowing her to give him a light punch in the arm. “Nice change of subject, though.”

“Sorry.” Corran hadn’t answered her question because he hadn’t allowed himself to think about it very much. It was all well and good to tell Wedge before the trip that he didn’t have any problem letting criminals loose. It was true that CorSec, like any other security force, made deals with a lesser evil to get rid of some greater evil. That clearly was what the whole Kessel operation was about—they’d be pitting a resurgent Black Sun against the Empire. With Fliry Vorru included in the mix of people freed, the chances were Black Sun wouldn’t run hopelessly wild.

On the other hand, Corran would have felt a lot better if the list of criminals they freed had been a list of folks lost on a ship that flew into the Maw and never came out again. The criminals were capable of doing the job the New Republic wanted them to do, but it was precisely because they were as ruthless and cruel as any Grand Moff that had ever served the Emperor. And while it was true that their activities would help break the Empire down, Corran knew plenty of innocent people could get hurt by any violent spillovers—and the people they had released could easily be described as sloppy when it came to violence.

“I guess I’m having some second thoughts. I know the Empire wouldn’t hesitate to use any weapon against us, so they’re definitely the target to shoot at.” He frowned heavily. “Once we take Coruscant, I’d be happy to help hunt down and ship back to Kessel any of the slime we released.”

“If you need someone to do the hauling, I’m in, free of charge.”

Corran smiled. “But we won’t tell your father you’re working with a Horn on such a thing.”

“No, I like him alive too much to shock him with that news.” Mirax laughed a bit. “Has the food here on Noquivzor gotten any better than the last time I was here?”

“It actually has. Lots of good things were shipped in for a meeting here last month and Admiral Ackbar left the surplus here. I think Emtrey has traded some of it away, but there are still some surprises. Want to get something to eat?”

“Please.”

They headed off toward the central corridor that eventually sent a branch running down to the mess hall. As they walked along Mirax related some of the odder antics of her Sullustan pilot and his bride to be. The stories were funny, and Corran laughed in all the appropriate places, but he was laughing because of more than the humor in the stories. He realized that with Mirax he felt very much at ease, providing one more reason why he found her attractive.

He knew he wasn’t in love with her, but he knew himself well enough that he’d be poised at the top of that very slippery slope if he just let himself go. Falling in love, for him, had never been one of those one-look-and-passion-ignites things. When that happened to him he knew it was lust, pure and simple. While Mirax was pretty enough to inspire lust, Corran knew things that burned hot burned out fast, and he’d been raised to think relationships should be stable, not supernova events that collapse into an emotional black hole.

The fact was that his father’s murder had cut him adrift emotionally. While he was still with CorSec he had Gil and Iella keeping him pointed in the right direction, but he had only made one new friend during that time, and she left after six months. Then, on the run, he couldn’t get close to people for fear of being unmasked and turned over to Imperial authorities. Even when he joined the Rebellion and applied for admittance to Rogue Squadron, the fierce competition with other pilots to get accepted created a wall. Lujayne Forge had made the first big breech in it, then others exploited that breech and helped him get used to being with people and trusting them again.

“Corran.”

Both he and Mirax stopped at the high-pitched squeal of his name. They turned back as a tall, blocky Gand came down the corridor from behind them. The Gand’s exoskeleton appeared uniform in color except where shadows edged the plates and on his right forearm and hand. There the exoskeleton was much more pale and even chalky. The latter half of the limb matched the left one in length, but was not quite as big around.

Corran pointed at his right arm. “They removed the bacta capsule.”

“Yes. Ooryl is most pleased.” The Gand forced inflections into his Basic, mostly at the right places, and added volume to emphasize his pleasure. Two months before, at the first battle for Borleias, Ooryl Qrygg had been shot out of his X-wing and had lost his right forearm in the process. By circulating bacta through a capsule, Rebel medics had been able to speed up the Gand’s rather remarkable regenerative abilities—abilities no one in the Alliance had known Gands possessed.

Ooryl flexed his three-fingered hand. “Once the carapace hardens, Ooryl will be fit enough to be your wing-Gand again.”

“I can’t wait. Trying to keep up with Captain Nunb is tough. She’s good enough she could fly through a nova and her ship would stay dark.”

Mirax smiled. “We’re going to get food. Do you want to join us?”

“Ooryl would be pleased, but Ooryl was sent by Commander Antilles.” Armored lids flicked down over the Gand’s multifaceted ebon eyes and back up again. “He wants to see you, Corran.”

“Why would he want to see me?” Corran couldn’t remember having done anything unusual. I hope Emtrey doesn’t have Whistler slicing some files for him.

Mirax tugged on Corran’s hand. “Let’s go and get this over with. I can say hi to Wedge, then we can get some food.”

Ooryl laid his left hand gently on Mirax’s forearm. “Qrygg regrets to tell you that Commander Antilles said this is official business. The Commander knew you would be together—Ooryl was sent first to your ship—and he wants Corran to go alone. Commander Antilles said he would see you later and explain everything.”

“If it’s official, it’s official.” She shrugged and let Corran’s hand go. “I’m still going to get some food. I’ll eat slowly, so if you get done fast, find me.”

“I will.”

Mirax looked at Ooryl. “You are still more than welcome to join me.”

“Ooryl is honored.”

“Good, I like having company, and since you share a room with Corran, you can tell me all sorts of embarrassing things about him.” She slipped her right arm through the crook of his left and winked at Corran. “Take your time with Wedge. I’ll be well taken care of.”

Corran laughed, more at Ooryl’s discomfiture than her remark. “Have fun—the fun I can bet I won’t be having.”

Corran walked past Emtrey and into the office space Wedge had been given on the unit’s return to Noquivzor. The room, which was not really that big, seemed far too large to suit Wedge. Other officers would have had the walls lined with holograms and the shelves packed with trophies from their various adventures. Aside from a few holograms of his dead parents and of him posing with squadron mates, Wedge didn’t have much reflective of his time with the Rebellion.

Wedge pointed Corran to one of the two chairs in front of his desk. “Be seated. This won’t take long, but it means some changes that are going to require some action on your part—both of your parts.”

By way of his statement Wedge included the woman seated in the other chair. Erisi Dlarit had been another of the recruits that had joined Rogue Squadron at the time Corran did. She wore her black hair cut short and tight against the back of her neck. She had blue eyes that sparkled like sapphires and an elegant beauty that definitely made her prettier than Mirax. Erisi, having been raised among the privileged humans on Thyferra, had benefited greatly from the riches her kith and kin made from the bacta cartel. Mirax had referred to Erisi more than once as “the bacta queen” and Corran thought the remark was uttered with an equal mix of envy and disgust in Mirax’s voice.

Though Mirax would deny any of the envy. Corran slipped into the seat and smiled at Erisi. “This should be interesting.”

“Indeed. We finally get to fly together.”

Wedge cleared his throat. “Emtrey will be giving you access codes for some datafiles. They include a self-extracting virus that will destroy the data once it has been viewed. Read carefully and memorize the points about initial contact.”

Corran’s mind flashed back to the sort of briefings Gil Bastra used to give him and Iella before they started on an undercover assignment. “You’re not preparing us for some escort run, are you?”

“No.” Wedge looked down at his desk, then back up again. “For a variety of reasons the Provisional Council has decided the New Republic needs to take Coruscant. To be able to do that we need reliable data on the defenses and the locations of tactical targets. Someone has to get that information and you’re it.”

“Us?”

Erisi looked as surprised as Corran. “Commander, there is no way the two of us can do that job alone, even if we have help from forces already there.” Her blue eyes shrank to slits. “We’re all going in, aren’t we?”

“That’s an assumption that I’m not at liberty to confirm or deny, Lieutenant Dlarit.” The Commander shook his head. “You both know how a cell system works—no one is allowed to know about more than their portion of the network. What you don’t know will keep others safe.”

“Who do we report to?”

“All that will be in your briefing file—even I do not know what your cover will be or what your travel arrangements will be and I doubt sincerely I’ll have a way to contact you.”

“You’ll be going, though, won’t you?” Erisi frowned. “It only makes sense they would send all of us, not just two.”

Wedge shook his head. “What makes sense to General Cracken is its own subset of reality. He says the precautions are necessary. It’s all to keep you safe.”

Corran scowled. “Since when was ‘isolated’ made a synonym for ‘safe’?”

Erisi patted his left hand. “Don’t worry, you’ll be with me.”

“That’s something.” Corran flashed her a smile. “How long before we head out, Commander?”

“You’re off as soon as you leave this office. The Forbidden is waiting for you.”

“Is Tycho flying us to wherever?”

“No. General Cracken has one of his people in command.”

Corran nodded slowly. The operation is sensitive enough that they don’t want to trust him with a part of it. “If you can, say good-bye to him for me. And goodbye to Mirax, too.”

“Will do.” Wedge folded his arms. “One last thing—and this is awkward—we need your permission to have Emtrey transfer money out of your personal accounts, slice it through some cutouts, and funnel it into the accounts you’ll be using on Coruscant.”

Corran laughed. “Get receipt bytes and we’ll be reimbursed?”

Wedge chuckled right along with the two of them. “It’s not enough they want our bodies, but they want us to finance the war. I understand there is a budget for this operation, but I know it’s not going to be enough. If things go wrong, having the extra credits available …”

“I’ve had practical experience in this area, and I’d not care to relive it. I’ve got ten you can have.”

Erisi looked at Corran, then up at Wedge. “Is ten enough?”

Corran smiled at her. “Ten thousand is what I meant.”

“Oh, I meant ten million.” She batted her eyes. “Is that enough?”

Wedge coughed into his fist. “I think it will do.”

“Yeah, being able to buy a whole wing of snubfighters could be handy in a pinch.” Corran shook his head. “Do we have to come back after this operation?”

“Have to? I don’t know, but I certainly hope you are able to.” Wedge came around from behind the desk and offered Corran his hand. “May the Force be with you.”

“And with you, sir.” Corran shook Wedge’s hand. “As much as we need, and then some.”

14

I guess now is the time we will see if this disguise really works or not. Wedge sat back in the starliner’s plush seat, barely glancing at the screen built into the rear of the seat in front of him. On it played little holographic reports about the nature of the Rebellion and the war being fought against it by the Empire. The gist of the reports was to suggest that the battle with Palpatine’s murderers was going well and justice was being restored to the galaxy as victory after victory over the treasonous Rebels was gained.

Wedge, disguised as he was, presented an argument that belied the Empire’s propaganda efforts. A metal mask covered his forehead, right eye, and cheek on down to the edge of his jaw. Part of the mask continued on past his right ear, flattening it utterly, and on back to the rear of his skull. Another piece curled down along his jaw and wrapped around his throat. A round lens set in place over his right eye enlarged it and made it very easy to see how blue the contact lens he had on was.

Surface pressure kept the mask in place, making it decidedly uncomfortable to wear. It also made the rounded edge on his face dig sufficiently into his skin to appear as if the metal had replaced flesh on that side of his face. The mask also unbalanced his head enough that his neck hurt too much to hold his head straight all the time. As a result he let his head loll to the right for the most part, and that added to his disguise.

The Customs official who had come aboard right after the Dairkan Starliner Jewel of Churba entered the Coruscant system stopped in the aisle opposite him. “I need to see your identification.”

Wedge slid an identification card from inside the breast of his black Imperial uniform. He used his right hand that had been encased in black leather. The glove did little to hide the blocky, angular nature of the hand, though even if it had been smooth, the fact that it consisted of two thick fingers and a thumb would have given the Customs man the idea something was wrong. Gentle whirring sounds emanated from the glove as Wedge’s fingers tightened on the card and his wrist rotated to hand the card over to the official.

“Here you are, sir.” Wedge’s words came in a buzzing croak, half because of the pressure on his larynx and half because of the voice modulator built into the mask.

The Customs official gave the ID card only a cursory glance before he swiped it through a slot on his datapad. “Colonel Antar Roat …”

“Ro-at.”

“What?”

“My name is pronounced Ro-at.” The buzz made the words all but unintelligible, though the emphasis he placed on them appeared to get through to the Customs official.

“Pardon, sir. Colonel Ro-at. You are bound for Imperial Center for reconstr … yes, of course.” The man’s voice trailed off. “Everything seems in order here, Colonel.”

Wedge raised his hand to take the card back, but did not let his claw close on it yet. “Are you certain? My baggage is in my sleeping berth.”

“Yes, I am certain.” The man impatiently tapped the card against Wedge’s thumb.

“I understand the need for security, sir.”

“I’m certain, sir.”

“If you have trouble, I will help.” Wedge let his voice fall to a whisper, as if suddenly overcome with fatigue. His head dipped slightly at the same time, then he brought it back up. “I will help.”

The Customs man nodded. “I will remember that, Colonel.”

Wedge took the card and fumbled a couple of times before he slid it home again. “I live to serve.”

The Customs man moved on, mumbling under his breath. “You’re dead and still serving. The Emdee-fours should have let you die.”

Wedge would have missed the remark, but the hearing enhancement built into the mask and fed into his right ear allowed him to catch it. He killed the smile the comment threatened to produce because he knew Colonel Antar Roat would find little in life that was funny. And getting caught by Customs as I try to land on Coruscant would not be funny at all.

It had not occurred to Wedge to wonder how he would be inserted into Coruscant until he was on his way for his briefing about his cover. He’d known, of course, that he couldn’t fly an X-wing in there, and he sincerely doubted much in the way of contraband or illegal immigrants made it onto Coruscant without someone knowing and approving of it. He’d assumed he would be disguised somehow, but it never crossed his mind that he would head into Coruscant in an Imperial Naval Officer’s uniform.

The briefing about his new identity had been fascinating. General Cracken’s people had fashioned several identities for him. One, Colonel Roat, was designed for insertion and possible reuse later to get back out again. He had another one for the time he would be scouting around on Coruscant and a third as his exit identity. He had been informed about the latter two identities, but all datacards and other things for them would be supplied on Coruscant after he had been met and had a chance to settle in.

The Intelligence division had chosen Colonel Antar Roat as his insertion cover for a couple of reasons. The first was that the prosthetics hid Wedge’s identity almost completely. Moreover, they were a forbidden attractant—they made him unusual enough that people would pay attention to him, but they would see the parts, not the man wearing them. And people caught staring at him would look away in shame. They would remember a man with war injuries, but any details would concern his mechanical parts. Since the parts could be removed and discarded, authorities would be looking for a man who no longer existed once Wedge had shed that disguise.

The second reason Roat had been created for Wedge was because Wedge was a pilot. He could accurately and intelligently converse about starfighter combat if pressed. His cover story indicated he had been shot down in the defense of Vladet, in the Rachuk system, and Wedge could talk about that battle since he’d been there.

I was on the Rebel side, but I was there.

A slight tremor rippled through the ship. Wedge hit a button beside the screen in front of him and the view shifted to an external one being flashed from a holocam mounted in the aft of the Jewel of Churba. A shuttle lifted off from a spinal docking port on the top of the ship. The ultra-class passengers had traveled in what was supposed to be unparalleled luxury on the starliner’s upper decks and those who could afford it clearly took their own shuttles down to the planet to avoid waiting to disembark with the other travelers.

It amazed Wedge that people would or could exist in such luxury in such a time of turmoil. He found their desire for pleasure and ease less disturbing than their apparent lack of foresight. From the Rebellion’s point of view the end was nigh for the Empire—though whether the Rebellion or someone like Warlord Zsinj was going to emerge as the new force in the galaxy was open to conjecture. The fact was, though, that no matter who won, avoiding unnecessary expenditures of money in such dire times seemed just to be common sense to him.

He did realize that some people would spend money to spin around themselves a cocoon within which the Rebellion did not exist. Maintaining the illusion that the Empire was hale and hearty was not difficult if price was no object. Wedge had no doubt that in some far-flung enclaves of the Empire not only were there people who did not believe the Emperor had died, but there were people who would keep on believing he was alive and well for years if not decades and possibly even centuries.

Ignorance I can understand, but not willful ignorance.

He killed another smile before it could blossom, though this one was more difficult to kill than the first. The very same people he considered willfully ignorant would find him deluded and misguided. Half of them would deny there were any problems inherent in the Imperial system—as if slavery, anti-alien sentiments, and weapons that destroyed planets could be so easily forgotten. The other half might admit there were problems, but they would shy from accepting open insurgency against the legitimate government as a solution to them. For those people, working within the system was the way to achieve change, but they failed to realize that when a system had become as corrupt as the Empire, significant change was impossible without a shattering of the power structure.

The trick of it all—and what tempted him to smile—was that all sides could make reasonable and logical arguments for their points of view. Therein was the problem with politics. Since it was the art of compromise, round upon round of discussion could end in no solution being reached. The only time serious change was made was when an individual was willing to die for what he believed. Absent that basic commitment—a commitment most Imperial citizens were not prepared to make—the Empire would continue to exist in one form or another, institutionalizing evil.

A man appeared at the end of his row of seats. “Colonel Roat?”

Wedge looked over slowly, then nodded. “Prefect Dodt. It has been, well, years.”

As Parin Dodt—an Imperial Prefect with greying brown hair and brown eyes—Pash Cracken nodded. “It was last at the ceremony ending the year of mourning, as I recall, just before you were transferred away. I would not have known it was you, but the Customs man told me who you were. The galaxy gets smaller as time goes by.”

Wedge stiffly patted the seat beside his. “Join me, if you do not mind. My body has been broken, but my brain was unaffected. You are coming to Imperial Center on business?”

“You know better than to ask such questions, Colonel, just as I know not to ask where you were injured.” Pash settled himself into the seat and loosely fastened the restraining belts on. “This has been a very smooth flight.”

“It has indeed.” Wedge nodded. Pash’s comment had confirmed what Wedge had decided about the journey to Coruscant: security was not so tight as to uncover them, nor as lax as might have been expected were the Empire’s core institutions breaking down. It also told him that Pash had encountered no trouble fitting in with the other passengers. While the two of them had known they were traveling on the same flight, they had not made contact previously. Had there been any difficulties they would not have made contact prior to landing, and only did so now to facilitate pickup in the spaceport.

A smiling flight facilitator’s face appeared on the flat screen. “We are beginning landing operations. Please bring your seats into a full and …”

Wedge killed the sound on the display. “I hope our landing is as smooth as the flight.”

“As do I.” Pash sighed convincingly. “I hate spaceport tie-ups. If things are going to go wrong, it’s generally there.”

The spaceport at which Jewel of Churba set down was a multistory facility built atop a triad of towers approximately fifty kilometers from the Imperial Palace. The docking bay had multiple levels that allowed passengers from the various classes to disembark without having to mix with the others. The rich who had not left in their own shuttles were received in an opulent, spacious area that Wedge saw through the porthole as Jewel settled in for a landing. The keelrunners—aliens and low-class humans—were off-loaded in a secure cargo area.

The first- through third-class passengers exited the starliner through multiple ports and into a clean but crowded waiting area. Customs officials ran spot checks on some of the passengers, but Wedge saw no one hustled away. Beyond the Immigration area was luggage retrieval, but before he or Pash could worm their way into the crowd to get their things, a brown-haired woman in a prim grey medtech uniform approached them.

“Colonel Roat?”

Wedge nodded. “I am Roat. This is my friend, Prefect Parin Dodt. You are?”

“Irin Fossyr. I am from the Rohair Biomechanical Clinic. I was sent to meet you.”

“You were.”

“I had been told you were notified. I left word with your aide, Captain Seeno.”

“That explains it. Seeno was killed just before I began my journey.”

“You have my sympathies, sir.”

“Accepted.” Wedge nodded solemnly. The woman had used the correct phrases to introduce herself, proving she was one of Cracken’s agents. Wedge waited while she and Pash picked up the luggage, then she led them out to a waiting lift-car. It had labels on the side proclaiming it to be from the Rohari Biomechanical Clinic but otherwise looked utterly ordinary. Their luggage was loaded into the external rack, then the three of them climbed in and the driver in the forward compartment headed them away from the spaceport.

The woman sat back on the bench seat that faced the rear of the craft. “It will take us fifteen minutes or so to get where we’re going. We could get there faster, but …”

Wedge smiled as much as the mask would allow him to. “Precautions, we understand. I was wondering, though, if I can’t take this mask off.”

“By all means.”

Wedge subvocalized the command that let the air out of the built-in bladders, loosening the mask. He worked it off, then coughed and finally shucked his hand out of the claw glove. “Luke doesn’t seem to mind his replacement hand—it must be that Jedi training.”

Pash chuckled politely, but the woman just sat there and stared for a moment. Then she blushed and looked away. “Forgive me. I had been told you were important, but I didn’t realize. I remember your face from some early Imperial warrants. You’re Wedge Antilles, right?”

Wedge nodded. “You saw Imperial warrants with my picture on them?”

“They had limited circulation—the Diktat might have been with the Empire, but not so all Corellians.” She extended her hand to Wedge. “I’m Iella Wessiri. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Iella Wessiri? Why is that name familiar? Wedge shook her hand and let her introduce herself to Pash Cracken—eliciting another blush—while he thought about her name. Then it came to him. That’s what Corran’s human partner was called.

“You saw the Imperial warrants when you were with CorSec.”

Iella blinked, then nodded slowly. “They must have given you a thorough briefing.”

“Not really, but I have heard of you.” He shrugged. “I can’t say from where, of course.”

She shook her head. “No, of course not.”

“What I can say is this”—Wedge smiled—“what I have heard makes me think this mission’s smooth start should extend yet further and give us a chance to accomplish everything we set out to do.”

15

Corran Horn felt miserable. The cover story prepared for his entry into Coruscant called for him to be swathed in multiple layers of cloth—most of it oppressively heavy and hot—forming the purple and red robes he wore. The collar on the shirt he wore closest to his skin had been starched and pressed until its edge felt like a razor, especially where it pressed up against his larynx. A big, old, rounded cylinder hat crowned him while the skirts of the outermost robe dragged on the deck of the Jewel of Churba’s exclusive ultra-deck.

He kept his hands hidden in the sleeves of the robe, as he had been instructed a good Kuati telbun would do. The goal of the clothing was to render him all but genderless, and were he traveling on Kuat with Erisi, he would be considered all but invisible by the upper crust of society. On Jewel he had been a curiosity and the combined object of envy and pity.

Erisi’s appearance had been the source of envy for every male in ultra-class. She wore tight blue leggings beneath a loose blue blouse flecked with scintillating points of light that flashed gold and silver. A belt gathered the blouse at her waist, which was just as well because it had no fasteners and lay open from throat to tails. Thus, though she was fully clothed, anyone with enough intelligence to outwit a Kowakian monkey-lizard could imagine what Erisi looked like naked, and the idea of having to share a cabin with her doubtless seemed wonderful to plenty of men.

Pity came when people saw how she treated him. Erisi berated him mercilessly—on those occasions she chose to acknowledge his presence consciously. Most of the time he trailed respectfully after her, paying for things she bought, carrying things she wanted carried, picking up after her, and apologizing graciously in her wake. While her conduct was far from graceless, she appeared to draw strength from the cruelties she inflicted upon him. Theirs appeared to be a symbiotic relationship where Corran endured abuse in return for sexual favors.

In the final analysis, despite Erisi’s beauty, no one thought it was an even bargain.

Erisi tapped her foot impatiently as a stocky female Customs official wandered along from the previous docking foyer to where they waited. Erisi folded her arms and gave the woman a withering stare. At first the official hesitated, then she smiled slowly. The expression on her face all but broadcast her thoughts to Corran. She’s remembered she has the power here, at this moment, and will make Erisi pay for her disrespect.

The official glanced at her datapad. “Ris Darsk?”

Erisi nodded coldly.

“I have a travel file with the appropriate visas for you, but not for him.”

“He is Darsk Ristel.” Erisi waved her left hand dismissively. “He is there.”

“I only show one passenger.”

Erisi reached out with one finger and punched a button on the woman’s datapad. “There. Baggage.”

A scowl settled over the official’s face. “State the purpose of your visit to Imperial Center.”

“It is a private matter.”

An oily smile spilled over the scowl. “That is insufficient for our records.”

Erisi glanced at Corran, then she produced a razor-edged smile that slashed into the official’s confidence. “Mine is a pleasure journey here, though I anticipate very little of it.”

The official turned toward him. “The purpose of your visit, sir?”

Erisi answered for him. “His is a business trip.”

“Business and pleasure? Should it not be one or the other?”

Erisi shook her head slowly. “Not when my pleasure is his business. He is telbun.”

The official’s head drew back, trapping an extra chin against her throat. “Telbun?”

“Exactly. My telbun bore me here on Imperial Center so, in keeping with my family’s tradition, I have come here with this telbun to conceive.”

“To conceive? A child?”

“You understand.”

“Telbun. I see.” The official looked at Corran and he averted his eyes. “Telbun.”

Telbun were drawn from the middle classes on Kuat. They were raised and trained by their families to excel in academics, social manners, and athletics. When they reached the appropriate age, they underwent a battery of tests that produced a ranking by combining scores for intelligence, grace, health, and genetic makeup. The upper classes of the great Kuat merchant houses then purchased telbun from their families for the purpose of parenting a child with a member of the merchant family, then raising that child. The child would be an heir of the merchant house, thereby getting all the benefits of its birth, while the telbun’s family would be greatly enriched by the fees paid for the telbun’s service.

The process, which divorced reproduction from emotional commitments, struck many, including Corran, as inhuman, but the Kuati aristocracy found it practical in a number of ways. It left their people free to enter into alliances and mergers without placing a child in jeopardy of being drawn into an enemy camp when whatever enterprise that brought two people together collapsed. It also prevented inbreeding between noble families and provided the children with a guardian/tutor with a very serious and tight bond to his charges. The children knew their telbuns provided one half of their biological makeup, but they only acknowledged their aristocratic parent as having a blood relationship with them.

The process was not easy on a telbun, but what did their feelings matter? They were property, nothing more.

The official hit a few buttons on her datapad. “You and the telbun are cleared. Beyond the airlock is your shuttle. Enjoy your stay … or whatever.”

The woman moved off down along the ship’s spine toward the next docking foyer. Erisi and Corran retreated to circle in the center of the docking foyer. The circle slowly rose toward the outer hull and the circular platform on which they rose locked into the floor of the airlock with a click. Corran felt bits and pieces of things shift below his feet, then the cylindrical airlock slowly rotated ninety degrees until the side opened onto a shuttle’s hatch. Beyond the opening stood a female pilot who waved them aboard the modified Lambda-class ship.

The hatch closed behind them. “If you will be seated,” said the pilot, “and strap yourselves in, I can take you to the Hotel Imperial.”

Erisi nodded. “We are cleared for an entry vector?”

“Yes, Mistress Darsk.”

Corran walked into the passenger compartment and took a seat in the last of four rows. Erisi cast a glance down a small corridor toward the cockpit, then came back and joined him. She said nothing as she strapped herself in, but she did rest her arm on his. The lights glistening on her blouse shifted color sequentially, as if a golden beach was being eroded by a silver wave.

The ship shuddered and popped as it disengaged itself from Jewel’s airlock, then it lifted off and its wings snapped down into place. As they did so, holographic displays lining the walls of the passenger compartment provided images that made it appear as if the whole ship had been made of transparisteel. The shuttle pulled up and away from Jewel, heading outbound from Coruscant for a moment. The screens filled with pinpoint images of distant stars.

Erisi kept her voice low. “Please forgive me for how rudely I have treated you.”

“Whatever you desire, mistress.”

She looked at him with a horrified expression at the dullness of his response, then that deepened as she realized that being alone in the ship’s cabin did not mean they could not be overheard. Erisi leaned toward him, filling his nostrils with the sweet scent of nlorna flower perfume. She kissed him on the lips, lingering close enough to whisper, “You are telbun. You understand.”

Corran nodded. “I am telbun. I understand.” Her comment and his reply, fairly innocent and common given the relationship of their two cover identities, had been imbued with a different meaning for the two of them. It was a touchstone, a link back into their real identities. Whenever they needed to assure themselves that the other person was just playacting they were able to use the phrases and responses to do so. In this way Corran knew her cruelties were forced upon him by their situation, and she knew his indifferent responses did not reflect his true feelings for her.

Of course, I don’t know what those feelings are, really. He liked Erisi enough as a friend and yet still found her very attractive. The degree of proximity forced by their roles had stopped short of physical intimacy, but had included living together throughout Jewel’s journey and the training before that. Erisi had made no secret, in the past, of her attraction to him. No one would have faulted them for sleeping together, given their circumstances, but Corran had held himself back from succumbing to her charms and the security of shared intimacy.

At first he told himself it was because he didn’t want to let his guard down. If they were to make love their guard would be down. One slip, one fatal admission, an inappropriate name whispered in an unguarded moment of passion, could have spelled their undoing. Only by being apart could they guarantee mission security.

Those concerns eroded as they spent more time together. For a very short time he allowed himself to imagine that he would be betraying Mirax in some way if he slept with Erisi. He did have feelings for Mirax, but there were no commitments or obligations between them. For all he knew she had a lover stashed away in every starport across the galaxy—he doubted it, and was surprised at the spark of jealousy ignited at the thought—and if she did, it was no business of his. They were both adults and if they did eventually enter into a relationship, what had gone before would have to be dealt with as something that happened before.

His ultimate resistance stemmed from two things that fed back and forth into each other. The first surprised him when he discovered it, but he couldn’t deny it—he thought of Erisi as being well and truly outside his social class—inescapably so. She came from a world where she was nobility. Money, opportunity, material advantages, and the best of everything were what she had been born to. While her joining the Rebellion spoke to true nobility in her heart, the fact was that she really enjoyed luxury and treated it as her due. He had seen that throughout the trip—she took to it like a Sarlacc to sand.

Despite being a telbun, the same luxury was available to Corran. He was surprised by his inability to get used to it. Whereas Erisi might think nothing of peeling a fruit and leaving the rind on the arm of a nerf-hide divan, Corran found himself worrying about spilling something or sweating on the divan, thereby ruining it. Erisi didn’t care if it was ruined, whereas he did because he did not have access to the sort of money that would allow him to laugh off a demand to replace the couch.

Erisi’s blithe disregard for money had all but given Corran fits. Erisi had ordered him to tip servants extravagantly, but he had a hard time rewarding indifferent or poor service as well as he did good service. And the servants on the ultra-deck were obsequious and sycophantic in the extreme. There were times he wanted to just lash out and bash them, but he knew they’d accept a beating, then thank him for administering it in such a skillful manner—doing whatever they thought would inflate the gratuities.

He knew he could never fit into her world, and he suspected she knew it, too. While the abuse she heaped upon him was exaggerated enough that he knew she didn’t mean it, there were times the tone of her voice or the venom in her eyes seemed a bit too convincing. A small part of her realized his unsuitability as a mate, and that bit went to war with the part of her that liked him, producing enough anxiety that she dealt with him more sharply than she might otherwise have done.

Her resentment about his lack of ability to cope with the common elements of her existence made him want to show her he could adapt. Deep in his heart he knew he would fail ultimately because just.as he and Erisi needed a touchstone phrase to remind them who they truly were, Corran himself needed a connection back to what he saw as real life. His family circumstances had never been affluent, but neither had they been impoverished. Like his father and grandfather, he had worked for the Corellian Security Force and he was proud of his background. If he and Erisi couldn’t be together, then it was her loss, not his.

Erisi’s hand tightened on Corran’s arm. “Oh, my, look.”

The shuttle had come about and gave them an unobstructed view of the planet. They sailed in beyond the sphere of Golan Space Defense platforms and the orbital solar reflection stations. The latter reflected sunlight down to the planet to warm zones near the glacial caps at either pole. While quite habitable, Coruscant’s orbit took it far enough from the sun that capturing and redirecting solar energy was needed to keep the world temperate year round.

The shuttle was heading down and in toward the daylight side of the planet, but a crescent of night gobbled up a big portion of it. The lighted side had a spiky, angular quality to it, with towers rising up and grand canyons sinking down through a khaki and grey landscape. Skyhooks, massive stone islands flecked with green and purple gardens, floated lazily over the ferrocrete terrain. Corran could see nothing natural on that side of the world, just the rough scars of humanity’s manufacture and constant reconstruction of the planet.

The nightside, by way of contrast, sparkled and shimmered with a full spectrum of colors that flowed through invisible channels. Millions of lights marked towers he could not see, and each light on them corresponded to one or two or four or a dozen people living in its proximity. Deep down at the base of the towers, winking in and out of life as buildings eclipsed his view, muted lights played out like those in ocean depths, hinting at life unseen and likely unknowable.

Approaching the line that marked the end of day and the beginning of the night, Corran saw a building that could only be the Imperial Palace. An arrogant edifice, it rivaled and mocked the Manarai Mountains to the south. Towers rose from it like coral spires from a reef and their sharp, angular construction made them seem as dangerous to Corran as the coral they reminded him of. Those towers, that artificial mountain, housed the bureaucracy and officials that could destroy planets with a rounding error in the budget. It is a hive of evil. He shivered. No one will ever be safe until it has been purged.

“Impressive, isn’t it?”

Corran looked up and found the shuttle’s pilot standing in the hatchway. “Shouldn’t you be flying this thing?”

“We’re on instrument approach to the Hotel Imperial. My droid copilot can handle it.” She gestured at the vision of the planet. “You’re lucky. It’s a clear night. If there were storms, I’d be at the helm dodging lightning and skyhooks and you’d not see much.”

Erisi lifted her chin. “My telbun and I …”

“You want the Emperor’s suite. Someone else has a previous reservation.”

Corran spoke slowly and carefully. “We thought it was arranged.”

“It can be.”

Erisi’s eyes narrowed. “Will a thousand credits suffice?”

“As a down payment, yes.”

Corran smiled. “You’re our contact?”

The pilot nodded and Corran took a good look at her for the first time. He found her pretty, and her dark eyes were full of fire, but there was another quality about her that he couldn’t place at first. He thought it had to do with her mood, and how quickly she had shifted from being just an anonymous pilot to their contact, but he recognized that mutability of personality as a mark of an excellent undercover operative. Iella could change like that—affect a mood and suddenly she was someone else.

As the woman drew closer he nailed it. Though her hair was white and gathered at the back of her head, he realized she reminded him very strongly of Princess Leia Organa. He’d not made the connection when she was the pilot—he knew he’d not really paid that much attention to her. It was obvious to him that she was not Leia Organa, but because of the resemblance he would have been willing to bet she came from Alderaan.

The pilot sat down in the chair in front of Corran and swiveled it around to face them both. “We’ve not much time here, but the cabin is clean, so we can talk briefly. I already know who you are. Here I’m known by the code name Targeter though as the pilot I go by Rima Borealis. That will do as a call name for now. We’ll get you into the hotel and book you into a suite, but you’ll live out of other rooms we have secured for you. New identities and identification cards will be supplied there.”

Erisi nodded slowly. “We’re not it, are we?” She pointed toward the Palace as their ship descended. “Just the two of us gathering the information needed to bring that down—that’s a lot of pressure.”

Rima shrugged. “I don’t know, and I couldn’t tell you if I did. Sorry.” She patted Erisi on the knee. “I wouldn’t worry, though. From what I understand, you Rogues are a thorn in the Empire’s flesh. Now’s the chance we have to shove it deeper and twist it a bit.”

“Nice analogy.” Corran smiled. “I like it.”

“I thought you would.” Rima returned his smile. “Nothing on this mission two Rogues can’t handle, even if,” she added with a shrug, “getting in to Coruscant is likely the easiest part of the whole thing.”

16

Gavin Darklighter said nothing as the Pulsar Skate reverted to normal space. His silence did not result from previously warbled warnings by Liat Tsayv, nor was it born of the need for operational security that General Cracken’s people had drilled into him. And it was not the result of his having his eyes closed so he couldn’t see anything.

He could see.

What he saw was Coruscant, and that vision took his breath away.

Mirax turned in her seat. “Impressive, eh, kid?”

Gavin knew he’d not seen as much of the galaxy as some folks—all of Rogue Squadron included, and the crew of the Skate as well—but he didn’t think of himself as a total nullwit or nerf-herder. He wasn’t one of the Sand People, for example, and he knew plenty about sophisticated things, like flying an X-wing or slicing code in a computer. He might have grown up on a farm outside Anchorhead, but he’d been to town at least once a month, and his family was always invited over to the big house by his uncle for family celebrations.

He’d even been to Mos Eisley. Once.

But he’d never seen anything like Coruscant.

“It’s just a city, the whole thing, one big, huge, really big city.” Gavin spread his arms wide for emphasis, but hit hull before he thought he’d gotten the gesture right. “It’s all city.”

“Pole to pole, horizon to horizon, more or less.” Mirax smiled. “There are spots on the glacier where things haven’t been built over, but the only reason that’s true is because the poles are frozen reservoirs. If you drink water down there, it was pole-frozen or shipped in from outside.”

A light came to life on the console. The Sullustan pilot chittered at Mirax, causing her to turn around and hit three buttons. “Merisee Hope here.”

“Coruscant Space Traffic Coordination on link here. Our files show you’re transporting exotics? Our scan shows you have eight individuals on board.”

“Affirmative. Three humans, five exotics.”

“I copy. You are cleared on vector 34293AFX.”

Liat gave Mirax a nod, so she spoke into the comm unit again. “We copy. Thank you, Coordinator.”

Gavin saw her shut the comm unit off, then raised an eyebrow. “That seemed too easy.”

“Suspicion is a good thing, just so long as you don’t go overboard with it.”

“Sounds like something Corran might say.”

Mirax glanced back at Gavin, but he couldn’t read the expression on her face. “He might say such a thing, indeed. And he’d be thinking our entry was too easy, too. The trick of it is that certain members of Coruscant’s Space Traffic Coordination office have been bought and paid for. When the entry-monitor satellites beamed an inquiry to the Skate they got a transponder message that told them we were the Merisee Hope. That ship is a known slave-runner for one of the brothels on the edge of Invisec.”

“Invisec?”

Mirax frowned. “I thought they briefed you before this run.”

“Well, yes, they did, but I don’t remember Invisec being mentioned before.” Gavin shrugged helplessly. “What is it?”

“A chunk of the Imperial City that is popularly known as the Invisible Sector, primarily because most people don’t want to admit it exists. It’s large enough to swallow up three or four of the largest metropolitan areas from elsewhere in the galaxy, but here it’s just one precinct out of many. Invisec is a contraction of the name and is used by folks who frequent it to refer to the area.”

“You mean the Alien Protection Zone.”

“Right, sure, if you want the Impspeak designation, but only the military uses that. Citizens don’t talk about it, or call it ‘there,’ or refer to it as invisible or unseen, or the witty ones confess slumming down there by saying they disappeared for a while. Invisec is largely made up of the APZ, but it extends around it and has little satellite sectors elsewhere in the city. Think of it like Mos Eisley, but uglier, nastier, and less hospitable.”

Worse than Mos Eisley? Gavin blinked. “Is that possible?”

“That’s the thing about evil, Gavin, it doesn’t diminish when you spread it over a larger area. It’s rumored Vader built a palace near Invisec because, for him, it was as attractive as a seashore sunset is to most folks. The black market thrives down there. Aliens who have work permits can leave Invisec and work in other locations. Those who don’t are forced into working at the factories that have been built on the edges of Invisec.”

Looking past Mirax and out through the cockpit viewscreen Gavin saw the dark city below rise up toward the ship. It seemed as if towers lunged to impale the Skate but the Sullustan pilot deftly steered the ship around them. Down and down the ship glided, flitting between towers and around through canyons, pushing lower and lower through layers of light and shadow until they reached a point where Liat had to turn on the ship’s running lights or be left without a means for orienting the ship.

The Sullustan slowed the ship and brought it down below the overhanging edge of a building. Dark fungi and white lime stained the walls. Gavin couldn’t identify the stone used to construct the building, but it seemed to be ancient and covered with odd, twisty runes like nothing he’d ever seen before. “What does the writing say?”

Mirax laughed. “That’s not writing, Gavin, those are the trails of granite slugs. Hawk-bats tend not to get down this deep.”

“Granite slugs and hawk-bats?”

“Hawk-bats look good riding the thermals—just as long as you don’t suck one into an engine. They prey on granite slugs and get the occasional borrat. Borrats get as big as two meters long.”

“Sounds like womp rats from back home.”

“Sure, except these things have tusks, spines, armored flesh, and claws that can dig through ferrocrete. The only good thing about them is that they tend to be solitary.” Mirax flipped some switches overhead. “And there are all sorts of extraterrestrial beasties that someone brought to Coruscant and let loose. Most are benign, but …”

Gavin shivered. And why was it I agreed to this duty?

The Skate slowly began an ascent, which Gavin thought would bump them against the bottom floor of the building above, but he discovered they were rising through an open hatchway in the overhang. “This is convenient.”

“A lot of transport of goods goes on at the lower levels in the city—it keeps traffic lighter up above. This building used to be outside Invisec, but as the construction droids slice a piece off one side of Invisec, the un-homed push out and take over new areas of the city. It’s a slow migration and Invisec generally gains two kilometers for every one it loses.”

The Pulsar Skate drifted forward and put down its landing gear. It came to rest in the large, dark basement of the building, squeezed in between trash middens, hydro-reclamation processors, and the heart of the building’s heating and cooling facilities. Liat killed the repulsorlift drives but left the external lights on, providing the only strong illumination in the facility.

Mirax unstrapped herself from the command chair and punched a button. Gavin heard a whooshing hiss followed by the sound of servomotors lowering the access hatch. It touched down with a metallic thump. “C’mon, kid, let’s see what they have set up for you.”

Gavin unfastened his restraining belts and followed her down the ramp and out into the building. The musty air filled his nose and dried it out. It reminded Gavin of how the air smelled just before a Tatooine dust storm hit with its full fury. He found the scent familiar enough to be reassuring.

Mirax preceded him down the ramp and crossed over to one of the trash middens. Dropping to one knee, she waved him over. “Grab this end of the crate and pull.”

Gavin grabbed one of the handles on the duraplast box and slid it from beneath the trash. Mirax got the handle on the other end of the two-meter-long case and between them they lugged the heavy rectangular box over to a spot beneath one of the Skate’s lights. The rest of the Rogues descended the ramp and joined them.

Nawara Ven’s black cape pooled around him as he knelt at the lockpad on the box. He studied it for a moment, then looked up at Mirax. “This looks to be what we were told to find here. It should have gear and identification cards in it. Should you be here when we open it?”

She shrugged. “You’re probably right, I shouldn’t be, but I’ve got two standard hours before the clearances for my exit identity become live.”

Gavin frowned at Nawara. “We can trust her, you know.”

The Twi’lek held a hand up. “I do not doubt her honesty, Gavin—but the less she knows, the better for her. In the same way, our not knowing the particulars of her escape vector and identity means we cannot reveal it if we run into complications.”

Mirax patted Gavin on the shoulder. “Not to worry, Gavin. I’ve got navigational calculations to do. May the Force be with you all.” She retreated up the ramp, then it ascended after her.

Nawara punched a combination into the lockpad. The lock clicked and the Twi’lek slid the cover off. The gear inside had been packed into numbered boxes that Nawara pulled from the case and handed to the appropriate individuals. Gavin accepted box one and wandered away from the others to open it.

Inside he found a folded change of clothes, a small satchel in which they could be carried, a hundred credits in various forms, a small hold-out blaster, and a packet filled with identification cards. He tore the packet open and poured its contents into his hand. He had a drawcard in his alias so he could pull money from a transaction account as needed, a basic medical record card containing a medical history that would allow doctors to treat him without knowing who he really was, and his new identification card.

His cover identity was that of Vin Leiger, a young man from a Rimworld who had gotten into trouble. He’d hooked up with a Shistavanen—conveniently played by Riv Shiel—and had left home. The two of them had scraped by on a number of worlds by using Vin’s apparent innocence to trick locals into trying to take him for all he was worth. Shiel—who would go by the name Shaalir Resh—would rob the con men targeting Vin, then they would move on.

A chill ran down Gavin’s spine as he ran through all the details of his new identity. Vin Leiger, he realized, had a more complete history than he did himself. It struck Gavin that it was utterly absurd for him to be trying to pass as an outlaw from another world. It was even more absurd for him to be a member of an elite Rebel squadron on a spy mission to the Imperial homeworld. How can I be here?

He remembered standing on the edge of the pit where his family lived, looking out at the wastes of Tatooine, wondering if Luke Skywalker had ever stood where he stood and had seen what he’d seen. It was quite a contrast to the scene below where his mother and siblings cleared away the debris from his sixteenth birthday celebration. Security, warmth, love, all existed down in the hole, while everything outside it was hostile, inhospitable, and unforgiving.

His father had come up and had stood there with him. “You’ve got the Darklighter look on your face, and at your age, too.” His father sighed. “I knew this day would come, just not this soon.”

Gavin had looked down at his father. “What do you mean?”

“Us Darklighters have a point in our lives when we look outside ourselves. We look outside our lives. Some of us, like my father, never do it until the end, and then they regret all the things they didn’t do. Your uncle Huff looked outside once upon a time and chose to ignore what he saw. That’s why he’s become a food magnate here. By building up his little empire here he’s too busy to see what’s out there.”

Gavin could once again feel his father’s rough hand on the back of his neck. “Your cousin, Biggs, had the look at your age. He was determined to go to the Academy and become a hero with his name written big in the stars. He succeeded, better than he ever imagined, I suspect, though I’d have settled for a bit less success and a bit more life for him. And now you, Gavin, my eldest, you have the look.”

“There’s something out there for me, Father.” Gavin had shrugged. “Maybe I’m dreaming, but it feels like my destiny is out there.”

“There’s only one way for you to find out.”

His father’s reply had surprised him. “Do you mean you would let me go off and join the Rebellion?”

The elder Darklighter sighed heavily. “I couldn’t stop you any more than Huff could stop Biggs, but Huff tried. When he saw he couldn’t win, he secured Biggs an appointment to the Academy—that way he was in control of his son’s fate. Biggs went, of course, because that’s what he had to do, but he resented his father’s meddling. There was a rift there, and that eats at Huff every day of his life.

“Well, I’m not going to stand in your way. You’re welcome back here whenever you want to come, and no matter what you do, or don’t do, or run from, you’ll always be welcome here. You’re a Darklighter. Going out there is what you must do, so go with my fondest wishes that the Force will keep you safe and whole.”

Gavin had smiled and continued to stare out into the distance. “I feel as if the whole universe is opening up to me, and that all I have to do is step forward and I can make a difference. The feeling is powerful and exhilarating. Is that how you felt when you looked, Father?”

“I never looked until now, Gavin. I was always too afraid, and what I see now is a lot of pain and hurt.” He smiled up at his son. “And regret I won’t be out there with you. Whatever you do, remember who you are, what you are. A Darklighter’s destiny is waiting for you out there. This Rebellion, it’s been without a Darklighter for too long. It’s time that problem was solved.”

So now I’m with the Rebellion, on a dangerous mission to find the weaknesses of a fortress planet. Whose vision was more accurate, Father, mine of destiny, or yours of pain and regret? He shook his head. At least back there with you I have a safe haven. This mission is part of seeing to it that everyone has a safe haven and the freedom to discover their own destiny. I think you’d probably tell me that with a Darklighter involved, we’ll succeed. I hope you’re right.

Shiel’s hand landed heavily on Gavin’s shoulder. “Time to move, Gavin.”

“I don’t know any Gavin, Shaalir.” Gavin stuffed his clothes into his satchel, tucked the blaster into his belt, and pocketed the identification cards and money. “The name’s Vin Leiger and I’m here to find out what makes this world spin, and then find a way to make it stop.”

17

Wedge Antilles realized that the mission he and Pash Cracken had been given was the most difficult of all to complete. He suspected the other members of Rogue Squadron had been assigned tasks like mapping out power grids or locating shield generation stations. Pinpointing those locations would be vital if any invasion was to succeed, but that data would be useless unless he and Pash succeeded and came away with a positive report.

They had been charged with the duty of assessing the loyalty of the populace on the planet. Iella Wessiri had been able to provide them with her impressions of the general mood of the world’s population, but she freely acknowledged she was more pessimistic than another might be. “Paranoia has a way of coloring your thoughts about the world.”

Wedge smiled as they moved out of the Galactic Museum’s Sith artifact room. “Paranoia may be an effect of the things in that room. Ghastly stuff …”

“But seductively powerful.” Iella glanced down wistfully. “Not as crude as a cubic meter of credits, but those things appeal to something even more base than greed.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Because of his mission parameters Wedge had decided touring the various Imperial facilities open to the public should form the basis of their survey, and in the week since his arrival they had covered a lot of ground. He had expected the Empire to put its best face forward and display things that would denigrate and demean the Rebellion, and he’d not been disappointed. By learning what it was the Empire wanted its citizens to believe about the Rebellion, he could then assess whether or not the Imperial propaganda efforts were successful.

The museum had proved very instructive in this regard. The bottom two floors provided extensive displays of the flora, fauna, and mineral treasures from throughout the Empire. Several displays did provide notations that this plant or that animal had been made extinct on their native worlds by “outlaws and malcontents,” and included among such beasts were Ewoks—and Imperial taxidermists had taken great pains to make them seem helpless and even more cute than they were in real life. However, despite such propagandistic comments, the displays were impressive and reminded Wedge there was much more to the Empire than he’d consciously acknowledged before.

The first two floors were clearly designed to impress and overwhelm visitors with their magnificence, so the next four floors had been put together to capitalize on the favorable impressions made below. Those floors covered the cultural and social developments of the Empire. One whole floor had been given over to the Emperor and his life. Holograms of people who had known him served as tour guides at each display while droids admonished the people to keep moving on. All the displays, from items shown to the descriptions that accompanied them, were slanted toward making the viewers believe everything the Emperor had done had been for their specific good.

The final tableau presented on that floor made this point abundantly clear. It showed the Emperor lying in state upon a bier in a dark room. He looked far younger and more handsome than Luke had described him, as if the moral rot and evil in him had never been able to ooze out and reveal itself. The Emperor appeared just to be sleeping, ready to rise up if the Empire needed him again.

A holographic image of Darth Vader sizzled to life when Wedge had approached. “Behold my Master and weep. He has been stolen from us by those who embrace hatred. The Emperor learned that the Rebels had stolen plans for an Imperial Planetary Ore Extractor and intended to use the one they were fabricating at Endor on inhabited planets. He assembled his fleet, and heedless of personal danger, he had me take him to Endor. He infiltrated the half-completed extractor, offering these Rebels his forgiveness and a hand in friendship. They rejected him and attacked his fleet. My Master had no alternative but to destroy this Death Star himself, perishing in the process so his citizens could live on. I was slain with him, but my death did not distress me, for it came in service to my Master.”

As Vader spoke, a fanciful holographic simulation of the battle at Endor played itself out against the backdrop of the chamber. An outnumbered and outgunned Imperial fleet drove a dagger into the heart of the Rebel formation. The pinpoint accuracy of Imperial gunners laid waste to the Rebels. As that war raged outside, the Emperor appeared looking beatific as he pleaded with an unseen Rebel host. His expression melted into sorrow and pain, then his eyes blazed and his fists knotted. Suddenly his image exploded, taking the Death Star with it. The explosion tore into the Rebel fleet, leaving only small, weak ships to flee.

The whole presentation had sent a shiver through Wedge. He had been at Endor—he had fired the shot that helped destroy the Death Star—yet this telling of the story felt as compelling to him as the true history of what had happened. It suggested a benign purpose for the Death Stars and made the Rebels out to be monsters for thinking to use one on an inhabited planet. By doing so, and by suggesting the Emperor had gone there to prevent that sort of perversion, the fear that lingered in everyone’s heart concerning the destruction of Alderaan was shifted into fear directed at the Rebellion. The Emperor had sacrificed himself to save everyone else, so only the most boorish of louts would not show gratitude of some sort toward him.

As he moved on to the Hall of Justice with Iella he found himself amazed at how easily the Empire had been able to warp the truth into a story that sustained the realm. “The people who create these exhibits are very good at what they do.”

“That was never more evident as it is with this area concerning the Jedi.” Iella linked her arm through Wedge’s as they strolled on. “Were it not for the Emperor, we would be slaves to a tyrannical Jedi state.”

The history of the Jedi Knights was presented in a linear fashion, moving from right to left around the room. The thousand-generation saga had been condensed such that it gave emphasis to the legendary Jedi Masters of old, then suggested a gradual deviation from that noble tradition as the Knighthood grew. The corruption had begun—Wedge gathered by implication—when human Jedi Masters had taken on nonhuman disciples. The Jedi Knights went from being the guardians of the Old Republic to the secret masters of its future. They used their powers to manipulate and direct the Republic’s leaders.

After the resolution of the Clone Wars, the Jedi began to move toward an open grab for power. Senator Palpatine circumvented them and deposed their puppet. In overthrowing the corrupt Old Republic, the Emperor stripped from the Jedi their political power and laid their evil bare for all to see. The Jedi denied the truth he revealed, all except one of their number. His fellows tried to murder him, but he survived their treachery and rose to assist the Emperor in rooting out the evil that had ruined the Knighthood. He was Darth Vader and, said the display, never had there been a greater champion for the high ideals of the Empire than he.

Wedge smiled. “At least that last bit is true—Vader was Imperial through and through.”

“Notice how they have the true line of Jedi Knights dying with Vader at Endor? No mention of Luke Skywalker, but the implication is that he is heir to the corrupt tradition.” She shook her head. “I wonder if that is too subtle?”

“Appeals that play to fear can be subtle and still very effective.” Wedge turned and looked back toward the far corner of the room. “It looks to me as if this chamber once opened onto another one, but the entrance has been sealed up.”

“I’ve seen an old version of a holographic museum tour—we have people who archive those sorts of things just to see what’s been changed. Once upon a time, back in the days of the Old Republic, there were three more chambers that extended back there with mementos of famous Jedi Knights and their exploits.” Iella shrugged. “It’s been sealed up for over thirty standard years. Rumor has it that most of the things in there now are memento mori, and the descriptions of some are enough to make the Sith artifacts look absolutely benign.”

Pash Cracken met them outside the Jedi exhibit carrying a small sack. “Are you two interested in getting out of here?”

Wedge didn’t answer immediately because his attention was drawn to something beyond Pash. The museum had been constructed in such a way that the circular foyer rose all the way up to the roof, giving each floor a crescent-shaped opening onto it. The northern wall, through which the public entered the building, had been constructed of transparisteel, providing a commanding view of the Imperial Palace and the walkway that linked the Museum with the Imperial Justice Court.

A vicious dark, roiling cloud was coalescing in the kilometer or so between the museum and the Palace. Golden lightning shot through it, then arced up into the air. A brilliant energy thread linked the cloud with the lowest of the planetary shields, then seconds later an explosive rumble of thunder sent a tremor through the building. More lightning flashed at the heart of the cloud’s dark depths and the cloud began to drift toward them.

Wedge looked over at Iella. “That’s a nasty-looking storm. Are we safe here?”

“Sure,” she said, taking her hands off the steel railing. “A compressor probably blew in one of the buildings down there. Water vapor escapes into the air, condenses, and starts spitting energy. There’s lightning rods all over the place on these towers and skyhooks, so we should be safe. You’ll know it’s a really bad storm when the skyhooks detach their tethers and move off.”

Down below Wedge saw all sorts of people streaming into the foyer as the storm approached. Beneath the dark cloud he saw a shimmering sheet of rain scourging the buildings. “Such quickly developing storms must make weather prediction here very tough.”

“I’ve heard it said that any meteorologist who is right thirty percent of the time here on Coruscant is barred from shipping on the submarine gambling vessel Coral Vanda or from any other casino because she’s just too lucky. In reality, though, no one has any reason to actually go outside, so the weather matters little.”

A bolt of lightning struck very near the museum and the lights dimmed for a moment. Pash smiled. “That could be an inconvenience.”

“True,”

Wedge pointed at the sack Pash had in his left hand. “I take it you found something interesting in the museum’s souvenir mart?”

“I have here the most popular items, as indicated by a very friendly salesclerk.” Pash peered down into the bag. “I have a statue of the Emperor made from cold-cast Corusca Stone resin—if you project a laser through the base it will give you a series of pictures of the Emperor displayed on your wall. I promised my father I’d bring him something, and that’s it.”

Wedge nodded solemnly. “He’ll love that.”

“I hope so. I also got two holopad display disks that will project the two most popular segments of the Emperor’s life story: the Clone Wars and the one titled ‘Sacrifice at Endor.’ I was assured they were the hottest sellers and especially popular with tourists who would be heading back into the outlier worlds.”

“Interesting.” In their early discussions of how best to accomplish their mission, Pash had suggested to Wedge that one way to determine the beliefs held by others was to watch what they spent money on. The popularity of the statue suggested that a good number of people did revere the Emperor, though the image of Pash’s father displaying it like a trophy in his office suggested that even the Emperor’s detractors would find a use for such a thing. The holopad disks, on the other hand, suggested an interest in the events that happened before and around the founding of the Empire and the events that marked its decline. The ‘Sacrifice at Endor’ piece was significant in that it confirmed the Emperor’s death and could be brought to distant worlds to lay any doubts to rest. The fact that it showed the Rebel fleet as having been broken, and suggested evil motives on the part of the Rebels themselves, was not that great a concern to Wedge. While Imperialists could use the program to show how the Emperor cared for his people, the chances of it convincing anyone that the Rebellion had died at Endor with it were slim indeed.

Well, this is a start. It would seem that people are beginning to come to grips with the fact that the Emperor is dead. How ever he died—by his own hand or through Luke’s intervention—the fact is that the Rebellion was sufficiently strong to put him in mortal danger. To a greater or lesser extent everyone on this planet must wonder how much of the Rebellion has survived and how it will come to affect their lives.

Wedge smiled. “I think those will do just fine. Everyone will be happy with them.”

“I hope so.” Pash jerked his head back toward the building’s central core and the lift tubes. “The storm will be past shortly. Shall we head down and out?”

Wedge nodded and started toward the lifts when a woman grabbed his elbow. He turned with a polite smile on his face and she launched herself into his arms. “Darling,” she shouted, then kissed him full on the lips. “I’m so glad I caught up with you!”

Wedge got his hands on her shoulders and pried himself loose of her embrace. He started to sputter, then he saw who she was and a chunk of Hoth settled itself in his guts. Mirax! “Yes, love, we were just getting ready to look for you. Where have you been?”

“I missed some connections and couldn’t get out when I wanted to.” Mirax forced a light laugh and smiled at Pash and Iella. “You know me, I always push my luck with my travel plans. Things just fell apart this time, and I don’t have a clue as to what I shall do now. Perhaps, my dear, you do.”

18

Though the week he’d already spent wandering through the upper precincts of Coruscant had allowed him to become accustomed to constant observation, Corran could not shake the background sense of being watched. Of course there were reasons for people to watch him. He sat at a tapcaf table on the edge of a promenade in the Imperial Palace’s Grand Corridor accompanied by two strikingly beautiful women. Erisi with her short black hair and Rima with her longer white hair proved enough of a contrast to each other that eyes were naturally drawn to them. That he, a lone man, should be blessed with their company made him the object of a certain amount of envy, as did the apparent leisure with which all three of them sat at the table and chatted away idly.

Corran and Erisi had been given two areas to study in their survey of Coruscant. They were to cover basic security and peacekeeping as well as medical services and facilities. Having been a security officer, Corran knew what to look for by way of force allocation, morale, discipline, response times, and tactics. Much of the week had already been spent in passive observation of the Coruscant constabulary and the stormtrooper contingents that worked with them.

Coming to the Palace’s Grand Corridor had been the final and crowning expedition in their survey of the upper, most public levels of Coruscant. At first Corran had absolutely balked at taking such a risk because he felt security there, in the heart of the building from which the government was run, had to be maintained at the highest level. The chance of detection there was greatest, yet the need for study there was equally great. He knew that any attempt to take Coruscant might well end up with a running lightfight through the halls and corridors of the Palace, so any information about its security would clearly save lives.

And in this place Rogue Squadron could have dogfights with a whole wing of TIEs.

The Grand Corridor had immediately impressed him with its scope and size. The corridor itself ran on for kilometers and the open areas at the floor level could easily have accommodated a Star Destroyer. Banners of all colors and designs hung from balustrades and arches. Each one represented a world in the Empire and there were more of them than Corran figured he could count in a lifetime.

Purple and green ch’hala trees lined the main floor and each of the upper levels. Their bark reacted to vibrations and sounds, sparking displays of color that splashed an ever-changing, opalescent mosaic on the grey granite walls and pillars. Corran had overheard from the numerous tour guide droids that ch’hala trees had been a favorite of the Emperor’s and placed here at his specific request. Though he hated everything the Emperor had stood for, Corran had to admit that the ch’hala trees were what truly made this place grand.

The necessities of modern life did not intrude and spoil the majesty of the hall. Reader strips, like those scrolling out the latest news stories everywhere else on Coruscant, had been shielded so that anyone wanting to read their messages had to stand at a specific point on the floor to actually see the scarlet letters rolling by. Information kiosks were warded by ch’hala trees. Small alcoves scooped from the walls at regular intervals provided people a modicum of privacy for using the holo-link stations built therein.

Security appeared to be lax, but Corran picked up on things that Erisi clearly missed. Stormtrooper squads did patrol the main floor and passed certain checkpoints at fairly precise intervals. They appeared to be most concerned with breaking up or moving along knots of non-humans. Those with legitimate reasons to be in the building were urged to be on their way, while those gawking at the magnificence of the Palace were directed to join escorted tours or to leave.

The upper galleries of the Grand Corridor appeared to be alien free, yet the mechanism for maintaining them that way was remarkably unobtrusive. Side passages leading to stairs or lifts narrowed considerably, forcing individuals to move through them no more than two or three abreast. Guards wearing a more stylized and esthetically pleasing form of stormtrooper armor maintained posts at these passages and gently redirected anyone who appeared to be lost. They did respond to questions, but only with the directions to the nearest visitor and information kiosks where the questions could be asked again.

The stairs themselves doubled back twice. This meant anyone who got past the guards on the lower level could be isolated on the middle staircase and dealt with. The landings on either side of the staircase appeared normal, but Corran knew of a dozen ways anyone traversing them could be trapped or, with a laser cannon emerging from behind a hidden panel, cut down with little or no risk to Imperial personnel. While quite fantastic in its design and execution, the Grand Corridor had not been created without an eye toward security.

Corran made some quick assumptions about other precautions that had to have been set up. He suspected that in the narrow corridors below there were weapons detectors. The technology for locating an inorganic object next to the flesh of or within the body of a living creature was old and unobtrusive. By detecting the disturbance a weapon made in the creature’s bioelectric field or the planet’s own magnetic field a computer could comlink to the guards the identity of the person carrying the weapon, its location on his body, and even the type of weapon he was carrying.

Other passive monitoring devices could be used to locate things like gas canisters or bombs by picking up on molecular traces coming off them. For all Corran knew the ch’hala trees could have been genetically altered to make them into botanical sniffers. The patterns of light flashing across their bark could have some sort of significance, alerting Imperial officials to danger without anyone in the Grand Corridor being the wiser.

You’re definitely thinking too hard about this, Corran. He smiled and looked over at Rima. He caught her staring at him for a moment, but her eyes had enough of a soft focus that he knew she’d not been seeing or thinking about him. “Imperial Center to Rima. Hello?”

She blinked, then grinned sheepishly. “Sorry. I was thinking.”

“That was apparent. What about?”

Rima hesitated and that caught Corran’s full attention. Throughout the time he had spent with her he’d come to realize two things: She was incredibly observant and she seemed to forget little or nothing of what went on around her. Actually Corran couldn’t remember having caught her out at having missed a detail about something, and he’d frequently been corrected by her. The only times she had previously hitched before answering a question were times when the answer had the potential of violating the security envelope surrounding the mission.

Rima’s expression softened somewhat and Corran sensed she was about to open up a bit about herself. “I was thinking that we might actually have a friend in common. He was from back home, though I did not know him there. I was wondering how he was.”

Corran smiled and picked up his cold cup of espcaf. He’d assumed all along she was from Alderaan. She’d never confirmed this, nor had she denied it. He couldn’t remember having said anything to her that told her his assumption, but from the look in her eyes, he had no doubt that he had said something, allowing her to phrase her question in such an oblique manner.

He lowered his cup and kept his voice neutral. “Do you mean Sel?” He abbreviated Tycho’s last name, assuming that even if the conversation were being overheard, the intelligence value of one syllable was tiny.

“Yes, I was thinking of him.”

Erisi smiled. “He is doing well. He recently got me out of a very tight spot. Quite a treasure.”

“Really? That’s good.”

Corran caught a flicker of surprise and hurt in Rima’s eyes. She covered it quickly, but he thought he recognized jealousy in her reaction to Erisi’s flirtatious response to the question. She and Tycho must have some history. “I guess you know him better than either one of us. We’re really just casual acquaintances of his.”

Rima’s eyes sharpened slightly. “Only casual acquaintances? I would have thought you two would have been fast friends.”

“We could have been, but the man has secrets.” Corran shifted his shoulders uneasily. Despite his original resolve to trust Tycho, reality had slowly impinged on him. The preparation for the mission to Coruscant had stressed trust and sharpened his sense of paranoia. At the core of the Tycho problem was the fact that no one save Ysanne Isard knew if Tycho was her puppet or not. Corran had emotionally begun to insulate himself from Tycho, but until now had not realized how far along that unconscious process had gotten. “Secrets establish a distance and undercut trust.”

Hurt returned to Rima’s eyes. “He’s had a hard life.”

“So haven’t we all.”

Rima’s head came up. “You don’t understand. His family died …”

“I do understand.” Corran kept the volume of his voice down, but let the emotions bubbling up in him pour straight through into his words. “I have no family either and do you know what? I saw my father get shot up. Murdered. And I couldn’t do anything about it. I was a hundred meters away, watching him by remote, backing him up, when a bounty hunter walked into the cantina and lit up the booth where he was sitting with two other people. Killed them all and I couldn’t do anything about it. I got there and held my father in my arms, but it was too late. You want a hard life, there’s a hard life for you.”

Corran’s hands contracted into fists and Erisi leaned over to hug him. He stared openly at Rima, daring her to deny his pain. He wanted her to break, to lose that look of superiority she wore. He wanted her to admit that nothing Tycho had been through, even the destruction of his homeworld or his Imperial captivity, could have measured up to what Corran had endured.

Even as Erisi whispered, “I’m so sorry,” in his ear, Corran knew he had overreacted and overreacted badly. What’s gotten into me? He searched his mind for an answer, tracing back fleeting thoughts, and slowly came to a realization that surprised with its simplicity and amazed him with its power.

Tycho, in saving his life and in shepherding him through his introduction to Rogue Squadron, had moved into an august company in Corran’s mind. Corran’s father, his CorSec supervisor, Gil Bastra, and Wedge Antilles were the only other people that Corran saw in the guardian and mentor roles in his life. With his father and Gil both dead, Corran realized he had begun to rely on Wedge and Tycho to serve as touchstones and moral compasses for him.

The fact that Tycho could not be fully trusted had gone to war with the esteem in which Corran had held him. As he had mentally distanced himself from Tycho, he began to feel that Tycho had somehow betrayed him. The anger he felt toward Tycho, the anger that had triggered his outburst, had come from this sense of betrayal and Corran’s guilt at having elevated someone so untrustworthy to a rank equal to that of his father.

This is crazy. I have to sort all of this out. Tycho has not betrayed me or anyone else. I need to apologize to him and to Rima.

Before he could say anything, Rima began speaking in low, even tones. “I do not doubt the sincerity of the anguish you feel, and I am most sorry for you. As tragic as is your story, though, I think Sel’s story can be considered of equal weight.”

Corran wanted to tell her she need say nothing more, she need not explain, but the solemnity of her tone froze his words in his throat.

“He had graduated from the Academy and was assigned to a Star Destroyer—the Accuser. On the occasion of his birthday—something most TIE pilots celebrate because of their rarity—he was engaged in a realtime HoloNet connection to our home. His family was there: father, mother, brother, sisters, grandparents, and his fiancée. He was speaking to them when the transmission was cut off. That sort of thing was not unusual and he planned to chide his father about it since his father ran Novacom, the largest HoloNet provider on the world. The fact was that Sel never got a chance to do that because, as he discovered shortly thereafter, his family had died in a monumental catastrophe.”

Corran’s stomach collapsed in on itself like a neutron star. Tycho was speaking to his family when Alderaan was destroyed. I saw my father die, but he saw everyone die. I was able to hold my father and give him a funeral. I was able to comfort his friends and be comforted by them. My father may have died alone, but I didn’t have to endure his death alone. My life’s as soft as a Hutt’s underbelly by comparison.

He heard Erisi stifle a sob and felt a tear moisten the side of his neck. He turned to face her, then saw a vision from the past that sent a chill straight through him. His hands came up to cup Erisi’s face, tipping her chin upward, then he pulled her to him and kissed her fiercely. He felt her start to pull away, but he restrained her gently and she flowed into his arms to return the kiss with a passion that all but melted what he felt inside.

Part of him wanted the kiss to end and wanted him to escape her arms. Corran resisted the idea of escape because he couldn’t be certain of how he would spend his freedom. What he really wanted to do was insane on an Imperial scale. It would compromise the mission. It had the potential to delay or prevent the New Republic from taking Coruscant and finishing the Empire. It ran the risk of destroying everything the Rebellion had worked for.

But it would feel very, very good.

Over Erisi’s shoulder Corran had seen Kirtan Loor. The tall slender body, the crisp gait, and the head held imperiously high were unmistakable. He’d memorized all those things about Kirtan Loor months before his father’s death. Subsequent to it he had reveled in the fury and contempt they had spawned when he saw the man.

What Corran wanted to do at that moment, more than anything else in the galaxy, was to walk over, grab Loor, and pitch him from the promenade. He would have preferred being on a higher level to do so—a much higher level—but that problem could not be helped. He hoped the fall would kill the man, though from a mere ten meters up the chances were it would only break a few limbs and possibly rupture some internal organs.

Corran felt someone tap him on the shoulder and for the barest of moments thought Loor had spotted him. About the time he realized that hadn’t happened—the fact that no stormtroopers were closing in and no alarms were going off cinching it for him—Rima said, “The danger is past. He’s gone up another level.”

Corran pulled back and gave Erisi a quick kiss on the nose, then looked over at Rima. “How’d you know?”

“Kirtan Loor’s presence on Coruscant has not gone unreported. Correlating things I know about him and you were not difficult.”

Erisi blinked her big blue eyes a couple of times, then looked from Corran to Rima and back. “What was all that about?”

“You saved my life.” He smiled at her. “Forgive the liberty I took, but …”

She caught her breath, then returned the smile. “I understand. If you ever need your life saved again, I’ll be honored to be of service to you.”

He patted her on the knee. “Thanks. I’ll remember that.” He turned back toward Rima. “I’m not afraid of him.”

“I didn’t think you were.”

“I want to kill him.” Corran reached out and tapped her lightly on the temple. “Do you know why?”

“I know many things, but not all things.”

“I caught the Trandoshan who killed my father, but Loor let him go.” Corran took in a deep breath and let it out. “He’ll pay for that one day. Sooner than later, I hope, but don’t worry, I have my priorities straight. His date with justice can wait, wait until we bring down the government that gives people like him the power to perpetrate evil on more worlds than we can count.”

19

It occurred to Gavin that if his father had any idea he’d end up sitting in the Azure Dianoga cantina, he’d never have let him leave the farm. If Mos Eisley was considered the armpit of the galaxy, this part of Coruscant could be considered anatomically lower and decidedly less hygienic. In the dim distance, in an alcove between the bar and the doors, Gavin could see a Kubaz quartet playing trunkflutes and percussion, but the din caused by hundreds of aliens speaking all at once walled away the sound of their music.

Acrid green smoke drifted through the cantina’s atmosphere, stinging Gavin’s eyes and painting another layer of grime across his face. Down in the lower reaches of Invisec he’d taken to wearing all of his clothes in layers, rotating the inners to outers, and had been at it for the week since they’d landed. He felt he smelled like a dewback with bloat, but the worse his scent became, fewer were the complaints from the various aliens with whom they dealt.

The mission given to their team had been quite broad. The top two items on the agenda were to determine the level of control the Empire exerted over the lower reaches of the city—and the general mood of the alien population on the world—and to find out if the lower levels of the infrastructure would provide avenues of attack against the government. That seemed logical to Gavin because if Coruscant were built on a foundation the government didn’t control, bringing it down would be just a little bit easier.

Since their cover story had Gavin and Shiel working as partners, they had traveled independently from the others and had spent a great deal of time exploring the tunnels and ruins at the bottom of the world. The Shistavanen wolf man had suggested they begin their exploration near the Invisec border because if there was no way to leave Invisec and penetrate the newer sections of the city, any invasion force that made planetfall in Invisec would be bottled up.

The border proved fascinating because of the mélange of building materials and architectural styles all jammed into a very small area. Where the huge construction droids had carved a swath that nibbled away at Invisec, the walls were formed of sheer ferrocrete with no preconstructed access ports to the other side. No matter how new these walls looked, all of them had been covered with colorful writing—most of it being anti-Imperial invective—or had been gouged by sharp claws or nibbled by sharper teeth.

Borrats appeared to be the pioneers that opened holes in these solid walls. The holes appeared to be about twice the size of a pilot’s helmet, with claw marks that striated a cone shape going in and coming out on the other side. Clearly sapient beings had expanded on some of these holes, enlarging them to permit easy passage for most creatures. Some of the holes had been resealed, but the ferrocrete patches could be removed if they were chipped away at the edges, and in at least one case, a plug had been hinged so it looked normal from the far side and could provide easy access to areas outside Invisec.

The perimeter of Invisec where the residents were moving out and taking over buildings previously outside their sector was known in local parlance as the Outer Rim. There the holes through the ferrocrete walls were numerous and large enough to permit all sorts of commerce. Where the Imperials made an effort to stop the migration of aliens, all windows and doors had been sealed with ferrocrete plugs. Messages splashed on walls indicated points where people suspected the Imps had set up booby traps. Arcane sigils and graffiti in more languages than Gavin knew existed marked the sites of fights where Imps had killed people to prevent the sullying of new territory.

The Outer Rim clearly provided more opportunities for an invading force to push into the city proper primarily because the walls there were not as strong as the barriers on the other side of Invisec. That fact, however, would be the only bright spot in an otherwise very gloomy report. After days of wandering through the dark and twisted alleys and byways of Invisec, the vast scale of the invasion needed to wrest the planet from the Empire began to press in on Gavin. The planet had billions upon billions of people. The force needed to pacify the populace and maintain order while fighting against Imperial stormtroopers would have to be incredibly huge.

It would take more troops than the Rebellion has under arms. The shields make this place a tough nut to crack, but chewing up the meat isn’t going to be any easier. Gavin hunched forward on the table in the corner booth and gripped his mug of lomin-ale with both hands. “Prospects don’t look so good, do they?”

Shiel lowered a mug from his muzzle and wiped excess ale off on his sleeve. “If there’s no prey, there’s no reason to hunt.”

Nawara Ven and Rhysati Ynr cut through the smoke and slid into the booth, forcing Gavin to slide around toward the center of the semicircle. The Twi’lek’s clothes were worn in only one layer, were more conservatively cut and decidedly cleaner than the ragged things Gavin and Shiel wore. Rhysati wore a skintight, dark blue body stocking supplemented with knee-high boots, belts, chains, and other straplike accessories that accented her already considerable charms. Gavin forced himself to meet her stare, then blushed when she winked at him.

Nawara raised a hand and waved a serving droid over. “Churban brandy for me, or the closest synthesis you can manage. She will have a Durindfire, light on the phosphorescent agent.” He settled a brain tail over Rhysati’s shoulders as the droid scuttled off, then nodded to Ooryl and Aril Nunb as they joined the group. “All alive and well, I see.”

Ooryl tapped himself on the chest. “Gand has traveled extensively and has found much exotica. Items are available from throughout the galaxy, at prices that reflect the distance they have been shipped, not any restriction on supply.”

Nawara rhythmically tapped his fingernails against the scarred and stained tabletop. “Estimates on how long those goods would last?”

Aril cocked her head. “A month, perhaps more, provided Imperial interests did not stage raids. The Imps appear to monitor trading. Everyone seems to pay protection to the Imps, to Black Sun, and to local Invisec factions. If things were to get tight, some of the things here would be pulled outside.”

Gavin exchanged a glance with Shiel. The wolf man had said that he would have opted to starve the Imps out by blockading the planet. He estimated it could survive for two or three months. Aril’s estimation of the supplies in Invisec meant that the alien population of Coruscant would be hurt worse by a blockade than the Imps would. Given the anti-alien bias the Empire had, that sort of result wasn’t surprising. If Ysanne Isard was smart she’d ransom the Invisec population for supplies, or she’d just have them killed and take their supplies for the humans.

The general din of the cantina faded and died as Imperial stormtroopers came through the doors. They wore the standard white armor seen across the galaxy, though they did have small pinpoint spotlights clipped to their right shoulders. Two soldiers remained at the doorway—they were armed with heavy blaster rifles—while the rest of the squad broke down into a pair of three-man groups that began to work their way around the dark oval room. Back through the doorway Gavin thought he saw more troopers and a large vehicle, but the swirling smoke and general gloom made a positive identification impossible.

Aril kept her voice low. “Another sweep?”

Nawara nodded but remained silent.

The various alien denizens of the bar shifted around anxiously. The Gotal seated back to back with Nawara in the next booth over ducked his head, giving Gavin a clear view of the stormtroopers centered between the Gotal’s horns. Gavin killed a smile as he recalled stories about Gotals being able to read minds. It would be very interesting to be able to know what’s going on inside those helmets, if anything at all is. I wonder what they’re after?

The knot of stormtroopers nearest the Rogues stopped at a table where two squid-headed Quarren sat conversing with a tall Duros. The leader of the stormtroopers demanded identification cards. He ran them one at a time through a slot on the datapad attached to the armor on his right thigh, then returned one card to the Duros.

“You two will have to come with us.” The stormtroopers behind him brought their blaster carbines up to cover the Quarren.

“What have we done?”

“Routine inquiries. You have nothing to fear if you have done nothing wrong.”

The Quarren, pulling their robes tightly around them, rose from their stools and scurried out. No one stared at them, but everyone seemed to be watching them go. Gavin could feel resentment rising in the room as it rose in him.

The second trio of stormtroopers found no one interesting to harass, so they backed to the door while the first set of troopers approached the Rogues’ table. The leader demanded Gavin’s identification with an outstretched hand. “Far from home, aren’t you? ID, now.”

Gavin fumbled for it, then turned it over.

The stormtrooper ran it through his datapad’s slot, but didn’t return it immediately. “I asked you a question, son. What are you doing here?”

“Ah, I, ah, I’m just here.” Gavin fought to stop panic from choking him.

The stormtrooper snapped the ID card on the table. “I have reports that say you left home under strange circumstances. Maybe you want to come with us and return to your own kind. We won’t let them hurt you.”

“No, I’m fine here, really.”

The trooper shifted his attention to Rhysati. “Identification.”

She snuggled tighter beneath Nawara’s brain tail and flicked her pink tongue salaciously over the grey flesh of the Twi’lek’s throat. Nawara reached inside his tunic and held up an ID card between the second and third fingers of his right hand. As he lifted it toward the stormtrooper, Gavin saw the outline of a black triangular coin worth a hundred credits. “You don’t really need to see her identification.”

The stormtrooper took the ID card and neatly palmed the coin. He held the card up to compare the hologram with Rhysati, then tossed it down in anger when she turned her face toward him and winked. “Your kind makes me sick.”

“As does your kind, which is why I’m with him.”

That rocked the stormtrooper back on his heels for a moment and he seemed about ready to go for his blaster when a buzzing came from his helmet. He touched the side of it with his left hand, then turned to his two companions and jerked his head toward the door. Looking back at Nawara he said, “You’re lucky this time, spoiler, but I’d be thinking about finding a new friend. It wouldn’t do to have this one crying over your ashes, would it?”

“Perhaps not.”

“Definitely not. Remember that.”

The stormtroopers withdrew and darkness again descended on the Azure Dianoga. The conversational tone remained low, which allowed some of the band’s music to make it over to the table. Over near the doorway Gavin saw some figures get up and begin to sway or writhe in time to the music, though the twitching of one person led him to believe that some of the notes were being played well outside the range of his hearing.

Aril appropriated Gavin’s ale and downed a healthy swallow of it. “That was close.”

“Gand has previously avoided such contact. Gand has seen Imperials rounding up others, both Quarren and Gamorreans.”

Shiel nodded. “The kid and I saw a family of Gamorreans herded off.”

“The stories we’ve heard indicate occasional sweeps taking in Gamorreans and Quarren on a weekly basis. They take a dozen or two.” Nawara Ven scraped talons along his jawline. “Perhaps there has been an anti-Imperial uprising on Gamorr.”

“That would explain the taking of Gamorreans.” Aril’s garnet eyes sparkled in the backlight of the glowing drink the service droid placed in front of Rhysati. “Why the Quarren?”

Nawara dropped a ten-credit piece in the slot on top of the droid’s head and drew his brandy from the tray. “Quarren share the same world with the Mon Calamari, but the two populations are not wholly united. Perhaps they want to exploit the enmity between them.”

A petite, black-furred female Bothan came walking over to their table and smiled invitingly in Gavin’s direction. A diamond of silken white fur covered her from throat to navel—it being visible beneath her sleeveless jacket’s loose lacing closures. White also sheathed her hands and carried on up to mid forearm. A blaze of white fur blossomed in the middle of her brow and splashed across her left eye and cheek to where it narrowed again at the corner of her jaw. Her light violet eyes shone brightly in contrast to the fur surrounding them, giving her a penetrating stare that sent a quick jolt through Gavin.

Nawara looked up at her. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“I think not, sir.” She picked up Gavin’s identification card, read it, and gently set it down again. “I noticed how you dared defy that stormtrooper, Vin Leiger, and I thought perhaps I would like to learn more of a man who can be so casual in a place where so few of his kind are found. I thought we might discuss this … privately.”

It took Gavin a half second to remember he was Vin Leiger, but that was because he’d not recognized himself in her description of the encounter with the stormtrooper. She must have somehow confused me with Nawara, but she’s looking right at me. “Urn, I, ah, I’m here with my friends.”

She nodded politely. “Of course, you would not want to abandon them. I understand.” The Bothan glanced back over her shoulder toward where people were dancing. “Surely they would not begrudge my stealing you away for one dance?”

“Ah, we’re discussing something right now. Perhaps another time, Miss …”

“I am Asyr Sei’lar.” Her smile slackened slightly. “Another time, then?”

“Yes, certainly.”

A Gotal seated in the next booth over turned around. “He’s lying, Asyr. Your approach made him nervous and your retreat filled him with relief.” As the horned humanoid came around to face Gavin he produced a blaster and pointed it at the Rogues. Out of the corner of his eye Gavon saw Asyr move and a small blaster appeared in her right hand. While he saw no more guns, he heard a crescendo of safety switches being snapped off, so he instantly rejected the idea of digging for his puny hold-out blaster.

Nawara’s voice took on an edge, the sort of edge Gavin imagined it had when the Twi’lek had fought for his clients in court. “Would someone care to explain what my friend has done wrong here? Is it a crime to refuse to dance in the Azure Dianoga?”

“Not at all, but his relief shows him to be as much a bigot as the stormtroopers who just left here.” Asyr tapped Gavin’s ID card with the muzzle of her blaster. “If he’d not lied, if he’d accepted my invitation, we’d have known he’s like your woman—someone to whom species makes no difference. Since he’s a bigot, we have other uses for him.”

“And those would be?”

The Bothan smiled coolly. “The Imps have been kidnapping people from Invisec and they’ve not returned them. Something has to be done, so we have formed the Alien Combine. We need someone to take a message to the Imps to let them know we’ll tolerate their prédation no longer. Your friend has elected himself to fill that post and this will be one time when a dead man will tell a tale.”

20

Kirtan Loor’s ears popped as the lift ascended to the rarefied precincts where Ysanne Isard lived. She does not live, she lairs. As much as he hated her intrusive holo-visitations to his tiny office, being summoned to see her personally was even less of a cause for celebration. And even though all of the news he had relayed to her had been very positive, he did not see her as someone who would invite a subordinate to her office to congratulate him on his successes.

To eat him alive, perhaps, but not to congratulate him.

The lift slowed, then stopped, and the doors slid open. He stepped out and paused, raising his arms away from his body. Though the scarlet-armored Imperial Guards on either side of the lift and at either end of the short corridor did not move or even seem to pay attention to him, he knew rash or casual movements could prove lethal in their territory. He waited, then lowered his arms and walked down the corridor to his right. After a couple more turns, passing several more guard stations, he arrived at the door to Isard’s office and it slid open soundlessly.

Though he stood half a head taller than she did, Loor always felt dwarfed by her. That impression had nothing to do with her physical presence, though she was a strikingly handsome woman, and her mismatched eyes did lend her an exotic air. Instead it was the way she stood, how she moved, and how well she wore the scarlet uniform that confirmed her right to rule. Though she made no claim to the title of Empress, she was very much Imperial in her manner. In a time when the Empire was crumbling, that was enough to leave her in charge.

Isard waved Loor into her office. As he had on each previous visit to it, he marveled at the sheer emptiness of the cavernous room. Whereas other Imperial officers and bureaucrats managed to cram their cramped offices with treasures from countless worlds, Isard reveled in the greatest luxury of all on crowded Imperial Center—uncluttered space. The external transparisteel wall gave her a view of the world she ruled as the sun set on it and the red strip edging the room’s blue carpet appeared to be just an extension of the red sunset.

“You wished to see me, Madam Director?”

Isard hit a button on a remote and shields slowly descended to eclipse the sun. She let the office fall completely dark before slowly bringing the lights up. “I did indeed wish to see you. General Derricote now wants Sullustans for his experiments?”

“He does. They were his second choice. He would have preferred Wookiees, but I explained to him the foolishness of killing off a valuable labor source.”

“Did you think to explain to him the foolishness of choosing Sullustans?”

Loor nodded. “I did, but he countered that since SoroSuub had chosen to back the Rebellion, punishing them is hardly out of the question. I suggested he should use Ewoks as a substitute, but he actually has some sound scientific reasons for wanting to work with Sullustans. The Quarren are an outlink to some of the more aquatic species, Gamorreans to another set of creatures, and the Sullustans, he says, will be a bridge race to Shistavanen, Bothan, and similar species.”

Isard frowned. “I would prefer avoiding the slaughter of Sullustans—like Wookiees they are useful. However, if their sacrifice will give me dead Bothans, the advantage outweighs the immediate disadvantage. Perhaps we should quarantine a breeding stock of Sullustans so they can repopulate their world.”

Her reasoning seemed logical to him, which surprised Kirtan Loor. On one hand she was plotting a way to slaughter millions of creatures in a most horrible way, yet on the other she was concerned with having enough of one species left alive to repopulate devastated worlds. While he had no love for Sullustans, and did see them as being inferior to humanity, he did think of them as something more than grain that could be poisoned and fed to rats, with some pristine kernels held back as seed stock.

Was there a time I would have seen this as insanity? That question lurked in his brain and he was surprised that he did not have a clear answer to it. Does it truly matter? These are extraordinary times, and they call for extraordinary action.

“Your precaution, Madam Director, is wise, but I wonder if it will be needed.”

“You are approaching a subject obliquely, Agent Loor. Please be more direct.” She clasped her hands at the small of her back. “You see a problem with Derricote’s Krytos virus?”

“I do. It can be cured by bacta.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“Yes, of course.” Isard smiled slightly. “That a cure can be affected by the use of bacta was one of my original design parameters for the virus.”

Loor’s jaw dropped. “But I thought your goal was to kill the aliens here on Imperial Center so that when the Rebels came here they would be horrified.”

“Oh, I expect that, but in a way you never imagined. The problem with your scenario is that it will not cripple the Rebellion.” Her eyes sharpened. “Warlord Zsinj, Darth Vader, and even the Emperor failed to see that a single strike at the Rebellion will not destroy it. The Rebellion is a fire. You have to extinguish each and every hot spot, or you have to deny it fuel, so it cannot burn any longer. They settled on the former method, whereas I will use the latter.”

“I am not certain I follow you.”

“This is not a surprise.” She held a hand up. “What do the Rebels do when one of their comrades is killed?”

“Bury him, burn him, whatever.”

“And if one of their comrades is wounded?”

“Get him help.” The simplicity of the question and the speed with which the answer came to him undercut its importance. He thought for a moment, then added, “Rescuing the man, getting him medical help, rehabilitating him, and getting him back into combat all require more resources than a memorial service.”

“There is hope for you, Agent Loor.” Isard’s smile grew, as did the lump of ice in Loor’s stomach. “The Rebellion has done a great deal with severely restricted resources, both in terms of matériel and personnel. If a trained warrior cannot be saved by medical intervention, the Rebellion has lost him and all the hours spent training him. While there are always more bodies willing to be sacrificed to tear down the Empire, training them is a strain.

“Another question for you: What will the Rebels do when they find people beginning to be sick with the Krytos virus.”

Loor frowned. “They will heal them, if they can.”

“Which means they will require unbelievably vast amounts of bacta. Just stabilizing a Krytos victim in the disease’s incubation period—before the virus has begun to reproduce out of control—will result in the loss of a full liter of bacta. That doesn’t seem like much, of course, since a bacta tank holds considerably more than that, but the losses will become significant as the disease spreads. Total production on Thyferra last year was seventeen billion liters. The amount needed to treat all the victims here on Imperial Center will require three quarters of last year’s production. At the current prices for bacta, saving everyone they can will bankrupt the Rebellion.”

“With no fuel they cannot burn.” Loor stared down at the floor, then shook himself. “When Derricote gets the virus perfected, you’ll turn the planet over to the Rebels.”

“Exactly. And because the virus will not infect humans, I force the human Rebels to act to save as many aliens as they can. If they do not, because they are unaffected it will appear to their alien allies that they are just as unconcerned about aliens as they accuse us Imperials of being. Moreover, because elements of Rogue Squadron are here on Imperial Center now, we can begin to weave together lies that will implicate them in spreading the virus.”

“No one would believe that of them.”

“No one would believe they would free vicious criminals from Kessel and send them to Imperial Center, but they did.” Isard slowly rubbed her hands together. “While that morsel will be a lie, it is a lie that the Bothans will use as a pry bar to work more power into their hands. Those aliens we do not kill or drive away into a self-imposed quarantine will see the wisdom of repudiating their alliance with treacherous humans. The Rebellion will tear itself apart from within.”

Loor gave himself a few moments and let all she had said sort itself out in his brain. “Am I to assume, then, that you do not want the members of Rogue Squadron we have identified swept up?”

“No, I want them to scout out the world and decide on one or another plan of attack to take this world away from us. As long as they are seeing what we want them to see, and our agent keeps us apprised of their timetable, they are useful to us. We cannot allow them to act before we have sufficiently infected the alien population of the world. If they strike prematurely, they will never take the world and our efforts to gather them here and present to them the Krytos crisis will fail.”

Isard closed her eyes for a moment, then nodded. “You will send out the appropriate code phrases to alert our agent that you desire a meeting, face-to-face.”

“Isn’t that risky?”

“I think it is vital. Arrange for it this evening—you will go yourself.”

“But …”

Ysanne Isard’s light laughter came laden with sharp barbs. “You are afraid of Corran Horn finding you, yes?”

Loor knew denying the truth in her question was foolish. “He would kill me if he had the opportunity to do so.”

“But the chances of your running into him here, on Imperial Center, are what, one in trillions?”

“Corran Horn has an annoying facility for beating those kinds of odds and showing up where he is least wanted.” Loor’s frown deepened into a scowl, but not because he resented the fear he had of Corran Horn. That fear was well founded and useful, just as the fear of a rancor might keep someone away from its lair. If Corran had the opportunity to kill him, he would take it and likely succeed.

What bothered Loor more than that eventuality was Ysanne Isard’s willingness to put him in jeopardy by sending him out to meet the traitor in Rogue Squadron. So far information generated by the spy had only been used actively once. That use had resulted in the death of Bror Jace, but things had been arranged so that everything appeared coincidental. That could have been enough to leave Corran without suspicion, but if it was not, then Loor’s sojourn could lead to a confrontation and his death.

To her I am expendable—an opinion I do not share. While she can take chances with me, I cannot afford to take chances myself. Fortunately I am not entirely without resources of my own here on Imperial Center. I will have to take precautions myself. I must prevent Corran from having a confrontation he devoutly desires and one I heartily wish to avoid.

Isard studied him with no mercy in her eyes. “Horn is not what should concern you—assuring our spy of our support is. Without timely and reliable reports, things could collapse and that would not please me.”

“Yes, Madam Director.”

“Oh, and order the collection of some Sullustans. Keep General Derricote happy.” She hesitated for a moment, then smiled. “Or, at least, keep him productive. The Empire is a house afire and he is the means to smothering the blaze. When his work is done, the Rebellion will have ceased to be a problem. Then and only then will we be able to begin to restore the galaxy to the way it should be.”

21

Though Mirax’s appearance surprised Wedge and had him a bit off balance, Iella took it immediately in stride. She looped an arm through Mirax’s and smiled sweetly. “We have some catching up to do, so you boys just follow along and don’t you dare try to overhear us.” Though her smile remained in place, and she kept a light tone in her voice, Wedge read tension and wariness in her eyes.

“As you wish, ladies.” He sketched a short bow, then followed them to the lifts. They descended in one cage, then headed out onto the rain-slicked promenade. Iella and Mirax chatted and laughed as their path meandered around, entering buildings, stopping at vistas, and going from point to point of interest while always descending. Wedge could tell, from the way they traveled, that Iella made some choices at random, but others with a purpose. With the frequent stops and passes through clothing boutiques that made him feel uncomfortable, Iella made it very difficult for anyone following them to go unnoticed.

Wedge realized that being forced to wait amid racks of women’s clothing samples made him uneasy because of more than his gender making him feel utterly out of place there. For the past seven plus years he had been at war. While there had been relaxing times and he’d been given leaves, he’d never slipped out of his identity of being a pilot. Without family to visit—his parents were dead, and because of his connection to the Rebellion, visiting any other relatives would put them in jeopardy—he’d taken time off but not time away. Wandering through the byways of Coruscant was as close as he had come to what others might see as normal life since his parents were killed.

He smiled. Even the time he had put in as a touring hero for the Rebellion had been far from normal. He found himself whisked around from planet to planet, banquet to banquet, wearing a dress uniform he didn’t even know the Rebellion had. At receptions and parties and dinners he found himself congratulated for his part in the Rebellion by creatures he never knew existed before. Gifts had been bestowed upon him, honors given him, and opportunities provided him to do things he’d never had the courage to even dream about as a child.

He watched as Iella and Mirax played with a garment-fabricator holo-unit, lengthening and shortening, trimming and coloring dresses they’d never order. They laughed and were having fun. Just the way normal folks do when enjoying a normal life.

The word “normal” stuck in his brain for a moment and he realized that “normal” was a goal for most folks that had no definition. When Rogue Squadron’s chief tech, Zraii, ran diagnostics on Wedge’s X-wing, normal was defined by a series of benchmark readings established in Alliance specifications and Incom performance manuals. There was a way to determine if the fighter was performing normally or not. And if it was deficient in some way or other, that defect could be corrected.

Normal in terms of life, on the other hand, was not so easy to determine. For Mirax, hauling contraband between worlds was normal, yet to someone like Iella or Corran, that was grossly abnormal behavior. For his parents normal life had been owning a fueling depot and raising a family. That version of normal, or some minor variation of it, seemed to fit most folks’ view of what life should be.

But does that mean that anything else is not normal? For him, living the life of a pilot fighting against the Empire seemed normal. Moreover, it seemed to be a life that was based on reality. The Empire, weakened though it was, cast a pall over the entire galaxy and until it was eliminated, the home, job, and family sort of normal would always be in jeopardy. A hint of wrongdoing could shatter the cocoon of normalcy most people tried to spin around themselves and disrupt their lives forever.

Wedge and Pash trailed silently in the women’s wake as they moved on. Iella seemed to move a little more deliberately, and as they emerged from a stairwell onto a promenade that hung out over an urban canyon with a river of shadow filling it, a repulsorlift cab came to a stop. The doors opened and Iella motioned them all into it. Wedge didn’t recognize the driver, but that somehow made him feel better about the situation than not.

Without instructions from Iella, the driver took the vehicle away from the building and down. The route he flew seemed as twisted and circuitous as the one Iella had employed, but the journey ended quickly. The driver dropped them on another walkway, but this one was several kilometers down and away from where they’d been picked up, leaving them submerged in the thick shadows of the undercity.

Iella led them along to an alley, then down it and into a building. Three floors up she opened a door and led them into a sparingly furnished room. Its most impressive features were the two large picture windows that dominated the far walls. They provided a rather panoramic view of the intersection that the apartment overlooked, or underlooked, depending upon one’s perspective.

Iella closed the door, then nodded toward the two couches that faced each other in the center of the room. “Please be seated.”

Mirax sat with her back to one of the windows and let a slight smile play across her lips. “Which do you want first? The story of why I’m here on Coruscant, or how I managed to find you?”

Iella shrugged easily. “Which one will convince me you’re not an Imp?”

Wedge frowned. “Mirax is clean. I’ve known her all my life. She’s no Imp.”

“Convince me.”

Wedge started to say something, but Mirax cleared her voice. “I can handle this, Wedge, honest.” She smiled. “I appreciate the caution, especially here. I’ll start with the museum and work back only as far as needed, that way you won’t know more than you need to.”

Iella nodded. “Coruscant is a world that has billions of people on it. The chances of your being in the right place to spot someone you know are astronomical. Even luck or believing in the Force doesn’t begin to cover those odds,”

“Quite true, but I had a house edge on the wager.” Mirax jerked a thumb toward Wedge and Pash. “They’re snubfighter jockeys. Sooner or later they’d have to go to the Galactic Museum and check the display that talked about Endor. It’s ego and these pilots can breathe vacuum easier than they let slip a chance to see what lies the enemy is telling about them. Corellian pilots are notorious egotists, so staking out the museum seemed natural.”

Wedge arched an eyebrow at Mirax. “You think I’m egotistical?”

“Wedge, I love you like a brother, so it hurts me to say this, but you’re so egotistical you think you can keep your ego under control. Most of the time you do, which is your only saving grace. And the times you don’t, well, I’ve not been on the receiving end of a display, but I imagine there are some Imps who would regret that experience, if they were alive to think about it.”

Despite the slight sting of her words, Wedge knew there was more truth in them than he really wanted to acknowledge. In the second run at Borleias he’d let himself be outraged at the tactics the Imps thought would stop him from completing his mission. That was quite the display of ego and they paid a dear price for letting me indulge myself

He turned toward Iella. “Well, at least you can tell she knows me.”

“From that explanation I can tell she knows Corellian pilots. I had a partner who was a hot hand with an X-wing. If he ever joins the Rebellion, he’ll give you a run for your credits.” Iella looped a lock of brown hair back behind her right ear. “Since you didn’t run Commander Antilles in to Coruscant, you didn’t know he was here. That means you brought more pilots in and were figuring they’d visit the museum. Probably more from Rogue Squadron.”

Mirax inclined her head to the left. “You certainly could conclude that scenario is accurate.”

“Oh, I’m sure it is.” Iella sat down on the arm of the couch opposite Mirax. “Your presence means your exit identity was blown, which means the rest of the pilots could have been compromised somehow.”

Mirax looked up at Wedge. “Are you and I the only folks from Corellia who don’t sound like we were trained in deductive reasoning by CorSec?”

Iella patted Mirax on the knee. “I was trained in deductive reasoning by CorSec.”

“So you were part of CorSec?”

“Yes, why?”

Mirax sighed and held her hand out. “I’m Mirax Terrik.”

Iella’s hand stopped short of sliding into Mirax’s grip. “You’re Booster Terrik’s daughter?”

Mirax’s hand dropped back to her lap. “I bet you liked it better when you thought I was an Imp agent.”

“You’d lose the bet.” Iella kept her hand held out. “I’d just joined the force when Hal Horn put your father away. Booster was smart enough that I can believe his daughter was sharp enough to stake out the museum. And he was lucky enough that I can believe you succeeded in your long shot. I’m Iella Wessiri.”

Wedge waited for recognition to flash in Mirax’s eyes, but she shook Iella’s hand without any sign she recognized the name or knew of the woman. Perhaps Corran never spoke to her about his partner or never named her to Mirax.

Iella freed her hand from Mirax’s and sat back on the couch. “This all complicates things incredibly, but we’re on top of them right now, so it’s not a crippling emergency. This place is a safehouse. I’ve called in someone who I expected to use to help debrief you and interrogate you, if necessary. We’ll still need the debriefing, of course, but we need it to determine where to start assessing the damage to our operation here. Your problems could have a perfectly innocent explanation, but because they involve the Empire, I doubt that entirely.”

“I don’t know what happened really.” Mirax shrugged. “I made the arrangements as per usual with a broker. That gives me an identity code and a window for an exit vector. I enter three flight plans or so, get clearance on them, then head out. This time, when I tried to use the ID to enter the flight plans from a public datapad, things locked up. I cleared out and Imp Security landed on the place. It was down in Invisec so it created quite the stir. I turned around and burned some favors my father had earned with Black Sun to get my ship and crew taken care of. Since then I’ve been looking for a friendly face.”

Iella’s brown eyes focused on the window behind Mirax for a second. “Sounds like the Imps got the controller who was entering the ID codes. Your broker insulated you from direct discovery, but when you used the code they found you. We can get some slicers backtracking things and see how bad the situation has become. That means bringing in folks who have skills I don’t, and for that, we have to wait.”

Pash sat down beside Mirax. “While we wait I think we’ve a more serious problem to figure out how to handle.”

Mirax frowned. “What can be more serious than the Imps knowing members of Rogue Squadron are on Coruscant?”

Wedge smiled. “If the Imps find out why we’re here, they can take steps to make the conquest of Coruscant impossible. That, my dear Mirax, is about as serious as it gets.”

22

As unsettled as things were, Corran felt glad when they headed back to the Hotel Imperial. Erisi, Rima, and he made fairly good time through the city. A freak storm over near the museum slowed them down by cutting power to a moving sidewalk. Like most of the other pedestrians they stood around waiting for it to be repaired, contenting themselves with watching the storm or reading the news as it scrolled past on the readers. Corran noted that while public transport could be disrupted by storms, the news and propaganda machine flowed onward without a hitch.

No one spoke very much as they traveled back to the hotel, but Corran caught Erisi watching him and giving him brave smiles to shore up his feelings. He appreciated the effort, but it only served to remind him what sort of fool he’d made of himself. He almost asked her to stop, but somewhere deep down inside he knew the humiliation was good for him, trimming back ego and forcing him to be more thoughtful.

As they walked along, he reached out and rested a hand on Rima’s shoulder. “I do want to apologize for what went on back there.”

A curtain of white hair slid in back of her shoulder, brushing across the top of his hand, as she looked in his direction. “Perhaps I owe you an apology also.”

“Not at all.”

“I do.” Pink, blue, and silver highlights flashed through her hair as a moving sidewalk conveyed them through a tunnel lit with a random pattern of neon lights. “Everyone from my world carries around some survivor guilt. We do not want to be pitied, but at the same time the sacrifice our people paid seems to demand respect. Among us there are those who have lost a great deal more than others …”

“But you have all lost everything.”

“True, but someone who was with his family in service on another planet has lost less than those who had kin die. Sel, in seeing everyone go, his story is tragic.” Rima glanced down at her open hands. “All of us recall where we were when we heard the news and the tragedy’s impact hit us full at that moment. Sel had thought nothing was amiss, then he learned the significance of what he had experienced. The hours in which he considered it nothing mock him and haunt him.”

In the same way does my failure to avenge my father haunt me. “You were right, his life was hard.”

Erisi rubbed her left hand along his spine. “I think what she means to say is that her people are pitied for something over which they had no control. The gulf between pity and respect is vast. When their tragedy is denigrated, and that seemed to be what you were doing, you strip away respect and reduce them to a pathetic state. And while they do not want to be pitied, their actions cannot be judged without bearing in mind the tragedy that underscores their lives.”

Corran slowly nodded. Working in the Rebellion provides two things for Alderaanians: vengeance and a means to earn the respect they desire from others. They seek the vindication I felt when I brought Bossk in for my father’s murder, and they’re fighting to avoid what I felt when Loor let him go.

He smiled. “We were both wrong.”

Rima shook her head. “We were both underinformed and that condition has been corrected.”

“Agreed.”

They got off the moving sidewalk at one of the Hotel Imperial’s middle entrances. Erisi pointed toward the doorway as Rima slowed her pace. “You will join us for dinner, yes?”

“Can’t.” She gestured vaguely back along their line of travel. “There’s something I have to check on. I’ll be in contact tomorrow morning.”

Corran and Erisi bid Rima farewell and took a lift down to their room. They said nothing to each other, but Erisi stood a bit closer to Corran than she normally did. He didn’t mind that terribly much because her obvious concern told him he wasn’t alone and had, in her, a friend upon whom he could rely. He also read other confusing things in her eyes and posture, but his emotional state was chaotic enough that making sense of much of anything was impossible.

He opened the door to the room and preceded her in. Hitting a light switch he saw no one and confirmed that things had been left the way he positioned them in the morning before they headed out. The triangular nub of a black sock was still caught in the edge of a drawer and the closet’s slide door had been left open to a point that was even with a pair of Erisi’s ecru slacks.

The door clicked shut behind him, then the lights went out. He turned and felt Erisi’s hands slide along either side of his chest, then close gently around his back. Corran felt her body press against his and the feather-light brush of her lips on his forehead, nose, and lips. She pulled him close and again dropped her mouth to his, kissing him with the fierce passion they’d shared in the Grand Hall.

Making no conscious decisions to do so, he let his arms enfold her. His left hand slipped beneath the hem of her jacket and gently stroked her back. His right hand came up and held the back of her head. He breathed in deeply, filling his nose with the spicy scent of her perfume. As she broke off their kiss, arching her head back, he traced his tongue from the hollow of her throat to her earlobe.

Erisi lazily pulled him along with her as she slowly drifted toward the room’s bed. Corran understood her intention and realized he should have resisted the temptation she offered. Rational arguments tried to trip a circuit breaker in his brain, but they all failed. Operational security wasn’t important because if the Imperials decided to take them there was no way for them to elude capture. Sleeping together or separately would not save them if the Empire knew enough about them to know where to find them.

Both of them being members of Rogue Squadron was no bar to involvement. Nawara Ven and Rhysati Ynr had fallen in love and that had not proved an impediment to their skills and performance. Corran and Erisi were of legal age, sound mind, and both consented to what they were about to do. Even the fact that the two of them were from different worlds and different cultures had no bearing on what they were going to do. That we are here, now, is all that matters.

The word “now” began to ricochet around in his skull, releasing all sorts of memories. When he’d been in CorSec he’d heard his father or Gil Bastra or himself tell rookies that most criminals were stupid because they lived for now. Living for now meant they didn’t look ahead to the consequences of their actions. They didn’t take precautions, didn’t plan, and as a result, what they did fell apart on them.

Things went deeper than just that as well. He remembered his father weeping on the anniversary of the death of Corran’s mother. “One of the reasons she was a good woman, wife, and mother was because she didn’t think about herself first. Not a selfish bone in your mother’s body. Everyone else came first and what she wanted was saved for later because we needed her now. And now she has no more later, and there seems little reason in having a later without her.”

Erisi stopped moving backward and Corran felt the foot of the bed against his shins. She slowly sank back on the bed and drew him down with her. He resisted slightly, lowering her softly onto the quilted coverlet. He saw her in soft shades of grey from the dim light splashing in through the window. She was a seductive vision, a dream made real and warm and he fought to use that image to quiet the thoughts raging through his mind.

Powerful though that image was, a feeling of disaster dissolved it. Corran remembered his own relief at not sleeping with Iella back when he was with CorSec because, aside from destroying her marriage, the affair would have changed forever their relationship. The friendship and trust they had developed working together could have never been reclaimed. It was true that they might have stuck together and been stronger for getting together, but their attraction had been as much circumstantial as it had been real, which made for a poor foundation for any permanent relationship.

And this is circumstantial, too. Corran heard Mirax on Noquivzor telling him that Erisi would not be good for him and he’d seen how truly different they were as they came into Coruscant. He’d developed doubts about any relationship with her then, and this situation now did not invalidate those doubts. She’s attractive and I’m attracted, but something is not right here.

Something inside him felt very wrong. His father had told him countless times to trust his feelings and to play his hunches. Corran had taken his father’s advice and had learned to live by what he felt, or to later regret going against those feelings. He had gone against his gut feelings before, and with much less in the way of inducement to do so, but those situations had never turned out right in the end.

Corran let himself fall forward, but he kept his elbows locked and held his chest and head above Erisi. “I can’t.”

Erisi flashed him a shadowed smile. “I think you’re doing fine.”

“Seriously, I can’t.” He bent his right arm and flopped down on his flank beside her. “It isn’t going to work.”

Rolling up on her side, she reached over and stroked his cheek. “What’s wrong? What did I do wrong?”

“It’s not you.” He took her hand and kissed her palm. “It’s not that I’d like nothing better than to be here with you, but …”

“This is just now, Corran. I need this, you need this. It won’t change who we are. No obligations. No recriminations. No regrets.”

Her words poured soothingly into his ears. He had no doubt she meant them and that they would be true for her. “I hear you, Erisi, and I believe you, but I don’t know that I’d be able to leave it in the past. It might not change who we are or what we mean to each other, but I’d bet against it given my past history. As I said, it’s not you, it’s me.”

He rolled onto his back, then sat up. “You have to figure I’m an idiot. We’ve gotten very close a number of times and I keep pulling back.”

He felt her hand on his back as she sat up beside him. “Actually, while it is frustrating, I do find this hesitation one of your more endearing qualities.”

“Decisiveness in men is so off-putting, after all.”

Erisi laughed easily. “Your sense of humor is attractive as well, except when you use it as a shield.”

“Sorry.”

She kissed his shoulder. “You see, Corran, few are the men who allow their emotions to have a part in their decision-making process. Most are expediently logical—emotions motivate them, but do not guide them. With most men there would be no hesitation—if emotions were going to come into play, it would be afterward. Your ability to factor emotions into your choices ahead of time makes you rather unique and worth pursuing.”

“Or a big waste of time.”

“Not so far.”

“I’m just warming up. You’ll see. Give me time.”

Erisi sighed beside him. “Perhaps that is the best idea, right now, no matter what we think we want. What we need is time alone.”

He smiled in the direction of her silhouette. “How can you be so logical? Aren’t you supposed to be feeling scorned right now?”

“Perhaps I should, but then I don’t always allow myself to be ruled by emotions.” She shrugged. “We’ve just come to a decision to postpone making a decision about us and the nature of our relationship. Depending upon the decision made, I might be scorned, but I don’t think that emotion is worthy of either one of us.”

Corran nodded. “Yeah, you’re right there, on both counts.”

“Well, I’ll leave you here, then …”

“No.” Corran reached over and squeezed her leg just above the knee. “I’m fairly used to taking walks to sort things out. I’ve got a key, so I can let myself back in. I don’t know when I’ll get back.”

“I’ll head out and get some food. I should be here when you get back unless some Hapan princeling comes along and sweeps me away to make me the queen of some distant planet. Then won’t you be sorry?”

“Actually I think I would be.” Corran stood, then leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “Thanks for understanding.”

“Thank you for letting me understand.”

Guided more by emotion than any sort of rational thought, Corran left Erisi behind in the room, entered a lift, and hit the lowest numbered button he could find. It took him well below the level where they had last seen Rima. The walkway onto which it dumped him didn’t look that bad, though it was deeper than any place he’d been since his arrival on Coruscant.

Shoulders hunched and hands jammed deep into the pockets of a brown bantha-suede jacket, he started wandering. It didn’t matter to him where he was going, but just that he was going. Walking demanded little in the way of mental activity, so it gave him time to think and he’d done scant little of that which was unconnected to the mission for well over a month.

He tried to trace the source of his discomfort, but no easy answer presented itself. Certainly the pressure of being on Coruscant had a lot to do with it. Though precautions had been taken against discovery, something as simple as his nearly being sighted by Kirtan Loor showed that no matter how much care one took, there were times when luck just ran out.

Corran smiled. Back in CorSec they’d adulterated an old Jedi aphorism about luck to answer criminals who claimed they’d been caught because of bad luck. The Jedi Knights maintained there was no such thing as luck, just the Force. In CorSec they’d told criminals there was no such thing as bad luck, just the Corellian Security Force.

Now there’s not even that. In news he had seen scrolling across readouts throughout Coruscant he learned that the Diktat had dissolved CorSec and had allocated most of its resources and some of its personnel to the new Public Safety Service. It didn’t take much to see the change was a purge of people with questionable loyalties to the Diktat, but whatever its purpose, it erased yet one more link he had to his past.

His hand rose to his breastbone, but the gold medallion he normally wore was not there. General Cracken’s people had said that by keeping it he could seriously compromise security, so he’d put it away in Whistler’s small storage compartment. He knew the droid would keep it safe and, for him, knowing where it was had almost the same effect as actually wearing the good luck charm. And the Jedi whose face appears on that coin would say there’s no such thing as luck, so clearly it can’t be a good luck charm.

It occurred to him that he was losing his focus on life. Back when he had been with CorSec things had been simple. He knew who he was and so did everyone else around him. Though things were not all black and white, the number of grey tones were limited. There wasn’t too much for him to handle, which made it that much easier to focus on what he was supposed to be doing.

In cataloging the chaos that had dominated his life over the past five years or so, it was easy to tote things up in the negative column. His father had died. He’d left CorSec and his friends had vanished. He’d slipped in and out of various identities while on the run. After months of training and fighting for the Rebellion—escaping death by the narrowest of margins over and over again—he got stuffed onto Coruscant and nearly got spotted by one of the few people on the planet who could recognize him. He wasn’t flying. He didn’t have his good luck charm and he found himself missing Whistler, Mirax, Ooryl, and the others.

He shivered. If I only look at things on the negative side of the balance sheet, I’ll keep imposing reasons on myself to remain unfocused. The key to getting his focus back was to isolate those things he could control and work with them. Anything else didn’t matter because he couldn’t influence it. Only by doing as much as he could to manipulate the variables under his control could he keep himself in position to make decisions instead of finding himself without options.

What that means now is concentrating on my mission. I’m here to learn about security and that’s what I should be doing. He nodded, then slowly began to realize that his wanderings had taken him farther and lower than he would have consciously chosen to go. Coronet City on Corellia had some seedy spots, but they appeared positively immaculate and safe compared to where Corran found himself. While his location did provide him with a datapoint for his mission—namely that there was no active Imperial security to be seen this deep down—it was a small speck of silver lining in a large cloud.

He decided to get his bearings and moved in off the street. This required him to thread his way through various makes and models of speeder bikes hovering in a wall in front of a cantina. If there was any lettering painted on the wall or door to indicate what the place was, it had long since faded too much for Corran to read it. A series of holograms flickered in sequence showing a stormtrooper’s helmet breaking into four uneven and rather messy sections. What it meant mystified him until he walked inside and down the steps and saw a sizzling orange sign that proclaimed the place to be “The Headquarters,” or, at least, did so when all the letters chose to buzz to life.

Corran had chased fleeing Selonians through sewers with better atmosphere and more consistent lighting than the Headquarters. The narrow stairway broadened out into a foyer that ended where one side of the triangular bar blocked it off. To get farther into the cantina one had to pass through the choke points at either end of the bar. While a fair amount of dense smoke filled the air, Corran could see tables clogging the floor and booths back against the walls. Two curtained doorways were built into the back corners, leading to waste relief stations and, given the sort of clientele drawn to this type of establishment, providing access to dozens of bolt-holes.

Speaking of bolt-holes … Blaster bolts had dotted the walls near the entrance with a dense pattern of holes. Corran noticed they tended to be grouped about a meter up from the floor and tapered off past head height for the average stormtrooper. He found this marginally reassuring, though his gut did not agree with that sentiment at all. The faster I can get out of here, the better I’ll like it.

He kept his gait casual and a bit loose. His hands emerged from his pockets slowly as he approached the bar, slipping into a spot near the end over to the left. A fairly powerfully built Quarren female in a sleeveless tunic planted her hands on the bar right in front of him. “I think you’re lost.”

In an instant Corran was back in CorSec making sweeps of various Coronet City cantinas. “If I wanted thinking, I’d not be in here. Lomin-ale.” He put enough of an edge in his voice to make her question the judgment she’d made of him. As she moved away to comply, with her facial tentacles twitching out a silent curse at him, he realized his clothes were too new for him to fit in easily. Most of the patrons wore cloaks, less out of a concession to fashion than because it concealed their identities, and not many people coming into a place like the Headquarters really wanted to be spotted.

She returned with a small glass of ale, half of which was foam. He tossed a couple of credit coins on the bar and they disappeared instantly in her grey fist. He sipped the ale and found it wasn’t as bad as he expected, though it could have benefited from being colder. His was the only small glass being used in the place, which he took as a not-so-subtle measure of his popularity with the staff. He knew he’d not get served again, and he wasn’t inclined to linger over his drink.

By the same token, if he just turned around and walked out, half the regulars would be all over him like chitin on a Verpine. Running away would have the same effect as flagrantly flashing credits around, or opening his jacket and letting everyone see he didn’t have a blaster with him. He considered, for a moment, trying to buy a blaster from someone, but that would put him in direct contact with gun-carrying criminals who might decide killing and robbing him was easier than selling him a weapon.

Corran leaned on the bar and drank more of the ale. Realizing he was not in a good position, he started to look around and assess the threats suggested by the cantina’s patrons. Dozens and dozens of criminal profiles flitted through his brain. He classified people based on their species, the amount of interest they showed in him, and the kind of hunches he got when he looked at them. The people inside seven meters provided him with two definite class-one threats, a half-dozen class-two threats, and one Gamorrean who appeared scared enough that Corran tried to attach the face to any warrants that had been outstanding when he’d been in CorSec. He came up blank, then started on the booths along the wall to the left.

What? Corran blinked his eyes and shook his head, then took another look. Through the swirling smoke, seated facing a tall, slender figure in a cloak and hood, Corran saw Tycho Celchu. Impossible.

He looked away, then back for a third time. The individual to whom Tycho was speaking stood, eclipsing Corran’s view of the unit’s Executive Officer. In doing so the figure also managed to destroy Corran’s interest in Tycho because despite the dim light and the thick smoke, he knew the hooded and cloaked figure could only be one person.

Kirtan Loor.

Corran set his ale down and began to move around the bar. Loor and Tycho! He is an Imperial agent! I have to get to …

He slammed into a large Trandoshan and rebounded from the reptilian’s chest. Someone clapped a hand on Corran’s right shoulder and he felt the muzzle of a blaster jam into his ribs. The Trandoshan closed in on the left, pinning him against the man with the blaster. “You’re going nowhere, pal.”

Corran looked to his right and couldn’t recognize the man holding the gun on him. What he did notice about the gunman was that he had a comlink clipped to the lapel of his jacket and a small lead to an earphone in his left ear. As Corran looked back to the left to see if the Trandoshan was similarly equipped he saw the cloaked figure disappear out one of the back entrances. Tycho was gone as well.

Depression blossomed full in the pit of Corran’s stomach, yet he knew things could easily continue to get worse.

They did. Very easily.

Through the doorway that swallowed the cloaked man swaggered a person swathed in garish and gaudy clothes. The smoke would have been enough to conceal his identity until he drew closer, but the cantina’s dim light allowed the diamond pupils in his eyes to shine brightly.

Corran shook his head. “What you see when you don’t have a blaster.”

Zekka Thyne didn’t bother to smile. “Your thoughts parallel mine.” He reached back and drew Inyri Forge from his shadow. As she came around him she handed him a blaster pistol. “Of course, now I have a blaster and am just full of ideas about what I can do with it.”

23

Though he marched at the head of the parade, Gavin Darklighter felt anything but happy. He’d been searched and deprived of his hold-out blaster. The Gotal walked behind him, occasionally poking him with a blaster, and Asyr Sei’lar walked on his right. She seldom looked over at him, but when she did he saw only venom in her violet eyes.

The other Rogues had been dragged along in his wake, with a thick knot of denizens from the cantina traveling behind them. The Rogues had been allowed to keep their weapons, but their power packs had been taken away, reducing the blasters to oddly shaped clubs. Shiel seemed the most angry, but Aril and Ooryl insulated him from the individuals on either side so no violence broke out.

Asyr led the way through a set of corridors and stairways that provided easy and instant access to the city’s lower reaches. Unlike the pathways Gavin and Shiel had located, this one appeared to have been built in place, not hacked out of what construction droids had created. It didn’t seem that new—and certainly not as new as Asyr had made the Alien Combine sound—so Gavin guessed it had been built after a Hutt or some other criminal bribed the city planners to program it into a construction droid.

The journey ended in a large rectangular warehouse area that they entered through double doors in one of the narrow walls. Scattered throughout the space were all sorts of makeshift hovels. They had been cobbled together from ferrocrete blocks, duraplast packaging, broken sheets of transparisteel, and ragged bits of cloth. Dwellings for larger creatures formed the foundation of the makeshift apartment blocks. Smaller creatures like Sullustans, Ugnaughts, and Jawas occupied the upper levels. Gavin felt pretty certain things actually roosted up in the shadows ten meters overhead, but the light was too dim for him to see more than silhouettes moving about.

The Bothan led them to a central clearing. Wide roll-up doors had been slid down in place where they bisected the longer walls. The one off to Gavin’s left had a hole cut in it large enough to permit transit by most humanoid creatures. A couple of Twi’leks and a Rodian bearing guns stood watch nearby. Since both of the roll-up doors were large enough to admit repulsorlift trucks, Gavin assumed they led out onto whatever passed for streets at this level of the city.

Asyr stopped Gavin at the center of the clearing. The rest of the aliens fanned out in a semicircle behind them to ring half the clearing. This left the rest of the Rogues halfway between Gavin and the circle. The Gotal came around from behind him and stalked forward to where a steel post had been set into the duracrete floor. He picked up the hammer that hung from a string and pounded it against the post’s flattened top.

A heavy mournful tone rang from the post and filled the room. Gavin could feel vibrations play through the floor. All around curious faces peered out through holes, windows, and doorways in the hovels. The Gotal hit the post again, summoning more people to come out of their homes. He hit it a third and final time, then let the hammer drop.

Gavin heard the whir of an engine and looked up as a box drifted forward and slowly down. Cables lowered it from the mobile winch moving along tracks out away from the far wall. Lights came on inside the box, revealing windows and a doorway. As the floating building came to rest against the floor, the doorway opened and a male Devaronian stepped forth. The black cloak he wore nearly shrouded all of him—what little of his rotund belly and chest it didn’t cover made a bright scarlet stripe down his middle that matched the tone of his flesh.

Asyr bowed her head in his direction. “Dmaynel, we have brought you one of the bigoted men who has traveled into Invisec to mock us. He is the one we should use as the message we wish to send to the Empire.”

Light reflected white from the Devaronian’s sable horns. He stepped forward and took Gavin’s chin in his hand. His fingernails pressed hard into Gavin’s flesh, but Gavin did not flinch nor try to pull away. He stared down into Dmaynel’s dark eyes and did his best to hide his fear.

The Devaronian smiled, then released him and stepped back. “You have chosen wisely, Asyr. He is youthful and even handsome by their standards. His body will say all we want to say, and more.”

“Indeed,” said Nawara Ven, “it will let them know they are superior to all of us in every way they think now and new ones as well.”

“Who are you?”

The Bothan scowled. “These five were with this Man.”

Dmaynel looked past Gavin. “And you five are his friends?”

“We are, and proud to be so.” Nawara Ven appeared at Gavin’s left hand. “I have known him for well over six standard months and consider him one of the best friends I have ever had.”

The Devaronian folded his arms across his chest. “It is rare among us to find one who so openly professes his friendship with a bigot.”

Nawara smiled. “And what proof do you have that he is a bigot?”

Asyr snarled. “He refused to dance with me.”

The Twi’lek opened his arms. “Of course, how could I have forgotten? Refusing to dance is a sign of being a bigot. What if I had refused your request? Would I have been a bigot?”

“You were with her.”

“The human female, yes.” Nawara nodded slowly. “So you would say I would have had a reason to refuse you.”

Asyr nervously smoothed the fur on her face. “Yes, you would have.”

“Is it not possible, then, that this Man had a reason to refuse you?”

“He did. He is a bigot.”

“You draw a conclusion that is not supported by evidence, my dear.” Nawara opened his hands and lifted them up to take in all the aliens watching. “Is there no reason other than bigotry that might explain his action? Perhaps he is not a good dancer. Perhaps he has someone he loves far away from here. Perhaps he is allergic to Bothan fur.”

Asyr thrust a finger toward the Gotal. “But Mnor Nha said he felt relief when I went away. He was relieved he would not have to touch me and associate with me.”

“She is telling the truth, Dmaynel. That is what I sensed.”

Nawara drew himself up to his full height and turned to face the Gotal. “Tell me, Mnor Nha, did you sense relief from this Man when the stormtrooper departed from our table?”

The Gotal hesitated, then nodded. “Yes.”

“So when one threat removed itself, this Man felt relief.” Nawara turned back and smiled at Asyr. “Could it be, fair Asyr Sei’lar, that this man felt you as threatening in some ways as a stormtrooper?”

The Bothan’s head came up. “I am no stormtrooper.”

“Perhaps not in form, but in impact, I think you are.” The Twi’lek patted Gavin on the shoulder. “My friend here is young and you are very beautiful. You approached him. You flattered him. You expressed interest in him and you were persistent. You stalked him, all of which must have quickened his pulse. You clearly saw something in him that he was not certain truly existed, which certainly would make him anxious. Your departure meant he never had to discover how disappointed you would be when you discovered he did not live up to the image you carried in your mind. Relief at your departure would only be natural.”

Gavin nodded in agreement with Nawara’s assessment and saw heads among the spectators also bob away. Nawara’s hitting close to one part of the truth so he can leave the rest of it alone. Rather obviously Gavin’s relief could be explained in terms of his being on a covert mission from the Rebellion, but revealing that fact would blow the operation. As much as the Alien Combine had been organized to protest Imperial misconduct, he knew there had to be at least one Imperial informant among the creatures assembled in the warehouse.

“He was threatened by me?” Asyr’s violet eyes narrowed. “That’s nonsense. How could anyone think of me as threatening?”

“How indeed?” Nawara exaggerated a frown. “Could it be that he has heard it was the Bothan people who bravely sacrificed themselves to carry news of the second Death Star to the Rebellion? How could he find a member of the species that caused the Emperor’s death threatening? No, of course, you’re right, that is not possible.

“The larger question to ask, of course, is why would he find you or me or any of us threatening right now? Could it be that his random selection, his being sentenced to death for an offense that is poorly defined; could that possibly remind him of the Empire you hate so much? Could it be the idea of being used to convey a message to people he does not know sounds very Imperial to him? Could it be that your action in this regard makes it difficult for him to differentiate between you and the Empire?”

“Absurd!”

“It is, Asyr?” Nawara looked up and out at the aliens staring down at the center of the room. “If you act like the Empire, you will be seen as the Empire.”

The Devaronian waved that idea away. “He is one of them. Kill him and leave the body for them.”

“No! He is one of us.” The Twi’lek shook his head vehemently. “You are protesting death and mistreatment by the Empire, but Humans have suffered as much at the hands of the Empire as any of us. Yes, Mon Calamari, Gamorreans, and Wookiees have all been enslaved, but none of them had their homeworlds destroyed as Alderaan was destroyed. And who is it who has struck the most mortal blows against the Empire? The Rebellion, yes, but the Men among them. How many of us were part of the Rebellion and shed our blood at Yavin? How many of us froze on Hoth or died at Derra IV?”

Someone in an upper gallery shouted down, “We were there at Endor. A Mon Cal led the fleet at Endor. We have contributed to the war against the Empire.”

“He’s right,” Asyr crowed. “We were there at Endor—without Bothans, Endor would not have happened. A Sullustan piloted the Millennium Falcon and it killed the second Death Star. Your points are for naught.”

Nawara smiled slowly. “Yes, we were there at Endor, but Men fired the shots that destroyed that Death Star. Men killed the Emperor. Even so, the point you bring up to protest mine makes my case for me. We would not have been at Endor except that the Men who began the Rebellion, the Men who bled and died for its first victories, the Men who allowed us in, brought us in, welcomed us with open arms. You accuse this Man of bigotry because he felt relief when you left him alone, yet you are willing to treat him as a loyal son of the Empire when you already know that to do so is to discard any possibility that he hates the Empire just as much as you do.”

Dmaynel shrugged casually. “If he hated the Empire that much, he would be out fighting it, not here hiding at its heart.”

Nawara hesitated for a second and Gavin shook his head. Don’t blow mission security. It’s better they kill me and our mission remain secret than to let the Empire know we’re here. Too many people would hear the explanation for us to be safe.

The Twi’lek stroked his chin. “And what if his loyalty to the Rebellion can be demonstrated?”

Dmaynel shrugged. “The Rebellion is far away. It will be years before I have to deal with them, and by then, this one will be forgotten. Right now he can serve notice on the Empire that we will no longer tolerate their predation upon us. Kill him.”

The Gotal took careful aim with his blaster, but before he could pull the trigger, earsplitting explosions and bright flashes buckled the metal door to Gavin’s left. The metal ribbon flopped down over the Twi’leks and Rodian standing guard. A cylindrical Ubrikkian HAVr A9 Floating Fortress cruised forward. The repulsorlift field pressed the door flat against the floor causing dark fluids to gush out from beneath it. The blaster cannon turret atop the vehicle spun to the right and the two spotlights on either side pinpointed the Devaronian. In the vehicle’s wake two dozen armored stormtroopers poured into the warehouse.

Light from the machine’s cockpit control panel revealed an image of the Fortress’s Commander holding a comlink up to his mouth. “This is an unlawful assembly. You will lay down your weapons and disperse peacefully when given leave to do so. If you do not, my orders are clear. So are my fields of fire.”

24

Wedge smiled as the white-haired woman walked through the door Iella had opened. “The Provisional Council must be serious about taking Coruscant. They have you here.” He offered her his hand. “It’s been a while, Winter—and you’d know exactly how long it’s been, right?”

“I would, Commander Antilles, which is why, like you, I’m here.” Winter shook his hand, then greeted Iella. Turning to face Pash, she nodded. “You would be General Cracken’s son.”

“The legendary Winter. I’m honored.” Pash bowed in her direction.

Mirax stood and shook Winter’s hand. “I’m Mirax Terrik.”

Winter nodded. “And the reason I was summoned here.” She looked over at Iella. “Nothing in our files indicates Imperial involvement with her.”

Pash frowned. “Being my father’s son, I have a question that you may not want to answer, but I have to ask. Commander Antilles and I were with Iella and Mirax the whole time we were coming here and we didn’t see Iella make contact. How did you know to come here?”

Winter’s expression became more serious, heightening her resemblance to Princess Leia. “The account number Iella used to gain access to the datapad in the dress shop was special. Various things about the dress design selected, such as the colors, were sliced into municipal computers. At certain points around the city—in this case on a moving sidewalk—a pattern of lights communicated to me enough information that I knew to come here. There are backup systems to handle things if there is no response, but everything worked well, so it was no problem.”

Wedge nodded appreciatively. “It’s nice that you can slice into Coruscant’s central computer.”

Winter shook her head. “We can’t. The safeguards there are too heavy for us to get in cleanly and out again. The central computer is attached to roughly a dozen auxiliary computer centers that are intended as backup, but are used primarily for low-level administrative and commercial applications. We can get into them and do so on a regular basis, but none of the patches we’ve tried to insert into the central computer have made it.”

Iella sat back down. “If we could bring the central computer down we’d be set because it controls all the important things, like the shields and ground-based fighter defenses.”

“The shields are the key.” Wedge perched himself on the arm of the couch next to Mirax. “If they go down I tend to think most of the citizenry would support a change in government.”

Winter sat beside Iella. “Overall security here is not as tight as I might have expected it to be under Ysanne Isard’s control. That goes for the Imperial Palace, too. I was seated on the promenade nearly four hours drinking espcaf and saw nothing special. We almost had a problem when an Imp Intel officer just happened by. I was afraid one of my companions was going to attack Loor, but he kept his temper under control, just barely, but under control.”

Iella’s eyes narrowed. “Kirtari Loor is here, on Coruscant?”

Winter nodded.

Mirax raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like the kind of reaction Corran would have had to Loor.”

Iella’s jaw dropped. “You know Corran?” Mirax looked up and stared blankly at Iella for a moment, then blinked with astonishment. Both women then turned to Wedge.

“Corran’s here?” Mirax asked.

“And he’s in Rogue Squadron?” Iella added. “Is Whistler still with him?”

Wedge held his hands up. “I don’t know exactly where he is, but he is on Coruscant. Iella, I know you were his partner in CorSec. I didn’t mention his being in Rogue Squadron because you didn’t seem to have that information yourself, which means New Republic Intelligence didn’t let you have it. Operational security and all that.”

Winter nodded. “Corran Horn is here, but he has no droid with him.”

Mirax frowned. “How did you know Whistler was a droid?”

“Two years ago Corran Horn ran from CorSec taking an X-wing and an R2 unit with him. He was spotted as a prospect then, but we lost track of him. A year and a half later he joins Rogue Squadron, implying he has great skill as a pilot. This implies practice flying while he was on the run. This means he kept his R2 unit, so I decided Iella’s question was about a droid, since X-wings have notoriously little capacity for dragging pets or other people around in them.”

Mirax sat back. “You’re good.”

“Thank you.”

Wedge winced. “Corran’s here with Erisi.”

Mirax growled. “The bacta queen.”

Iella glanced at her. “The way you said that … but you’re Booster Terrik’s daughter. You and Corran couldn’t be …”

“We’re just good friends.”

Iella laughed. “Not the first time I’ve heard that said in exactly that way. The stories I could tell you.”

“Without Corran here to defend himself, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Wedge looked over at Winter. “Mirax’s exit identity was blown by the Imps, leaving her stuck here after she dropped off what was probably the rest of my squadron.”

“All of them, even Ooryl. They’re in Invisec, or at least that’s where I left them.”

“Thanks. What we’re trying to determine is if the Imps picked Mirax up at random, or if the security on this operation has been blown. Any problems with Corran and Erisi?”

“None.” Winter thought for a second. “I had a team watching them for the first couple of nights to see if any Imps showed an interest in them, but that turned out negative. Those teams were shifted to monitor Imp sweeps in Invisec. They seem to be picking up Gamorreans and Quarren, but no one is certain why.”

As Winter spoke staccato flickers of color outside prompted Wedge to look toward one of the windows. Bright flashes of red and green blaster bolts lit the thoroughfare outside. He studied the tableau for a moment, trying to make sense of it, then his jaw dropped as his brain sorted out what he was actually seeing. “Everyone down!”

Having no time to explain his warning shout, he grabbed on to the arm of the couch and wrenched it over backward. Mirax’s hands shot out to both sides as she fought to balance herself, with her left hand locking in a death grip on Pash’s shirtfront. She pulled her legs up and in to protect them, inadvertently making it just that much easier for Wedge to tip the couch over.

Over he went with it. He slipped to the side, ducking in toward Mirax, barely managing to pull his left leg in to safety. His hands came up to cover his head and he expected a nasty bash when he hit the floor, but that was the least of his worries. I hope the couch will be armor enough!

Outside, the speeder bike he had seen flying toward the window finally hit. It broadsided the wall of transparisteel with a solid thump, bursting through to spin into the room. The rider went one way and the speeder bike the other, between them sowing a glittering rain of lethal crystalline shrapnel throughout what was supposed to be, ironically enough, a safehouse.

25

Corran let himself sag toward the man on his right. The man jabbed him again with the gun to shove him away. Corran moved to the left but when he could no longer feel the gun in his ribs he took a step backward. The man on his right pulled the blaster’s trigger, sending a scarlet bolt of energy into the Trandoshan’s belly. It opened a smoking hole there, hurling the reptile back onto a table that collapsed under his weight.

Corran’s left hand dropped over the top of the blaster and pulled. At the same time his right elbow came up and out, catching the shooter between mouth and nose. Twisting slightly, Corran pulled the man around between him and Zekka Thyne. He tore the blaster from the man’s grip, then gave him a sidekick that propelled him toward Thyne.

Without waiting to see what happened, Corran spun and ran a zigzag course toward the doorway. The whine of blaster fire filled the room. Bolts burned past his legs and over his head, lighting little guttering fires on either side of the doorway. Remembering what he’d observed on his way in, Corran dove forward into a somersault, then came up to his feet at the base of the shadowed stairs. Shifting the gun to his right hand, he brought his arm up and fired back over his shoulder to discourage pursuit.

Bursting out through the doorway, he kicked a Rodian off a speeder bike, settled himself in the saddle, and dropped it into first gear. Cranking the throttle, he shot off and headed for the nearest canyonlike intersection that would allow him to lose himself in the city. He instantly regretted not having shot up the other speeder bikes in front of the Headquarters, but a glance back at his pursuit suggested returning to do that now would be suicide.

If I’m going to die, I’d prefer it on my terms, in my time. Doing what he’d done back in the cantina had been stupid, but that was the only option he had when being faced with death. There had been no doubt in his mind—or the minds of anyone else in that cantina—that Thyne was going to kill him. That knowledge was the reason Corran knew the man on his right would hesitate before shooting—robbing Thyne of his kill would be as fatal as being Corran Horn in that situation.

Corran clutched and shifted with his feet, then gave the bike more throttle with his right hand. Using his thumb he hit the suicide-cruise button, keeping the throttle constant, then shoved the blaster down onto a pair of snap-clips that held it perfectly at the muzzle and trigger guard. With his left hand he rotated the vector-shift back, canting the forward directional vanes up, and hung on as the speeder bike climbed toward a hovering skyhook.

I don’t remember the Incom Zoom II being this responsive, but it looks like the Rodian had this one all tricked out. Good thing for me, I guess. He hunkered down and rotated the speeder bike to put its bulk between him and the blaster bolts being shot by his pursuit. The Incom speeder bike didn’t have any weaponry built onto it. The small data display between the throttle and vector handles constantly had stuff scrolling across it, but it was all in Rodian, which meant Corran had no idea what was going on. As long as I go fast, does it really matter?

Rolling the bike and playing with the vector-shift, he straightened it out and sent it screaming along through one of the upper canyons. He aimed the speeder bike well away from the mountainous Imperial Palace and cut around a skyhook tether. Shifting his weight and giving the vector-shift nudges now and again, he kept the speeder bike juking and bouncing as the wind tugged at his hair and blaster bolts streaked scarlet past him. Some of them were heavier than those a handheld blaster could produce, letting him know that some of the machines were military surplus and in good working order.

He glanced back, but in the darkness all he could see was blaster bolts coming at him. The riders coming up behind were getting better with their shots and Corran realized that flying up high and in the open was playing to their strength. I need a tight course with few shots available. That means down!

Hanging on tightly he inverted and cranked the vector-shift back. The speeder bike dove through the night, flashing past level after level of apartments, malls, offices, and grand promenades. Chopping the throttle back, Corran threw his weight to the left and hooked the bike around and back up through a narrow space between two towers. Leaning back to the right, he came around the cylindrical tower and shot off down an alley.

A scattering of blaster bolts scored the walls around him. Corran broke left, then cut the throttle back and shifted into neutral. A tug on the vector-shift brought his bike around in a flat spin that he killed by goosing the thrust to kill his momentum. Hanging there in the air, he filled his hand with the blaster and braced his hand on the speeder bike’s chassis.

Two speeder bikes cut into the alley, racing full bore after him. Corran’s first two shots hit the rightmost bike on the nose. The bike’s control panel exploded in a silver shower of sparks. The blast lifted the driver and pitched him head over heels off the speeder bike’s rear end. The bike itself immediately began a smoking dive toward the planet below and the driver slowly tumbled down in its wake.

He shifted his aim to the second bike, but the driver had already begun to pull up. Corran’s two shots hit his target, one on the driver’s leg and the other on the connector post fixing the sidepod to the speeder bike. The vehicle did not split apart and the driver veered away as if he’d had enough, so Corran rehomed the blaster and set off again.

Something on the data monitor squawked at him. He knew it was Rodian but he could no more understand the spoken tongue than he could read the written language. The guys on the bike and sidepod are comlinking with the others. They’ll coordinate and they know this city better than I do. His hand snaked up to where he usually wore his good luck charm but he felt nothing. On my own.

He refused to despair and instead set the speeder bike at a moderate pace and took it down farther and farther into the lower reaches of Coruscant. He had no idea where he was, but that did not matter to him as much as being aware of where his pursuit was. Fortunately for him they tended to announce themselves with blaster shots that sizzled past close, but never seemed to tag him.

With three on his tail, he dove into a black hole at the bottom of a canyon, then came around and shot back against his previous line of travel. Trimming his speed he ducked and dodged his way through a tangle of support girders, then dove back out of them and came up and around through a hole in the roof of a passage. Cutting back on his throttle, he locked the speeder bike in a gentle circling pattern that flew around the hole. He drew the blaster and waited. One has to be coming soon.

One of the three did jet up through the hole, but he came out riding a rocket. Corran snapped a quick shot off at him but missed. The way he came out means he was warned.

A speeder bike swooped at him from above. Something bright flashed at the front of the sidecar, then he felt a thump on the aft end of his bike. The whole speeder bike jolted, then started flying backward. Because of the way he’d locked his controls, the bike began spinning through an awkward spiral that almost pitched him to the ground.

Dropping back into the saddle—literally willing himself back into it—Corran shifted to neutral and adjusted the vector control to kill the roll. They’ve got a line on me. He twisted himself around and tried to see the line so he could shoot it, but it was too slender for him to spot in the darkness. Given no choice, he shifted his aim toward the main body of the Ikas-Ando Starhawk and triggered three shots at the lump a meter or so below a fist that had been thrust victoriously into the air.

The Starhawk’s pilot slumped forward over the front of the speeder bike and Corran immediately felt his bike begin to slow. Dropping back down into the saddle, he shifted the Zoom II into gear and punched the throttle forward. Coming around to his right, he sailed on past and below the hovering Starhawk. Twenty meters out from it he felt a tug and his bike slowed.

Damn, the sidecar guy didn’t release me. All speeder bikes came with a deadman switch that returned the throttle to zero thrust if it was released. That prevented the speeder bike from racing along if the person at the controls died, fell off, or somehow could no longer pilot the bike. It was a safety precaution built into the machines, but as with the one Corran had stolen, it was possible to put in a suicide-cruise switch that would keep the throttle set despite having no hands on it.

Corran cranked his throttle up full, but the drag from the Starhawk was making him far too slow. The trio of bikes that had chased him down were pacing him, but their drivers had clearly decided to call in other help to box him in. I have to get rid of this thing. I have to cut that line.

Corran sent the Zoom II into a dive, hauling the Starhawk after it. He sped on through level after level, then came out into a huge intersection of canyonlike airroads. Damn, back out in the open. His pursuit began to close, shooting again. Corran tried to make the bike dance as before, but with an air-anchor attached to it, he was having no luck at all.

Snarling with frustration, he pointed the speeder bike straight at the building on one corner of the intersection. He aimed at a lit rectangle on one of the lower levels, intending to whip the trailing Starhawk into the illuminated sign there. It would be poetic justice if it were an ad for Starhawks. He expected the impact would batter the bike to bits. If it didn’t, well, there are plenty more walls.

It wasn’t until he got close enough to see people sitting in the room move that he realized it wasn’t an advertising billboard but a window. He wanted to veer off, but blaster bolts on both sides bracketed him. He thought for a second about going straight through and out through the other side, but he knew the transparisteel would rip him apart. Get out of the way!

At the last moment Corran hauled the speeder bike around in a sharp left turn. The Starhawk trailing around after him hit the window. He felt a hard jolt, then his speeder bike shot off across the intersection and parallel to another building’s front. He glanced back and thought for a moment that he was free of the Starhawk, then a slight tremble in the bike’s frame matched sparks on the building wall.

Of all the luck! Instead of the transparisteel severing the cord that bound him to the Starhawk, the sharpness of the turn had snapped the weakened connectors between the sidepod and the Starhawk itself. The pod’s occupant had vanished, but Corran couldn’t see where he’d gone. The pod itself trailed after him like a balloon after a child in a stiff wind, but the advent of a half-dozen more speeder bikes into the intersection gave him no chance to try to shuck it off.

The trailing pod gave him all sorts of trouble because of the potential it had for anchoring him to pillar or post. He tried to keep his turns crisp, but he had to avoid narrow alleys and keep his speed under control. If he went too fast the pod would whip around, bashing into walls and throwing the aft end of his speeder bike around. If he slowed, the pod still shot forward. The elasticity of the line connecting it with his bike meant it shot it toward him unless he broke from his line of flight.

The trailing speeder bikes and swoops kept him hemmed in. He knew he was being herded toward a specific point, and he desperately wanted to avoid going there, but he didn’t have many choices. He did dive and sideslip to smash the pod against walls and break it loose, but it stayed with him. If I survive this perhaps I’ll send the Ikas-Ando people a testimonial on the durability of their sidepods …

Cruising around a corner, Corran saw bikes closing from above and behind, trapping him in a wide alley that ended in a solid wall a hundred and fifty meters on. It had no other outlets save up and what appeared to be a closed loading gate at the base of the wall toward which he sped. This is it, my run ends now. The only choices open to him seemed to be slamming into the wall and dying, or fighting and dying.

He thought about slowing to fight, but the whistling pod behind him reminded him of the folly of that idea. It’ll go through me faster than … hey, that’s an idea! Corran pointed the speeder bike directly at the loading gate and kicked the throttle up to full. Twenty meters out, he cranked the vector-shift back, nosing the speeder bike toward the sky, and reversed thrust. The combination pitched him forward, then brought the front of the bike up to bash him back into his seat. As the bike inverted and the pod sailed through beneath it, Corran grabbed the blaster pistol and dropped a dozen feet to the ground.

The pod hit the loading gate’s roll-up door with enough force to cave in the metal barrier toward the middle and rip it from the tracks on which it hung. The speeder bike, with the suicide-cruise switch engaged, slammed into the falling ribbon of metal, then flew on over the crest of it and on into the building’s interior. It tugged on the pod, but the pod had become trapped by the door, so the cord parted, freeing the speeder bike to careen farther on.

With blaster bolts raining down around him, Corran dove for cover inside the building. Speeder bikes swooped past him as he twisted around and got just inside the doorway. Bringing his blaster pistol up, he tried to pick out targets, but found far too many to choose from. This confused him for a moment because while he distinctly remembered being chased by Zekka Thyne’s Black Sun villains, he could see no way stormtroopers could have anticipated his journey and set up the ambush into which he had ridden.

26

The peal of metal striking metal and the scream of the door being torn from its rails snapped Gavin’s head around to his right. Beyond Asyr he saw the door opposite the Imperial Fortress come crashing down, then a riderless speeder bike flew into the warehouse. Blaster bolts stippled the door and scarlet energy darts shot from incoming speeder bikes toward the stormtroopers.

As shock faded and the stormtroopers began to return fire, Gavin dove to the right and tackled Asyr Sei’lar. She snarled and clawed at his back as they went down, but he held on and rolled her toward the edge of the circle and behind debris. A dying Duros—his chest featuring a blackened hole at the center with flames burning around it—collapsed on top of them. Gavin shrugged him off and filled his hands with the blaster pistol the Duros had dropped.

Gavin came up on one knee and triggered two shots at a stormtrooper. One glanced off the man’s thigh armor, scoring it with a black stripe, and the other passed between the man’s knees. The stormtrooper came around, leveling his blaster carbine at Gavin. Oh, no, just like on Talasea.

A hand grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him down. The stormtrooper’s fire scythed up through where Gavin had been and one bolt passed through the hem of Gavin’s coat, but didn’t draw blood.

Having released her grip on his shoulder, Asyr leaned out around the ferrocrete blocks shielding them and snapped off two shots at the stormtrooper. Both hit him in the torso, turning him around and dropping him to the floor. There he twitched and slapped his hands at the holes in his armor, but he did not rise up again.

Red and green energy bolts crisscrossed in the air, filling the warehouse with the stink of ozone, melted armor, and burned flesh. The Fortress’s heavy blaster cannons pumped out bolts that methodically blasted into the lower levels of the makeshift dwellings. Shadowed interiors flared scarlet for a moment, then exploded in smoke and dust. The upper floors would collapse on the lower, burying people alive.

Gavin came up to fire again, but Asyr yanked him back down as a speeder bike just missed clipping him.

“Keep your head down unless you want to lose it.”

“A minute ago you were planning to have me killed.”

She flashed him a smile. “A bigot wouldn’t have saved me.”

Gavin shoved her aside with his left hand and triggered a line of shots at a stormtrooper peeking out from behind cover. “We can’t stay here.”

“C’mon, run to the open door.” Nimbly she rolled up onto her feet and started off. She scattered shots in the direction of the Fortress. He couldn’t see what she was shooting at because of the dust and the smoke, but he ran right along behind her and shot in the same direction she did. Blaster bolts sizzled back through the pall at him, but nothing came within a meter of hitting him.

As nearly as Gavin could tell, the volume of blaster fire heading in at the stormtroopers grossly exceeded the amount coming back from them. What the Imperial fire lacked in volume it made up for with accuracy and power. Through the smoke Gavin could see bolts from pistols and carbines glancing off the Fortress’s armor whereas its return fire stained the smoke with the color of blood and exploded whatever it touched. People ran screaming, others staggered and fell. He looked for anyone he could recognize, but saw none of the other Rogues among the refugees.

He reached the street outside and found himself abruptly dragged out of the river of fleeing people and to the left. He pulled his right arm free from the other man’s grasp, then smiled. “Corran?”

“Good to see you, too, Gavin.”

Asyr, who was standing next to Nawara and Rhysati, frowned. “Gavin?”

“Long story.” Gavin looked at the others gathered beside the door. Between them, Shiel and Ooryl supported the Devaronian, Dmaynel Kiph. His black blood oozed like oil from a wound in his right thigh. Everyone else looked fine. “Where’s Aril?”

Nawara shook his head. “Don’t know.”

Corran glanced at the people running from the warehouse. “She’s small. We could have missed her.”

Rhysati nodded. “There have been a lot of Sullustans running away.”

Gavin brandished his gun. “We can’t leave her.”

Another explosion rumbled from within the warehouse. Corran shied away from the opening. “The Fortress is moving up. We can’t go back in.”

Bits of masonry debris pitter-patted over Gavin’s coat and stung his face. He wanted to go diving back into the fight, but his belly began to throb where he had previously been gut-shot by a stormtrooper and that made him hesitate. Guilt immediately assailed him because he had been the cause for the Rogues to be in the warehouse. Part of him knew the Imperial operation had to have been one that was planned long before he was dragged down for a trial, but logic couldn’t defeat the fear he felt for Aril and the others inside.

Two speeder bikes shot back out of the warehouse, followed by a third and then a fourth. After them came two Imperial stormtroopers on speeder bikes of their own. The lead Imp bike fired a shot from its laser cannon and melted half the control surfaces on a Starhawk. The speeder bike went down hard, spilling the rider to the ground. The second bike swooped low toward the downed driver.

More smoothly than Gavin would have thought possible, Corran’s blaster pistol came up and around. He snapped off three quick shots. One missed the second Imp speeder, but the other two hit and boosted the driver up out of the saddle. The armored figure fell ten meters to the ferrocrete street, rolling up in a lifeless heap next to his prey. The speeder bike glided to a hover in midair above him, out of reach and benign.

Nawara pointed up as a half-dozen stormtroopers on speeder bikes dove down through the alley. “Reinforcements, let’s move.”

Asyr pointed to a doorway set flush with a wall off to the right. “This way.”

Corran waved them on, then darted out and ran toward the downed bike driver. Gavin followed him, directing a scattered pattern of covering fire back into the warehouse. He reached the rider a moment after Corran did and realized the rider was a woman. She tugged her helmet off, spilling brown hair over her shoulders. A blue forelock had been pasted to her forehead by sweat.

“Leave me alone!” she snarled at Corran.

“No way, Inyri.” Corran grabbed her by the shoulder of her jacket to pull her along, but just ended up keeping her off the ground when her step faltered.

“My knee,” she gasped, “I can’t.”

Gavin handed Corran his blaster, then swept her up in his arms. “Let’s go.”

Inyri struggled against Gavin for a moment, then hung on as stormtroopers started shooting at them from all directions. The Rogues who had gone over to the doorway Asyr had pointed out returned fire on the stormtroopers emerging from the warehouse, momentarily driving them back. Corran, with a blaster in each hand, triggered a flurry of shots at the first speeder bike as it came around to make a pass at them. He didn’t hit the pilot, but he made the man shy off and slam his speeder into the alley wall.

The speeder exploded, spilling fire down the wall and into the alley. It sparked a momentary lull in the shooting that Gavin used to complete his run to the doorway. He got inside quickly and stumbled forward, but kept his feet. The backlight of blaster fire from the other Rogues provided him with enough light to find his way a bit deeper into what appeared to be a cluttered stockroom of some sort. Despite the smoke in the air, Gavin detected a heavy chemical scent.

Up ahead Asyr cracked a door open, letting a sliver of dim yellow light slice through the gloom. Janitorial supplies filled the shelves in the room, though dust covered all of them. As he moved out into the corridor with Inyri, he saw enough grime to confirm that the supplies were seldom used in the building.

Asyr cut across the corridor to a stairwell and led them down. Ooryl and Shiel followed with Dmaynel, leaving Nawara, Rhysati, and Corran to form the rear guard. Though no one seemed to be pursuing the group, Corran and the other two gave the wounded folks a good head start before they followed.

Gavin didn’t recognize any of the tunnels or passages they took, nor the buildings they cut through, though they all looked pretty much like those he and Shiel had seen in their survey of Invisec. Finally they moved up a few levels and were admitted to an apartment where an Ithorian led them through a fairly conventional room to a thickly overgrown, junglelike area of heavy humid air, dripping water, rainbow-colored plants, and artificial lighting.

Asyr pointed Ooryl and Shiel toward a bluish-green mossy patch and they deposited Dmaynel there. “Houlilan, take care of Dmaynel. This other one is hurt, too, but not badly.”

Inyri shifted a bit in Gavin’s arms. “You can let me down. I can stand. I just banged my knee up when I fell.”

Gavin eased her onto her feet and supported her as she balanced on her left foot. “Are you going to be okay?”

She nodded, wincing only slightly as she tried to put weight on her right leg. “I guess you think I should be grateful.”

Asyr looked surprised. “They saved you from death or worse at Imp hands. Thanks are warranted.”

Inyri shrugged. “Thank them? Never. They’re the reason I’m here. If they’d not interfered with my life, I wouldn’t have been in trouble.”

Corran frowned from the doorway. “You had a choice. You didn’t have to leave Kessel.”

Asyr pocketed her small blaster and folded her arms. “There’s definitely something going on here that I don’t know about. Do I want to?”

Gavin shook his head. “Probably not.”

“For your own sake,” Nawara added.

Inyri smiled cruelly. “These are the people who brought Black Sun back to Coruscant.”

The Bothan covered her surprise well, then stared right at Gavin. “True?”

He shrugged. “I’m afraid so.”

Asyr frowned. “Freeing folks from Kessel explains why you’ve got no love for the Imps, but I don’t think the Rebels will think much of your doing that either. Makes the galaxy kind of small for you. That’s a big problem.”

“Not really, not at all.” Corran handed Gavin back his blaster. “As things go, that’s really a minor problem.”

“A minor problem?” Asyr’s frown deepened. “Do I even want to know you people?”

“Probably not.” Gavin smiled at her. “We’re Rebels—pilots in Rogue Squadron.”

“And you’re here on Coruscant?” Asyr’s amethyst eyes widened. “I begin to see your perspective on things.”

Corran nodded. “Let me help you get the full hologram. We’re here to figure out how to liberate Coruscant. In comparison with our mission, any other problem is a minor problem.”

Aril Nunb had decided to feign unconsciousness when they dragged her from the rubble, but the cracked ribs on the right side of her chest were painful enough to make her squeal when a stormtrooper pulled on her right arm. He hauled her to her feet, then shoved her toward the group of cut and bleeding refugees standing behind the Floating Fortress.

Aril didn’t think she’d blacked out when things started happening, but she couldn’t be certain. She remembered the stormtroopers arriving, then the far door going down. She’d broken for the exit along with the other Rogues, but a blast from the Fortress had exploded part of a hovel to her right. She thought only the shock wave had knocked her down, but the ache in her ribs suggested she’d been hit solidly by flying debris. Then she’d seen a Sullustan toddler begin to scream and thrash in a midden. She’d bent to help him out when the rest of the building came down.

She glanced back at the pile from where they had pulled her, but she saw no child. Aril turned to look forward again, but she saw no child among the hollow-eyed survivors. Those that could cry did, others licked their wounds; many stared off into space.

A Too-Onebee glanced in her direction, then pointed off to the left. Aril mutely followed the directions and found a group of Sullustans huddled together, segregated from the other refugees. A number of children clung to adults, hiding behind legs or burying their faces in a parent’s neck. Aril couldn’t see the child she had gone after. She had a hard time actually recalling the child’s face, which told her she’d probably been concussed.

Instead of letting herself think she’d failed, she arbitrarily picked out one child and decided he had been the one she had tried to help. She nodded in his direction, but he just hid further behind his father’s leg.

Someone grabbed her left arm. Aril looked up into the jowly face of a man who stood a good forty centimeters taller than she did. He was quite heavyset, yet his brown eyes shone with a cunning that removed him from the class of man she would have called bovine. He wore his thinning black hair in a short military style cut, which was in keeping with his General’s uniform.

“You seem healthy. A good specimen.”

Aril lightly tapped the right side of her chest and winced.

The man dropped his thick-fingered hand to her flank and probed her ribs. She squeaked out a protest. His touch, while clinical, was also forceful and hurt. “Cracked ribs maybe, probably just bruised.” He looked down into her eyes and turned her head to the left and right. “You look fine. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.”

He straightened up. “Diric!”

An older, dull-eyed man in a bloodstained orderly’s uniform spun on his heel. “Yes, General Derricote?”

Derricote patted Aril on the shoulder. “This is one we’re taking with us. Put her with the others.”

“She makes a dozen and a half, sir.”

“Good.” Derricote pointed to the orderly. “Go with him. You will have the best of care. In fact, I daresay, you will have the best medical care available for the rest of your life.”

27

Admiral Ackbar closed his eyes for a second, then nodded to his aide. “I suppose the tide is high, so I cannot escape it. Please show Councilor Fey’lya in.”

The human aide departed, giving Ackbar a moment of silence in which he could prepare for the coming confrontation. No, Ackbar, if you assume bitter water, you’ll not taste the sweet. The Admiral refused to consider the Bothan a rival for power, primarily because Ackbar himself had no desire for power in any political sense of the word. He had risen to his position at the head of the Alliance military because of his intimate knowledge of Imperial doctrines—learned while he was Grand Moff Tarkin’s slave—and because the Mon Calamari had contributed their considerable fleet to bolster the Rebel Navy for the battle at Endor. Once the Empire was defeated and his services were no longer needed, he would happily retire to Mon Calamari and spend the rest of his days living through tide cycles.

He realized his refusal to see Borsk Fey’lya as a rival probably was shortsighted, but he could not afford the distraction. With the death of General Laryn Kre’fey at Borleias, the Bothans had lost their most celebrated military leader. The Bothans had no other candidate to offer as viable for running grand operations like the taking of Coruscant.

Which meant any Bothan agenda had to go through Ackbar.

Which is why Fey’lya has come to me now.

The hatch to Ackbar’s cabin on Home One opened and Borsk Fey’lya entered the dimly lit office. Ackbar started to adjust the lighting upward, but the Bothan shook his head. “Be comfortable, Admiral, I can see well enough in this light.”

The subdued tones of Fey’lya’s voice, and the conciliatory nature of his words, immediately put Ackbar on his guard. “You honor me with your visit, Councilor.”

Fey’lya held a gold-furred hand up. “Please, the formality of titles is unnecessary between us. We have not always been on the same side, nor do you probably consider me a friend, but you do acknowledge the bond we share within the Rebellion.”

“Of course.” Ackbar nodded slowly. “You came to speak to me about Noquivzor.”

“Indeed. The reports I have gotten were sketchy.”

Ackbar sat back in his eggshell repulsorlift chair. “You have the basics: one standard day ago Warlord Zsinj showed up in the system with the Iron Fist, launched a wing of TIEs, and proceeded with a planetary bombardment. Our base there was hit hard, though since most of it was underground, the damage was not as extensive as Zsinj undoubtedly would like to think.”

Fey’lya’s purple eyes glowed luminescently in the half-light. “We met on Noquivzor approximately seven standard weeks ago. Do you think this was a misguided assassination attempt?”

Ackbar thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Unlikely. If he killed the Rebellion leadership he would make himself a target. I suspect he thought he was attacking Rogue Squadron, to pay them back for hitting his ships. His facility for carrying a grudge is all but legendary. We made no secret of where Rogue Squadron was staying primarily to keep the Empire looking at Noquivzor instead of closer to home.”

“How badly was Noquivzor hit?”

Ackbar’s eyes half closed. “We had major damage to the barracks complex. Multiple floors collapsed one atop another. We will be a long time digging bodies out. Rogue Squadron lost a significant portion of their support staff. The hangar complex, on the other horizon, escaped damage. When we get them back from Coruscant they will have ships to fly.”

“Even the worst plague will spare some of the virtuous.” The Bothan slowly shook his head. “Warlord Zsinj is becoming more of a problem. If we do not strike back at him and hit him hard, he will be emboldened and hit us again.”

“Agreed, but where do we hit him? He’s as elusive as the Katana fleet. The galaxy is a big place and even with back-plotting and reports coming in, pinpointing his location is all but impossible. To find him would demand a full fleet operation, and that would mean we delay the Coruscant operation indefinitely.”

“But if we were to do that and try to hunt Zsinj down, we would suddenly open ourselves to more reprisals by him and might give Ysanne Isard the opening she needs to strike at us.” Fey’lya smoothed the fur around the mouth with his left hand. “Fighting on two fronts is folly.”

“Truly spoken.” Ackbar cocked his head slightly. “You would not be here if you did not have an idea to offer, for this discussion merely verbalizes facts plainly in evidence to anyone who has read the reports.”

A hurt expression stole upon Fey’lya’s face, but the intelligence in his eyes robbed it of its intended effect. “To escape a rancor, one is wise to ignore the bite of a flea.”

“Meaning?”

“We cannot shift our focus from the Empire. What I propose is a bold strike at Coruscant.”

“We’re not ready.”

“We must be.” Fey’lya opened his hands. “We are already staging for it and nothing in reports from Coruscant give any indication that Isard is increasing her defenses. She must know we are not ready so she thinks she has time to prepare. If we go now, soon, she will be taken unawares.”

“You grossly underestimate Iceheart if you think she is ever unprepared.”

Fey’lya’s head came up and his jaw opened in a predatory grin. “You are not protesting the plan as utter madness. Your thoughts parallel mine, don’t they?”

Ackbar sat forward again, his barbels quivering. “We are at a critical junction. Iceheart’s preparations for the invasion she has to know is coming have been insufficient. Reports from Coruscant are favorable. Because of recent developments it appears it is possible to unite disparate parts of the Coruscant population to give us a partisan force on the planet. They are poorly equipped, but can be disruptive and distracting.”

“Can they disrupt and distract enough to bring the shields down?”

“I do not know.” Ackbar shook his head. “I have sent a message to Commander Antilles directing him to formulate and prepare to implement a plan to do just that, with the resources he has on hand. Once I receive a reply that indicates he has such a plan prepared, I will give him a target time for when it has to go into effect. When the shields go down, we will arrive at Coruscant.”

The Bothan’s eyes narrowed. “You allow for no slippage in his plan. What if he cannot bring it off in time?”

Ackbar’s jaw opened in a smile. “I have had a report which makes this plan viable in the event that Commander Antilles and his people fail to bring the shields down. You may recall that in recent months the Interdictor cruiser Black Asp ran afoul of Rogue Squadron? Their Captain, a woman named Uwlla Iillor, filed a protest over the transfer of her flight operations officer from her command. The protest was ignored and, apparently, was enough to prompt her and her staff to decide to defect. This gives us an Interdictor cruiser, something we have not had before.

“Depending upon the course we choose, the journey from Borleias to Coruscant will take approximately twenty standard hours. My intention is to send the Black Asp in early and have it jump to the outer edges of the Coruscant system. If the shields are not down, the Interdictor will power up the gravity well projectors and drag our invasion fleet from hyperspace prematurely. If the shields are down, Iillor will do nothing and allow us to revert from hyperspace right on top of Coruscant.”

Fey’lya slowly nodded. “Elegantly simple but decidedly effective. You clearly trust this Captain Iillor. You do not think her coming over is one of Ysanne Isard’s deceptions?”

“No. Captain Iillor cites interference by Imperial Intelligence with her command as the primary reason for her defection. General Cracken has cleared her and has his people working on her staff. Within a week the Black Asp will be operational with an Alliance crew.”

The Bothan nodded. “The ship will be renamed?”

“The crew has chosen a hopeful name: Corusca Rainbow.”

“An omen, to be sure.”

“That is my hope.” Ackbar gave Fey’lya a wall-eyed look. “You will propose this plan to Mon Mothma?”

“In both our names, yes.” Fey’lya smiled. “With her support and the two of us backing it, the Provisional Council cannot fail to make it operational.”

“Good.” The Mon Calamari nodded. “Then I just have to see that the operation does not fail.”

28

Kirtan Loor dropped to one knee before the holographic image of Ysanne Isard but did not bow his head. “Thank you for replying to my request so quickly, Madam Director.”

She arched an eyebrow at him. “Displays of ego and spirit always attract my attention, Agent Loor.”

“Good, then I can take it that you will be reprimanding General Derricote?”

“Why?”

Loor blinked, then narrowed his eyes. “Why? Madam Director, he took it upon himself to go into In visee and select subjects for his experimentation who were transported directly to his lab. He violated every known security procedure we have in doing that. The Sullustans he took were not properly screened so we do not know who they were. The other captives spoke of an Alien Combine and the Sullustans might have been able to supply more useful information on that organization.”

Isard dismissed his protest with a sneer. “I have told him you are to be allowed to interview his subjects.”

“Oh, yes, but he immediately injected them with the newest strain of his Krytos virus. The interviews would have to take place with my people in isolation suits, which means the subjects would know they were never getting out. Their motivation to cooperate would be gone. And if he’s right, if this strain has an incubation period of two weeks, the subjects would be well into dementia and death before analysis would let us conduct other interrogations.”

“That is not your concern at this moment, Agent Loor. General Derricote’s Krytos project is of paramount importance. This new strain could be the breakthrough we need to prepare Imperial Center for the Rebels.” Fire flared in her molten left eye. “That idiot Zsinj attacked the Rebels to salve his own wounded pride. He doesn’t realize that if they were to mobilize their entire fleet and devote it to hunting him down they’d have him inside a year. The fool thinks he is powerful, but he doesn’t realize all he has done is to force the Rebels to move more swiftly to take Imperial Center—too swiftly.”

Loor sat back on his heel. “There is no indication of impending operations according to our spy in Rogue Squadron.”

“I know that, but I also know their leadership. They mean to wipe us from the galaxy and they cannot do that if they end up chasing after every Moff who decides he should be the next Emperor. Imperial Center is the key to power in the galaxy. They know that and they know the sooner they sit Mon Mothma on the Imperial throne, the easier their crusade will be.”

The audacity of launching a strike at Imperial Center surprised Loor, but he knew the leaders of the Rebellion often saw the impossible as necessary and their successes against the Death Stars had made them think they could succeed at anything. Isard had purposely left Imperial Center vulnerable, but only so the Krytos virus could cause the Rebel Alliance to collapse. If it were not ready, her plan would fail and the Alliance would be stronger than ever.

“I will monitor the situation, Madam Director.”

“Oh, yes, you will.” She stabbed a holographic finger at him. “The Rogues can plan all they want, but nothing can actually be done for two weeks. I am going to deploy this version of the Krytos virus so it can be introduced to the planetary water supply starting now. We will see if Derricote’s predictions on its speed and lethality are correct, and assuming they are, we will save ourselves two weeks of waiting. If the Rogues strike too soon, all will be lost. Two weeks minimum—a month would be better. Develop the resources you need, do whatever you must, but see to it that the Rogues do nothing substantive before I want them to.”

“It will be done, Madam Director.” Loor bowed his head, but when he looked up again her image had vanished. He stood, slowly, and a smile spread across his features. “Develop resources and do what I must. By your order.”

He walked from his dark, cramped office down a short corridor to another room. The door whisked up into the ceiling, revealing a dark room with a figure bound to a chair and flanked by two stormtroopers. Loor walked in and took the man sitting there by the chin, eliciting a snarl from him.

Loor laughed, releasing the chin, then backhanded the man across the face. “Displays of spirit can be painful.”

“Nothing you can do will hurt me, Loor.”

“Ah, you do remember me. I should be flattered, Patches.” Loor looked down at Zekka Thyne and hit him again. The man’s head rocked back, but the red eyes stared up at him, full of defiance. Striking Thyne had a cathartic effect on him, but Loor refused to indulge himself. “Fortunately for you, I remember you as well.”

“You’ll get nothing from me, Loor.”

“But you have nothing I want, Patches.” Loor tapped fingers against his own breastbone. “I have something to offer you, however. Rogue Squadron brought you and other Black Sun scum to Imperial Center, then they followed you. There is only one implication for this, which is to suppose you and they are preparing for an assault on Imperial Center.”

“I know nothing about that.”

Loor grabbed an ear and twisted it cruelly. “You’re listening now, not speaking.”

Thyne stared vibroblades at him but remained silent.

“Good.” Loor released him. “You will be my eyes and ears within the Alliance community here. I want to know their plans. I want timetables, suppliers, personnel rosters, anything and everything. If you give me what I want, I let you live.”

“If I walk out of here, you will never be able to get me again so your threat means nothing.”

“Oh, I won’t be the one to kill you. Not firsthand, anyway. What I will do is allow Black Sun slicers to obtain files that even go back to my CorSec days noting how you were working for me. They will implicate you in the downfall of Black Sun here on Imperial Center. Your fate will be decided by your brethren, not me.”

That threat damped some of the defiance in Thyne’s eyes. “Do not be disheartened, though, Patches, I would not surrender you unless forced to. These stormtroopers will conduct you to a place to which you will say you escaped after your speeder bike was brought down. We’ve been combing the area constantly for the last three days. You will tell your compatriots that you were in hiding and finally managed to escape. They will believe you.”

“No one will believe I hid.”

Loor looked over at one of the stormtroopers. “He’s right. Before you leave him inflict a nonfatal abdominal wound—one he could survive and one that won’t hamper him too much.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

Loor smiled. “Oh, but I think we do. Verisimilitude. If you can’t believe you would have been hiding, no one else will. People are suspicious, especially people like Corran Horn.”

“Then this will be another thing I owe him for. If it weren’t for him, I’d not be in your custody.”

“Indeed,” Loor nodded confidently. “And just to show you that I’m not a monster, I’ll give you a gift. If you find a convenient time to kill Corran Horn, do so. I consider him a threat to you and your operation. His elimination, therefore, will please me no end.”

29

Corran hated waiting. It seemed that since he’d left the rest of the Rogues with the Ithorian he’d done little but wait. After departing from the Ithorian’s jungle—which was just one apartment within a whole complex filled with such apartments so the Ithorians could live together, as was their wont—he had used a public comm station and had called a number Rima had given him. The recording at the other end asked him to punch in a personal code, which he did, then he was given instructions on where to go.

Being careful to see he was not followed, he went to the location indicated. He found himself at a biopod hotel run by a Selonian. The tall, slender creature showed Corran to a small pod midway up on a wall of pods. As Corran climbed in he estimated the cockpit of his X-wing was larger. He dialed the external opaquing for his door up to full, then lay down in a pod that measured two meters in length, a meter in height, and a meter in width.

He immediately adjusted the temperature up—it was set low enough that he figured a Sullustan had been the last occupant—and opened a channel on the comlink to let music fill the pod. The datapad display unit above his face flashed through a series of instructions concerning fire exits, the location of refresher facilities, and the locations of nearby culinary establishments. He watched that until one advertisement showed a Gamorrean digging a paw into a bowl of something pink that pulsed, at which point the need for locating food became moot.

He remained at that location for two days before Rima came for him and took him to another place that was better suited to his needs, though it was in need of a great deal of repair. Plasteel sheets covered one of the apartment’s walls. The furnishings, while hardly worn at all, were tattered and torn. The carpet had some blood in it and transparisteel occasionally crunched underfoot. The interior wall opposite the plasteel wall had been heavily dented by an oblong, vaguely cylindrical object.

Corran looked at her. “Is this the place where a speeder bike came crashing through the wall?”

Rima stared at him, somewhat stunned. “How do you know about that?”

“I was driving the bike that sent it into the window.” Corran ran his hand over the impression in the wall. “The others wouldn’t have told you about that. The Rogues didn’t know and the Black Sun people aren’t much for talking about their defeats. I’d imagine they have turned the story into something about rescuing the aliens from the Imps, right?”

“I do not know.” Rima shrugged easily. “My primary concern has been seeing to it that you and Erisi are taken care of. I apologize for quarantining you two, but I don’t know how much has been relayed to Imperial Intelligence.”

“I don’t know either, but I made some basic arrangements before I headed out and called the emergency number you gave me. Inyri Forge was going back to the Headquarters. That is one place Fliry Vorru can be found. It was my bad luck that Zekka Thyne was there the night I visited. That’s what initiated the chase that ended with my running into the Imperial raid on the Alien Combine.

“The other Rogues have the Headquarters as a touchstone. I gave them no way to reach me and I have no way to reach them save through using Inyri as a cutout. I imagine the Alien Combine also has a way to reach the other Rogues. Has there been any word on Aril?”

Rima shook her head.

Corran frowned. “Does that mean there’s no information or there is, but I don’t need to know it?”

“There is no news.” Rima’s shoulders sagged just a bit. “There was a lot of confusion in the aftermath of the raid. Some reports have suggested a group of Sullustans were led off early on, but we’ve no confirmation of that, nor any indication they are in any of the prisons here. They vanished and so has Aril.”

“People tend to do that.” Corran’s hands knotted into fists. “One thing that’s important, I need to talk to Commander Antilles.”

“Who?”

Corran smiled wearily at Rima. “I’m here, the other Rogues are here.” Including Tycho. “Commander Antilles has to be here and I need to speak with him. I saw something the other night that he needs to know about.”

“If it is that important, perhaps I need to know about it?”

Not with you being as close to Tycho as you seem to be. Corran shook his head. “You don’t need to know, Rima, sorry. Squadron business.”

“Very well.” The white-haired woman shrugged. “Stay here until I return for you.”

“As ordered.” Corran drew the blaster from the makeshift holster he’d fashioned in the lining of his jacket. “Can you get me some spare power packs for this thing?”

“I’ll see.”

“That doesn’t sound very hopeful. What if stormtroopers raid this place?”

“Ask if you can borrow some from them.” Rima gave him a grim smile. “All they can say is no.”

He waited two more days, spending his time working up a line that would convince stormtroopers to surrender their weapons to him. He found it a singularly frustrating occupation because, since they tended to be much larger than he was, he knew he could not intimidate them. Appealing to their humanity seemed a dubious prospect, as did appealing to their sense of fair play.

He spent the vast majority of time in the apartment going over the earlier events and trying to draw conclusions from all of it. First and foremost he was certain he’d seen Tycho Celchu talking with Kirtan Loor. That meant the operation on Coruscant was busted wide open. With Tycho on Coruscant the Imps clearly had full descriptions and datafiles on everyone in the squadron. He had to assume they were under surveillance or would soon be watched.

The fact that he’d stumbled across Tycho and Loor meeting in public did bother him a bit. If Tycho was an Imperial agent—as had been everyone else who’d ever been at Lusankya—why wouldn’t the meeting have been held in an Imperial facility? The obvious answer to that question was that Tycho hadn’t appreciated his Lusankya experience and was being wary of trapping himself in an Imperial stronghold. He was smart enough to know the Imps couldn’t be trusted, so he was probably gouging them for sufficient credits to buy some far-away world and live like a Moff for the rest of his life.

The fact that their mission had so clearly been blown really left the Rogues only one choice: leave immediately. He felt he had collected enough information about the general level of security on the planet to be useful, but he also expected all that to change in the near future, if it had not changed already. He had to assume that whatever any of the Rogues had learned was of dubious value, and therefore, their mission was a bust.

The only way to salvage any of this is to go home and start fighting against the Empire again.

Before he could come up with another plan that would be effective, but also before he’d admitted defeat to himself, Rima came for him. She resisted answering his questions about their destination and seemed abnormally taciturn and withdrawn, but she did give him power packs for his blaster, so he chose not to press her for information. He did wonder what had gotten into her, but he chose not to ask questions on the street. When they slipped into the Headquarters he found other things to occupy his attention, especially his being ushered down the back corridor to a side room where Wedge sat waiting for him.

Corran snapped to attention and saluted as Rima left the room. “Horn reporting, sir.”

Wedge returned the salute, then smiled and gave Corran a back-slapping hug. “It’s good to see you’re alive and well, even though the last time I saw you, you were doing your best to kill me and a number of other people.”

What? “Excuse me, sir?”

“I was in the apartment where you sent a speeder bike through the window.” Wedge held a hand up and Corran saw some half-healed cuts on it. “Nothing major, but there’s not much bacta down here, so I have to heal the traditional way. Did find some ryll tincture that killed infection, though.”

“If I had known, I’d …”

“No one save the driver was badly hurt, so don’t worry.” Wedge inclined his head toward the door. “Winter tells me you wanted to talk with me? Something you could only tell me?”

“Winter?” Corran frowned for a second. “Ah, you mean Rima …”

“Right. We’d met before. She and Tycho are friends.”

“So I’ve gathered, which is why I wanted to talk to you.” Corran clasped his hands at the small of his back. “Five days ago, right here in the Headquarters, I saw Tycho Celchu talking with Kirtan Loor, an Imperial Intelligence agent.”

Wedge looked surprised, then frowned and slowly shook his head. “Five days ago?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s impossible.”

“I know what I saw, sir.” Corran jerked a thumb back toward the bar. “I saw him as sure as the Emperor is dead.” He tried to make his statement sound certain, but he was getting feelings of confusion and sorrow from Wedge’s expression. “Really, I did see him.”

“That’s impossible, Corran. Five days ago Warlord Zsinj attacked our base at Noquivzor. The barracks complex got hit hard. They’re digging through the rubble now but they don’t expect to find survivors.” Wedge hesitated for a moment, then swallowed. “Our support staff was devastated. Zraii survived, but that was the only confirmation they’d give me.”

“What about Whistler?” Corran blurted out the question before he realized how callous it made him sound. “He’s only a droid, but …”

Wedge patted him on the shoulder. “I understand. I don’t have word of him directly, but Zraii was working on our fighters in the hangar, so I have to suppose most of our astromechs were there with him. The hangar escaped serious damage. If any news comes through, I will let you know.”

“Thanks.” Corran took a deep breath and tried to sort everything out in his mind. “So what you’re telling me is that if I saw Tycho, I saw a ghost?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“And you told Rima, er, Winter? That’s why she was so quiet.”

“I just got word myself and broke it to her as gently as I could. We’re still hoping—bacta can do miracles if there’s even the remotest spark of life—but things do not look good.” Wedge sighed. “Of course, that’s the least of our worries right now.”

“Oh?”

Wedge nodded. “Zsinj’s attack is driving the invasion schedule forward. We have a new mission and you’re here to help plan it out.”

“I’ll do my best, sir.”

“Let’s hope we can all do our best, and then some.” Wedge slowly exhaled. “We’ve got to come up with a plan that will let us, with a minimal amount of lead time, take over or destroy whatever we need to bring down Coruscant’s shields and leave the world open to invasion.

30

Corran followed Wedge from the small room into the hallway and farther along to an even larger room. The first people he saw there were the Bothan Asyr and the Devaronian he’d helped to escape from the warehouse. They were already seated at the large round table in the middle of the room. As he came around Wedge he saw Fliry Vorru looking very Imperial and Zekka Thyne looked pale and in a bit of discomfort.

Looks like not everyone escaped unharmed.

“Corran!”

“Iella!” Arching his back, he picked her up in a hug and hung on tight. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

“Gil did this to me. The identities he set up were on Coruscant.” Iella pulled back away from him, but kept his hands in hers. “I can’t believe it’s you.”

If seeing Thyne hurt had made Corran feel good, seeing Iella made him feel … almost whole. I’ve spent too long with nothing and no one from my past aside from Whistler. It was as if that world didn’t exist. He smiled. “Where’s Diric?”

Iella’s smile froze for a second, then she glanced down. “I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry. What happened?”

“A year ago or so he was picked up in an Imp sweep and never came home. I bolted, made some Alliance contacts, and joined the Rebellion. There’s been no word and after this amount of time …”

Corran nodded and hugged her again. Diric Wessiri had been an interesting man. Old family wealth allowed him to lead a life of leisure. He viewed life as a collection of phenomena to be studied and experienced, but he was not one to let those experiences change him. He was easily twenty years Iella’s senior, but they fit together like oxygen and hydrogen. Diric didn’t always agree with things CorSec did, but he made an attempt to understand what had been done, and that quest for enlightenment had impressed Corran.

This is not the time to tell Iella that Gil is dead and that Loor killed him. There will be opportunities later, I’m sure. “Diric was special, but so are you. It’s great to see you again despite everything else.”

“I agree.” Iella squeezed his hands gently. “And Mirax asked to be remembered to you.”

A smile blossomed on Corran’s face. “She’s here? How?”

“The Skate brought the rest of the squadron here and couldn’t get away.” Iella frowned. “I would have thought the others had told you how they got here.”

“We were a bit busy when we ran into each other.”

“No kidding. Mirax has threatened to give you speeder bike lessons. First rule, she says, is stay away from buildings.”

Corran laughed aloud. “Yeah. We’ll have to discuss that more.”

Thyne snarled. “How long is this chummy crap going to go on?”

“Patches, someday when you have a friend you’ll learn this is what you do when you haven’t seen each other for a while.” Corran released Iella and she moved off to take a seat next to Winter.

“Well said, Lieutenant Horn.” Vorru folded his hands together on the table. “However, time is of the essence, I gather. Shall we get things under way? Commander?”

Corran took a seat beside Wedge, placing Winter on his right hand. Iella sat next to her, then the two aliens and finally Vorru and Thyne. Corran noticed that Thyne held his right hand and forearm protectively over his stomach. Gut-shot. Painful. Good.

Wedge stood. “I want to keep this as simple as possible. Since the warehouse incident we have all come to agree that working together to oppose the Empire is preferential to each going our own ways. Each of our groups has strengths and weaknesses, most of which overlap to minimize our exposure to the enemy. We can all agree that we will fare better on Coruscant once the Empire is overthrown and accomplishing that end is a goal of the Rebellion.

“Originally Rogue Squadron was sent here to recon Coruscant and gauge the vulnerable points for later exploitation. The problem is that Warlord Zsinj is testing both the Empire and the Rebellion. The Imperials know that to attack him is to weaken themselves to the point where they cannot prevail. The Alliance knows that to pursue Zsinj would dilute our strength so that a strike at Coruscant won’t be possible for years, perhaps even decades. This means the Alliance will have to strike in the very near future and they want us to open the gates to Coruscant.”

Fliry Vorru tapped a fingertip against the tabletop. “Bringing down a planet’s shields is not an easy proposition.”

“Agreed.” Wedge leaned forward on his hands. “The central computer complex here is the key. Is it fair to assume Black Sun’s slicers have not been able to insert code into the master programs that control the planet?”

The white-haired man sat back in his chair. “I believe the discussion of that point is premature.”

“Oh?”

“Quite so, Commander.” Vorru nodded toward the representatives of the Alien Combine. “Their stake in this is quite clear. The Imperial regime is decidedly cruel and inhumane in dealing with them. The liberation of this planet would benefit them enormously. And you Rebels, well, you would be achieving a goal you’ve been focused upon for at least seven years. I mean, Winter dear, it is every Alderaanian’s dream to replace your lost world with Coruscant, is it not?”

Winter’s eyes glittered coldly. “The Alliance’s goal is to see the death of the evil that destroyed our world. Alderaan cannot be replaced and certainly not with this transparisteel and duracrete mausoleum for an Empire.”

Wedge folded his arms. “Your point, Vorru?”

“My point, Commander, is that the Alliance is not likely to be any more favorable to Black Sun than the Empire was. Less, in fact, I suspect. I want to know what is in this plan to reward me and my people for their cooperation.”

Corran snarled. “Why don’t you start with your liberation from Kessel?”

Vorru smiled delicately. “You would gladly see me back there, would you not, Lieutenant? If your plan succeeds you might find yourself appointed Minister of Security. If the cursing about you and your family done by Thyne here is any measure of Horn efficacy, I think I prefer having Ysanne Isard opposing me. What I would like, Commander Antilles, is some guarantee of clemency for those of my people who work to help you overthrow Isard.”

“And if that is not possible?”

“Relocation to a world of my choosing, a world that will be made part of your Alliance with me at its head.”

“A world you will turn into a haven for crime?” Iella looked disgusted.

Corran shook his head. “He’s smarter than that. He’ll solicit bribes from worlds so he doesn’t end up there. He’ll be rich enough to buy a star system or two.”

Vorru opened his hands. “I seek a world where I can live out my days in peace and you think poorly of me. I find it hard to believe you hold the rehabilitative qualities of Kessel in such contempt.”

“Enough.” Wedge held a hand out to forestall Corran’s reply to Vorru’s unctuous comment. “I’ll give you my personal guarantee you and your people will not be held responsible for crimes committed while you are acting in concert with us. That doesn’t mean a sociopath like Thyne here is free to slaughter innocents. We’re only going to hit legitimate military targets. The streets start running with blood and I’ll burn your people down myself. I think this is the best offer you’re going to get.”

“It’s acceptable. For now.” Vorru nodded. “And, no, our slicers have not been able to get into the main computer.”

Thyne shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “We should just blow it up. Everything will stop and the shields will come down.”

“No they won’t.” Winter frowned. “Damage to the main computer system will transfer control to satellite facilities. While they are not as well guarded as the main facility, they will not be easy to take over. There is also a possibility that crucial systems, such as shield control, could get shunted to another satellite center if there is trouble with one. In other words, to get the shields down that way we’d have to guarantee a strike at all of the satellites as well as the main center, and we don’t know for certain where all of those subsidiary centers are.”

Vorru smiled. “I can furnish you with those locations, but your reservations about so explosive a plan are justified. It strikes me that something more subtle would be preferential.”

Asyr laid a hand gently over one of Vorru’s. “I don’t understand why it is so difficult to slice code into the main computer. There are billions of transactions and messages that go through the system on an hourly basis. Something ought to be able to get through, shouldn’t it?”

Wedge shrugged. “Seems like it, but I guess not. Winter?”

She tucked a strand of white hair back behind her ear. “The Imperial computers operate through a very restrictive language that has a hierarchical command and access structure. Programs that go in to be effective across the system have to be authorized at the highest security levels. These levels are ultra-secure. Programs are scanned for content and that content is compared to their access levels. If a system program comes in without an access code that is cleared for entering system programs, it’s dumped.”

Corran frowned. “If you were able to wrap a program up in the right disguise, it would get through, right?”

“Presumably, but we don’t have the right codes. Those codes are changed by the hour and old memory cores are swapped out daily and destroyed within a week—though after a day’s worth of use they’re pretty well ready to be junked anyway. Each night clean new memory cores are placed in the computers and trillions of exabytes of transactions are transferred to the new cores. This happens throughout the system.”

Asyr nodded. “The production facility for the Palar memory cores is on the Invisec border. Nasty work making the things. All sorts of noxious chemicals go on the data retention surfaces, then a lot of energy gets used in formatting the cores. We lose people every day in that plant.”

Wedge folded his arms. “If they’re getting new cores daily, how does the transfer of data occur? I mean, if an old core is replaced with a new core, how does the data from the old core get onto the new core?”

“They have two banks of cores and the data is transferred from one to the other. The process doesn’t take that long.” Winter smiled. “The Imperial Senate’s computer system used the same security system, but on a much smaller scale. Half a standard hour is all it should take to complete the operation.”

Corran sat back. “What happens to the transactions that occur while the transfers are taking place?”

“They get caught on a subsidiary memory bank and queued up to be sent into the main banks when the appropriate cores are free. Then those cores send the data over into the new banks.”

“Okay, Winter, now what sort of program governs the transfer of data between the banks?”

She looked at Corran oddly. “Pretty basic stuff, universal to every system really. It goes into cores when they’re formatted. What are you getting at?”

“Data goes from the first bank to the second, right?”

“Yes.”

“And it goes fast because, presumably, it was checked as it came in and anything bad was discarded, right?”

“Yes.”

“So if something on one of the subsidiary cores was shot over into the security core during the transfer, it wouldn’t be checked by the second bank, right?”

Winter began to smile. “And altering the transfer code on one of the subsidiary disks so it would send a Rebel program over when the secure transfer was taking place, instead of blocking that transfer the way it’s supposed to, wouldn’t be that hard …”

“Because,” said Asyr, “we have access to the plant where the cores are manufactured and we can alter the code used to format the memory cores.”

“Right.” Corran beamed. “We send over a program that causes us to be given clearance codes and addresses for the shield maintenance programs and we can bring the shields down at will.”

Vorru bowed his head in Corran’s direction. “CorSec’s gain was Black Sun’s loss. You have a devious mind—it is a pity you decided to use it to hunt us.”

Corran winked at him. “That’s the trick of it—I can’t stand the thought of a criminal who’s dumber than I am profiting by his crimes. Neither could my father, which explains why we shortened Patches’s career.”

“If your father was that smart, he’d still be alive.”

Corran refused to be goaded. “This operation is a little bit more important than punching holes in your fantasy life, but the time will come.”

Thyne started to get up, but Wedge pushed him back into his chair. “Stay down.”

“Make me.”

Vorru’s right hand struck fast and slapped Thyne on the belly. The younger man howled, then, as he doubled over, Vorru grabbed him by his neck and slammed his forehead into the table. Thyne, glassy-eyed, rebounded and Vorru flung him from his chair. “For some people discipline is a lesson. For others it is a lifetime.”

A shiver ran down Corran’s spine. He goes from gracious to vicious in less time than it takes for darkness to come in when a light goes out. And Thyne is out like a light. He exchanged a knowing glance with Iella and saw her shake her head.

Wedge looked at the man on the floor, then shrugged. “We have enough, I think, to begin some planning. Winter, if you can have your slicers begin the programs we’ll need, that will be a big help. Asyr, we’ll need the basic security setup at the Palar plant, plus the routines and any computer security information you can get us.” He looked at Vorru. “And you …”

“I will find out if any of the computer core technicians have any interesting vices we can exploit or an interest in exploiting the vices we have to offer.”

“I think that will be fine.” Wedge smiled. “In two days we will meet again and see how close we are to making the plan work.”

31

Kirtan Loor’s hands convulsed into fists. Who is more stupid, a fool or someone who relies upon a fool? Zekka Thyne’s initial report about a planning meeting for what the Rogues would be doing to bring Imperial Center down had seemed promising. Thyne had told him who had attended and it had pleased Loor to learn Iella Wessiri and Corran Horn had been reunited. The fact that he’d not known Iella was living right under his nose did not thrill him, but her location had been outside his area of immediate interest until she became part of Rogue Squadron’s operation.

The datafiles that the Imperial Intelligence organized crime division had sent over to him had provided interesting information on Fliry Vorru as well as the Devaronian, Dmaynel Kiph, but of Asyr Sei’lar they had no record. Though he had been chastened before by Ysanne Isard about drawing unwarranted conclusions, Loor decided Sei’lar was probably a member of some Bothan spy network. The possible existence of an independent Bothan Intelligence operation on Imperial Center suggested the Alliance was not a wholly unified front, which meant Iceheart’s strategy for dividing and destroying them piecemeal had even greater merit.

What angered Loor was Thyne’s deception—a deception that became quite apparent from subsequent reports. Thyne had said the first meeting had merely been organizational and had not produced any sort of a working plan. In the five days since that meeting, though, Thyne had been given certain tasks to perform that ran outside the usual duties he had within Black Sun. Initially he had overseen the collection of all sorts of data from the Black Sun’s gambling and spice operations on Imperial Center, but he only collected the datacards. He had no idea what information they contained.

After two days of that he had been shifted over to equipment procurement. While his activities provided Loor with an interesting window on the black market availability of almost anything, it did not give him the sort of information that would be useful for countering the Rogues’ operation. Thyne was overbuying weapons and having them delivered to any number of sites. In this Loor recognized an effort to provide far too many sites for Imperial Intelligence to adequately cover.

It seemed clear to Loor that Thyne had been isolated by the command group and given jobs that, while valuable, were not crippling if bungled. Thyne was not the only person buying weapons on the black market so Loor had to conclude that perhaps none of the arms Thyne had collected would be used. Loor would have decided Thyne’s cover had been blown, but Vorru’s file left little doubt about how the man would have been dealt with if Black Sun knew Patches was working with the Empire.

Several things seemed obvious to Loor. The first was that Thyne had managed to show himself to be unreliable. He assumed this was because Thyne clearly would have loved to supplant Vorru as the head of Black Sun and Vorru, just as clearly, would want to prevent that from happening. Thyne’s animosity for Corran and Iella could have also made him a liability in any planning councils. Loor had decided that Thyne had been ejected from the initial meeting before plans had been discussed and only later learned that Thyne had been concussed and amnesia blanked the substantive part of the meeting.

The spy within Rogue Squadron had not been present at the meeting. The spy’s subsequent reports had been singularly useless. The planning council had compartmentalized the jobs needed to complete the operation, so the spy’s activities proved less enlightening than Thyne’s. Having Rogue Squadron personnel maintain a low profile did make sense, since they were not as familiar with Imperial Center as other members of the conspiracy, but it made their activities useless as indicators of what was going to happen.

The only saving grace in all of it was that things appeared to be building slowly. Isard had told Loor that nothing could happen before two weeks—the incubation period of the new strain of the Krytos virus. The Sullustans taken in the warehouse had been injected with the virus ten days earlier so he was very close to his deadline already. Isard said she’d already introduced the virus into the water supply, so countless creatures were already ingesting it. Loor himself had taken to boiling water and only drinking wines imported from other worlds—even though the virus was not supposed to infect humans, he wanted to take no chances.

Loor sat back in the shadowed depths of his office and rubbed a hand against his forehead. The key to taking any planet was to lower its shields and drop troops. While a planetary bombardment might cause a lot of damage, only troops on the ground could take and hold real estate. Without the shields going down, that couldn’t happen, so the shields had to be the logical target for the Rogues.

The obvious target for taking the shields down was to attack the shield generators themselves. Loading a landspeeder full of Nergon 14 and having a suicide bomber run it into a generation station seemed the most expedient way of dealing with the shields. Two facts argued against that as a strategy—the sheer number of stations would require a metric ton or two for the Rebels to obliterate them all and the Rebels had not, to his knowledge, purchased any Nergon 14 so far. More importantly, destroying the shield generators would work against their future efforts to hold the planet.

A strike against the power generation stations had similar problems. There were even more of them than there were shield generation stations. The planet’s electrical grid was coordinated such that an area that lost its local power plant would immediately have energy supplied by others in nearby sectors. Flickering lights would be the only sign of disruption. In his months on Imperial Center Loor had only seen lights flicker when one of the powerful local thunderstorms broke over a building where he was.

The obvious target was the computer that controlled everything on Imperial Center, but Loor had seen prisons that had less security than the central computer. The center had its own platoon of stormtroopers and the barracks within a fifty-kilometer radius had orders to respond to alarms there with all speed and firepower at their command. The facility itself had been built with more demanding specifications than those of any other building on the planet, including the Imperial Palace. Rumor had it that if the Death Star had been used against Imperial Center, the computer center would have been a recognizable and salvageable piece of debris.

An armed strike on the computer center would seem doomed to failure, but the presence of Rogue Squadron did make it a bit more viable. If they had fighters—and fighters of various types were available on the black market—they might be able to intercept and down some of the incoming troops. That would give the attackers more time, though the outcome would still be dismal for the Rebels. The ground-based TIE fighter squadrons in the area would be able to counter the fighter threat, so placing them on alert was a precaution he would suggest to Isard.

Perhaps the most difficult part of guarding against the Rebel action was balancing on the razored edge of Isard’s plan. She wanted to give Imperial Center to the Rebels, saddling them with responsibility for a population that would drain them of bacta and fluid capital, effectively hobbling them and pinning them in one place. If his precautions against Rebel action were too obvious, the Rebels might do something unusual, giving them the planet before she wanted them to have it or, worse yet, convincing them to scrub their invasion. The idea of facing her anger if things went wrong filled Loor with dread.

Still, there are only four more days until her minimum deadline, two and a half weeks until the maximum. I’m close to success. Loor nodded slowly in the darkness. “If Derricote delivers what he promises with this Sullustan group, the Rebels will take a dying world and their movement will die right along with it.”

32

Corran wetted a small cloth swab with ethyl alcohol and rubbed it over the focal end of the BlasTech DL-44 Heavy blaster pistol. He peered at it closely, then gave it one more light pass with the cloth. As the alcohol evaporated, he saw Gavin reflected in miniature. “Ah, Gavin, this is the third time you’ve asked me if you could ask me a question.”

The kid blushed as he snapped the trigger assembly for his SoroSuub S1BR into the receiver housing. “I know, sorry.” Gavin kept his voice low enough that no one in the warehouse space aside from Corran could hear him. “I wanted to ask you about, urn, you know.”

Corran winced. He didn’t know, but that sort of thing was only said as preface to a question about killing or sex. Since Gavin had long ago become an ace and had acquitted himself well in the firefight in the warehouse across Invisec, Corran assumed the question had to be about sex. His parents should have told him about this before they let him go off to war, shouldn’t they? Corran looked around to see if Wedge was nearby, figuring he would do a much better job helping Gavin.

He couldn’t see Wedge anywhere. Corran shrugged his shoulders and eased the concentration element into the barrel of the blaster pistol. “What’s your question?”

Gavin set his face in what he clearly thought was a serious expression, but the general youthfulness of his features undermined the effort. “On Tatooine, well, in Anchorhead, well, in the area around the farm, it was small and so … We didn’t have a school the way you did on Corellia, see, we all took classes via a local HoloNet and sent lessons in on datacards, you know …”

Corran fit the barrel assembly together and snapped it into the gun’s frame. “Gavin, are you trying to tell me you don’t know how to kiss a girl?”

The young man pulled his head up and blinked, then frowned. “Anchorhead may have been small but not that small.”

“Kin don’t count.”

Gavin blushed. “I wasn’t related to everyone around there, you know.”

Corran raised his hands and smiled. “I know, I know, I was just giving you a hard time. What is it that you want to know?”

“Well, you’ve been around a lot. And you come from Corellia.” Gavin’s voice dropped precipitously. “You’ve seen, you know, two people get together, but they’re different, right?”

“Do you mean like Erisi and me? We come from different worlds, but we’re both human—though we haven’t gotten together.”

“No, I mean like Nawara and Rhysati.”

“Oh.” Corran nodded slowly. Throughout the galaxy the permutations of relationships between two or more individuals were legion, as were the rules, formal and otherwise, that governed their conduct. Prohibitions on relationships between races and classes and castes varied from planet to planet, but the rules governing interspecies relationships tended to be largely similar. The majority of them were set by official Imperial policy—a policy CorSec officials had called “look but don’t touch.”

“Exotic and different can be very attractive, Gavin. There are some folks who absolutely draw the line on dating outside their species while there are others who seem to be interested in experiencing anything and everything they can.” Corran shrugged. “I guess I don’t think it’s wrong, but it just may not be right.”

“I don’t think I follow you.”

“I wasn’t very clear. Look, would you like to have children someday, have a family?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Okay, what if the person you fall for isn’t capable of having children with a human?”

“I would, well, urn, I don’t know.”

“There are other problems, too, and we’re not talking the possible difficulties and dangers of making love, either.”

“Dangers?”

“Sure. Suppose the person you’re with is used to giving and getting gentle little love nips—with ten-centimeter-long teeth?” Corran hooked two fingers over like fangs. “Your hide isn’t as thick as a Gamorrean’s, so you’d be leaking.”

“I hadn’t thought about that.” Gavin frowned and his shoulders slumped. “I mean, I don’t think that will be a problem.”

“Some species don’t live as long as we do—though amid present company, life expectancy isn’t that big an issue.” Corran picked up a new heavy blaster and began to disassemble it for cleaning. “There are a lot of things you can take into consideration, Gavin, but it pretty much boils down to the same thing relationships between humans do: if you and the other person get along, problems can be worked out.”

Gavin nodded. “So have you ever, you know …?” The young man’s voice trailed off as color rose in his cheeks.

Corran felt two hands on his shoulders and looked back to see Iella’s smiling face above his. “Has Corran ever what?”

Corran shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing.”

Mirax appeared on his left and leaned on the table between Corran and Gavin. Her dark hair had been pulled back into a thick braid. “The look on Gavin’s face doesn’t suggest it was nothing, CorSec.”

Iella’s hands tightened playfully on the back of his neck. “Come on, Corran, there’s not much you haven’t done.”

A smile blossomed on Gavin’s face and Corran suddenly felt outnumbered. And reluctant to answer Gavin’s question. He knew it wasn’t because of Iella’s presence—she already knew the answer and could even tell the story better than he could. And he figured Gavin would find it amusing and make him less nervous. Clearly Gavin wanted to hear that Corran had dated an alien because the boy obviously had an interest in someone, and from the glances Corran had seen and the stories he’d heard, Gavin was thinking a lot about the Bothan, Asyr Sei’lar. While Corran thought she was a bit worldlier than Gavin could handle, he was willing to bet the farm boy from Tatooine could learn fast.

He found his reluctance to say anything came from Mirax’s presence and his feelings toward her. Erisi and Rhysati had been paired together for their part of planning the operation, giving Corran time apart from her. It allowed him to put Erisi into perspective. Even though they were of the same species and even were attracted to each other, something deep down inside told Corran that their getting together would be wrong. Not wrong, a disaster!

Everything that made Erisi wrong seemed to make Mirax right. She understood him because of their common background. Granted their fathers had been enemies—Corran characterized them as chronic enemies instead of mortal enemies—but that gave them a bond he would never have with Erisi. Ultimately with Erisi he knew he’d have felt like a pet, whereas with Mirax he felt like a friend and equal.

During the planning operations Corran, Mirax, Gavin, and Iella had gone out and secured a lot of supplies for the operation. Things were scarce and, if available at all, were high priced. More than once Corran wished Emtrey had been on Coruscant to help with procurement, but Mirax proved every bit his equal in obtaining things. Whereas the droid might have used an instant analysis of a trader’s wares to figure out his markup and squeeze him until his prices became reasonable, Mirax charmed, cajoled, wheedled, and even threatened. She’d learned every trick in the book from her father and Corran thought old Booster would be proud when he learned about her exploits.

But there is so much about her I don’t know, like her reaction to learning I dated outside my species. Fear that she might see such an action as making him unclean or unworthy killed any quip he might have tossed at Iella. He looked up at Mirax but saw no suspicion or disappointment in her face.

Gavin fit two pieces of the blaster rifle together and tightened down a restraining bolt. “I wanted to know if he’d ever dated someone who wasn’t human.”

Iella laughed. “Well, there were plenty of women he dated who weren’t human, in spirit, that is.”

Mirax sniffed lightly. “But why bring the bacta queen into this.”

“I never dated Erisi.”

“No, you just pretended to be her Kuati impregnator, then kissed her in full view of the Grand Hall of the Galaxy in the Imperial Palace.” Mirax shook her head. “Clearly no relationship there at all.”

Corran laughed. “The way you tell it, I might have actually had fun.”

Iella lightly cuffed the back of his head. “You always did complain about the easiest duty, Horn.”

“Believe me, I’d take Chertyl Ruluwoor over Erisi gladly.”

“Oh.” Iella raised an eyebrow. “That’s interesting.”

Gavin frowned. “What’s Chertyl Ruluwoor?”

Mirax straightened up and tapped a finger against her chin. “Sounds Selonian.”

“It is.” Iella smiled broadly. “Tell them, Corran.”

“No, you tell them. You tell it better.”

“You don’t mind?”

“If I have to be mortified, I’d prefer not to do it to myself.”

Mirax swung around and seated herself on the edge of the table. “This sounds wonderful.” She winked at Corran, then looked up at Iella. “Go ahead, he’ll survive it.”

“True, it’s not like it’s the first time he’s heard this.” Iella smiled and Corran knew she’d put a good face on the incident. “Chertyl Ruluwoor was a female Selonian who had been sent to our unit to get some training. It was a cultural exchange program. She was tall—at least two meters—and slender. Selonians are all very lithe and she was covered with relatively short black fur that glistened a silver-blue when the light hit it right. Definitely gorgeous, definitely humanoid, but definitely not human.

“The Annual CorSec Awards Ball was coming up and she didn’t know anyone. Selonians tend to be a very private sort of people and the only ones you see in public are sterile females. They run things in their society and maintain a family unit with fertile males and females, but she was all alone. The unattached male officers in our branch put together a pool to see who would take Chertyl to the celebration. Each man was required to buy a ticket for five credits and the winner—whom everyone considered a loser—would get the pot to compensate for the evening.”

Mirax frowned. “It strikes me that the whole process was the wrong way around.”

Corran smiled. “The Awards Ball pool is a tradition dating from a time when the Director had a daughter who, as decorum dictated, could not go to the Ball unescorted. The Director refused to order someone to ask her to go, though he did order participation in the pool. Most years the prize is someone in the squad who has volunteered to be ‘won,’ with the money going to the Survivors and Orphans fund.”

“This year, though, the prize was Chertyl and she knew nothing about it. Most everyone who knew what was going on thought it was barbaric, but they hid behind tradition.”

Gavin smiled. “And Corran won, right?”

“You could say that.” Iella gave him a gentle punch on the shoulder. “What he did was talk to the women who really wanted to go to the Ball with the other officers and gave them the impression that the whole thing had been rigged—whatever ticket their guy had would be selected as the winning ticket. The only way their man could get out of winning would be to get out of the pool. When pressed Corran allowed that he could be bribed into taking on just one more ticket—but it would have to be a secret. The women pressured their men to get Corran to take their tickets. By the time the pool winner was chosen, Corran had all the tickets.”

Mirax beamed at him. “Quite enterprising, sir.”

“Well, I knew I’d be miserable because of how my life was going at the time, so I saw no reason for anyone else to be away from the person they wanted to be with.”

“But you did something noble. That’s good.”

“It gets better, Mirax. Corran gave the pool and the bribes to the fund, then went all out and showed Chertyl the time of her life. He hired a repulsorlimo, found out what kind of flowers were considered appropriate by Selonians, and flew out in his X-wing to the only import florist on Corellia who had them in bloom to get them. He even got a new formal dress uniform tailored up for the occasion. And he proved he cleans up very well.

“For her part, Chertyl was nothing short of stunning. She had that long, sleek physique that enabled her to wear a slinky gown over which light slithered. She wore a necklace of silver and aquamarine and a bracelet to match that looked like light playing across her fur. Every woman who saw her was instantly jealous and Corran was the envy of all the men. And, to make it worse, they actually enjoyed each other’s company. That was about six months after his father’s death and things had been rough for Corran, so the whole situation seemed perfect.”

Being unable to stop a smile from tugging at the corner of his mouth, Corran nodded, and discovered he was disinclined to kill the smile. That evening was a lot of fun. I put enough energy into it that I got to leave my life behind for a while. “It was great.”

Gavin leaned forward. “So what happened?”

Corran looked up at Iella. “Spare the salacious details, please.”

Mirax smiled. “You can elaborate another time, Iella.”

Iella shrugged. “Though Chertyl was infertile it didn’t mean she was incapable. Apparently she had enjoyed the evening as much as Corran had and they continued to celebrate after they left the Ball. Is that circumspect enough for you?”

“It will do.”

“Was it …?” Gavin began to blush.

Corran gave him a wink. “Better.”

Mirax raised an eyebrow. “Than what?”

“Imagine finding a pile of rocks, deciding to throw them out, dropping one, and having it split open to reveal a Corusca gem embedded in the middle.”

“Oh, my.”

“And with each stone after that, the Corusca gem is more lustrous and beautiful than the one before it.”

“I see, very special indeed.”

“And each of those stones, when fitted together, creates a brilliant, exquisitely carved sculpture.”

“I’ve got the hologram digitized and analyzed here, Corran. Thanks.”

Gavin blinked. “Wow.”

Mirax’s brown eyes narrowed. “So if it was as great as all that, how come you’re here and not in some den on Selonia?”

Corran winced. “Well, there was one little, microscopic problem.”

Iella nodded. “The chemistry wasn’t right.”

“Sounds like it was perfect to me.” Gavin grinned broadly.

“Personal chemistry, yes, Gavin, was perfect. Personal biochemistry was not, however.” Iella rested a hand on Corran’s shoulder. “The reason the lucky charm Corran wears is on a gold chain is because his sweat is acidic enough to tarnish something like silver. It’s within normal range for a human, mind you, but just on the acidic end. And that was sufficient to get through the waxy surface on Chertyl’s fur and irritate her skin. And as it turned out, Corran was mildly allergic to her fur.”

“It was much like being sunburned all over for the both of us.”

Mirax giggled for a second, then made herself appear sober and saddened. “That’s horrible.”

Corran shrugged. “Unfortunately, it’s life.” He looked over at Gavin. “There you have it, kid. My advice, see what happens. It can’t hurt, except in rare cases.”

Gavin set the blaster rifle down and stood. “Thanks. I’ll take your advice, if you’ll excuse me.”

“Good luck, Gavin.” Corran waved him on his way, then smiled up at Iella. “Nicely told.”

Mirax’s brows furrowed. “How much of that was true?”

“All of it, every bit.”

She frowned. “That’s so sad, though.”

Corran shook his head. “Not really. We both knew we were living out a fantasy, but it wouldn’t have worked in the long run. I had no desire to move to Selonia and become part of a broodhome. Chertyl knew she couldn’t bear the children I’d want. We remained friends and both have wonderful memories. In fact, that was the best ending I had for any of my relationships.”

“True, Corran, but that’s because you never listened to my advice about the women you were interested in.” Iella shook her head. “Disasters, every one of them.”

Mirax smiled. “And what is your impression of the bacta queen?”

“Her? All wrong for Corran. Attractive, sure, but just not his kind of woman.”

“My thoughts exactly. I’ve told him so, but he doesn’t listen.”

“Never has.”

Corran held his hands up in surrender. “Stop, please. You may not think Erisi is right for me, and I don’t really think so either—a conclusion I came up with on my own, too, I might add. Regardless, though, she doesn’t deserve this. Ysanne Isard wouldn’t deserve this.”

Iella glanced down at him. “Actually, Ysanne Isard does deserve this.”

Corran thought for a moment. “Yeah, you’re right, she does, carry on. By the time you’re done, I’ll have finished cleaning all these blaster pistols. Then we’ll be ready to do the job that really needs to be done.”

33

Though General Derricote’s office was no larger than his own, its stark white color made Kirtan Loor feel more vulnerable. He would have preferred waiting to deliver his message to the Director from his own office, but the delay the trip back would necessitate would not be acceptable. Ysanne Isard would be furious with what he had to say, so he saw no reason to compound her anger.

On one knee, he refused to look up when her image burned to life in the General’s office. “What is so urgent, Agent Loor?”

“General Derricote’s estimates of the incubation period for the Krytos virus in Sullustans was generous.”

“What?” Loor could not see Isard’s expression, but her voice sounded as it might if he had told her that the Rebels had just showed up with a Death Star. “Generous in what way?”

“Generous in his favor. He promised you ten days until the Sullustans began to sicken, but a dozen appears more correct. And …”

“There is more?”

“Yes, Madam Director. The virus has resisted airborne transmission. Contact with virus-laden fluids and tissues will still infect another individual, but fluid contact is still required.”

“This is impossible, Loor, and I hold you responsible for all this. Look at me!”

Loor lifted his face and saw molten fury roiling in her left eye. “General Derricote gave me false information.”

“He did that at Borleias, but you found him out.”

“But I didn’t have to be tracking Rogue Squadron’s activities on Imperial Center at the time. I was worried about your deadline, which came and went today.” Loor hesitated and found himself cringing in anticipation of her reply.

“The deadline was based on a ten-day incubation period followed by a week-long terminal cycle. This throws everything off.” Isard’s image towered over him. “What are the transmissibility figures? Is the virus jumping from species to species?”

“Flesh contact with ten ces of viral fluid results in a twenty percent infection rate and the virus is viable for thirty-six hours outside a host, longer if the conditions are warm and moist. The virus can be frozen and thawed without lost of viability or lethality. If the virus is actually injected or injested, as little as one cubic centimeter is enough to infect a subject.”

“And species migration?”

“General Derricote projects …”

“Projects! I want results, not projections.” Isard’s hologram slammed a fist into an open palm but the sound relayed by holo-link sounded muted and weak. “Order Derricote to begin replication of the current virus strains and release all of them into the water supply.”

Loor again bowed his head. “I anticipated your request. Derricote says that in four days he should have sufficient supplies to take care of the planet.”

“Tell him he doesn’t have four days. Full replication and production begins immediately and batches go into the water supply when they are complete. I want it done now. I will tolerate no more mistakes, his or yours, do you understand?”

“Yes, Madam Director.”

“And one more thing, Agent Loor.”

“Yes, Madam Director?”

“Your last report on the Rogues indicated this evening appears to be when they are taking their first step at liberating Imperial Center. It is too soon. I won’t have it. Scatter them, kill them, deal with them. This time tomorrow I do not want to have to worry about them.”

“As you wish, Madam Director!”

Isard’s image vanished revealing Derricote standing in the doorway to his office. He applauded politely. “That was a wonderful performance.”

Loor snarled inarticulately and came up quickly. He buried his left fist deep in Derricote’s stomach, then clouted him on the side of the head with a roundhouse right. The heavyset man stumbled sideways and slammed into the wall. He tipped shelves, overturning countless boxes of datacard journals, then abruptly sat down on the floor and wallowed in them.

Part of Loor basked in the disbelief on Derricote’s florid face, but even that feeling of elation did not dull the rage in his mind. He grabbed a handful of Derricote’s tunic and hauled the corpulent man to his feet. “You have placed me in mortal jeopardy because of your incompetence.”

“Incompetence!? We are traveling paths that were previously shunned here. I have done the best I could. The fact that my efforts do not live up to specifications designated by those who have no idea about the true nature of …”

Loor slapped the man hard with his open hand, then tugged him out of the office. “First, your technicians are to start manufacturing the Krytos viruses in their myriad forms and start injecting them into the water supply. Now! You have lied about how long it will take to kill aliens and I’m not sure I trust your transmission figures so I want as much virus as available being used now as possible. Including the experimental versions.”

“But …”

“No buts, General, just now.” Loor’s nostrils flared. “What else have you lied to me about? Is it as deadly as you say?”

“You have seen the results, Agent Loor.”

“Yes, I have seen the results, but not all of them.” Loor dragged Derricote stumbling after him through the laboratory to the hallway where the victims were kept. Loor tossed him on ahead and Derricote spilled to the ground in the sanitized corridor. “I will not pay for another of your mistakes, General.”

Glancing to the right, Loor could see Quarren beging ning to melt, so he turned away and studied a huddled group of Sullustans. They clustered around two small children who were vomiting violently. Half the adults tore at their own hair, pulling it out in great clumps. Some reeled away, others just fell and trembled as if being shaken by a Cyborrean battle dog.

Loor looked back down at Derricote. “Madam Director wants bacta to cure the Krytos virus.”

“It will.”

“Have you tested the Sullustan version for a cure?”

“No, there is no need to waste bacta …”

Loor kicked the man in the thigh. “Wrong answer, General. Get up here.”

The General stood and Loor shoved him toward the transparisteel wall. “We will test the efficacy of bacta on the virus, General.” Loor looked at the Sullustans and saw one adult desperately mopping vomitus from a child’s face. “Those two, the child and the adult. Test it on them. I want them to survive, General, do you understand me?”

“Mother and child? How touching.”

“Don’t mock me, General. The child is younger and the disease has clearly ravaged it far more than the adult. And that adult, she is caring for the child. She can tell others how to care for victims of this virus, accelerating the desired effect on the Rebellion.” Loor shoved a comlink into Derricote’s fat hand. “Get your people in there now and save them. Do it.”

“Or?”

“Or I give you a taste, here and now, of what the Rogues will face tonight.” Loor smiled coldly. “I guarantee, General, you’ll like it no better than they will.”

34

Everything was going perfectly, then the Trandoshan dropped the memory core. Wedge’s heart caught in his throat—it clearly intended to escape him altogether, but the forced smile and gritted teeth prevented it from getting away. The box landed on a corner that immediately crumpled, and there was no mistaking the moan of metal bending out of shape.

The Imperial technician’s face drained of blood. “Oh, now there is trouble.”

Wedge raised a hand. “Perhaps not, friend.”

“I have no time and this incident will have to be reported and checked out.”

“I think, perhaps, I have a solution to your problem.”

“I hope so, for your sake.” The small technician sniffed and looked around nervously. “If there is trouble, I will not be found at blame—you and your alien help will be held responsible.”

The loading process had gone almost without a hitch. Each core had been packaged in individual boxes and a diagnostic datacard had been placed in a clear plastic container fastened to the box. The technician had selected forty Palar memory cores from the fifty-five available at the plant. Each datacard was checked and then a quarter of the boxes were opened and probes were run on these randomly selected cores. If the data on them matched the data on the card, the lot was assumed to be good.

The auxiliary cores were slightly different and only ten of them had been produced. Three of them had been formatted with the special codes and had serial numbers where the last two digits added to ten. The Trandoshan doing the loading had been told to drop a core if none of the specially prepared ones had been selected, but one had.

The one he dropped.

The Trandoshan trundled back to the remaining five boxes and picked one of the other two that had the Rebel coding on it. He started to lift it up, but the technician put his hand firmly on the box and pressed it back down to the ground. “No, you clumsy vermin, you will not select the core. My choice.”

Wedge slapped the Trandoshan hard across the arm, stinging his hand on the creature’s leathery hide. “Back away, Portha. Your clumsiness will be reported.”

The big, lizardly Trandoshan hissed and shuffled back away from the boxes to stand over by Pash. The technician nodded slowly. “Thank you. They so seldom understand our problems.”

“Indeed.” Wedge scratched at the beard he had grown to help disguise himself. “You are quite right to make the choice yourself, but there is insufficient time to run the diagnostics yourself. Their cards have already shown you that they are clean, but you want it clear that you were scrupulous in making your random choice. If not, well, I doubt your superiors would be impressed.”

“That would be very bad indeed.”

“And we can’t have that, so choose you shall. Several times, so there can be no doubt of the randomness of the choice. You’ll see.” Wedge smiled and spread his hands out. “There are five here. Pick three.”

The man frowned for a second, then pointed to the first one and the last two.

Wedge motioned Gavin over. “Take the other two away.”

Gavin slid the two designated units away into the depths of the factory’s warehouse floor. Wedge hastily rearranged the remaining trio into a single line. One of these is the unit I want him to take, two are not. “Pick two more.”

The man designated the two on the end. “I choose them.”

“Good.” He pointed to Pash. “Take that one away. Now pick one.” Wedge wanted him to pick the first box, but the technician tapped the second one.

Wedge nodded, smiled, then turned and scowled at Gavin. “What are you waiting for? Get it into the truck with the others.” As he gave Gavin the command, Wedge rested his foot on top of the chosen memory core. “Hurry up, the man’s on a schedule, a tight schedule.”

“Don’t drop it,” the technician snapped.

Wedge sighed. “The exotics here work hard, but you can’t trust them—then I get a man like him who isn’t much better.”

The technician nodded as he watched Gavin carry the box to the repulsorlift truck and slide it into the back. “It’s the fault of the Rebellion, you know.”

“Do you think?”

“Of course. When the Emperor was still ruling there was no doubt about how things were to be done. Now …” The man shrugged his shoulders eloquently and Wedge nodded emphatically. “The people nowadays have stopped thinking because sloppiness no longer earns the sorts of rewards it did before.”

“I think you are quite correct.” Wedge smiled and rubbed his hands together. Had you been thinking at all, my friend, you’d have seen that I forced your choice of box. You made the choice, but I decided what the choice meant. Had you chosen the two sliced cores at first, I would have discarded the other three. The illusion of choice has you satisfied. He made a mental note to thank Booster Terrik for having so long ago taught him the value of letting people deceive themselves by showing him how to force a choice.

The technician made an entry on his datapad. “Even the stormtroopers are slipping. They tried to prevent me from coming into this sector this evening, but I would not be dissuaded by them, no, sir. I bulled on through and they let me go!”

“Stormtroopers?” Wedge shook his head, then pointed at Gavin. “Do you hear that, son? Even stormtroopers are becoming so undisciplined that you could join them. Perhaps those outside could tell you where their recruiting office is.”

The technician looked surprised. “Son? Is he your boy?”

“Takes after his mother.” Wedge guided the man toward his repulsorlift truck. “Don’t want to keep you.”

Suddenly sparks shot from the loading dock side door and rained down from the warehouse ceiling. A halo of brilliant white fire surrounded the door, then imploded leaving a smoking hole through which stormtroopers began to run. Duracrete and steel rained down from above as teams blasted their way in through the roof and descended on slender lines. Out past the nose of the computer center truck Wedge saw a Mekuun Hoverscout’s blunt prow batter the far gate. It bounced back, fired one burst with its laser cannon, then came on again over the molten remains of the gate.

Wedge gave the technician a shove forward, then spun on his heel and started running back into the warehouse’s shadows. He hurdled a line of memory cores, then cut left and back right as blaster bolts exploded all around him. Leaping over another line of crates, Wedge crouched down behind cover. From his right Iella slid him a blaster carbine, then activated her comlink. “Shiel, Ooryl, Wedge is clear. Open up.”

From deeper in the warehouse both the Gand and the Shistavanen started firing with a pair of Merr-Sonn E-Web Heavy blaster cannons. The weapons were mounted on tripods and had very specific fields of fire. Ooryl raked a stream of fire over the loading dock and out at the Hoverscout. The scarlet blaster bolts burned their way up over the vehicle’s nose and punched through the cockpit windscreen. The cockpit exploded in fire and smoke.

Shiel concentrated his fire on the stormtroopers descending on the lines from the roof. The high rate of fire allowed him to track his shots and pick stormtroopers off the lines. Wedge and Iella added their fire, but concentrated it near the holes to shoot people just beginning their descent.

The exit over at the far corner of the factory exploded. Wedge hit his comlink. “Corran, report.” He got nothing in reply and could see nothing but fire and twisted metal where a stairway had once been. The original evacuation plan had designated that stairway and the area beyond it, which Corran, Mirax, and some of the Black Sunners were holding, as their primary exit. Not anymore.

He looked at Iella. “Plan two. Fall back.”

She passed the signal along via her comlink. Portha, Pash, and Gavin pulled back from their positions first while Iella and Wedge provided covering fire. Once they were set, Iella and Wedge pulled back, but they didn’t get far. Even with covering fire from the heavy blasters and the others, the stormtroopers managed to concentrate enough fire to make it impossible for him to move.

Lying prone on the ferrocrete, with his left cheek pressed against the cool floor and sparks from burning crates stinging his right cheek, everything seemed to collapse in on him at once. Wedge knew that being in the warehouse in Invisec on Coruscant was utterly and completely insane—more so even than sending snubfighters out to destroy a Death Star. He should have been in an X-wing if he was going to be fighting Imperials. Having a firefight with stormtroopers was still one of the best ways he knew of committing suicide, and he was afraid he was going to prove it in the next three or four minutes.

In setting up their operation they had taken into account what would happen if a stormtrooper patrol happened to make a sweep of the Palar factory—and the two heavy blasters should have been more than enough to take care of the threat. The presence of so many stormtroopers meant they’d been sold out at least twice—once so the Imperial operation could be planned and again so the scouts they’d had outside the plant wouldn’t warn them of the impending raid. Corran said having Thyne organize the lookouts was a big mistake.

More blaster bolts scorched the air above him. If I don’t do something fast, we’re done. Wedge pushed up on the bottom of his comlink and gave it a twist, setting the device on a new frequency. “This is Rogue Leader. Things are breaking up here. Track and recover on this signal. Come ready to shuck stormies.”

“I copy.”

Iella crawled over to him and glanced at the comlink. “Do I want to know?”

“I don’t like working without backup.” He smiled, then ducked his head as a blaster bolt scorched the air. “If we hang on we may get out of this fine.”

“You’re the Rebellion’s hero, so I’ll trust you.” She gave him a confident smile. “Thyne sold us out, I’d bet.”

“No takers.” Another trio of bolts burned through the air above them. “Can’t wait here. Let’s move.”

“How?”

Wedge grinned. “Call Shiel. Get him to use that cannon to burn us a path through this maze.”

“Consider it done.” Iella gave Shiel the command and the line of thick red bolts cut over and down. Memory cores exploded casting fiery debris everywhere. The memory platters whirled through the air, hit, and rolled throughout the warehouse. Smoke already coated the ceiling with a grey cotton cloud, but more rose to take it from benign to a darkly menacing thunderhead.

As nearly as Wedge could determine later, Shiel’s firing on crates to clear a path for Iella and him was interpreted by the computer technician as an attempt to destroy the memory cores in the back of the repulsorlift truck. Whoever was driving it started the engine and ran power into the repulsorlift coils. The truck rose from the warehouse floor and started forward gingerly. The aft end began to drift left, but that was clearly preparatory to swinging around the burning Hoverscout.

Suddenly the truck lurched forward. Its right front fender slammed into the edge of the loading dock access port. The truck spun around to the left and backed into the burning Hoverscout. It rode halfway up onto the military vehicle before the repulsorlift coils shorted, dropping the truck down to crush the Hoverscout.

A titanic explosion shredded both vehicles and sprayed shrapnel throughout the loading dock area. The blast’s shock wave sent crates flying and tossed Wedge around like a Chadra-Fan wrestling with a rancor. He landed hard on a crate, shattering it and the memory core it had contained. At the same time he felt something pop on his left side and got a sharp pain with each breath. Ribs, but at least I can still move.

He grabbed Gavin’s proffered hand and got to his feet. The two of them sprayed blaster fire into the black cloud choking the far end of the warehouse, but very little in return fire headed in their direction. The stormtroopers clearly had gotten the worst of the blast, being closest to it when the Hoverscout’s magazine of concussion missiles had blown.

Iella, Pash, and Portha had taken up stations around the doorway heading deeper into the factory complex. Beyond it Nawara Ven and Shiel were wrestling with their heavy blaster cannon. Rhysati and Erisi were out in front with Ooryl close behind. He sported a blaster carbine.

Wedge winced as he waved everyone on. “Go, go! This place is crawling with Imps. We were sold out so now we have to get clear.”

Gavin’s eyes grew wide. “But you’re hurt, sir.”

“I can still move, Gavin, and that’s what we have to do.” Wedge shoved him on ahead. “If we don’t we’re all going to be hurt a lot more.”

35

Waiting in the plant supervisor’s office Corran had a bad feeling about how things were unfolding out in the warehouse. The supervisor’s holopad had been wired into the warehouse surveillance holocams. Wedge, the technician, Pash, Gavin, and Portha all marched around on the desktop like pieces in a hologame. Though everything seemed to be going well for his team, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were somehow losing.

Mirax sat behind the heavy steel desk and watched Wedge force the technician’s choice of a new core with a big smile on her face. “Oh, the smuggler you could have been, Wedge Antilles! He’s got this guy thinking he’s made a totally random choice when Wedge had a core picked out from the beginning for him to take.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Corran paced back and forth behind her. The supervisor’s office had two doors. The one at the front of the office led to a waiting room with a window that overlooked the warehouse. The other door, built into the office’s back wall, led to a private stairwell and the private parking area below the warehouse floor. To avoid being spotted through the window, Mirax and Corran had taken up a position in the office. Down below, in the parking area, Inyri and several other Black Suns waited with airspeeders to whisk the Rogues away.

“Take it easy. We’re almost home free.”

“I’ll believe it when we’re away from here and Winter’s people can test the code.” He again dropped a hand to the heavy blaster he wore on his hip, just to check how it was seated in the holster, then looked at the blaster carbine he held and made sure the safety switch was off. “Wait, what’s that?”

“I don’t know.” Mirax leaned forward and poked at a sparking light at the edge of the hologram. “Someone’s burning through the door!”

Corran smelled smoke and knew he was too far from the loading dock to be getting it from there. Something else is burning. Too close. He reached out with his right hand and roughly shoved Mirax from her chair. “Get down.”

The wall between the waiting room and the office exploded inward. He saw it fragment and fire poured through the cracks. The pieces of wall disintegrated, breaking into smaller and smaller bits until they were nothing but pebbles and dust. The fire blacked the aluminum studs, ripping them free from the floor and ceiling, then propelled them into the office, gnarling and twisting them as they flew.

The force of the explosion lifted Corran off his feet and blasted him into the office’s rear wall. Wallstone sagged and buckled, studs bent, but the wall did not collapse. The door leading into the stairwell crumpled and tore free of the hinges, allowing a great deal of the explosive force to blow out through it. The desk slammed back against the wall and Corran’s legs fell across the top of it. His head and shoulders tipped down, his feet came up, and he crashed to the debris-strewn floor with blood streaming from his nose and an incessant ringing in his ears.

Through the dust and smoke he saw what appeared to be a quartet of stormtroopers dropping through a hole in the floor and standing on the ceiling. Dazed as he was it took him a moment to realize his perspective came from his still being upside down. Slightly more surprising than that discovery was the far more welcome realization that he still held the blaster carbine in his left hand.

He let his body sag to the right, then he rolled forward onto his stomach. The world swam into focus a moment later. He slid his right hand forward and got it wrapped around the weapon’s pistol grip. His left hand moved up to grasp the barrel and he tightened down on the trigger.

His first shots hit a stormtrooper in the knees and dropped him back into his fellows. Only one of them turned toward him, the other two looked out at the warehouse floor that was lit by back and forth fire from dozens of blasters. The stormtrooper who had made the correct guess brought his carbine up and over, but only managed to trace a line of fire across the wall above Corran’s head.

Corran walked his fire up the stormtrooper’s midline, burning three holes navel, heart, and throat before a fourth knocked the man’s helmet flying and dumped his body to the floor. The helmet bounced off the back of one of the other stormtroopers and clipped the helmet of the last one. Both men spun, their weapons coming around with deliberate and lethal intent.

Corran managed to rip off a burst that hit one of them in the thigh, then his blaster carbine stopped firing. The man he’d hit spun around and went down to one knee, but still appeared to be full of fight. Corran hit the power pack release button and reached down into his pants pocket for a replacement, but all he felt was tattered fabric and his own flesh.

Next to him the desk rose two centimeters off the floor, then tipped forward. It rolled awkwardly, half eclipsing him, and caught the full force of the last standing stormtrooper’s fire. Corran rolled to his right, trying to take advantage of the cover. As he did so, Mirax rose up on one knee and scythed blaster fire back and forth across the last two stormtroopers. Her shots took the standing man in the middle, doubling him over, and blew apart the helmet of the one Corran had only wounded.

Corran saw her look down at him and saw her lips move, but he couldn’t hear her past the ringing in his ears. He took a guess at what she was saying and forced a smile through the blood he could taste on his lips. “I’ll live. They used concussion munitions but the wall stopped us from being knocked out.” He scrambled up on his hands and knees. “Let’s get out of here.”

Mirax crawled over to the open doorway and slid down the door to the first landing. Corran followed, then the two of them ran down the remaining flights. Corran kicked the door to the basement garage open. Mirax went through low and he followed. What they found made her curse and the only good thing about it was the fact that he heard her oath.

Off to the right, heading out through the shadows, he saw four airspeeders going away. From the left, racing down a ramp and into the garage’s dark interior, came six Imperial stormtroopers on Aratech 74-Y military speeder bikes. Five peeled off their formation to go after the airspeeders and one swung around toward them.

“Mirax, go!” Corran cast aside the useless carbine and drew his blaster pistol. She darted off toward the left and got behind one of the garage’s massive pillars. She waved him toward her and made to come around and cover him, but a laser bolt from the speeder bike gouged a chunk of duracrete from near her head.

He shook his head and ran toward the approaching speeder bike. He cut to the right, snapped off two shots, then ducked his left shoulder and rolled to the side as the speeder bike’s laser bolts sizzled over his head. He came up into a crouch with only twenty meters separating him from the speeder bike. As his blaster came up he saw the stormtrooper’s right hand curl back, cranking the throttle. The bike roared forward and Corran knew the man intended to impale him on the spikes that jutted forward of the speeder bike’s vector-control surfaces.

Corran twisted to the right, willing his body to flow out around the sharp spearhead mounted on the front of the craft. The vector-control surface shredded the left side of his jacket, passing just beneath Corran’s left arm. He tried to bring his blaster around to get a shot off at the stormtrooper, but all he managed to do before the stormtrooper’s knee caught him in the hip and spun him to the ground was slam the weapon down hard on the driver’s left hand.

The blow to the man’s hand jerked the vector-control back making the speeder bike’s nose veer sharply upward. It struck sparks from the ceiling and a moment later the bike’s tail joined in producing fireworks as it scraped along on the ground. The forward control surfaces buckled and curled in as the bike jammed them hard against the ceiling. The bike began to invert, spilling the rider, then bounced against the floor and ceiling before it stopped and hovered.

The stormtrooper skidded along on his armored back, spinning around like a top. His legs finally smacked up against a pillar stopping his spin. He shook his head and tried to climb to his feet, but Mirax stepped out from behind the pillar and dropped him with a kick to the head.

“Now what, Corran?”

A muffled explosion from above shook the garage. Dust and peeling paint fell from the ceiling. Smoke and dust billowed out of the doorway from above. “I know we’re not going back up there.”

She frowned. “Okay, one choice down. Care to pick another?”

He shrugged, then saw blaster bolts darting through the garage. One of the airspeeders had turned off at the last moment and was racing back toward them, with a speeder bike in pursuit. The airspeeder’s driver neatly wound the vehicle around and through a complex course, never giving the stormtrooper a clean shot. Even so, because of the speeder bike’s shorter turning radius, it ate up the distance between them, making it only a matter of time before he drew close enough to cripple and kill the airspeeder.

Corran pointed toward the pursuit. “Fire at the speeder bike. Let the airspeeder know there’s cover over here.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Get luckier than I’ve been already, I hope.” Corran ran over to the hovering speeder bike, grabbed the control handles, and started pushing it toward one of the open rows between columns. He swung into the seat and checked the weapon’s control monitor. It’s good to go. Now I just need a target. He hit the thumb switch on the vector-controller and sent a ruby laser bolt screaming out into the distance.

Mirax laid down a solid pattern of fire that hemmed the speeder bike in and the airspeeder driver took full advantage of it. She whipped the wheel to the right and shot straight down a row toward the end where Mirax and Corran stood.

The airspeeder passed in front of the hovering speeder bike and the second it was clear, Corran hit the firing switch. The speeder bike’s laser cannon spat out a steady stream of scarlet energy darts. He expected the pursuing stormtrooper to fly his speeder bike right through the hail of bolts, but the pilot cut sharply to the left and swung wide of Corran’s trap.

Fortunately that left him in the open for Mirax. Her burst of fire caught the man in the left flank and knocked him from the saddle. He hit hard, with his helmet splitting like the rind of an overripe meiloorun. His body rolled along, almost coming upright again, when it collided with a pillar and fell back to the ground slowly.

The airspeeder came to a stop between Corran and Mirax. “C’mon, get in.”

Corran looked somewhat agog at the pilot. “Inyri, you came back for us?”

“Stay if you like, Horn, or come with me.”

Mirax grabbed Corran by the shoulder and dumped him into the rear seat, then hopped in beside Inyri. “I think he got hit in the head. Go.”

Lying in the back of the airspeeder, Corran swiped a hand across his mouth and it came away bloody. He tore a chunk of the lining out of his jacket and started mopping up the blood. “What happened back there?”

“I don’t know.” Inyri brought the airspeeder out of the garage and immediately started it climbing. “We were below waiting the way we were supposed to, then we heard a couple of small explosions and one big one from the office at the head of the stairs. There wasn’t any percentage in staying around, so we took off.”

Her voice took on an edge. “I wasn’t really coming back for you. The speeder bikes had an angle on exit and I figured that being last in line I’d be the first to die. I broke off and thought to run back to the way they came in, then I noticed you were shooting at the bike on my tail. When you got him, the least I could do was pick you up.”

Mirax patted Inyri on the shoulder. “Intentions don’t count, what you do does.”

Corran sat up in the back seat. The only way Imperials could have gotten to the memory core factory and raided it when they did was if they had inside information about what was happening there and when it was going to take place. Without thinking too hard on the matter he could identify twenty people who knew about the operation and that number could have expanded exponentially if someone stupid started bragging.

From those who might have sold the operation out he immediately discarded any of the Rogues, Mirax, Winter, and Iella. All of them, save Winter, had actually been in the factory. Wedge said Winter was incorruptible. While it was not in Corran’s nature to believe that about anyone, the fact that Pash Cracken and Iella also vouched for her let him clear her.

Mirax looked out through the windscreen. “Where are we going?”

“Zekka picked out a location for us to meet if things didn’t go as planned. We’ll link up there and then see who else has survived this debacle.”

As Inyri whisked them along a twisty, mind-boggling course through the city, ascending and descending through levels and around buildings, Corran continued considering suspects. In the back of his mind he knew the exercise was futile because there was no way he could prove his suspicions. He also knew that the first person on his suspect list, Zekka Thyne, would also be the last person on it. Corran knew Thyne had betrayed them, he knew it in his heart, and he didn’t really need proof for that conviction.

His being placed in the position of lookout was perfect from the Imp point of view. He protested that he wanted something more important but Vorru forced him to keep that job. Even though I thought letting him organize lookouts was a bad idea, I was relieved since I wouldn’t have him with a gun in a place where my back might be turned. Heck, I was even glad he was disappointed with his assignment. Unfortunately, without proof I’ll have a hard time convincing others he’s the Sithspawn who gave us up to the Imps.

Inyri swooped the airspeeder down and brought it in through a small round portal on the shadowed midlevel of a building. A round plug of a door rolled in place after they entered. Lights came on in a hangar, revealing it to be empty except for a racked speeder bike off to the right. Inyri brought the airspeeder to a stop, letting it settle on the hangar floor.

“I guess we got here before the others.” With her hands on the top of the windscreen, Inyri pulled herself up out of the airspeeder. “I hope they make it.”

“I can vote for that.” Corran clambered out of the back of the airspeeder and walked over to the speeder bike. He pressed a hand against the cold metal of its engine housing, then turned as the doorway into the interior of the building opened.

“You’ll want to get away from the speeder bike.” Zekka Thyne emerged from the building with a blaster carbine leveled in Corran’s direction. “Get your hands up. Hmmm. I can see why you security types like saying that, such a feeling of power. You, too, Terrik. Inyri, take their blasters.”

Mirax frowned. “What’s going on here?”

Corran raised his hands to shoulder height as Inyri collected his gun. “Patches sold us out.”

Inyri shook her head. “Impossible. He hates the Imps as much as you do—as much as any of us do.”

Corran jerked a thumb toward the speeder bike. “The engine’s cold. We got no warning because he wasn’t there. Didn’t want to take a chance the Imps would shoot him up.”

“I knew you’d figure it out, just the same way I knew they wouldn’t get you.” Thyne sneered at him. “You and your father always were lucky. That’s the only way you got me, your old man was luckier than I was.”

“It wasn’t luck. My father was smarter than you were. He still is.”

“He’s dead.”

“My point stands.” Corran shrugged. “What did you figure you’d tell Vorru after everyone else got wiped out in the raid? Or did you figure it wouldn’t matter?”

Mirax slowly nodded. “He’s got a plan to get away, Corran. He’s going to sell you to his Imperial contact for safe passage and a new identity on a new world.”

Thyne’s smile broadened to hideous proportions. “Close, very close, except in one detail.” The carbine rose to shoulder height. “Kirtan Loor just wants a corpse.”

The whine of a single blaster shot filled the hangar and the bolt tinted everything with the color of blood. Thyne staggered, then slumped back against the wall. His legs collapsed and his carbine clattered to the ground. With both hands he tried to stem the steaming blood dribbling from his belly.

Corran looked over at Inyri, his gaze drawn to her because of the blaster pistol falling from her hands, then ran over to Thyne. Squatting down he could tell from the way blood soaked the man’s clothes that there wasn’t anything he could do for him. “Unless you have a bacta tank in there, you’re dead.”

“Then I’m dead. Just like your father.” A wet cough wracked Thyne. “You want to know if I had him killed, yes?”

Corran shook his head. “No. I wouldn’t believe whatever you told me and it wouldn’t bring him back.” And since you really want to torture me with it, I won’t give you the satisfaction of thinking I do want to know.

Thyne grimaced against the pain that contracted his muscles. “Let me tell you this. Loor knows about you. He knew about you before he forced me to betray you. I sold you out this time, but someone else sold you out before me.”

Corran’s jaw dropped open. Tycho! But Wedge said he’d died on Noquivzor so I couldn’t have seen him here. Someone else? Who?

Thyne forced a laugh. “There, I will haunt you.”

“No, you’ll just be dead and you’ll die knowing you’ve warned me about an enemy I didn’t know I had.” Corran patted the man on the shoulder, pulling his hand back before Thyne could bite weakly at it. “You’ve just saved my life, Zekka Thyne, and that’s something we’ll both remember until death takes us.”

Thyne’s head lolled to the left and his body slackened. Corran stood and saw Mirax comforting Inyri. He started to open his mouth to say something, but Mirax caught his eye and shook her head to forestall his comment. He closed his mouth again realizing that the question he would have asked, though simple, probably would not have a simple answer. Nor an answer I really have a chance of understanding.

He didn’t even know if he should thank Inyri for saving his life by shooting her lover. Corran admitted to himself that he’d not have thought she’d do that for all the stars in the galaxy. Her reaction toward him had been hostile from the moment they’d met on Kessel. Corran clearly remembered Inyri dispassionately handing Thyne a blaster so Thyne could kill him at the Headquarters. Later she had seemed to resent his helping her escape from the Imperials after her speeder bike had been shot down.

Every clue she’d given him suggested that if Thyne had been slow in shooting him, she’d have gladly done the job rather speedily.

Inyri eased herself free of Mirax’s embrace and sat back against the airspeeder’s hull. The front end of the vehicle hid Thyne’s body from her view though a thin rivulet of blood was meandering toward a drain in the center of the hangar floor. She hid her face in her hands, sobbed silently a bit, then wiped away her tears.

When she looked over at him, despite the red rimming her eyes, she looked eerily like her sister, Lujayne. “You want to know why.”

Corran nodded. He’d heard enough preambles to confessions to know that she needed to talk more than he wanted to have her actions explained. “If you want to tell me.”

“Coming from Kessel, it marks you. No one respects you because they assume you’re a criminal. When you tell them you aren’t they just assume you’re a liar. Even the prisoners don’t respect you—they all come from worlds that have more going for them than spice mines and a prison. If you’re born there you can never escape Kessel.”

Corran felt a tight knot forming in his stomach. When he’d first met Lujayne Forge he’d prejudged her because of where she had come from. Everything Inyri said was true, but her sister hadn’t let that stop her. Lujayne had confronted Corran with his bias and made him see what he was doing. That experience with Lujayne had changed him. It had made him ready to look beyond where Inyri came from, but she’d prejudged and rejected him.

“Thyne helped me escape Kessel. He respected me. He made others respect me. He made me respect me. Yet in all the time I was with him I knew that he was not the sort of person I had been raised to respect. He was the antithesis of everything my parents had taught me was good and right in the galaxy.”

Mirax nodded. “But he respected you and valued you in a way you never thought you’d find.”

“Exactly.” Inyri looked up at Corran. “Every time you would show up I’d be reminded of what I’d been raised to believe. I tried to keep you away, but in the middle of a lightfight you and Gavin run out and pull me out of the street. Thyne didn’t do that. He didn’t turn around and come back for me, but I missed the signs even then.

“Today he didn’t warn me about what would happen at the factory. If you two hadn’t been there in the garage, I would have died. And when we got here, his central concern was killing you, not the fact that I’d survived. I realized that Thyne did respect me, but only for my usefulness to him. He thought he could trust me implicitly, which is rare among the members of the Black Sun.”

She shrugged. “So, he saved me from Kessel, but you saved me from the Imps and, through that, saved me from thinking I was worthless. That was worth more than Thyne’s respect … or his life. I guess that favor you said you owed my sister has been redeemed.”

“That favor I owe your sister, that’s one that will take a lifetime to pay off. What you did here, as far as I’m concerned, nulls the datacard between us. We’re even.” Corran smiled, then shook his head. “Of course, we’re still on Coruscant, we’re being hunted by Imperial stormtroopers, and Thyne told me we have yet another traitor in our midst. Seems to me this is the perfect time to be settling up accounts and making sure all our affairs are truly in order.”

Mirax nodded. “Never put off to tomorrow what you can do today.”

Inyri raised an eyebrow. “Except, perhaps, dying.”

“Good point.” Corran headed toward the door into the building. “Let’s get cleaned up and then we can go see if anyone else procrastinated their way past death.”

36

If the Force is with us, Gavin thought as he ducked around a corner, it’s definitely the dark side. Blaster bolts gnawed away at the wall, leaving the corner serrated and flaming. Looking to his right, he saw Ooryl and Nawara positioned inside a doorway, so he dove between them and rolled on past as they opened fire on the stormtroopers chasing them down the corridor.

Pursuit began almost immediately after they left the factory. They entered and moved through a number of buildings and thought they were in the clear when Portha shot a stormtrooper who challenged them. The stormtrooper went down but apparently lived long enough to report their location to his headquarters. Stormtroopers began to converge on the area, giving the Rogues few choices of where to run and even less time to consider them.

Wedge had insisted on going up, but the building they’d picked to give them access to the bridges on higher levels was probably the worst choice they could have made. A transparisteel and ferrocrete monolith, at the lower levels it stood absolutely alone, with no attachments, walkways, or links to other buildings. Up on the fiftieth level it branched out and gave them the access to other avenues of escape they desired, but getting to the fiftieth level proved to be the problem.

Coming up into a crouch, Gavin looked around and his heart sank. As with several previous floors, this one was an open square space centered on a lift and stairwell core. The floor-to-ceiling windows provided a lovely view of the shadowed levels of Coruscant—a view he found decidedly claustrophobic.

Especially with an Imperial Troop Transport gravtruck floating up to their level. An armored side panel snapped down on the truck’s boxy cargo pod. A stormtrooper framed himself in the opening and tossed something at the window. It stuck for a second, appearing to be a black amoebic blob, then it exploded, spraying transparisteel fragments into the room.

Gavin had already dived to the floor, but he still felt the sting of the shards on his left flank and face. We’ve had it.

“Stay down,” Wedge shouted above the din, “everyone stay down!”

Though he had no intention of making himself a target when trapped between two stormtrooper squads, he wondered if the Commander had snapped. Staying down was tantamount to surrendering, which would make sense except that the stormtroopers had never given any sign of being interested in taking prisoners. Looking to his left at the stormtroopers picking their way along the panel and entering through the broken window, Gavin didn’t get the impression they were more inclined to shows of compassion than the other stormtroopers they’d fought so far.

Then something odd happened. The gravtruck tipped up at the front, spilling two stormtroopers from the walkway and tossing those in the back from their feet. A half second later the thing that had made the driver shy hit the front end of the gravtruck and exploded. The concussion of the blast shattered more windows and obliterated the gravtruck’s cab. Beyond the floppy-limbed tumbling of broken stormtroopers, Gavin saw the gravtruck begin to break apart and slip from sight.

A sleek snubfighter shot up past their level, then came back around and flew directly toward the building. Though not as elegant as the next generation of starfighters, the black with gold trim Z-95 Headhunter came as a welcome sight to Gavin. Its blasters started blazing from each wingtip and sliced fire through the building’s central core. Sparks shot from ruptured electrical conduits and water gushed from shattered mains. Walls evaporated beneath the assault, and of the stormtroopers who had been following them, Gavin could see no trace.

The Headhunter pulled back as a long black repulsorlift vehicle rose into place. Wedge got up and ran toward the window even before the gull-wing door to the vehicle’s passenger compartment had fully opened. He waved the others forward and Gavin followed, but kept an eye on the downed stormtroopers and the central core to protect against further trouble.

“Gavin, go.”

“After you, sir.”

Wedge laughed, then winced. “Go, it’s an order.”

Gavin tossed his blaster carbine to Pash, then leapt into the vehicle and jammed himself between Erisi and the Trandoshan. Wedge followed and the vehicle dropped away from the building. Wind whistled in through the closing doors, and it wasn’t until silence again reigned that Gavin heard the driver’s voice. Once he did, Gavin recognized it and found the shocked look on the other Rogues’ faces mirrored his own surprise.

Wedge nodded toward the driver’s compartment. “Yes, Emtrey, I am hurt, but it’s not serious.”

Gavin shook his head and poked a finger in his right ear to try to clear it. “How can Emtrey be here?”

Rhysati nodded. “And who’s flying the Headhunter, Commander?”

“Tycho.”

Gavin’s face froze as his emotions went from elation to suspicion and the despair of betrayal. “How? He was killed at Noquivzor.”

Wedge shook his head slowly. “No, he wasn’t. The raid was real, but neither he nor Emtrey was there. Whistler was logging reports for both of them to make it appear like they were there. Both of them were actually here.”

Iella raised an eyebrow. “You brought them here, why?”

“There are two things I’ve learned in the Rebellion. The first is that what any of us thinks is secret is really information that can be used to purchase other, more valuable information. If it were deemed expedient and useful for our presence on Coruscant to become common knowledge, say, to show a potential ally that we are taking steps to take the world, that ally would learn we were here. It would only be a matter of time before that information got into Imperial hands and we got into trouble.”

Nawara nodded. “The fact that we were sold out today lends credence to this idea.”

“And that brings me to my second point—the opposition can only plan to handle those things they know about. Tycho has been here as long as the rest of us have and has been working for me. I wanted one sabacc card that wouldn’t change value on me and he was it. He’d been to Coruscant inside two years ago, knew how to get around, and, as we saw just now, has turned out to be very useful.”

Emtrey’s clamshell head swiveled around to the back. “Captain Celchu indicates we have no pursuit and are clear to our hideaway. He also has a message for you.”

“Link him through.”

“Wedge, I’d save this, but it’s time-critical.”

“Go ahead, we’re all friends here.”

“An urgent message came through for you while I was waiting.” Tycho’s voice grew somber. “We’ve got forty-eight hours to bring Coruscant’s shields down.”

37

Kirtan Loor bowed before Ysanne Isard. “Rogue Squadron is a threat no more.”

Isard nodded as if she had only half heard him. “They are not dead, however.”

“Not for lack of trying.” Loor smothered the frown that struggled to make itself manifest. Her order to him had been to prevent Rogue Squadron from doing whatever it was they had planned to do. Killing them was an option, and he certainly could have had a squadron of TIE bombers fly in and level the Palar factory. Had he done so he had no doubt he would have been criticized for the overkill. “Their escape is regrettable, but our forces have seized their weapon and equipment caches. They are helpless.”

Isard raised an eyebrow over her blue eye. “I hardly think the evidence justifies that statement.”

Her stare sent a shiver down his spine, but Loor raised his head defiantly. “I agree, Madam Director, that the appearance of a Headhunter and a transport vehicle are disturbing, but extrapolating too much from that makes no sense. I think we will find the people who helped them escape were mercenaries or bounty hunters. If Rogue Squadron had on hand the resources necessary to effect that rescue they would not have engineered a plan as weak as the one we disrupted.”

“Weak?” Isard began to pace through the open expanse of her office. “I saw it as quite subtle.”

“True. Analysis of some memory cores does indicate they contained programs that might have been able to insert security codes into the central computer that would have given the Rebels system-wide programming access. That might have enabled them to bring our shields down, but for how long? Overrides and failsafes in the system could have had the shields back up within an hour.”

“Provided, Agent Loor, that they only went for the shields. You seem to think their effort would be either one employing brute strength, or one that is subtle and elegant.” Isard shook her head. “Perhaps their first stage was meant to be subtle, but the second would be singularly crippling and enable them to destroy the central computer itself.”

“I do not discount that, Madam Director, but I do not think you believe what you are saying.” He held up a hand to postpone the angry reply her molten stare promised. “Bringing the central computer down would end all service on Imperial Center. All emergency services, all power, all water, all transportation. While that would be advantageous for them, the untold hardship it would visit upon the citizenry would work against them. Your plan to drain the Rebellion of bacta and money is predicated on their altruistic nature, which means you cannot believe they would be so crude.”

The heat in Isard’s stare slackened, then she nodded, once, and began to smile. “You surprise me, Agent Loor, with your insight. I had missed it before because of your inability to think through other things.”

Loor cringed inwardly. “I beg your pardon, Madam Director?”

“Did you think you could run Zekka Thyne as your own operative without my becoming aware of it?”

“That was not my intention, Madam Director. He was but a minor player and I thought not to bother you with insignificant details.”

“You lie. He was useful in supplying you information, but you primarily wanted him to kill Corran Horn.” The tall woman tapped a finger against her sharp chin. “It is just as well Thyne failed for I think I would like to meet this Corran Horn. It would be interesting to see why you fear him so.”

“I fear him because he can be relentless. He hates me because I freed the bounty hunter who murdered his father. Though not a crime, it is something for which he will not forgive me. Were he disposed toward murder, I would already be dead. Now that he has joined the Rebellion, killing me would not be murder.” Loor narrowed his eyes. “Playing with Corran Horn is playing with fire.”

“I am Iceheart, I do not burn.”

“Yes, Madam Director.”

Isard watched him for a moment, then nodded slowly. “I find myself in a curious position regarding you, Agent Loor. A project under your direction, the Krytos project, has not succeeded according to my specifications. You have also, it appears, grown something of a spine and I am inclined to crush you down for having done so.”

Fear clawed his heart but—and this surprised him—it found no real purchase there. It struck him that fear had been the motivating force for his life and the tool he used most often in dealing with others. He had first entered Imperial service out of fear of disappointing his parents. Fear of failure kept him pressing forward. Fear of embarrassment made him try to destroy Corran Horn and fear for his own life had marked his actions since Horn left CorSec.

He realized he’d lived in fear so long that he had become accustomed to it. As if it were an addictive drug, he required more and greater amounts to affect him. For the past two years he had operated at a high level of fear, at first because of Horn and then later because of Isard. Every threat Isard had thrown at him involved his termination for failure, and impending failure had seemed a constant companion for him. The pressure had not crushed him, and having lived through it, he was stronger for it.

Isard nodded slowly. “Very soon this world will become a festering pit of sick and dying aliens. I expect an inordinate number of Rebels will be here soon as well—them or Warlord Zsinj’s people. For these and other reasons I will remove myself to my Lusankya facility. I have there the seeds of the Rebellion’s complete destruction and they require cultivation.

“Imperial Center, on the other hand, needs slashing and burning. While I am content to let someone else take this world, I do not want their time on it to be easy. I do not want them to become complacent. I have determined, then, to leave behind a veritable web of Special Intelligence Operative commando and terrorist cells. I had not yet decided upon who I would sit as a spider in the center of that web, but it occurs to me that you would serve very well in that capacity. This spirit, this spine, it speaks well about your ability to act independently in my behalf.”

Part of him, the cold, calculating, and fearful part of him, screamed for the offer to be rejected. If Isard was correct and the Rebellion would soon possess the planet, there was no reason he should stay behind. It would be better to go with Isard to Lusankya and face death at her hands every day than it was to remain on Coruscant to live a life in the shadows.

Another part of him correctly assessed the position. He would almost constantly be in danger. There would be no sanctuary, no safe haven. Even so, he would be the master of his fate—his decisions would determine whether he lived or died. That very prospect terrified him and yet, at the same time, it exhilarated him. Horn had left the sheltered life CorSec offered and he had thrived. This was Loor’s chance to see if he, too, could stand on his own.

He pulled himself up to his full height. “You will make me, in effect, the Grand Moff of Imperial Center?”

“You will be the leader of the Palpatine Counterinsurgency Front. You will annoy the Rebels on Imperial Center as they have annoyed us throughout the galaxy. If you are successful, we will let the word of your movement spread throughout the galaxy. We want them focused on you so they will not be able to look too far ahead. Hobbling them by giving them this planet, then blinding them by making them focus on you means they will not see the snares I lay for them.”

She smiled coldly. “They stand united now, but that is because they have a common enemy. The Krytos virus, the scramble for power here, and your PCF will help fracture this Rebel Alliance into its constituent parts. Once that happens, once they allow themselves to be divided, sweeping them away will be nothing.”

Loor rubbed a hand over his chin. “If I succeed, what will my reward be?”

“If you succeed, you will do so because you will have mastered skills few people today possess.” Isard’s smile broadened, and even though he found the prospect of her being happy frightening, her amusement gratified him somehow. “In that case, Kirtan Loor, you will be in a position to tell me what your reward shall be, and to wrest it from me if I am foolish enough to deny it to you.”

Which means you will have to destroy me somewhere along the line, but that is not unexpected. Loor nodded. “I understand your offer and all it entails.”

“And?”

“And I accept it.”

“Excellent. I have already sent two Star Destroyers and several of the ground-based TIE wings off to prepare the way for what will be a mass exodus when the opposition arrives. I will disappear then.” Isard pressed her hands together. “To you I give the responsibility for Imperial Center, the Heart of the Empire. Ward your charge well and the glory that was Palpatine’s empire will once again shine forth to illuminate the galaxy.”

38

The location Tycho had found to serve as a hideaway surprised Wedge because it seemed quite unusual for Coruscant. Though he did not believe the room actually was beneath the surface of Coruscant itself, it had the sort of feel that made Wedge think of it as subterranean. The ceiling climbed up into a vault that had been finished to look as if it was part of a cavern, complete with stalactites hanging down. However, rust stains and lime scale added details that reminded him where he really was.

So did the moist trash midden in the heart of the room. It consisted largely of things slowly disintegrating to mush, but a few brightly colored plastic things spotted the corroded orange pile like mold. Nothing looked very useful and it all smelted rather bad, a fact that had Shiel feeling rather out of sorts. The moisture in the midden contributed to the room’s microclimate, evaporating and then condensing on the ceiling to drip back down again.

Gavin seemed to be the only person who didn’t mind being dripped upon. “On Tatooine I never even saw rain, much less got rained on.” For the others the dripping water seemed to make their moods more foul and none became quite as foul as Corran’s did when he saw Tycho.

Wedge had spotted Corran’s anger rising up through his surprise. He pulled the younger man aside and away from the others. “Do you want me to apologize for deceiving you, Corran?”

Corran’s green eyes flared. “You’re my commanding officer. You don’t need to explain yourself to me, sir.” The hurt in his voice was unmistakable, but so was the implacability in his eyes. “I’m glad to see Captain Celchu was not killed at Noquivzor.”

“Corran, I chose to keep Tycho’s presence here a secret to safeguard him and to give us a weapon the other side knew nothing about.”

“Wedge, I saw him talking with Kirtan Loor at the Headquarters.”

“Tycho said he was there meeting with a Duros gunrunner named Lai Nootka. He didn’t see you, but he wasn’t meeting any Imp agent, that’s for certain. Had he seen you and the trouble you were in, he would have helped.”

“I bet.”

Wedge grabbed Corran by the shoulders. “Look, he had instructions to contact you if something happened to me. You were going to be told, but only when it was necessary. It wasn’t necessary until now.”

Corran’s head came up. “When Zekka Thyne was dying he said Kirtan Loor knew we were on Coruscant before he pressed Thyne into his service. There’s a lying snake among us.”

“And you believe what he said?”

“Shouldn’t I?”

“Should you?” Wedge’s brown eyes narrowed. “Why do you think Thyne said that to you?”

Corran hesitated. “He wanted to hurt me, sure, but that doesn’t mean he was lying.”

“No, but it also doesn’t mean he was telling the truth, either. He reported what Loor told him.” Wedge frowned. “We’ve not seen Aril Nunb since the warehouse. It is entirely possible she was interrogated before Loor confronted Thyne. Loor bluffed and Thyne believed him.”

Corran slowly shook his head. “I worked with Loor for years and the one thing I never saw him do was bluff. The man’s got a memory retention rate that rivals Winter’s. Instead of letting a suspect guess at what he did or didn’t know, Loor just started reeling facts off. He’d overwhelm a suspect with detail, proving how smart he was, so it would seem obvious to the suspect that sooner rather than later the truth would be found out. No, if Loor told Thyne he knew we were here, he did. And, remember, at the point she was taken, Aril didn’t know anyone outside her group was here.”

He has a point there, but he’s still inferring a great deal from a dying man’s last statement. “You think Tycho is the Imperial agent?”

“You know his history. What do you think?”

“I do know his history, but the whole of it.” Wedge pointed over to where Tycho and Winter sat in close conversation. “I’ve watched him go through countless missions against the enemy. He has a facility for being in the right place at the right time.”

“A bonus for a spy.”

“Or for a hero. He’s saved my life and he saved yours, as I recall, on numerous occasions for the both of us. I trust him absolutely. If there is a spy—and I don’t find a spiteful tale told by Zekka Thyne very reliable—I’d sooner believe it was any one of us than I would believe it is Tycho. More importantly, though, I need Tycho and everyone else if we’re going to bring the shields down tomorrow night.”

Corran folded his arms across his chest. “So you’re telling me to leave it alone even though his presence might jeopardize whatever we do?”

Wedge opened his hands. “Look, Corran, I respect your instincts, I really do, but I’ve been down here for fifteen hours more than you have. Our other caches have been hit by Imps. This is the only safe place for us. If Tycho had betrayed us, this place would have been hit, too. And, yes, the Imps could be holding off for some other reason, but I can’t think of one aside from their not knowing where we are. That may not seem like much to you, but it’s enough for me to hope we have a shot at accomplishing our mission here.”

The younger man frowned heavily. “It isn’t much, but right now it’s more solid than anything I have. I’ll try to keep an open mind here, but if the least little thing gets screwed up, I’m going to find out who did what and there will be hell to pay.”

“I’ll back you all the way.”

“I guess that’s as good as it gets, given the circumstances.”

Wedge brushed a droplet of water off his shoulder. “That’s not saying much here.” He led Corran over to an area with a table and chairs set up under an overhang. “If I could have everyone over here, we need to figure out what we’re going to be doing. Any and all suggestions are welcome.”

The others gathered around the table. Aside from the members of Rogue Squadron the group included Iella, Winter, Mirax, Inyri, Portha, and Asyr. The Trandoshan and Shiel both remained on cots and did not join the meeting. Wedge could see both were sleeping, albeit fitfully in Shiel’s case, so he decided not to waken them. Better they rest now and are able to fight later.

Wedge leaned forward on the table. “Our basic problem is the same as it’s always been: The shields on this rock have to come down. We took one shot at getting a computer override established, but that didn’t work. What do we do now?”

Winter raised a hand. “Things are not exactly the same as they have always been. The loss of the memory cores means the central computer has begun to delegate jobs to the subsidiary systems to conserve memory media. The disks they’re using now are in sad shape—a lot more errors are creeping into things. They’ve got a construction droid building a new manufacturing plant as an adjunct to the computer center to bring the memory-core manufacture under Imperial control, but it won’t be able to turn out product for another two days.”

Wedge shivered. He’d seen construction droids work before and found their efficiency as impressive as he did their potential for destruction. Vast, huge machines, they combined the whole of the manufacturing cycle in one highly mobile package. The front end used lasers and other tools to dissect a structure. Little ancillary droids—some as big as a gravtruck—sorted through the debris and fed the appropriate bits of material into the constructor’s gullet. There metal was resmelted, stone ground down to dust and reconstituted, then extruded in girders, blocks, sheets, and trim. The aft end of the construction droid then took the building blocks and, in accord with preprogrammed plans, created a new structure where the old one had been. Specialized subsidiary construction droids equipped with repulsorlift coils built the walkways that linked structures and worked on the delicate upper reaches of the highest towers on Coruscant.

“It’s hard to believe that a factory can be built and running in three days, but that’s progress.”

Asyr growled. “I hope they evicted the tenants of the building they destroyed to make the factory. They keep forgetting to do that when they have one of those monsters take a slice out of Invisec.”

Corran frowned. “If I remember correctly, the subsidiary computer facilities are not as well guarded as the central computer. This makes them vulnerable to an attack, right?”

“True, but using one of the computers to bring down the shields means we’re only going to get a small portion of the shields down.” Wedge shook his head. “This forces us to concentrate our assault teams in one place and allows the Empire to do the same with their defenses. This world is too well defended for the Alliance to take it by storm.”

Gavin shot from his chair and clapped his hands together. “That’s it! We take the world by storm.”

Only the dripping sound of water violated the silence that greeted Gavin’s remark. Everyone stared at him and Gavin blushed.

Wedge nodded slowly. “What are you talking about, Gavin?”

“I’m talking about the storms we’ve seen here before. A cloud comes up and a lightning storm hits.”

Corran shook his head. “Conjuring a storm up isn’t that easy, Gavin.”

“No, Corran, it is.” Gavin raked his fingers back through wet hair. “My uncle on Tatooine is a food magnate who has a virtual monopoly on water rights and moisture farms. He wants all the water he can get. Hundreds of people have come to him with schemes to bring rain to Tatooine, and probably ten times that number have come up with schemes they intend to use to break Uncle Huff’s control of the water market. Most he ignores, but occasionally he pays someone off. One of the guys he paid off was someone who had a plan to seed the atmosphere with chemical crystals around which water would condense. The water would form clouds and the clouds would produce rain.”

Wedge straightened up. “Doesn’t that presuppose there is sufficient water vapor already in the air? Aside from this place, Coruscant seems rather lacking in humidity.”

“And when there is some, a storm forms almost instantly.” Pash nodded at Iella. “We saw one of those fast-forming storms when we were at the museum.”

Corran smiled. “Perhaps we could get everyone in the Black Sun and Alien Combine to put a pot on to boil at the same time.”

Everyone laughed except for Winter. “Boiling is a good idea, but we need a lot of water set to boil all at one time. That requires lots of water and lots of heat.”

Corran opened his hands. “So, where do we get that much water?”

Winter chewed on her lower lip for a second. “Water gets melted at the polar glaciers, then pumped through long aqueducts to pumping stations and deep reservoirs throughout the equatorial areas of the city. There’s plenty of water in any one of the reservoirs.”

“But how do we vaporize it?” Wedge scratched at the back of his head. “Thermal detonators are too inefficient, and repeated strafing runs to use lasers on it would take too long. We need a lot of heat, but we need it delivered all at once.”

“I’ve got it.” Asyr smiled proudly. “We use one of the orbital mirrors. They’re designed to concentrate sunlight and deliver it to the planet to warm up the colder regions. We redirect one of them to focus on a reservoir and it’ll vaporize the duracrete, transparisteel, and water in short order.”

“The problem there, Asyr, is getting up to the mirror.” Corran shook his head. “We’d have to get through the shields we want to bring down first, and that’s not going to be easy, then we have to take the mirror. By the time we finished assaulting it, the Golan Space Defense stations would shoot it down or a TIE starfighter wing would come up and destroy it.”

Iella looked over at Winter. “Are the mirrors crew-controlled or ground-controlled?”

“Ground-controlled. Mirror duty is considered punishment. The crews that maintain the facilities go out to repair damage from strikes by debris, but that’s about it.”

Wedge’s eyes narrowed. “Presumably you’re suggesting we take control of a ground station and redirect one of the orbital mirrors to vaporize a reservoir. That water vapor will condense into a monster storm that will strike with lightning all over the place, taking down the power grid. As the computers try to match power to demand, we should get a complete power grid collapse.”

Iella smiled. “You got a better idea?”

“Unfortunately, no.” Wedge frowned. “The weak link here, as I see it, is taking the control station.”

“The orbital mirrors are controlled by the subsidiary computer centers.” Winter glanced at her datapad. “The nearest should be SCC Number Four, just south of the Imperial Palace.”

“Do we have enough people to assault it and get us in fast enough that we can do what needs to be done without interference?” Wedge looked around the table and saw frowns or blank expressions except on one face. “Lieutenant Horn, you have an idea?”

“Yeah, we evict folks from that center.”

“What?”

Corran leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “There’s a construction droid building a factory within a laser shot from that center, right? We get a crew in to take control of the factory and have it go rogue. It heads straight for the computer center. I don’t think anyone is going to remain on station while a Death Star’s little brother comes toward him gobbling up cityscape. It stops short of destroying the center, but our crew should be able to get in and get working on the orbital mirror. Moreover, we can have the construction droid spitting out a new central computer facility with some of our own code sliced into it. If we take the planet, we’ll be up and running even if the Imps blow the old center.”

“And if the Imps manage to stop the construction droid before it hits the abandoned computer center, they’ll think they’ve muted our attack and thwarted us.” Wedge nodded. “I see it. Emtrey, do you know how to run a construction droid?”

The droid’s head came up. “I have had some experience with smaller manufacturing systems, sir, so I believe I can determine what we need to do.”

Mirax raised a hand. “I’ve used one of the small ones to fabricate some storage areas for my father. Count me in on that crew.”

“Right.” Wedge felt a twinge of pain in his ribs. “With broken ribs I’m not flight ready, so I’ll go on that one, too. Iella?”

“I’m with you.”

“Good.” Wedge rubbed his hands together. “Winter, you’re the best slicer we’ve got here, so you’ve got to be going into the center. Tycho, Gavin, and Ooryl, you’ll round out that crew.”

Corran looked up at Wedge. “What about the rest of us?”

“You’re flying cover.”

“Commander, I don’t think you’re going to fit the rest of us in the cockpit of a Headhunter.”

“True, which is why Tycho has procured six of them.” Wedge smiled broadly. “Corran, you’ll fly with Erisi on your wing, Rhysati and Pash will fly together and …” He looked over at Shiel. “Hmmm, Nawara, you might have to fly alone.”

Asyr raised her hand. “Commander Antilles, I’m combat-qualified in a Headhunter.”

“Excuse me?”

The Bothan looked down sheepishly. “You know me as Asyr Sei’lar, but what you don’t know is that I’m a graduate of the Bothan Martial Academy. I graduated a year behind Peshk Vri’syk. He was good enough to join Rogue Squadron last year, and I was his equal when we were trained. It’s been a while since I’ve flown, but I can handle the fighter.”

Wedge raised an eyebrow. “What would a member of the Bothan military be doing here on Coruscant?”

“I’d rather not say, sir.”

“I can understand that.” Wedge nodded slowly. “Well, then, you’ve got number six with Nawara in five.”

The Twi’lek shook his head and Wedge noticed his normally ash-colored flesh had taken on a creamy tone that, in some places, seemed translucent. “I think I’m coming down sick, sir. I’m not certain I’m flight capable. The ryll I’ve taken is helping a bit, but I’m still not feeling well enough to fly.”

“I’m not formally qualified to fly, but I’ve done a lot of simming.” Inyri bit her lower lip. “Lujayne used to train against me. She was better than I was and beat me regularly, but not all the time.”

Corran smiled. “I’ve seen her pilot a speeder bike and an airspeeder. She does well in the tight confines of these urban canyons.”

Wedge was tempted to take her up on her offer, but he held back. “I believe what you’ve told me, Inyri, but I can’t take responsibility for your first starfighter combat taking place on Coruscant. What I’d rather have you do is deliver Winter and the others to the computer center. That will take some fancy airspeeder flying because we’ll be grinding a lot of stuff up in the area.”

“Commander,” Erisi began, “if we have Asyr or Inyri bring in some more people for the ground teams, we could free up Gavin, Captain Celchu, or Ooryl and give us six pilots.”

“No, we’re not bringing anyone else in.” Wedge leaned forward again on the table. “Corran has brought to my attention the potential for betrayal. Zekka Thyne informed the Imperials of our plans for the factory. We’re going to need all the time we have remaining to double- and triple-check our plans and equipment, then we’re going. No one here is going to communicate with anyone outside just to make sure the Imps have no inkling of what we’re going to do. This effort must succeed.”

Gavin slowly shook his head. “Fourteen against a world. Those are long odds.”

“Lieutenant Darklighter, I’m a Corellian. I have no use for odds.” Wedge smiled broadly, putting as much confidence as he could into it. “No doubt the Imps have a sizable house edge here, but now the war has come to Coruscant, which means they’re playing our game, and that makes everything even all over again.”

39

Corran Horn tightened the straps on his life-support controller, adjusting the boxy device as he went to get it centered on his chest. He much preferred having the controller built into his command chair as it was on his CorSec X-wing, but the Z-95 was more primitive than that, so he had to wear it. He punched a button, putting the device through a self-check, then got a tone indicating everything was in good working order.

Mirax smiled broadly as she came walking over and succeeded in forestalling the dread her black Imperial uniform sparked in him. “We’re getting ready to head out. Are you okay?”

Corran nodded. “Yeah. We’ve gone over all the Headhunters from nose to stern and they check out.”

“So I gather. I recall seeing you and Erisi in close conversation.”

Corran felt hot color rise in his cheeks. “That was a prelude to a group discussion. We ended up adjusting the sensor packages and zeroing the blasters at 150 meters. We figured that dogfights would be close and shots of over 150 meters in the canyons here are going to be rare.”

“Take care of yourself out there.”

“Hey, my job is making sure to keep TIEs and others off you.” Corran reached out and tapped the tip of her nose with his finger. “Look, it will be crazy out there. In all likelihood Rogue Squadron will get a few more heroes inducted into its Hall of the Dead …”

Mirax gave him a smirk. “Corran, if this is one of those ‘tomorrow we might die so we should be together tonight’ speeches, your timing is lousy since tomorrow is now and last night ended when this morning started.”

“I know.” Corran laughed at the nervousness he felt. “I guess what I’m trying to say is this: Before Coruscant I found you interesting and attractive. Since we’ve been here I’ve gotten to know more about you, to see how you react under pressure and how effortlessly you seem to get along with others. I admire the qualities that I’ve seen in you and, well, if we both come out of this, I’d like the opportunity to get to know you even better.”

“Corran Horn, are you asking me out?” Mirax’s dark eyes sparkled. “Or was there some pool that you lost?”

“If there’d been a pool, I’d have bought up all the tickets.” He sighed. “Mirax, we’ve got enough things going against us, like our respective backgrounds, that the chances of things working out are bad.”

“But we’re Corellians, so what use have we for odds?” She pressed a finger to his lips, then leaned forward and kissed him. “And just to let you know, you’re not the only one who’s been impressed here, so you’re on. You’re taking me to the biggest and best victory celebration the New Republic throws on this rock.” Mirax tapped a finger against the box on his chest. “Life-support gear optional.”

“I’ll be there.” He kissed her in return, then looked up and saw Wedge heading over to the black airspeeder Emtrey was to use to get them to the construction droid. “You better get going.”

“The Force be with you.”

“And with you.” Corran smiled as she ran off. He felt particularly lucky and hoped that sensation would continue throughout the mission, then he turned and found himself face-to-face with Tycho Celchu. “Captain.”

“I’m glad you’ll be flying the black and gold Headhunter. I think it’s the best of the lot, which is why I used it the other day. I just checked it out, everything looks fine, and I know I can trust you to bring it back in one piece.”

“I’ll do my best, sir.” Corran refused to look him in the eye. “If you will excuse me, sir.”

“No, wait a minute.” Tycho shifted to the right to block his path. “I want you to know you’re wrong about me. I didn’t meet Kirtan Loor the night you saw me. I’m not working for the Imps.”

Corran exhaled slowly. “Captain, Wedge has asked me to let it go, and so I will, for now, but there are too many odd things here to make me leave it alone forever.”

“Such as?”

“Such as your being here when Alliance Intelligence thinks you’re buried in rubble on Noquivzor. Such as my seeing you here with an agent of Imperial Intelligence. Such as your vacation at Lusankya.” Muscles bunched at the corners of Corran’s jaw. “Such as Bror Jace being ambushed and killed by Imperials after you obtained permission for him to travel and plotted his course for him.”

Tycho’s face slackened slightly. “But that’s all circumstantial. Nothing is proven.”

“Nothing’s proven yet.” Corran looked him square in the face. “The fact that there’s no solid evidence against you just means you’re real good.”

The other man’s blue eyes sharpened. “Or, Lieutenant Horn, it means I’ve left no evidence because I’m completely innocent.”

“I guess we’ll see about that, Captain Celchu.” Corran rested his fists on his hips. “When I return, I’m going to make ferreting out the spy in our midst a hobby. I’m good at that sort of thing, very good.”

Tycho opened his hands. “And you’re honest, so I know I have nothing to fear.”

His calm reply surprised Corran. There was an utter defenselessness about it he’d never encountered before. He wasn’t certain how to take that remark, so he shunted it aside. “Well, Captain, if you do have anything to fear, I’ll find it.”

“Fly well, Corran.” Tycho gave Corran a nod, then walked off. Beyond him Corran saw Pash Cracken looking in his direction, but he turned away quickly and rubbed at an invisible spot on his red and green Headhunter’s cockpit canopy.

Corran walked past him toward his own fighter. Erisi glanced up from where her blue Headhunter with red trim sat, then walked over on an intercept course. Corran forced a smile on his face. “Set to go, Erisi?”

“Yes. I still wish we were flying together.”

“I’d be happy to have you on my wing.” With Asyr’s joining the flight, Wedge had adjusted assignments so Pash flew with the Bothan and Erisi joined Rhysati. That left Corran alone, but he’d been alone before in combat zones and both he and Wedge knew anyone other than Pash Cracken would have a hard time keeping up with him anyway. “With me flying solo we can lull the Imps into a false sense of security.”

“The last thing they’ll feel is regret.” Erisi smiled easily at him. “Are you feeling well? You’re not coming down sick like Nawara and Shiel, are you?”

Corran shook his head. “No. I’ll be fine. I, ah, I just had a confrontation with Tycho. The Empire owns him, I can feel it. I told him that when I got back I’d dig up all the clues concerning the spy in our midst and prove he was involved in getting Bror Jace ambushed and jeopardizing our mission here.”

“I can see how that might have you out of sorts.” She reached out and stroked his arm. “If there’s anything I can do to help you, let me know.”

“Thanks, Erisi, I appreciate it.” He winked at her, then stepped back and let a loud whistle echo through the cavern. “Let’s go, Rogues. It’s time to get moving. Our people will be in position inside fifteen minutes, which means our prey will show up shortly thereafter. Shoot straight and fly fast.”

40

The datapad’s stuttered trilling attracted Kirtan Loor’s attention. He walked over from where he had been inventorying weapons to be distributed to his command and tapped a button on the datapad. The nature of the sound had told him the message was urgent and of a high priority as well. The message the datapad displayed lived up to its billing.

So an Interdictor cruiser has been spotted at the fringe of our system. Those ships are too big and too valuable to use as scouts. Either it is meant to decoy some of our forces out away from this planet or it is the vanguard of an invasion fleet. He knew, without a doubt, the latter case was the truth, but that prospect did not fill him with the dread it might have six months earlier. His reason for existing now required a Rebel invasion and conquest of Coruscant. Our shields aren’t down, so they must mean to make a fight of it or …

Loor hit some more buttons and checked to see if any warnings had come in from the Rogue Squadron spy. He saw nothing, but curiosity and caution caused him to delve a bit deeper. Using a security override program he discovered all messages from the agent inside Rogue Squadron had been reclassified to “Isard Eyes Only.” She had engineered it so all those messages were routed to her first so she could decide their disposition. Loor knew if he challenged her on it, she would say it was done so he would not be distracted during his preparations.

At another stage in his life he would have wasted valuable time and energy trying to work a way around Isard’s action, but no more. What the spy had to say was no longer important to the conduct of his mission. Isard wanted Coruscant to fall into the hands of the Rebellion, so it would. Since he already knew who the spy was, reestablishing contact at a later date would not be particularly difficult, should the need arise.

Best if I assume that the Rogues are up to something. Fine. I wish them all the Force-inspired success they desire. Once they win, once they drop their guard, then we will hit them and hit them hard. He laughed aloud and returned to his work. “Not much longer from now the Rebels will have what they most desire. And shortly thereafter they will learn they don’t really want it at all.”

The black airspeeder raced through the night-dim streets on a course that brought it parallel to the construction droid’s path, then Emtrey cut the wheel left and pulled back. The airspeeder climbed rapidly, then the nose eased down and Emtrey steered in toward the flat landing surface built behind the droid’s control center. “I will have us down in fifteen seconds, sir.”

Wedge fitted the mask over the right side of his head. He spoke the command that inflated the air bladders that clamped the helmet in place. “How do I look?” he croaked.

“Very Imperial, Colonel Roat.” Iella gave him a nod.

Mirax looked less comfortable with his disguise. “You look very cyborg.”

“Good. That lessens my chance of being recognized.” Wedge rode out the slight bump as Emtrey put the vehicle down on the construction droid. A faint hum filled the air, but it grew to a hideous din when the airspeeder’s gull-wing doors opened. Wedge got out of the speeder first, then helped both Mirax and Iella disembark.

A man wearing a red helmet and an orange jumpsuit waved both hands at them as he came running over. “You can’t be here. Get going or I call for stormtroopers.”

Wedge leaned forward and frowned, tapping the metal over his right ear. “I cannot hear you.”

“I SAID …”

“Too much noise.”

The workman frowned, then bid all of them to follow him with a curt wave. He led them into a small foyer just outside the command center. The door closed behind them, cutting the noise almost to nothing. “You can’t be here.”

“I am Colonel Antar Roat and these are my aides. I have come for a safety inspection.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

Mirax gave the man a withering stare. “Of course not, idiot. If you did, this inspection wouldn’t be a surprise, would it?”

Iella held a hand out. “Your identification and work permits please.”

“Wait.” The man went for the identification cards and held them out. “I should check with …”

Iella snatched the datacards from him. “Compounding the possible charges against you? Is there a conspiracy between you and your cohorts? How much do they pay you for your part in the smuggling operation?” Iella paced around him like a Thevaxan Marauder stalking prey.

“What smuggling?” The man’s hands came up as he turned to face her. “I don’t know no …”

Wedge’s boxy right hand crashed onto the back of the man’s head, dropping him to the ground. Iella immediately turned to the interior door while Mirax let Emtrey into the foyer. The droid held blaster carbines for each of the others and passed them out carefully. Iella checked hers, then passed the downed man’s identification card through the coded slot.

The door buzzed. Iella jerked it open and Wedge and Mirax hurried through it, brandishing their weapons at the trio of men lounging at a hologame table. Beyond them, filling the walls of the rectangular command center, mojiitors, gauges, dials, and lights displayed an unending amount of information about every phase of the construction droid’s operation. The multicolored lights tended mostly to be green, which underscored the sick pallor of the men’s flesh tones.

“Lie down on the floor and no one gets hurt.” Mirax pointed her carbine at the men and smiled. “I ask once—after that I have the droid pitch your bodies off the front and you’ll end up as compost in some Ithorian’s indoor garden, understand? That’s it, hug that deck and you won’t have to be enlightened.”

Iella held the door open as Wedge went back through and dragged the unconscious man into the cockpit. The other three looked shocked to see him down, but his snores reassured them somewhat as to their own fate. Iella used some synthetic binders to fasten their hands behind their backs and link their legs together. “They can be tightened, gentlemen, so rest easy and there will be no need to make you more uncomfortable.”

While Iella took over covering the men, Wedge removed his mask and joined Mirax at the command console. “Can you drive this thing?”

Mirax tipped her head to one side, then the other, hesitated, then nodded. “It’s a bit more complex than the one I’ve used before, but I think Emtrey can help me through this. Emtrey, bring this monster around on a new heading for our target.”

“Yes, Mistress Terrik. There, new course is set.”

The main viewscreen showed a nighttime landscape of lights and shadows begin to scroll across as the construction droid executed a ninety-degree turn toward the south. In the distance, between two stocky office towers, Wedge made out the squat form of Subsidiary Computer Center Number Four. “Right on target.”

“Good.” Mirax looked up and hit a glowing red button. The light started flashing red.

“What’s that?”

“All government buildings are required to have evacuation alarms in the case of a catastrophe.”

Wedge smiled. “Like a construction droid bearing down on it?”

“It’s easy to see how you got that squadron command, Wedge.” Mirax poked him playfully in the stomach with an elbow. “The alarms are going off in every building for ten kilometers along our line of advance. The same evacuation alarms are required in residential areas with a relatively high assessed value. Not so in places like Invisec.”

Emtrey turned from his position. “Sir, I have inserted the auxiliary code into the blueprints here. Our computer center is begun.”

The buildings in their path immediately came alive with lights moving at a variety of speeds. Wedge scanned the console and punched a button, shifting the image over from visible light to infrared. He saw traces from all manner of speeders heading out and away. A solid mass of gold tinged with red at the top and bottom surged across the bridges connecting the doomed towers with safer buildings.

The console’s comm unit came alive. “This is the Ministry of Planning and Zoning. Construction droid Foursixnine, do you have a problem? We’re showing a deviation of your course.”

Wedge hit the reply button. “No problem here, we just have new plans. With Coruscant being under new management, we wanted to get things started early to ease the transition.”

“What are you talking about? Who is this?”

“Rogue Squadron Contracting. X-wings are faster, but they don’t build things as nicely as this does. Antilles out.” He hit the comm, terminating the conversation. “There, think that will make us a target?”

Iella laughed. “If it doesn’t, that’s just one more example of why the Empire is too stupid to survive.”

Captain Uwlla Iillor of the New Republic Interdictor cruiser Corusca Rainbow glanced at the Chronographie display built into the arm of her command chair, then up at the holographic representation of Coruscant hovering in the middle of the bridge. The display indicated there were only twenty standard minutes left before the Rebel fleet would be within range for her to pull them from hyperspace. If she did not, they would continue on into the system and arrive around Coruscant to do battle for the Jewel of the Empire.

The hologram of Coruscant—which was based on Imperial Traffic Control data broadcast to the system—showed the world as a translucent sphere studded with a rainbow of lights. Superimposed over that were two spheres made up of hexagonal tiles. As long as those spheres were there, indicating the presence of shields around Coruscant, Captain Iillor was under orders to power up her ship’s gravity well projectors and pull the fleet from hyperspace prematurely. The situation was desperate enough that Admiral Ackbar had even said a partial shield failure would be sufficient to let the fleet continue on in, provided Captain Iillor felt the shield outage was significant.

The decision she had to make was even more difficult than the choice to defect with her ship and crew to the Rebellion. While Ackbar had been clear in his instructions to her, she knew the conquest of Coruscant would significantly cripple the Empire and correspondingly enrich the New Republic. That she had been placed in such a position of trust and power showed her how different the Republic was from the Empire and because of that difference she didn’t want to make the wrong decision.

Lieutenant Jhemiti, her Mon Calamari First Officer, held a datapad out for her inspection. “Projector crews have run full system diagnostics on their equipment and we are ready to power up when you give the word.”

She glanced at the times appended to each diagnostics run. “The crew is slow. We can’t have that.”

The Mon Calamari opened his mouth in a smile. “Few believe we’ll be activating the gravity well projectors, Captain.”

Iillor raised an eyebrow. “And why is that, Lieutenant?”

Jhemiti hesitated for a moment. “Rumor has it that the people we have on the ground are Rogue Squadron. They’ve killed Death Stars. They’ll accomplish their mission.”

“Ah, yes, Rogue Squadron.” The Captain smiled slightly. “Let me tell you, Lieutenant, I’ve fought Rogue Squadron. They drove this ship off. They cost me almost all of my TIE fighters, too, in doing so. Were anyone else down there, I would take their failure for granted. With them, I am willing to allow the possibility they will succeed.”

Jhemiti blinked and the gold flecks in his red scales sparkled. “But Rogue Squadron is known for accomplishing the impossible.”

“If reputations alone won wars, Lieutenant, Darth Vader would still live and you’d still be a slave.” Captain lillor nodded grimly and looked at the chronometer again. “There are eighteen minutes on the clock—eighteen minutes for a squadron to strip a planet of its defenses. We’ll let them have every second we can, but we will be ready to do our duty if they cannot do theirs.”

41

Gavin jammed his hands against the dashboard of the airspeeder as Inyri flew through the cloud of dust being raised by the construction droid. Even in the enclosed cab of the speeder he could hear the warning klaxons blaring at Subsidiary Computer Center Number Four. As they broke free of the grey cloud he got a good look at all the vehicles jetting away from the computer center and all the people fleeing across bridges to other towers.

Inyri sideslipped the speeder to center it on the balcony situated fifth-floor front. From information supplied originally by Black Sun, Winter had determined the control center they needed was located on the fifth floor. While they expected the whole facility to be abandoned, they assumed a general security lockdown would make entering at the first floor and working their way up difficult.

“Brace for impact.” Inyri cut power to the engine and began to slow the speeder, then let it sail straight over the balcony and into the office beyond it. The transparisteel wall disintegrated into one crystalline wave that washed up and over the speeder’s windscreen. A desk exploded at the front bumper’s casual caress and the room’s far walls buckled, letting the speeder skid to a stop in the waiting room attached to what had once been the CEO’s office.

Gavin slapped the quick release for his restraining belts and kicked his door open. He slid from the speeder and brought a blaster carbine up. The klaxons obliterated any sounds the opposition might have made and the dust curtain between him and the rest of the building hid possible foes. Hunkered down in the shadow of his opened door he could see nothing, but with each passing second he came to believe everyone had evacuated the building.

Tycho cut to the right, Gavin went left and advanced. Things appeared clear from his new vantage point, so he waved the others forward. Ooryl came up with Winter following close behind him. Inyri brought up the rear, constantly checking back toward the outside to make sure no one followed them in.

Winter was the key to their success because the datapad she held contained the code that would move an orbital mirror to target the nearest water distribution plant and reservoir. Once beyond the area of devastation created by Inyri’s entry, they were able to move along quickly. All the doors along the corridor to the control center were closed. Gavin tried to open all those on his side of the corridor but they were all locked tight. Tycho indicated the situation on the right was the same, but that is what they had been led to expect after the plant was abandoned.

They reached the door to the computer center without opposition. Gavin took a moment to glance through the transparisteel viewport in the heavy door. The room looked empty of life to him, though the computers themselves had lights flickering across their dark surfaces. Holographic streams of data scrolled up from desktop to oblivion above a dozen workstations. Aided by a thin mist hanging in the air, the light from them cast green and red shadows over the rest of the room, making the dimly lit room seem sinister.

Winter dropped to her knees and attached a cable from her datapad to a computer port on the doorjamb. “The sequencer programs I have will open the door in no time. First, though, I need to run a diagnostic and see what sort of combination I want.”

“Good luck.” Gavin dropped to a crouch and watched the corridor that led farther into the complex. He positioned himself so his body shielded Winter. He felt a twinge in his belly from an old blaster wound and hoped it was not some sort of ill omen for the future.

The datapad beeped and Winter swore. “Sithspawn.”

Tycho crouched at her shoulder. “What?”

“They’ve flooded the control room with gas. Looks like Fex-M3d.” Winter raised a fist but refrained from punching the door. “It’s in a diluted form so it won’t kill you if you get a lungful, but it’ll put you out.”

Gavin jerked a thumb at the door. “To the left, on the wall, there’s a clear case that has breather masks in it. If we could get in, we could get them.”

“That’s the big if. The case is coded, just like the door here. By the time a sequencer got it open, you’d have to breathe and you’d be down.” Winter shook her head. “Looks as if this system was installed within the last two weeks, after we were given the data we used to make our attack. There’s nothing we can do. We can’t get in. It’s over.”

His hand on the stick, the Z-95 Headhunter cruising through the duracrete canyons of Coruscant, Corran Horn felt more alive and free than all the soaring hawk-bats on the planet. He would have much preferred to be flying his X-wing, and he felt awkward flying into combat without Whistler backing him up, but flying again made him happy enough that he could forgive Whistler his absence. No place for him in this Headhunter anyway.

The Headhunter suffered in comparison with the X-wing. It lacked the maneuverability and speed of the X-wing, though the shields and hull had the same integrity. The Headhunter did not have hyperdrives and, consequently, did not need an R2 unit. The Headhunter’s triple blasters and concussion missiles were not the equal of the X-wing’s four laser cannons and proton torpedo launchers but they didn’t exactly leave him defenseless, either.

Against the Imperial starfighters he’d be facing the Headhunter had the potential to be troublesome—both for him and them. In atmosphere the TIEs lost some of their maneuverability. Their lack of shields made them vulnerable to his attacks, but the fact that they’d be swarming meant being able to stay with one long enough to kill it would be difficult. Locking in on one target would make him a target.

He glanced down at his sensor display. “Hunt Leader here. I have twelve, that is one-two, starfighters coming in on the droid. Time to engagement is thirty seconds. Shoot straight and call for help.”

Corran got a series of acknowledgments over the comm. Pulling back on his stick he started the Z-95 climbing. Pushing the throttle full forward he rocketed up like a ship intent on escaping the planet. A quartet of TIE starfighters came up after him but before they could close to range and start shooting, he rolled the Headhunter to starboard. The fighter came up and over, then dove back in the direction from which the TIEs had come.

Halfway through the dive, he pulled the fighter through a 180-degree snap-roll left, then swooped out in a long glide that brought him in over the construction droid and into the rest of the TIEs. He spitted the leader on his targeting crosshairs and gave it two bursts of blaster fire. The dozen energy darts stippled the eyeball with hits. It began a lazy roll that ended abruptly as it slammed into a tower and exploded.

The pilot of the next TIE followed his leader through the roll, clearly not realizing one of Corran’s shots had pierced the cockpit and killed the pilot. He tried to pull up and away at the last second. His hexagonal port wing clipped the corner of the tower and sent the TIE into a corkscrew spin that spiraled down into a fiery explosion deep in a dark canyon.

Standing the Headhunter on its port S-foils, Corran added enough left rudder to snap the ship into a dive past the construction droid. He pointed the fighter’s nose straight at the bottom of the urban trench and started down. He chopped his throttle back to zero and used the stick to roll his ship until the canyon stretched to infinity off each wing, but crowded him above and below.

Two TIEs dove after him and closed fast. Corran made minor adjustments on his position, forcing them to stick with him to target him. Their first shots missed, sending green energy lances down to flare brightly in the darkness, but they began to get better. Then they got close enough that they hit his aft shield, prompting him to take action.

He rolled the Headhunter ninety degrees to port, hemming himself in on either wing, then he pulled back on the stick. At the same time he punched all the power being generated by his engines into the repulsorlift drive. The Headhunter’s nose popped up, leveling him out a hundred meters above the canyon’s bottom. Momentum from the dive kept him going forward and away from the TIEs.

One eyeball pilot made a serious mistake by not rolling before he tried to follow the Headhunter. His maneuver was intended to bring the TIE around in a sharp, right-angle turn—a maneuver that would have worked in the vacuum of space and placed him right on Corran’s tail with a killing shot. In atmosphere, however, the maneuver brought his starboard wing around in direct opposition to his previous line of flight. The hexagonal panel snapped, with the top half sheering through the ship’s ball cockpit. Still going full out, the TIE fighter hammered the ground and exploded.

The second TIE pilot rolled first, then swooped in after Corran’s Headhunter. The speed of the dive forced the pilot into a wider turn than he clearly wanted. The lower edges of his wings struck sparks from the duracrete street. Fighting inertial forces, the pilot did everything he could to make his fighter climb. Finally the ship began to win in its battle with gravity and began to come up.

Up into one of the numerous walkways connecting one building with another. The TIE plowed into a central portion of the span, splintering the permacrete section it hit. The fighter exploded, shattering windows and sowing shrapnel throughout the area.

Reversing thrust and applying some rudder, Corran brought the fighter around in an end for end swap that left him looking at the fires burning in his wake. Not a bad start, four down, but it’s only a start. He eased the throttle forward and started a gentle climb to the unobstructed reaches of Coruscant’s atmosphere. He glanced at the shipboard chronometer and fuel gauge.

“Fifteen minutes to get the shields down and a half hour of flying time. That’s forever if we succeed and little more than a heartbeat if we do not.”

Wedge’s comlink buzzed at him. “Antilles here, go ahead.”

“Tycho here. We have a problem—gas in the computer center. We need Emtrey. Now.”

“I copy.” He looked up at Mirax. “Will this thing keep going by itself?”

She nodded. “The droid will stop at the outer edge of the computer center if”—she pointed at external view monitors showing TIEs on strafing runs—“they don’t stop it first.”

“If we can leave this thing alone, they need us in the computer center.”

Mirax held her hands up. “Let’s go.”

Iella led the way back into the entryway. She started to push the door open, then quickly ducked back. A spray of blaster bolts dotted the interior of the door with burn marks.

Wedge ran over to where she sat on the floor. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.”

“What was that?”

She shook her head. “I couldn’t see clearly but given the size of those burn marks I’d say some stormtroopers have an E-web heavy blaster set up on one of the nearby towers. They’ve got the door covered and covered well.” Iella shrugged. “Unless we get some help, we’re going to be stuck here for the rest of our lives.”

42

Gavin’s stomach began to fold in on itself as he heard Wedge’s voice come out of the comlink. “Sorry, Tycho, we’re pinned down here. Unless we get some help, we’re going nowhere.”

“I copy, Wedge.” Tycho looked over at Gavin. “You and I will go see if we can help them out.”

Ooryl raised a three-fingered hand. “Ooryl …”

Tycho shook his head. “I want you here to help Inyri guard Winter. The kid and I will go.”

The Gand nodded, then his mouth parts snapped open. “Ooryl does not question your orders, Captain. Ooryl merely wants to know how this Fex-M3d works.”

Winter slowly straightened up. “You breathe it in, it gets into your bloodstream and binds to neuroreceptors, preventing nerves from passing information. If you get a strong enough dose your autonomie nervous system shuts down and you stop breathing. You suffocate.”

The Gand’s mouth parts closed again. “Ooryl understands. If you will all back down this hallway, Ooryl will open the door, open the interior case, and bring you back respirators.”

Gavin’s jaw shot open. “But you’ll die.”

The Gand shook his head. “Ooryl does not respire.”

Inyri blinked. “What?”

Ooryl tapped his chest. “Gands do not respire.”

“But you talk.”

“Yes, Inyri Forge, but respiration is not required for speech. Ooryl’s body has a muscular gas bladder that allows Ooryl to, among other things, draw in gases and expel them at a controlled rate through pieces of Gand exoskeleton that vibrate and approximate speech. Ooryl gets the metabolic ingredients Ooryl needs through ingestion, not respiration. Fex-M3d will not affect Ooryl.”

Tycho thought for a moment, then nodded. “Here’s what we’ll do. Ooryl will wait here until we retreat. Inyri, you’ll turn the airspeeder around and bring the engine up. Point the exhaust jets down this hallway and we can use them to push the freed Fex-M3d deeper into the building.”

“It will also point the airspeeder in the right direction for our escape.”

“Good point, Inyri.” Tycho looked over at Gavin. “Depending upon how many masks there are in the room, you and Inyri may have to wait outside. If there are enough, we all go down and hold the center.”

“Got it.”

Tycho slapped the Gand on the arm. “Wait until we get clear, then go.”

“Ooryl understands.”

Gavin retreated with the others. They sealed themselves inside the airspeeder. Inyri brought it up and around, giving Gavin a good view of the firefights going on outside. TIE fighters swooped and dove. Green laser bolts flashed through the sky thick and furious. Countless burn marks scored the flanks and front of the construction droid, yet it loomed ever larger as it came on toward them.

Winter twisted around in the seat. “He’s in.”

Gavin turned to look. The room’s door appeared open. A greenish-yellow mist rolled out and carpeted the hallway in haze. The airspeeder’s exhaust pushed it farther down the hallway, but there always seemed to be more of it pouring from the computer center.

The sharp report of an explosion brought all eyes forward again. A pair of blurred Headhunters raced past, flying through a collapsing ball of fire and debris. More laser bolts poured in at the construction droid, but there was no sign they had any effect on the titanic machine. And as bad as things looked in the air outside it, the cold efficiency of the way the droid dismembered the building in front of it was even worse. Their vantage point let the Rogues peer into the construction droid’s maw and Gavin imagined what he saw to be the vision seen by billions of Alderaanians before their world exploded.

A thump on the hood of the airspeeder made Gavin jump and bang his head on the roof. He hunched down and rubbed his head. “Emperor’s bones!”

Outside the Gand looked surprised, then held up four masks. “Ooryl has been successful.”

Tycho reached forward from the back seat and patted Gavin on the shoulder. “Ready to go?”

“Sure. Maybe I can get a light dose of the gas and it’ll slow my heart.” Gavin got out of the airspeeder and pulled his mask on. It immediately felt hot on his face, but he tugged on the straps, fitting it tightly to his face. He took his comlink from his jacket lapel and snapped it into the receptacle near his right ear.

“I’m set, Tycho.”

The Alderaanian Captain gave him a nod. “Come on, then. Let’s go see if we can make it rain.”

As Corran’s Headhunter came up through the towers he caught Wedge’s message to Tycho. “Hunter Lead here, Commander. Got a problem?”

“Seems so, Corran. Tower east of us has an E-web trained on us.”

“Collateral targets?”

“Don’t know, but the building should be evacuated except for troops. Get them gone.”

“As ordered. Stand by.” Corran throttled the black and gold fighter up and aimed for the stars. Before he got there, but after he had left the towers of Coruscant behind, he came up on his starboard wing and started to circle. From up there it was relatively easy to spot the stream of fire coming from a nearby cylindrical tower and lancing out at the construction droid.

Corran extended his loop and let it take him over and around the computer center. He dove and leveled out, coming in on the tower while running parallel to the construction droid’s course. He shot past the droid and came up slightly. Heavy blaster fire lanced out at the construction droid from the tower. Corran let loose with a quick burst of fire, raking it across the side of the building.

His flight took him past his target, so he started to turn around again when fire came at him from the building. The blaster bolts splashed harmlessly against his rear shield, but Corran immediately rolled the Headhunter and turned back away from the side of the building he’d attacked. He leveled out, then dove and came around on a new attack vector. He switched his weapons’ control over to concussion missiles, linked two, then climbed up over the construction droid’s blocky outline.

His crosshairs settled on the genesis of the red stream directed against Wedge’s droid. He got no target lock—an E-web and stormtrooper crew didn’t conform to any target profile in the Headhunter’s combat computer. Regardless, when he hit the trigger, two blue missiles streaked out and hit dead on target.

An argent explosion blew through that floor of the cylinder. The silvery disk spread out through the entire level and beyond, incinerating most of what was in there and scattering the rest of it out over the city. Yet, even for all that violence, the concussion missiles failed to damage the structural supports, leaving the tower intact above and below the level where little fires burned brightly in the night.

Corran keyed his comm unit. “Will that do it for you, Commander?”

“Thanks, Corran. We’re leaving to see some friends.”

“I copy. Want an escort?”

“If you’ve got nothing better to do.”

Corran smiled. “At your leisure, sir, I live to serve.”

Gavin had positioned himself so he could watch the door and still see what Winter was doing from the corner of his eye. Once they’d gotten into the room she’d plugged her datapad into the computer console and very quickly had a representation of Coruscant floating above her workstation. Her fingers flew over the keys and suddenly small cubes appeared to float around the world arranged in three rings. One circled the equator while the other two split the distance between the equator and the poles.

Seeming as insectoid as a Verpine because of the mask she wore, Winter nodded to Tycho. “These are the Orbital Solar Energy Transfer Satellites.” She pointed to a glowing red dot riding just above the equator. “This is our target. It’s night here now, but several orbital mirrors are high enough to give us what we need.”

More typing and a small label appeared attached to each of the floating cubes. Gavin couldn’t read them at that distance but he assumed they were unit designators that would allow Winter to send orders from the computer to the station.

“We’ll use OSETS 2711. First step is to have the mirror opaque itself. Then we focus it here and start it reflecting again.”

Tycho nodded. “Can you also bring up on this display the Golan stations and ships in orbit?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, probably, but if I do it might attract some attention. First things first.”

“Go to it.” Tycho stood behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders. “This world needs a bath, so start boiling the water.”

•    •    •

Life could have been worse, Lieutenant Virar Needa thought to himself. The Captain Needa who had once commanded the Imperial Star Destroyer Avenger had only been his cousin, and one generation removed at that. Darth Vader had executed Lorth Needa for incompetence after Hoth, while Virar was still at the Imperial Military Academy. His cousins had all vanished, along with his aunt and his grandparents on the Needa side of the family, but at least he’d remained alive and been allowed to continue in service to the Empire. It could have been worse, I could be dead.

Of course, service on an Orbital Solar Energy Transfer Satellite was about as close to death as someone could get in the Imperial Navy without having shots fired at him. Others, including the rest of the six-man crew, saw OSETS service as punishment, but Virar Needa saw it as noble duty. After all, he was entrusted with the care of a facility that made life on Imperial Center possible. Without OSETS 2711, Imperial Center would be just that much more uncomfortable, and if the people who ran the Empire were uncomfortable, well, then things would just begin to fall apart entirely.

A mild tremor shook the station. The others looked up from their sabacc game in the lounge. He saw fear in their eyes because they had no idea what was happening. He did because of his four years of experience with OSETS 2711. That’s why he was a Lieutenant and in command.

He raised a hand. “Don’t worry, that’s just the mirror panels rotating to opaque the surface.”

One of the cadets looked up. “Why would they be doing that, sir?”

Needa smiled at him. “Well, Pedetsen, I would guess it is because another station is off-line for repairs and we’re going to take over its duty. We’ll have our direction adjusted …” He held a hand up, then cocked his wrist and pointed his index finger just as the altitude adjustment jets started a burn. “There you go.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Needa nodded and went back to looking out the viewport. Below him he saw the dark face of a sleeping Imperial Center. It scintillated with a variety of lights that ran like phosphorescent blood through shadowy flesh. He smiled and tried to burn the vision of the planet into his brain. It always looks so pretty from up here—a potential it fails to live up to when I am down on the ground.

The jet burn went on a bit longer than usual and this disturbed him. Not because he realized anything was wrong, after all, the care of OSETS 2711 was what kept him alive, so nothing could go wrong. He couldn’t and wouldn’t conceive of that possibility. No, the longer than normal burn, he decided, meant they had built a new reception facility for the energy OSETS 2711 was sending down. That he’d not heard of the plans to do this meant they were top secret. The use of OSETS 2711 to power this top secret, vital, new site meant someone down there had finally decided to reward his unswerving and unfailing loyalty.

The tremor again coursed through the station and Needa smiled. “That’s the mirror reflecting again, boys. We’re giving them everything they want. Our contribution to this day will never be forgotten.”

43

Corran Horn snapped the Headhunter up on its starboard S-foil and pulled back on the stick. He feathered the throttle back, slowing his fighter, and pulled it through a tight turn. Leveling off he triggered two blaster bursts that blazed through the air in front of a TIE starfighter. The eyeball broke off its run on Wedge’s airspeeder. The black vehicle slid into the gaping cavern marking what had once been a fifth-floor office.

Corran rolled the ship left, dropped into a dive, then came back up and over the computer center. “Hunter Lead here, anyone need help?”

Asyr’s voice came back through the comm. “I show six more interceptors vectored in on us. Estimated time of arrival, five minutes.”

“I copy, Five.” Corran glanced at his scanner and saw the group she was indicating. “See if you can pull the fight more in this direction.”

“As ordered, Lead.”

Leveling out, Corran began a slow loop to the east. All of a sudden a golden dagger of sunlight stabbed down through the night. The wedge of light focused on an ostentatious building fitted with columns and a cascade of ever broadening steps. The building grew in brilliance until it shone like a beacon. For the barest of moments it even rivaled the exalted edifice of the Imperial Palace.

Then the building began to melt.

Window casings began to smoke and glow, then the pressure from the superheated air inside the building blew them out. Pennants flying from the top of the building burst into flame. Huge iron doors went from black to orange, red, and finally white before they began to waver and collapse. Columns began to wither and the building’s sharp edges softened.

The building began to sag in on itself, then it swelled at the center. The roof rose up volcanically, then an explosion shook the building. Half-molten granite blocks split apart and sloughed to the side like rotting vegetable matter as a gout of steam shot skyward. It billowed out and thickened as it hit the layer of cooler air above it. The expanding vapor darkened precipitously, then Corran saw golden highlights illuminate it from within.

The first silvery lightning bolt slashed down at the Imperial Palace. Corran laughed aloud. “Even the elements want the Empire dead!”

He keyed his comm unit. “I hope you can hear me, Wedge. You’ve got one fantastic storm brewing out here. Keep it going.”

The image of Coruscant floating in front of Captain Uwlla Iillor on the bridge of the Corusca Rainbow began to change. Beneath the twin shields the datastream began to sketch in an angry red storm centering itself over the Palace district. Gold pinpoints marked lightning strikes and quickly became so numerous that flecks of red floated like islands in a golden sea.

Jhemiti inclined his head toward the image. “The storm appears to be fierce.”

“The worst Coruscant has seen in generations, I would imagine.” She leaned forward and studied the image through half-closed eyes. “Rogue Squadron must have caused this storm somehow. It becomes a weapon of fantastic power, but it is very difficult to direct.”

The Mon Calamari nodded. “Perhaps the Jedi Knight …”

“Can control it? I doubt the Emperor could have controlled a storm of this magnitude. This I take as a good thing because it means the Empire cannot stop it.”

The inner shield sphere flickered and went dark. Jhemiti pointed at the holographic projection. “There, the shields are coming down.”

“Perhaps.” Iillor looked at the chronometer. “We have five minutes until the fleet comes through. Begin initial power up of the gravity well projectors.”

Jhemiti’s eyes half shut. “But the shields.”

“The shields still exist.” Captain Iillor gave her First Officer a cold stare. “We’ll give Rogue Squadron time to finish their mission, but if they cannot, we will finish ours.”

Wedge came around the corner and into the computer center after getting an all-clear from Gavin. Because the construction droid had the same anti-intruder system installed on it, Mirax, Iella, and he had been able to appropriate breathing gear from it before they made the run to the center. He immediately crossed to the workstation where Winter sat while Iella and Mirax took up defensive positions near the door.

“How are things going?”

Tycho looked over at him while Winter typed furiously on her datapad. “Good and bad. The storm is fierce enough that skyhooks are detaching and moving off. Better yet, the inner shields have come down. Unfortunately, it appears their collapse has resulted in a shift of resource allocation programs within the computers. The storm is taking some power plants off-line, but others have been directed to shunt their output through previously unused conduits.”

Wedge frowned. “You’re telling me that the destruction of one layer of shields has diverted power through backup systems to reinforce the remaining shields?”

Winter nodded. “No one knew the backup system of conduits existed—no power ran through them so folks scouting for places to tap the grid never found them. In essence, this is a whole new power grid. It allocates power to essential services, of which this center is part, but it means that main shield isn’t coming down.”

This is not good. Wedge leaned with one hand on the workstation. “Can you pull a map of this grid up?”

“Not available.”

Emtrey tottled over. “If I might suggest, sir …?”

“Please do, Emtrey.”

“Lightning will travel along the easiest course from the ground to the clouds and vice versa. The new grid, and especially its substation transfer points, will leak a certain amount of power. Lightning strikes will cluster at these points, so a plot of strikes should show you where the grid is.”

Winter’s fingers played quickly over the datapad’s input surface. The globe flattened out and golden pinpoints started to dot the resulting grid map. The image became localized to the Palace district and enlarged, but the strikes still bled together into a golden network. Wedge saw dark spaces fill in on the map with each staccato thunderclap from outside.

Tycho pointed to a solid cluster that appeared to be the hub from which many gold spokes spread. “That’s likely a substation. The whole purpose of this storm was to hit and knock out power stations. This one looks invulnerable to lightning. So much for our plan.”

Wedge shook his head. “The grounding that will protect it from lightning won’t help it against missiles. Winter, can you pinpoint that substation?”

“Done.”

Tycho looked over at Wedge. “You’re going to send someone in at that target with the storm raging above it?”

“The airspeeder I came in doesn’t have missiles or I’d go.”

“Yes, but you’re a Corellian. You have no respect for how truly hopeless some tasks really are.”

“Right.”

“So you’re sending Corran.”

“Right again.” Wedge slapped Tycho on the back. “There’s no pilot I know of for certain who can outfly lightning, but I’d sooner bet on Corran than against him.”

Corran brought his fighter around on the heading Winter gave him. “You want me to fly into that?” Six kilometers distant, the lightning strikes came in sheets, not individual bolts. “It’s very ugly over there.”

“I copy, Corran, but it’s got to be done. Take heart, the target is twice the size of the conduit on Borleias.”

“Oh, you should have said that from the start.” Corran nudged the throttle forward. “On an inbound vector.”

“You have four minutes.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Corran took the fighter into a dive and tried to sink as low as he could in the duracrete chasms. The storms had already begun to kick up high winds, but the buildings tended to break them up. He did hit some nasty sheers when he flew through intersections, but the worse of them occurred at the largest intersections, giving him plenty of time to recover.

He started to come up and out of the urban maze two kilometers away from his target. Rain immediately lashed his fighter. It beat so heavily on the cockpit canopy and shook the ship enough that it wasn’t until he saw his shield indicator go from green to yellow that he realized someone was shooting at him. A glance at his aft monitor showed two Interceptors coming up on his tail.

Corran rolled and started a dive that he aborted almost immediately. Rolling again violently, he righted his craft and kicked in power to the repulsorlift drives. The drives cut in on cue and bounced his fighter up over a crumbling skywalk between buildings. With power going down, they don’t have their little lights on.

Behind him something exploded and his aft sensor indicated he only had one squint on his tail. A pair of near misses, with green bolts shooting past his starboard S-foil, told him that the Imp pilot behind him was good. Coming up on his left wing, he pulled a hard turn around the corner of a building, then rolled 180 degrees and cut back around another. The figure-eight maneuver got rid of his pursuit for the moment, so he came back around and set up to make his run on the target.

The Headhunter sliced through the air amid a cacophony of thunder and a forest of lightning bolts. Corran knew there was no way to dodge a bolt—one second it would not be there and the next it would. The lightning strikes silhouetted darkened towers, helping him steer around trouble. In that way they proved more helpful than harmful, but he knew one solid strike and his controls would fry. They will fry, fighter won’t fly, and I will die.

Turbulence in the air began to bounce him around. The stick tried to pull itself out of his grasp, but he hung on firmly. Flying through rough air he had to strike a balance between becoming rigid, which would lock things up and crash him, and being too flexible, which meant he’d lose control of the stick and the fighter would crash. He trimmed his speed and did his best to keep the fighter on target.

More green laser blasts shot past. At least the turbulence is making me tough to hit. He shoved the stick hard to the left, then rolled right and pulled back. After two seconds he rolled left again and hauled back on the stick. Leveling out right, he hit rudder and brought his nose in line with the aft of the Interceptor. His quick turns amounted to taking a long time to cover the distance the squint covered swiftly in its swoop. He ended up behind it and fired.

The blaster bolts clipped the starboard wing on the Imperial fighter. It rolled right and got out of his line of fire. Corran could have followed it and killed it, but he’d closed on his target, so he switched over to concussion missiles. He set them on single fire, rolled, and dove in on the target. He dropped the targeting box on what appeared to be the base of a massive obelisk honoring the Emperor and let fly.

The concussion missile streaked out and hit the base of the statue. It exploded, casting rock in all directions. The obelisk cast a massive shadow up over the face of the Imperial Palace, then it tottered and fell. Hitting the ground, it shattered into a thousand pieces, but Corran saw no secondary explosions. Ruined a monument, but nothing else. One more run better do the trick.

Wedge stared at the map. He’d seen Corran’s attack run and had a track of the missile going into the target, but the lights didn’t go out and the image didn’t die. “What happened? He hit it, didn’t he?”

Winter nodded. “Right on target, but not enough power. He’s cracked the outer case. Another shot or two should do it.”

Tycho shook his head. “It better just be one more shot because that’s all he’s got.”

Wedge pointed to a green Interceptor icon coming in and around toward Corran’s red Headhunter icon. “Provided he gets one more shot. Can’t you do something about that squint, Winter?”

She looked up at him. “That squint was the source of the data on the missile hit. You really want us to be blind out there?”

“No, of course not.” Wedge looked down for a moment, then clapped his hands. “You’re getting datafeeds from him? You have his identification number and internal identification, right?”

“Can’t get this data any other way. We’re inside the Imperial system, so getting that data is easy.”

“Good. I’ve got an idea. Tap into Coruscant Traffic Control and get the Taxi, Hangar, and Maintenance programs set up with his numbers.” Wedge keyed his comlink. “Corran, listen to me. Your first hit was good, but you need to pack more into the next one. Here’s the plan …”

•    •    •

Corran closed his mouth. “I copy, Wedge.” He punched a couple of buttons on his console. “Telemetry coming your way. You know, you’re always stealing my data for runs. Can I start getting Pathfinder pay?”

“Sure, I’ll add it to your back-pay file. Squint’s coming up on your tail. Get ready.”

“As ordered, sir.” Corran let a smile spread across his face. According to the boss I want you with me as tight as possible, but still loose enough that you aren’t going to burn me down. Corran unconsciously pressed his hand to his throat, but the medallion he normally wore wasn’t there. It’s with Whistler. That’ll have to count for luck for now.

Coming around on another attack vector against the target, Corran let the squint drift onto his tail. Loosening his grip on the stick ever so slightly, he let the air bounce him around a bit. Green laser bolts played out all around him. With a flick of his thumb he shunted all forward shield energy to the rear shields, then he tightened his grip and rolled ninety degrees to the left. He remained diving in at the target, but was ready to pull out at the last minute.

He spitted the hole the earlier missile had made with his targeting reticle. “Control, three, two, one!” He hit the trigger, then pulled back on the stick for all he was worth. “Missile away.”

Winter punched a button on her datapad. “Link established and flowing.”

Captain Iillor looked at Jhemiti. “Thirty seconds and counting. Bring the gravity well projectors to full power on my mark.”

Corran’s concussion missile sailed in at the target. Throughout the short flight the targeting computer built into the missile took sensor readings, compared the coordinates they supplied with those of the target, determined if it should explode or not yet, and reported the whole process back to Corran’s Headhunter. A million times a second it went through that same process, constantly updating its position relative to the target and relaying the data to the Headhunter.

Corran’s Headhunter, in turn, sent that information on to Winter’s datapad. There it remained for a nanosecond, then flowed into the Imperial computer network. It routed itself through several key systems and finally poured into Coruscant Traffic Control. The data then fed into the Taxi, Hangar, and Maintenance programming that, because of the override and emergency data flags Winter had provided, sent it back out to the Imperial Interceptor closing on the Headhunter.

The chief benefit of computers is that they can automate boring and routine jobs that need not concern a human. If an X-wing fighter needed to be moved from a landing pad to a hangar position, or on into maintenance, the R2 unit assigned to that X-wing could perform that simple task without the need to trouble the pilot. Since TIE fighters do not use R2 units, other programs had been created to supply travel routes, coordinates, and speeds to a TIE fighter so it could be moved about without a pilot.

In this case, the course supplied to the Interceptor on Corran’s tail was the course the missile was traveling. The destination was the missile’s target coordinates and the speed was as close as the fighter could manage to approximating the missile’s speed. The implementation of such programming required an override code, which had been supplied. Because of the potential problems caused if such codes were to fall into enemy hands, the pilots could override the automatic programming, provided they hit the correct console buttons in the appropriate order.

Doing that required approximately 2.5 seconds of the pilot’s undivided attention.

The Interceptor pilot’s attention was anything but undivided.

The concussion missile caromed off the edge of the breach its predecessor had opened and exploded. It blasted a hole in the shielding of the energy conduit. Shards from the conduit and its shielding sprayed the interior of the conduit, severing some cables, merely nicking others. Sparks flew and several circuits shorted out. Power died in several buildings for a second, but other lines accepted more power and the shields remained intact.

Then the Interceptor hit. While it was not traveling as fast as the concussion missile, it did mass significantly more than the projectile. It was able to build up a considerable amount of kinetic energy that it transferred to the target upon impact. In addition, the crash compacted the Interceptor’s fuel cells, compressing the fuel that subsequently detonated. The Interceptor’s crushed hull sheered through the power conduit, severing the thick bundle of cables running through it, and the explosion that followed tangled and fused lines that had never been meant to touch.

Outside Corran’s cockpit, Coruscant went black.

“Ten, nine, eight,” Captain Iillor counted down.

“Look!”

Her eye came up off the chronometer. The last shield sphere flickered.

“Seven, six, five …”

The shield sphere died.

“Kill the projectors, Lieutenant Jhemiti.” Captain Iillor looked out toward the planet sparkling like a star in the distance. “Now the battle for Coruscant begins.”

44

Still basking in the glory of his redemption, Lieutenant Virar Needa stared out the viewport at Imperial Center. He saw lights on the world flicker and die, but even that unusual a thing happening did not penetrate the aura of well-being in which he cocooned himself. Clearly, it seemed to him, those responsible for the power problems on Imperial Center would be banished to oblivion and he would be free to ascend into the positions they vacated.

As he stared out into space he saw the stars ripple along a wide front. Ships began to revert from hyperspace and his heart rate picked up as this happened. He always enjoyed ships entering and leaving Imperial Center space. He took great delight in cataloging them by type and later correlating a sighting with news from the war against the Rebels.

A smile spread across his face as two large ships materialized. He recognized them instantly as Imperial Star Destroyers. As they reverted they executed a turn to starboard, putting them into a geostationary orbit. That’s standard procedure, as the Captains of the Accuser and Adjucator know quite well.

His ability to recognize the two ships pleased him, which is why he wondered about the underlying sense of unease slowly seeping into his heart. About the time one of the long, gently curved Mon Calamari battle cruisers reverted and swung into the line, he recalled the Accuser and Adjucator had both been captured at Endor by the Rebels. The fact that a number of Mon Cal ships were pulling into line with them meant … Needa paled. At the moment of my greatest glory, the Rebels have come to ruin me!

More and more Rebel ships poured from hyperspace. Big ships, small ships, snubfighters, freighters, frigates, and corvettes, each of them pulled into line with the heavier ships. The battle cruisers and destroyers formed a central layer, with ships diminishing in size and strength as they stretched out from equator to pole in the northern hemisphere.

Instantly the black void of space came alive with turbolaser and ion-cannon fire. Toward the bottom of the viewport Needa saw a Golan Space Defense station. The lozenge-shaped platform launched spread after spread of proton torpedoes while its turbolaser batteries sprayed green energy projectiles at the invaders. The return fire it took splashed harmlessly against its shields, or so it seemed at first, though Needa noticed the shield sphere slowly shrinking.

This cannot be! He turned from the viewport, raking fingers back through brown hair. “To your battle stations, men! The enemy is upon us!”

Pedetsen looked up from the sabacc game. “Begging your pardon, sir, but a mirror doesn’t have battle stations.”

Needa’s jaw worked up and down a couple of times as he mulled over the cadet’s comment. True, but we must do something. “Arm yourselves. We won’t go down without a fight.”

The darkness in the computer center only lasted for a couple of seconds, but it seemed like eons to Wedge. It was time enough for remnants of childhood fears of darkness to meld with adult fears of failure. The darkness left him blind and opened the doorway to any number of possible and horrible futures. For all he knew the power to the subsidiary computer center had been severed by Imperial stormtroopers who were even now preparing to enter the room and resume control of the facility.

The lights came back up again. The holographic map wavered and popped, then stabilized. Elation filled him for a moment, then he realized that having power available meant failure. Or does it? “Why do we have power?”

Winter hit two keys on the datapad. “Reserve generators came on-line here after the external power was cut.”

“And power is down? And the shields?”

She hit more keys and the map expanded up from the tactical one showing the Palace district to the orbital one showing the planet as a whole. There was no indication of shields anywhere. “They’re down.”

Wedge keyed his comlink. “Corran, you did it.”

“I just aimed, Wedge, you sliced the victory together.”

“We can argue who gets stuck with credit later. Be careful, you still have TIEs flying around you.”

“They’re all vectoring up, Wedge.”

“What?”

“We have company.”

Wedge pointed to Winter. “Slice me into Traffic Control. I want to see what’s orbiting out there.”

“Will do.” Winter’s fingers flew over the keys and the sphere that was Coruscant suddenly became surrounded by a shell of orbiting stations, satellites, and ships. The Rebel fleet formed a concave cap over part of the northern hemisphere. Within its range floated a number of Golan stations as well as several Star Destroyers racing to oppose the Rebels.

“Can you get me better visuals? Is there a feed from that mirror you can pull?”

She shook her head. “No visual feed from it and all of the military ships have gone independent of the ground, so I can’t get their visuals either. We know where they are, but we don’t know what they’re doing.”

A few holes opened in the Rebel formation. Wedge knew that the ships lost were small—most likely converted freighters with weapons grafted on—but their losses disturbed him. Just looking at the situation, the size of the Rebel fleet and the paucity of defenders, there was no way Imperial forces could defeat the Rebels. Slow us down and hurt us, yes, but keep us off Coruscante? No. That’s clear, which means everyone who dies up there today doesn’t need to.

Tycho pointed to one of the space platforms. “I’d bet that’s a Golan III. Our heavy ships can’t concentrate on it until they eliminate the destroyers. It’s not quite as heavily armed as the Victory-class destroyers, but it’s got to be the source of most of the damage to the fringes of the fleet.”

“You can’t slice into any ground-based missile batteries to use against that thing?”

Winter shook her head. “Aside from Corran and the other Headhunters, we have no weapons here. It would be nice if the Golan station would shoot streamers down into the atmosphere and into our thunderstorm, but I wouldn’t count on that happening anytime soon.”

Tycho shrugged. “Look on the bright side, Wedge …”

“Is there a bright side?”

“Sure, if it had targeted us, we’d be slag.”

“That’s not what I’d call particularly bright, Tycho.” Wedge brought his head up. “But it could be. It could be very bright indeed.”

“Go down without a fight, Lieutenant Needa?” Pedetsen frowned in Needa’s direction. “One proton torpedo and we go down without even a whimper. I’ll take two.”

Needa blinked in confusion. “You want us hit with two?”

“No, I want two more cards.” The cadet glanced at his cards, then up at Needa. “Of proton torpedoes I want zero.”

“The Rebels have come!” Needa pointed at the viewport. “We must do something!”

Pedetsen shook his head and laid his sabacc cards on the table. “Sir, if we do anything, we’ll die. Now either side might have a use for dead heroes, but I don’t think the heroes will get much out of it. On the other hand, whoever takes Imperial Center—or maybe we should call it Coruscant—will have use for an undamaged mirror and a live crew.”

Needa glanced back at the fleet. “But those are the Rebels.”

“You think they can find us worst duty than this?” Pedetsen smiled. “They’ll probably hail you as a hero.”

“What?”

“Hey, it was your cousin who was martyred by Darth Vader after he let Han Solo escape Hoth. After all, your cousin had Rebel sympathies that he only confided in you, which is why he let Solo escape. Your having been punished with this duty proves the Empire suspected him, but could prove nothing.”

That is one way to interpret the facts of the case, I suppose. Needa frowned. “Do you think the Rebels would believe that?”

“I don’t know, but I think if we’re dead, you won’t be able to convince them that you and your loyal crew have been waiting for them for ages.” Pedetsen raked a pile of chips toward himself and started to shuffle the sabacc deck. “Your choice, sir. Do what you think is right.”

Needa thought for a second, frowned, then nodded. “I think I choose not to choose. If we do something, we risk death. We can’t do anything anyway, so there is no reason to choose.”

A tremor shook OSETS 2711. Needa braced himself against the bulkhead as the mirror started to shift. “We’re moving.”

“I know, Lieutenant.” Pedetsen smiled. “Looks like someone just made your mind up for you.”

On Home One’s bridge chaos reigned. Hundreds of voices competed with one another, each filled with urgency. Admiral Ackbar sat at the center of it, listening intently to comm feeds from his group commanders. The two Imperial Star Destroyers entering the battle were the Triumph and the Monarch. Already Emancipator and Liberator had begun pounding the ships. Triumph’s shields had collapsed on one side, prompting the Captain to execute a roll that brought undamaged shields up between the destroyer and the Rebels.

Though the Triumph’s difficulties heartened Ackbar, the Golan Space Defense platform off the port stern sickened him. It had engaged many of the smaller ships in the fleet and was hammering them mercilessly. The Commander on the platform had targeted ships with multiple proton torpedoes while saving his turbolasers for snubfighter defense. TIE fighters coming up from Coruscant seemed content to fight beneath the umbrella of his fire. The fact that the station could not move made it marginally less lethal than the Star Destroyers, but in the time it took for them to be taken out of action, a lot of smaller Rebel ships would die.

He looked up at the Quarren who had just appeared beside his command chair. “What is it, Commander Sirlul? Something about the station?”

“Perhaps …” A tremolo distorted her words as she pointed out the port side viewport. “The mirror is moving.”

“Why would it …?”

Before Sirlul could offer a possible answer to Ackbar’s question, the mirror’s panels swung and locked into reflective position. The whole structure contracted slightly, sharpening the solar beam. Though the reflected light remained all but invisible in space—only showing up where it shone upon and incinerated debris—its brilliant focal point could easily be seen. It appeared as a bright dot on the edge of the Golan III station.

Silvery lines, like cracks forming in ice or rootlets spreading through the earth, began to appear at the edges of the circle. Delicate and almost brittle, they snaked away from the station and drifted into space. The bright spotlight shifted right ever so slightly, leaving in its wake a black crescent. The argent rootlets clung to the crescent’s outer edge while opposite them some of the rootlets spun off into space.

The Quarren clasped her hands at the small of her back. “At its focal point the solar beam is approximately 12.5 meters in diameter. Roughly the length of an X-wing.”

The hole on the end of the station grew as the beam shifted slightly. Already half the turbolaser batteries had stopped firing. Ackbar could easily visualize the destruction as the beam pierced bulkhead after bulkhead, burning from one end of the station to another. A sheet of metal would glow red, then white, then evaporate. The solar beam would stab deeper, igniting whatever it touched, then begin on another bulkhead.

Ackbar looked up. “When the platform stops shooting send the Devonian and Ryloth over there. I want our people on that station to assess it and help those who have survived.”

“Sir, the Ryloth and Devonian have less than one hundred troopers on board. The station has over a thousand.”

“Not anymore, Commander.” Ackbar half closed his eyes as something near the center of the station exploded. “Those who are left aren’t going to be hostile. They’ll want to get off that thing and we will oblige them. Send them to the other Golan stations, let them tell the story of what happened to their station. It’ll give their Commanders a lot to think about and maybe, just maybe, save a lot of lives on both sides.”

45

Corran glanced at the fuel indicator on his command console. It showed he had another ten minutes of fuel. A return to Tycho’s base would only take two or three minutes and refueling would take a half hour or so. He wasn’t certain if with the fleet orbiting above the Palace district, Wedge and the others in the computer center would face danger from Imperial forces, but in many ways that question was moot given his fuel supply. He suspected the others were not in much better shape.

“Hunter Lead here, report with fuel status.”

Everyone else in the flight reported being in the same situation he was. “What we will do is this: Everyone take a long-range scan of the area. If we have no immediate things to worry about, we head in, refuel, and come back out.”

“I copy, Hunter Lead,” came the replies.

“Corran, I caught that, too.” Wedge’s voice paused for a moment. “Winter shows no activity in your vicinity and we look pretty secure here, too. Head in and hurry back.”

“Will do, Wedge. Horn out.” Corran brought his Headhunter around in a vast circle, letting the others fly in on a more direct route toward their hangar. First up, last in. He smiled. He knew the others didn’t need him to provide a good example. The fact was that the five of them had accounted for over a dozen Imperial starfighters and Interceptors, proving the Rogues had not lost their edge and that Asyr Sei’lar was a good pilot in her own right.

He punched his sensors over to long range and immediately picked up a number of signals on his scanner. Corran keyed the comm unit. “Pash, I’m picking up nine or ten hits.”

“I copy, Corran. Looks like small civilian vessels. The exodus is beginning.”

Corran ruddered his ship to port and dove down to do a flyby on one of his sensor contacts. It did in fact appear to be a luxury yacht, with gentle flowing lines and a gaudily painted hull. Like the other ships it was heading northeast to slip beneath the edge of the Rebel umbrella. The ships would sail around to the daytime side of the planet and head out into hyperspace from there, using Coruscant’s mass as a shield to prevent the Rebels from attacking them.

Corran was certain the vast majority of the people heading out firmly believed the Rebels would steal their wealth, dispossess them of their treasures, defile their sons and daughters, torture, maim, and kill resisters, and commit any number of other crimes against them. He didn’t think plunder and raping were foremost in the minds of most Rebels, but here at the core of the Empire the belief in lies used by the Emperor to justify his dictatorship ran deep among some folks. And even those who knew better than to believe such lies did truly feel they had something to fear since the idea of bringing Imperials to justice had always been one of the Rebellion’s more appealing tenants.

He found himself of two minds about the fleeing people. Part of him wanted to bring them to justice. He could easily have sideslipped his Headhunter and blasted the hyperdrive engines from the hull of the yacht. That would trap its occupants on Coruscant and force them to face retribution for their crimes against their fellow citizens.

The other part of him sympathized with them. The Empire had forced him to flee from Corellia, carrying with him little more than a change of clothes. He even had to surrender his identity, as would these refugees, for to remain who he was would have left him vulnerable to the Empire’s hunters. He had been forced to change who he had been and had been forced into an entirely different lifestyle just to preserve his life. Because of the constant fear of discovery, of being made to run again, that life seemed more punishing than any prison term or even execution. Better no life at all than one lived in constant fear.

He didn’t know if he’d heard those words before or composed the line himself, but it struck him that those words embodied the nugget of Rebel opposition to the Empire. Mon Mothma and the other leaders had enough foresight to look ahead and plan out the course of the campaign against the Empire, but for people in his position, the fight was one to defeat the forces who made them fear. The fact that after each battle, each victory, there was just that much less to be afraid of became almost tangible and served as a very sweet reward indeed.

Corran nudged his stick back and climbed up away from the fleeing yacht. Run, but always know you cannot run far enough.

He started to bring the Headhunter around on a course to the hangar, but he saw an anomalous blip on his sensor screen. He initiated an identification program, but the contact faded and returned, depriving the computer of enough solid data to make a match. It seemed to settle on an unknown fighter and a Super Star Destroyer. “Pash, what have you got for a contact at 352.4 degrees?”

“Nothing. Do you have something?”

“Yeah, but it’s weird. Probably a storm ghost. I’m going to check it out.”

“Want a wing? I can abort my approach.”

“Negative, I’m just doing a flyby. If I need help, I’ll need you all ready to go.” Corran glanced at his fuel gauge. “One pass, then I’m in.”

With the Golan Space Defense platform gone, Admiral Ackbar sent a signal to the fleet that started an evolution of the battle. Originally the Rebels had expected two or three times more by way of Star Destroyers than had appeared to defend Coruscant. That only the Triumph and Monarch remained to oppose them surprised him because neither ship had a particularly illustrious reputation or crew. At last reports Emperor’s Will and Imperator had also been part of the Coruscant defense force as well, and their participation in the battle would have made things much more difficult.

Liberator, Emancipator, and Home One formed a line moving past Triumph and Monarch. The two lines exchanged fire and missiles, savaging each other. Shields held at first, then, inevitably, crumbled. Beneath them the ships’ heavy armor had to absorb the force of the missile blasts and laser bolts. Some shots, guided by the Force or the product of pure chance, hit turbolaser batteries or torpedo launch tubes, vaporizing them, crushing them, and destroying them. Others just nibbled away at a ship’s hull or superstructure. Molecule by molecule they weakened the barrier between the ship’s interior and the void.

As always with war the best strategy was to hit without being hit back. With ships the size of Star Destroyers and heavy cruisers, avoiding being hit was, at best, difficult. The closest that could be managed in that regard was to minimize the number of weapons bearing on the ship. With the two lines passing broadside to each other, the ships were exposed to the maximum possible damage inflicted by the other side.

At Ackbar’s signal another Mon Calamari heavy cruiser, Mon Remonda, turned from its position in line behind Home One, and pointed its bow toward Coruscant. It surged forward, cutting across the Imperial Star Destroyers’ line of flight. In doing so it was able to bring all of its starboard firing-arc weapons to bear on Triumph while the Star Destroyer could hit it with its forward arc weapons.

Mon Remonda’s gunners began to pour fire in on Triumph. The Imperial Star Destroyer had already lost its shields, so the turbolaser strikes played easily up over the spine of the ship. Even more devastating were the hits by the Mon Calamari cruiser’s ion cannons. Their blue lightning chased all over the destroyer’s hull. Explosions trailed in the lightning’s wake.

The same time that Mon Remonda moved to strike at Triumph, the umbrella force began to separate. Assault frigates—a fanciful name for refitted freighters—began to close a net around the two Imperial warships and their smaller support ships. While they could not sustain the sort of damage the heavier ships were taking and survive, the Star Destroyers’ ability to strike at them had been diminished by combat. The smaller ships closed in, firing away at the destroyers. There were so many of them that the gunners who could target them could not target all of them.

Other heavier ships—Corellian corvettes, gunships, and a variety of bulk cruisers and Mon Calamari cruisers—pushed up and out away from Coruscant. They used distance to let them see over Coruscant’s horizon and spot other Imperial forces that could have been hidden on the world’s far side. They remained out of range of the Golan Space Defense platforms, yet close enough to respond quickly to any situation that demanded overwhelming firepower.

Starfighters and troop carriers began their runs to the planet. The outcome of the battle in space was important, but without troops on the ground to take, hold, and secure facilities and impose order, Coruscant would remain unconquered. Ackbar suffered under no illusions about Coruscant and its defenselessness. That the shields were down he felt was nothing short of a miracle, but he couldn’t count on how long they would stay down. He had, as nearly as he knew, a narrow window in which to insert his troops, so he pushed them forward as quickly as seemed prudent.

Commander Sirlul reached over and tapped a command into the keypad on the arm of Ackbar’s command chair. A holographic schematic of Triumph appeared before him. Multiple systems were outlined in red, including the bridge. “Triumph has lost power and is beginning to slide back into the atmosphere.”

Ackbar hit his comlink. “Ackbar to Onoma.”

“Onoma here, Admiral.”

“Cease firing on Triumph. Use your tractor beams to pull Triumph along and accelerate its orbit so it won’t decay. We want to save the ship if we can.” Ackbar looked at Monarch and could see it taking as much damage as Triumph had. Between it and Triumph, we might be able to salvage most of a Star Destroyer.

“Order acknowledged, sir. Onoma out.”

Sirlul glanced over at Ackbar. “Captain Averen of Monarch has sent a truce-byte out to everyone.”

“He will surrender unconditionally?”

“If there are conditions, they will be insignificant.”

Ackbar nodded. “Conduct the negotiations.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And when you’re done with that, Commander, I have another job for you.”

“Yes, sir?”

Ackbar pointed at Coruscant. “Find me someone down there who can surrender that world to me.”

Wedge had Winter bring back up the Palace district tactical map. “Corran, we’re getting nothing on this contact you report.”

“Contact is weak, Wedge. It oscillates back and forth, as if running between buildings. The computer can’t make any sense of … wait a minute!”

“What’s going on, Corran.”

“I’ve lost throttle control. I’m speeding up!” The green arrow representing Corran’s Headhunter began a slow dip toward the planet. “Initiating emergency shutdown of fuel injectors one and two.”

That will cut fuel back to half, slowing him. Wedge looked down at Winter. “Can you help him?”

“I can try.”

“Negative, Winter, cut the override code you’re using. I need to shut those two injectors down.”

“I haven’t used an override code, Corran.”

“Yes, you have. I’m locked up. No control.”

Wedge dropped down to stare at the data scrolling across the screen on Winter’s datapad. “What’s happening?”

Near panic flooded through the comlink from Corran. “Manual override is not working.”

“Punch out, Corran! Eject!”

“Can’t. Inverting! Nothing I can …”

Static filled the comlink channel as the green arrow dropped from sight. Wedge heard an explosion and listened to its echoes rumble as the holographic image of the building Corran’s Headhunter had hit slowly collapsed. He saw the building implode, but he felt it in his stomach. A void formed deep in his guts, swallowing the elation he had felt moments before and having more than enough room to devour the pain and guilt trickling through him.

Wedge bounced a fist off the holopad workstation, then tore off his gas mask and hurled it across the room. He didn’t know if the gas in the room had fully dissipated yet, and part of him hoped it had not. He’d been fighting for more than seven years to oppose the Empire. Friends had come and gone—mostly gone—in that time. He’d grown cynical enough to keep his distance from new recruits because he knew they died earliest and if he didn’t befriend them it wouldn’t hurt him as much when they died.

The truth was, though, that the distance didn’t really insulate him, it just allowed him to think their deaths didn’t hurt as much. But Corran, as much as the rest of the Rogues and a little bit more, had managed to close that gap. No, they didn’t always get along, but disagreements didn’t dull respect and admiration. Corran was a good pilot and a smart man who treated loyalty as the sacred foundation of friendship. Corran was like Tycho and Luke—all of them knew the horrors and pressures and anxiety of war, and all of them knew the sense of satisfaction at having completed a mission.

Even though they fought against Imperial stormtroopers and pilots, it sounded somehow evil to take pride in killing other living creatures. And it wasn’t really the killing of which they were proud, but of surviving. They took pride in the fact that they had stopped someone from killing their friends and, in doing so, loosened the grip of an evil Empire on a fearful populace. Only those individuals who had gone through what they had could truly understand it all and only those who understood it could really, truly, understand why war and killing should never be anything but the last resort.

A hand landed on Wedge’s shoulder and he spun, knocking Tycho’s arm aside. “I lost another one.”

“Maybe.” The outline of his gas mask had left red lines on Tycho’s face. “But maybe, just maybe, Corran managed to punch out before the ship went down. Maybe he’s lying on top of that pile of rubble just waiting for someone to help him.”

And maybe he’s buried so deep we’ll never find him. Wedge drew in a deep breath, then nodded. “You’re right, that’s probably what happened. He’s probably waiting for us right now.”

“He’s a Rogue, after all.”

“Right, come on.” Wedge headed for the door. “He’s a Rogue and we take care of our own. No matter the circumstances, no matter the situation, we take care of our own.”

46

Wedge Antilles found the duracrete and transparisteel barrow improbably neat. The off and on rain for the last four days had washed the dust away and granted the fractured pieces of pseudogranite sharp edges that looked almost decorative. Nothing moved in the mound, nothing showed colors outside reflective silver, black, and grey. The hill of debris rose less than seven meters above the level upon which he stood because the falling stories had telescoped into the floors below.

And somewhere in there are the mortal remains of Corran Horn, Wedge shook his head. The building Corran had hit had been on the line of the construction droid’s advance, so when Mirax used the warning beacon to get the computer center evacuated, this building had likewise emptied of people. Most of the newly unhomed already picked up on Rebellion phrases and said that the Force had truly been with them when they got out. And yet others had determined that Corran, knowing his Headhunter was going down, had deliberately driven it into a tower he knew had been evacuated. They said that made him a hero.

As if that’s what it took for him to be a hero. As if nothing else he had done would have made him one. Wedge realized his hands had knotted into fists again. He forced them open, as he had found himself doing numerous times since Coruscant had fallen. When it came down to it, because of the efforts of his people, Coruscant had not been drenched in blood. In fact, aside from the casualties in the space battle and limited actions on the planet, virtually no one had been injured. “Yet another miracle, another sign the Force was with us.”

Wedge hated the mocking tone that came with his words. People all around had gone berserk with joy when Coruscant fell. Even he had celebrated, albeit a bit subdued, because Aril Nunb had been found alive and nearly well in Invisec. Her return did not cancel the pain of Corran’s loss, especially with Mirax Terrik wandering around as if her heart had been torn out and Iella Wessiri not being much better off. The big hologram, the liberation of Coruscant, became hard to focus upon with such an immediate loss.

While he pointed to Corran’s death as the wellspring of his anxiety and frustration, he knew he did so because he did not want to consider the question that all members of the Rebel staff had been asking themselves: Why hadn’t it been harder? To even consider that question somehow seemed to cheapen their victory that was, by all accounts, hard fought and won through superior planning and execution. Even so, an average deck of sabacc cards had more computing power than the whole of the Imperial Naval staff left to conduct the defense of the planet.

The inescapable conclusion that could be drawn from the utterly inept defense of Coruscant was that Ysanne Isard wanted the New Republic to take the world. The Provisional Council had seen Coruscant as a symbol. Once they took it they would have won the right to rule the galaxy. There was no doubt that many worlds that had proclaimed themselves neutral would indeed throw their allegiance to the Republic. In that way the conquest of Coruscant did hasten the fall of the Empire.

Coruscant also became a black hole from which the New Republic could not escape. Just as taking it had been a goal for them, so taking it would be a goal for any other pretender to Palpatine’s throne. The Rebellion that had survived detection by the enemy through moving their headquarters dozens of times now had bottled itself up. It traded flexibility and mobility for legitimacy and Wedge wasn’t certain that was a trade made in their favor.

He also knew the conquest of Coruscant would not be without a price. Ysanne Isard had clearly traded the world for her escape from it—no one had found any trace of her and the reason for her evacuation seemed quite sound. Already rumors of a plague spreading through Invisec were flying thick and fast. Nawara Ven and Riv Shiel had undergone bacta therapy and were recovering. What little General Cracken had told him about Aril Nunb’s debriefing suggested the virus might have been created by the Empire specifically to leave Coruscant a charnel house, but the conquest had aborted that plan. Virus had been found in the water supply, though Rogue Squadron’s boil-off of a lot of water may have killed a vast quantity of the virus.

Wedge heard footsteps behind him and, expecting to see Tycho and Winter, was surprised when instead he saw General Cracken and Pash. Wedge began to smile, but Pash appeared hesitant and Airen intent, which led him to believe something serious was going on. “Good afternoon, General, Lieutenant. Is there something I can do for you?”

The elder Cracken nodded. “There’s been some headway in the investigation of what happened to Lieutenant Horn. My people went over all the sensor traces we could find concerning the crash, as well as comm transcripts and the statements made by everyone who heard his last transmissions.”

Wedge smiled genuinely. “This is good news. If you don’t mind waiting a minute or two, I know Tycho will want to hear this, and it will save you telling it again.” Wedge glanced at his chronometer. “He should be here momentarily.”

Airen Cracken shook his head. “I’m afraid he won’t be joining you. He’s been arrested for treason and the murder of Corran Horn.”

“What? That’s impossible.” Wedge stared at the head of Alliance Intelligence. “Tycho would never do that. Never.”

General Cracken held a hand up. “There are some things you don’t know, Commander, and I shouldn’t have to remind you that an arrest is not a conviction. It is just that we have sufficient evidence to arrest him and it was deemed appropriate to do so.”

Wedge folded his arms across his chest. “What evidence?”

“He was absent without leave from his post at Noquivzor. He traveled from there to Coruscant, bringing with him an M-3PO droid full of highly sensitive data.”

“He did those things on my order, General. Those orders were issued and sealed by me at Noquivzor.”

The older man nodded. “So I have been told and so it says in your statement. If we ever get down to where your office was, I believe I will find those orders. However, until I do, his vanishing act looks highly suspicious, especially when coupled with other things.”

“Such as?”

“Captain Celchu knew the command codes for the Headhunter Horn was flying.”

“He knew them for all those Headhunters.”

“Yes, but no other pilot threatened him with exposure for treasonous activities.” General Cracken looked at his son. “Pash overheard a heated conversation between Horn and Celchu right before the mission began. Celchu told Horn he’d checked his machine out special.”

Wedge’s head came up and Pash winced at the harshness of his stare. “Is this true?”

“I wasn’t spying, Commander.”

“My son was not placed in your unit to spy. He just happened to be there.” Airen frowned. “He didn’t want to tell me about the conversation and has proved a most reluctant witness.”

“I see.” Rogue Squadron’s leader nodded toward Pash. “Corran was probably hot about all this. What was Tycho’s reaction?”

Pash’s tense expression eased. “He said he welcomed any investigation Corran wanted to make. He said he had nothing to fear.”

Wedge raised an eyebrow. “That hardly sounds like a man with any fear of discovery.”

“He wouldn’t fear it if he’d disabled the manual override and had given his masters the command code for the Headhunter. What you did with that Interceptor, they did with Horn’s Headhunter.”

“You still haven’t established a link between Tycho and the Empire.”

“But we will, Commander.” Cracken shrugged his shoulders. “We have means, motive, and opportunity. That’s all we need for an arrest and trial.”

Wedge just shook his head. “This is wrong, and you know it. After all we’ve fought for, to get to this point and arrest someone who’s risked his life time and again for the Rebellion on evidence that’s circumstantial at best is a crime itself. A crime worthy of the Empire.”

“No, Commander Antilles, you’re wrong.” Anger sparked in the elder Cracken’s eyes and jetted into his voice. “The Empire would have snatched Celchu, broken him down until he confessed, then they would have killed him. He would have disappeared and no one would have dared ask about him. That’s how the Empire would have handled it. The way we will handle it is to have a trial and assess innocence or guilt publicly, openly, aboveboard, so there is no question about justice being done or not.”

Cracken raised his head up and met Wedge’s stare openly. “That, sir, is exactly what we fought for. You know it, and you know there’s no other way to handle this situation.”

Wedge hesitated, then closed his eyes and nodded. “You’re correct, of course, General. We did fight for justice.” He turned to stare at Corran’s grave and thought of Tycho. “The pity is, even in victory, justice still eludes those who deserve it the most.”

Epilogue

If there was a part of him that didn’t hurt, Corran Horn couldn’t name it. His chief complaint came from his shoulders. He could feel the binders holding his arms at the small of his back constantly exerting pressure to pull his elbows closer together. They sheathed his arms in metal from fingertips to elbows and were the kind of restraints that had been outlawed for CorSec’s use.

He found himself lying on his stomach in the dark on a thin cot of some sort. He was naked, save for the binders, and the room was slightly chilled. A weak, barely noticeable vibration ran through the cot, producing a low hum that depending on how he turned his head, he could occasionally hear. He strained his eyes to determine if there was anything to see, but the utter absence of light foiled him.

Corran found his thoughts wandering, which made him think that he’d been drugged. That sensation, along with the binders, his nakedness, and the darkness, led him to the inescapable conclusion that he’d been captured by the Empire. The darkness and drugs kept him disoriented. His nakedness made him defensive—or was supposed to. He recalled a CorSec training seminar about methods used by kidnappers to keep their victims off balance and was able to pinpoint himself as the subject of such treatment.

The chill in the air and the vibration suggested he was on a starship heading out through hyperspace to some destination or other. He knew the Imps would be fleeing Coruscant, but for a moment he had no idea why. Then he remembered the Alliance fleet having arrived at Coruscant. If they are running, we won. He frowned. But if we won, why am I their captive?

He tried to remember what he could of his last moments on Coruscant. He’d lost control of his Headhunter and the manual override didn’t work. Then a light had flashed on the console indicating the acceleration compensation unit had gone out. The ship flipped itself into a high g-force turn and he remembered nothing more. Without acceleration compensation, I felt the full effect of the turn. Blood drained from my brain and I went out.

Corran rolled onto his left side, then drew his knees up to his chest. He rocked himself a little bit and managed to get up onto his knees. The world immediately spun, which was a sensation that was made worse because the utter darkness gave him nothing to look at, nothing to occupy his attention. He brought his head down and rested it on the cot, but refused to let himself flop down again. It didn’t matter that he felt terrible, he’d gotten to his knees and refused to retreat to his belly again.

Lights flashed on brilliantly in an instant, stabbing forked pain into his brain. He heard a door whoosh open and the careful, deliberate clank-clack of shoes on metal lattice steps, but he made no attempt to look in the direction of the sound. He refused to look, part of him knowing the individual had desired to make an entrance, and he congratulated himself for his restraint.

He waited until the sound of the footsteps stopped before he slowly brought his head up. He kept his eyes all but shut, letting eyelashes and welled-up tears protect his eyes against the light. Out of the corner of his right eye he saw a blot of red, so he slowly turned his head toward it and looked up. Even before he got to the mismatched eyes, he knew who she was and he hoped against hope she was a figment of whatever drugs they’d pumped into him.

Her first words came cold and even, tinted with just a hint of curiosity. “I would have expected you to be more formidable somehow.”

“Clothes make the man,” he said. At least he thought he said it. He did hear sound coming out of his mouth, a kind of harsh croaking that seemed closer to Huttese than Basic. Had he any spit to let gurgle in his throat as he spoke he’d definitely have been taken for a Hutt.

“Ah, the infamous Horn wit.”

Corran opened his eyes wider and shuffled on his knees around to face her. “I left most of it back on Free Coruscant.”

She brought her hands up and clapped gently. “I’m amazed a man in your condition can make jokes.” She squatted down and caught him across the face with an openhanded slap he never saw coming. “I’m amazed a man in your situation would make jokes.”

Corran played his tongue over his split lip. “Lieutenant Corran Horn, Alliance fleet, Rogue Squadron.”

Ysanne Isard stood again but he didn’t bother following her with his eyes. “Very good, defiance. I like defiance.”

“If that were true, you’d find all you want on Coruscant.”

“Indeed, perhaps I would. That is no concern of yours, however.” Her low chuckle filled the room and made it seem even colder. “I’ll have you know that your Rebel forces are indeed now in control of Imperial Center. What they have discovered, though they know not the depth of the problem, is that Imperial Center is a poisoned world, a sick world. It is a black hole from which they cannot escape. They have truly bitten off more than they can possibly chew and they will be choked to death because of it.”

“I’m not inclined to take your word for all this.” Corran put as much disdain in the sentence as he could muster, but what she said disturbed him. Shiel and Nawara Ven and Portha had all become ill enough that they could not participate in the squadron’s final action. He didn’t think anyone could have gone forward with releasing some sort of plague on a world deliberately, but then he’d not thought anyone would use a weapon that destroyed whole planets on an inhabited world. The Empire had done the latter, so using a biological agent to destroy people and leave the world infrastructure intact just seemed like an economical refinement of Imperial doctrine.

“I neither desire nor care about your belief in what I say. Ultimately what you think is immaterial to me. I have you, you are mine, and I will do with you what I see fit.”

Corran brought his head up despite the pain. “What you did to Tycho Celchu to get him to betray me? He gave you the codes for my ship. That’s how you got me.”

She looked down at him and her eyes narrowed. “Oh, well done, Horn, well done. I would deny this, of course, but the latest word from Imperial Center is that Tycho Celchu has been arrested by Alliance Intelligence on charges of treason and murder. Specifically, your murder.”

“Hardly an injustice, given the circumstances.”

“Perhaps not, but I will find a way to use it. I will return you to them after they have convicted and executed him. His wrongful death will gnaw away at consciences and undercut the Rebellion’s illusion of moral superiority.”

“I’ll tell them the truth.”

“The only truth you’ll know is the truth I give you.” Isard’s smile slithered cruelly onto her face. “We are bound to Lusankya, my private workshop for people like you. By the time I am finished with you, your mind will be mine and your heart’s desire will be what I wish.”

Corran shook his head violently, hoping the pain would be enough to make him black out. It was not. “I will never betray my friends.”

She laughed again. “I have heard this chorus many times before and it always sounds so sweet. You will betray them, Corran Horn, just as Tycho Celchu betrayed you. You will be the instrument of Rogue Squadron’s death and will strike a mighty blow against the Alliance’s precarious unity. When I am through with you, little man, you will become the instrument of the Emperor’s vengeance and nothing and no one will be able to stop you.”

DEDICATION
To the memory of
Roger Zelazny

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank the following people for their various contributions to this book:

Janna Silverstein, Tom Dupree, and Ricia Mainhardt for getting me into this mess;

Sue Rostoni and Lucy Autrey Wilson for letting me get away with all they have in this universe;

Kevin J. Anderson, Timothy Zahn, Kathy Tyers, Bill Smith, Bill Slavicsek, Peter Schweighofer, Michael Kogge, and Dave Wolverton for the material they created and the advice they offered;

Lawrence Holland & Edward Kilham for the X-Wing and TIE Fighter computer games;

Chris Taylor for pointing out to me which ship Tycho was flying in Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi and Gail Mihara for pointing out controversies I might want to avoid;

My parents, my sister Kerin, my brother Patrick and his wife Joy for their encouragement (and endless efforts to face my other books out on bookstore shelves);

Dennis L. McKiernan, Jennifer Roberson, and especially Elizabeth T. Danforth for listening to bits of this story as it was being written and enduring such abuse with smiles and a supportive manner.

STAR WARS: THE KRYTOS TRAP
A Bantam Spectra Book/October 1996

SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

®, TM, & © 1996 by Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved.
Used under authorization.
Cover art by Paul Youll.
Copyright © 1996 by Lucasfilm Ltd.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or by any information
storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.

eISBN: 978-0-307-79623-3

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

v3.1

Contents

Master - Table of Contents

The Krytos Trap

Title Page

Copyright

Dramatis Personae

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46

Dedication

Acknowledgments

DRAMATIS PERSONAE
ROGUE SQUADRON

COMMANDER WEDGE ANTILLES (human male from Corellia)

CAPTAIN TYCHO CELCHU (human male from Alderaan)

CAPTAIN ARIL NUNB (human male from Sullust)

LIEUTENANT CORRAN HORN (human male from Corellia)

LIEUTENANT PASH CRACKEN (human male from Contruum)

OORYL QRYGG (Gand male from Gand)

NAWARA VEN (Twi’lek male from Ryloth)

RHYSATI YNR (human female from Bespin)

ERISI DLARIT (human female from Thyferra)

GAVIN DARKLIGHTER (human male from Tatooine)

RIV SHIEL (Shistavanen male from Uvena III)

ASYR SEI’LAR (Bothan female from Bothawui)

INYRI FORGE (human female from Kessel)

M-3PO (Emtrey; protocol and regulations droid)

WHISTLER (Corran’s R2 astromech)

MYNOCK (Wedge’s R5 astromech)

ALLIANCE MILITARY

ADMIRAL ACKBAR (Mon Calamari male from Mon Calamari)

ALLIANCE INTELLIGENCE

GENERAL AIREN CRACKEN (human male from Contruum)

IELLA WESSIRI (human female from Corellia)

WINTER (human female from Alderaan)

CITIZENS ON CORUSCANT

FLIRY VORRU (human male from Corellia)

DIRIC WESSIRI (human male from Corellia)

BORSK FEY’LYA (Bothan male from Bothawui)

HALLA ETTYK (human female from Alderaan)

QLAERN HIRF (Vratix from Thy ferra)

CREW OF THE PULSAR SKATE

MIRAX TERRIK (human female from Corellia)

LIAT TSAYV (Sullustan male from Sullust)

IMPERIAL FORCES

YSANNE ISARD, DIRECTOR OF IMPERIAL INTELLIGENCE (human female from Coruscant)

KIRTAN LOOR, INTELLIGENCE AGENT (human male from Churba)

GENERAL EVIR DERRICOTE (human male from Kalla)

1

Commander Wedge Antilles would have preferred the ceremony to be private. Rogue Squadron had come to mourn the passing of one of its own on the week anniversary of his death. Wedge wanted the gathering to be small and intimate, with Corran Horn’s friends all being able to share remembrances of him, but that was not possible. Corran’s death had come during the liberation of Coruscant. That made him a hero from a company of heroes, and while a small memorial might have been what Corran himself would have wanted, it was not heroic enough for a figure of his posthumous stature.

Even though Wedge had known things would not go quite the way he wanted, he had not anticipated how out of control they would get when he requested permission to hold the ceremony. He had expected a number of dignitaries would come to the pseudogranite barrow that marked where Corran had died when a building collapsed on top of him. He even anticipated people lining the balconies and walkways of nearby towers. At the very worst he imagined people might gawk from the beds of hovertrucks.

His imagination paled beside that exercised by the bureaucrats who organized the memorial service. They took a ceremony based on heartfelt grief and made it into the focal point of mourning for the entire New Republic. Corran Horn was a hero—this they proclaimed loudly—but he was also a victim. As such he represented all the victims of the Empire. It didn’t matter to them that Corran would have rejected being labeled a victim. He had been transformed into a symbol—a symbol the New Republic needed badly.

Rogue Squadron likewise underwent iconization. The unit’s pilots had always worn orange flightsuits in the past, or, as supplies became harder and harder to find, whatever had been handy. Corran’s flightsuit had been green, black, and grey, since he’d brought it with him from the Corellian Security Force. In homage to him, that color scheme was used to create new uniforms for the squadron: evergreen overall, with dark grey flank panels, black sleeves, leg stripes, and trim. On the left sleeve and breast rode the Rogue Squadron crest. It had also appeared on the evergreen hawkbilled caps designed by a Kuati, but Wedge had vetoed their addition to the uniform.

The makeup of the Squadron had also been adjusted. Asyr Sei’lar, a Bothan pilot, and Inyri Forge, the sister of a dead squadron member, had both been added to the squadron. Wedge would have gladly welcomed them, and they had been crucial to the success of the mission to liberate Coruscant, but they had been pressed upon him for political reasons. Likewise, Portha, a Trandoshan, had been made a member of the squadron despite his inability to fly. He was attached to the unit as part of a previously nonexistent security detail. Each of them was appointed by bureaucrats as a reward to various constituencies in the New Republic, and Wedge hated their objectification.

The ceremony grew out of all proportion until special grandstands had to be grafted to the nearby buildings and color-coded for the various levels of access people were to be accorded. Holocams had been stationed at various positions so the ceremony could be recorded and replayed on countless worlds. Despite the very real fears about contracting the highly contagious Krytos virus, the stands were packed to overflowing.

He looked up from his position on the reviewing stand and out at Rogue Squadron. His people were bearing up well despite the bright sunlight and unseasonably warm weather. The recent rains had raised the general level of humidity until clothing clung and the very air lay like a smothering blanket over everyone. The thick air seemed to deaden sounds and suppress emotions, and Wedge was tempted to allow himself to imagine that Coruscant somehow also mourned Corran’s passing.

In addition to the members of Rogue Squadron, Corran’s other friends stood on the platform nearest the barrow. Iella Wessiri, a slender, brown-haired woman who had been Corran’s CorSec partner, stood next to Mirax Terrik. Despite being the daughter of a notorious Corellian smuggler, Mirax had managed to become friends with Corran. Mirax, who had known Wedge since they had both been kids, had tearfully confided in him that she and Corran had planned to celebrate the liberation of Coruscant together. He could see she’d fallen hard for Corran, and the lifeless expression on her face made his heart ache.

The only one who is missing is Tycho. Wedge frowned. Captain Tycho Celchu was a long-standing member of Rogue Squadron who had served as the squadron’s executive officer. He’d surreptitiously joined the mission to Coruscant at Wedge’s request and had been instrumental in bringing the planet’s defenses down. His action was the latest in a string of heroic missions Tycho had carried off during his Rebel career.

Unfortunately, Alliance Intelligence had developed evidence that indicated Tycho was working for the Empire. They blamed him directly not only for Corran’s death, but for the death of Bror Jace, another Rogue Squadron pilot who had died early on in the Coruscant campaign. Wedge had not been fully apprised of what the evidence was that they had against Tycho, but he did not doubt the man’s innocence for a second. Still, his innocence might mean nothing in the long run.

In spite of the liberation, Coruscant was not a pleasant or stable world. A hideous epidemic—the Krytos virus—was ravaging the non-human population of the planet. It had struck at the non-humans in the Rebellion and was hard enough on some species that even coming down to the planet was an act of extreme bravery. Bacta, as usual, could cure the virus, but the Rebellion’s entire store of bacta was insufficient to cure everyone. This resulted in panic, and resentment against humans for their apparent immunity to the disease.

The memorial service had become an important event because Coruscant’s population needed something to unite them and to get their minds off their suffering, even if only for a moment. The fact that Rogue Squadron had humans and non-humans working together in it showed the strength of unity that had allowed the Rebellion to prevail. Non-humans coming together along with dignitaries from various other worlds to mourn a dead human acknowledged the debt the Rebels owed humans. Speakers devoted themselves to exhorting their fellows to labor together in building a future that would justify the sacrifices made by Corran and others. Their words raised things to a philosophical or metaphysical level meant to soothe away the anxieties and worries of the citizens.

Those were noble messages, to be certain, but Wedge felt they were not the right messages for Corran. He tugged on the sleeves of his uniform jacket as a Bothan protocol subaltern waved him forward. Wedge stepped up to the podium and wanted to lean heavily upon it. Years of fighting and saying good-bye to friends and comrades weighed him down—but he refused to give in to fatigue. He let his pride in the squadron and his friendship with Corran keep him upright.

He looked around at the crowd, then focused on the mound of pseudogranite rubble before him. “Corran Horn does not rest easy in that grave.” Wedge paused for a moment, and then another, letting the silence remind everyone of the true purpose of the ceremony. “Corran Horn was never at ease except when he was fighting. He does not rest easy now because there is much fighting yet to be done. We have taken Coruscant, but anyone who assumes that means the Empire is dead is as mistaken as Grand Moff Tarkin was in his belief that Alderaan’s destruction would somehow cripple the Rebellion.”

Wedge brought his head up. “Corran Horn was not a man who gave up, no matter what the odds. More than once he took upon himself the responsibility of dealing with a threat to the squadron and to the Rebellion. Heedless of his own safety, he engaged overwhelming forces and by sheer dint of will and spirit and courage he won through. Even here, on Coruscant, he flew alone into the heart of a storm that was ravaging a planet and risked his life so this world would be free. He did not fail, because he would not let himself fail.

“Each of us who knew him has, in our hearts, dozens and dozens of examples of his bravery or his concern for others, or his ability to see where he was wrong and correct himself. He was not a perfect man, but he was a man who sought to be the best he could be. And while he took pride in being very good, he didn’t waste energy in displays of rampant egotism. He just picked out new goals and drove himself forward toward them.”

Wedge slowly nodded toward the rubble pile. “Corran is now gone. The burdens he bore have been laid down. The responsibilities he shouldered have been abandoned. The example he set is no more. His loss is tragic, but the greater tragedy would be letting him be remembered as a faceless hero mouldering in this cairn. He was a fighter, as all of us should be. The things he took upon himself might be enough to crush down any one person, but we all can accept a portion of that responsibility and bear it together. Others have talked about building a future that would honor Corran and the others who have died fighting the Empire, but the fact is that there’s fighting yet to be done before the building can begin.

“We have to fight the impatience with the pace of change that makes us look nostalgically on the days of the Empire. Yes, there might have been a bit more food available. Yes, power outages might have been fewer. Yes, you might have been insulated from the misery of others—but at what cost? The security you thought you had froze into an icy lump of fear in your gut whenever you saw stormtroopers walking in your direction. With the liberation of Coruscant that fear can melt, but if you forget it once existed and decide things were not so bad under the Emperor, you’ll be well on your way to inviting it back.”

He opened his hands to take in all those assembled at the monument. “You must do what Corran did: fight anything and everything that would give the Empire comfort or security or a chance to reassert itself. If you trade vigilance for complacency, freedom for security, a future without fear for comfort; you will be responsible for shaping the galaxy once again into a place that demands people like Corran fight, always fight and, eventually, fall victim to evil.

“The choice, ultimately, devolves to you. Corran Horn will not rest easy in his grave until there is no more fighting to be done. He has done everything he could to fight the Empire; now it is up to you to continue his fight. If he is ever to know peace, it will only be when we all know peace. And that is a goal every one of us knows is well worth fighting for.”

Wedge stepped back from the podium and steeled himself against the polite applause. Deep down he would have hoped his words had been inspiring, but those gathered around the memorial were dignitaries and officials from worlds throughout the New Republic. They were politicians whose goal was to help shape the future others of their number spoke about. They wanted stability and order as a foundation for their constructions. His words, reminding everyone that fights were yet to be waged, undercut their efforts. They had to applaud because of the situation and who he was, but Wedge had no doubt most of them thought him a politically naive warrior best suited to being a hero who was feted and used in holograph opportunities to support this program or that.

He could only hope that others listening to what he had to say would take his message to heart. The politicians required stability, and the way they acquired stability was to ignore instability or patch it over with some quick fix. The citizens of the New Republic would find their politicians as distant as the Imperial politicians before them. With their new-won freedom, the people would be able to let their leaders know what they thought, and might be tempted to protest if things did not move swiftly enough in the direction the people wanted.

A rebellion against the Rebellion would result in anarchy or a return of the Empire. Either would be disaster. Fighting for progress and against reactionary forces was the only way to guarantee the New Republic would get a chance to flourish. Wedge dearly wanted that to happen and hoped the politicians would look past their efforts to gather power to themselves long enough to take steps to provide real stability and a real future.

Over at the grave site an honor guard raised the squadron flag, then backed away and saluted. That signaled an end to the ceremony, and the visitors began to drift away. A cream-furred Bothan with violet eyes crossed to where Wedge stood and nodded almost graciously. “You were quite eloquent, Commander Antilles.” Borsk Fey’lya waved a hand toward the departing masses. “I have no doubt quite a few hearts were stirred by your words.”

Wedge raised an eyebrow. “But not yours, Councilor Fey’lya?”

The Bothan snoted a clipped laugh. “If I were so easily swayed, I could be convinced to back all sorts of nonsense.”

“Like the trial of Tycho Celchu?”

Fey’lya’s fur rippled and rose at the back of his neck. “No, I might be convinced that such a trial was not necessary.” He smoothed the fur back down with his right hand. “Admiral Ackbar has not convinced you to abandon your petition to the Provisional Council about this matter?”

“No.” Wedge folded his arms across his chest. “I would have thought by now you would have engineered a vote to deny me the chance to address the council.”

“Summarily dismiss a petition by the man who liberated Coruscant?” The Bothan’s violet eyes narrowed. “You’re moving into a realm of warfare at which I am a master, Commander. I would have thought you wise enough to see that. Your petition will fail. It must fail, so it shall. Captain Celchu will be tried for murder and treason.”

“Even though he is innocent?”

“Is he?”

“He is.”

“A fact to be determined by a military court, surely.” Fey’lya gave Wedge a cold smile. “A suggestion, Commander.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t waste your eloquence on the Provisional Council. Save it. Hoard it.” The Bothan’s teeth flashed in a feral grin. “Use it on the tribunal that tries Captain Celchu. You’ll not gain his freedom, of course—no one is that eloquent; but perhaps you will win him some modicum of mercy when it comes time for sentence to be passed.”

2

High up in a tower suite, up above the surface of Imperial Center, Kirtan Loor allowed himself a smile. At the tower’s pinnacle, the only companions were hawk-bats safe in their shadowed roosts and Special Intelligence operatives who were menacing despite their lack of stormtrooper armor or bulk. He felt alone and aloof, but those sensations came naturally with his sense of superiority. At the top of the world, he had been given all he could see to command and dominate.

And destroy.

Ysanne Isard had given him the job of creating and leading a Palpatine Counter-insurgency Front. He knew she did not expect grand success from him. He had been given ample resources to make himself a nuisance. He could disrupt the functioning of the New Republic. He could slow their takeover of Coruscant and hamper their ability to master the mechanisms of galactic administration. A bother, minor but vexatious, is what Ysanne Isard had intended he become.

Kirtan Loor knew he had to become more. Years before, when he started working as an Imperial liaison officer with the Corellian Security Force on Corellia, he never would have dreamed of finding himself rising so far and playing so deadly a game. Even so, he had always been ambitious, and supremely confident in himself and his abilities. His chief asset was his memory, which allowed him to recall a plethora of facts, no matter how obscure. Once he had seen or read or heard something he could draw it from his memory, and this ability gave him a gross advantage over the criminals and bureaucrats with whom he dealt.

His reliance on his memory had also hobbled him. His prodigious feats of recall so overawed his enemies that they would naturally assume he had processed the information he possessed and had drawn the logical conclusions from it. Since they assumed he already knew what only they knew, they would tell him what he had not bothered to figure out for himself. They made it unnecessary for him to truly think, and that skill had begun to atrophy in him.

Ysanne Isard, when she summoned him to Imperial Center, had made it abundantly clear that learning to think and not to assume was the key to his continued existence. Her supervision made up in severity what it lacked in duration, putting him through a grueling regimen that rehabilitated his cognitive abilities. By the time she fled Imperial Center, Isard had clearly been confident in his ability to annoy and confound the Rebels.

More importantly, Kirtan Loor had become certain that he could do all she wanted and yet more.

From his vantage point he looked down on the distant blob of dignitaries and mourners gathered at the memorial for Corran Horn. While he despised them all for their politics, he joined them in mourning Horn’s loss. Corran Horn had been Loor’s nemesis. They had hated each other on Corellia, and Loor had spent a year and a half trying to hunt Corran down after he fled from Corellia. The hunt had ended when Ysanne Isard brought Loor to Imperial Center, but he had anticipated a renewal of his private little war with Horn when given the assignment to remain on Coruscant.

Of course, Corran’s demise hardly made a dent in the legion of enemies Loor had on Imperial Center. Foremost among them was General Airen Cracken, the director of Alliance Intelligence. Cracken’s network of spies and operatives had ultimately made the conquest of the Imperial capital possible, and his security precautions had given Imperial counterintelligence agents fits for years. Cracken—or Kraken, as some of Loor’s people had taken to calling the Rebel—would be a difficult foe with whom to grapple.

Loor knew he had some other enemies who would pursue him as part of a personal vendetta. The whole of Rogue Squadron, from Antilles to the new recruits, would gladly hunt him down and kill him—including the spy in their midst since Loor presented a security risk for the spy. Even if they could not connect him with Corran’s death directly, the mere fact that Corran hated him would be a burden they’d gladly accept and a debt they would attempt to discharge.

Iella Wessiri was the last of the CorSec personnel Loor had hunted, and her presence on Imperial Center gave him pause. She had never been as relentless as Corran Horn in her pursuit of criminals, but that had always seemed to Loor to be because she was more thorough than Horn. Whereas Corran might muscle his way through an investigation, Iella picked up on small clues and accomplished with élan what Corran did with brute strength. In the shadow game in which Loor was engaged, this meant she was a foe he might not see coming, and that made her the most dangerous of all.

Loor backed away from the window and looked at the holographic representation of the figures below as they strode across his holotable. The ceremony had been broadcast planetwide, and would be rebroadcast at various worlds throughout the galaxy. He watched Borsk Fey’lya and Wedge Antilles as they met in close conversation, then split apart and wandered away. Everyone appeared more like toys to him than they did real people. He found it easy to imagine himself a titanic—no, Imperial—presence who had deigned to be distracted by the actions of bugs.

He picked up the remote device from the table and flicked it on. A couple of small lights flashed on the black rectangle in his left palm, then a red button in the center of it glowed almost benignly. His thumb hovered over it for a second. He smiled, but killed the impulse to stab his thumb down and gently returned the device to the table.

A year before he would have punched that button, detonating the explosives his people had secreted around the memorial. With one casual caress he could have unleashed fire and pain, wiping out a cadre of traitorous planetary officials and eliminating Rogue Squadron. He knew, given a chance, any of the SI operatives under his command would have triggered the nergon 14 charges—as would the majority of the military command staff still serving the Empire.

Loor did not. Isard had pointed out on numerous occasions that before the Empire could be reestablished, the Rebellion had to die. She had pointed out that the Emperor’s obsession with destroying the Jedi Knights had caused him to regard the rest of the Rebellion as a lesser threat, yet it had outlived the Jedi and the Emperor. Only by destroying the Rebellion would it be possible to reassert the Empire’s authority over the galaxy. Destroying the Rebellion required methods more subtle than exploding grandstands and planets, accomplishing with a vibroblade what could not be done with a Death Star.

Rogue Squadron could not be allowed to die, because they were required for the public spectacle of Tycho Celchu’s trial. General Cracken had uncovered ample evidence that pointed toward Celchu’s guilt, and Loor had delighted in clearing the way for Cracken’s investigators to find yet more of it. The evidence would be condemning, yet so obviously questionable that the members of Rogue Squadron—all of whom had indicated a belief in Tycho’s innocence at one level or another—would decry it as false. That would increase the tension between the conquerors of Imperial Center and the politicians who slunk in after the pilots had risked their lives to secure the world. If the heroes of the Rebellion could doubt and resent the government of the New Republic, how would the citizenry build confidence in their leaders?

The Krytos virus further complicated things. Created by an Imperial scientist under Loor’s supervision, it killed non-humans in a most hideous manner. Roughly three weeks after infection, the victims entered the final, lethal stage of the disease. Over the course of a week the virus multiplied very rapidly, exploding cell after cell in their bodies. Their flesh weakened, sagged, and split open while the victims bled from every pore and orifice. The resulting liquid was highly infectious, and though bacta could hold the disease at bay or, in sufficient quantities, cure it, the Rebellion did not have access to enough bacta to treat all the cases on Coruscant.

The price of bacta had shot up and supplies dwindled. People hoarded bacta and rumors about the disease having spread to the human population caused waves of panic. Already a number of worlds had ordered ships from Imperial Center quarantined so the disease would not spread, further disrupting the New Republic’s weak economy and eroding its authority. It did no good for human bureaucrats to try to explain the precautions they had taken for dealing with the disease since they were immune, and that immunity built up resentment between the human and non-human populations within the New Republic.

Loor allowed himself a small laugh. He had taken the precaution of putting away a supply of bacta, which he was selling off in small lots. As a result of this action, anxious Rebels were supplying the financing for an organization bent on the destruction of the New Republic. The irony of it all was sufficient to dull the omnipresent fear of discovery and capture.

There was no question in his mind that to be captured was to be killed, yet he did not let that prospect daunt him. Being able to turn the Rebels’ tactics back on them struck him as justice. He would be returning to them the fear and frustration Imperials everywhere had known during the Rebellion. He would strike from hiding, hitting at targets chosen randomly. His vengeance would be loosely focused because that meant no one could feel safe from his touch.

He knew his efforts would be denounced as crude terrorism, but he intended there to be nothing crude about his efforts. Today he would destroy the grandstands around the memorial. They would be nearly empty, and all those who had left the stands would breath a sigh of relief that they had not been blown up minutes or hours earlier; but everyone would have to consider congregating in a public place to be dangerous in the future. And if he hit a bacta treatment and distribution center tomorrow, people would also have to weigh obtaining protection from the virus against the possibility of being blown to bits.

By choosing targets of minimal military value he could stir up the populace to demand the military do something. If the public’s ire focused on one official or another, he could target that person, giving the public some power. He would let their displeasure choose his victims, just as his choices would give direction to their fear. Theirs would be a virulent and symbiotic relationship. He would be nightmare and benefactor, they would be victims and supporters. He would become a faceless evil they sought to direct while fearing any attention they drew to themselves.

Having once been on the side attempting to stop an anti-government force, he could well appreciate the difficulties the New Republic would have in dealing with him. The fact that the Rebellion had never resorted to outright terrorism did not concern him. Their goal had been to build a new government; his was merely to destroy what they had created. He wanted things to degenerate into an anarchy that would prompt an outcry for leadership and authority. When that call went out, his mission would be accomplished and the Empire would return.

He again took up the remote control and returned to the window. Down at the memorial he could see small pinpricks of color that marked passersby on their way to and from other places. He glanced at the holograms striding across his holotable and saw that none of the people were of consequence. He followed the course of one woman, allowing her to clear the blast radius, then pressed the button.

A staccato series of explosions went off sequentially around the memorial. To the south the grandstands teetered forward and started to somersault their way into the depths of Imperial Center. A half-dozen people who had been seated on them fell like colorful confetti. One actually grabbed the edge of the platform next to the barrow and hauled himself up to safety, but a subsequent blast tossed him back into the pit from which he had narrowly escaped.

Other explosions twisted metal and shattered transparisteel windows in the surrounding buildings. Grandstands clung to the sides of buildings like mutilated metal insects with bleeding, moaning people clutched in their limbs. Dust and smoke cleared to show the central ferrocrete ring around the memorial had been nibbled away, with a huge chunk of it dangling perilously by a reinforcement bar or two.

Loor finally felt the blast’s shockwave send a tremor through his tower. The hawk-bats flapped black wings to steady themselves, then dropped away from their perches. Wings snapped open, sending the creatures soaring into a slow spiral that would take them down to the blast site. Loor knew enough of them to know the hawk-bats would first look to see if the holes in the buildings revealed previously hidden granite slugs, but when deprived of their favorite prey, they would settle for the gobbets of flesh left behind by the victims.

“Good hunting,” he wished them, “eat your fill. Before I am done there will be more, much more for you to consume. I shall let you feast on my enemies, and together, here on a world they call their own, we shall both thrive.”

3

It seemed to Wedge that the mood of the Provisional Council was as dark as the room in which they met and as sour as the scent of bacta in the air. The dimly lit chamber had once been part of the Senatorial apartments Mon Mothma had called home before the Rebellion and her role in it forced her to go underground. It had been redecorated in garish reds and purples by Imperial agents, with green and gold trim on everything, but the paucity of light quelled the riot of color.

A desire to hide signs of Imperial occupation of the apartments was not the reason for keeping the room dim. Sian Tevv, the Sullustan member of the Provisional Council, had been exposed to the Krytos virus. While there was no evidence he had contracted the disease, he had undergone preventative bacta therapy and had some residual sensitivity to bright light. The Council made a concession to him by lowering the light, and another to the non-human members of the Council by circulating a light bacta mist through the air to prevent possible contagion. This increased humidity seemed to please no one, save perhaps Admiral Ackbar, but he looked grim for his own reasons.

Primarily because I’m actually here. Wedge knew his petition was doomed to fail—Borsk Fey’lya had said as much at the memorial ceremony, and various other councilors had repeated the warning in the two days since then, including Admiral Ackbar and Princess Leia Organa. In fact, Wedge knew, the only reason he was being given a chance to address the Council was because of his status as a liberator of Coruscant.

The Council had arranged three long tables in a half-hexagonal formation, with Mon Mothma in the middle, flanked by Princess Leia and Corellia’s Doman Beruss. Ackbar and Fey’lya anchored the far ends of the two angled tables. This left Wedge to stand in the open area before the Council, as if he were on trial. This is exactly what Tycho will face if I do not succeed here today; therefore, I must succeed.

Mon Mothma inclined her head toward him. “I need not introduce to you a man who has appeared before this Council previously and who has been so instrumental in the New Republic’s success. Because Commander Antilles may end up discussing highly sensitive material, this will be an executive session of the Provisional Council. Everything said here is confidential, and reporting of it will result in possible criminal charges.”

Doman Beruss smiled. “Ah, to have cases before we have a Judiciary, now that is civilization!”

Even Mon Mothma smiled at the remark, then set her face again into a mask of solemnity. “Please, Commander, speak your mind.”

Wedge took a deep breath, then began. “I have come here today to ask you to prevent a gross injustice from being enacted. Captain Tycho Celchu has been arrested and will be tried on murder and treason charges. The evidence against him—what little of it I know about—is circumstantial and weaker than the defenses Ysanne Isard left behind here. Tycho is a hero of the Rebellion. If not for his efforts, we would not be here right now, and I would be dead. The man he’s accused of killing is someone whose life Tycho saved on numerous occasions—Corran would have long since been dead if Tycho wanted him dead. Tycho is innocent, and to put him through this trial after all he has endured would be cruelty on a truly Imperial scale.”

Mon Mothma nodded slowly. “I appreciate your frankness, Commander, and have no doubt you believe everything you’ve told us. Before we can make any sort of decision, it would be useful for us to have a better grasp of the facts surrounding the situation.” She pointed to a green-eyed man whose hair had shifted from its original red to mostly white. “If you would, General Cracken, please bring the Council up to date with what you have learned concerning Captain Celchu.”

Cracken walked over to stand next to Wedge. “I hope Commander Antilles will forgive my contradicting him on a couple of points. Some of this information has been developed recently, and because the circumstances surrounding the investigation are tricky, I have not had a chance to brief him on them.”

Wedge dropped his voice to a whisper. “Nice ambush.”

“That’s the last thing I want to do, Commander.” Cracken cleared his throat. “Tycho Celchu is a native of Alderaan who graduated from the Imperial Naval Academy and was made a TIE fighter pilot. Subsequent to the destruction of his homeworld—which he had the misfortune of witnessing via holonet communications with his family—he defected from Imperial service and joined the Rebellion. He joined us just after the evacuation of Yavin 4, served with distinction at Hoth, and accompanied Commander Antilles on the assault on the Death Star at Endor. He is one of a handful of pilots who entered and escaped the Death Star.

“Slightly less than two years ago Celchu volunteered for a covert scouting mission to Coruscant. On the way back out, he was captured and sent to Ysanne Isard’s Lusankya facility. Little is known about this prison, except that people who have come from it have routinely been brainwashed into becoming Imperial agents who commit acts of murder and mayhem when bidden to do so by Isard. Tycho is unique among those who have been to Lusankya in that he retains some memories of having been there. Prior to his appearance, former inmates revealed their connection to this place only after they had been activated, done their damage, and were captured by our forces.”

Wedge shook his head. “I’m sure General Cracken will not mind my pointing out that Tycho did not escape from Lusankya. Isard transferred him to the penal colony at Akrit’tar, and he escaped from there to return to us.”

“Thank you, Commander, I was just getting to that.” Cracken’s expression betrayed neither amusement nor irritation, which somehow made Wedge think things were not going to go well for Tycho. “Upon his return, Captain Celchu was debriefed, and his debriefing, in fact, indicated he recalled almost nothing of his time at Lusankya. We could find no indication he had been brainwashed by Isard. However, we had never detected brainwashing in any of her other little bio-weapons. We were left in the unenviable position of having to assume the worst about Captain Celchu. Commander Antilles, believing then as he does now in his friend’s innocence, struck a bargain with his superiors to get Celchu assigned as his executive officer. Security was maintained, for the most part, and the incidents where it was not betrayed no Imperial leanings on the part of Captain Celchu.”

Cracken frowned. “Unfortunately we have developed evidence that suggests Celchu has betrayed Rogue Squadron and the New Republic. In the case of Corran Horn, Tycho Celchu had access to the command code for the Headhunter Horn was flying at the time of his death, and Celchu had gone over the fighter, without supervision, just prior to Horn’s flight. Horn confronted Celchu before they headed out; Horn threatened to uncover his treason, so Celchu had him killed. He waited until after the shields had been brought down, but we have pretty well determined Isard wanted us to take the planet and inherit the virus, so killing Horn after her goal was accomplished only makes sense.

“The Horn case is not the only death to which we can link Captain Celchu.”

Wedge’s jaw dropped in surprise. “What? You can’t mean Bror Jace?”

“Indeed I do.”

“Nonsense. The Empire killed him.”

Cracken nodded. “Agreed, but the way they got him was unusual. Previously we believed he happened to have been trapped by an Interdictor Cruiser out looking for smugglers. However, we have been forced to amend that view following the defection of the Imperial Interdictor Cruiser Black Asp. Captain Iillor indicated in her debriefing that the Black Asp was directed to go to specific coordinates to intercept Bror Jace as he headed back to Thyferra. He was a bit late in arriving, but showed up exactly where he was expected to. They tried to capture him, but his ship exploded during the fight. The arrangements for Jace’s journey home, including the plotting of his course, were made by Captain Tycho Celchu.”

“By my order.”

“Yes, Commander, by your order—which does not mean Isard could not have warped Celchu enough to make him betray your people.”

“But, again, that’s circumstantial.”

“We have more.” The Alliance Intelligence chief shrugged. “Horn told you, Commander, that he’d seen Celchu here on Coruscant talking with a known Imperial operative, Kirtan Loor. Horn had worked with Loor for years on Corellia, so the chance of a mistake in his identification are minimal. In backtracking Celchu’s time here on Coruscant—granting that you ordered him to come here, Commander—we have periods of time for which we cannot account. Moreover, we have uncovered a number of banking accounts in which large numbers of credits have been accumulated. These accounts add up to approximately fifteen million credits, which means Celchu was being paid by the Empire.”

“What?” Wedge couldn’t believe what he was hearing. There was no way, just no way Tycho was an agent in the pay of the Empire. “If he was one of Isard’s sleeper agents, why would she be paying him?”

“Commander, for years I’ve been trying to fathom her mind, and I have been unable to do so. If I had to guess, however, I would say that creating those accounts was a precaution to let us uncover Tycho at some point or, as it stands now, a means to guarantee he will be tried for his crimes.”

“But she has no interest in seeing justice done, which underscores how ludicrous all these charges against Tycho are.” Wedge brought his head up. “If Isard wants a trial, you know conducting it will be to her benefit, which is yet one more reason not to go ahead with it.”

Borsk Fey’lya tapped a talon against the tabletop. “Or is she providing more evidence than we need to convict so we will be convinced Celchu is being framed? If we are convinced he is innocent, we could exonerate him, raise him into a position of trust, and find ourselves again fodder for her schemes.”

Wedge winced. He hated Fey’lya’s wheels-within-wheels reasoning because it came down to a core problem with Tycho’s case: either he was innocent and being made to look guilty, or he was guilty and being made to look innocent through a clumsy frame. The evidence served both explanations well, and sorting good data from bad was a task that could easily defy completion. Everyone could agree something was not right in the whole situation, but assigning blame and assessing truth was not going to be easy.

And no matter what happened, Tycho would end up being stigmatized, reviled, and ostracized. He would be destroyed by it all, and that was something he did not deserve.

For Wedge it was simple to separate fact from fiction, but he knew that was because he was starting from a deep belief in Tycho’s innocence. Wedge didn’t have a Jedi’s insight through the Force—he just knew Tycho. They’d fought side by side through some of the most harrowing battles the galaxy had ever seen. They’d shared hardships that others could not have even imagined, and they shared good times that others could only envy. Wedge knew Tycho could no more betray the Rebellion than he himself could, but looking around at the Council, he realized that even his conduct might not be seen as above reproach.

“I still do not believe the evidence General Cracken’s people have gathered is anything more than circumstantial.” Wedge studied the members of the Council. “For any trial to go forward, especially as quickly as this trial is being pushed, is reckless and negligent. I know we all want swift justice if Tycho is guilty, but trying him on these charges right now can only hurt him and, ultimately, the New Republic.”

Doman Beruss, her light eyes glinting coldly in the dimness, opened her hands. “Your opinion, Commander Antilles, is respected but not universally held. The evidence is sufficient in any jurisdiction of the galaxy to call for a trial.”

Wedge’s eyes narrowed as he sensed a transparisteel barrier descending between his argument and the Council’s willingness to act. He knew he had to do something to get them to open their eyes, so he decided to take a chance. “This evidence may demand a trial, but at least delay it until there is time to scrape things down another layer or two and find out what’s really going on. I think it is the minimum courtesy you owe someone like Tycho Celchu, and that’s an opinion I do not need to keep private.”

Borsk Fey’lya’s head came up and his fur rippled like a storm-wracked ocean. “Are you threatening to use your status as hero to oppose us?”

Ackbar answered for Wedge. “He was doing nothing of the kind. Because Captain Celchu is facing a court martial, the trial and everything surrounding it is a military matter, and Commander Antilles knows unauthorized discussions of same violate regulations and oaths he took when he became an officer.”

“Begging the Admiral’s pardon,” Wedge growled, “I was threatening to go public with my feelings about the trial. I still am. And if expressing my opinion about an injustice is not allowed in the Alliance military, I can always resign my commission.”

That bombshell certainly had an effect, but not entirely the one he expected. While Ackbar looked disappointed, Borsk Fey’lya smiled victoriously. The other councilors reacted with horror or a grim acknowledgment of his bold stroke. If they had thought his speaking out against Tycho’s treatment would attract attention, his resignation because of it would undoubtedly be an action with a much higher profile.

Leia leaned forward. “Chief Councilor, I suggest we recess for an hour. I would like a chance to speak with Commander Antilles, if I might.”

“Please.” Mon Mothma stood and gave Wedge a look that combined pride with frustration, anger with sympathy. Wedge felt not exactly pitied, but as if there was more going on than he had access to. He knew that was true, of course—he was just the leader of a fighter squadron, and these were the leaders of a new nation. But he hated to think their perspective could somehow justify what they were going to do to Tycho.

General Cracken left the room last and closed the doors behind himself, leaving Wedge alone with Princess Leia. In all the time he’d known her, she’d never looked so saddened. “If you want to convince me to save my career, I appreciate the effort, but I’ll stand by what I said just now. You can’t talk me out of it.”

She remained seated and slowly shook her head. “I know that, so I’m not going to try. It’s important to me that you know I think Tycho is innocent, too. I’ve known Winter for as long as I can remember, and she’s terribly fond of Tycho. If she can remember nothing that’s the least bit ambiguous about him, then I can’t imagine there’s anything sinister to uncover. You and I both know that the trial will be rough on Tycho, and unfair.”

“Then help me convince them to stop it or delay it.”

“I would if I could, but I can’t.” A deep frown creased her brow as she plucked at the fabric of her pale green gown. “The reason I asked for the recess is so I can tell you what’s going to happen after someone here decides that we have been suitably courteous in listening to you and that we need to move on to new business.”

Leia chewed on her lower lip for a second. “Mon Mothma will thank you for coming to us, but she will point out that Tycho is being tried in a military court. The Provisional Council has no authority to interfere with the way the military deals with violations of the code of military justice. Until there is a conviction, and punishment is decided upon, there is nothing the Council can do, and even at that point it is an open question whether or not we can interfere.”

“But there has to be a chance to appeal a conviction.…” Wedge hesitated, then nodded. “Councilor Beruss’s comment about a lack of a Judiciary … that was meant to forestall this argument, yes?”

Leia nodded. “In simple terms, yes, but we haven’t yet had time to make decisions concerning the structure of such a body, much less its jurisdiction and duties. For example, would an appeal go to the New Republic courts first, or would it be sent to the courts on the defendant’s homeworld, or the victim’s homeworld? Putting together a government is not easy, and the process is not pretty or without pain. There are casualties all over the place.”

“And Tycho will be one of them.”

“Unfortunately, yes, he may be.” Leia’s shoulders slumped with fatigue. “You may not realize how fragile the New Republic is right now. With her Krytos virus Ysanne Isard has succeeded in driving a wedge between the human and non-human members of the New Republic. There have been accusations that some of us knew the virus was here and encouraged people to return to their native worlds specifically to spread the disease and kill off whole planetary populations. There are others who accuse us of not doing enough to get bacta to those who need it. If we do try to get as much as possible here to save as many people as possible, we drain the military of their supply. If Isard hits back, or Warlord Zsinj decides to strike at us, we can be devastated. Trying to buy up supplies of bacta has driven the price higher than ever before, and to make matters worse, the Ashern rebels on Thyferra have managed to damage production, limiting the supply at a time when the demand couldn’t be higher.”

She looked up at him. “It’s a good thing we don’t have a Treasury Ministry in place, because they’d tell us we’re bankrupt.”

When Wedge realized his mouth was hanging open he clicked it shut. “I had no idea.…”

“Of course not. Nor does anyone else outside the Council. Things are so dire that I’ll be heading off to try to open relations with Hapes and ask them for help—and that’s something that’s so secret I’ll deny even knowing you if it gets out.”

Wedge nodded. “Already forgotten.”

Leia mustered a weak smile. “Frankly speaking, there is a remote possibility that we can secure enough bacta to save many of the people who are afflicted by Krytos, but not all. Even if we cure 95 percent of the cases, those we don’t cure will amount to millions of fatalities—non-human fatalities. The resentment against the government will rise until the Alliance falls apart. When that happens, someone like Warlord Zsinj or Ysanne Isard or who knows who else is lurking out there can come in and sweep up the pieces.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “That shouldn’t have anything to do with Tycho, but it does because Tycho is a human, accused of a heinous crime against a fellow Rebel and a man who is now a hero. If we do not bring him to trial quickly and let the trial take its course, we will be accused of favoring a human. People will suggest that were Tycho a Gotal or Quarren, we’d have tried, convicted, and executed him inside of a day. That charge is baseless, but it’s critical we avoid any appearance of favoritism.”

“So Tycho gets offered up as a sacrifice to keep the Alliance together?”

“I would have preferred being able to put Ysanne Isard on trial for having the Krytos virus created and spread, but she got away—how, I don’t know, but she did. We probably could scoop up a double-handful of Imperial bureaucrats and put them on trial for past activities, but then the entire Imperial bureaucracy would go into hiding and any chance we had of trying to govern the galaxy would go away.”

That comment brought Wedge up short. The notion of using the enemy to administer the territories of the new government struck him as wrong, but then he realized the Alliance military had always welcomed defectors from the other side into its ranks. Experience was enough to forgive past sins, especially when things were so critical. “You’re right, creating a government isn’t easy or pretty.”

“But it’s what we have to do.”

The logic of her argument was inescapable, but Wedge bristled at it and didn’t want to back down. “Perhaps resigning is something I have to do.”

Leia shook her head. “No, no it’s not. You’re not going to resign, Wedge.”

“Why not? The war’s over. There have to be a half-dozen fueling depots I could buy and operate here on Coruscant or back on Corellia.” He knew he was letting himself be a bit petulant, but to acquiesce seemed like abandoning Tycho. I won’t do that without sufficient reason.

“You won’t resign, dear heart, because of the same sense of responsibility that makes you threaten to resign.” Leia smiled at him. “Cracken’s people have been doing more than looking into Tycho’s activities. Turns out that Warlord Zsinj hit a Thyferran bacta convoy and stole a fairly big shipment. An Ashern rebel was on the convoy and got word out to us about the location of the space platform where Zsinj has the convoy docked. The bacta will save a lot of people, but getting our operatives in and back out means someone very good is going to have to be flying cover for our strike. Rogue Squadron will be leading the way.”

Wedge nodded. “Resign and doom millions, or stay and watch a friend be destroyed. Not much of a choice.”

“Not so, my friend, it is indeed quite a choice. Not an easy one.”

“Oh, the choice is easy, Leia, but living with the result will not be.” Wedge swallowed past the lump choking him. “You’ll let the Council know I’ve reconsidered my resignation.”

“I’ll tell them that you meant the suggestion as a way to underscore your concern for Captain Celchu.” Leia nodded solemnly. “According to Cracken you’ll be briefed inside a week and then head out. May the Force be with you.”

“I’ll save the Force for Tycho.” Wedge’s eyes became slits. “No matter what sort of reception Zsinj has for us, what Tycho’s going to face will be a million times worse.”

4

The prison uniform Tycho Celchu had been given looked enough like a flightsuit that Wedge Antilles could almost imagine his friend being free again. The black jumpsuit had red sleeves and leggings that started at elbow and knee respectively. They also ended well shy of wrist and ankle so the fabric would not interfere with the operation of the binders Tycho wore.

Wedge shuddered with anger and embarrassment. I will see you free again, my friend.

Tycho looked up and smiled. A bit taller than Wedge, but with the same lithe build, Tycho was a handsome man whose blue eyes appeared brighter than Wedge would have thought possible. Tycho held his hands up in greeting to Wedge and Nawara Ven, and almost made it seem as if the binders were not hampering him. He waited patiently as a guard in a control room opened the transparisteel barrier separating him from the visitation center, then shuffled in past his escort.

Wedge rose and started across the sparsely furnished white room, but Tycho’s guard brandished a Stokhli Spray Stick. “Keep away from the prisoner, Commander.”

Wedge felt a hand on his left elbow and turned back to face the Twi’lek who had accompanied him to the detention center. “Commander, we’re not allowed physical contact with Tycho—no one is allowed to touch prisoners. It’s security.”

Wedge frowned. “Right.”

Nawara Ven skewered the guard with a pink-eyed stare. “You’ve done your duty here, now I require you to leave us alone with my client and my droid here.”

The heavyset guard’s eyes narrowed, then he tapped the Stokhli Spray Stick against the palm of his other hand. “I’m going to be right out there. Anything funny happens, and you’ll be spending a lot of time with this traitor.” He turned and headed back out to the far side of the transparisteel barrier.

Wedge dropped into one of the four chairs around the table in the middle of the room. “How are you doing? Is that guard causing you trouble? Because if he is, I’ll do something about it.”

Tycho sat across from him and shrugged. “Voleyy isn’t so bad, he just doesn’t like things to get odd on his watch. Other guards are worse, and if I weren’t in solitary confinement, I think the general population would have already tried and executed me.”

“What?” Tycho’s comment caught Wedge by surprise. “What do you mean by that?”

“I thought it was rather self-explanatory.” Tycho shook his head, then smiled up at his friends. “You have to remember, I’ve been charged with murder and treason. There are guards here who are just waiting for an excuse to show the New Republic how deep their patriotism runs. Some of the prisoners think they could win a pardon by saving the Republic the cost of a trial. I shouldn’t think that would come as a surprise to you, Wedge.”

“No, I guess it doesn’t, but your reaction to it does. If I were in your boots, I’d be angry and outraged.”

“That’s because you’ve never been a guest in the Empire’s correctional system.” Tycho sighed and Wedge read weariness in the way his shoulders sagged. “All the anger and outrage I can muster won’t get me out of here any faster, and it could get me in trouble.”

“But aren’t you angry about being imprisoned for something you didn’t do?”

“Yes.”

Wedge opened his hands. “Then why don’t you show it? You can’t keep it bottled up inside. It’ll tear you apart.”

Tycho took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Wedge, you’ve always been my friend and you’ve supported me with no questions asked, but what I’m enduring now is really no different than what I endured while being under house arrest. Sure, I can’t go flying, can’t head out to Borleias with Mirax to save Corran’s tail, and I’m not free to walk the streets of Coruscant as your hole card, but nothing has really changed. Since my capture by the Empire right here on Coruscant I’ve been their prisoner. I’ve never really escaped the Empire because they managed to make others suspicious of me. I was outraged then and have been since, but protesting wouldn’t do me any good. The only way I can be free, truly free, is for the Empire to be destroyed. I know, as it falls apart, someone somewhere will have the information that will set me free.”

“And if they don’t?”

Tycho cracked a smile. “You figured out a plan to take Coruscant away from the Empire. Springing a friend from prison shouldn’t be that hard for you to manage.”

Nawara Ven cleared his throat. “Let’s not be adding conspiracy to the charges against you.”

Tycho nodded. “As you wish, Counselor. How’s my defense going?”

“Good and bad.” Nawara Ven sat at the end of the table and a little green and white R2 unit rolled up beside him. “The best thing we have going for us right now is that Whistler here has joined our defense team.”

“But I’m accused of killing Corran Horn. He and Corran were partners. Why would he want to help defend me?”

The droid keened a reply.

Wedge smiled. “Ah, he did know Corran well.”

The Twi’lek nodded. “Well enough to decide Horn was wrong about you, Captain Celchu. If Horn was wrong about your being a traitor, that means someone else killed him. Since you’ve been framed for the murder, if Whistler does nothing to help you, he’s ensuring that his friend’s murderer is getting away. Having Whistler on the team is unbelievably useful because of the specialized circuitry and programming he has. It allows him to wade through a lot of law enforcement data, including Imperial files.”

Tycho shifted around in his chair, making his binders click against the edge of the table. “I hope the bad news doesn’t obliterate the good.”

Nawara’s braintails twitched lethargically. “Corran had reported to Commander Antilles that he saw you in the Headquarters talking to Kirtan Loor. You said you were speaking with,” Nawara glanced at his datapad, “a Duros Captain Lai Nootka.”

Tycho nodded. “Right. He flew a freighter called Star’s Delight. I was negotiating with him for spare parts for the Z-95 Headhunters I’d bought.”

“Well, no one can seem to find him or his ship. The prosecution can introduce ample evidence that Kirtan Loor was here on Coruscant, that Corran would have recognized him, and that knowing you were exposed, you had to take steps to cover yourself.”

Wedge frowned. “If the only way out of that trap is to find Nootka, we’ll find him.”

Whistler tooted a dour message.

Rogue Squadron’s commander rubbed his eyes for a moment to ease their burning. “Fine, fine, there are 247 unidentified bodies of Duros here on Coruscant, and the possibility exists that the Imps caught him, killed him, and dumped him so we’ll never find him. We can still try to find the ship. The log might have an entry in it about the meeting.”

Tycho gave Wedge a smile. “You’re more nervous than I am, Wedge.”

“That’s because I don’t think you understand what’s at stake here, Tycho.” Wedge got up and began to pace. “Your trial is going to go forward and go forward quickly. It’s going to be used to show that the New Republic can be just as hard on humans as the Empire was on non-humans. I have to tell you, if Nawara here weren’t already a lawyer, I’d be looking for the best non-human counsel I could find for you. The judges here are going to feel pressure to convict to seem fair; I want the fact that your defender is non-human to make them worry about how your being found guilty will look.”

“Captain, you might want to look into more competent counsel than me.”

Tycho shook his head. “No, Nawara, I want you. I’ve read your file and I know you. This is going to be hard enough without having a lawyer who wants the case for the notoriety.”

“Tycho’s right, we need you. The squadron is behind Tycho, and having you represent him means the rest of us don’t feel entirely impotent.” Wedge’s dark eyes narrowed. “Do you see a problem with defending him?”

The Twi’lek hesitated for a moment, then answered. “I’ve defended a lot of people in criminal cases, but the stakes have not been this high before, nor the opposition so tough. Emtrey knows all the regulations, so having him in court with me means I’ll have a good grasp on the differences between military law and civil law, but it would be better for you to have someone who doesn’t have to rely on a droid for that stuff. The fact that I was down with the first stages of Krytos during the alleged murder means I can’t be called as a witness of fact in the case—at least, I’d not call me, but the prosecution might have other ideas.”

He tapped a button on his datapad. “The prosecutor is Commander Halla Ettyk. She’s 34 years old and from Alderaan. She had gained quite a reputation as a prosecutor there and happened to be off Alderaan to depose a witness in a case when Alderaan was destroyed. She joined the Rebellion and was part of General Cracken’s counterintelligence staff. She may not have prosecuted any cases over the last seven years, but that’s not going to dull her skills. Captain, you don’t happen to know her or have a family vendetta with her family or anything that could let me suggest she has a conflict of interest, do you?”

“Nothing, sorry.”

“What about the tribunal?” Wedge stopped pacing, crossed his arms, and looked down at the Twi’lek. “The subpoena I was served with yesterday indicated General Salm, Admiral Ackbar, and General Crix Madine were going to serve as judges. Salm has never liked Tycho. Can’t you get him removed?”

“Trying to get him replaced is tricky. If he does not recuse himself, he clearly thinks he has no conflict of interest. If we suggest he does and we fail to remove him, we’ve poisoned him. The other thing to keep in mind is that Salm was present at the first battle of Borleias and saw Tycho flying an unarmed shuttle and rescuing pilots, including me. He’s got to weigh what he remembers against the evidence he hears, and we’ll be sure to remind him of Borleias.”

Tycho nodded. “I’m willing to take my chances with Salm. What do you think of the other two?”

The Twi’lek shrugged. “Ackbar agreed to have you serve as Rogue Squadron’s executive officer and has remained neutral regarding this prosecution. Crix Madine came over from the Imperial side around the same time you did, Captain. Given his work planning covert missions for the Empire, I would have to guess he has met Iceheart and is aware of the work she has done. He knows of your reputation and, being a Corellian like Commander Antilles, has an appreciation of bravery and audacity.”

“You’re forgetting, Counselor Ven, that Corran Horn was Corellian, too.”

“No, Commander, I’ve not forgotten that fact. I’m counting on it to motivate General Madine to seek the people truly responsible for Corran’s death.”

Wedge nodded. “So that’s the line of defense: Tycho’s been framed?”

“The truth always is the best defense. Their evidence is all circumstantial, so we can slip someone or several someones in to raise doubt about who actually committed the crime.” Nawara Ven pressed his hands flat on the table. “This trial will be played as much to public opinion as to the judges. It’s going to do no good if the people think Captain Celchu is guilty while the court lets him off. Everyone knows how twisted and full of plots the Empire was. The mention of Kirtan Loor and Lusankya allows us to bring up Ysanne Isard. I can show that Captain Celchu’s pattern of activity is all wrong by showing what Isard does do with her people. I can even point to the bombing as likely residue of her evil. If we have public opinion looking at Captain Celchu as the last victim of Imperial intrigue, a Rebellion hero being destroyed by a bitter and vengeful Empire, we have a lot of maneuvering room in the aftermath of the trial.”

Nawara Ven’s explanation made sense to Wedge, but he didn’t like all it entailed. Fighting enemies who were shooting back was one thing. Winning a court case was quite another—one akin to politics, and Wedge knew he’d utterly failed in that arena at the Council meeting. Waging a public relations war to win the hearts and minds of a planet for a man who was already being entered into the pantheon of evil with Darth Vader, Prince Xizor, Ysanne Isard, and the Emperor himself—well, that was a battle no one could consider easy.

Wedge nodded toward the lawyer. “What happens if Tycho is found guilty?”

“Hard to say. There’s no clear appeals system set up. Unless the judges reverse their decision, he’ll be stuck.”

Tycho raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean by stuck?”

“This is treason, Captain, and murder.” Nawara Ven shook his head as Whistler moaned. “Given the mood of the people and the nature of your crime, if we lose, the New Republic will put you to death.”

5

As Wedge entered the darkened briefing room, the pilots of Rogue Squadron broke from the knot surrounding Nawara Ven and took their places. Some of their expressions were difficult to read. Riv Shiel, the Shistavanen wolfman, wore his perpetual impenetrable frown. Gavin Darklighter, the youngest of the pilots in Rogue Squadron, seemed fairly cheerful, but the hardness of the flesh gathered at the corners of his eyes betrayed the pressure most of the rest of the unit felt.

Wedge stepped behind and past Aril Nunb, then paused with the holoprojection table in front of him. “I appreciate your getting here so quickly. I had hoped we’d get at least a week’s liberty after the conquest of Coruscant.…”

The fiery-haired lieutenant in the front row, Pash Cracken, shrugged. “We’ve not had that much to celebrate, sir.”

“I know.” Corran’s death, then Tycho’s arrest, had undercut the Rogues when they should have been enjoying their greatest triumph. While everyone else on Coruscant was jubilant about the world’s liberation, the Rogues felt still enslaved by Tycho’s plight. The contrast between the congratulations they got from others and the way they felt inside remained sharp enough to slice them up emotionally. To save themselves, the squadron members had rallied around Tycho and were determined to prove his innocence. That provided them a sanctuary and sense of control, though it did nothing to endear them to others who thought Tycho’s guilt was indisputable.

“The one thing we do know, people, is that the source of our problems lies on the Imp side of things. We should also realize that what we’re suffering is nothing compared to what hundreds of thousands of people out there are suffering.” Wedge pointed a finger toward Nawara and Riv Shiel, then glanced back at Aril Nunb. “Three of our own came down with this Krytos virus, but they got quick treatment with enough bacta to knock it out. Bacta is in high demand right now, but supplies are very short.”

Erisi Dlarit, the dark-haired pilot from Thyferra, pressed a hand to her own sternum. “I know the cartels are producing as much as they can—at least the Xucphra group is. I have personally sent messages to my grandfather to let him know of the need for bacta here.”

“Thanks, Erisi, every bit of help we can get is vital.” Wedge folded his arms across his chest. “Warlord Zsinj hit a bacta convoy heading out from Thyferra. I believe it was from the Zaltin group, Erisi, not your family’s corporation. Zsinj took the bacta to a storage facility, but a member of the Ashern rebel group …”

“Terrorists!” Erisi spat.

“… happened to be crewing aboard the Zaltin ships. He managed to get a message out concerning the location of the space station Zsinj is using.” Wedge nodded toward Aril, and the Sullustan punched up a holographic image of the station on the holoprojector. The station consisted of a central disk with thick expanses of living quarters above and below the horizon. Slender towers rose from the middle of the disk, suggesting the station had been impaled on spears. Three wedge-shaped launch-and-recovery causeways stabbed out into space from the central disk like spokes meant to connect up with a nonexistent rim.

“This is an Empress-class space station located in the Yag’Dhul system. Basic armament is ten turbo-laser batteries and six laser cannons. It also has the capability of housing up to three squadrons of TIEs, though the usual complement is only two dozen fighters. The bacta is being held here, and we’re going to get it away from them.”

As Wedge continued his briefing, little glowing icons appeared to hover around the station. Each represented a ship and entered the display as its part in the operation was explained. “We will be leading two squadrons from General Salm’s Defender Wing to pull a quick strafing run on the station and get them to scramble their fighters. The squadrons we’ll have with us are Warden and Champion—you remember them, they saved us at Borleias.”

The Gand toward the back raised a three-fingered hand. “As Ooryl remembers it, Commander Antilles, Defender Wing flies Y-wing fighters. Provoking TIE fighters to come out and attack Y-wings would seem to Ooryl as potentially dangerous for Defender’s pilots.”

“Your concern is noted, Ooryl, and has been taken into account. Guardian Squadron, the third of Defender Wing’s component parts, has been refitted with B-wings. This adds considerable firepower to the wing. We’ll pull the TIEs out and away from the station and the B-wings will drop on them and help us kill them. The Y-wings will continue in toward the space station and start working on its defenses with their ion cannons.

“Following us in will be a half-dozen assault shuttles and then enough bulk-cruisers to haul the bacta away. This is a hit, hold, then run operation.”

Gavin smiled. “Sounds like a dew-run.”

“Maybe.” Pash Cracken leaned forward in his chair. “Where’s the Iron Fist supposed to be?”

Wedge shook his head. “I’ve been given no data concerning the Iron Fist.” Warlord Zsinj’s flagship was one of the Super-class Star Destroyers created by the Kuat Drive Yard’s shipworks before the Empire collapsed. The ships were, for all intents and purposes, fleets unto themselves. They carried 144 fighters, had a crew of over a quarter of a million people, and bristled with over a thousand missile launchers, ion cannons, and turbolaser batteries. Though the Rebel fleet had managed to destroy the Executor at Endor, everyone knew that ship had died because of luck, not skill.

If the Iron Fist showed up at Yag’Dhul, the operation was doomed. Wedge knew it, as did all of the pilots in the room. “While I am as concerned about the appearance of Iron Fist as any of you, I know the bacta is too valuable to risk on an operation that could be so easily jeopardized. I have to assume that Intelligence has the Iron Fist located and that it won’t interfere with the mission. If it does show up, all we can do is pull out.” And hope no one gets left behind.

Rhysati Ynr, the blond woman sitting next to Nawara Ven, raised her hand. “Do we just fly cover when the assault shuttles go in, or are we going to land and go in-station, too?”

“Right now we’re just flying cover. If things change, you’ll be the first to know.” Wedge sighed. “We’re heading out in twelve hours, so you’re now all under security quarantine. Report to your quarters, get your gear, and go to the hangar. Once there you’ll get a more specific briefing and run through a basic simulation of the exercise before we leave. Any other questions?”

Gavin looked around nervously, then nodded. “Sir, won’t Nawara’s heading out on a mission compromise Captain Celchu’s defense? I mean, shouldn’t Nawara be here setting things up?”

A question I asked myself. “Your concerns, Gavin, are valid, but not terribly important in the face of what we’re doing here. We’re already one pilot light because of Corran’s death, so we need everyone we can get. The fact is that obtaining the bacta is far more important to the future of the New Republic than Tycho’s trial, so that is our priority.”

“Besides, I have Whistler and Emtrey doing a lot of computer fact-finding for me right now.” Nawara sat forward and slapped Gavin on the shoulder. “The lawyering part of all this comes later. It occurs to me that if we do get the bacta and things begin to calm down, someone might start listening to reason instead of political pressure, and this case will be dumped in some black hole, where it deserves to be.”

“May the Force be with you in that regard.” Wedge smiled openly. “If that’s it, get going. Everyone should be in the hangar in an hour at the very latest.”

As the pilots started to leave the room, Wedge caught the eye of a black-and-white-furred Bothan female. “Sei’lar, if I could have a moment of your time.”

“Yes, Commander.”

He watched Asyr as she waited for the others to leave, then walked toward him. There was no overt challenge in her stride, though the fire in her violet eyes did reveal a strong streak of Bothan pride running in her. Splotches of white fur covered her from throat to belly, gloved her, and slashed down from her forehead over her left eye to her cheek. They almost succeeded in diluting the predatory power in her petite frame. She stopped before him and snapped to attention.

“At ease, Sei’lar.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You might want to reserve your thanks until you’ve heard what I have to say.” Wedge looked down on her and saw her fur ripple with irritation. “Two things I want to discuss. The first is Gavin.”

Asyr blinked with surprise that flowed out into her fur. “I was under the impression that pairing among members of the squadron was not prohibited. Nawara and Rhysati, and Erisi and Corran …”

“I’m not under the impression anything was going on between Erisi and Corran.”

“But her reaction to his death …”

“They were close, but not in that way, as I understand it.” Wedge frowned for a moment. Mirax Terrik had been crushed by Corran’s death and had confided in Wedge that she and Corran had chosen to begin dating once the conquest of Coruscant had been accomplished. Though Corran had never revealed his feelings about Erisi or Mirax to Wedge, Corran’s attraction to Mirax had been fairly easy to spot, which led Wedge to believe Erisi was out of the picture.

“Regardless of what was or was not happening between Erisi and Corran, or what is or is not happening between Rhysati and Nawara, the big difference between those situations and your situation with Gavin is that Gavin’s barely seventeen years old. He’s very young and hasn’t had the experiences that your education at the Bothan Martial Academy has afforded you. He’s not a stupid young man—he’s actually fairly intelligent—but his upbringing on Tatooine has left him a bit idealistic.”

Asyr’s violet eyes sank into crescents. “Are you ordering me to stop seeing him?”

Wedge laughed. “No, not at all. You’ve only been out twice—”

“Have you had someone watching us?”

“No, and that’s just the point.” Wedge opened his hands. “Gavin is so taken with you that his enthusiasm isn’t always kept under control. While he remains very circumspect about private moments you have shared, he is very happy to let others know how much fun you’re having together doing all the things you have done. It’s all very innocent and natural, but it’s also a sign of his falling in love with you. He may not quite be there yet, but he’ll be hurt badly if you pull away from him abruptly after too much longer. I don’t want to see him hurt, so if you don’t really care for him, let him down easy and now, please.”

Asyr’s chin came up and defiance blazed in her eyes. “What makes you think I might be toying with him?”

“The second thing I want to discuss with you does, Sei’lar. I wonder if you don’t have another agenda that you’re working on.” Wedge met her hot stare unflinchingly. “You graduated near the top of your class from the Bothan Martial Academy but never formally entered the military. Your records are decidedly sketchy, but I would imagine, given your age, that you were recruited into the Martial Intelligence Division of the Bothan military in an effort to replenish the supply of spies who died securing the plans to the second Death Star. The fact that you were already here on Coruscant when our operation arrived suggests the Bothan government had its own goals here on Coruscant.”

“But you forget, sir, that I did help organize and participate in the operations that cleared the way for the Rebel Alliance to take the planet.”

“I never accused you of being stupid, Sei’lar. Quite the contrary, I think you are very intelligent. You saw an opportunity that had to succeed and you did your best to make it succeed.” Wedge let a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. “That self-same intelligence is why I want you in this squadron.

“The fact is, Sei’lar, who and what you are makes you very valuable and desirable. I want you here in Rogue Squadron. I think you are an incredible asset to the Rebellion. Flip a bit, though, and it’s easy to see that your Bothan masters also find you quite useful. That means, sooner or later, you’re going to have some decisions to make.”

Asyr glanced down. “Decisions about Gavin.”

“And about your loyalties to your planet and your nation.”

“Or my squadron.”

“Exactly.” Wedge nodded slowly. The pressure is not on you right now, but it will come. Borsk Fey’lya likes having a Bothan in Roque Squadron, but at some point he’ll want to exert control over you.

Her head came back up. “Do you want me to make those decisions right now?”

“I want you to make them when you feel they need to be made. I trust you, and I want to continue to trust you. If you find you can’t be part of the squadron, you can walk away and I’ll have been proud to have you as one of us.”

Asyr arched an eyebrow. “No threat of retribution if I betray you?”

Wedge shook his head. “If you decide to betray us, I can’t imagine we’ll survive long enough to avenge ourselves on you. On the other hand, Rogues tend to take a lot of killing, so you can’t be sure of how things will turn out.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Asyr smiled and Wedge took it for a good sign. “And, Commander, concerning Gavin, there is no hidden agenda. His wide-eyed way of looking at everything is refreshing and, perhaps, even energizing. I’ve lived a long time in the shadows, so moving into the light feels very good. I’ll do nothing to hurt him.”

“Good.” Wedge waved her toward the door. “Go get your stuff and get to the briefing. I’m trusting you’ll see the holes in this plan and help us plug them before Zsinj accomplishes what the Empire could only dream about: the destruction of Rogue Squadron.”

6

Corran Horn let his joy at again being in the cockpit of a starfighter consume him. It did not matter to him that he did not know how he’d gotten into the ship. He did not let the fact that he was flying a TIE Interceptor concern him. He thrust aside anxiety born of his ignorance of his location. None of those things were germane to his present situation.

The only relevant facts in his life were these: he was flying and, he knew, if he flew well enough he would be allowed to fly again. He had no idea how he knew his performance would be rewarded with more flight time—that fact seemed as fundamental to him as his need for air and food and sleep. His desire to continue flying blazed hot in his gut and burned from him the annoyance at the squint’s inefficient controls and sluggish reaction time.

“Nemesis One, report.”

It took Corran a moment to realize the comm unit call had been directed at him. He glanced at his scanner windows. “One is clear.”

“One, we have two eyeballs vectoring in on a heading of 239 degrees at a range of ten kilometers. They are hostiles. You are free to engage and terminate them.”

“I copy. Nemesis One outbound.” Corran hit the left rudder pedal and swung the ship around onto the proper heading. The starfield whirled around him, then froze in place again. He could recognize none of the constellations, but that did not concern him. His mission was to destroy the enemy, and that he would gladly do no matter where he found himself.

His breathing reverberated loudly in the full helmet he wore. The sound came rhythmically. It betrayed no nervousness. It was not the quickened breathing of prey, but the strong steady respiration of a predator on the hunt. He had already killed more TIE starfighters than he cared to remember; these would just be two more.

And yet, in the back of his mind, he knew he could not actually remember his previous kills, and this amnesia began to nibble away at his emotional well-being.

With a thumb he flicked the Interceptor’s quad lasers over to dual-fire mode, then pulled back on the steering yoke and brought the ship up in a slight climb. A quick starboard snaproll onto his head turned the climb into a dive, and suddenly he was upon the eyeballs. His index finger tightened on the trigger and a stream of verdant laser-bolts sliced through the lead eyeball.

Because of his angle of attack, the bolts scored black furrows in one wing, then pierced the ball cockpit from the top. On the other side they freed the wing, but the ship’s explosion shattered the hexagonal panel. It blasted debris into the flight path of the second TIE, causing it to roll to starboard and dive. The maneuver succeeded in saving the second ship from a collision with its dying wingman, but dropped it straight into Corran’s sights.

Corran cut the throttle back by a quarter, matching speed with his prey. The pilot he hunted juked right and left, but made none of the hard breaks and sharp turns needed to shuck Corran from his tail. Without remorse, but full of contempt, Corran flicked the squint’s lasers over to quad-fire, then impaled the TIE fighter on his crosshairs and hit the trigger with a delicate twitch of his finger.

The four green laser-bolts converged and merged into one a nanosecond before they burned the top from the cockpit, sheering it off just above the engine assembly. Corran imagined he could see the pilot’s blackened body in silhouette for a second, then the eyeball exploded and seared that image into his brain. Exultation at having been victorious swept through Corran, though in its wake came the feeling that those two pilots had been so inexperienced that he had not really fought them, but had just slaughtered them.

“Nemesis One, we have two uglies at five kilometers, heading 132 degrees. They are hostile. Engage and terminate.”

“As ordered.” Corran brought the squint up and around, then punched the throttle to full power. He wanted to close quickly so he would be able to get a look at the ships he faced. Uglies were hideous, hybrid spacefighters cobbled together from various salvage parts. Smugglers and pirates used them fairly often. He couldn’t pinpoint how he knew that, but he did know he’d fought uglies before. Given that he was alive, he assumed they had not proved too much of a problem for him.

Something about that assumption niggled in the back of his mind. He knew it was not incorrect. He was a good pilot and he knew it, but his assuming superiority seemed wrong. He hadn’t made the assumption on the basis of the fact that uglies seldom had the performance characteristics of the fighters from which they were created. He realized he’d assumed anyone flying uglies would be pirates or smugglers, and had instantly assumed they were his inferiors. While he could find no facts to dispute his assumption about his foes, he knew there was something wrong with his having made it.

A warning klaxon blared in the cockpit, alerting him that one of the uglies had gotten a torpedo lock on him and had launched a proton torpedo. Corran banished thoughts about his enemies’ combat-worthiness, rolled the ship up onto its port wing, then dove. His abrupt maneuver hurled his ship onto a course at right angles to the one he’d been traveling previously. The proton torpedo, which was traveling roughly twice as fast as he was, shot past his starboard wing and started on a long loop to head back at him.

A proton torpedo has thirty seconds of flight time. I can’t outrun it, but I can out-maneuver it. Corran smiled. Or deal with it more directly!

He reversed the squint’s thrust and hit the port rudder pedal. This threw the Interceptor into a flat spin that brought the nose around to face back along his flight path. Where the proton torpedo had been coming straight at his back before, now it was coming straight in at his cockpit. He killed the thrust and glanced at his scanner monitor—750 meters and closing fast.

At 400 meters he flicked the lasers over to dual-fire and tightened his finger down on the trigger. Pairs of laser-bolts burned green through space seeking the torpedo. One bolt hit the torpedo at 250 meters out. It failed to destroy it, but did melt its way into the body and ignite a fuel cell. The subsequent explosion pitched the torpedo off course. When the onboard computer calculated the torpedo would not hit its target, it detonated the warhead, but the Interceptor remained a hundred meters outside the blast radius.

Switching thrust forward again, Corran throttled up to full and punched up profiles of the uglies. One was an X-TIE. It had the body of an X-wing fighter with the hexagonal wings from a TIE starfighter. Corran found the ship hideous to look at and would have dismissed it immediately except it had launched the proton torpedo.

The other ship looked fairly ridiculous. It mated a TIE’s ball cockpit with the engine pods from a Y-wing. This particular hybrid was rare because it combined the TIE’s lack of shields with the Y-wing’s lumbering, slothful handling. Corran knew this type of ugly was often referred to as a TYE-wing, though DIE-wing was a common nickname for it as well.

Corran cut his Interceptor on a course that shot him past the X-TIE, then broke on down into a series of maneuvers, twisting and turning, that left the TYE-wing far behind. The X-TIE hung with him long enough for Corran’s scanners to pick out details. X-wing fighters had two torpedo launching tubes in the nose and four lasers, one mounted on each end of the stabilizers that supplied the ship with its name. Lacking those S-foils, the X-TIE had replaced one proton torpedo launch tube with what Corran guessed would be a laser cannon.

Undergunned and overmatched. Corran rolled his way down through a corkscrew dive that lengthened his lead on the X-TIE and the TYE-wing. The X-TIE’s pilot began to pull the fighter’s nose up, as if he intended to return to his wingman’s side and the safety the TYE-wing would provide him. Corran watched him turn away, then inverted and pulled the Interceptor through a tight turn and shot back up and in at the X-TIE’s exposed aft.

Clearly unaware of Corran’s maneuver, the X-TIE’s pilot inverted and headed back toward the TYE-wing. Corran saw the pilot’s head come up as he scanned space for signs of the Interceptor. Coming in from behind made spotting the squint difficult. The pilot never managed it, though Corran did see the R5 unit’s head swivel around and spot him.

Corran hit the trigger and walked laser fire from stern to nose on the ugly. Two bolts blew the R5’s flowerpot head off, then two more punctured the cockpit, exploding it into a cloud of transparisteel and duraplast fragments. The last bolts hit forward and touched off a proton torpedo’s fuel cells. The fuel’s detonation filled the slender craft with fire and sent the nose spinning wildly off into space.

Pulling back on the yoke, Corran brought his nose up and spitted the DIE-wing on the crosshairs. The ugly began a roll, so Corran matched him and tightened up on the trigger. Green laser-bolts slashed at one of the Y-wings, but the ugly flashed on past beneath him. Corran prepared to invert and loop, but a hail of angry red laser-bolts sliced across his flight path.

“What? Who?” He kicked the squint up on its right wing, wrenched the wheel right, and tugged back on the yoke. The maneuver pulled him sharply out of line with his previous course, but he wasn’t content with just doing that. He broke again, to port and up, then searched his scanner monitor for whomever had shot at him.

The scanners reported two ships, both of them X-wings. “What’s going on here?”

“Nemesis One, we have two hostiles. X-wings. It was an ambush. Engage and terminate.”

Ambush me, will you? Corran translated his outrage into fluid maneuvering. Cutting and jumping, he bounced his Interceptor through a series of jukes that shook the X-wings from his tail and brought him around on the DIE-wing. Without really thinking about it, he pumped laser-fire into the ugly’s ball cockpit, then pulled up and away as the misbegotten fighter exploded.

Two on one—same odds I’ve had all day. Despite that hasty assessment, he knew the odds were actually quite different in this battle. The squint’s speed and maneuverability gave it an edge over the X-wings, but they had shields. They could take more damage than he could, and the ability to survive damage had a very direct relationship with the ability to survive in combat. More importantly, the two X-wing pilots seemed determined to operate together. They flew in tight formation and seemed familiar enough with each other that he wasn’t so much fighting two foes as one meta-foe.

The X-wings came around on a vector that brought them straight at him. Corran knew head-to-head passes were the most deadly in dogfighting, and given the enemy’s superiority of numbers, he had no intention of engaging in such a duel. He cut his throttle back and dove at a slight angle so he would pass beneath their incoming vector. They made a slight adjustment in their courses, apparently content to get a passing deflection shot. Corran then goosed his throttle forward, forcing them to sharpen their dives, yet before they could get a good shot at him, he had passed beneath them and had started up again.

One X-wing inverted and pulled up through a loop to drop on Corran’s tail while the other broke the other way. The second X-wing’s looped out and away from the Interceptor, momentarily splitting the two fighters. Corran knew the second pilot had made a mistake and instantly acted to make the most of it. Cutting his throttle back, he turned hard to starboard and then back again to port.

Corran’s sine-wave maneuver brought him back on course, but the X-wing that had been following him now hung up and out in front of him. The X-wing’s pilot had continued on his course, assuming the Interceptor had been trying to evade him. It wasn’t until he shot past the Interceptor and it dropped into his aft arc that he realized his error.

Corran throttled up and closed with the X-wing. You’re mine now, all because your buddy made a mistake. He pushed the Interceptor in to point-blank range and started to fire—then he saw a blue crest on the X-wing’s S-foils. It appeared to be the Rebel crest with a dozen X-wings flying out away from it. Though no words accompanied the crest, Corran knew they should have.

Rogue Squadron!

The second he recognized the crest, his finger fell away from the trigger. He didn’t know why he didn’t fire. Fear crystallized in his belly at the sight of it, but he knew he wasn’t afraid of the Rogues. It was something else. Something was wrong, hideously wrong, but he could not pierce the veil of mystery surrounding that sensation.

Suddenly something exploded behind him, pitching him forward. He slammed hard into the steering yoke, crushing his life support equipment and driving the breath from his lungs. His chest burned as he tried in vain to catch his breath. He caught the fleeting scent of flowers, then a painful brilliance filled the cockpit. He waited for the pain in his chest and the fire in his lungs to consume him, but those sensations dulled, and his ability to focus on them or anything else eroded.

A woman’s voice spoke to him. “You have failed, Nemesis One. You are weak.” Her words came tinged with anger, bitten off harshly and clearly meant to hurt him. “Had this been other than a simulation, your atoms would be floating through space and the rabble would be laughing at you. You are pathetic.”

Corran’s right hand rose toward his throat and pressed itself against his chest. The shattered remains of his life support gear prevented him from touching his breastbone, but he knew something was missing, something that should have been laying against his flesh. He did not know what it was, but he knew he would draw comfort from it.

In its absence, despair flooded through him.

“I had thought you worthy, Nemesis One. You told me you were, didn’t you?”

Though he recalled no such declaration, he confirmed it. “I did. I am.”

“You are nothing unless I say you are something. Now I say you are nothing, nothing but a failure!” In the light he saw the silhouette of a tall, slender woman. The sight of her made him shiver more than her words. He knew he feared her, but he also wanted to please her. Pleasing her was very important to him, the only thing that was important in the world. “You have failed me and yourself.”

“Please,” he croaked, but her silhouette gave no indication she had heard him.

“One more chance, perhaps.”

“Yes, yes.”

“If you fail again …”

Corran shook his head adamantly. “I won’t, I won’t.”

“No, for your next failure will be your last, Nemesis One.” The silhouette folded its arms together. “Disappoint me again and what is left of your life will be spent in agonizing atonement, disgrace, and, after a long time, death.”

7

The reversion to realspace brought Wedge and the Rogues out into a situation that just seemed like another simulator run, with one minor variation. As he expected, Wedge saw the space station slowly revolving in a star-stained void. Way off toward the right, closer to the yellow star burning at the center of the solar system, sat Yag’Dhul. The planet’s grey cloud cover made it only slightly more colorful than the Givin who called it home.

The only variation from the opsims was the appearance of a flight of four TIE starfighters patrolling the area around the space station. Mynock, the R5 unit in Wedge’s X-wing, immediately screeched out a warning when he noticed them off to port. Wedge glanced at his monitor, noted how the TIEs moved into an attack formation, and smiled.

Action beats inaction every time. He keyed his comm unit. “One flight, on me. Rogue Twelve, take the Defenders in.”

“As ordered,” Aril Nunb replied.

Committing only one flight of fighters against an equal number of TIEs, especially when he could have had two dozen Y-wings and seven more X-wings join the fight, might have seemed the height of arrogance, though Wedge knew it was quite the opposite. While TIE pilots seldom managed to amass the experience of their Rebel counterparts, they were quite competent, and more than capable of killing in a dogfight. Warlord Zsinj’s pilots had proved to be good fighters in the past, and Wedge expected them to be nothing less in this engagement.

The reasons he only pulled one flight from his formation to deal with the TIEs were twofold. First, and most important, their operation demanded that the threat to the station caused it to scramble its fighters. The X- and Y-wings were to draw the TIEs out and away from the station to a point in the system where the B-wings would come in. The B-wings were in hyperspace, already on their way, so if surprise were to be achieved, Zsinj’s troops had to be lured into position in a timely manner.

The second reason to match forces with Zsinj was because having too many fighters involved in a battle tended to wreak havoc on the efficacy of the pilots. The difference between a good pilot and a bad one, all other things being equal, came down to situational awareness. A pilot who could handle more variables, and keep track of more ships in his mind would do better in combat than one who could only deal with less in the way of distractions. Wedge had seen statistical analyses that showed that kill ratios fell as the number of fighters in a dogfight increased; so by keeping the fight small, he made it easier for his people to grasp all the aspects of the fight.

“Three, you and Four have the trailers. Two, I have lead. Target the second TIE.”

“As ordered, Rogue Leader.” Rhysati Ynr led Erisi Dlarit in a dive and sweeping turn that brought them around toward the following pair of TIEs. Rhysati’s attack vector was intended to push the TIEs farther from the space station and the rest of the Rebel force. Wedge saw the TIEs begin to react to her maneuver, but they seemed content to let her dictate the direction of the fight.

Wedge flipped his weapon’s controls over to lasers and set them for dual-firing. He pumped his shields up to full and picked the lead eyeball as his target. They started to close, coming head to head, with their wingmen off starboard and hanging slightly back, each formation being the mirror image of the other. He smiled. Just where I want him.

“Rogue Two, do you have your target?”

“Confirmed, lead.” Asyr’s voice came through the comm unit cool and steady.

“Get ready. On my mark, I’m going to foul your target. Shoot immediately after that with a proton torpedo.”

“As ordered.”

“Three, two, one, mark!” Wedge rolled the X-wing up and over in a barrel-roll to port. His target did the same thing, sweeping his fighter across his wingman’s flight path. That momentarily blinded the second TIE and caused him to shy. Wedge glanced at his monitor and saw a report of a proton torpedo launch, then touched the starboard rudder pedal a second before inverting the X-wing and making his pass on the TIE fighter.

Before Wedge applied rudder, the two ships had been heading straight at each other. The rudder drifted the X-wing’s nose about ten degrees to starboard, pulling him out of line with the TIE. The inversion flopped the starfighter, bringing the nose back into line with the TIE. Before Zsinj’s pilot could react, Wedge’s fighter streaked in at him and started shooting.

The first pair of red laser-bolts missed low, but the next two pairs swept up and across the ball cockpit. One of the TIE’s lasers died in a cloud of duraplast mist. Wedge’s third shot lanced through the transparisteel viewport, igniting and melting all manner of components and equipment. The TIE starfighter rolled up on the starboard solar panel, then tightened down into a screw-spiral before exploding.

A second later a blue proton torpedo slammed into the port wing on the second TIE. The black solar panel closed around the torpedo like cloth around a thrown stone. The torpedo itself punched through the panel and penetrated the fighter’s hull before detonating. The blast ripped the back half off the cockpit pod, freeing the engines to soar further in-system while the shattered husk of a fighter tumbled on through the void.

“Nice shot, Deuce.”

“Thanks for the setup, lead.”

Wedge brought the X-wing up and around to the original heading and saw a proton torpedo from Erisi’s ship finish off a TIE. Farther along he saw streams of green laser-bolts spraying out from the space station. At the extremes of range the fire did not seriously threaten the incoming fighters, but it did keep them away long enough for the station to scramble its TIEs. Zsinj’s fliers boiled up and out from the station and rose on an intercept course with the Rebel fighters.

“Lead, I have a dozen Interceptors and eight starfighters.”

“I copy, Twelve.” That should be everything they have, unless they’re holding something back. Keeping ships in reserve made little or no sense to Wedge, but he’d long since learned that warfare and tactics seldom make a lot of sense to the opposition. I just hope our run away from the station looks believable.

Aril Nunb led the Rogues and Y-wings up and away from the station. The squints and eyeballs came on in pursuit, hot to thin the ranks of the Y-wings. The Interceptors opened a lead on the TIE starfighters and started to close fast with the Y-wings. Aril brought her X-wing over, and the rest of the Rogues followed her through a loop that.took them back toward the Interceptors while the Y-wings continued heading away from their pursuers.

As the X-wing and Interceptor formations began to spread out into clouds, the B-wings burst into realspace and shot straight into the gap between the squints and the eyeballs from the station. Wedge marveled at how each cruciform ship flew with its wings and fuselage whirling around to keep the cockpit stable despite a wild series of maneuvers and course corrections. Having flown a B-wing a few times, he could appreciate the ship’s firepower, but the way it moved and flew made him feel less like a pilot than a driver.

The B-wings slashed in at the Interceptors. Half of them seemed content to attack using lasers or blasters, while the other half employed ion cannons to take the squints out of the fight without killing them. Blue ion-bolts caught Interceptors in full flight, sending electricity skitter-jagging over the hulls. Laser and blaster fire ripped into other Interceptors, burning holes through solar panels and cockpits.

The B-wing ambush scattered the Interceptors, but the X-wings coming in at them did not break off in pursuit. They left that to the B-wings. The Rogues pushed on through the crumbling Interceptor formation, shot past the B-wings and, as One Flight reunited with the squadron, sailed on in at the eyeball formation.

The first pass came head to head. Static hissed through the X-wing cockpit as TIE lasers stung his forward shields repeatedly. Wave after wave of green light washed over the shields, but Wedge ignored it. He concentrated instead on his monitor and shifted the X-wing a bit to starboard, trapping a TIE fighter in the center of his targeting crosshairs. He tightened down on the trigger, pulsing kilojoules of scarlet energy into an eyeball’s cockpit.

A roiling explosion shredded that ship. Wedge kicked the X-wing up onto the starboard S-foil, then climbed up and away from the expanding ball of gas. Letting his roll continue over the top, he dropped the X-wing into a dive, then rolled out to port and came around on an arc between the cloud of fighters and the station. He glanced off to starboard and saw Asyr still with him, which prompted him to toss her a salute. “Glad you stayed with me.”

“That’s my job.”

From his vantage point at the periphery of the battle he could see a number of things that impressed him. The Rogues had hit the eyeballs very hard, but Zsinj’s people regrouped in good order instead of scattering. Without shields, the TIE starfighters were really no match for the X-wings, but remaining together made them far more dangerous than individual ships fleeing. Whoever the leader of that squadron was, he was sharp enough to keep his people together and head them out and away from the fray.

“Rogue flights Two and Three, leave the flight of eyeballs alone and join the Y-wings. One flight, we’re watching the eyeballs.” Wedge hit two buttons on his flight console. “Mynock, see if you can get me a frequency for the comm unit communications between the eyeballs.”

The droid hooted his understanding of the order.

While Wedge waited for the droid to get him that information, he watched the B-wings finish off the squints and head in toward the station. Wedge’s monitor showed seven Interceptors hanging dead in space. That number was impressive, even in spite of the ambush, because blowing ships up was far easier than taking their electrical systems down. While he appreciated the fact that the pilots had not been killed when their ships had been stopped, he knew the choice to use ion cannons on them had been made for practical rather than altruistic reasons.

Each of those pilots will be debriefed, and what they know will be added to our store of information concerning Zsinj. It is entirely possible some or all of them served on the Iron Fist, and learning about the ship’s condition is of vital importance. It represents the core of Zsinj’s might, and will let us determine how truly dangerous he is.

The Rebel fighters all converged on the Empress-class space station with the Y-wings in the lead. While ungainly, the Y-wings were still not easy targets to hit. The station’s weaponry sent energy beams shooting out at the attackers, but the incoming fighters supplied three targets for each weapon system, overwhelming the crews defending the station. Added to that was the ability of fighters to approach while using part of the station to shield them from many of the lasers. Using targeting data supplied by other ships, the fighters were able to pop from cover and fire at targets that had previously been unseen.

The swooping, diving, rolling, and climbing cloud of fighters boiled around the station like insects around a bright light. Direct hits on a fighter would make the craft break off and loop away until its shields were recharged, then head back in. The battle to defend the station was lost from the very start, but the fear Zsinj inspired in his people clearly kept them fighting long after it made sense for them to do so.

Mynock beeped, and Wedge saw a comm unit frequency come up on his monitor. He punched the number into his comm unit and keyed his microphone. “Starfighter flight, this is Commander Antilles of the New Republic Armed Forces. If you power down your weapons, we’ll consider you noncombatants. The same offer goes for the people on the station.”

“I copy, Antilles.” The voice coming back to Wedge through the comm unit had the metallic echo commonly injected in speech by Imperial equipment. “My flight is disarming itself. I’ll pass your message on to the station chief, Valsil Torr.”

“Obliged, starfighter.” Wedge checked his sensors for hostiles as he waited for a return message.

“Antilles, Torr has the message and is powering down his weapons. The station is yours. Be careful, though, he’s a wily old Twi’lek.”

Wedge smiled. Though the communications gear had robbed the voice of any humanity, it couldn’t kill the personality in it. He might have been amazed that someone who had just been shooting at him and his people would so quickly offer helpful advice, but he’d long since learned that warriors from all sides of any conflict had more in common than not. “I copy the advice. I appreciate it.”

“One thing, Antilles.”

“Yes?”

“If we surrender to you, will you haul us out of here?”

“Don’t want to be around when the Iron Fist gets here?”

“Not especially.”

No surprise, that. Unlike the starfighters the Rebellion used, the TIE fighters were not equipped with hyperdrives. TIEs traveled between battles in the bellies of ships like the Iron Fist. The flight of starfighters was trapped unless Wedge arranged transport for them out of the system. Zsinj had a reputation for being short-tempered, so leaving them behind was tantamount to murdering them, and Wedge had no desire to have their murders on his conscience.

“Starfighter, surrendering to me means you’ll lose your ship.”

“That’s a problem, Antilles. We’re all mercenaries. We lose our ships and we starve.” The TIE pilot fell silent for a moment, then continued. “Of course, no reason to eat and live if you can’t fly.”

“I understand, starfighter.” Wedge thought for a moment. “I have an idea. If you hire on as guards to fly cover for one of the freighters coming in, you can get out of here and be free.”

“Freighters?”

“Coming for the bacta.”

“Bacta. So that’s what we were guarding.”

“And you can continue guarding it all the way to Coruscant, where it’s needed. Give me your word you won’t fight against the New Republic in the future, and you’ve got a deal.”

“You have it, Antilles.”

Right on cue, a dozen and a half bulk freighters and specialty haulers started coming out of hyperspace and cruising in toward the space station. Most were blocky, squared-off craft that had seen better days, but a few were more elegant ships whose very designs were tributes to the romanticism of space travel. One, a converted Baudo-class yacht, glided through the void like a metal simulacrum of the Corellian sea creature that gave the ship her name.

“Starfighter, the Baudo-class yacht there is the Pulsar Skate. I’ll have the captain contact you on this frequency. Stand by.”

“I copy.”

Wedge opened a channel to the Skate. “Skate, this is Rogue Leader.”

“Mirax here, Wedge. We’re fourth in line to head in. What can I do for you?”

“We have a flight of four eyeballs orbiting. They’ve left Zsinj’s service and need a ride out of here. Will you?”

“Sure. Not the first time I’ve hauled a ship for you.”

No, the first one was Corran. “Thanks, Mirax. Mynock is sending you their comm unit frequency, so I’ll leave the arrangements to you.”

“It will give me something to do while I’m waiting.”

“I copy.” Wedge glanced at the Chronographie display in the corner of his monitor. “When we get back home, you and I will sit down and talk, yes?”

Weariness washed through Mirax’s voice. “I’ll have to offload the cargo first. Then maybe I can sleep. Haven’t been doing much of that lately. I will call you when I’m functional again.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

“And keep that promise, or I talk your father into coming out of retirement by telling him you’re moping over the death of his worst enemy’s son.”

“Oh, Wedge, that’s cruel.” Light static hissed in Wedge’s ears as Mirax’s voice broke. “There’s no reason I shouldn’t mourn for Corran.”

“Agreed, but you don’t have to do it alone. That’s a burden we all share, got it?”

“I copy.” Resignation tinged with relief flooded her words. “See you back on Coruscant.”

“I am counting on it.” Wedge looked out at the station and his squadron patrolling around it. And, miracle of miracles, it looks like everyone is going to make it back home again.

8

Corran knew that once again being in the cockpit of a fighter should have made him happy, but it did not. He could find no fault with the fighter nor with being given a patrol mission. He’d done enough of those to expect boredom, and yet even that wasn’t giving him a problem. Just to be flying again was enough to override boredom.

The fact was, he realized, that he was unhappy. Something was gnawing away at him inside. Something was wrong, and there was no way he could ignore it. It created an anxiety in him that was out of all proportion with what he was doing. It felt as if he weren’t involved in a patrol at all, but in some other mission with a hidden agenda he knew nothing about.

“Nemesis One, report.”

“One is clear, Control.”

The voice coming through the comm unit betrayed no hint of deception or urgency, but Corran couldn’t shake the sickening feeling that he was being manipulated. He had a natural aversion to being used, and he could feel unseen hands all over himself, pointing him in a certain direction, for reasons he could not fathom. He was surprised to find himself less resentful of their agenda—whatever it was—than of being manipulated.

I’m reasonable. I don’t shy away from difficult tasks. I do what I am asked to do, within reason. Didn’t I do that …? His thoughts dead-ended as he realized he couldn’t summon up specific memories to back up his argument. He knew he had performed many dangerous missions, but he couldn’t pinpoint them. His inability to do so wouldn’t have concerned him, and in fact almost did not, except that he kept feeling like a hologram being processed by someone else’s computer.

“Nemesis One, we have two contacts on the heading of 270 degrees. They are ten kilometers distant. They are hostile. You are free to engage and terminate them.”

“As ordered.” Corran punched up the data on the incoming ships and displayed it over his monitor. Two TIEs. The starfighters inspired no fear in him, and he would have viewed them with utter detachment except that a random thought shot off through his brain.

Two TIEs aren’t nearly as deadly as a single Tycho. The connection seemed entirely logical to Corran: the similar sounds created a link. The fact that Tycho Celchu had been an Imperial pilot who flew TIEs reinforced it. Corran knew Tycho had betrayed Rogue Squadron, and Corran had been determined to see him pay. If I weren’t here, I’d be there, taking care of Tycho.

Before he could begin to wonder where there was, Control’s voice came through the comlink again. “We have additional information on the incoming ships. Transmitting now.”

The image on the monitor shifted from a TIE starfighter to an X-wing. An additional line of data beneath the fighter’s image informed Corran the ship was flown by Captain T. Celchu. A jolt of adrenaline pulsed through his body, then slammed into his brain. He couldn’t believe his luck—the coincidence of being able to fly against Tycho and avenge Rogue Squadron was incredible. And I will make the most of it.

Corran inverted the TIE Interceptor he flew and dove. The X-wings started to come after him, vectoring in on his belly, so he inverted again, then pulled through a climbing loop to starboard. He soared as the X-wings dove, neither side wasting laser energy when the chances of hitting were so small. Corran kept tightening the loop into a spiral that emphasized the squint’s greater maneuverability, then streaked away to underscore its superior speed as well.

A light flicked on within the head’s-up display, indicating one of the X-wings was trying for a proton torpedo target lock, but a quick climb, roll, and twisting dive broke the lock and brought Corran out on a vector toward Tycho’s X-wing. Corran sideslipped the Interceptor to starboard, then rolled up on the left wing and climbed in toward Tycho. He flipped his lasers from quad- to dual-fire, assuming he’d have to use multiple shots in multiple passes to bring Tycho down. He led the X-wing, anticipating Tycho’s break, then hastily snapped off a shot that splashed energy over Tycho’s shields as the Interceptor overshot its target.

No reaction. That isn’t like Tycho at all. Corran rolled up on the right stabilizer, climbed into a loop, then rolled over and out to port. Another inversion took him into a dive, but his scanners showed the X-wings hadn’t stayed with him past the first maneuver, much less through the second.

Corran shivered. They’re handling like TIE starfighters, not like X-wings, and the pilot flying that first one isn’t Tycho. He switched his targeting computer over to the second ship and saw that X-wing was listed as being flown by Kirtan Loor. An immediate desire to vape that ship filled him, but it did not deflect him from thinking. In fact, the vehemence of his feelings about Loor swept him past the fact that Loor and Tycho had been in collusion on Coruscant.

It carried him far enough that he recalled Loor didn’t know how to fly any space ships at all, much less starfighters.

Loor can’t be there. The chance that Tycho and Loor would show up where I could attack and kill them is unbelievable. Whereas before he had taken great delight in the coincidence, now it became evidence that he was being manipulated. The link between a TIE and Tycho had been made in his mind before Tycho showed up as a pilot. While he knew inferring causality from that relationship was not strictly logical, his being manipulated meant it was more than possible.

Tycho is an enemy, so he was placed in one fighter. Another enemy was plucked from a list of my enemies and placed in the second fighter. More anger flared through Corran and battered aside the blockages in his brain that had kept him thinking of nothing outside the cockpit. The apparent insertion of personal enemies into his situation told Corran two things. First off, I’m in a simulator, and second, someone knows enough about me to know who my enemies are. Pitting me against my enemies gives me some wish fulfillment, which is a good thing. It rewards behavior, but I have to ask myself, is flying an interceptor against X-wings behavior for which I want to be rewarded?

His stomach shrank and hardened into a rock that threatened to explode volcanically. I’m flying an Imp ship against Rebels. I don’t want to do that. Corran immediately realized that only his enemies—the remnants of the Empire—would want him to feel good about attacking Rebels, yet few Imps would take the time or make the effort to manipulate him that way. Some would imprison him and the rest would just kill him.

Except one.

Ysanne Isard.

Injecting her into the jumble of thoughts bouncing around his brain immediately started to impose order on his mind. She was known and feared for her ability to warp Rebels and turn them against friends and family. She had been successful with Tycho Celchu, and he was not the only success story to come out of her Lusankya prison. Her altered agents had wrought havoc among the Emperor’s enemies, and his death had done nothing to cause Iceheart to curtail her operations.

The fog in Corran’s brain began to evaporate. He remembered having met Isard after his capture. She’d vowed to transform him into a tool of the Emperor’s vengeance. This simulator run—and the one before it—clearly was designed to get him to attack Rebel symbols. Subsequent sessions would further crush his resistance, training him to greater and greater levels of efficiency while turning him against everyone he knew, loved, and respected.

She would make me over into the human equivalent of the plague she unleashed on Coruscant.

Corran shook his head, then raised his hands from the simulator’s steering yoke and yanked his helmet off. Electrodes taped to his head pulled away rather abruptly, taking some hair with them, but he ignored the pain. The electrodes fed my brain wave patterns to a computer. The patterns were compared to data gathered from interrogations, so the computer could recognize what I was thinking about and project the proper clues into the simufotion. Very good.

He pulled the respiration mask from his face and let it dangle against his chest. “This is Nemesis One. The game is over. I won’t betray my people.”

The star field on the screen in front of Corran vanished. In its place he saw Ysanne Isard’s head and shoulders. Her mismatched eyes, the left one a fiery red and the right one an ice blue, added venom to the woman’s steely expression. Her sharp, slender features might have made her seem beautiful to some, but the fear her anger stabbed into his heart made her more than ugly to Corran. Her long black hair had been pulled back into a ponytail, yet she had let her white temple-locks remain unbound as if that girlish affectation would somehow soften her image.

“You are under the impression, Corran Horn, that this little victory is significant and hampers my efforts in some way. It does not.” An eyebrow arched over her arctic eye. “You worked with the Corellian Security Force, so you can understand how powerful certain interrogation techniques can be. What you have endured so far is little more than testing.”

“And I passed.”

“From your perspective that might seem true.” Her eyes sharpened. “From mine it merely means you have reclassified yourself. You will require more time than others I have worked with in the past, but here at Lusankya, time is abundant.”

Corran shrugged. “Good, then I’ll have abundant time to plan my escape.”

“I doubt it.” She sighed as if what she was about to say hurt her in some way. “Were you easy to train, you would find your stay here pleasant. As you are difficult, the next step is for me to determine if you know anything I consider valuable. Unfortunately this means sifting through a lot of things I don’t want to know. I hope your life has been interesting, because my technicians have been known to resort to cruelty when they are bored.”

“They’ll learn nothing from me.”

Isard frowned. “Please, Horn, skip the bluster. We will start with a level four narco-interrogation and work our way down to level one if we must. You know you’ll tell us whatever we want to know.”

Sheer terror froze the lump in Corran’s stomach solid. With a level four interrogation session he’d be remembering things his mother had forgotten while she was carrying him in her womb. I will have no secrets. Hundreds of images flitted through his mind as he sorted valuable memories from the casual ones.

This process, while agonizing, also brought a smile to his face. Gil Bastra, the man who had created a series of identities for Corran to use after he fled from Corellia, had made sure the identities took Corran out into the outlier worlds. From Loor they know everything about my days with CorSec. Thanks to Gil there’s very little valuable information I can give her. I was out of circulation until I joined Rogue Squadron, and I don’t know enough about the Rebellion to hurt it.

“I see your smile, Horn. You may feel bold enough to smile now, but things will change.” Isard herself smiled, and Corran found it a most forbidding thing. “When we are finished with you, smiles will be but a memory, and a painful one at that.”

9

Wedge laughed aloud, telling himself he was laughing at the irony of feeling nervous, not because of being nervous. Here he was, a celebrated hero and the sole survivor of both Death Star runs, conqueror of Coruscant and leader of the most feared fighter squadron in the galaxy, and at Iella Wessiri’s door he felt nervous. Enough ice water ran in his veins, so the rumors went, to replenish Coruscant’s polar caps, yet he found himself clearing his voice and hesitating before he pushed the buzzer button at her door.

On the way over from squadron headquarters he had convinced himself he wasn’t going to be asking her out on a date, really. He’d spent the previous hour being harangued by Erisi Dlarit concerning the Vratix terrorist and his whereabouts after the raid on Warlord Zsinj’s bacta store. He’d done his best, over and over again, to explain to her that he had no reports about the Thyferran native, but promised to pass notice of her interest up to General Cracken. That really was all he could do, but Erisi took a lot of convincing on that point.

The experience had been draining. There had been moments when he considered just cutting her off and ordering her out of his office, but he could tell her concern about the Vratix was based on her conviction that the insectoid creature was a terrorist and a potential hazard to anyone who came in contact with it. He thought Erisi’s reaction might have been born from her frustration at not having been able to do anything to prevent Corran’s death. By making the terrorist her responsibility, she might prevent another tragedy, thereby atoning for her lack of action in Corran’s case. Wedge found her motive noble, but her insistence exhausting. Corran’s death and the misery of millions on Coruscant had everyone in the squadron worn thin, and being dismissive of Erisi’s concerns would not help the situation.

Corran’s death had likewise affected Iella deeply. She had been Corran’s partner in the Corellian Security Force and had fled Corellia at the same time he had. Her flight had brought her to Coruscant, where she joined up with the Rebel underground. Her reunion with Corran had been a joyous occasion. It had been easy for Wedge to see how they complemented each other and must have worked well as a team.

Those qualities that made her well-suited to working with Corran were qualities Wedge found attractive. She was thoughtful and stable, yet possessed of a good sense of humor and a fierce loyalty to her friends and to justice. Unfortunately, her loyalty made her most zealous in helping the prosecution find evidence against Tycho Celchu, but she approached the search so openly that Wedge couldn’t find fault with her in doing her duty as she saw it.

He pressed the door buzzer, then tugged at the cuffs of his jacket sleeves. I’m not asking her out. I’m just here as a friend visiting a friend. Wedge shook his head. For the past ten years, since the death of his parents and through his association with the Rebellion, he’d really given little thought to romance and relationships. He’d certainly found companionship with a number of Rebel women, but he’d not found a single companion, a partner, the way Han Solo or Tycho Celchu had. He couldn’t explain why not, nor did he let it bother him—the nature of the Rebellion and his assignments meant planning for anything long-term was silly, and avoiding relationships meant the chances of getting hurt when the unspeakable happened were much less.

He’d seen Leia over the time Han Solo had been encased in carbonite. She had been driven almost to the point of recklessness in her attempts to free her beloved. He laughed. Entering Jabba’s palace meant she was driven beyond recklessness. While he envied Han Solo the passion with which he was loved, he dreaded the idea of being plagued by the pain Leia had known.

The door to the apartment slid open and Wedge’s nervousness slackened when Iella smiled. “Wedge. This is a surprise.”

“A pleasant one, I hope.” He glanced down at his hands for a moment, then back up into her brown eyes. “I should have called before heading over, but I was going to get something to eat and I thought, well, I hate eating alone and …”

The brown-haired woman’s smile widened for a moment and carried on up into her eyes, then shrank as if the corners of her mouth had slammed into walls and were rebounding. “I think you’d better come in.” She turned away from the door, and he followed the lithe woman down a short corridor to a modest-sized parlor. The door closed automatically behind him, cutting off the brightest source of light and sinking the room into a grey gloom.

The man sitting in the corner chair looked every bit as if he were constructed from shadow-threads and slivers of grey. The sharpness of his features accentuated the gauntness of his frame. His shoulders and knees poked like knobs against the grey fabric of the jumpsuit he wore. A few strands of black hair wove through the white and grey combed over his largely bald head but did nothing to disguise the shape of the skull beneath it. In fact, were it not for the spark of life burning in the man’s brown eyes, Wedge would have believed him to be a mummified worker resurrected from some tomb in the bowels of Coruscant.

Iella folded her arms across her chest. “Commander Wedge Antilles, this is Diric Wessiri. He is my husband.”

Husband! Wedge covered his surprise by taking a step forward and extended his right hand toward Diric. “My pleasure, sir.”

Diric inclined his head forward and shook Wedge’s hand with a long-fingered grip that was firm and even strong, though the strength faded quickly. “The honor is mine, Commander. Your exploits bring glory to your world and fellow Corellians.”

“Glory wasn’t our goal, sir.”

“Nonetheless …” The man smiled, then let his hand drop back toward his lap. “Forgive me, Commander. At another point I would engage you in a lively discussion, but now I am somewhat fatigued.”

“I understand.”

Iella walked to her husband’s side and gently rested a hand on his shoulder. “The Imps caught Diric up in a sweep about a year ago. They interrogated him, broke his identity, then imprisoned him. Six months ago or so they set up a bio-research project and made Diric part of the slave-labor force. They only used humans because the lab produced what we know to be the Krytos virus.” She gave his shoulder a squeeze. “General Cracken’s people had Diric in quarantine, then debriefed him. I only learned he was alive when they brought him here four hours ago.”

“I should be going, then, and leave you two alone.”

“No.” The old man raised his right hand and gently patted Iella’s hand. “I have long been among Imperials and other slaves. It is good to have normal people here to ease me back.”

Wedge coughed lightly into his hand. “I don’t think you’ll find my life normal at all.”

Iella laughed politely. “Nor mine.”

“How fortunate. Normal can be quite boring.” Diric’s head came up and he fixed Wedge with a steady stare. “And I want you to know, Commander, if anything has happened between you and my wife, I bear neither of you malice. I have been dead for a year. While I dreamed of being alive again, I do not bear a grudge against those who lived while I was dead.”

Wedge held a hand up. “First, no titles.”

“Where they kept me, we joked that titles were for when we were once again people. I use it to remind me I am again a man. And I use it out of profound respect for what you have done.”

“Don’t. I’m just Wedge. Nothing I’ve done is the equal of your enduring Imperial captivity, so titles don’t apply here. Second, Iella is intelligent, a wonder to work with, a joy to be around, and above all else, loyal to her friends. In fact, save one thing, she’s just the sort of woman I could see myself growing old with. That one thing is this: she’s married to you. Her loyalty to you, her fidelity, has never been in question. You are undoubtedly one of the luckiest men on this planet.”

As he spoke, his mind raced on through thoughts and dreams of what he might have had with Iella had Diric not reappeared. It seemed as if the life they would never share was flashing before his eyes even as his words killed it. The romantic in him just wanted to hold onto how wonderful it would have been, but the pragmatist knew from just looking at Diric that things would have fallen apart in the end. Iella had chosen Diric because he was a sanctuary. No matter what her life held in store for her, he was someone who would always be there to share her joys and ease her disappointments. Wedge realized that he could not have given her what Diric provided. It might have taken a long time for their relationship to destroy itself, and they might have overcome the difficulties, but Wedge knew he could never have been as perfect a match for her as Diric was.

Someday I’ll find someone. Wedge smiled. When I’m ready to settle down.

Diric mirrored Wedge’s smile and let his head sink back contentedly against the chair’s padding. “I am glad Iella found friends as generous and honorable as you are, Wedge. I do feel quite fortunate.”

“And I bet you’re happy to be free.”

“Happy? Yes, though captivity wasn’t as brutal as imagined. They can only control your body, not your mind.” Diric shrugged slowly as if the effort were all but beyond his ability. “I knew I would be free someday.”

“That’s what Tycho says.”

“Who?”

Iella looked down at her husband. “The man who killed Corran.”

“The man who is on trial for killing Corran,” Wedge corrected her. “Your wife is working with the prosecution team.”

“Working to find the truth, mind you.” Iella gave Wedge a frank glare. “There’s ample evidence to bind him over for trial and to convict him.”

“And blasted little uncovered, so far, to acquit him.” Wedge held his hands up. “However, discussing that case was not my purpose for coming over here.”

Diric’s bushy brows met over the bridge of his hooked nose. “You think this Tycho is innocent?”

“I know it. Tycho Celchu is as much a victim of the Empire as you were.”

Iella gave Diric’s hand a gentle squeeze. “Tycho was once captured by the Imps. He’s been working for them since his supposed escape, though Wedge would tell you he’s been neatly framed.”

Diric looked up at her. “And you know Wedge is wrong?”

Her immediate response died in a moment of open-mouthed hesitation. Iella’s gaze flicked up at Wedge, then back down again. “We have found a lot to indicate Captain Celchu was an Imperial agent of extreme resourcefulness.”

“But there are gaps in the evidence.” Wedge smiled slowly. “Everything that condemns Tycho is available, but those things that would acquit him have vanished. Given the timing, the only force that could provide with one hand and take away with the other is the Empire.”

Diric disengaged his hand from Iella’s and pressed it, fingertip to fingertip, against the other hand. “This Tycho must be something to earn such loyalty from you.”

“I feel about Tycho what Iella feels about Corran.”

“Hence the impasse between us.”

“Impasse, indeed. Still, Captain Celchu sounds fascinating.” Diric’s voice became wistful and Iella straightened up.

“Don’t even think it, Diric.”

Wedge raised an eyebrow. “What’s the matter?”

Anger creased leila’s brow and put snap into her voice. “He’s going to meddle.”

The older man wheezed out a laugh and punctuated it with a wet cough. “Meddle, is it? You see, Wedge, my vocation in life is to seek out people who fascinate me. I study them. I try to understand them. I share what understanding I have with others.”

Ieila’s brown eyes narrowed. “On Corellia he found a defendant in a case fascinating. He got to know her and decided she was innocent.”

“Was she?”

Diric nodded solemnly.

“He kept after Corran and me, constantly asking us little questions that forced us to look beyond the scope of our investigation. She had been framed, but we got the guys who were responsible in the end.” She frowned at her husband. “That was a different case, it wasn’t on Coruscant, and you weren’t weak as an Ewok cub at the time. You need to recover.”

“I will, dearest.”

Wedge smiled as he heard all manner of meaning in those words. Ieila’s sigh meant she heard at least some of them and knew nothing short of house arrest would keep Diric from meeting Tycho. Diric will make sure Iella doesn’t let her desire to avenge Corran stop short of discovering the truth of what caused his death. “Having a hobby will likely speed your recovery.”

“A hobby, very good.”

“This man’s hobby is going to be my nightmare.” Iella shook her head. “Antilles, didn’t you say something about food when you arrived here?”

“I did indeed.” Wedge jerked a thumb up toward the ceiling. “There is an Ithorian tapcaf about thirty levels up that is supposed to offer some fairly exotic vegetable matter and then …” He stopped as a tone sounded from the comlink clipped to the collar of his jacket. “Hang on a second.”

He pulled the comlink free and flicked it on. “Antilles, go ahead.”

“Wedge, it’s Mirax.”

“Finally awake?” Wedge nodded toward Iella. “It’s Mirax.”

“Ask her if she wants to join us for food.”

“Will do. Mirax, I’m at Iella’s apartment. She wants to know …”

“I heard, but it’ll have to be another time.” Mirax’s tone dripped seriousness. “I have a problem. It’s on the Skate, and I need you to get down here. Just you.”

Wedge frowned. Those fliers for Zsinj should have been taken into custody a long time ago. “How bad is it? Are your riders back and causing trouble?”

“No, no, not that. That I could handle.” Mirax sighed. “Look, you know I usually haul rare items for folks, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, at the station I picked up something that’s very rare, and as near as I can tell, if I don’t get rid of it in the right way, the New Republic will shake itself apart and a scant few people will be alive to start rebuilding the future.”

10

Gavin Darklighter felt his gorge rising as the miasmal stench from the darkened hovel stabbed through his nostrils and into his brain. He reeled away from the doorway and fell to his knees, puking up what felt like every last bit of food he’d eaten since his return to Coruscant. His stomach muscles clenched again and again, wringing his guts empty, but doing nothing to soothe the prickly sensation in the back of his throat that prompted him to heave once more.

A piercing wail from a female Gamorrean drilled through his skull and reminded him where he was and why he was there. Gavin coughed once and spat, then croaked a command to the black M-3PO droid behind him. “Emtrey, don’t let them go in there. Tell her I’ll do all I can.”

Gavin wiped his mouth with his hand, then weakly crawled up the hovel’s exterior wall. He pressed his back against the ferrocrete and slowly straightened up. He coughed again and his body tried to make him heave yet again, but he clenched his jaw and refused to vomit. Never seen one that bad before. Though he hoped he never would again see such a case, he knew that was one hope that had no chance of becoming reality.

The M-3PO droid succeeded in guiding the Gamorrean female and her tusky children to the other side of the walkway, then turned back toward Gavin. The droid’s nonstandard clamshell head—a refit from a spaceport control droid—canted slightly to the left. “Is there anything I can do for you, Master Darklighter?”

“I’ll be fine in a minute, Emtrey. Just keep them back.” Gavin again spat, trying to rid his mouth of the sour taste. “Ask her when she last heard from her husband.”

The protocol droid swiveled his head around and grunted the question out to the Gamorrean female. She replied in subdued and broken tones, which Emtrey translated for Gavin. “She says she and the children had been visiting kin elsewhere. The last time she spoke to her husband it was by comlink. He had sniffles, but was not alarmed. I’m gathering, from the words she’s using, sir, that there was some domestic discord, which is why a lapse in communication would not be surprising.”

“Got it, Emtrey. How long was she gone from here?”

“A standard month, sir—she left well before the liberation.”

Gavin nodded. A month meant the chances she’d been infected by her husband were nil—if she had been, she’d already be showing signs of the Krytos virus. “Tell her to get to a bacta center for evaluation. She doesn’t want the kids sick.”

“I’ve told her, sir. She wants to know if Tolra will recover.”

Gavin sighed and pushed himself away from the wall. “Tell her he’s very sick. The prognosis is not good, but we will do what we can. Then call Asyr and tell her we’ll need a clean team here.” He forced himself to smile. “And, Emtrey, tell Tolra’s wife she did the right thing. Tolra was brave and smart, and together they saved many people.”

The words rang hollow in his ears, but he knew they would not in hers. What he said was correct: when the Gamorrean in the hovel recognized how sick he had become, he sealed his home’s entrances and scrambled the lock-codes, preventing anyone else from getting in and becoming infected. In that he had indeed saved many lives.

Except for his own. Gavin forced his fists to unclench. Had the Gamorrean used his comlink to summon medical help, he might have been saved. That he was lucid enough to entomb himself meant that he was not so far gone that bacta therapy couldn’t have helped him. He needn’t have become what Gavin had seen in shadows.

The pilot realized the blame lay not entirely with the Gamorrean himself. The black-market price for bacta was astronomical, so far out of reach for the average citizens that they could not imagine there was any bacta available for them. Those who did summon help, or had it summoned for them, were often so far gone that no therapy could help, so they never returned. As a result, other citizens saw the medivac units as thinly disguised extermination units that took the sick away and destroyed them.

Ignorance is killing these people.

Gavin forced himself to step forward and reenter the Gamorrean’s hovel. The fetid stink returned to his nose and found accompaniment in the horrible sights and sounds that greeted him. The single-room hovel itself was scarcely larger than his own room in the squadron headquarters—and he found that a bit cramped for one. It had two doors—the one he’d opened using a lock-descrambling unit and a back door. A heating plate and water spigot to the left of the doorway marked the extent of the dwelling’s kitchen facilities. The refresher station stood farther along that wall, in the corner.

Spattered blood covered all of it, sprayed along the floor, up the walls, and across the ceiling. It had dried and taken on a black hue, making the room look as if a shadow had exploded. The explosion’s epicenter lay in the back corner, on a raised black platform that glistened in what little light made it in past Gavin.

A wet, gurgling sound pulsed arhythmically from that corner. On the platform, restrained by bedding twisted about him while in the throes of agony, the mortal shell of the Gamorrean named Tolra somehow clung to life. Gavin could see where the flesh had split, allowing leg and arm bones to protrude. The skin itself had thinned to a green-grey translucency and hung in ragged ribbons from ribs and fingers.

The Gamorrean seemed to sense Gavin’s presence, because he turned to look at him. With a thick sucking sound, like cold grease being slathered over machine gears, the skull turned toward him while the fleshy sac encompassing it did not. The Gamorrean’s horns and tusks gashed his own skin, then the thick muscles on the creature’s neck snapped, leaving the massive skull to loll unnaturally in a puddle of viscous tissue.

A chill settled over Gavin. Though he knew Tolra was dead and that the disease had long since eaten away any trace of sapience, he nodded toward the Gamorrean. “You saved them. You did it. May the Force be with you.”

Shivering, he turned and walked from the room. He sat down outside and stripped the filmplast covering off his boots, then tossed them back through the darkened doorway. He didn’t bother to look up when a shadow fell over him. “He’s dead.”

Asyr crouched down beside him. “The clean team will get here shortly. Are you all right?”

Gavin thought a moment before he answered. “I will be, and I think that scares me.”

“No reason it should.”

“I think there is.” He jerked a thumb toward the hovel. “There is a Gamorrean in there who has been turned into a mass of jelly. The disease killed him, but it did so in a way that didn’t let him die until he could experience every fragment of pain possible. There’s nothing left to him, but he was still breathing when I went in there. He was so tough, he probably lasted longer than a week in the end stages of the disease.”

The Bothan stroked Gavin’s cheek. “He fought the disease. That’s good.”

“Sure, but the fact that we can find something noble in this seems twisted.” He shook his head. “I’ve seen more death in my time with Rogue Squadron than I have ever seen before, but nothing was so hideous as this. A year ago I would have run screaming. Now I just clean my boots and wait for guys with sterilizer units to show up. I’m changing and I’m not sure I like it.”

Asyr smiled gently at him. “It’s called maturing, Gavin, and not everyone likes it. Now me, I think you’re maturing very well.”

Gavin half-coughed a laugh. “Thanks, but I still have to wonder if it’s right that we can see something like that and just continue on.”

“We continue on, my dear, because we must.” Asyr’s voice developed an edge. “The Gamorrean, he summoned up the strength to lock others out and protect them. That was good. You and I, though, have a different mission. This disease doesn’t appear to affect our species, so we have volunteered to help out during this public health crisis, but that is not our primary purpose here. Our mission is to fly our X-wings, to locate and destroy the kind of monsters who would do this kind of thing to others. Doing that requires all the maturity we can muster.”

“I know.” He rubbed a hand along her spine, then looked over to where Emtrey was conversing with an Emdeeoh and two men carrying portable plasma-incinerator units. The droid would take samples; then the men would burn everything in the hovel, including the first five millimeters of ferrocrete, to a white ash that would be vacuumed up and disposed of safely.

Gavin let Asyr help him to his feet. “You’re right, of course. I hope we can accomplish our mission. If we don’t, I’m afraid we’ll have to take Coruscant down to bedrock, and I don’t think even that will erase the scourge of the Empire from the galaxy.”

I think even stormtroopers would find my men terrifyingly efficient. From the dark security of the grav-car’s interior, Kirtan Loor watched as four Special Intelligence operatives clad in civilian garb approached the building’s door. As huge and imposing as they were, they moved with a lethal fluidity their armor normally hid. Almost casually, one of them placed a thermite boring charge on the door lock and set it, then accepted a blaster carbine from a compatriot and flattened himself against the building’s wall.

A red light blinked three times on the thermite charge, then a smoke-shrouded gout of white fire burst to hissing life. The harsh light transformed the shadowed Imperial Center street into a chiaroscuro landscape burned clean of imperfections but still full of menace. One of the operatives punched a hooked prybar through the center of the fire and yanked the door open, then his three compatriots dashed through.

The blue backlight of stun-fire strobed momentarily through the doorway and gaps in the window shading. Loor waited for a moment, then saw two more flashes. A human figure appeared in the doorway and nodded in his direction, then retreated into the shadows of the building’s interior.

Loor opened the grav-car’s door and emerged. He gathered a cloak about himself and pulled the hood up to conceal his face from incidental observation. He strode forward purposefully, but he imagined himself a pale imitation of Darth Vader. Tall and skeletally slender, with dark hair, he had been told he resembled a young Grand Moff Tarkin. While that comparison had been one he had used to his advantage, he would have preferred to inspire Vaderian terror in those with whom he dealt.

He squeezed past the two operatives at the doorway and stepped over the drooling Ithorian lying in the center of the antechamber. Beyond it, through a short corridor and past a third operative, he arrived in a room that resembled a rodent nest more than it did a human dwelling. It stank of mildew and old, musty sweat, though the occupant’s new terror added piquant elements to the room’s stale bouquet.

Loor looked down at the small, balding man pinned to the stained mattress by the muzzle of a blaster. “Your surroundings are so miserable, I am almost moved to pity you, Nartlo, but then, pity is wasted on the dead, isn’t it?”

“What are you talking about?” The man’s brown eyes bulged with terror. “I don’t know you. What did I do?”

“True, you do not know me, but you have brokered some cure for friends of mine. It has been selling at a high price, but they tell me that you have told them the market has crashed. At the same time they noted that the supply of cure you returned to them had gone from 95 percent purity to 75 percent purity.” Loor shook his head slowly, mournfully. “My friends feel you have lied to and cheated them.”

“No, no, I didn’t do that.” Nartlo tried to claw his way into a sitting position, but the operative beside the makeshift bed kept him rooted in one spot. “I drew off some of the bacta as a sample, but a deal went bad and I lost it. I didn’t figure they’d believe I lost it, so I tried to cover up what I’d done. I’m sorry.”

“And stupid if you expect me to believe a story that was ancient when the Old Republic was born.” Loor let anger into his voice and won a groan from his victim. Because of the surveillance he had on Nartlo, Loor did know that the story was not wholly false. Some of the bacta had been lost when a deal went sour, but only some. The rest of the missing cure had been donated to an alien pleasure house for the employees’ own use. Nartlo had spent a week basking in their considerable gratitude. “Tell me we won’t find a Rodian concubine’s sucker-marks on your back if we strip off your shirt.”

Nartlo accompanied his curling up into a fetal ball with a low moan. “I owed some favors.”

“You gained some favors, more than you owed.” Loor took a step closer to the bed, forcing Nartlo to crane his neck back to look up at him. “Now you owe me favors.”

“Anything you want, anything.”

“Good.” Loor turned to the right and nodded at the operative menacing the small man. The operative withdrew a step and Nartlo coughed as the pressure eased on his rib cage. “You told my friends that the market for cure had crashed. Explain.”

“The Rebels picked up a lot of cure. I don’t know when or where, but it was recent and was really very quiet. Rogue Squadron was involved, though, I know that much. I’ve been selling some of your cure to people who do business with people who work for people in the Provisional Council, see. They’ve been buying to be able to keep themselves and their supporters healthy—no matter the plague doesn’t seem to affect them.”

Loor smiled within the dark sanctum of his hood. The New Republic government had put into place programs that were designed to be fair to the victims of the Krytos virus. The scarcity of bacta meant virtually all of the public supply went to individuals who were infected, with the goal being to save their lives. By curing them, public health officials could limit the spread of the disease. Others, mostly those from uninfected populations, argued that a prophylactic use of bacta to prevent the spread to new populations would be best. Public health officials argued that there was no proof pre-exposure bacta therapy could prevent someone from becoming infected with the virus, but that did nothing to stem the desire to get bacta and use it as preventative medicine.

Nartlo swiped at spittle flecking the corners of his mouth. “Seems there’s going to be enough now so the provos think they won’t need their own supply.”

Loor frowned. “Impossible. It would take a decade of bacta cartel production to satisfy the demand here.”

“Could be, sir, could be, but right now the word is out that the New Republic’s government has things under control.”

“It’s a lie, of course, but a good one.” Loor slowly sank down onto his haunches, letting his cloak pool around him. “You believe this bacta supply exists?”

“I think some does, sir, yes, sir.”

“You will learn about it. All about it.”

Nartlo’s eyes grew large again. “I don’t know as I can, sir. Security is tight.”

“You owe me, little man.” Loor’s growl cowed Nartlo. “You will go to your contacts and this time offer to buy cure at a good price.”

“What if they don’t want to sell?”

“Tell them that they will find exposure of their previous black market bacta dealings rather painful and embarrassing. If that is insufficient, perhaps making an example of one or more of them would be persuasive. I can and will do that.” Loor nodded toward the operative to his right. “Blasters have more than just a stun setting on them, you know.”

Nartlo licked at dry lips with a dry tongue. “Yes, sir, I know.”

“Good. I want to know how much they have, how long they think their supply will last. I need to estimate when the price will climb again.”

“I can understand that, sir.”

And with that information I can begin to project how large a facility they would need to store it and how best to destroy it. Loor began to smile. I could even just spread the rumor that they have more than enough bacta to cure everyone, then reveal the true amount they have in their stores. The gap between what is hoped for and what is real should create a lot of unrest. That is a suitable fall-back plan, and one which I can pursue while seeking out and destroying the containment facility.

“And, Nartlo, you will try to find out whatever you can about their storage, transport, and distribution network. If I do go buying more bacta as a hedge against shortage, I would prefer to go directly to the source. I would like to cut out the middlemen, no offense intended.”

“No, sir, none taken.”

“Good, good. I’m glad we understand each other.” Loor straightened up again. “I will be interested in hearing what you can find out.”

Nartlo nodded enthusiastically. “You can count on me.”

“I am counting on you. See to it that you do not fail me.”

“Yes, sir.” The small man shivered. “But, sir, I was wondering …”

“Yes?”

“How do I …”

Loor laughed in as sinister a manner as he could manage. “We will find you. Have something for me in two days.”

“But that’s not enough time.”

“But it is all the time you have, Nartlo.” Loor turned and swept from the room. The operatives crowded behind him and the two at the door preceded him to his grav-car. Loor climbed into the back, one of them got behind the controis, and the other three disappeared into the night. “Drive.”

Inertial forces pushed Loor back into the car’s plush upholstery. He began composing the report he would send off to Ysanne Isard. The fact that the Rebellion had gotten its hands on a new supply of bacta would not please her. She had wanted the demand for bacta to bankrupt the Rebellion, but Rogue Squadron’s capture of more bacta meant it was not nearly as pricey for the Rebels as Iceheart desired. The only way to counteract that bit of luck was to locate and destroy the bacta store, which was exactly what he intended to do.

The problem is that no matter how quickly I resolve this matter, it will not be quick enough for her. It occurred to him that her messages to him suffered little reduction in their venom, despite having to be recorded and transmitted instead of being delivered in person. He would have thought that the distance between them would have insulated him from her criticisms, but it had not. She seemed to have a preternatural ability to point up to him errors he had made, no matter how slight, and that kept him constantly off balance.

He realized that if he told her he was having some of his people train for a strike on the bacta facility before he knew what that mission would take, she would point out that he was wasting time and resources. He decided he would put men into training for smaller missions that could serve as diversions or that would, at the very least, provide the training framework upon which the bacta strike mission could be built. Iceheart might maintain that he was wasting resources that could be better used to locate the bacta facility in the first place. But trying to argue that stormtroopers could be used as spies was not the sort of blunder Isard would make.

The grav-car broke free of sub-urban roadway and shot up into the night sky. Countless towers flashed past, each lit as brilliantly as the fire of the thermite charge, but not nearly as harshly. He wondered how many of the people and aliens living in those towers were rejoicing over the secret word that their worries about the Krytos virus would soon be over. Many. Too many.

Loor let his own laughter become a parody of the sound he imagined echoing through those towers. It struck him that laughter and sobbing were really not that different, and decided that he would do his best to see to it that others gained first-hand knowledge of this insight.

Before they die of the virus for which I will destroy the cure.

11

Admiral Ackbar sat back in his Council chair and tried to pull serenity from the cool mist drifting down over him. Grand Moff Tarkin, in one of his more expansive moods, had once described politics to him as “soft warfare, the elegant duel of lightsabers instead of the thunder of turbo-lasers.” Tarkin, with that description, had given no evidence of finding political fights frustrating because of the posturing and the treacherous riptide shifts of allegiances.

Or the inability to come to grips with problems in a direct manner. Ackbar had endured more reports on microeconomic fluctuations on planets he’d never heard of than any sapient creature could be expected to stand in one lifetime. Slowly, in working through the reports, Borsk Fey’lya and Sian Tevv were moving toward the matter that had been bruited about on the Provisional Council’s staff level.

Glancing over at the Bothan councilor, Ackbar could see a feral gleam in Fey’lya’s violet eyes. The Bothans thrive on this soft warfare. Ackbar had already recognized in Fey’lya a drive to lead or, when he had been outmaneuvered, a desire to vault out in front to where the leaders stood so he was placed among them. Ackbar had seen similar tactics among warriors who sought promotion, but true warfare tended to deal with such ambition in a most lethal fashion.

Mon Mothma nodded toward the Elom councilor. “Thank you, Verrinnefra, for bringing us up to date on the economies of our newest worlds. Next on the agenda is the matter of bacta. Borsk, you have a point to make?”

The cream-furred Bothan stood opposite Ackbar. “The recent mission which has liberated a supply of bacta and brought it here to Coruscant is, of course, a great victory for us and a great boon to the people here. For that we owe much thanks and praise to Admiral Ackbar and his staff. Their success also brings with it some burdens, not the least of which is the need to take precautions to prevent Warlord Zsinj from exacting retribution from us.”

Ackbar leaned forward. “Forgive me the interruption, Councilor Fey’lya, but it strikes me that you are asking us to deal with the undertow before the wave has crested.”

“Excuse me?”

Princess Leia smiled. “I believe the Admiral is pointing out that the supply of bacta brings with it far more pressing problems than a possible attack by Warlord Zsinj.”

“More correctly, Princess, I meant to say that because an attack by Warlord Zsinj has always been possible, both before and after our strike, there have long been plans in place to deal with such. I am more than willing to review those plans, but I think the core problem with bacta needs to be addressed more quickly than the surface issue of Zsinj. Trouble is a vast ocean, and for us, bacta distribution is the issue lurking in the depths.”

The Bothan’s fur rippled. “There is indeed much to discuss on the matter of bacta distribution. With the supply we now have, I think it should be possible to create centers for preventative therapy to stop the spread of the virus. My people tell me that an hour’s mist therapy per week should be sufficient to destroy the virus before it has a chance to incubate. Creating centers that would allow that much treatment would go a long way toward quelling the fear that has gripped this world.”

Leia frowned. “I’ve seen no such reports concerning mist therapy. The review of the data we captured from General Derricote’s lab does not show evidence of any testing in that regard. In fact, the only data the Imperials had on the Krytos virus showed massive amounts of bacta would be required to cure patients—having the effect of draining our supplies of bacta. There is no reason to suppose creating the centers you advocate would do anything but waste more bacta.”

“Ah, Leia, I would have expected more compassion from you.” Fey’lya glanced down at her. “If it were humans who were dropping dead of this plague, you would be the first to advocate creation of these centers.”

Leia’s dark eyes flashed coldly. “And you think I do not support your plan because it would save non-humans?”

“I would like to think better of you, but I know you have various constituencies to worry about. Like Admiral Ackbar, you would like to see some of the bacta reserved for use by our military. I understand this, for saving the lives of our valiant warriors is certainly commendable. I fear, however, your hedge against the unseen means there are countless individuals who might sicken and die and never get a chance to enter the military and fight for their freedom.”

Doman Beruss raised a hand. “I think, Councilor Fey’lya, you do Princess Leia and every other human member of the Council a disservice by even hinting that opposition to your plan is based on an anti-alien bias.”

“Ah, but even you are prey to it, Councilor Beruss. You refer to us as ‘alien’ and the Princess called us ‘non-human.’ Why are we defined by you and in comparison to you? Humanity certainly has contributed much to the Rebellion, but it did so because the Empire had done all it could to suppress and subjugate the species it saw as harmful and aberrant. Humans—being those who learned their trade at the hands of our Imperial masters—were the only people capable of taking a leadership role in the actual Rebellion. The rest of us contributed as we could, and made great contributions—contributions that led to the successful conclusion of the major campaigns in the Rebellion.

“I do not accuse you of being wholly unfeeling, but I think your perspective in this matter is compromised.” Fey’lya smoothed the fur on the top of his head. “I believe the matter of bacta distribution is one that should be decided by those of us whose people are prey to the virus.”

Ackbar rose from his chair and slapped a hand against the table top. “In that case, Councilor Fey’lya, you will also be required to recuse yourself from any decisions in this matter.”

“What?”

“There is no known case of any Bothan being afflicted with the disease.” I have no doubt Iceheart wanted you Bothans to survive so you could help split the Alliance. “Sullustans and Shistavanens have been infected, leaving open the very real possibility that Wookiees could find themselves susceptible to the virus. Quarren have died from it, leaving the Mon Calamari population vulnerable. I have heard of no Elom who have become ill, but Twi’lek, Gamorrean, and Trandoshan populations have, so the possibility of the disease jumping to the Elom is not out of the question.”

The Bothan’s fur rose on head and shoulders, but Ackbar ignored the signs of Fey’lya’s anger. “Moreover, from a public health standpoint, your plan of therapy centers is more of a risk than it is a help. The facilities you suggest would call for vast numbers of people congregating in an environment where contact with infectious fluids is not difficult to imagine. And, even if there were studies to show bacta mist did kill the virus, using it carelessly promotes the chance of a bacta-resistant strain of the virus being passed among people who believe they are being protected from it. If such a strain does appear, we will be powerless to stop the plague from destroying the galaxy.”

The Bothan kept his voice low. “What, pray do tell, would you suggest, then?”

“First and foremost, we secure the water supply. We have evidence to suggest the virus was introduced into the planetary water supply, and for all we know, there are pockets of virus frozen in the glaciers just waiting to be melted before they become virulent again. Second, we continue the intensive therapy to control and cure those populations we know are infected. It is important to note here, I think, that human medtechs have been tireless in caring for victims of the virus. Their immunity to the disease certainly means they have less to fear than others, but that immunity in no way makes it incumbent upon them to help out the way they have.”

Ackbar held a hand up. “Third and final, we need to deal with the black market. The rumors of a supply of bacta arriving on Coruscant have depressed the prices, but estimates of how much we got from Zsinj are grossly high. When the truth comes out, prices will begin to rise, and selling off portions of the supply will become very attractive. If we don’t have our supply depleted through profiteering, we stand a good chance of buying enough time to obtain more bacta from Thyferra and solving our problem once and for all. If not, we will find ourselves bankrupt and dying of the virus.”

The Bothan opened his hands. “So you think we should just continue to proceed in the manner in which we have gone about things so far?”

“No, by no means.” Ackbar looked around the room and then up at the misting system. “We argue here whether bacta-mist therapy has any value, yet we have a system installed here to protect us. All of us, including the humans, know affluent members of our populations have purchased bacta on the black market to use in their own preventative therapy. And, I have no doubt, people have come to you since the news of our victory has leaked out, asking you to procure bacta for them. While I know none of us would agree to such a thing, the perception that we might, and that there is special treatment for some selected folks going on, is one that will heighten the panic our people are feeling.”

Sian Tevv sniffed. “This virus is more than panic, Ackbar. It is real and deadly.”

“Agreed, but our actions make it deadlier still. If one person believes there is no hope for himself, that there will be no cure when he needs it, he might not seek treatment. A day’s delay not only can cost him his life, but can infect his family and friends. The fact is that if we project the image that says the virus can and will be defeated, everyone will do what they can to defeat it.”

Leia smiled. “It’s the same morale-building technique that kept us going during the dark days after Derra IV and Hoth.”

The black-furred Wookiee councilor’s bark flowed into a murmur, and Leia’s gold protocol droid translated. “Ambassador Kerrithrarr suggests treating the virus as an enemy against which everyone is enlisted. With discipline and direction the spread can be minimalized.”

Ackbar nodded at the Wookiee. “An apt analogy.”

Borsk Fey’lya’s eyes narrowed. “A military model might well be sufficient to deal with the virus, but do you suggest we use it to curtail black market trading? Having storm-troopers breaking into private homes to deprive people of bacta supplies will hardly endear us to our people.”

Mon Mothma shook her head. “No such thing is advocated. General Cracken is devoting a certain amount of his energy to this problem, and is working to put the New Republic Security Force together. The NRSF will replace the old Imperial Sector Ranger force, and is meant to be a law enforcement and counter-insurgency force. It will be some time before the force will be ready to administer all that needs to be dealt with here, but we have an offer for dealing with our law enforcement needs in the interim.”

Mon Mothma used her comlink. “Please send Vorru in.”

Ackbar saw the hackles go up on Fey’lya and felt his own flesh crawl. The doors to the chamber opened, and through them walked a small human with a thick head of white hair. From his size, which was not that big, even for a human, he could have easily been dismissed as benign, yet a warrior’s instinct told Ackbar that was just an image Vorru sought to project.

He’d met the man once before, when Fliry Vorru, then an Imperial Moff, had been a guest of Tarkin. The two men were physical opposites, but so alike in temperament and spirit that Ackbar had wished they would turn on each other and destroy one another. That didn’t happen, though circumstances soon conspired to get Vorru sentenced to Kessel, where he had remained until he had been freed and returned to Coruscant as part of the Rebel operation to take the planet.

Vorru looked up and Ackbar read pure cunning in his dark eyes. “I thank you for seeing me, esteemed Councilors. I thank you for my freedom. I find myself in a position to repay the debt I owe you.”

Leia’s head came up. “You don’t consider your part in the liberation of Coruscant to have canceled that debt?”

“If the truth be told, Princess Leia, I do not.” Vorru stiffened formally, then bowed his head. “The liberation of the planet would have been accomplished more smoothly and efficiently if not for the treacherous behavior of one of my lieutenants. While I did not know Zekka Thyne was working for Imperial Intelligence agents, I must accept responsibility for his actions. In effect, the liberation proceeded without my help, so my debt to you remains.”

A pained expression passed over his face. “You brought me here in the hope that I could revive Black Sun and turn it into a force that would aid the effort to take Coruscant from the Empire. I did what I could, but the fact is that the Imperial effort to expunge the remnants of Xizor’s organization were as ruthlessly efficient as only Darth Vader’s vengeance could be. What little of the leadership remained was destroyed in internecine battling. When I arrived here there was a paucity of leadership and an insufficient amount of time to once again establish control over the various factions present on Coruscant. Durga the Hurt and others resist unification, so Black Sun is effectively dead.”

Ackbar sat back in his chair. “I would have expected more regret in your voice at that pronouncement.”

Vorru shrugged. “Black Sun was Xizor’s dream, not mine.”

Fey’lya folded his arms across his chest and remained standing. “And your dream is …?”

“Freedom, the same as your dream.” Vorru smiled. “The Empire treated criminals the same way it treated you Rebels. With the Empire’s grip broken, you Rebels have become the New Republic and have gained legitimacy. The criminals who have long been repressed by the Empire are not all evil, but many have been trapped in a cycle of lawlessness precisely because they knew they could expect no mercy from the Empire. While they were not Rebels, they were no less victims of Imperial repression.

“To bring things to the point quickly, we no longer wish to be treated as criminals. We want a chance to gain legitimacy and lead normal lives. For this we realize we need to offer you something of value, and so we shall. We know the ways of the black market. We know how to disrupt it and break it. We know the ways of criminals and how to disrupt their activities. We know the underworld of Coruscant and we know how to bring to justice those you want to punish.”

Doman Beruss stared at Vorru. “You want us to make you the Commissioner of the Coruscant Constabulary?”

“I do not think you that foolish, Doman Beruss. I knew your father and mother and I know you cannot be easily deceived.” A smile came readily to Vorru’s face—a smile Ackbar did not trust. “What I want is for my people to be allowed to administer the law in the underworld here. Your Security Force will have more than enough to do with the areas of Coruscant where you can project power. We already have various off-world populations forming their own militias and civil defense corps, so why not tolerate a similar force created out of my people?”

Mon Mothma arched an eyebrow at Vorru. “Very few others have as colorful a history as you do, Fliry Vorru.”

“But some of those who have equally notorious backgrounds are continuing in service to the government, though the leadership and philosophy have changed.”

Ackbar slowly nodded. The realities of governing a vast panoply of worlds necessitated using the Imperial governmental apparatus to maintain communication and order. While a wholesale replacement of the bureaucracy would have been ideal, the fact was that, just as the Rebel military had relied on people with Imperial training, so the government was being forced to rely on clerks and administrators who had faithfully served the Empire until it fell. While most of these people had an allegiance to their jobs and not to the government, the tacit clemency granted to them in return for continuing to work did not sit well with many of the Rebels.

Fliry Vorru presented an interesting case. He had directly contributed to the winning of Coruscant. While he underplayed his contribution, Vorru could easily have turned Rogue Squadron over to the Imperials, preventing the Rebel conquest of the planet. His support, despite the betrayal of subordinates, had facilitated the Rebel victory, making him a valuable ally.

And his request of us is an ally’s request for trust. Ackbar half-closed his eyes. Vorru’s request also made sense from a purely pragmatic position. While Cracken’s law enforcement organization would soon be functioning fully, it would never have been as effective in the underworld as Vorru would be. The Palpatine Counter-insurgency Front, black marketeering, and a dozen other problems needed attention on Coruscant, and yet Cracken still needed to attend to intelligence matters involving Warlord Zsinj and Ysanne Isard, wherever she was.

Vorru opened his hands. “The question I place before you is this: will you grant me and my people the trust we have earned?”

Leia’s eyes hardened. “The Empire was a common enemy we had between us, hence our alliance. In acting against them you have earned trust, but I suspect you see the account more fully than we do.”

“This is true, Leia, but Vorru’s point is well taken.” Mon Mothma pressed her hands gently against the table top. “The fight against the Empire is truly what bound the Alliance together. We must build on that basic level of trust if we expect the Republic to thrive. As long as Fliry Vorru’s people are willing to abide by the conduct standards we set for our law enforcement and militia forces, they will remain within the bounds of our trust. If they step outside those guidelines, they will be outside their lawful duty and will be dealt with in a suitable manner.”

“You will find me a most able and loyal servant in this matter, Mon Mothma.”

“So I trust, Fliry Vorru.”

“So we must all trust,” Ackbar murmured.

Something dark flashed through Vorru’s eyes as he turned toward the Mon Calamari. “I would have thought you above veiled threats, Admiral Ackbar.”

“I am above them.” Ackbar’s mouth dropped open in a Mon Calamari grin. “I merely meant that we must take your word concerning your loyalty because your previous masters are all dead, and the greatest of them through our efforts. If you choose to read a threat in that set of facts, I cannot stop you from doing so.”

“But if I get out of hand you will destroy me?”

“You have earned trust.” Ackbar leaned forward and gave Vorru a wall-eyed stare. “Spend it unwisely and I will do what I must to settle your account.”

12

All the while in the back of the grav-cab, Wedge tried to puzzle out what Mirax had found on the Pulsar Skate that could threaten the Alliance. With anyone else Wedge would have made an allowance for hyperbole, but Mirax had never been prone to melodrama. In fact, she tends to see issues and emergencies rather clearly.

Wedge shivered. Once before the Ashern rebels of Thyferra had inserted a virus into bacta shipments that induced an allergy to bacta in those who were treated with it. This, in effect, left them without treatment for a whole host of ills. If Mirax possessed evidence that the batch of bacta stolen from Zsinj had been similarly contaminated, not only would it doom millions of people to die from the Krytos virus, but the withdrawal of the bacta from the health services system on Coruscant would spark riots that would kill many more people.

That would surely rip the Alliance apart. Non-humans would say that the bacta was being hoarded for use by humans in case the Krytos virus jumped species and began to kill them. Humans would also be blamed if non-humans were hurt or killed by the contaminated bacta, and any attempt to blame the contamination on the Ashern rebels would be decried as false and part of a human conspiracy, since it was well known that the Zaltin and Xucphra combines were run by humans.

Let it be anything else but bad bacta.

Wedge had the droid flying the cab let him off three blocks and two levels from the hangar where Mirax kept the Pulsar Skate. While he wanted to get there as quickly as possible, the urgency in her voice kindled a desire for caution in him. He’d learned a lot from Mirax’s father, Booster Terrik, about the need for caution, especially at those times when events seemed to be moving too fast to allow any delay. Wedge regretted the lack of a sidearm, but he did have a comlink and took a moment to preset it to the squadron’s emergency frequency.

He forced himself to slow down as he wandered toward the hangar. He stopped to look at the holographic displays set in shop windows or to read the latest news as it sped past on the omnipresent news-scrolls. With each stop he looked around and tried to spot anyone paying over much attention to his presence. He saw no signs he was being followed, but took the added precaution of wandering into a tapcaf, going out through the lower level, then coming back up and heading to the hangar.

At the door Wedge announced himself. The computer got a good voiceprint match, then opened the door. Wedge stepped through into the security lock area. After the door closed behind him, another door in front of him opened up and allowed him into the hangar itself.

A smile slowly spread across his face as he looked at the Pulsar Skate. The modified Baudo-class yacht had the overall shape of a broad-bladed dagger. The twin engines at the aft formed an abbreviated hilt. The broadest parts of the blade curved down to form gentle wings that swept up to a rounded prow. The ship very much did resemble the Corellian deep-sea skate for which it was named. It had sailed through a lot of parsecs between the time its hull was first welded and its current presence on Coruscant.

He quickly crossed the darkened hangar floor and made his way up the loading ramp. At the top of the gangway he nodded to Liat Tsayv. The Sullustan returned the nod without comment, and raised the muzzle of his blaster carbine enough so Wedge could pass unmenaced. The normally voluble Sullustan’s grim silence gave Wedge a measure of how serious Mirax thought the situation was and filled him with a sense of dread.

He made his way past the galley and crew lounge to the hold. The hatch stood open, and through it he could see Mirax sitting on a duraplast crate. She looked well, though she still wore her brown hair in a long braid that she doubled up and fastened at the back of her head. She’d started wearing her hair that way since Corran’s death and Wedge remembered her having done the same thing when her father had first been sent away to Kessel. That’s Mirax being serious and remote, walling her feelings off so she doesn’t have to deal with the pain.

A single red light provided all the illumination for the hold, yet it did little more than illuminate a two-meter-wide globe within which Mirax sat. Everything else remained in shadow, yet from the way Mirax looked out into the darkness, Wedge could tell something alive lurked there.

A cold chill shot down his spine, and all manner of irrational thoughts exploded in his brain. He paused in the hatchway and stared out into the blackness, trying to see what captivated Mirax’s attention. He thought he saw red light glint off a rounded black dome, which he translated into Darth Vader’s helmet. No, he’s dead. It can’t be him again.

Wedge smiled at Mirax. “I’m here. How are you doing?”

“I’m holding it together, Wedge, really.” Her tone matched the hopeful nature of her words, giving Wedge reason to feel slightly relieved. “Thanks for getting here so fast. I don’t know who else could help me with this, but it turns out you were their choice anyway.”

Mirax gestured off into the darkest part of the hold. “Wedge Antilles, this is Qlaern Hirf, a Vratix native of Thyferra and a proud member of the Ashern Circle.”

“The honor is ours, Commander Antilles.” The voice from the shadows came deep and deliberate. Wedge heard his name pronounced with respectful precision; the hard sounds—the C in Wedge’s title and the t in his name—were slightly abbreviated, as if snapped instead of spoken. Ooryl Qrygg, the squadron’s Gand, produced similar sounds when he spoke, though even bringing to mind the image of the exoskeletoned pilot did not fully prepare Wedge for his first sight of the Vratix.

Qlaern moved from the shadows and into the circle of light slowly and benignly. The insectoid creature’s head featured two bulging compound eyes, and Wedge realized it was light reflected from one of these that his imagination had transformed into Vader’s headgear. The Vratix’s bent antennae dangled over its triangular face, and its curved mandibles remained pressed one against the other.

The Vratix’s stalk-like neck broadened into a cylindrical thorax and abdomen. The first of three pairs of limbs, which hung from the point where the neck joined the thorax, consisted of two trifold arms that ended in three long, delicate fingers and a thicker thumb, and sprouted stout hook-claws from the middle arm segment. The second and third sets of limbs were legs, yet they were mismatched. The middle legs connected with the body below what would have been the ribs on a human. Longer and far more powerfully built than the other pair of legs, their configuration led Wedge to imagine the Vratix capable of great leaps and savage kicks in combat. The last pair of limbs were certainly more than vestigial, serving as they did to keep the Vratix’s abdomen from dragging on the ground, but they reminded Wedge of little more than the landing gear on an X-wing: useful to have when you need them, but built to be tucked away when work had to be done.

The Vratix body appeared to have a uniformly grey color to it, but Wedge put that down to the lack of light in the hold. The claws on its forearms were black, but with lighter flecks, which led Wedge to believe the black color was cosmetically applied, not something native to the creature itself.

“I am pleased to meet you, Qlaern Hirf.” Wedge smiled and extended a hand toward the Vratix.

Qlaern’s hand came in toward Wedge’s, then moved past it and came up. The Vratix brushed its fingers over Wedge’s face. The creature’s flesh, which Wedge expected to be cold and hard like armor, was dry and warm. While he could feel the solidity of the exoskeleton beneath it, the scaly texture of the skin covering the Vratix somehow made the creature seem less alien to Wedge.

Mirax reached out and brushed a hand over the flesh of Qlaern’s right foreknee. “The Vratix find both sound and vision to be deceptive senses. As Qlaern reports it, both sight and sound are things that are of the past the moment you perceive them. Only touch reports information that is concurrent with the gathering.”

“Interesting perspective.” Wedge shifted his hand around to grip the Vratix’s arm above the curved spikes. “Qlaern, you are the Ashern agent who tipped us to the presence of the bacta that Zsinj had captured?”

“We are responsible for that occurrence.” Qlaern tilted his head to the right and then the left. “We would have preferred to transfer the bacta directly to you, but this was not possible. Our affluence is not such that we could present our gift in the manner we wished.”

Wedge frowned. “I am not certain I understand what you are saying.”

Mirax scooted over on the crate. “Sit down, Wedge. This gets complicated.”

Wedge sat beside her. “Am I going to like this?”

“Parts of it, sure.” Mirax smiled weakly at him. “At least, I think you will.”

Qlaern spread his forelegs slightly to bring his face down to their level. “You know of our world.”

“Some. Thyferra is a world in the Polith system, quite temperate in nature and an excellent world for agriculture. Thyferra is where bacta is produced and distributed by Zaltin and Xucphra, the two corporations that have a monopoly on the bacta trade. The corporations are decidedly feudal in nature, with humans de facto governing a world where the Vratix are the majority.”

The Vratix’s head bobbed on the end of its neck. “Good. Not as much as she who is Mirax knows, but good.”

“Please, tell me what I do not know.”

“We have insufficient time for that, we think.” Qlaern’s head craned back as a sibilant hiss issued from its mouth.

Wedge looked at Mirax. “Sarcasm? A laugh?”

“I think so.”

“Forgive us, but so many times we find humans say things they do not mean.”

“Ah, then tell me what you believe I need to know.”

“Much better.” The Vratix settled a hand on Wedge’s knee. “The healing properties of bacta were discovered during the days of the Old Republic. It was apparent to all that bacta was a miracle cure for many ailments and infirmities. The corporations which now control Thyferra and bacta made narrow profits, but made them on a wider range of sales. They set up many satellite manufacturing centers, all under license, all with Vratix verachen overseeing the final processes no matter where they took place. The thought then was to beat competition by producing better bacta for less than anyone else could.”

“You mean there once was competition for the bacta market?”

“For more time than there has not been, but all of it before you were born. The Clone Wars made one thing abundantly clear—a supply of bacta could heal even the most grievously wounded soldiers and render them receptive to mechanical replacement limbs. This meant they could return to combat, saving the military the cost of training new warriors. As a pilot you know how much expense goes into training, so the saving is clear.”

“And I know many a pilot, myself included, who owes his life to bacta therapy.”

“So it is.” Qlaern nodded solemnly. “The Emperor decided that the only group that should have a guaranteed supply of bacta was his military. He systematically suppressed small manufacturers of bacta in favor of Zaltin and Xucphra. They realized greater profits by letting the marketplace set the price and utilized Imperial soldiers to wipe out independent growers and to round up all the verachen to return them to Thyferra.”

Wedge frowned. “Twice now you have used the word ‘verachen.’ ”

“We are verachen.” Qlaern tapped his free hand against his thorax. “Bacta is an organic product made through the blending of alazhi with kavam. Kavam is itself a compound made of other ingredients. Alazhi, because it is grown, comes in various potencies depending upon location, soil content, rainfall, and even spontaneous mutation. Verachen oversee the proper combination of these components into the bacta. Each lot has a minimum potency, but sometimes the bacta will be most potent and work extremely well. Such is the batch we have presented to you as our gift.”

“Gift?” Wedge placed his hand atop Qlaern’s hand. “Please do not think me dense, but there are some things you say as if you expect me to already understand them.”

“Forgive us. We have been foolish.”

“That’s partially my fault, Wedge.” Mirax added her hand to the pile on Wedge’s knee. “The Vratix are not exactly a hive mind, but there does appear to be surface thought exchange among Vratix who spend a lot of time in close proximity to one another. The reason ‘verachen’ is plural is that while Qlaern here might be the supervisor in charge of a batch process, Qlaern will have subordinates who act almost as remotes, reporting back and receiving orders on a subsensory level of some sort. Qlaern may have been under the impression you and I similarly shared thoughts.”

“So you know what he’s talking about?”

“I think so—and, actually, Qlaern is not a he per se. The Vratix can both father and bear young, depending upon stages in their life cycle, which I guess is rather long.” She inclined her head toward the Vratix. “When it speaks of the Clone Wars, it’s speaking from life experience.”

“Huh?” Wedge smiled. “So, will you clear up this gift thing for me?”

“Sure, if you don’t mind, Qlaern.”

“We are grateful for your aid.”

Mirax drew in a deep breath. “The Vratix have made you a gift of the bacta and all that entails.”

“Why me?”

Qlaern’s antennae twitched. “Your fame has made you known to us. You are known as a fair and wise man who values loyalty. This we value as well.”

Wedge’s eyes narrowed. “I appreciate that, but I still don’t understand. What’s in this for the Vratix?”

The Vratix inclined its head toward Mirax. “This you must explain, for you will do it better than we will.”

Mirax nodded, then took another deep breath. “The Vratix are giving this bacta to you because they want you, Wedge Antilles, to represent them before the Provisional Council. They want to join the New Republic.”

“What?” Wedge’s surprise at being asked to represent the Vratix immediately faded beneath a sense of disaster. Thyferra was the sole supplier of bacta, but the world had steadfastly remained neutral in the civil war. Everyone believed that this was so they could gouge both the Empire and the Alliance, thus enriching themselves while the war raged. To keep Thyferra happy, the Alliance had even inducted two of its human residents—one from a Zaltin family and the other from a Xucphra family—into Rogue Squadron. Bror Jace, the pilot representing the Zaltin corporation, had been killed fighting against the Empire. Erisi Dlarit, the other Thyferran, still flew with the squadron, and viewed the Ashern as murdering terrorist monsters.

And there’s the problem. If the New Republic granted the Ashern any sort of status, the Thyferran government would react harshly and swiftly. Any hope of getting bacta from the cartel—no matter how successful Erisi’s backdoor efforts in that regard might be—would die quickly and horribly. If the bacta supply dried up, the Krytos virus would ravage Coruscant and, quite likely, spread to other worlds and kill billions of individuals.

If I refuse the request … then what? Wedge looked up at Qlaern. “The bacta you made available to us, there’s nothing wrong with it, is there? We’re not in a situation where you have to mix something else in for it to be effective, such that if I refuse your request, the bacta will be useless or harmful, are we?”

Qlaern’s mandibles clicked open and shut again. “There was once a case where verachen fouled a batch of bacta. The reasons for that action were sound. The results of that action were unacceptable. The Vratix ask for your help, but cannot do so at the expense of your people. The bacta, it is a gift to you. So is this verachen.”

“What?”

“We have come here to Coruscant because we know you cannot jeopardize your people by taking up our cause. As verachen we have ways and means to mix up more than just bacta, or to make bacta more effective. We are here to learn of this Krytos virus and to stop it.”

“But this virus could kill you.”

Qlaern shrugged. “Great risk is necessary to defeat great evil. You know this.”

Wedge slowly smiled. “That I do. Your offer impresses me, but I cannot act alone in this. I have people to whom I must speak.”

Mirax raised an eyebrow. “Not the Council, right?”

“No, not the Council, not right off. I only really have one choice: General Cracken. If word of Qlaern’s presence gets out, or Erisi catches wind of the Vratix working with us, Thyferra will hear about it quickly and we’ll be stuck. Cracken can provide security and whatever resources Qlaern will need to do the job.”

Mirax smiled. “And it might distract him from persecuting Tycho.”

“It might do that, indeed.”

The Vratix hissed sharply. “It is a beneficent balm that soothes more than one wound.”

“Agreed.” Wedge stood and clapped the Vratix on both shoulders. “I’m glad you’re here, Qlaern Hirf, because there’re plenty of wounds to be found, and decidedly little soothing going on. If you can do anything—anything more than you’ve already done—to stop the Krytos virus, I’ll gladly represent you before the Council and, if need be, even take your case to Thyferra itself.”

13

A jolt ran through Nawara Ven and traveled out to the tips of his lekku, making them twitch. He immediately blushed, bluing the shadows on his grey cheeks and beneath his eyes. If I do not have more control than this, Tycho is lost. He pulled his braintails back so they dangled beneath the level of the defense table. No reason to let the opposition read involuntary motion as a sign of my nervousness.

His nervousness would not be denied, however. The trial was being held—staged was the term he preferred to use—in the old Imperial Justice Court. High vaulted ceilings had been covered with polished black marble panels streaked with white, giving the whole room the feeling of actually being on a high promontory and open to the night sky. The black marble had also been used to build up the High Bench at which the Tribunal would sit, rather ominously; it reminded Nawara of the Imperial Palace’s towering edifice.

Below the ceiling level, stainless steel, molded ferrocrete, and duraplast castings completed the court’s design. While the forms meshed perfectly with the stone shapes, the rest of the room seemed artificial and not a little sterile. This room does not seem conducive to compassion. Nawara looked around at the upper gallery and the seats in the court, which were packed with individuals slavering for justice.

Justice, in this case, means they want my client shot into the sun. Admiral Ackbar had acquiesced to Nawara’s request that the trial not be sent out in real-time holo. While it could have been argued that news of the trial had already done as much damage to Tycho’s reputation as it would be possible to do, broadcasting the trial could easily serve to further inflame public sentiment and cause trouble. Nawara had already been questioned about defending a human, and that sort of thing would only get worse if everyone in the galaxy was able to watch the trial unfold.

The discussion about broadcasting the trial had been the subject of an executive session of the Provisional Council. Borsk Fey’lya had tried to argue that justice conducted in the shadows was just a continuation of Imperial policy. Nawara had countered that a publicly broadcast trial abandoned any pretense of justice and became a sporting event where a man’s life hung in the balance. He argued that how the Republic conducted the trial was as important as the outcome, because any perception of injustice, no matter how slight, would get magnified and form the core for discontent and dissent.

And they agreed with Ackbar to keep things limited to news summaries. It’s not much, but it’s something. He shook his head. Now if I blow it, at least folks won’t know it until later.

Across from him, Commander Halla Ettyk rose from her place at the prosecution table. Athletically trim and tall, Ettyk cut a very commanding figure with just a hint of lean menace to her. She wore her black hair gathered back into a thick braid—somewhat reminiscent of Princess Leia’s current hairstyle—providing Nawara an unobstructed view of her strong-jawed profile. Fire filled her brown eyes as she glanced at him, then turned her attention toward the tribunal.

“If it please the court, we will call our first witness.”

Ackbar nodded. “Please, Commander.”

“The Prosecution calls Lieutenant Pash Cracken to the stand.”

Nawara hit a couple of keys on his datapad, calling up the deposition Pash had given him earlier. He let his eyes track over the Rylothean script, but did so only to cover his surprise at Ettyk’s choice of lead witness. He had fully expected her to start with Iella Wessiri or General Cracken to establish a connection between Tycho and Imperial Intelligence. Instead, by calling Pash first, she appeared to want to firmly set up Tycho’s having the motive, means, and opportunity for killing Corran, then work backward into the larger treason picture.

I should have seen that coming. Since the great public hue and cry about the case had pushed the treason angle, that was the vector he’d expected Ettyk to take in presenting her case. He’d thought she’d establish the treason, then show that Corran’s murder was necessitated to cover the treason. By coming at it the other way around and establishing the murder, she got treason by implication, and all the evidence she presented after that just went to bolster a fact she had previously proved.

“This pitches our defense into the Bright Lands,” muttered Nawara.

Tycho leaned over toward him as Pash stepped into the witness box and was sworn in. “What do you mean?”

“There is ample circumstantial evidence to show you killed Corran. Emtrey could convince a jury of droid-haters that you certainly could have killed Corran. I could baffle a jury by pointing out how many others could have done the job, but the Tribunal is going to be tough.” Nawara narrowed his pink eyes. “I had hoped we’d have to fight over treason first, since it’s a weaker charge, but we’ll have to deal with this first.”

Tycho gave Nawara a confident smile. “You’ll get me out of this.”

“I will.”

Ettyk moved out from behind the prosecution table with the supple ease of a taopari stalking prey. “Lieutenant Cracken, your service record has already been appended to the transcripts of this trial, so I will not ask for a recitation of your numerous citations and awards won in service to the Alliance. I would, however, like you to think back to the events that led up to the night when Coruscant fell to our forces. Can you do that?”

“Yes.” Pash nodded and a lock of red hair curled down over his forehead.

“Good.” Ettyk gave him a polite smile. “Where were you at that time?”

“Here, on Coruscant.”

“And you were present on Coruscant as part of an assignment given to Rogue Squadron?”

“Yes.”

“Did that assignment include orders that posted Captain Celchu to Coruscant?”

Pash shook his head. “I only know my orders for the assignment, Commander. My orders contained nothing that referred to Captain Celchu.”

“So, at the time you left your base to travel to Coruscant, you expected Captain Celchu to be where?”

“Objection!” Nawara stood. “The question is irrelevant and the prosecution has provided no foundation to show the witness could answer it.”

Admiral Ackbar nodded slowly. “Sustained on the relevance grounds. Lieutenant Cracken’s expectations are immaterial, Commander Ettyk.”

“Yes, Admiral.”

“And you, Counselor Ven, need not stack objections. We’ll take them as they come in, shall we?”

Nawara nodded. “I appreciate the court’s admonition and I shall remember it.” He returned to his seat and forced himself to breathe slowly. You aren’t going to win this case with the first witness. Be careful but not so eager.

“Lieutenant Cracken, there came a point during the operation here on Coruscant in which the squadron’s personnel were drawn together, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And Captain Celchu was not among those people, correct?”

“He was not there, no.”

“But there was news of him, was there not?”

Pash leaned back in the witness chair. “Yes.”

“One report was that an attack by Warlord Zsinj on the base at Noquivzor had hit Rogue Squadron’s staff hard and that Tycho Celchu was among the missing.”

“Yes.”

“Who delivered that report?”

“Commander Antilles.”

“After hearing that report, you believed what about Captain Celchu?”

Pash glanced down at his hands. “I thought he was dead. He was listed as ‘missing in action,’ but you learn that really means ‘dead, and we don’t have enough pieces left to fill a thimble, so we can’t prove it.’ I expected we’d get confirmation of his death fairly quickly.”

Ettyk gathered her hands at the small of her back. “There was another story told about Captain Celchu, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Who told that story?”

“Lieutenant Horn.”

“What did Lieutenant Horn say about Captain Celchu?”

“Objection, hearsay.”

“Exception, Admiral: The statement Lieutenant Cracken will relate was told against Lieutenant Horn’s best interest.”

“What?” Nawara Ven’s jaw dropped open. “How is what Corran said about the defendant going to be against Corran’s best interest?”

Ettyk smiled. “Lieutenant Horn prided himself on his observational skills, and when he related the story of what he had seen, he made it into a self-depreciating tale. Given his position of authority in the squadron, this was against his best interest.”

“Admiral, that is a gross misuse of the hearsay exception.”

“You won’t be able to keep the story out—Commander Antilles filed it as part of a report concerning the operation here on Coruscant.”

Nawara’s lip curled back in a snarl and gave Ettyk a view of his sharpened teeth. “If you want to bring that story in, by all means, lay the proper foundation and call your witnesses in order.” You may indeed succeed in bringing this stuff in, but I’m going to make you work for it.

Admiral Ackbar leaned over and consulted with General Madine for a moment, then straightened up and nodded. “The objection is overruled.”

Nawara felt his lekku twitch. “Admiral, this leaves me grounds for an appeal.”

“It may indeed, Counselor Ven, but the ruling stands.” Ackbar pointed toward the witness. “Lieutenant Cracken, you will tell the court what Corran Horn said, as best as you can remember.”

Pash nodded as a frown gathered on his face. “Corran said he’d seen Tycho on Coruscant on the same day Warlord Zsinj hit Noquivzor.”

“And what did he say Captain Celchu had been doing when he saw him?”

“Talking with someone in a cantina.”

“Who was he speaking with?”

“Objection. The question calls for a conclusion based on facts not in evidence.”

“Please, Commander, rephrase your question.”

“Yes, Admiral.” Ettyk glanced back at Nawara for a moment, then looked over at Pash. “Whom did Lieutenant Horn say he saw in conversation with Captain Celchu?”

“He said it was Kirtan Loor, but—”

“That’s quite enough, Lieutenant, thank you.”

“But—”

Admiral Ackbar looked down from the bench at Pash. “I’m certain Counselor Ven will allow you to finish your answer under cross-examination.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, Lieutenant, I want you to recall when it was that you saw Captain Celchu after the report of his death.”

“Three weeks ago. He showed up and saved us from stormies trying to kill us.”

“Did his presence cause you to reevaluate Lieutenant Horn’s story?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“No?” Ettyk’s expression sharpened. “You had been told Captain Celchu was dead, then you saw him again. You learned he had, in fact, been on Coruscant at the time Horn said he’d seen him. Did that not give you cause to wonder about what Horn had seen?”

“Things were very busy at the time. Desperate. I was given orders. I didn’t think about things I didn’t have to think about.”

“Not even a bit? Not even when your orders included taking precautions to keep a traitor in your midst from getting information out to Imperial sources?”

“That was normal for a covert op.”

“But you had to wonder if there wasn’t really a traitor in your midst, correct?”

“No.”

“No?” Ettyk’s head came up. “You’re a friend of Captain Celchu’s, aren’t you?”

Pash hesitated. “I’m in his squadron. I know him. I know what he’s done. He’s saved my life.”

“And you think you owe him something?”

“I said he saved my life.”

“And you don’t want to be testifying here against him, do you?”

“No.” The response came emphatic and strong.

“And, in fact, I had to compel your testimony with a subpoena, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

The prosecutor looked up at the Tribunal. “I’d like permission to treat this witness as hostile.”

Nawara winced. “Not good.”

“Why not?” Tycho asked in a whisper.

“In direct testimony the questions are supposed to be open and nonleading. On cross-examination you get to lead the witness toward the answers you want.” Nawara scratched at his throat. “A witness who is forced to answer questions always leaves the impression he’s covering something up, so it makes even innocent things seem condemning. Pash is trying to do my job for me, but he’s just making it tougher.”

Ackbar waved a hand toward Ettyk. “Permission is granted to treat Lieutenant Cracken as hostile.”

“Thank you, Admiral.” Ettyk smiled. “Now you’re a smart man, Lieutenant Cracken. You attended the Imperial Military Academy under a false identity your father created for you, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And the operation that took you to Coruscant involved your arriving under a false identity, correct?”

“Yes.”

“So you have some understanding of what it takes to operate covertly in a hostile environment, just as any spy would, correct?”

“Yes.”

“It would be natural for a smart man like you to use what you had learned to try to check and see if you could detect any signs of a spy in your midst, correct?”

“It would seem that way.”

“It really was that way, wasn’t it, Lieutenant?” Halla Ettyk opened her hands. “You certainly found yourself evaluating people and trying to decide how much you could trust them, yes?”

Pash’s frown deepened. “Yes.”

“And Captain Celchu figured high on your list of suspect individuals, didn’t he?”

“On a scale of one to infinity he ranked about a five.”

“But that was higher than anyone else there, correct?”

“You’re making it sound wrong.”

“I move for the answer to be stricken as nonresponsive.”

“So ordered.” Ackbar again looked down at Pash. “Just answer the questions, Lieutenant.”

“The ranking you gave Captain Celchu was higher than anyone else’s ranking, wasn’t it, Lieutenant?”

Pash nodded reluctantly. “Yes.”

“Thank you. Now, on the night, two weeks ago, you were preparing to fly a mission that would aid in our conquest of Coruscant.”

“Yes.”

“What was that mission?”

“Five of us were going to fly cover for the rest of the squadron as they tried to bring the planetary shields down.”

“To do that you needed fighters, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And you had them?”

“Yes.”

“Where did they come from?”

Pash took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Captain Celchu had purchased them during his time here on Coruscant.”

“And he had even flown a mission here, correct?”

“Yes, the mission where he saved us.”

Ettyk turned back to the prosecution table and studied the datapad. Iella Wessiri came around to face her. “That night you witnessed a conversation between Captain Celchu and Corran Horn, did you not?”

“I did. I wasn’t a party to the conversation, though.”

“But you did overhear it?” Ettyk turned and spitted the witness with a forthright stare.

The pilot hung his head. “Yes.”

“Did you hear Captain Celchu tell Lieutenant Horn that he had checked over the fighter Horn would be using?”

“Yes.”

“And did you hear Lieutenant Horn threaten to work to expose Captain Celchu’s treason once he returned from the mission?”

“Yes.” Fatigue dragged at the red-haired man’s reply.

The prosecutor smiled. “And what was Captain Celchu’s response to that threat?”

“He said he had nothing to fear from Corran’s investigation.”

“As if he knew there would be no investigation?”

Nawara stood quickly. “Objection! It calls for speculation and is inflammatory.”

“Sustained.”

Ettyk turned and nodded to Nawara. “Your witness.”

Nawara hesitated for a second. The evidence Halla Ettyk had laid out so far came as no surprise and was circumstantial. All she had gotten from Pash was that he had seen Tycho and Corran exchange some harsh words. That would go to motive, and some of the comments did cover opportunity to fix Corran’s fighter, but without the Headhunter there was no evidence of tampering.

All he could accomplish on cross-examination would be to ask Pash to recount Tycho’s explanation for the meeting where Corran saw him talking to Kirtan Loor. Tycho had explained he’d been speaking to a Duros trader, Lai Nootka, not Kirtan Loor. Nawara knew Ettyk would object to Pash’s repetition of Tycho’s explanation on hearsay grounds. Without being able to call Lai Nootka—or putting Tycho on the stand—there was no way to get at that whole subject.

Unless I called Kirtan Loor and he denied ever meeting Tycho! He put the chances of that happening at something just under the chances of the Emperor showing up and granting the Rebels one and all an Imperial pardon.

“Counselor Ven?”

Nawara looked up at Admiral Ackbar. “Sorry, sir. I have no questions of this witness at this time.” The Twi’lek resumed his seat.

“Very well. Next witness, Commander Ettyk.”

Ettyk stood once again. “The state calls Erisi Dlarit to the stand.”

14

Corran Horn felt as clumsy as the Trandoshan dragging him through the interrogation center’s corridor. The injection an Emdee droid had given him back in his isolation cell had already begun to take hold. He had it in his mind that at least part of the concoction used was skirtopanol and that was not good. The one time he’d been under its influence, back during an exercise at the Corellian Security Force Academy, he confessed to all sorts of minor transgressions from his childhood. That would have been merely comical, but one of his father’s cronies was overseeing the interrogation seminar and supplied his father with the text of his confession.

I don’t think Iceheart will … When he started he’d had a full thought there, but the very image of Ysanne Isard that sprang into his mind killed things. Corran knew enough to know the drugs were working the way they were supposed to. He started to moan from fear and frustration, which earned him a backhanded cuff from his guard.

The blow and the dry-rot scent of the Trandoshan combined with his fear to bring memories rushing full-blown and terrible back into his mind. He saw little holographic images hovering in the air before him. Three figures, two men and a female Quarren, sat at a table in the darkened corner of a tapcaf. The two men—one of them his father—were deep in conversation. His father showed his agitation in the way he poked a finger at the smaller man and the color rising in his face.

Into the picture walked a Trandoshan bounty hunter wearing a bulky dust-cloak thrown over his shoulders. The lizard-man strode past the table and on up toward Corran until his green, scaly face eclipsed sight of Corran’s father. The Trandoshan, Bossk, stepped back, slapping a power pack into the blaster carbine he’d produced from beneath the cloak. He spun slowly and sprayed red blaster bolts back and forth over the trio at the table.

The Quarren all but exploded into a black mist. Corran’s father caught two shots high in the chest, slamming him against the back of the booth. As he slid from sight, the little man to whom he had been speaking tried to dive for cover. Unfortunately for him, the Trandoshan’s fire blasted the table into flaming splinters and half-melted metal and still hit him. The little man took three bolts in the torso and a fourth that blew the back of his head off.

Corran saw himself in the scene. He saw no transition, no arrival. He just was there, kneeling in the blood, surrounded by burning bits of table. He held his father’s body in his arms. He wiped the Quarren ichor from his father’s face with a borrowed rag, all the while willing his father to open his eyes and announce he would be fine.

The two blackened holes in his father’s chest stared up at him. At first they reminded him of a viper’s fang marks, then they blinked. One became an icy blue and the other a volcanic red. The world blurred for a moment, then all the colors flowed together and became solid white, as they did when he was in hyperspace.

Then he reverted and found himself standing before Ysanne Isard in a predominately white room.

She frowned. “It fascinates me how all of our interrogation sessions with you end up coming back to your father’s death. There are countless psychiatric advocates who would find your preoccupation with your father’s death to be grand justification for adherence to disciplines as useless as Jedi training. I do not.”

Corran blinked his eyes. He couldn’t recall going from the corridor to the interrogation chamber, nor being bound to the man-form that held him upright. The straps at his shoulders, and across his chest, waist, wrists, and ankles all pinched and chafed in such a way that he knew he’d been in restraints for quite some time. He couldn’t remember anything but seeing his father die again, yet his throat felt raw enough that he knew he had to have been speaking or shouting or screaming.

Isard turned, presenting him her profile, and nodded to unseen minions beyond a mirrored wall. “What I have learned so far is a great deal of gossip that might be suitable for embarrassing the Corellian Diktat, but that sort of information is hardly in short supply. You have not ensconced yourself highly enough in the councils of the Rebellion to be of use to me—at least, I do not believe you have. It is entirely possible you have managed to resist interrogation in certain areas.”

Corran shook his head. “You got the wrong guy.”

“Then I will just have to make you into the right guy, won’t I?” Her eyes narrowed with irritation as she faced him again. “Had Gil Bastra not sent you to the outlier worlds, you would have become part and parcel of the Rebellion. You would have found yourself in General Cracken’s confidence and I would have found you very useful in that regard. Then again, it is possible that he set you in Rogue Squadron so you could watch Tycho Celchu and uncover his ties to me.”

“No.”

“No? Cracken must have done that. You were his agent, yes?”

Corran shook his head adamantly. “No. I wasn’t a spy for Cracken.”

“Were I inclined to believe anything, I might be inclined to believe you in this case. Unfortunately I need proof.” She stepped aside as the Trandoshan wheeled in a device that bristled with probes and danced with the colorful illumination of an ever-changing light array. The probes had been fitted on a concave surface that could easily close over him and the rack to which he was bound. Corran caught the stink of ozone as the Trandoshan brought the device closer. He didn’t like the fact that he heard a click down at his feet when the lizard-man finally nudged the device into place.

Isard smiled in a manner that made Corran want to shrivel up and die. “This is a variant on a design Darth Vader created to torture, among others, Han Solo at Bespin. As you know, humans have a number of different types of neural receptors. This device is designed to stimulate three of them—the original only worked on the pain receptors. I have found that adding stimulation for the heat and cold receptors is most effective in getting what I want out of those I interrogate.”

Corran wanted to snap off some quip, but fatigue and anxiety prevented him from mustering the required concentration.

“So, now we begin, Lieutenant Horn. Just tell me what I want to know.…”

“… and I won’t have to ask the court to let me treat you like a hostile witness.”

Iella Wessiri almost felt sorry for Erisi Dlarit as Halla Ettyk tried to coax cooperation out of her. In going over the depositions before the trial opened, Iella and Halla had agreed that members of Rogue Squadron would be hostile and resistant to anything that made them speak against Tycho Celchu. Halla had decided, therefore, to bring them up first and get them out of the way before she brought in the investigators and other witnesses who could attest to Tycho’s involvement with the Empire. Halla had pointed out that Nawara Ven would probably end up calling all the Rogues back to the stand, but by the time he did that, their positive affirmations about Tycho would sound hollow and unsupported to the Tribunal.

“Flight Officer Dlarit, how did you come to be on Coruscant two weeks ago?”

Erisi brought her chin up and her blue eyes flashed defiantly. “Corran Horn and I were inserted into Coruscant under the guise of being a Kuati telbun and his mistress. For the entire journey to Coruscant and the subsequent week, we were together almost constantly. We were good friends and talked a great deal.”

Halla Ettyk nodded. “So you were confidants?”

“We shared confidences, yes.” The black-haired woman smiled politely. “It is difficult to keep secrets when you are living in such close proximity with someone.”

“And Corran Horn felt free to discuss things with you?”

“Objection: relevance.”

Iella glanced over at Nawara Ven. The twitching of his braintails betrayed some nervousness, but the Twi’lek was objecting at all the places Halla had predicted he would. She said he had talent. She didn’t think he could win the case, and his decision not to cross-examine Cracken wasn’t what Halla had anticipated.

Halla looked up at Admiral Ackbar. “This is foundational, Admiral. She was living with Corran Horn for a considerable portion of the last part of his life. I would suggest this would qualify her to give opinions on his demeanor.”

“Overruled.”

Erisi frowned briefly. “We discussed many things rather openly and frankly.”

“How would you characterize the conditions under which you spent time with Lieutenant Horn?”

The Thyferran pilot shrugged. “I saw him in combat, during which he was calm and a leader. A hero. I saw him in regular circumstances as well. He could be funny and compassionate and, well, attractive. I saw him in all different ways and situations.”

“On the night Coruscant fell, how would you characterize him?”

“Anxious and agitated.”

“And what was the source of his irritation?”

Erisi chewed her lower lip for a moment. “Corran said …”

“Objection.” Nawara Ven stood. “This is hearsay.”

Halla Ettyk took a step forward. “I would ask for an excited outburst exception, your honor. She has already testified that Horn was anxious and agitated.”

The Twi’lek stepped up beside Halla. “My learned colleague certainly understands that being agitated and saying something in no way makes it subject to the excited outburst exception.”

“Sustained.”

Nawara smiled slightly as he returned to his bench, but Halla’s expression just darkened. “Very well. Flight Officer Dlarit, did you speak with Lieutenant Horn before you took off on the mission that evening?”

“Yes.”

“You stated he seemed anxious and agitated. Did you find his state of mind unusual?”

“Objection, counsel is leading the witness.”

“Rephrase the question, Commander.”

“Flight Officer Dlarit, how did Lieutenant Horn’s state of mind strike you at the time?”

Erisi tugged at a wisp of hair behind her left ear. “Anxiety I could understand. We were all anxious to get going and to see if the mission would succeed or not.”

“And his agitation?”

“That wasn’t like Corran.”

“Had you seen or heard anything that, in your mind, explained his agitation?”

The witness hesitated. “I saw Corran speaking with Captain Celchu. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I saw them speaking together. Then Corran came over and spoke with me.”

“And you concluded?”

“Something in their conversation had set Corran off.”

Iella glanced down at the datapad on the prosecution table. Halla had gotten out of Erisi all she expected the witness to admit—testimony showing Corran to be out of sorts as a result of his conversation with Captain Celchu. When they had deposed Erisi they had learned the nature of her conversation with Corran. While Halla would have loved to get that testimony in, hearsay prevented it. The excited outburst exception wasn’t something she had expected to succeed.

Halla smiled at Nawara. “Your witness.”

The Twi’lek stood. “Flight Officer Dlarit, how long was it between the time you reported speaking to Corran and the previous time you had spoken to him?”

“An hour.”

“Now, you just testified that you saw Corran speak with Captain Celchu. Did you see Lieutenant Horn speak with anyone else before speaking with Captain Celchu?”

“No.”

Nawara’s head came up as if her answer surprised him. “You didn’t see Lieutenant Horn speak with Mirax Terrik?”

Erisi shrugged her shoulders. “I suppose I did. I saw them standing near each other and saw her run off, but I don’t recall any conversation.”

“But you do concede that they may have spoken to each other?”

“Yes.”

“So, as nearly as you know, Lieutenant Horn might have had multiple conversations that could have set him off?”

“I suppose so.” Erisi blinked a couple of times. “That could be it.”

The Twi’lek bowed his head. “Thank you, Flight Officer, that’s all I have for you.”

Corran felt like a block of burning ice caught in a lightning storm. His flesh felt on fire while his bones seemed chilled to absolute zero. Every pain receptor in his body strobed on and off on a near-constant basis. The pain would start at his feet and move up in a wave, or descend on him like a rain shower, or pummel him with randomly delivered jolts.

He would have welcomed death but for the horror of spending eternity with the memory of such pain so fresh.

He heard a hiss, and the rack retracted from what he had taken to calling the Inducer. Corran hung limp from the restraining straps and welcomed the constant, unrelenting, unshifting pain the straps caused as they sank into his flesh. Sweat poured down over his face and stung fiercely where he managed to bite through his lower lip, but even that sensation was a relief from what he had just been through.

Ysanne Isard entered the interrogation chamber and waved the Trandoshan out. “I would find you fascinating if you knew more, Horn.” She glanced at the mirrored panel on the wall. “Your tolerance for pain is remarkable.”

Corran would have shrugged, but every ounce of energy in his body had been exhausted in screaming answers to the questions fired at him during the session. He couldn’t remember what he had said. He recalled that in those few moments of lucidity which he could touch between pulses of agony, he had tried to focus on the cold or heat. Locking into those sensations had seemed to dull the pain somehow. Now, in the absence of pain, he doubted that observation was correct, but it had been a sanctuary into which he had retreated, and that was a very small victory.

She posted her fists on her hips. “You present a problem for me. You don’t know enough to be useful, and your position within the Rebellion is so low that you are hardly vital. If I return you to them, they will likely treat you much as they are treating Celchu now. You won’t have even the freedom he had before his arrest. This does not incline me to send you back.

“On the other hand, you would be perfect to mold into my own avenger. Your resistance to pain will make your rehabilitation into a right-thinking Imperial time-consuming, but not impossible. Your core discomfort with the unlawful nature of the Rebellion is a foundation on which I can build you anew into the tool I need. I can form an Avenger Squadron around you that will go after and destroy Rogue Squadron. Using a Rogue to destroy Rogues, that would be delicious.”

Corran summoned strength from reserves he didn’t know he had and smiled. “You won’t live long enough to see me turn on my friends.”

“Good, anger directed at me, excellent.” She politely applauded him. “Hate me all you want. I’ll turn your hatred for me into hatred for those who haven’t saved you from me. You won’t be the first broken that way, and you’ll not be the last.”

“I won’t break.”

“Ah, but you will. They all do.” She nodded solemnly as the rack hissed and slowly lowered him toward the Inducer. “And when you break, I will put you back together again, and in gratitude you will do all I ask, without question or regard for loyalties you once held dear.”

15

It was probably in a place like this that Rogue Squadron plotted the conquest of Imperial Center. Kirtan Loor ducked his head beneath a series of moist, moldy pipes and followed his guide deeper into the rusted-out bowels of Imperial Center. Loor had been driven deeper into the planet-wide city than he thought possible, then had gone several kilometers farther through a hot, wet labyrinth that had him imagining he’d passed through the core of the world and was now working his way up and out the other side.

The Special Intelligence operative leading him through the maze cut to the left and through an oval opening hacked through the wall of the access tunnel. The opening seemed, at first glance, as if it was chopped through the wall; but when Loor grabbed its edges as he climbed through the hole, the striations he felt made him wonder if it hadn’t been nibbled out of the ferrocrete. Unless I can find a way to use it, I don’t want to know what chewed this hole.

The low, wide area into which Loor stepped stank of rust, stagnant water, and mildew. The few standing puddles had an oily slick on them that phosphoresced slightly. The weak light supplemented the temporary floodlights the operatives had arranged to display their motley collection of airspeeders. All in all the tableau was unremarkable and unlikely to attract attention from anyone save a truly desperate airspeeder thief.

And wouldn’t he be surprised at what he got.

The dented and dinged airspeeders, which were of a variety of years and makes, had been carefully worked over by the operatives and transformed into a half-dozen flying bombs. The hollow spaces in the chassis had been filled with explosives. Designed to be flown by remote from a companion airspeeder, they would be driven like proton torpedoes into the various bacta storage facilities around the world.

An operative came walking over to Loor, unable to keep a smirk from his square face. “As you can see, we are prepared to go at any time. We have completed our initial electronic sweep of the target sites and have found them negative for counter-remote tactics or equipment.”

“Very good.” The Empire had long ago perfected precautionary measures to take against bombs that might be set to detonate by remote. The easiest of these was to broadcast strong signals on a variety of comlink frequencies of the sort used by Rebel terrorists to detonate such bombs, causing a premature detonation while the bombs were still in the attackers’ keeping. Broadcasting from patrolling airspeeders in hostile areas had even detonated explosives in bomb factories that Intelligence had suspected existed, but had not been able to pinpoint for a more surgical strike. The harm done to innocents in the area when the bombs went off had been seen as just punishment for the failure of the people to report the Rebels working in their area.

Although they had been unable to detect similar counter-remote tactics in the bacta storage areas, Loor’s people had decided against detonating the bombs by remote. Getting an airspeeder into position and leaving it there long enough for the setup team to get away provided a window for discovery and deactivation. Even though that window would be small, it was felt to be too risky; they intended to hit a number of sites in rapid succession, and if the Rebel forces discovered one bomb and sent out a warning, it would make hitting the others far more difficult. Moreover, the fact that they could not detect anti-remote equipment in their reconnaissance sweeps could have been explained by nothing more sinister than someone forgetting to turn the devices on that day.

The plan they had hit on was actually fairly simple. Commercial speeder-ferry vehicles were not an uncommon sight on Imperial Center, hauling broken air- and land-speeders to repair shops. Using a tractor beam and a simple remote-slave hookup, repair techs regularly flew speeders throughout the city. Using a speeder-ferry to haul a vehicle to the right area, then having someone fly it by remote into the building, was seen as a clean way to deliver the bombs. Since the remote-slave hookup was in common use by these sorts of vehicles, it couldn’t be jammed without causing dozens of legitimate disasters, so Loor knew their delivery method was safe from interference.

Contact detonators had been rigged in the various panels and bumpers on each vehicle. The explosives would be triggered when the detonators were compressed with the force of an airspeeder slamming into a building. While a head-on collision with another airspeeder at significant velocity could cause the bomb to go off, the chances of that happening were relatively small. Regardless, the amount of explosives packed into the vehicles meant that any explosion in the general vicinity of the target would do substantial damage and, if not destroy the store of bacta, at least make its distribution difficult.

The operative looked up at Loor expectantly. “When will we be given the signal to go?”

Loor looked at his wrist chronometer. “Rumor has it that Mon Mothma is going to announce the particulars of the bacta distribution plan approved by the Provisional Council in fourteen hours or so. I am debating whether we should use these vehicles to punctuate her speech, or let public anticipation build for a day or so before striking.”

Loor kept his tone light, as if the decision to be made was of little consequence. He preferred going off sooner rather than waiting, but he was fairly certain that Ysanne Isard would want him to wait. So far he had gotten no word back from her on this plan—or on any of my plans. This meant the decision was truly up to him, but he knew it didn’t have to be made until an hour or two before the assault would take place.

The Intelligence agent frowned. “Contact me on a secure frequency three hours before the scheduled start of Mon Mothma’s speech. Assume the operation will go off during her speech. When you call me, I will either cancel the assault and reschedule, or let you go. If you do not reach me, you are on.”

“Very good, sir.” The operative waved a hand toward the airspeeders. “If you care to inspect our handiwork?”

Loor shook his head. “You have ever been efficient before, Captain. I see no reason to doubt your preparedness now.”

“Thank you.”

“Of course.” Loor smiled slowly. “And, speaking of efficiency, your people dealt with Nartlo, yes?”

“As you ordered, sir.”

“Excellent.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll have someone conduct you back now, sir.”

The operative waved another of his plainly clothed men over and Loor followed that operative out through another exit from the underground bunker. Loor found this route less odious, and the use of a series of turbolifts meant it took less time to get back into more hospitable regions of the city. After taking leave of the operative, Loor worked his way up and through the city. He constantly checked his surroundings and back-trail for sign of pursuit, but found none.

The prospect of destroying the Rebels’ bacta supply pleased him, but not for the reasons most Rebels would ascribe to him. He took no delight in the fact that the destruction of the bacta would cause the deaths of millions, even billions. As odd as it seemed, even to him, their lives meant nothing. Since he did not know them, they were numbers, and Kirtan Loor had never been one to be terribly emotional about numbers.

Destroying the bacta would be a victory in the war he was waging against the Rebellion. He and his people were outnumbered, out-gunned, and under-resourced, but they were winning. So far they had struck when and where they wished. Just the fact that they were able to assemble an armada of bombs on Imperial Center without detection was a triumph in their battle against General Cracken and his forces.

Oddly enough, Loor realized that he was playing a game to sudden death, and it was more likely to be his death than that of his foes. Still, he now understood the secret thrill that kept the Rebels going. They had been the insects repeatedly stinging the bumbling giant that was the Empire. Yes, the giant had swatted them and, in some cases, had hurt them badly, but it could never kill all of them. The defiance they showed the Empire now burned in his veins, and while it did not make him think he was immortal or unstoppable, it did drive him with a desire to do more and more to torment his enemy.

He also knew that his efforts would not reestablish the Empire. That was not the goal Ysanne Isard had in mind when she set him up on Imperial Center as the leader of a pro-Palpatine movement. What he was doing would weaken the Rebellion and allow other forces to tear it apart. Whether those other forces included a warlord like Zsinj blasting his way into Imperial Center and taking it over, or the product of some other scheme Iceheart was undoubtedly planning, did not matter. Isard wanted to destroy the Rebellion, and that was the goal he intended to help her reach.

He smiled. He had been given a great responsibility, and his success would create a power vacuum at the heart of the Empire. Isard maintained her goal was not the resurrection of the Empire, but the destruction of the Rebellion; still, it seemed obvious to him that the recreation of the Empire was a natural consequence of eliminating the Rebellion. When the Rebellion collapsed, if he did things well, he would be in position to help restore the Empire. While he knew better than to make himself a direct rival to Iceheart, he also knew she wouldn’t live forever.

Nor will I, but if I live longer than she does, the Emperor’s throne might well be open to me. Loor smiled and sniffed proudly, but the scent of the city’s lower reaches tarnished his fantasy. He glanced down at his feet and saw a glistening fungoid residue that seemed to shift colors as he watched it. Immediately desirous of returning to his eyrie and washing away the stink of Imperial Center’s darker reaches, he fished a comlink out of his pocket and called for one of his guards to meet him with his airspeeder.

Loor did his best to scrape the goo off his shoes against the side of a building, but it clung tenaciously. He chuckled to himself, thinking of it as true Rebel scum. He made no headway in his battle with it and wondered if a lightsaber would be able to damage it. He’d concluded it would not by the time his airspeeder slid up to the curb and the rear gull’s-wing door swung up.

Loor started into the passenger compartment, then caught himself. Inside, nestled in the corner, a smallish, white-haired man pointed a blaster pistol at him. “Sorry, wrong speeder. My mistake.”

“No mistake. Get in.” The man sighed. “Get in or my other people will shove you in.”

Given no choice, Loor entered the vehicle and folded himself into one of the jumpseats. The door closed behind him, leaving the two of them alone in the speeder’s darkened interior. Loor raised his hands and clutched the safety straps. “Is there any purpose in my putting these on, Moff Vorru?”

Fliry Vorru nodded his head graciously. “Very good, Agent Loor. Yes, by all means, strap yourself in. I do not anticipate this being a rough ride, but things can get turbulent here on Imperial Center.”

“So I have noticed.”

“I’m certain you have.” Vorru set the blaster pistol on the seat beside him, then tugged at the grey cuffs on his midnight-blue jacket. “And I’m no longer a moff, merely a colonel in the Imperial Center People’s Militia.”

“Natty uniform. I’m sure it will show you off at your best when you hold a news conference and announce my capture.” Loor tried to force a smile on his face, but it hardly seemed worth the effort. “Quite the coup for you.”

“Indeed, it could be.” Vorru yawned in an exaggerated fashion. “The question remains as to whether or not that is necessary.”

“Excuse me?”

“You present me with a problem, Agent Loor. Your Palpatine Counter-insurgency Front is one of the reasons my militia was created. As long as you are a threat, the Provisional Council needs me. Without you, all we can do is go after petty black marketeers and other criminals.”

“All of whom you currently control anyway.”

“You overestimate my abilities.”

Loor raised an eyebrow. “Do I? You found me quickly enough.”

Vorru shrugged. “More by happenstance than anything else. I was in the process of consolidating my hold on the black market in bacta and had Nartlo under observation, since he had a source I could not isolate. My people had your people under observation when they visited him last night. We continued watching and were led to this vehicle. Your people are good at disguising themselves—by the way, the blond hair and goatee really do distance your appearance from that of Tarkin. Changing the appearance of a vehicle is not as simple.”

The little man smiled. “I had no idea who we had found until we checked the records on this vehicle. The registration is utterly benign and ordinary, with no sign of slicing on the datafile at all. That indicated to me that the registration had made it into the computers through legitimate means, and that meant Imperial Intelligence. Since you had turned Zekka Thyne against me, I had made it my business to learn about you then, surprise, surprise, here you are.”

“I hope I don’t disappoint you.”

“It’s possible, but we’ll see.” Vorru frowned. “Normally I’d not have picked you up so early, but Nartlo indicated that he’d given you the locations of the Republic’s bacta repositories. I immediately became suspicious—he maintained you were just a bacta dealer, but those containment centers just ache to be hit by the PCF. I tried to determine if Nartlo was lying to me, but you had anticipated I’d do that.”

Loor smiled. “You used skirtopanol on him.”

“Yes, and the convulsions were rather hideous.”

“Convulsions? Hmmm. We gave him a supply of lotiramine and told him it would prevent him from getting the Krytos virus. I included strict dosing instructions. If he went into convulsions he must have taken four times the recommended amount.”

“Some people assume that if one pill is good, more is better.”

“He died?”

“Cerebral hemorrhage.”

“He was useful, which is why we didn’t just kill him outright. The lotiramine would have made interrogation difficult for the Rebels, and some of the information he had about my operation would have had them haring off in all sorts of wrong directions.”

Vorru nodded. “Though he claimed no knowledge of a planned assault on the bacta stores, that is what you are planning, yes?”

Loor looked around the passenger compartment. “I would have thought General Cracken would resort to more professional methods of interrogation.”

“He would, and will, if you do not choose to cooperate with me.” Vorru crossed his legs and plucked at the crease in his slacks. “If I don’t get answers from you, I will tell Cracken I have uncovered a plot to assault the current centers. He’ll put precautions into place that will prevent your success while moving the bacta to new locations. You will lose and I will win.”

“And you have a plan that will result in some other outcome?”

Vorru smiled. “You will now be working for me. You will hit targets I give you and you will hit them when I want them hit. I am not unsympathetic to your war against the Rebellion, I just wish to kill yet one more mynock with a single laser-blast.”

Of course, it should have been obvious. Loor nodded. “You would do what Prince Xizor could not.”

“Xizor relied too much on his personal abilities and not enough on the ability to read others.”

“Having made Black Sun over into the People’s Militia, you’ll be in position to assume power if the Rebellion falters.”

“But I have no desire to see the Rebellion fail. I just want to see the Rebellion’s leadership fail. Manipulate the Bothans and appease them, frustrate the Alderaanians until they alienate the other humans with their constant reminders of how their world was martyred for the Rebellion, let the black market bankrupt the Republic so someone who has monetary reserves can come in and bail things out—”

“That being you.”

“Of course.” Vorru nodded. “Ysanne Isard may have injected the Krytos virus into Imperial Center, but the Rebels injected a more deadly virus into Imperial Center before that: me. They saw me as someone who could be a brake on the predations of the underworld here, but they forgot the Emperor himself had seen me as a rival for power once upon a time. What they forgot, I never have. Now the Emperor is dead and I am here on his world.

“The question for you, Agent Loor, is this: how do you want to destroy the Rebellion? Do you want to blast it apart, or distract it until it, too, sickens and dies? What you will find growing up in its place, I can assure you, will be to your liking.”

The Intelligence agent pressed his lips together in a thin line. My refusal to go along will mean my death, so my choice is obvious. And, as with Ysanne Isard, Fliry Vorru will not live forever.

Loor nodded slowly. “What do you want?”

“I want you to hit only one of the six repositories at this time—the one just south of the Senate district. My people have already managed to steal most of that supply anyway, so your attack will cover our tracks and leave us to profit from the spike in black market pricing. I will give you other targets as we go along to further my aims.”

“Consider it done. Tonight, during Mon Mothma’s speech?”

Vorru’s face blossomed in a broad smile. “Ah, you have a taste for irony. Splendid. I think our alliance will be most profitable for the both of us. I anticipate doing business with you, Agent Loor, will be an ongoing pleasure.”

16

Iella Wessiri smiled at Diric as she settled into the witness chair. Diric was in the court for the first time and actually looked excited by the crush of people. The bailiffs had let him sit right behind the prosecution table because that put him in close proximity to where she sat when she wasn’t on the stand.

The ashen hue of Diric’s flesh betrayed his fatigue, but the trial had piqued his interest. If not for the fire that put into his brown eyes, she would have remained adamantly against his attending the trial. She felt the trial had to be on the Palpatine Counter-insurgency Front’s list of targets, and she didn’t want Diric exposed to their violence. The sheer savagery of their strike at a bacta containment facility the previous night had left her shaken and, secretly, pleased to have Diric where she could see him.

Halla Ettyk stood. “Iella Wessiri, could you please tell the court about your personal employment history over the last eight years?”

“I joined the Corellian Security Force just about a standard year before the Emperor dissolved the Senate. I worked there for six years, moving up into the Smuggling Interdiction division, where I partnered for two years with Corran Horn. Approximately two years ago Corran, Gil Bastra, my husband Diric, and I all fled Corellia before our division’s Imperial Liaison officer, Kirtan Loor, could trump up charges and arrest us. From Corellia Diric and I came to Coruscant and remained in hiding for a year. We had enough money that we didn’t need jobs, so I did nothing during that first year here. Subsequent to my husband’s disappearance, about a year ago, I joined the Alliance organization here on Coruscant and aided Rogue Squadron in bringing the shields down. Since then, for the past two weeks, I’ve been assigned to your office as chief investigator on this case.”

The prosecutor nodded. “So, you worked with Corran Horn for two years.”

“I partnered with him for two years.”

“Describe what you mean by partnering.”

Iella shrugged slightly. “It’s akin to being married to someone in that you have to trust them completely. Your life is in your partner’s hands in dangerous situations. The only way you can build up that level of trust is by getting to know one another. The job means you’re together a great deal—in any given week you could easily see more of your partner than you do your own family. Some partners get to know each other so well that they almost get this Gotal-sense of being able to read each other’s moods and react in situations without a word being spoken.”

“Describe for us, please, your relationship with Corran Horn.”

“We were close, very close. About six months after I started working with him, Corran’s father was murdered. That event crushed Corran and I helped him through it. He’d been an only child and his mother had died previously, so he felt alone. The fact that Kirtan Loor freed his father’s murderer had Corran burning for vengeance, but Loor’s Imperial ties meant Corran couldn’t do anything, and that frustrated him. Gil and I worked at calming him down, and he came around. The point is that when you help someone through such a difficult time, you get to see his heart and get to know him very well.”

Halla Ettyk glanced at her datapad. “How well did you know Kirtan Loor?”

“He became our Imperial Liaison about a year before I was partnered up with Corran. I found him to be aloof and distant. We didn’t socialize—he made no effort to get to know the rest of us after work and didn’t socialize during office celebrations. He seemed to delight in frustrating investigations. In the three years I worked in the same office with him, I got to know him well enough to avoid him as much as possible.”

“Did you become good at avoiding him?”

“Yes. He’s fairly easy to spot, especially because of his height, and if he became too obnoxious, I could always retreat to the female officers’ refresher station and he’d not follow me.”

“You mention his height. How would you characterize his appearance overall?”

“Rather distinctive.” Iella brushed her light brown hair away from the side of her neck. “He prided himself on looking like a younger, taller Grand Moff Tarkin, and he wasn’t far wrong in that. He definitely stood out in a crowd.”

“Would you say Corran Horn knew Kirtan Loor as well as you did?”

“Objection, counsel is leading the witness.”

“Sustained. Rephrase the question, Commander.”

“Yes, Admiral. How well could you say Corran Horn knew Kirtan Loor?”

“Objection. That calls for speculation.”

“I’ll allow it. Overruled.” Admiral Ackbar nodded toward Iella. “You may answer the question.”

“I’d say Corran knew Loor as well as I did. Corran seemed to know where Loor would be before Loor did, and he programmed Whistler to give him a sign if Loor was around and he’d not noticed yet.”

“Thank you.” Again Ettyk checked her datapad. “Please describe for us the kinds of materials you have reviewed during your investigation.”

Iella started ticking things off on her fingers. “I have interviewed witnesses, I have listened to comlink recordings and read transcripts of same, I have looked at physical evidence and reviewed reports prepared by forensics concerning same, and I’ve reviewed the file evidence available.”

“What sorts of things are in that file evidence?”

“Reports by Commander Antilles, Lieutenant Horn, and Captain Celchu about their time here on Coruscant.”

Halla hit two buttons on her datapad. “I’ve now downloaded into the court’s evidentiary computer a report by Lieutenant Corran Horn that I would like entered into evidence as People’s exhibit 34. You have reviewed this report?”

“I have.”

“What does it say concerning Kirtan Loor?”

Iella looked straight at Halla Ettyk. “In it Lieutenant Horn reports that he saw Captain Celchu in conversation with Kirtan Loor at a cantina called the Headquarters.”

“Based on your experience as Corran’s partner, how would you characterize the nature of this report?”

“Typical Corran: concise, to the point, and unequivocal in his statement of facts.”

“And, based on your experience, how would you characterize Corran’s identification of Kirtan Loor?”

“He was absolutely certain he’d seen Captain Celchu talking with Loor.”

Ettyk smiled. “So there was nothing in the report, nothing in your experience that would lead you to question Lieutenant Horn’s identification of Kirtan Loor?”

Iella hesitated. “Actually, there is one little detail about which I do have a question.”

Surprise flashed across Halla’s face, but she smothered it quickly. “Move to strike as nonresponsive, your Honor.”

The Mon Calamari’s barbels twitched beneath an open mouth. “No, Commander, you asked one more question than you should have, and now you have to live with the consequences. Do you have anything else for this witness?”

“At this time, no sir, but I reserve the right to recall her.”

“Understood. Your witness, Counselor Ven.”

Iella straightened up in the witness box and tried to calm herself, but she felt her guts begin to knot up as the Twi’lek stood. Her heart started pounding a bit faster. She’d never liked being cross-examined, and she expected no mercy from Nawara Ven, especially after Halla made her mistake.

“Agent Wessiri, in your time with the Corellian Security Force, have you ever performed an investigation into a matter of treason?”

“No, but I have worked murder cases before.”

“I know. You’ve worked many murder cases, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And some have been easier to investigate than this one, haven’t they?”

Iella nodded. “Yes.” Though Nawara Ven kept his voice low and his demeanor easy, she didn’t like the way he started nibbling in around the edges. He was projecting an aura of calm control, running the trial, and she knew that was bad. Once he got into a rhythm and she started moving along with him, he could turn and surprise her, and get admissions out of her that would give the wrong impression to the Tribunal.

“How long would you say the average murder investigation you worked lasted?”

“You’d have to be more specific.”

“How long before an arrest?”

Iella shrugged. “Less than a week. If you don’t have a suspect in custody by that time the trail can get very cold.”

“The investigation itself, though, might go on longer than that, correct?”

“Sure.”

“Because there are details to check, lab reports to read and analyze, witnesses to depose, more facts to be checked, and the like, correct?”

“Yes.”

The Twi’lek smiled. “That takes a long time to do, doesn’t it?”

“That depends.”

“Say you want to do it right.”

“I always want to do it right.”

“Of course, but haste can make for sloppy work, can’t it?”

“Yes.”

“So a hasty investigation is potentially a sloppy one?”

“Yes.”

Nawara Ven nodded. “So would you characterize two weeks from murder to trial as fast, in your experience?”

Iella nodded reluctantly. “It’s faster than most trials.”

“Have you ever been involved in a case that went to trial as quickly as this?”

She shook her head. “No.”

The Twi’lek looked back at the datapad on his table. Iella saw lights flicker across the front panel on Whistler, then Nawara nodded and looped a braintail back over his shoulder. “I want to call your attention to People’s 34. How long after the incident described was the report made?”

Iella glanced at the small datapad monitor in the corner of the witness box. “There is a two-week gap between the incident and the filing of the report.”

“Now, in your experience as Corran Horn’s partner, would you say he was usually prompt in filing his reports?”

“Yes.” Iella glared at Whistler. “But sometimes there were delays, and the two weeks you mention were fairly busy.”

“Is that the only reason, being busy, that you believe Lieutenant Horn delayed filing his report?”

“Objection, calls for speculation.”

“Counselor Ven is asking the witness what she believes, not what she thinks the victim thought. I’ll allow it. Overruled.”

“Because we believed Captain Celchu was dead on Noquivzor, there seemed no way the report could be true, so there would have been no reason to file it.” Iella leaned forward in her seat. “However, the minute Corran learned Captain Celchu was alive, he made that report.”

“I understand that.” The Twi’lek flashed her a smile full of pointy teeth. “In your time as his partner, had you ever known Corran Horn to make a mistake?”

“He was only human.”

Ven’s expression darkened. “Perhaps you can expand on that answer for those of us who are not human.”

Iella blushed and glanced down at the floor. What a thing to say, especially here and now! “I mean, yes, he did make mistakes.”

“Thank you. Now, you alluded to something in the report that left a question in your mind about the veracity of Lieutenant Horn’s identification of Kirtan Loor. What was that?”

Her stomach folded in on itself. “Corran describes Loor as wearing a hooded cloak and following Captain Celchu out the back of the cantina as Corran entered it. Corran recognized Loor from his height and his gait, but he never actually saw his face.”

“And as good as Corran was, you think that his making an identification without seeing the individual’s face leaves room for him to be mistaken?”

“Yes.”

The Twi’lek nodded. “Thank you for your candor. Nothing further.”

Ackbar looked at the prosecutor. “Redirect?”

“No, Admiral.”

The Mon Calamari nodded down at Iella. “You are excused, Agent Wessiri. I am going to recess the court at this time. The Provisional Council is meeting to discuss a number of problems and I must be there. I may, in fact, recess the trial for a week. I assume, from the question you asked earlier, Counselor Ven, you would not mind having the extra time for investigation of the case?”

Iella, returning to her place at the prosecution bench, watched Nawara’s grey profile as he nodded. “I welcome the time to continue to prepare my defense.”

“Commander Ettyk, you have no objections to a delay?”

“No, sir.”

“Very good, court stands adjourned for one week.”

Iella entered Halla Ettyk’s office. “Diric’s in the outer office, lying down. I hope you don’t mind. The crush of people leaving the court was a bit much, but the bailiffs didn’t seem to want to let him catch his breath. In fact, they weren’t too interested in letting me bring him along with me here to the office.”

The black-haired prosecutor shook her head. “Not a problem, but get him a special visitor’s identification badge.”

Iella frowned as she slipped into a nerfhide chair in front of Halla’s transparisteel desk. “What’s going on?”

Halla set a comlink down on her desk. “I just heard from Admiral Ackbar’s aide, Commander Sirlul. The reason for the abrupt adjournment was more than a routine meeting of the Provisional Council. It appears, in the wake of the PCF assault on that bacta storage site, we’ve had a bomb threat here. They aren’t sure who made the threat or how real it is, but they want a week to reinforce the courthouse complex.”

“I see.”

Halla nodded solemnly. “Just as well—it gives me a week to shore up my case.”

Iella winced. “I’m sorry for what I said in there. I don’t want to have Corran’s killer get off, but—”

“Not your fault. Admiral Ackbar was right—I asked one more question than I should have. I tried to make sure there was no question that Corran had been right, and I was too smart for my own good.” She shrugged. “At least nothing got said about the Duros that Captain Celchu says he was meeting with that night. Right now the Tribunal just knows that Corran might have been mistaken about his identification. If the Duros is brought in, they’ll be free to wonder how much Kirtan Loor in a cloak looks like a Duros in a cloak.”

Iella’s eyes narrowed. “We all knew Celchu claimed he met a Duros that night.”

“So it seems, but all those stories get traced back to Celchu himself, so anyone else bringing it up gets it stricken because of the hearsay rule. The only way that comes in is if Tycho takes the stand.”

“What if the Duros testifies?”

“What’s the likelihood of that happening? There’s no evidence Lai Nootka ever was on Coruscant, as nearly as we can tell. Moreover, there was some history between Corran and Nootka—Corran got him out of an Imperial prison on Garqi, wherever that is. Why would Nootka run from the man who saved his life?”

Iella opened her hands. “Maybe he was just following Tycho.”

“Fine. Let’s assume that meeting was as innocent as Tycho has tried to make it out to be. It doesn’t make the least little bit of difference. The bribe data alone is enough to show he was working for the Empire. Corran believed Tycho had met with Kirtan Loor; his threat to dig into Tycho’s background because of that belief is our motive for the murder.”

“But why kill Corran when you can show he’s wrong about the meeting just by producing Lai Nootka?” Iella frowned. “Tycho always seemed confident of his innocence, which meant he either had Nootka where he could deliver him, blowing apart the foundation of Corran’s threatened investigation, or—”

“Or he could be innocent?” Halla shook her head. “Don’t plot a course into that black hole.”

“But that black hole might be the truth.”

“Sure, but we’re not the triers of fact in this case, the Tribunal members are. We just have to present to them the best case we can muster, and the defense has to knock it apart.” Halla’s brown eyes narrowed. “You’re not going to start in on me about wanting to make sure your partner’s killer really is caught, because I’ll tell you we’ve got him beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Iella shrugged. “And if I don’t want to be reasonable?”

Halla winced, then sat back in her white high-backed chair. “Idealists should not be in this business, you know.”

“And your point is?”

“The Duros thing has bothered me, too. I can grant that Tycho might have pulled that name from Corran’s file just to annoy him, but that would be very risky for him to do. The trail Tycho has left has shown him to be very careful, so I don’t see him throwing out that sort of taunt. Therefore I can imagine that he really did meet with Lai Nootka. And if that’s true, I have to wonder about our inability to find Nootka or any record of his presence here on Coruscant.”

“So even though you believe Tycho was working for the Empire, you think Nootka’s disappearance may be evidence of someone making sure Tycho’s perfidy is obvious?” Iella frowned. “Who? Why?”

“Good, obstruction-of-justice questions to answer.” Halla sighed. “You want to find Nootka, right?”

“If you don’t mind.”

Halla sat forward and fingered a small black wafer of silicon. “Do it. And take this—it’s a code chip that will let you bring your airspeeder into the upper-level security garage. You can take the turbolift down to the court from there. It’ll save Diric from having to go in and out with the courtroom crowds from now on.”

Iella accepted it from her and smiled. “Things are just going to continue getting crazier, aren’t they?”

“I’m afraid so.” Halla visibly shivered. “I’m very much afraid so.”

17

Aided by the Trandoshan’s healthy shove, Corran flew through the darkened doorway. Unable to see anything, he curled himself into a ball and hoped he didn’t land on his head. He smashed his shins into something hard, then bounced down onto his right shoulder before continuing his roll. He hit more things, most of which cried out, and all of which gave way, then came to an abrupt stop against something very solid.

Corran opened his eyes and in the dim light made out the smiling, bearded face of a positively huge man. He’d come to rest against the man’s shin and thigh—clearly the man had dropped to one knee to stop Corran’s tumble through the room. Back along his flight path Corran heard the muttered curses of people he’d knocked down.

The bearded man stood and dragged Corran to his feet. “Quite the entrance.”

“I had help in making it.” Corran plucked at the shoulders of his tan canvas tunic and tried to settle it in place. The bulky garment extended all the way to his knees. The sleeves ran to mid-forearm, but that was because the shoulder seam started well below the curve of his deltoids. Naked beneath it, Corran felt a little uncomfortable. He knew that was part of the psychological war waged by Isard on him and the other prisoners—deny them human clothing and you deny them a little piece of their humanity.

The big man nodded. “The Trandoshan doesn’t like anyone. I’m Urlor Sette.” He offered Corran his hand. Sette was missing the last two fingers of his right hand but didn’t seem bashful or embarrassed about it.

Corran met the man’s firm grip with a solid one of his own. “Corran Horn.”

“Glad to make your acquaintance.” Sette pointed off to the left. “Come on, I’ll take you to the Old Man.” The big man’s voice carried with it equal measures of respect and affection, reminding Corran of how he’d often called Gil Bastra “the Old Man.”

Must be the nominal leader among the prisoners here. Corran realized that his being thrust into the general Lusankya population could have been another ploy by Isard to get him to reveal information he’d not given up during interrogation. Because he did not have a clear memory of what he had actually said while being chemically debriefed, he didn’t know what she might be looking to confirm or uncover. For all I know, this is an elaborate charade. I will have to be on my guard.

Urlor led Corran out of the area near the doorway and deeper into the cell complex. It appeared to have been ground and drilled out of solid rock. Thick dust coated the floor and hung in Urlor’s wake like ground-covering fog. The irregular rock walls and ceiling had pockets of luminous lichen clinging to them. Their lime-green light gave the dust an eerie glow, and greyed out the flesh of those standing about.

Corran followed Urlor into a side chamber with an entrance low enough that even he had to duck his head. Beyond the threshold the big man straightened up and moved aside. On the opposite side of the circular room, barely six meters from the entrance, an older, white-haired and bearded man sat up and hung his legs over the edge of a hammock braided together from darkened strips of tunic canvas. Corran immediately had a vague sense that he’d seen the man before, or a holograph of him, but if so, it was a long time ago, and he couldn’t place him.

“Sir, this is Corran Horn. They just delivered him to us.”

The older man stood and straightened his tunic, then peered closely at Corran. He felt as if under the scrutiny of his first drill instructor at the Corellian Security Force Academy. The effect was not wholly unpleasant in that it reinforced the leadership role into which the old man had been cast. “Come here, son, let me see you close up.”

Corran closed the gap between them and felt Urlor drop in behind him, ready to prevent him from doing any harm to the old man. “I’m with Rogue Squadron, a lieutenant.”

“You have the look of a pilot about you—size, anyway. You’ve got a good leader in Antilles—assuming Skywalker’s not back in charge there.”

“No sir, he isn’t. Wedge Antilles is still in charge, and is a commander now.”

The older man nodded, then squinted at Corran’s face. “You’re from Corellia?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did I know your grandfather?”

Corran shrugged. “His name is Rostek Horn. He was with CorSec.”

The old man shook his head and straightened up again. “No, I was thinking of someone else, from the Clone Wars. I don’t recall Rostek Horn, though I might have met him once or twice. It’s possible.”

Though the man qualified his statement, Corran felt he was being polite instead of indecisive. Although his age had given him white hair and wrinkled skin, clearly the man’s mental faculties were not suffering from the ravages of age. The old man knew exactly who it was he thought Corran looked like, and he also knew that he’d never met Corran’s grandfather. That clarity of mind impressed Corran, as did the mannerly qualification of his firmly voiced denial.

The old man extended his hand to Corran. “My name’s Jan.” His dark eyes flicked up toward Urlor. “Despite what he will tell you, there’s no rank here. That was for when we were people. Now we’re just here.”

“Pleased to meet you, sir.” Corran shook the man’s hand and found his grip firm even though his hands were a bit bony.

Jan sat back in the hammock. “You say Antilles has finally accepted a promotion?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He always seemed level-headed. Good officer material. And who’s commanding the fleet?”

Corran hesitated. “I’m not sure how much of that you want me to discuss, sir.”

A smile spread across Jan’s face. “Very good, my boy. If you’re in here it’s because Isard has sucked you dry like the spider she is, but caution is good.” He glanced down. “It’s just that some of us have been in here since Yavin and, well, we wonder about how the war is going. We’ve had others through here who have told us a lot. We know, for example, that the Emperor is dead and with him another Death Star. And we know about the Ssi-ruuk. But news has been pretty spare in the last year and a half—you’re the first military man who’s not an Imp who has ended up here for about that long. The few civilians who’ve been here have been interesting, but their knowledge of how the Rebellion is going has been filtered through Imp news sources.”

Urlor landed a hand heavily on Corran’s right shoulder. “Imps would have us believe Rogue Squadron is dead and gone. Died at a place called Borleias.”

“Sure, in some Imp’s lum dream.” Corran turned, slipping from beneath Urlor’s grip, so he could see both men at the same time. “Rogue Squadron did get hit hard at Borleias, but that was more the product of bad intel going in than it was anything the Imps actually did to us. The fact is, though, that inside a month after we got bloodied, we were back and took Borleias away from the Imps. And, from there, we staged for the invasion of Coruscant.”

His smile grew broad as pride swelled inside him. “Rogue Squadron went into Coruscant and managed to bring the shields down. I don’t remember much, but I know our fleet arrived and I was evacuated by Isard as she fled the planet, so I have to figure the New Republic now rules Coruscant. It’s ours.”

“It is yours because we gave it to you.”

Corran looked to his right, toward the doorway, and saw an obese man squeezing his way through it. The tunic, which was black like the man’s thinning hair, could barely contain the man’s bulk. Anger filled the man’s brown eyes for a second, then melted away as he straightened up and tugged at the hem of his sleeves. “You inherited a sick world, a dying world.”

Jan bowed his head in the heavy man’s direction. “This is General Evir Derricote, late of Imperial service. He is the ranking Imperial here among us.”

Corran immediately realized that a secondary reason for the lack of titles among the Rebel prisoners was to allow them to further differentiate themselves from the Imps in Lusankya. “I’m Corran, and I was at Borleias.”

“Then you saw me smash the little invasion fleet you sent against me.”

“Yeah, I did, and I lost friends at that battle.” Corran balled a fist and arced it toward Derricote’s bullet head, but it never landed. Urlor lunged forward, grabbed the collar of Corran’s tunic, and hauled him backward. Corran’s feet left the floor and the canvas rasped against the flesh of his armpits as the big man held him up. “Hey! That hurts!”

Urlor kept his voice even. “There’s a rule—if we beat up on Imps, the staff here beats up on the Old Man.”

What I almost did. Corran’s mouth hung open as if to let the twisting sensation in his stomach a chance to escape. He nodded once and Urlor put him back down. Corran turned to Jan and bowed his head. “I won’t let it happen again.”

“Spirit is good, Corran, very good.” Jan coughed lightly into his hand. “The general here was the one who told us of Rogue Squadron’s defeat at Borleias. He left out your apparent return and victory.”

Derricote sniffed. “Had I still been on Borleias there would have been more Rebel blood shed.”

“Not likely. We pinpointed the power generator at the Alderaan Biotics facility and severed the conduit that sent the auxiliary power to your shield generators and ion cannons. A handful of TIEs survived our second raid, and those pilots surrendered when they flew home and found their base in our hands.” Corran shrugged. “And as for Coruscant, the fact that you use the word ‘inherit’ to describe what we did, well, it means that the world is ours now. It might be sick, but it’s better off in our hands than it ever was in yours.”

“I doubt the dying think that.”

“I doubt the dying blame the Rebels for their problems.”

Derricote shrugged, and a shiver ran through the layer of fat around his middle. “It does not matter to me who they blame. When the histories are written, this shall be but a momentary disturbance in the Empire’s epic.”

Jan rocked to his feet. “That will be up to the historians to determine, won’t it, General?”

“When I get out and put together my memoirs, you will fare well, Jan.” Derricote ducked his head and slid his body back out through the doorway. He paused halfway through, and Corran thought for a moment he might have been stuck, but the fat man turned to look at Jan again. “Before I forget what I came here for, a batch is ready.”

“Thank you. I’ll have Urlor organize a party to help you decant it.” Jan nodded at Urlor and the large man stooped to force Derricote from the doorway, then followed him out. The older man smiled. “The general is a recent addition to our population, but he has proved himself useful in that he’s good with biotics. He’s managed to ferment a relatively mild ale here, providing us with a forbidden pleasure that many of us had forgotten.”

“You trust him and drink it?”

Jan shrugged. “He drinks enough of it that if it were lethal, he’d have long since been dead. Despite being proud of his Imperial service, he seems somewhat perplexed by his imprisonment here. He thought he had fulfilled the parameters of a project for Iceheart, but she disagreed and he’s here.”

Corran nodded. “I can understand his confusion. I don’t know why I’m here either.”

“It may be temporary. We get a lot of transients who are transferred out in bulk. Traffic into and out of Lusankya seems to be relatively rare.”

“That’s not good news. If this place is truly a backwater planet, the chances of our being found by the Alliance are tiny.”

Jan fingered the knots in the braided canvas cord that gathered his hair into a ponytail. “I’ve been here for, as nearly as I can determine, seven years, and no one has found me yet.” His laugh came warm and natural, not tinged with the sort of madness Corran had heard in Derricote’s laugh. “There’s always tomorrow.”

“Right.” Corran sighed and looked around the small chamber. “Urlor’s acquainted me with one rule. Are there others?”

“We do what we’re told when we’re told to do it. Rations are not great but are not starvation fare, either. Produce is seasonal but not so peculiar as to let us pinpoint where we are. I think there’s an agrocombine maintained to supply us, though none of us down here ever see it. We assume there are lower grade prisoners who are used to maintain it, but we’re in the deepest level, which has the highest security. At least that’s where we think we are. Could be there’s something more stringent, but I’ve not seen it.”

“What do they have us do?”

“Hard labor make-work.” The old man sighed. “Big rocks are made into little rocks, little rocks are made into gravel, and gravel is moved from one point to another. It is painfully and mind-numbingly boring, designed to crush hope and make the days meld one into another. It drives some of the men insane.”

Corran lowered his voice. “Anyone ever escape?”

“Not quite that insane, son.”

“No one has tried?”

“Few have tried, no one has made it.”

“To your knowledge.”

Jan’s mouth opened, then he shut it and nodded. “To my knowledge—you are correct. At any rate, no one has made it since I’ve been here.”

Corran frowned. “Those who have tried, they get brought back here?”

“Parts of them, anyway.” The old man pointed vaguely off deeper into the caverns. “The Imps have a chamber where they keep the skulls and other relics of their dead. We smuggle ours into the mines where we work and bury them.”

“So escape is impossible?”

Jan winked at him as he dropped his voice into a conspiratorial whisper. “I never said impossible, I just said it hadn’t been done successfully.”

Corran laughed quietly. “I’m with Rogue Squadron. Impossible is our stock in trade, and success is what we deliver.”

Jan slapped him on the shoulder. “Now I’m thinking it’s a pity I didn’t know your grandfather. With a grandson like you, I’m sure we would have gotten along famously.”

“I have a feeling you’re right, sir.” Corran nodded solemnly. “And being his grandson, I’m going to do everything I can to get out of and off of this rock.”

The old man smiled. “From the moment I saw you, Corran Horn, I somehow expected nothing less.”

18

Wedge felt more trapped by wearing a dress uniform and being in the witness box than he ever had in action against the Empire. He didn’t see Halla Ettyk as a simulacrum of Ysanne Isard or an enemy warrior with whom he would be doing combat. The pleasant expression on her face belied either of those descriptions. Moreover, Wedge knew he had entered her arena—for him to think about defeating her here was as foolish as for her to imagine she could best him in a dogfight.

This is all about survival—mine and Tycho’s survival.

The prosecutor looked up from her datapad. “Commander Antilles, how did you come to be on Coruscant before our forces had taken possession of it?”

“My squadron and I were inserted into Coruscant in a pathfinder capacity. We were here to evaluate the world from a number of points of view to determine if, how, and when the Alliance might want to attempt to take it.”

“I see. What was the security classification on this operation?”

“The highest. If it had been known that we were coming or that we were here, we would have been dead.”

Halla nodded sagely. “In preparation for sending your squadron out, what role did Captain Celchu play?”

Wedge shook his head. “He played no part.”

“Why not?”

“Objection.” Nawara stood at the defense table. “Calls for a conclusion.”

“It goes to the witness’s state of mind, Admiral.”

Admiral Ackbar shook his head. “Counselor Ven, please do not object to questions calling for answers that Captain Celchu’s commanding officer should know. Overruled. You may answer the question, Commander.”

Wedge nodded. “Captain Celchu was seen as a security risk by General Cracken, so he was not involved in the preparation for the mission.”

“Then how did Captain Celchu end up oh Coruscant?”

This is not going to sound good. Wedge sighed. “I do not like covert missions. The things you don’t know always seem to be the things that get you into trouble. If any of our people got picked up on the mission, it would be logical for the Imps to conclude there were more of us present, and hunt us down. I wanted someone on Coruscant whom I could trust to get me out of difficult situations.”

“So you chose someone that Alliance Intelligence did not trust.”

“I chose Tycho for a number of very good reasons, Commander Ettyk. He had been to Coruscant before and knew his way around.”

“But he was captured on Coruscant, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And imprisoned in a place the Empire uses to create covert operatives, correct?”

“So I have been told.”

Halla smiled slightly and gave him a slight nod. Wedge felt it was the sort of salute one pilot might toss another for a good shot—the sort of salute that came with the promise of destruction on the next pass. A wave of heat washed over him and he wanted to loosen the collar of his dark green jacket. Can’t. Don’t want to let her know she’s beginning to get to me.

“Commander Antilles, why did you feel you needed your own person operating independently on Coruscant?”

“If things went bad and some or all of General Cracken’s operation here on Coruscant was uncovered, we would be in dire straits.”

“Did you have a reason to suppose there was a chance the operation would be compromised?”

“I’m not certain I understand the question.”

“What reasons did you have to fear your operation might be compromised to Imperial Intelligence?”

“There is always a risk of such betrayal with any covert operation. Certainly the fact that we were going to be on Coruscant had to suggest that was a possibility.”

“And you knew, as you just told us, that Captain Celchu had been captured on Coruscant, so that was certainly in your mind, yes?”

Wedge frowned. Where is she going with this? “Yes.”

“And there were other incidents involving Rogue Squadron where betrayal had been previously mentioned, correct?”

“I am not certain I understand what you mean by that.”

“Please characterize for the court the first mission to Borleias.”

“It was an unmitigated disaster. I lost people, the Alliance lost people, and we didn’t take the planet.”

Halla glanced down at her datapad. “And there was an investigation conducted upon your return to determine if your mission had been betrayed to the enemy, was there not?”

“Yes, but Tycho was never implicated, never under suspicion.”

“I know—still, your mission to Coruscant was staging from Noquivzor, which was where the mission to Borleias staged from, was it not?”

“Yes.”

“So the spectre of a chance that whoever might have betrayed your first mission to Borleias could betray your mission to Coruscant certainly existed, did it not?”

“Yes.”

“Hence your precaution.”

“Yes.”

“And yet you would tell us that you had no cause to suspect Captain Celchu of collusion with the enemy?”

Wedge blinked as Halla shifted her aim to a new target. “I had no reasons to suspect Tycho of anything.”

The prosecutor’s head came up. “You did not find the circumstances of Bror Jace’s death the least bit suspicious?”

“Excuse me?”

Halla folded her arms across her chest. “I believe, Commander Antilles, you were present in the courtroom for the testimony of Captain Uwlla lillor in regard to the mission to capture Bror Jace. At the time of his death did you not consider the possibility that news of his travel to Thyferra had been leaked to the Empire?”

“No.”

“Not at all?”

“Well, not in any substantive way, and certainly not with Tycho being the source of the leak.”

Halla narrowed her eyes. “Who obtained the permissions and filed the flight plan for Bror Jace’s trip to Thyferra?”

“Tycho did, by my order.”

“Did you approve the flight plan?”

Wedge hesitated as he felt pressure building up in himself. “No.”

“Did you know the flight plan?”

“No.”

“To the best of your knowledge, did anyone in your squadron outside of Captain Celchu and Bror Jace know that flight plan?”

Wedge’s hands pulsed into fists. “No.”

“Captain lillor testified that her ship, the Black Asp, had been given specific orders as to where to go and when to be there to encounter Bror Jace. How could they have gotten that information, do you think?”

“A spy, I suppose. I don’t know. Espionage is not really my stock in trade.”

“So you would have a difficult time determining if someone was a spy or not?”

Wedge glanced down. “You’re good at twisting my words, Commander. I know Tycho wasn’t working for the Empire.”

Halla’s eyes narrowed. “You may have felt that, Commander Antilles, but tell me truthfully, when Corran Horn told you he’d seen Captain Celchu speaking to an Imperial Intelligence operative, tell me you didn’t wonder, just for a heartbeat, if everything General Cracken and others had said about Tycho Celchu wasn’t true.”

Wedge closed his eyes. When Corran had come to him on Coruscant and reported what he had seen, Wedge had been unable to cover his shock. I said to him, “That’s impossible, Corran.” I followed up with the explanation about Warlord Zsinj having attacked Noquivzor, but the first thing out of my mouth had been a denial of what I feared might be true. Just for a second I allowed myself to accept what he said, I refused to let myself believe what he had said, but I knew I could not prove his statement to be absolutely false.

The leader of Rogue Squadron nodded and refrained from looking over at Tycho. “Yes, for a heartbeat, I did allow myself to consider what Lieutenant Horn said. I rejected it just that quickly.”

“On what grounds?”

“I knew Tycho wasn’t a spy.”

Halla raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t know Zekka Thyne was working for the Empire, did you?”

“No, but I never truly trusted him.”

“Your opinion of him and his treacherous nature was based on what?”

“His history and …” Wedge caught himself.

“And?”

“His demeanor when I saw him.”

Halla Ettyk opened her hands. “Were there no other factors in your forming your opinion of Thyne?”

Ven stood. “Objection, relevancy, your Honor.”

Admiral Ackbar looked down at the prosecutor. “Commander, this does seem a bit far afield from where you started.”

“It is relevant, your Honor. I’m closing in on my point.”

“Proceed, but be aware I will strike this line of inquiry if you don’t bring us to that point quickly.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The objection is overruled.”

Ettyk nodded toward Wedge. “Commander, were there no other factors in your forming your opinion of Thyne?”

“Not really.”

“Lieutenant Horn’s opinion of Thyne was not important to you?”

“It was, and it was a factor, though Thyne’s hostility to Corran was more indicative of trouble than anything else.”

“But you felt your observations of Thyne justified Horn’s opinion of the man?”

“Yes.”

“So, when Thyne turned out to be an Imperial plant you had not detected, but whom Horn had warned you about, didn’t you have to reconsider Captain Celchu’s position in regard to what Horn thought about him?”

Wedge shook his head. “To be honest, Commander, there was so much happening at the time Thyne was revealed to be a traitor, that I could only consider one thing: getting my mission done. We had just received word that we had to bring the shields down so our fleet could invade. Mind you, Tycho passed that message to me. If he were an Imperial plant, he could have withheld that information and set a trap for our fleet.”

“So then, Commander Antilles, you are not of the opinion that the Empire gave us this world, infected as it is with the Krytos virus, to destroy us?”

“I have no idea, Commander Ettyk, what was in the mind of Ysanne Isard at the time we took Coruscant.”

“I see.” Halla Ettyk took a datadisk from Iella Wessiri and exchanged it for one in her datapad. “But you do not discount that possibility, correct?”

“I cannot discount it.”

“And you cannot discount the possibility that Captain Celchu was working for the Empire in helping give Corus-cant to the New Republic.”

“Yes I can.” Wedge nodded solemnly. “I know Tycho. I know he’s not a spy. I trust him.”

“And you trusted Zekka Thyne until proved wrong about him, didn’t you, Commander?”

“No, that’s not the way it was.”

“Perhaps not to you, Commander, but it was to one man.” Halla Ettyk shrugged casually. “Corran Horn. And now he’s dead.”

Outside the courtroom, Wedge slumped against the cold stone wall. Nawara tried to rehabilitate me as a witness, but the damage was done, I wanted to be in there and help Tycho, but I didn’t. He hammered a fist against the wall. “Sithspawn!”

He straightened up immediately as a woman closed to within inches of him. She held up a comlink and nodded to a holocam-carrying Ithorian. “This is Zaree Lolvanci, Kuati First Holo-News, and I’m standing here with Alliance hero, Commander Wedge Antilles. How does it feel, Commander, to know that your testimony is what will convict Captain Celchu?”

Before Wedge could gather his wits enough to answer, a body sliced between the holojournalist and him. Wedge felt a strong grip on his upper arm and heard a firm voice reply to the question in his place. “Commander Antilles’s only interest in this matter is seeing justice done. He has every confidence that his faith in Captain Celchu will be vindicated when the defense presents its case. Until then, any speculation on the outcome would be premature and possibly prejudicial. And he has no further comment.”

Wedge let Diric Wessiri guide him past the Ithorian and on through a security checkpoint, where two guards stopped the reporter and her holographer. Diric steered him to a bench and sat beside him. “Odious people, the holoshills, aren’t they, Commander Antilles?”

“They don’t make a very good first impression …”

“No, but it tends to last.” The older man smiled at him. “How are you holding up?”

Wedge nodded. “I think I will be able to recover. Just need some time.” He regarded the slender man closely. Though his flesh still seemed a bit ashen, spirit and fortitude shone in his eyes. “Thank you for saving me.”

“I am glad I was able to help.” Diric gave him a smile that appeared artificial only in that it looked as if Diric had to consciously work at remembering how to smile. “Iella was afraid something like that would happen. She sent me after you.”

“I’d have thought she was happy with the turn of events. Commander Ettyk ate me alive.”

“No, she wasn’t happy.” Diric patted a tunic pocket. “I have a pass that can take us up to the secure parking area. We can get in my airspeeder and leave here. Iella said she would be willing to join us later for dinner, if you wish.”

“I doubt I would be very good company.” Wedge glanced back toward the courtroom. “I wanted to end Tycho’s persecution with my testimony, and all I did was leave the impression that even I think he was a spy.”

“Not at all.” Diric tapped Wedge’s thigh with a finger. “First of all, the Tribunal judges know you and know how difficult that was for you. All Commander Ettyk really did was establish that Tycho was on Coruscant at your request and that the possibility of betrayal was in your mind.”

“Sure, but she also made it sound like I wouldn’t know who was a spy and who wasn’t.”

“Why would you?”

“What?”

Diric opened his hands. “As you said, ferreting out spies is not what you do. No one expects you to have been able to spot him as a spy if he was, and you certainly couldn’t if he wasn’t. And, between you and me, I don’t think he is a spy.”

“Thanks.”

“None necessary. I’ve had a number of conversations with Captain Celchu in jail and I find him thoroughly likable. If he’s a spy, well, then all of us are suspects.” Diric held a hand up. “I would also like to point out that I have attended many trials in my time, and you did no worse on the stand than many people I have seen. You see your performance as hideous because you were hoping to put the state’s case away with one telling shot. Unfortunately the case against Tycho isn’t a Death Star. It isn’t going to go away that easily. Nawara Ven knows what he’s doing, though, and he’ll do a good job.”

Wedge stared down at his hands. “I’d like to believe you, but I feel the way I did at Yavin, when Luke told me to pull up out of the trench on the Death Star. Luke was right, there wasn’t anything else I could do, but to abandon the effort at that point, it just didn’t feel right.”

“I understand that, but Luke Skywalker was correct and the Death Star was destroyed.”

“Yes, but Biggs Darklighter died. If I’d stayed in there, maybe—”

“Maybe he would have lived and you would have died?” Diric shook his head ruefully. “And you probably think that if you had been flying the night Coruscant was taken, Corran would still live?”

I hadn’t thought about it, but, yes, that notion has been bouncing around in the back of my mind. “It’s not that I have a death wish, you know.”

“I know that very well, Wedge. I have seen this survivor’s guilt in Iella, in Corran and his father, and in others.” He pressed a hand to his own chest. “Even I have known it. We all have friends and acquaintances who meet with what we see as an untimely death. With me, because I do nothing, I wonder why it wasn’t me who died. I wonder what I have done to survive. With you and others who actively oppose evil, you wonder what it is that you could have done to prevent another person’s death. Those questions have no answers—at least none outside the philosophical realm. For me they are a point of departure for thought, but for you and my wife they are just sources of frustration and regret.

“This is why, of course, my wife is working so hard to uncover who caused Corran’s death. That’s the only way she will be able to defeat the frustration and assuage her feelings of guilt. She hated what you were put through on the stand, because you are her friend, but her loyalty to Corran demanded she sit through it and help Commander Ettyk, if need be.” Diric shook his head. “Fortunately she did not have to help. You two are enough alike that I imagine you can see how much that would have hurt her.”

“Yeah, I can see it.” Wedge rubbed at his temples with both hands. “And I can understand the frustration. I have to wonder if there was a way to prevent Corran’s death.”

“Undoubtedly there was, Wedge, but it was not open to you. If Captain Celchu was a spy, then General Cracken and Winter and Iella all missed the signs of it.”

“But Corran didn’t.”

Diric’s smile returned more naturally. “As much as I valued Corran as a friend, he was not always right.”

“So Whistler has indicated.”

“And no one knew him better.” Diric patted him on the leg. “Maintain your faith in your friend. He deserves it.”

“Again, thank you.”

“No thanks are necessary. So, would you like me to take you somewhere? We can eat or drink and Iella can join us.”

Wedge thought for a moment, then shook his head. “There should be another two hours of testimony today, shouldn’t there?”

“Yes. Winter was called after you were.”

Watching Winter testify has got to be hard on Iella. They were even closer than Iella and I became, and with Winter and Tycho being together … “Iella will need you there, because Winter’s testimony is going to be tougher on her than mine.”

“But you shouldn’t be alone right now.”

“I won’t be.” Wedge jerked a thumb toward the east. “I’m going to go down a level, then over to the Galactic Museum via the walkway. I’ll spend some time in the Criminal Gallery, visiting old friends, then I’ll come back here when court is adjourned for the day and take you up on your offer. I have a feeling that when today is over, Iella isn’t going to want to be alone either. No matter how this turns out, I do consider her a friend, and I want to make sure she has no reason to doubt that at all.”

19

Gavin shifted his shoulders uneasily and tugged at the cuffs of his dress jacket. I feel about as comfortable here as Commander Antilles did on the witness stand.

Asyr slipped her arm through his as the tether-lift stopped and the doors opened. “It’s not going to be that bad, Gavin. Liska Dan’kre, our hostess, is an old friend of mine. We schooled together before I went off to the Academy.”

“If she’s hiring a skyhook for this party, she must be filthy rich.”

Asyr purred contentedly. “Rich, yes, but you’ll find nothing filthy about her.” She led Gavin from the lift box onto the entry platform which overlooked the whole of the skyhook’s disk. “Impressive, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” The circular skyhook actually formed a bowl with several pathways spiraling down through forested depths to a central courtyard. A kilometer in diameter, the floating garden flew high over the mountain district of Coruscant. Off to the northeast, beyond the Manarai Mountains, Gavin saw the top of the Imperial Palace. “I can’t believe I’m here.”

Asyr looked up at him, puzzlement riding openly on her face. “What’s wrong?”

Where to begin? “Nothing, really, I suppose. It’s just that, well, on Tatooine we had no skyhooks. They weren’t deemed safe enough—one good dust storm blows up out of the nastier regions and it would pull one of these skyhooks from the sky.”

The Bothan patted his hand. “The repulsorlift generators are more than sufficient for keeping this skyhook aloft. Don’t worry about that.”

“Then there’s the jungle.” He gave her a weak smile. “You weren’t with us on one of our duty stations, but it looked a lot like this. I got shot there. My stomach is already acting up because of it.”

Asyr rubbed her hand over the faint trace of a scar on his belly. “I’ve seen what the bacta left you for a souvenir, remember, love?”

Gavin blushed. “Yeah.”

“And I think you’re not nervous about that as much as you’re nervous about being here among my people.” She raised a finger and pressed it to his lips to forestall a comment. “I know you’re not bigoted—if you were you’d not be here—but you’ve even said yourself that most of your life has been spent among humans. It’s not unusual to be anxious when outnumbered—I feel it whenever we go to places where humans predominate.”

Gavin’s shoulders sagged a centimeter or two. “I should have realized … I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Asyr smiled broadly. “Come on, let’s make an impression on my friends.”

Gavin brought his head up and smiled. “As you wish, Asyr, so shall it be.”

Together they descended from the entry platform and started off on a path that took a long, looping spiral down to the central courtyard. The guests at the party were mostly Bothans, and all of them stared at the couple as they walked past. Gavin knew that had to be because of the high-necked, sleeveless gown Asyr wore. Woven of iridescent blue and purple thread, the color shifted and shimmered with her every movement. The garment clung tight to her slender body, but the fact that the skirts had been slit from ankle to high on her thigh meant she was not hampered while walking. She’d loosely draped a simple blue stole, woven from the metallic thread used in her dress, across her back and through her elbows, completing the outfit.

Other Bothan females wore similar gowns, but none so well. Though he was not wholly adept at reading Bothan body language and facial expressions, the rippling of fur on necks and shoulders of those they passed by told him that Asyr’s gown was making quite an impression indeed. Gavin thought he looked pretty sharp in his Rogue Squadron uniform, but he was a black hole compared with a supernova, and quite content with that role.

As they reached the courtyard, a lithe female Bothan with black and tan markings excused herself from a circle of individuals who were listening to Borsk Fey’lya holding forth on something. She wore a gown similar in design to Asyr’s, though it had been made of cloth of gold and had been accented with jet beadwork in the form of stripes. She beamed broadly as she approached them. “Asyr Sei’lar, you are a vision!”

Asyr gave her friend a big hug. “Thank you for the invitation, Liska.”

Liska pulled back and looked up at Gavin. “And you are Asyr’s friend.”

Gavin executed a semiformal bow. “Gavin Darklighter of Rogue Squadron, pleased to make your acquaintance.” He took her hand in his and shook it gently.

Liska sighed contentedly, then smiled at Asyr. “So mannerly, no wonder you find him so attractive. How did you meet him?”

Asyr hesitated for a moment. “I was part of an operation in Invisec before the liberation. We met then.”

Gavin smiled. “She was trying to get me executed as an example to the Imps.”

“You always did play a little rough, Asyr.”

Asyr shrugged. “Luckily he had Nawara Ven defending him, so the execution was delayed. Imps showed up, Gavin saved my life and I his in the ensuing firefight. Not much more to tell than that.”

“Quite the first date, Asyr. It’s a wonder he dared go out with you again.” Liska linked her arm through Asyr’s. “You never seemed to get into this sort of trouble when I’ve been there to keep you safe.”

“True enough.”

Liska looked up at Gavin. “I’m going to steal her away for a moment or two, just to get caught up. You don’t mind, do you?”

Gavin gave her a big smile and shook his head. “Not at all—seeing you again is all she’s talked about since the invitation came. I’ll just find myself something to drink.”

Asyr reached out and gave his right hand a squeeze. “Won’t be but a minute.”

“Have fun.” Gavin watched Liska lead her away, then looked around, surveying his surroundings. Knots of individuals—almost exclusively Bothans—dominated the landscape. About the only place they were not predominant was at one bar where a couple of humans, two Ithorians, and a handful of other non-Bothan individuals seemed to have taken up residence. Gavin drifted off in that direction, keeping his strides even and his head up even though something in his belly made him want to hurry over there.

He looked at the bartender. “Lomin-ale, please.”

A short, balding man smiled over at him. “You should drink the expensive stuff—the Bothans are paying for it.”

“Perhaps, but I like lomin-ale.” Gavin accepted the frothy green glass of ale, sipped, then licked the foam off his upper lip. The ale was good, though not nearly cold enough for his tastes. Bothans don’t seem to like particularly cold drinks, so that’s not a big surprise, I guess.

The shorter man offered Gavin his hand. “Herrit Gordon, Ministry of State.”

“Gavin Darklighter, Rogue Squadron.”

Herrit shook his hand firmly. “Glad to meet you. I did a tour of duty with the Diplomatic Corps on Bothawui, so they felt they had to invite me.” He pointed off toward a woman who looked positively dowdy amid a circle of Bothan females. “That’s my wife, Tatavan. She learned to speak Bothan, so she’s quite popular among the Bothans.”

“A useful skill, I have no doubt. I only know a few words.” Gavin sipped his ale again. “I came with Asyr Sei’lar. She’s a friend of Liska Dan’kre.”

“I know the family. I liaised with her father on Bothawui. Minor nobles, but they have a thriving trade business to support them, so they wield a bit more power than might be imagined by their place in the formal hierarchy.”

“Powerful, really?”

“She was able to bring you, wasn’t she?”

Gavin frowned and drank again, killing the need for an immediate reply. I know she didn’t bring me as a trophy—she told me that much and I believe her. “You make it sound as if she’s trying to annoy some of the folks here.”

“Not the impression I meant to make, I’m afraid. Asyr is something of a renegade. She went to school with Liska and some of the others.”

“I know. She told me.”

“I’m sure she did. That school, however, was meant to prepare her for a life as a trader or in a governmental position. Without her family’s permission she transmitted an application to the Bothan Martial Academy and was accepted. She did very well there, and her family is very proud of her accomplishments, but they wonder when she will abandon what they see as adventurism and get a real career.”

Gavin’s smile returned to his face. “I doubt that will happen very soon. Asyr seems very at home in the squadron.”

“Don’t underestimate the pull of the Bothan family structure. Their families are very tightly bound together.”

“Nothing wrong with that.”

Herrit nodded, then looked toward his wife and paled. Gavin followed his gaze and saw a trio of male Bothans approaching them. The leader stood as tall as Gavin, though he did not have Gavin’s bulk. Creamy white fur and golden eyes contrasted with the black uniform he wore. His subordinates wore similar uniforms, but their fur was a motley riot of orange and black.

The lead Bothan stopped right in front of Gavin, but did not offer a hand in greeting. “I am Karka Kre’fey, grandson of General Laryn Kre’fey. You were with Rogue Squadron at Borleias?”

“I was.” Setting his ale on the bar, Gavin aped Karka’s stance by grasping his hands together at the small of his back. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“Reports on the assault suggest my grandfather was poorly prepared for the assault and made foolish decisions in the battle.”

“And?”

The Bothan’s golden eyes burned with anger. “I would know if you feel these reports are correct.”

Gavin ignored the gasp from Herrit. “In my opinion, they are.”

Karka’s open-handed slap arrived with no warning and caught Gavin over the left cheek, snapping his head around. Gavin staggered back a step, but the bar kept him from going down. He grabbed onto it with his hands, then straightened up slowly. He wanted to shake his head to kill the ringing in his ears, but he stopped himself and instead looked Karka hard in the eyes.

“I understand your being upset over your grandfather’s death.”

“I am upset because you have besmirched his honor.”

“Be that as it may, don’t slap me again.”

“Or?”

Herrit stepped forward. “Please, let’s not have an altercation here.”

Gavin reached out and grabbed Herrit by the back of the neck. He directed the diplomat back to his place at the bar. “We’re not going to have a fight, sir.”

Karka’s lip curled back in a snarl. “You have sullied the honor of the Kre’fey family. I challenge you to a duel.”

Gavin shook his head slowly. “No.”

“You refuse to accept?”

“I will not fight you.”

“Then you are a coward.”

Gavin laughed aloud. Just a year previous he would have leaped on Karka and done his best to pummel him, but his time with Rogue Squadron had changed him so that was not an option. Actually, it is an option, but not one I’m compelled to choose. In the last year Wedge and Corran and even Tycho had impressed upon him the fact that what others thought and said didn’t matter—it was the person inside and what he thought of himself that mattered. That’s what allows Tycho to endure everything he’s going through. He’s got a quiet kind of courage that doesn’t require boasts and defenses because it’s the courage that kicks in when it’s really needed.

While part of him still wanted to know the satisfaction of using his fist to disassociate Karka’s teeth from their sockets, another part of him reveled in his freedom to ignore the challenge. Because he would not allow himself to be aroused by the Bothan’s taunts, those taunts had no power. They became pitiful in their efforts, and transparent. And ignoring them hurts Karka more than any physical damage I could inflict upon him.

Gavin met Karka’s molten stare. “Call me a coward if you wish, I don’t care. You are not my enemy. My enemy is the Empire and its remnants. Maybe you can’t see that. Your grandfather could. Strikes me that you honor his memory more by continuing his crusade than in trying to hide mistakes he may have made.” He extended his right hand toward the Bothan.

Karka stared at it as if it were a snake, then snarled and spun on his heel. His subordinates fell into step with him, prompting a sigh of relief from Herrit as they departed.

The bartender plopped a fresh lomin-ale on the bar for Gavin. “To your health, sir.”

Herrit clinked his lum mug against the glass. “You handled that well. Sorry I got in your way.”

“No blood, no report.” Gavin worked his jaw around and heard it pop. “I’ll be feeling that tomorrow.”

Asyr appeared at his side. “What happened?”

Gavin shrugged. “Nothing, really.”

Herrit smiled. “Just a couple of boys getting some exercise.”

Asyr looked up at Gavin. “Exercise?”

He smiled and nodded. “Yeah. I gave that maturity you were talking about a workout. Felt pretty good, too.”

“If you want to leave, we can.”

Gavin shook his head. “No, stay and see your friends. Have fun. I don’t think there’s going to be any more excitement tonight.”

The fact that Borsk Fey’lya was nowhere to be seen heartened Admiral Ackbar greatly as he entered Mon Mothma’s living quarters. The presence of General Cracken confirmed that the reason he had been summoned was business, but that everything would be conducted informally. Whatever action needed to be referred to the Provisional Council would be in its own good time.

Had he thought Mon Mothma possessed a Bothan’s sense of subtlety, he would have assumed the way her apartments had been redecorated were designed to encourage a sense of well-being in him. Diaphanous blue and green drapes rippled gently in front of the windows—the movement being caused by the air conditioning, though it did suggest the windows behind the drapes were open. The carpeting had a rich aquamarine hue to it, and the tile pattern used to decorate the lower half of the wall had a nautical motif. The upper part of the wall matched the carpet in color, but the recessed oscillating lights in the ceiling gently picked up and sparkled from the rainbow pinpoints worked into the paint.

Even the furnishings were more to his liking than most. Painted in greens, browns, and blues, they had an organic and flowing shape to them. They lacked the pure symmetry that most humans seemed to prefer. The table in the center of the room, for example, could have been water that had been poured out on the ground, frozen, and then placed atop legs. The lack of sharp edges and jagged corners somehow drained tension from the room, and Ackbar felt himself relaxing.

Mon Mothma smiled in warm welcome. “I thank you for coming so quickly after I sent for you. I know the trial is your primary concern and is occupying much of your time.”

“The trial is indeed a concern of mine, but I consider it a cove, when my real concern is the ocean of security for the New Republic.” Ackbar opened his hands. “I must compliment you on the decor—I find it most pleasing. You grew up in one of Chandrila’s port cities, did you not?”

“Yes, my mother was the governor there. I learned to love the Silver Sea. I find that making my home over in the image of where I lived in better times is good for my sanity.”

“You have done a wonderful job.” Ackbar looked around the room again. “It is a pity to bring the discussion of difficult times into such a beautiful place.”

“There are always compromises that become necessary.” Mon Mothma waved Ackbar to a floating chair fashioned after a fan of blue seaweed. She seated herself in a similar chair, and General Cracken joined them by dragging over a green coral chair. “There are some things that have come up that could require Council activity, but I think it would be better to present them to the Council as fait accompli.”

Ackbar’s barbels twitched. “Insulating the Council from a backlash?”

“And preventing the chance for people to profit from what we are going to be doing, materially or politically.” Mon Mothma sighed heavily. “There are times I can see glimmers of what made the Emperor decide to dissolve the Senate. I reject that course of action, but I can certainly feel its allure. I especially hate it when action that is necessary is delayed so various individuals can set themselves up to reap the benefits of doing what they have no choice but to do. Not the way it was when we had to deal directly with the Empire.”

“I have ridden the crest of that wave myself, Mon Mothma. Being a rebellion was much more simple than being a government.” Ackbar settled back into his chair and folded his hands into his lap. “What is it you would have of me?”

Mon Mothma looked at General Cracken. “You might want to give the Admiral some of the background on this.”

Cracken nodded. “Though the pro-Palpatine terrorists last struck ten days ago, that attack has had a chilling effect on our bacta distribution efforts. The Krytos virus is beginning to spread a bit more quickly than we projected when we got the bacta from Warlord Zsinj. People are balancing their fear of the disease against their fear of being at ground zero of a terrorist attack. Black market prices for bacta are beginning to climb again because, in effect, the PCF attack has made our bacta off-limits to a lot of people. The demand for bacta from other sources is thus increasing, and so are the prices.”

Ackbar gave Cracken a wall-eyed stare. “Vorru and his militia have not been able to crack down on the black marketeers?”

“Vorru claims his people are concentrating on keeping the PCF under wraps. They’re reacting to every rumor they get and, though we have not released this information to the public, they have uncovered a couple of bombs that our people think were created by the PCF. I do not for a minute think Vorru is playing everything entirely straight, but his people are maintaining order in a sector we had no chance of controlling.”

“And how does this concern me?”

Mon Mothma nodded. “General Cracken has been in charge of some ultra-secret researches into the Krytos virus. Details of them have been kept even from me, but their continuation requires a quantity of ryll.”

The Mon Calamari pressed his hands together. “And that will require an expedition to Ryloth.”

“Precisely. Aside from getting the ryll, I think this will be an excellent opportunity for us to open some diplomatic channels with the Twi’leks, even if it is only at a very low level.”

“And you will want Counselor Ven to go.”

“Yes.” Mon Mothma smiled. “All of Rogue Squadron, in fact. Commander Antilles made quite an impression there several years ago, and the contribution of Nawara Ven to the taking of Coruscant has attracted a lot of attention on Ryloth. This notoriety will add weight to our negotiating position.”

“So you need me to delay the trial and release Rogue Squadron to this duty.”

The leader of the New Republic narrowed her eyes. “Is there a problem with this? Surely you can find a reason to grant a continuance in the case.”

Ackbar’s mouth dropped open in a silent laugh. “Find a reason? I could find a school of them, Chief Councilor. I applaud General Cracken’s ability to uncover so much so quickly about Captain Celchu’s involvement with the Empire—the pace of discovery is remarkable. The trial is moving with such alacrity that there is no way the defense has adequate time to prepare. Counselor Ven is doing his best, but this is clearly the most difficult assignment he’s been given since joining Rogue Squadron.”

“So this is not a problem?”

“No, though I suppose the continuance cannot be granted on the grounds that Rogue Squadron is going off on a secret mission to Ryloth?” When silence met his question, Ackbar opened his mouth in a smile. “I was being facetious. It was a joke.”

Cracken laughed, but Mon Mothma just smiled. “Forgive me, my friend, but as General Cracken will attest, I have not heard many things that make me laugh of late.”

“I understand.” Ackbar sat forward. “I will, of course, clear Rogue Squadron for the mission. Will you be wanting Erisi Dlarit to fly that mission?”

“I should think so. Is there a reason we would not want her on it?”

Ackbar shrugged. “Since she is involved in pushing the Xucphra corporation to sell us a great deal of bacta, I would think putting her in jeopardy on a mission would be contra-indicative.”

Mon Mothma looked at her Intelligence director. “Is she in danger on this run, General?”

Cracken frowned. “We anticipate no trouble.”

Ackbar blinked his eyes. “And if the mission is betrayed to the PCF?”

“We have the Imperial spy, don’t we? Isn’t that why Captain Celchu is on trial?”

“Yes, Chief Councilor.” Cracken’s dark eyes sharpened. “What the Admiral is suggesting is that we cannot be certain Captain Celchu was the only spy in service to the Empire. The potential for betrayal does exist here and on the Ryloth side of things. While sending her out might endanger her, holding her back might be taken incorrectly by officials on Thyferra, dooming that deal.”

“But if she dies, that could also hurt us.” Mon Mothma shook her head. “The lack of clear-cut decisions is what makes this job so difficult. The Thyferrans seem to set great store by Erisi Dlarit’s flying with Rogue Squadron. I suppose we will have to let her go.”

Ackbar nodded. “I concur. That is the tide on which you should sail.”

“And you, General Cracken,” Mon Mothma said, “will have to make certain security around this mission is not breached. We cannot afford to have the mission disrupted, nor can we afford to lose Erisi Dlarit.”

“Of this, I am aware.” General Cracken nodded solemnly. “I understand the gravity of the situation. If there is a leak, we’ll find it—find it and eliminate it. The New Republic can afford for us to do nothing less.”

20

“I am fairly certain, Colonel Vorru, that I do not like this turn of events at all.” Kirtan Loor peered down at the smaller man but clearly did not have quite the intimidating effect on him that Loor wanted. “I invited you here to inform you of my plan as a courtesy, not to allow you to veto it.”

Fliry Vorru shrugged. “Ah, but I have vetoed it.”

No! “No! I cannot allow this.” Loor’s hands balled into fists. “My agreement with you was to let you select domestic targets that help weaken the New Republic’s government. I have abided by your decisions in any case where the target was of that sort. This is not one of those cases.”

Loor stalked around his darkened office, flitting like a moth around the circle of light that anointed Fliry Vorru and made his white hair shine brilliantly. “The destruction of Rogue Squadron has been a priority with me since well before they took Imperial Center, and now, now they are within my grasp. I have a squadron of X-wings here on Imperial Center that I will use to attack Rogue Squadron’s base and destroy them on the ground. It will be perfect and will allow me to finish a mission that has taken far too long to complete.”

Vorru leaned back in Loor’s tall chair and put his booted feet up on the surface of the desk, scattering a stack of datacards. “What were once your priorities do not matter to me. I deem this attack too risky. Cracken will suspect I leaked information about Rogue Squadron’s impending mission to you.”

“No, no he won’t.” Loor’s fingers itched to be punching data up on his datapad—or to be strangling you, Vorru. “I uncovered evidence of a run to Ryloth based on fluctuations in the secondary ryll-derivatives black market. I traced it back to a woman in the medical corps who’s been making extra money producing her own brand of patent medicine. It’s mostly lum, with ryll and a drop or two of bacta in it—useless, of course, but she’s begun to raise the price. It’s assumed that when Rogue Squadron brings the ryll back to Coruscant, its effectiveness against the virus will be touted and her medicine will be in high demand. I can give her to you and you can point her out as the leak.”

“Suggesting that a quack producing a folk remedy led you to Rogue Squadron is what will get me implicated.”

“Nonsense.” Loor slapped his hands against his hips in frustration. “You know as well as I do that Ryloth is as dark a den of iniquity as exists this side of Varl. The Twi’leks have not supported the Rebellion in any great numbers, so the most prominent Twi’lek in the New Republic is Nawara Ven. The Republic has to use him as their negotiator and, lo and behold, the prosecution asks for and gets a continuance of the case. That leaves plenty of time for Rogue Squadron to make the trip to Ryloth and back. The only obvious assumption is that they’re going to make the trip.”

Loor shook his head. “I’ve known where Rogue Squadron has been stationed for a while now. This is my opportunity to hit them right at a time when the failure of their mission will severely hurt the New Republic.”

“Your reasoning is flawless, Agent Loor, but that concerns me not at all.” Vorru’s dark eyes glittered. “I even find your devotion toward the elimination of Rogue Squadron admirable. However, your taking action against Rogue Squadron does not suit me at this time; therefore you cannot launch your assault.”

“And if I choose to ignore your advice?”

Vorru twisted his head slightly sideways. “Do you really want to test me, Kirtan Loor?”

Loor hesitated, losing his chance to snap back a defiant answer. Anyone else asking that question would have filled the words with impending doom, but Vorru asked it in an easy tone, as if asking a child if she were certain she wanted to do something that was obviously dangerous. His expression, his posture, bore no obvious menace, and yet Loor found himself more fearful of Vorru than he would be of a buzzadder coiled and ready to strike in his place.

“Testing you would get neither of us anywhere.”

“I always thought you were more than reasonable.” Vorru swung his feet off the desk and swiveled the chair around so he could stand. He withdrew a datacard from inside his militia tunic and tossed it on the desk. “You and your people have been good and have done nothing of import for nearly two weeks. I have found you a new target.”

Loor exchanged places with Vorru, spun the chair around, and dropped into it. He pulled himself around to face the desk and saw Vorru’s shadowed form standing opposite him. Loor shoved the datacard into his datapad, punched up a directory, then opened the file labeled “target.die.” The architectural renderings of a building showing stress points filled the small screen.

The Intelligence agent looked up. “It’s small. I don’t see bacta storage areas or barracks facilities. What is it?”

“A school.”

“School?” Loor frowned. “You mean a training academy?”

“No, a school. For children.”

“Children of the Rebel leadership?”

“Hardly. They’ve been too busy to breed.” Vorru shook his head quickly. “This is just a normal school, with normal children—some aliens, but mostly human.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because the students are drawn from the local population.”

Loor’s frown deepened, and confusion made his voice tenuous. “No, why hit a school?”

“Come now, Agent Loor, you didn’t expect to get great results without inflicting great pain, did you?” Vorru laughed lightly. “You probably thought you could cling to some shred of honor. By hitting factories and military facilities and places where adults congregated, you could put fear into them. By hitting bacta distribution centers, you could make parents concerned about the welfare of their children, but it would be the Krytos virus that killed the children, not you. Is that it?”

“I … perhaps …”

“Perhaps nothing, that is exactly what you were thinking. And because of it, your efforts would have been for naught.” Vorru leaned forward, supporting his body on both arms. The light from above hid his eyes in black triangles. “Threaten a child and you will unite the parents against you. Kill a child and those who have lost it will retreat in mourning. Those around them will feel their pain and likewise look to their own families. They will keep their children close and out of schools. This will shatter the Rebellion’s ability to indoctrinate the young. It also makes the Rebellion look unforgivably weak. People will demand things be done and it will be left to me to do them.”

And one of the things you shall do is use me as a scapegoat for your evil. The illusion of control over his own situation evaporated in a heartbeat. To Loor his future was clear: He would carry out more and more heinous missions for Colonel Vorru; then, eventually, Vorru would betray him. He would remain alive and free until Vorru had no further use for him, then he would be broken and displayed as proof of Vorru’s virtue.

It struck Loor as almost comical that he could see Vorru’s desire to strike at a school as evil, yet his desire to hit Rogue Squadron was nothing more than duty. The difference, ultimately, was that the strike at Rogue Squadron would advance the cause of the Empire, while the strike at the school would only strengthen Vorru’s position. We are not as far apart as I would like to think, but neither are we as close as Vorru sees us.

Nor am I as stupid as he thinks I am. Loor hit a button on the datapad and read the list of materials needed to undertake the operation. “When?”

“A week. There will have been no news of the trial in that time, so this will really attract attention.”

Loor’s head came up. “Will you need me to sacrifice some of my men to your militia?”

“Not immediately.” A shadowed smile spread across the small man’s face. “I have several troublesome individuals who need to die in an airspeeder explosion. The chemical composition of the explosives will match those in the school bombing. That will send Cracken’s people off in a direction I want and leave you free to operate.”

“Will you be selecting another target for us?”

Vorru straightened up, retreating into shadow. “No. Just go ahead and pick out a half-dozen targets you want to hit and I’ll pick one or two from your list. I’ll use them as tests for my subordinates to see if they can figure out how we can profit from these things. Competition will keep them sharp.”

“I would imagine.”

“I’m certain you would, Agent Loor.” Vorru sketched a mock salute. “I look forward to the results of your handiwork.”

Wedge looked around the lab set deep in the bowels of the Imperial Palace complex. “So this is where the Krytos virus was developed?”

General Cracken nodded. “You noticed, when you came in, that the place is kept under negative pressure. If the seals are breached, air flows in, not out. It precludes the possibility of pathogens getting out.”

Wedge frowned. “But I thought the Krytos virus could not be spread by air, only by fluid contact—in drinking water or when someone came in contact with bodily fluid from an infected person.”

“That’s absolutely true, but in this lab they were manufacturing a virus that had never existed before. They wanted something that would mutate relatively quickly so it could spread between species. With that sort of thing the chance of a spontaneous mutation that would let it become airborne and still remain infectious is one that must be guarded against.” Cracken led him on through a throng of white-coated lab assistants to a back room where Qlaem was using its hands to enter information into a datapad. A number of droids worked in and around the room, apparently orchestrated by a Verpine droid that looked much like a metal avatar of the Vratix.

Qlaern drew its hands back to its thorax as Wedge entered the room. “Commander Antilles, we are pleased to see you.” The Vratix’s right hand came out and gently brushed Wedge’s cheek.

Wedge stroked the Vratix’s arm in return. “The honor is mine. You know, I expect, that my squadron will be leading the expedition to Ryloth.”

“Yes, of this we are aware. We also know that Mirax will be traveling with you.”

“Right.” The trip to Ryloth from Imperial Center would take five days, and that was a bit long to be trapped in the cockpit of an X-wing. Ten of the squadron’s X-wings would be loaded aboard a modified Rebel Transport, the Courage of Sullust. Wedge would travel with Mirax in the Pulsar Skate, with his X-wing ensconced in the cargo bay that would, if things went as planned, be filled with ryll for the return trip. The X-wings would fly escort out of Ryloth; then they would be loaded aboard another transport after the first leg of the journey, for the rest of the trip to Coruscant.

Airen Cracken patted the Vratix on the shoulder. “As you asked, I have brought Commander Antilles. You have something to tell him?”

“Yes, of course.” Qlaern rested both hands on Wedge’s shoulders. “We have analyzed the virus and various medicinal preparations. Ryll will have some effect against the virus. Its efficacy varies widely. We have been pursuing the reason for this. We have been advised that ryll is classified in a number of different grades by the Twi’leks. Most of the ryll available off Ryloth is of the lowest grade.”

“They don’t export the best, I can understand that.”

“Good. The rarest grade of ryll is known as ryll kor. It makes up approximately three percent of all ryll. The compound contains in it trace elements that appear to work against the virus, but exactly how and why we are not certain. We need as much ryll kor as we can get.”

Wedge nodded and patted the backs of the Vratix’s hands. “How will I know it?”

“The ryll kor tastes …” Qlaern stopped. “You would not be able to differentiate the taste, we think.”

“Probably not.”

“Kor absorbs light except in the ultraviolet range.”

Wedge glanced at Cracken. “Meaning?”

“It looks black, like charcoal, except to someone who can see in the UV range.” Cracken smiled. “I have some gear that will be able to sort kor from ryll that’s dyed black. You might check, though, perhaps your Gand can see in the ultraviolet range.”

Wouldn’t surprise me. He doesn’t breathe or sleep and can regenerate severed limbs. “I’ll ask Ooryl if he can help me in that capacity.” He looked back at Qlaern. “I’ll get you your kor.”

“Do that, Wedge Antilles, and we shall cure the disease.”

And then I’ll be bound by my promise to represent you to the Provisional Council. Wedge smiled and brought Qlaern’s right hand up to feel his face. “We’ll be back before you know it, I promise. And you know I keep my promises.”

21

Corran Horn shuffled along in line with the other prisoners. He affected the dull-eyed, hopeless stare most of them displayed for their guards. He moved when told to move and stopped when told to stop. In no way should any of the guards in stormtrooper armor conducting them to the mines have noticed anything out of the ordinary about him. To them he should have appeared to be just like all the other prisoners being herded to the mines.

He hoped against hope the facade he put forward fooled them, because as dull and soporific as he might seem on the outside, he was seething and anxious on the inside. After only a week in the general population he had decided to make his first stab at escape. He had briefly discussed his plan with Jan and found the man’s insights useful, but he had ignored Jan’s entreaties to put off his attempt.

The prospect of being killed in his first try did daunt Corran, but not as much as he thought it should have. He had a hunch that he wouldn’t be killed if he was captured. He knew that was foolish, and that he had no factual basis for making that judgment, but it felt right. During his career with CorSec, and as a pilot with Rogue Squadron, he’d gone with gut feelings before, and won more times than he’d lost.

Although he did not have any facts to support his feelings about escape, he did have some circumstantial evidence that made him optimistic. First and foremost was the fact that he wasn’t dead yet. He couldn’t imagine Ysanne Isard keeping him or anyone else around unless they were useful. As long as he did not prove to be more of a bother than he was worth to Iceheart and her plans, he’d be kept alive.

Second, and it was a rather bizarre fact, was the method of return for the unsuccessful escapees. Most of them came back as fire-blackened skeletons, or parts thereof. The only way to match them up with the people who had escaped would be through genetic testing. Since that was unavailable to the prisoners, they had to assume the bodies were, in fact, those of the escapees. However, since confirmation was impossible, Isard could have simply picked a prisoner out of the less secure prison levels, and had him burned beyond recognition and dumped in the high security area. As long as she could identify who had escaped, returning a close match would be pretty easy, and the high-security prisoners would be left imagining escape was impossible.

Third and finally, Corran saw that Jan really did care for the men under his control. His fear for Corran’s safety was genuine, and not based in any fear of retribution against himself. As the leader of the Rebel contingent, Jan felt responsible for the other Alliance prisoners. He’d seen enough people die in the fight against the Empire that he wanted to prevent people from throwing their lives away needlessly. He clearly believed that some day, that day being sooner rather than later, the Alliance would find them and free them, and he wanted as many of his people alive on that day as possible.

As wonderful as Jan’s care and concern was, it also tortured the older man. Corran could clearly see Ysanne Isard’s fine hand in that. By letting Jan take responsibility for all the Rebel prisoners, she created dozens and dozens of avenues to attack him. With each one of them who went away or died, a little piece of Jan died. How he had endured that much pain for so long Corran could not imagine, but he hoped, by taking responsibility for himself, he could ease the burden on Jan’s shoulders.

Seventy paces from the cave mouth they passed the opening to the latrine. The fixtures in it were rudimentary, but did include a water spigot so a minimum of hygiene could be observed. Thirty paces beyond it, about halfway to the mine complex, the line of prisoners passed through a barred gateway that was locked closed at night. Corran thought its presence was unnecessary, since the Imps had placed infrared detection units at both ends of the corridors. Then again, those units aren’t really that hard to defeat, especially if the people monitoring them are as alert as the guards marching through the dust with us.

A full 203 paces from the mouth of the cavern complex, Corran passed through what had once been a ship’s hatchway and into the prisoners’ workstation. Rumor among the prisoners had it that Lusankya dated from before the Clone Wars and incorporated parts from various ships that had been blasted to pieces in a naval action beyond the atmosphere. The scavenged hatch and the condition of the old, worn tools did suggest a certain amount of antiquity to the facility, but that conclusion came so easily that Corran was disinclined to trust it. If that’s what Isard wants us to think about her Lusankya, then I don’t want to think it.

Beyond the hatch they proceeded down a steep grade to a long rectangular cavern that had five tunnels shooting off it like fingers off the palm of a hand. All the fingers ended in doors that were cobbled together from ship bulkhead panels and held closed by chains and locks. The tunnels were big enough to allow a small mining droid to pass through them, but the doors were always shut when the prisoners came into the room, so Corran never saw the droids digging out the ore they processed.

At the far end of the chamber from the entryway sat several piles of huge boulders. Men would work on them with heavy sledgehammers, bit by bit breaking them down into smaller rocks. Other prisoners would carry those smaller rocks to the middle of the chamber, where more prisoners would smash them with smaller sledges. Yet more prisoners with shovels and screens would sift the debris, pitching back the larger stones. The resulting gravel would then be hauled in buckets to a conveyor belt that carried the gravel up and away. At the top of the conveyor belt the gravel disappeared through a heavy steel grate.

No one knew much about what lay beyond the grate. They knew air was blowing out of it because they could see a fair amount of dust blown back into the air around the conveyor belt. Most of the prisoners assumed the belt led to a blast furnace where the gravel was melted down, or a mixing container where it was being made into ferrocrete. Corran argued that it was just as likely that the gravel was being dumped into hovertrucks and taken out to pave walkways in some Moff’s garden, and if that was true, the grate was all that stood between them and freedom.

All of the prisoners knew what they were doing was simply make-work, but the Imps had taken the precautions necessary to prevent work stoppages. The conveyor belt’s workings had been sunk into the ground so the prisoners couldn’t get access to the motor and sabotage it. Steel fibers had been woven into the length of the belt to keep it strong and had been tightened so virtually no slack appeared in the belt on its return trip to the depths of the mine’s floor. A railing had even been set up to prevent prisoners from accidentally falling onto the belt or getting caught in the mechanism.

Corran dumped his bucket of gravel into the maw of the container bolted on the conveyor belt. Humming away loudly, the belt started the gravel on its twenty-meter journey to the grate. Corran watched it go for a second, then allowed the next man in line to bump him out of the way.

Heading back to where Urlor was shoveling gravel into buckets, Corran took a quick inventory of the guards watching over them. A full squad of men in stormtrooper armor guarded them, providing one trooper for every ten of the eighty prisoners in the work detail. Six of the troopers carried blaster carbines. The other two crewed an E-Web set up just inside the hatchway, making any attempt to rush out of the mine suicidal. The sharp slope up which the prisoners would have to charge would slow them enough that the two-man heavy blaster would cut them all down. Though none of the guards were as big as stormtroopers, nor seemed as well disciplined as the Empire’s shock troops, even they would have been enough to quell a prisoner revolt.

Urlor tossed a shovelful of gravel toward Corran’s bucket but missed with half of it. “Don’t do this, Corran.” He kept his voice low enough that the rattling chuff of gravel pouring through a screen hid it from outsiders. “Wait. Learn more.”

“This is learning.” He winked at the bigger man. “Guards have their blasters selected for stun.”

Jan looked over from the end of the screen he was holding. “You’ll risk your life on the flick of a thumb?”

Corran tapped himself on the chest. “Rogue Squadron, remember.”

“Corellian, more like.” Jan shook his head. “None of you have any respect for odds.”

“Why respect what you have to beat?” Corran gave each of them a nod. “Trust me, I have to make this run.”

Urlor dumped a final shovel’s-worth in the bucket. “May the Force be with you.”

“Thanks.” Corran, letting the bucket dangle down between his legs, started the awkward, hunched-over Rybet-walk back toward the conveyor belt. His plan was simple: he’d dump his bucket, then hop over the railing and ride the belt up to the grate. Up there, at least as viewed from the work floor, there appeared to be enough shadowed space to conceal him. If he could then get down through the grate, or find a hidden passageway out, he’d be free.

“You there.”

Corran looked over at the guard pointing at him. “Me?”

“Come here.”

Why me? Corran shuffled over toward the man. “Sir?”

“Don’t question me, prisoner.” The guard, clad in the lighter weight scout version of the armor, loomed over him. “As for the reason I picked you, you’re new and need a lesson.”

Without warning the guard brought the blaster carbine up and around in a one-handed backhand stroke that caught Corran over the right ear. Stars exploded before his eyes and the clank of metal on skull started a fierce ringing in his ears. A flange on the barrel cut his ear and split his scalp, while the force of the blow spun Corran around to the left.

Pain overrode panic. As Corran whirled he held on tight to the bucket, brought it up, and let it fly when his tormentor came into view again. The gravel-filled container smashed into the guard’s faceplate. The man’s head snapped back as the blow knocked him from his feet. He stumbled backward as the bucket flew on comet-like, spraying out a gravel tail.

Corran’s vision cleared and seconds seemed to take hours to pass. The guard’s carbine, the muzzle glistening with his blood, hung in the air. Corran knew he could snatch it before it hit the ground and burn down the two closest guards in a heartbeat. Half the guards in the detail would have been accounted for. Getting the rest would be difficult, but the other prisoners could swarm them. They’d take the guards’ weapons and …

And die trying to clear the E-Web. Or die trying to fight our way out of the belly of this prison. All of them will die, and their deaths will be on my head, if I grab that gun.

He heard the whine of a blaster and saw something blue shoot past him. All the prisoners dove for the floor. They shrank into a huddled carpet of dirty arms and legs, ducking their heads to avoid recognition, yet peeking out to see what would happen.

All of them went down save for one.

Jan.

Eyes filled with horror and pride, he nodded to Corran.

Corran, understanding, nodded back.

The stun-bolt caught Corran square in the middle of his chest. It did to his nervous system what an ion-bolt did to a machine. In one instant every nerve in Corran’s body fired, instantly wracking him with pain, burning him up, shaking, crushing, and freezing him. All of his muscles contracted, bowing his back, grinding his teeth, and kicking him up into the air with a little hop. His limp body’s impact on the ground probably hurt, but his nervous system couldn’t route reports to his brain properly, so he really didn’t know how he felt.

Except it’s not good.

He saw Jan crouching over him. “I’ll see they get you help.”

Corran wanted to nod, wanted to blink, wanted to do something to let Jan know he heard him, but he couldn’t. About half the time he’d been hit with a stun-bolt before—in training exercises and a couple of times with CorSec in the field—he’d lost consciousness. The times he hadn’t, he’d wished he had, because the feeling of helplessness created by being trapped inside a body that didn’t work was worse than any pain.

The medical team called for by the guards arrived rather quickly, bringing with them a repulsorlift stretcher. After they loaded their unconscious comrade on it, they reluctantly draped Corran over the man’s legs, leaving Corran’s head dangling and his hands and feet scraping along the ground as they hauled the two individuals out of the mine.

Staring down at the floor, he couldn’t see much on the trip out. The medtechs wrestled the stretcher into a lift, and the one to the right of the door, at the foot of the stretcher, punched a button and started the box ascending. Corran heard three tones, which he took to mean they had ascended three floors, then the lift stopped and the medtechs again struggled to get the stretcher out of the lift.

They floated Corran on through corridors that appeared much more modern and maintained, if floor tile was any indication, than the rest of the facility. Finally they brought the stretcher to a stop in a place where he caught the familiar scent of bacta, and unceremoniously dumped him to the floor. He rolled onto his left side, his cheek pressed against the cold flooring.

He caught snatches of the conversation between the medtechs and the Emdee droid that would be caring for the guard, but the ringing in his right ear made it difficult for him to catch everything. Moreover, he wasn’t certain he could trust any sensory inputs, because what he was hearing through his left ear was simply impossible.

Starting from above his head and continuing on down toward his feet, he heard the dopplered sound of stormtroopers—real, well-disciplined stormtroopers—marching along. That was not remarkable in and of itself except in that if they had been there, they’d have been marching over him, and as messed up as he was, he was fairly certain he’d have noticed that. The only other alternative was that they were in a room below him, marching on the ceiling, and what that meant was, at that time, well and truly beyond his ability to comprehend.

22

Wedge thumbed his comlink on. “What do you need, Mirax?”

“Coming up on the Kala’uun Starport, Wedge. I thought you might like to be up here on the bridge as we come in. It’s quite the sight.”

“On my way.” He glanced around the cargo hold and nodded at his R5 unit. “Hang on, Mynock, we’re almost there. Keep a scanner on these crates for me, will you?”

The cylinder-headed droid beeped affirmatively. The R5 unit then exchanged some softer tones with the Pulsar Skate’s Verpine maintenance droid.

No, they can’t be talking about me. Wedge laughed at his flash of paranoia and stepped out of the hold. The doors crunched shut behind him. Letting a hand trail along the corridor’s ceiling, he made his way along the spine of the ship to the bridge. He thought he might have been imagining things, but heat from the atmosphere already appeared to be bleeding in through the ship’s hull. Scant wonder there are Twi’leks that think of Tatooine as a suitable place to flee to during the hot season here.

He stepped down into the bridge and dropped into a seat behind Mirax. “I’d forgotten how impressive this is.”

The tortured surface of Ryloth spread out before them like the shards of a shattered earthenware vase. Black basalt mountains thrust up into a dusky red sky. Centermost in their view of the planet stood a massive mountain with a huge tunnel cored into the interior at its base. The smaller holes dotting the face of the mountain would have appeared to be natural openings except for the regularity with which they were arranged.

Because the planet rotated on its axis once per year, the same side of Ryloth always faced the sun. Kala’uun existed near the terminus line—where day and night met—making it one of the cooler sunside locations. Because of Ryloth’s elliptical orbit, the planet did have seasons, though most humans could not tell the difference between summer and the cool season since both were unbearably hot.

“Yeah, impressive and impressively treacherous. Liat, watch the crosswinds as we enter the tunnel.”

The Sullustan pilot chittered angrily at her.

“I know you can’t miss the rocks out there, I just want to make sure we miss the rocks.” Mirax smiled. “No heat storm activity today, it seems, but the currents can still be tricky.”

“Right.”

Liat Tevv took the Pulsar Skate down into the canyon that led to the tunnel. Harsh winds had smoothed the stone to the consistency of polished glass in some spots, and had torn away huge dagger-like slabs in others. Smaller areas of damage to the rocks—some graced with a splash of paint or metallic debris—gave mute testimony to the need for care in negotiating the approach to Kala’uun.

The Pulsar Skate slipped into the approach tunnel with plenty of room to spare on all sides. Liat flicked on the ship’s external running lights and floods, filling the dark tunnel with jagged shadows. Up ahead a massive portcullis slowly rose into the tunnel’s ceiling. As they flew past it Wedge guessed it was at least thirty meters thick and would require a lot of pounding before it admitted unwanted visitors.

Mirax glanced back at him. “Ever get the feeling that the portcullis is as much for keeping folks in as it is for keeping them out?”

“Only when I’m on the inside of it.” Three years had passed since his first and last trip to Kala’uun, when he and the rest of Rogue Squadron had arrived unbidden and in pursuit of a Twi’lek. The circumstances of this trip were certainly more favorable. Even so, just to make certain there were no grudges being borne against him, he’d put Emtrey’s scavenging abilities to good use and had him round up a plethora of gifts for the Twi’leks.

Mirax nodded. “Kala’uun is the one place my father figures he didn’t make out like a bandit. The Twi’leks are tough negotiators.”

“I hope that skill holds for Nawara’s efforts on behalf of Tycho.”

Mirax’s brown eyes narrowed. “I hope so, too, I think. I know you believe Tycho had nothing to do with Corran’s death, but I can’t be so sure. I wish I could, really, because Tycho helped me save Corran at Borleias.”

“Don’t forget that Tycho saved me and the rest of the Squadron on Coruscant.”

“I’ve not forgotten that, but while he was saving you, Corran and I were saving each other from the Empire and the traitor in Fliry Vorru’s organization.” She patted Wedge on the knee. “We’ve been over this a dozen times and I’m getting better about it, I really am. I don’t cry nearly as much right now as I did.”

Wedge tipped her face up with his left hand and brushed a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “Hey, being sad doesn’t reflect badly on you at all.”

“Thanks.” Mirax sniffed a little. “It’s just that it seems so ridiculous sometimes. We’d not even dated. We didn’t know each other that well. For his death to hurt this much we should have been a lot closer.”

“That’s the trick of it, Mirax, you were a lot closer than you imagine. The two of you shared a lot of the same qualities.” Wedge smiled. “Your father and Corran’s father were mortal enemies. Why? Because they were a lot alike, too. Both of you had strong relationships with your fathers, which is reflected in how you turned out. Under different circumstances old Booster and Hal Horn probably could have been friends. You and Corran became friends because you met under those different circumstances.”

She frowned for a moment. “You are probably right. I could also help myself get over this, I think, if I could just finally accept the fact that Corran’s dead. Listening to the comlink call when he went in, that was pretty nasty, but we never found a body. I know it’s stupid to make anything of that, what with the building coming down on him and all, but my father always said that if you don’t see a body, don’t count on someone being dead. He did once—”

“And it cost him his eye. I remember the story.” Wedge laughed lightly. “Now I remember it. That explains a lot.”

“What do you mean?”

“Biggs, Porkins, Corran, my parents—I never saw their dead bodies. Partly because of your father’s story, I suspect, and just human stubbornness, I find myself sometimes expecting to see them walk into my office.”

Mirax’s face brightened. “Or you think you see them walking along in a crowd. You catch a glimpse of them.” She glanced down. “Part of me thinks that we see them because we don’t truly believe they’re dead. Maybe the barrier that separates the living from the dead is permeable as long as there is someone who doesn’t accept death. Sithspawn, listen to me. I’m talking like a glitbiter.”

“That’s not a problem, Mirax, I understand.” Wedge leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. “And I don’t think your theory is all that wrong. I don’t imagine we can bring people back to life by hoping, but letting their memories live on inside us is not a bad thing to do at all.”

The Sullustan cheebled something at Mirax, prompting her to spin around in her command chair. She hit several switches above her head, then punched a button on the console. “Landing gear deployed, repulsorlift drives engaged. Kill thrust and set her down gently.”

Liat’s melodic grumble accompanied the delicate thunder of the Pulsar Skate’s landing. Mirax slapped a button on the command console and Wedge immediately felt a rush of warm air as the ship’s gangway lowered itself. Mirax nodded toward the aft and the opening. “After you, Commander Antilles.”

“Thank you, Captain Terrik.”

Mirax smiled. “By the way, I think you look slicker than a Hutt’s slime trail in that native garb.”

“Thanks.” Since the mission was diplomatic in nature, Rogue Squadron had been supplied with clothes like those their counterparts on Ryloth would wear. Because of the planet’s oppressive heat, the natives tended to wear loose, bulky, hooded cloaks over their other garments. The nature of the clothes they wore beneath the cloaks depended upon their occupation. Twi’lek warriors tended to be clad in a loincloth, wrapped leggings to the knee, fingerless gloves, and a highly decorative bandoleer that did still serve a martial function. Their cloaks also tended to be abbreviated, as if their whole costume was meant to show they were tough enough to endure even the harshest of conditions on the planet.

Wedge’s attire varied only slightly from that Twi’lek warriors wore. His brown boots came up to his knees and beige trousers had been tucked into them. To that he added an emerald green loincloth and a bandoleer of the same color. All of his battle ribbons and awards had been embroidered on the bandoleer, starting with two Death Star representations at his right shoulder and ending with a symbol representing Coruscant near his left hip. The crests of the Alliance and Rogue Squadron stood side by side over his heart. His cloak was a darker green than his bandoleer and had been lined with a shiny red fabric that formed two red wings when he folded the cloak back behind his shoulders.

He descended the gangway and looked up. Kala’uun Starport occupied a colossal cavern which had been hollowed out of the heart of the mountain that sheltered it. Above his head lay level upon level of Twi’lek clan warrens, comprising the living quarters and work areas of over 100,000 Twi’leks. He could only guess at what the warrens looked like—according to Nawara, few were the non-Twi’leks who ever saw them, and those individuals were people a clan had acknowledged as a friend.

The Courage of Sullust had landed off the Skate’s starboard wing. Nawara Ven disembarked and came walking over toward Wedge. They wore similar clothes, though Nawara’s loincloth, bandoleer, and cloak were all a deep shade of purple. His cloak had been lined with a grey that was slightly darker than his skin tone. “Are you ready, Commander?”

Wedge nodded. “Lead the way.”

Nawara did, and Wedge followed a step behind him and one to his left. “It looks like our welcoming party. Is the Shak clan still the Head-clan here?”

One of Nawara’s braintails ran back along his spine. The tip of it jerked up and down in what Wedge had been told was the Twi’lek equivalent of a nod. “Koh’shak is still the master of the starport. It would appear, from the colors of the individual next to him, that someone from the Olan clan has chosen to greet us as well.”

“Cazne’olan, perhaps?”

Nawara shrugged. “Possibly. I don’t know him. The Olan clan and mine do not mix much—no animosity, just little association with each other. His presence here could be good or could be very bad.”

Wedge smiled, stepping up beside Nawara as they both stopped before their hosts. Nawara Ven bowed deeply, bringing both his braintails down to dangle limp by his knees. Wedge aped his bow, then opened his hands and pressed their backs against his thighs. The gesture was slightly awkward but was meant to symbolize exactly what the limp braintails did: a lack of negative feelings and thoughts about the people in front of him. Without braintails he had to rely on the universally peaceful symbolism of an empty, open hand to make his intent clear.

Wedge and Nawara straightened up at the same time, then their hosts bowed to them. Scarlet cloth swathed the corpulent Koh’shak. The gold badges of his office and clan held his outer cloak closed at his throat, though his round middle poked through the central opening. Wedge got an eyeful of Koh’shak’s red robe and a wide cloth of gold sash pressed into the double duty of containing his girth and supporting a pair of Sevari flashpistols.

Cazne’olan would have seemed thickset except by comparison with Koh’shak. His black cloak covered a bright yellow robe and blue sash. The gold office and clan badges he wore were smaller than Koh’shak’s, but the craftsmanship on them seemed more delicate and less overpowering. Cazne’olan held his bow for a second longer than Koh’shak, but straightened up with less effort.

The heavier Twi’lek opened black-taloned hands. “In the name of Kala’uun’s Clans, I bid you welcome, Nawar’aven.”

“In the name of my clan, I am pleased to be accepted at Kala’uun.” Nawara turned to his left. “I am pleased to present to the Clans of Kala’uun my commanding officer.…”

Cazne’olan stepped forward between Nawara and Koh’shak, extending his hand to Wedge. “Nawar’aven, you have no need to introduce Wedgan’tilles to us. We remember him from his last adventure on our world.”

Wedge smiled and shook Cazne’olan’s hand. “Good to see you again.”

“And you.” Cazne’olan took a step back and paused for a second before his headtails began to twitch up and down. “You have done much and learned much in the time since we have seen each other. Not the least of which is learning how to dress.”

Nawara glanced over at Wedge. “Commander, I did not realize—”

“No reason you should have Nawar …,” Wedge hitched a moment. The way the Twi’leks ran Nawara’s name together, he couldn’t be certain exactly what Nawara’s clan name was. When in doubt, go with indigenous custom. “… Nawar’aven. It was an adventure the squadron had well before you joined it. Suffice it to say it was resolved to the satisfaction of all interested parties.”

“It was indeed, Wedgan’tilles.” Koh’shak stretched the last syllable of Wedge’s name into a whole sibilant phrase of its own. “And now you are come here seeking satisfaction of another kind.”

“Quite true, Koh’shak.” Wedge half-turned and pointed back at the two Alliance ships. “We have for you some wondrous things drawn from the various worlds of the New Republic.” As he turned back to face the starport’s master, he noticed Nawara and Cazne’olan speaking to each other in low tones, with their braintaiis convulsing wildly.

Koh’shak closed his pinkish eyes and settled interlaced fingers over the bulge in his middle. “I am certain what you have brought will be impressive. Shall we begin our negotiations?”

His offer seemed a bit abrupt to Wedge, and the surprised look on Nawara’s face indicated he also thought something was amiss. What’s going on here?

Before Wedge could venture a reply, Nawara gently grabbed Wedge’s right forearm. “While the Commander applauds your alacrity in seeing to his needs, we have been traveling for days to get here. He chooses to invoke twi’janii.”

Koh’shak’s eyes popped open with the speed Wedge would have expected if the starport master had felt a gun being jammed against a spine. “I welcome Wedgan’tilles and would have granted him twi’janii without reservation if I felt he did not find our climate oppressive.”

“Open your eyes yet wider, Koh’shak.” Cazne’olan gestured toward Wedge. “He is a warrior in truth as well as dress. Even in the hot season he would not be discomfitted.”

“Your courtesy in reminding me of that is appreciated, Cazne’olan.” Koh’shak’s words came out light and even, but the violent twitching of his braintails seemed to belie the benign tone of the reply. “Wedgan’tilles, you and your people are to consider yourselves our guests. We will see to your pleasure, then to our business.”

“You are most kind,” Wedge said, believing Koh’shak to be anything but. I don’t know what he has in mind as our pleasure, but I’m certain his will be business, and I don’t anticipate that being much fun at all.

23

Elbows planted on either side of the dataterminal’s keyboard, Iella leaned forward and rubbed her hands over her face. The jolt of excitement she had expected had come, but it faded far too quickly. Fatigue and an unfocused fear flooded through her in its wake. She could feel herself beginning to slow down, but she refused to surrender.

No, no giving up now. I won this one. She pressed her fingers against her eyelids. I think.

She had begun her quest to locate the Duros captain, Lai Nootka, in a most organized and methodical way. She pulled as much as she could about him from Imperial and Alliance sources and compiled a profile of him based on that information. The most complete Imperial record came from a planet named Garqi where Nootka and his crew had been imprisoned for several months on charges of smuggling for the Alliance. Nootka’s presence on the planet had been well documented, and the Prefect Barris, Nootka’s Imperial adversary, had paid dearly for his brush with the Alliance.

Garqi was where Corran met Nootka.

Alliance files were far more generous in the amount of information they provided. Nootka had indeed moved shipments for the Alliance, but he acted on their behalf only when it suited him. He didn’t appear to have firm ties to the Alliance—not even as firm as those Mirax Terrik had. Nootka’s distance from the Alliance, yet willingness to work with it, certainly put him in a grey area that might have been why Tycho chose to trade with him.

Iella’s inquiries then went off in several directions at the same time. She started a search for any records pertaining to any of the aliases and various ship identification codes she could find for the Star’s Delight. She was less interested in the Alliance material than she was the Imperial records, but she did note that Nootka had not been off on missions for the Alliance at the time Tycho said he met with him on Coruscant.

She also dug deeper into the person who was Lai Nootka himself. The Duros were a race of tall, slender, blue-skinned beings whose facial expressions seemed, to most humans, to be entirely dour. They remained aloof, and it was often said that they lacked noses because they were disinclined to stick their noses into business that did not concern them. Most Duros remained neutral concerning the Rebellion, but a few brave individuals like Lai Nootka dared trade with the Rebels. Only in this did Lai Nootka appear to be different from the majority of his people, which made researching him much easier.

Iella’s greatest triumph was in locating the series of young-adult Duros novels from which Nootka drew inspiration for his various aliases and the new names of his ship. He had mixed and matched first and family names of characters to create aliases for himself, and then for each alias, gave his ship a name that was not associated with the corresponding characters in the books; but everything had indeed come from that pool of names. When none of the aliases she already had for him turned up an Imperial record, she tried inventing additional aliases, using the process she imagined Nootka himself had used to create his new identities. She started pumping these possible aliases through the Imperial computer and hoping for the best.

The computer had reported back a lot of misses, but finally she got a hit. Just four days before Tycho’s meeting with Lai Nootka, a modified CorelliSpace Gymsnor-3 freighter named Novachild entered the Coruscant system. A Duros named Hes Glillto had been listed as the captain of record. No departure for that ship or captain had been recorded, but this didn’t surprise Iella. The one record providing the information about his arrival was in a duty log filed by Lieutenant Virar Needa of Orbital Solar Energy Transfer Satellite 1127 after Coruscant had fallen to the Alliance and after Tycho Celchu had been taken into custody.

Though officially part of their duty, OSETS officers seldom maintained or filed such logs, but from what she could see Needa had been obsessive about it. The log had data concerning incoming and outgoing ships that traveled in-system during Needa’s watches on the station. The lack of a departure record for Novachild could have meant nothing more sinister than that the ship had left while Needa was sleeping, but Iella felt in her gut that was unlikely.

She sat back in her chair and looked at the data on the screen again. The fact that no other Imperial records mentioned the Novachild or Hes Glillto told Iella the records had been deliberately purged. And anyone with the access needed to purge those records could easily manufacture and enter the data that shows Tycho was in Imperial Intelligence’s pay. Or, Tycho himself could have doctored things to make it look as if he had been framed.

Iella slowly shook her head. The information she had was intriguing but essentially useless. She could not prove Lai Nootka and Hes Glillto were the same person. The Novachild’s arrival put it on Coruscant a couple of days before the meeting Corran had witnessed, but she couldn’t exclude the possibility that the ship had departed before the date of the meeting. Unless she could definitively place Nootka on Coruscant at that time, she couldn’t prove Tycho was telling the truth.

And I’m not so sure I want to do that. She sighed. Diric had told her about some of the conversations he’d had with Tycho. He was more convinced than ever of Tycho’s innocence, and his opinion did carry a lot of weight in her mind. Even so, if Tycho had caused Corran’s death, Iella didn’t want him to be able to get away with it. I owe Corran that much.

A familiar hoot brought her back to the present and sparked a smile on her face. “Whistler!”

The small green and white R2 beeped happily. Behind him, tottling along, came Rogue Squadron’s black, clamshell-headed M-3PO unit. “Good morning, Mistress.”

“Morning?” Iella glanced at the Chronographie readout at the top of her datapad’s screen. “I don’t believe it. I’ve been here eight hours. Diric will kill me.”

Emtrey’s head canted to the left. “I would hope not, Mistress Iella. That would be a crime and—”

“I was speaking metaphorically, Emtrey, not literally.” Iella frowned at the droid. “I meant that he would be upset with me.”

“Ah, I see.”

Iella patted Whistler gently on his domed head. “So what are you two doing here in the computer center?”

Whistler warbled nonchalantly.

“We can so tell her, Whistler.” Emtrey’s head righted itself and thrust forward, giving Iella a good view of the gold eyes burning in the hollow of his face. “You do want the truth to triumph, don’t you?”

Iella nodded slowly. “Every day it seems I’m hearing less and less of it. What have you got?”

Emtrey pointed toward her dataterminal’s I/O port. “Whistler, hook in there and show her what we found.”

Whistler squawked rudely—a sound Iella recognized as one she’d often heard the droid use to chasten Corran. Her throat thickened as melancholy tried to suck the life out of her, but she shook her head. She looked up at Emtrey and forced words out past the lump in her throat. “What have you been doing?”

“We have finished the tasks Master Ven set for us before he left with the others, so we started going over transcripts and noticed an underlying assumption everyone seems to have made concerning the conquest of Coruscant.”

“And that is?”

“It is assumed that Ysanne Isard let us have the world because she wanted us to have it, infected as it was with the Krytos virus. The stresses possessing it has put on the Alliance certainly are great, and the assumption is probably valid, but there is no straight-line correlation between her desire to let us have the planet and actions taken in the final days.”

“I’m not certain, at this hour, I follow what you’re saying.” Iella rubbed at her burning eyes with her left hand. “Can you break it down and be more specific?”

“Certainly.” Emtrey glanced down at the R2 unit. “Show her the current disease case grid.”

Whistler chirped happily. The data on the terminal’s screen vanished beneath a graph that plotted incidences of sickness over time in red. A thick blood-red line quickly blossomed into a triangle with a steep hypotenuse, then leveled out into a rectangle that began to flare upward again over the last ten days. The disease had spread quickly at first, but had plateaued—until recently.

Iella nodded. “The plateau indicates the period when the disease stopped spreading because bacta therapy managed to keep it under control.”

“Exactly. The graph of fatalities has a similar profile.”

“I can imagine. This is pretty horrible.”

“True, Mistress. Whistler, now run the plus-six graph.”

“Plus-six?”

“The projected disease report graph we would have seen if the planet had fallen to the Alliance just six days later than it did.” The new graph exploded from the starting point and spiked quickly off the top of the screen. “Projected fatalities in this model are 85 percent of afflicted populations.”

Iella’s jaw dropped open. “Whole alien populations would have been wiped off Coruscant.”

“Exactly. This model, when broken down by species, shows a complete depopulation of Gamorreans, Quarren, Twi’leks, Suilustans, and Trandoshans. The chances of the disease traveling off-world are incalculable, but the potential for galaxy-wide extermination of some species cannot be discounted.”

She blinked and rubbed at her eyes again. “Why are the models so different?”

Silvery highlights flashed from the edges of Emtrey’s black carapace as he raised his hands. “One reason is highly speculative. First, it seems that in boiling off a reservoir to create the storm that brought down the planet’s shields, our efforts destroyed a large amount of the virus present in the planetary water system. Second, and far more germane to our discussion, is the abbreviated incubation period our arrival gave the disease. Had the Alliance arrived just a week later, we would already have had a wave of deaths and a whole new round of infections because of contact with bodily fluids from the victims and the virus in the water system.”

Iella nodded slowly. “If we had been just a week later in liberating the planet, there would have been no way to save it. Non-human members of the Alliance would have fled, dooming their own populations. Without non-human support, the Alliance would have foundered.”

“That seems probable, Mistress.”

“Yeah.” Iella’s brown eyes tightened. “So the reason the Imps stopped our initial effort to shut down the shields was to keep us from taking over the world too soon. For Iceheart it wasn’t a matter of if but when we’d take the world. And since Tycho’s contribution to our efforts were what enabled us to bring the shields down before the time that would have been optimal for Iceheart, we can suppose he wasn’t working for her.”

Emtrey nodded and Whistler trumpeted triumphantly.

“Unless, of course, that’s exactly what Iceheart wants us to think.” Iella shook her head. “Not bad work, you two, but it’s about as helpful as what I found on Lai Nootka. I can put someone who ought to be him flying something that ought to be his ship here about the time Tycho said he met with Nootka, but I can’t prove it. I’d dearly like to believe Tycho is being framed, but I don’t see a good reason why Isard would be devoting so many resources to getting someone who is really not that important.”

Whistler reeled off a series of sharp bleats.

“Yes, I will tell her.” Emtrey looked down at Iella. “Whistler says discrediting Tycho will discredit Rogue Squadron. If Tycho is convicted, Commander Antilles will be distracted. Tycho’s conviction could also cause an inquiry into the events of the first assault on Borleias. He could be blamed for the disaster, absolving the Bothan General of his mistake, and that might make the Bothans feel they can grab for more power.”

“I can follow that, but it’s too risky a return for Iceheart to take an interest in it. There has to be something else.”

“There is, Mistress Wessiri.” Emtrey lowered his hands to near his hips. “Whistler says Ysanne Isard would do it because she’s cruel.”

That idea landed in Iella’s gut and sat there like one of Hoth’s frozen continents. “You know, Whistler, you may have something there. Toying with an innocent man like that is exactly what she would do, especially when it meant that the Alliance was dancing to a tune she called. Of course, that doesn’t prove Tycho is innocent, but thwarting her is enough to make sure I keep digging until I learn what’s really going on, one way or another.”

24

Corran scratched at his right ear, flaking off some crusted flesh. “Yeah, I know it sounds as if I got hit harder than I did, but I’m convinced I’m right.” He looked at Jan. “I think it’s a good shot at getting out of here, or at least one that has to be explored.”

“I agree.”

Urlor shook his head. “Too far-fetched.”

“Which is why I want to test my theory when we’re down in the mine.”

Urlor’s massive left hand stroked his beard. “Will you give this foolishness up if your experiment fails?”

Jan raised an eyebrow and glanced at Corran. “Will you?”

Corran hesitated before answering. Though he had not blacked out, the Emdee droid had kept him in the infirmary overnight for observation—at least Corran assumed it was overnight, having had no way of judging the passage of time. Corran had gone over in his mind what had happened and came to two conclusions. The first, which no one doubted, was that the guard had singled him out because someone had mentioned his desire to escape. Though Corran hadn’t mentioned it to anyone other than Jan and Urlor, the questions he had asked of the inmates would have been enough to alert even the most dense of individuals to his plans.

The second thing he had concluded, and had spent the last week attempting to convince Jan and Urlor was true, was that they were all upside down. The technology for creating and negating artificial and real gravity was ancient. Ships of all sizes and stripes could generate their own gravity. Reversing the gravity in the complex would lead any escapees to assume that by going up they’d be getting closer to the surface and freedom when, in fact, they’d be getting farther from it and killing their chances of escape. If Corran had heard troopers marching past, any escapee would run full on into at least one level occupied by soldiers. Even if he didn’t get captured, by the time he realized what had happened, he’d have a long way to go just to get back to the prison level, much less go beyond it to freedom.

He shook his head. “No, I’ll still go even if my experiment is unsuccessful. I have no doubt that I’m right—the experiment is just to convince you I’m right.”

Urlor folded his arms across his chest. “Why do you care if we believe you?”

“If I’m right, you can come with me.”

The big man held up his ruined right hand. “You’d find a cripple of little use to you. I’ve learned to become patient. I’ll wait for you to come back.”

“You’re wrong there.” Corran looked at Jan. “How about you?”

The older man sat silently on his billet for a moment, then shook his head rather firmly. “Forgive me. There is no way I can go, but I allowed myself to indulge in the fantasy.”

“You’re strong. You could make it.”

“I appreciate your assessment of me, Corran, but it is overgenerous.” Jan shrugged. “Besides, just as a desire to keep me safe prevents our people from harming our Imperial compatriots, so a desire to keep our people safe prevents me from joining you. If I escape, Iceheart will kill the lot of us. I’ll remain here and keep them safe until you can bring help back.”

Corran frowned. “So neither of you will go?”

“No.” Urlor shook his head. “You’ll be on your own.” Unspoken in that sentence was the conviction there was no way to guarantee that the Imps didn’t have spies among the Alliance prisoners.

And my traveling alone means that if I’m a spy, I won’t be taking anyone else with me. “Don’t worry, I’m no Tycho Celchu, nor will I let myself be betrayed by one another time.”

Jan’s eyes narrowed. “Tycho Celchu? He was here once for several months. They called him out one day and he vanished. Was he a traitor?”

“He’s the reason I’m here. He gave the Imps override code data on a Headhunter I was flying. They took control and I’m here.” Corran forced his balled fists open. “Isard told me Tycho is on trial for my murder, so justice does prevail.”

Urlor scratched at his jaw. “Celchu was a sleeper, wasn’t he?”

As much as Corran hated Tycho, that description sent a shiver down his spine. Within the prisoner population were individuals who were suffering severe shock from their interrogations. Most were ambulatory, but not much beyond that. In the brief time he’d been in the general population he’d seen one or two of them recover to a certain extent, but their attention spans and short-term memory were short and shot respectively. They did seem to get better, but only gradually.

“I believed he was, but that must have been an act. If you think about it, being a sleeper meant many people would speak in front of him. When he recovered he’d have folks trying to help him with his memory.” Jan shook his head. “When he got to the point where he should have been better, they pulled him out and debriefed him. He had me fooled.”

“He had a lot of people fooled, Wedge Antilles included.” Corran nodded firmly. “He’s not fooling folks any longer, though. Just goes to show the Empire doesn’t win them all, not by a long shot. And if my experiment works, we’ll give them one more loss to account for.”

In some ways Wedge was surprised by his reaction to the display of hospitality Koh’shak put on for his benefit. He found it both barbaric and somehow naive. An area had been cleared near the Alliance ships. Opalescent glow-stones—technological lamps designed to look like natural stones—had been brought out from homes and arranged in a circular pattern. While red and gold highlights played through them, the illumination they produced was coldly blue and white. It made the humans into pale ghosts and rendered the Twi’leks as cyanotic ice creatures.

Rogue Squadron and the ships’ crews had been invited to the celebration. The visitors arrayed themselves in a circle that put them five meters from the outer edge of the glow-stone circle. Twi’leks from various clans interspersed themselves among the visitors, with one who spoke passable Basic acting as interpreter for two or three others. Wedge harbored no illusions about what was going on—his people were being interrogated, albeit politely. Their stories would be compared at Twi’lek councils, and decisions would be made about the future of Ryloth based on what the Twi’leks learned.

Servants passed around the outside of the circle, offering the visitors food, drink, and gifts. The musicians who had been assembled opposite him played a variety of string and wind instruments producing notes that ran up and down on a thirteen-note scale. Wedge found the music only marginally painful, while Liat Tsayv and Aril Nunb seemed to be moving in sync with notes he couldn’t hear. Out behind the cold spectral light cast by the glowstones, life continued as usual in Kala’uun. People walking by gawked for a moment or two, and many braintails—or lekku, as Wedge had learned they were called in Rylothean—twitched with silent messages about the assembly.

Wedge didn’t really have eyes for much of what was happening outside the visitors’ circle, primarily because of what was going on at its heart. A lithe, petite Twi’lek female dancer spun and leaped through the air. Her tattooed lekku lashed out like whips, then whirled down and enfolded her like ivy. The tails of the loincloth she wore similarly clung to her body, sliding away as she whirled, to reveal silken flesh over taut and powerful muscles. She gave Wedge a pixie-wink, prompting a smile from him, then she twirled off to charm another of the visitors.

Cazne’olan draped a braintail over Wedge’s shoulder. “Sienn’rha is the only positive thing Bib Fortuna ever accomplished. He stole her from her darkside family and meant to present her to Jabba the Hutt. In preparation for that he had her taught to dance as well as she does. She was saved from Jabba by your Lukesky’walker. She always dances wonderfully, but this night she approaches perfection because of the gratitude she feels to the Alliance.”

“She is spectacular.” Wedge could not deny that he found her dance exciting and even stimulating, but that bothered him just a bit. By seeing her as being so seductive and beautiful, and reacting to her on a physiological level, it was very easy for him to forget she was a living, thinking creature. That made it deceptively simple for him to see how the Imperials found objectifying and dehumanizing other races justifiable—if they seem like animals or appeal to you on an animal level, clearly they are animals.

Cazne’olan tapped him on the shoulder. “It would be possible for a private dance to be arranged for you, my friend.”

“I appreciate the offer, but …”

Cazne’olan’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Sienn’rha asked me to convey that suggestion to you, on her behalf. She is well aware of your history and considers you quite a hero.”

“I see.” Wedge considered for a moment all the offer implied and felt sorely tempted. Sienn’rha’s sensuous beauty, from her full lips and dark eyes to her fluid and athletic grace, hinted at pleasures he’d not had time to enjoy for … If I can’t remember off the top of my head, it’s been well and nigh too long. But is here and now, with Sienn’rha, the time to change that?

Wedge smiled at Cazne’olan. “Convey to her my profound appreciation of her offer, and my sincere regret at having to refuse. Ultimately I am here as a representative of the Alliance. Perhaps some time when I am merely here as myself.…”

“She will understand, I think.”

“I hope so.” Wedge frowned for a moment. “I have a question to ask you about something you said a moment ago.”

A lek twitched. “Ask.”

“You pronounce my name as Wedgan’tilles and Nawara Ven’s name as Nawar’aven, running them together. When you mentioned Bib Fortuna, you distinctly broke his name up. Why?”

Cazne’olan nodded slowly and let his lekku slip from Wedge’s shoulder. “Bib Fortuna was a member of the Una clan. Because of his predations on his own people, he was cast out. The joining of personal and clan names is, among us, a sign of belonging. Breaking the names apart is a statement of the distance between that person and his people.”

Wedge nodded. “How do you decide what a name will become? Nawara is a member of the Ven clan, but you make his surname into ‘aven’ when you pronounce it.”

“And I know your surname is Antilles, but I break it in two.”

“Exactly.”

The Twi’lek laughed lightly. “Naming conventions are determined by a venerable set of rules—superstitions almost—that transform names into auspicious omens. Ven, for example, translates into Basic as ‘silver.’ Nawara would translate roughly as ‘speaker’ or ‘tongue,’ either of which suggests a gifted negotiator. However, if his name were pronounced as Nawara’ven, because of peculiarities in Rylothean, his name would mean ‘tarnished silver.’ By changing the pronunciation slightly we retain the correct meaning.”

“I’m impressed.” Wedge smiled openly. “So, what does my name mean, the way you pronounce it?”

The Twi’lek shrugged. “There is no good, direct translation of foreign names, but Wedgan’tilles comes close to ‘slayer of stars.’ ”

“I like it.”

“It is much to be preferred to the alternative suggested by the Basic pronunciation.”

“Which is?”

“Difficult to translate.”

“Give me a rough go at it.”

Cazne’olan’s braintails twitched sharply. “Being generous, it is ‘One so foul he could induce vomiting in a rancor.’ ”

Wedge shuddered. “I prefer your pronunciation, I think.”

A gentle vibration running through the ground forestalled further lessons about Twi’lek culture. He assumed the vibration was produced by the raising of the portcullis, so he looked off toward where the tunnel entered the Kala’uun cavern. Boiling up out of it, in three pairs, came a half-dozen Uglies. The X-wing fighter’s distinctive S-foils jutted out from the sides of a TIE fighter’s ball cockpit. The stabilizers had been fastened to a collar that surrounded the cockpit, and as the fighters maneuvered and cavorted in the air above the assembly, he saw the S-foils rotating around the cockpit, making the design similar in principle to that of the B-wing fighter in service with the Alliance.

Never seen those before. Must be a homegrown Twi’lek design. The S-foils collapsed into a single wing on either side of the cockpit, then landing skids extended from the bottom of the collar and the peculiar ships descended. They landed in a rough semicircle facing the Alliance ships, easily menacing all the visitors.

One of the cockpit hatches opened and a huge Twi’lek pilot emerged from the top of the sphere. He wore a black Imperial flight suit, but a scarlet loincloth and cloak had been added to make it seem closer to native warrior attire. His lekku had been tattooed with a variety of sinuous and serpentine shapes which Wedge supposed were Rylothean glyphs, but he could not even guess at their significance.

As the warrior strode over to the circle, the music died and the servants shrank back. Sienn’rha stopped her dance and retreated into Wedge’s shadow. Wedge stood, with Cazne’olan on one side and the great, lumpish Koh’shak on the other. As the warrior came closer, Wedge saw he was positively huge, easily forty centimeters taller than Wedge and massing at least another thirty kilos. How he actually managed to jam himself into the TIE cockpit Wedge couldn’t imagine.

The warrior stepped through a quickly widening gap in the circle, then stopped five meters from Wedge. “I am Tal’dira, first among Twi’lek warriors. You, the lekku-less who wears the clothes of a warrior, you are Wedge Antilles?”

Wedge did his best to ignore the faint retching sound Tal’dira made in the back of his throat as he pronounced Wedge’s name. “I am Wedgan’tilles.”

The Twi’lek warrior raised an eyebrow at Wedge’s reply. “And you have come here for ryll?”

“I have come for ryll kor.” Wedge’s reply won a gasp from Koh’shak and a lekku-twitching from Tal’dira. “Is there a problem?”

“None, Wedge Antilles, if—” Tal’dira drew a pair of slender vibroblades from sheaths hidden in his bandoleer, “—you are willing to fight to prove you are a warrior. A warrior should deal with warriors. Win the fight and the kor shall be yours.”

Wedge’s stomach tightened and his heart began to pound. As a pilot, in his X-wing, he had no doubt at all that he’d be able to vape Tal’dira and his X-ball. In a vibrobkde fight, though … As much as he would have preferred to avoid fighting, he knew he really didn’t have any choice in the matter. The kor was vital to stopping the Krytos virus. If I have to carve this Twi’lek behemoth up to get it, I will.

He held out his right hand. “I will fight.”

Tal’dira tossed him one of the vibroblades. “A warrior should deal with a warrior.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

The warrior’s lekku writhed up and down once affirmatively. “Good.”

Wedge flicked the blade on with his thumb. “Come on. I’m ready.”

“You are, but your opponent isn’t.” Tal’dira looked around, studying each of the Rogues. They all wore Twi’lek warrior garb, and the disdainful expression on Tal’dira’s face suggested he found something wrong with that. He openly appraised them, looking each of them up and down before passing from one to the next.

Will he pick one of them as my foe? Wedge felt his stomach begin to implode. I know Twi’leks can be cruel. Is he going to force me to slay one of my own people because of some affront we’ve given him?

Tal’dira looked back at Wedge. “I have made my choice. Prepare yourself.”

Wedge nodded. “I’m still ready.”

“Good.” The warrior casually tossed the vibroblade to Koh’shak. “I choose you.”

The starport master’s eyes ballooned as he bounced the inert vibroblade from hand to hand. It slipped from his grasp and ricocheted off his stomach before tumbling toward the ground. The obese Twi’lek began to bend over, thick fingers wriggling slothfully in a vain attempt to catch the blade before it could hit the ground.

In one flowing motion that nearly shamed Sienn’rha’s performance, Tal’dira swooped forward and plucked the blade out of the air. It hummed to life and with one deft cut, split the brooch holding Koh’shak’s cloak closed. The garment puddled around Koh’shak’s feet and a stiff-arm blow to the chest dropped the starport master on top of it.

Tal’dira grabbed one of Koh’shak’s braintails and yanked none too gently on it, then pressed the vibroblade to the Twi’lek’s throat. “Warriors should deal with warriors, Kohsh’ak! Wedgan’tilles came to us as a warrior, leading a band of warriors, including our own Nawar’aven. You knew of this mission to Ryloth but hid that knowledge from me so you could profit from the gifts our visitors would bring. That is fitting conduct for a merchant, but not a warrior, Kohsh’ak!”

Tal’dira’s delivered the altered pronunciation of the starport master’s name harshly, filling it with scorn. Wedge had no idea of what it meant, but he was glad Tal’dira’s anger wasn’t directed at him.

Tal’dira released Koh’shak and turned the vibroblade off. He resheathed it, then turned toward Wedge. “The blade you possess is my gift to you, Wedgan’tilles. This kor you want will be delivered to you, a gift between warriors. It is happily given in the hopes it can heal those who have been touched by treachery and cowardly action. All I ask in return is your forgiveness for this breach of etiquette.”

Wedge turned his vibroblade off and tucked it into the top of his right boot. “A warrior does not hold another warrior responsible for the actions of a merchant.” He turned and pointed to the Alliance ships with his left hand. “On those ships I have gifts from my warriors to yours, offered in spirit shared by warriors.”

Tal’dira clapped Wedge on both shoulders. “There is much honor in you, Wedgan’tilles, and in your Rogue Squadron. I will be most pleased if, while the merchants scurry about unloading and loading our ships, you will continue to join me in Twi’janii.” Looping a lekku over Wedge’s shoulders, Tal’dira pointed at the musicians. “Play for our guests, play the best you ever have. You are playing for the pleasure of warriors now, and nothing less than the best will do.”

25

Corran’s mouth felt like a desert, and it wasn’t just because of the dust created by working the grater. He’d been planning his little experiment so he could test his theory about the prison’s orientation for the last two days, and was fairly certain that what he had in mind would work perfectly. Despite his confidence, he’d hesitated, telling himself he’d wait for the rock that would work the best.

He’d found the rock on the grate. It had something of a clamshell shape—momentarily reminding him of Emtrey’s head. It fit easily in his palm and would fly well. It had enough mass to it to make his throw possible, and yet had a narrow enough cross-section and dark enough color that it wouldn’t easily be seen in the cavern.

His mouth was dry because the fear coiling in his belly was sucking all the moisture out of him. He couldn’t think of what he had to be afraid of. His life couldn’t get any worse. He was locked in the highest security prison the Empire had ever known. Most people had never even heard of Lusankya, and most of those who had thought it was a rumor. Even during his time on the Corellian Security Force he’d only heard passing references to it. Beyond believing that it existed and was not a good place, he’d known nothing about it.

Corran caught other prisoners in his work group looking at him, and in their expectant glances he found the source of his fear. I’m afraid of being wrong and disappointing them. Only Jan and Urlor knew what he intended to do, but a number of other prisoners had been recruited to stage the distraction that would allow him to act. They had figured out he was going to be doing something related to escape, but they had no clue what it was, nor did they expect to be told. Despite their ignorance, they were all enthused with the idea of helping him out. Hopes they had long since abandoned were being revived by his escape attempt.

Corran closed his fist around the stone. This had better work.

He looked over at Urlor who, in turn, nodded to two men working with the smaller sledgehammers. One of them brought his sledgehammer down on the ground hard, then loosened his grip so the tool cartwheeled away. The handle grazed another man, who screamed, clutched at his shin, and started hopping around madly, all the while swearing he was going to kill the clumsy oaf who let go of the hammer. The workers backed away from the careening hammer and the two men, then started shouting encouragement to them in hopes of goading them into a fight.

Corran retreated along with the others, then stopped when Urlor and a knot of three prisoners screened him from the guards. He looked at the rock, gave it a kiss, then hauled back and hurled it up toward the apex of the ceiling, thirty meters away. Come on, come on!

Corran’s theory had been simple. If the prison was oriented upside-down, then gravity generators would be operating beneath his feet to keep him in place. The generators were clearly strong enough at this surface to hold him to it, but the farther he got from them, the weaker their grasp would be. If, in fact, the cavern’s ceiling was actually closer to the core of the planet than where he stood, the planet’s natural gravity would be strong there.

If that were true, if his theory was correct, the rock would hit and hold.

Down on his level the guards began shooting into the crowd. Stunned prisoners began to collapse in waves.

Up above, the stone clipped a stalactite. Deflected, it continued to travel upward, but now at an angle. As Corran watched, the stone seemed to slow and begin to stall.

All around him blue stun-bolts dropped prisoners. Two of the men screening him went down. Then Urlor twitched and fell to the ground. Down to the ground.

The stone fell up!

The stone rattled up in between two stalactites and nestled there safely. As it settled into place, two tiny points on it twinkled, and Corran imagined it was Emtrey’s head and he’d just gotten confirmation of his theory from the droid. I was right! There is a way to escape!

The stun-bolt’s blue agony played over Corran. Once again every nerve in his body fired, every muscle tightened, and every joint creaked. Wracked by pain, he collapsed with the others and rolled onto his back. The world swam in and out of focus and he knew, this time, he was going to black out. That should have filled him with dread, but when he could see clearly, Emtrey looked at him from afar.

And looking at the stone, he knew he was looking down, which meant things for him were definitely looking up.

Evir Derricote, slaving with the other Imperial prisoners at the far end of the cavern, turned to look at the commotion the Rebels were causing, but he did not hurry to do so. It would have been beneath him to let them think their squabbles were of interest to him. Affecting an air of nonchalance, he turned and watched them disinterestedly.

Then he saw Corran Horn.

The diminutive Rebel had irked him the first time they had met, then had compounded his error by gloating over his part in taking Borleias. As the Rebel reared back to throw something, Derricote almost called out a warning to the guards, but something forestalled him. He watched Corran make his throw and saw a small missile shoot up toward the ceiling.

Derricote lost it in the shadows above and began to wonder what Horn was up to. The rock he had thrown clearly was insufficient to dislodge a stalactite or trigger a collapse of the ceiling. As unwise and annoying as Horn had appeared to be, Derricote never would have classed him as suicidal, yet if he was successful in an effort to dislodge a big piece of rock, it would drop straight down on him and the carpet of stunned prisoners covering the cavern floor.

The Imperial General saw Horn go down. The little fool will likely be hit by the rock he threw. Serves him right. Derricote almost turned away, but stopped to see if his prediction would come true.

It did not.

He did not see the stone fall back to the earth.

This started General Derricote thinking. He prided himself on being intelligent. He had, after all, created the Krytos virus. It was not his fault that Ysanne Isard’s expectations for it were unrealistic. He had done his best, but that was not good enough for her, so he ended up in her private prison, subject to her whims. The whims that imprisoned me can also free me.

Derricote could think of dozens of explanations for why the stone did not fall back to the cavern floor. The simplest explanation was that it had become lodged between stalactites. However, for that to happen, Horn would have to be incredibly lucky. He doubted the prisoners would have staged the sort of charade that shielded Horn’s effort just so he could test his luck in a place that, ultimately, housed those who were utterly without luck.

One by one Derricote examined and discarded explanations for the rock remaining on the ceiling and, at last, hit upon the only one that seemed to make sense. Iceheart has us standing on our heads. Any fool who tries to escape to the surface will just go deeper and deeper into her prison. Horn discovered this fact, tested his hypothesis, and has his result. And, just as obviously, he means to use it to escape.

The general slowly smiled. He could easily let the guards know Horn was planning to escape, but doing that would make him nothing more than an informant. Informing was weak and would not be rewarded by Ysanne Isard. She wanted action. She wanted him to do something to atone for his failure. To please her he would have to act, because taking action was strong.

This Horn will bear watching. When he moves, I will be ready. Derricote tugged at the abbreviated sleeves of his tunic. He will become the source of my redemption and I will once again know the glory of service to the Empire!

26

“Thank you, Admiral, I do have questions for Tsillin Wel.” Nawara Ven sorted through his set of datacards, then fed one into his datapad. On the long journey to and from Ryloth he’d read Wei’s depositions and had formulated a series of questions to ask her. There really was little to dispute in what she had to say, but he needed to make certain the Tribunal understood the limitations of what she had testified to.

In direct testimony the Quarren had seemed a bit testy, and Admiral Ackbar had admonished her to be cooperative. If needed, Nawara knew he could exacerbate that natural Mon Calamari-Quarren enmity and completely discredit her testimony in Ackbar’s eyes. Generals Salm and Madine, on the other hand, might react negatively if he provoked her.

Combat piloting is often much easier than this.

Nawara looped a lekku over his shoulder. “Agent Wei, according to your earlier testimony, you’ve been auditing Imperial expenditures for years, is that correct?”

The Quarren’s facial tentacles quivered. “I have said this, yes.”

“And the purpose for studying these expenditures was to estimate how much money the Empire was pouring into anti-Rebel activities, correct?”

“Yes.”

“This means you were looking for evidence of expenses that were hidden—black projects, so to speak, that did not appear on any official Imperial budget.”

The Quarren nodded. “Budgets for such things are regularly hidden within other programs. A terra-forming budget might, for example, have miscellaneous expenses linked to it that cover the cost of military development projects. Prior to our taking of Coruscant I would compare known expenses with the budget expenditures and create a picture of what the Empire was spending.”

“I see.” Nawara glanced down at his datapad. “Now, you have told the court that my client, Captain Celchu, was paid approximately fifteen million credits over the past two years. This would be the amount of time that has passed since his escape from Imperial custody. Is that a fair summarization of your testimony?”

The Quarren’s turquoise eyes glinted wetly. “I indicated that fifteen million credits is all we have been able to uncover. The money is located in six different accounts. There could be more.”

“But you are uncertain of that?”

“Counselor Ven, since the occupation of Coruscant I have been working night and day analyzing Intelligence accounts. There are literally millions of accounts. I feel fortunate to have uncovered the six we have found so far.”

Nawara pressed his hands together. “But these six accounts are not the only accounts you have looked at, correa?”

“No, I have reviewed thousands of accounts myself, and my staff has reviewed nearly a million.”

“So the accounts you have linked with my client are not remarkable?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“Allow me to rephrase it.” Nawara smiled. “How many Imperial agents have you found that have funds in numerous accounts?”

A translucent membrane nictitated up over Tsillin Wei’s eyes. “A few.”

“A few what? Dozen? Hundred? Thousand?”

“Dozen.”

“And how many of those individuals have six accounts?”

The Quarren shifted slightly in the witness chair. “So far, none, but we have a great deal of work to do yet.”

Nawara nodded. “Now, discovering the links between these files and an agent is not easy work, is it?”

“No.”

“Is one of the difficulties that Imperial Intelligence took pains to make it difficult to locate the identities of their agents?”

“Yes.”

“Do they encrypt data?”

“Yes.”

“Do the encryption routines vary in difficulty depending upon the value of the agent?”

“Objection.” Halla Ettyk stood. “Calls for speculation on the part of the witness.”

“Admiral, Agent Wel is overseeing an Intelligence division that has been at war with Imperial Intelligence for years. Clearly she would be familiar with the degree of security the Empire used to protect its assets and hide information.”

“Overruled. You may answer the question as best you are able.”

Wei’s facial tentacles rolled up and slowly unfurled. “Encryption does become more difficult the more valuable the asset. The methods used to hide Captain Celchu’s identity show him to be of middling importance to the Empire.”

Nawara smiled. “So you have uncovered other agents on the same level of importance as him?”

“Dozens. Hundreds.”

“And each of them had fifteen million credits paid out?”

The Quarren hesitated. “No.”

“No? How much were they paid?”

“Thousands.”

“So you’re saying that while Captain Celchu was protected like an agent of little value, he was paid out of all proportion with his apparent worth to Imperial Intelligence?”

“That is one conclusion that could be drawn from the accounts.”

“Is the other perhaps that he was set up to look like a valuable agent as part of a frame-up?”

“Objection. Speculation.”

“Withdrawn.” Nawara nodded to Commander Ettyk. “Agent Wei, how much money has Captain Celchu taken from his accounts?”

Wei’s tentacles writhed. “None.”

“To your knowledge, is there any evidence that Tycho Celchu knew the accounts existed?”

“No.”

Perfect. “So these accounts could have been set up and made to look as if Captain Celchu was an Imperial agent without his knowledge, specifically to discredit him in a trial like this?”

“Yes.”

Nawara let his smile blossom fully. “And in your experience, has Imperial Intelligence ever set up such accounts to attempt to make the Alliance think someone is an agent in their employ?”

The Quarren glanced down at her hands. “Yes. At least once.”

“And who was that?”

Tsillin Wei glanced up at the bearded man sitting at Admiral Ackbar’s left. “General Crix Madine. I found the accounts and also proved they were false.”

“And you have diligently applied yourself to proving the accounts you have linked to Captain Celchu are false as well, correct?”

The Quarren shook her head. “That is not part of my job.”

“So you just manufacture evidence for the state. Truth means nothing.”

“Objection.”

“Sustained.” Admiral Ackbar looked down at Nawara. “You have made your point, Counselor Ven. There is nothing more you can gain on this line.”

“Yes, Admiral.” Nawara returned to the defense bench. “No further questions.”

In the holding cell, Nawara rubbed some warmth back into the tip of his right lekku. “No, you’re right, Captain, we did score points today. I think General Madine will question whether or not you’re being paid off.”

Tycho smiled over at him. “That’s good, yes?”

“In a way, yes.”

“What do you mean?”

Nawara shrugged. “The idea that you’re an agent who was being paid by the Empire isn’t supposed to impress the Tribunal—it’s meant to impress the public. It’s only one of three motives that would explain your actions. It does provide the prosecution with an embarrassment of riches. Greed is the easiest thing for most folks to understand, especially when you’re talking that much in the way of credits.”

Tycho’s binders clicked against the edge of the table as he slid his hands from it and held them against his chest. “Corran’s threatening to expose me is another motive. What’s the last one?”

“Lusankya.” Nawara opened his hands. “The Tribunal, at this point, has a choice. If they assume you betrayed the squadron because you were being paid or because you feared what Corran would uncover, they can convict you of murder and treason without any problem. Everyone will understand what happened and there won’t be any messy details to deal with. If they decide, on the other hand, that you did what you did because of Imperial brainwashing at Lusankya, then they would be bound to find you innocent by reason of diminished sapience. In that case you’d be placed into a hospital and treated for your affliction, to be released whenever you are cured.”

Tycho stared down at his hands. “Which could be never.”

“That’s your nightmare. Their nightmare is that some Emdee-oh droid with a Cognitive Matrix analysis package will unscramble your brain and declare you cured in a week or two. They’d have to let you go free, which would make the justice system seem impotent.”

Tycho’s head came up and the bright blue of his eyes surprised Nawara with its intensity. “What you’re saying is that the sabacc cards have been programmed against me.”

“It’s worse than you know.” Nawara jerked a thumb toward the exterior wall. “The day we got back from Ryloth, the Palpatine Counter-insurgency Front blew up a school. It’s been thirty-six hours and they’ve still not found all the bodies. Some were vaporized in the explosion, unrecoverable—just like Corran’s. Both humans and non died in the blast. Someone claiming responsibility said that such acts of terror would continue until the state’s sham trial of you, an obviously innocent man, was ended and you were set free.”

“What?” Tycho shook his head. “In court you showed that the Imps had planted the information to frame me, and now you’re telling me that they’re saying I’ve been framed? What’s going on?”

“Your trial is divisive. The government is using it to show they, unlike the Empire, can handle things in an open manner. Imperial agents, on the other hand, are making it look like evidence is being trumped up against you. It makes humans think you’re a sacrifice being offered up to keep the Alliance together. The non-human population already thinks you’re guilty and somehow responsible for the Krytos virus—it doesn’t matter that you had nothing to do with it.”

Tycho leaned forward and slapped his hands on the table. “Nawara, you have to let me testify on my own behalf. I can convince them I’m innocent.”

The Twi’lek sat back. “You’ve been talking to Diric again, haven’t you?”

Tycho nodded. “He visited me while you and Wedge were gone. Aside from Winter, he was my only visitor. He says that talking to me has him convinced I’m innocent.”

“That’s great for him, but he was also an Imperial prisoner, so he feels a sense of kinship to you. Most other folks don’t have that bond.”

Tycho raised an eyebrow. “You endured Imperial discrimination against non-humans. Can you really say you weren’t an Imperial prisoner?”

Nawara hesitated for a moment. The greatest thing for him about joining the Rebellion had been having the weight of oppression lifted from him. As a non-human he was treated as inconsequential by the Empire. Imperial magistrates would ignore him and his objections, or they would overrule him and threaten him with contempt for wasting the court’s time by bringing up points of law. He knew that at any moment he could be gathered up in some Intelligence sweep and incarcerated for whatever was left of his life, and no one would know.

Fear was once a constant factor in his life. Then he joined the Alliance, and while he didn’t fully leave fear behind, he was given control over it. Now, with the Empire in retreat, that same control had been extended to others. Even the most despised individuals in the Empire now knew freedom.

And still have a taste for revenge against their oppressors.

“Yes, I could say I, too, was their prisoner, Captain, but that doesn’t matter. The fact is that if you testify, Commander Ettyk will destroy you on cross-examination.”

“How?”

“She’ll go back through your life and make it into a mockery of what it’s been.” Nawara’s eyes narrowed to bloody crescents. “She’ll point out that you volunteered for the Imperial Academy and were a successful TIE fighter pilot. She’ll suggest you were so callous that you were speaking to your family and fiancée via the holonet at the precise moment Alderaan was destroyed—all because you had learned, being as you have always been an Imperial Intelligence agent, when your world’s destruction would take place.”

Tycho’s jaw shot open. “But that’s preposterous.”

“You and I know it’s preposterous, but there are countless people out there who would believe it. You’ve been to the Galactic Museum. You’ve seen how the exhibits about the Emperor twist facts into lies. It’s no surprise that such twisting can take place. The fact is, though, that people believed the Emperor died at Endor destroying a Rebel Death Star. It will be very easy for those same people to believe the worst of you.”

Nawara hooked a taloned hand over Tycho’s binders. “You don’t remember your time at Lusankya, but she will make your amnesia sound like lying. And she’s good, very good. She’ll have you saying things you don’t want to say. Damage will be done and we won’t be able to recover from it.”

Tycho slumped back in his chair, dragging his hands into his lap. “We’ve really got nothing to prove my innocence, do we?”

“We have testimony about all you have done that is positive and good. Whistler and Emtrey came up with an analysis of the Krytos virus infection pattern and I can get experts up to show how your actions actually made it much milder than it could have been. And we’re still looking for Lai Nootka.”

“So you’re telling me that we need a miracle?”

Nawara nodded. “I’d take one if you had one to offer, but then again, I wouldn’t worry too much. Winning this trial is merely impossible, and we’re Rogues. We’ll get it done.”

Tycho sighed. “Or die trying.”

27

“Ah, Commander Antilles, welcome.” Admiral Ackbar stood as the man entered his office. “I apologize for the short notice, but time rolls away as the tide.”

“I came as quickly as I could, Admiral.” Wedge gave the Mon Calamari a friendly smile. “It must be important.”

“It is. You’re the first person outside the Provisional Council to hear this.” The Mon Calamari opened his mouth in the closest approximation of a human smile he could muster, hoping to put his visitor at ease. “The Xucphra faction on Thyferra has agreed to send us a substantial shipment of bacta. Your squadron—all of whom were called back to duty and are currently under a communications quarantine—will be sent out to meet the freighter convoy and bring it back here to Coruscant.”

“I see.” Wedge’s face took on a suitably grim expression. “Aren’t we a bit small to be protecting a convoy of, what, thirty ships?”

“Twenty, actually. Most are small ships, like the Skate. We have a few larger ones going, but our hauling resources have never been abundant.” Ackbar’s chin fringes wriggled. “We are having to rely on stealth and secrecy to safeguard the shipment—and not by my choice. The whole matter of negotiations about all this bacta have become very delicate.”

Wedge raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

“We never expected your visit to Ryloth would be kept secret, but the news of it traveled more quickly than we expected. Apparently the Thyferrans know we obtained ryll from Ryloth. Some of the Thyferrans wanted to cut us off from bacta completely, pointing to your trip as an attempt to circumvent them. Cooler heads prevailed, so we’re getting this shipment, but it is barely sufficient to keep people alive. If the basic combinations with ryll work, we might double the effective strength of what we have, but that’s still not going to be enough to effect a final cure of the Krytos virus.”

Ackbar sighed as weariness washed over him. “While Xucphra officials are willing to send us the bacta to keep us paying them credits, they are very wary of advertising the fact that they’re working with the New Republic. They only benefit from all this if they are able to sell bacta to all sides in the conflict. They want this convoy to appear to be a private enterprise—it was suggested that Mirax Terrik could take credit for it and profit from it. They will get the ships to our rendezvous point, then we take over. You’ll ostensibly be on a training mission and offer the escort as a courtesy.”

Wedge frowned. “Rogue Squadron is a high-profile outfit. We’re bound to be watched. Why use us?”

“You have a Thyferran.” The Mon Calamari’s lip fringes twitched. “It has been suggested that having Erisi and Rogue Squadron present to guide the ships back here to Coruscant would prove to the Thyferrans that we appreciate the risks they are taking.”

“Do I sense Borsk Fey’lya’s furred hand in this?”

“You do, though he was not alone in it.” The Council meeting where this plan was floated seemed more difficult than any of the battles I’ve fought against the Empire. “The possibility of having our bacta supply cut off is causing people to take whatever steps they can think of to appease the Thyferrans.”

Wedge’s eyes narrowed. “The big problem we have with the Thyferrans is that they could cut us off at any time.”

“They have the monopoly, so they can do that. The fact that ryll kor might make bacta more effective against this virus does not diminish our need for bacta. Before the Empire aided the Xucphra and Zaltin corporations in monopolizing the bacta trade, we might have been able to find other sources of bacta. Now we have no choice but to trade with them. While we could manufacture our own bacta, the startup costs for a facility that could produce what we need would—well, I can’t say it would bankrupt us, because the New Republic may already be over that line. And you didn’t hear that from me.”

“No, sir.”

“So, Commander, you see our dilemma. We are dependent on the bacta cartel, yet our supply is shaky. Steps taken to secure our supply could anger the cartel—if those steps do not include them—or could anger our enemies enough that they strike at the cartel itself. Warlord Zsinj’s Iron Fist could put a chill on convoy traffic and cause us significant trouble.”

“But they would stop shipping him bacta, too.”

“True, but his need for it is not as great or urgent as ours is.”

“Point taken.”

Ackbar shrugged. “As smugglers put it, we have all our spice in one freighter, and other solutions to the problem seem impossible. I know Rogue Squadron prides itself on doing the impossible, but I think this bacta problem is beyond even your capabilities.”

“Perhaps, sir.”

Wedge’s curious reply seemed tinged with deception, but Ackbar found it hard to believe Wedge would be involved in plotting. He has been spending a certain amount of time in General Cracken’s company, and Cracken’s reportage to the Provisional Council has been handled by subordinates of late, but to combine those things into a plot would be leaping to a conclusion of Borskean proportions. Even so, it does seem rather plausible. “Do I take it you disagree with my assessment, Commander?”

Wedge’s shoulders shifted uneasily. “I would have to say I think you’re probably correct, sir, but Rogue Squadron has done many things in the past that were thought impossible.”

Ackbar nodded. “You realize that anything you might do in this regard could have catastrophic results if the Thyferrans disapprove.”

“If I were involved in anything, sir, that would be foremost in my mind.”

“Very good.” Whatever you are doing, I wish you grand success. “General Cracken will be briefing your people. May the Force be with you—in all you do.”

Wedge smiled. “Thank you, sir.”

Ackbar hesitated, then his eyes shrank to demi-lunes. “Be careful, Commander. Billions of lives hang in the balance. If something goes wrong, I doubt if even your status as the Conqueror of Coruscant will save you from becoming more reviled than Tycho Celchu.”

28

Kirtan Loor stared at the glowing holographic text hanging in the air in front of him and found himself poised between unbridled terror and unbound elation. The message offered him a way out from beneath Fliry Vorru’s thumb, but only if he took steps that could easily anger Ysanne Isard. Doing that could destroy him. But doing nothing clearly will destroy me.

The text, after it had been decrypted and decoded, carried a simple yet explosive message. Twenty ships—New Republic and privately owned freighters—would be traveling from Thyferra with a shipment of bacta bound for Imperial Center. Rogue Squadron was to meet them in the Alderaan system—as if all the bacta in the galaxy could heal that wound—and guide them in on the return trip to Imperial Center. The message contained the times and coordinates, easily allowing for the interception of the convoy.

If he destroyed the convoy, he would advance the Imperial cause beyond even Ysanne Isard’s wildest dreams. He had the means to do just that at his disposal. His earlier plans to substitute a look-alike group of fighters for Rogue Squadron and have them strafe the squadron’s base required him to put together a full dozen X-wing fighters. They would be hawk-bats among granite slugs if he set them on the freighters. He was more than willing to do that, blasting every single freighter from the Pulsar Skate to the Rebels’ Pride into free-floating atoms.

He had only one problem: he wasn’t supposed to know what the message said.

Imperial spies in service to the Rebellion had been given a variety of ways to make contact with their superiors. Certain public terminals, for example, had special coding that routed messages along secure lines to specific destinations. A datadisk could be recorded and left in any number of blind-drops for pickup by agents. Face-to-face meetings could be and had been arranged, even with the highest profile agents around. Whatever was necessary to move information would be done.

The Rebels were not without countermeasures, and they were effective when they wanted to stop information from getting out. Fortunately Coruscant was still more of an Imperial world than it was a Rebel one. While Rebel computer code experts had gone through the planetary computer system and shut down many of the most obvious stealthways into it, they had not found them all. The Rebels would clearly have preferred to avoid using the Imperial computers at all, but running Coruscant without them was impossible, so compromises were made.

The Imperial agent in Rogue Squadron had resorted to one of the most simple stealthways in the system to get the message out. A coded message was created and saved as usual, then deleted. The command used to delete the message was a batch command, one commonly used to purge a month’s worth of old messages at a time. When the computer asked for a date from which to begin the purge, the agent gave it the date and time, down to the second, the message had been created. The ending date for the purge was the same date and time.

The deletion routine in the system took that information and began special processing. A copy of the message was whisked away to a randomly chosen memory sector and there encrypted. At the original memory location where the message had been stored, zeroes were written to erase all traces of the message, then corrupted copies of other documents were written into its place. A scan of files would show documents and programs in the normal process of being overwritten.

No trace of the coded message was left in its original location. The agent was safe.

The encrypted message was transferred through a series of accounts and finally ended up on a datadisk that was dumped into a blind-drop. One of Loor’s Special Intelligence operatives retrieved it and brought it to him. Loor himself decrypted and decoded it. He told himself he did so because messages from that agent had normally traveled directly to Ysanne Isard. The fact that he had ended up with a copy meant the normal channels of communication were closed and he wanted to make certain delays did not prevent action from being taken to capitalize on the information.

Had I forwarded it to Iceheart blindly I would not be caught in this trap. Because the rendezvous would take place in less than three days, there was an open question as to whether the message would reach Isard in time for her to do anything about it. Loor felt fairly confident she would act to destroy the convoy, and his own squadron had enough firepower to chew up the twenty-ship convoy with little problem. A pair of proton torpedoes would destroy most of the freighters, which meant a full dozen could die in the first pass. Another volley of torpedoes would cripple or kill the others, and the X-wings could follow up with lasers to finish off the survivors.

Probably not flashy enough for her, but if my X-wings were marked up to be Rogue Squadron ships—and the news-nets have been full of examples that making last-minute changes to match the paint jobs will be easy enough—I can sow more discord and distrust between the people and the Rebel government. Iceheart would like that.

The problem with doing just that, however, was that the operation did not help him eliminate Vorru as a threat. If, instead of destroying the convoy, he hijacked it to another system, he would have control of a very large shipment of a vital commodity. While Vorru had a solid lock on the bacta black market on Imperial Center, there were other worlds clamoring for the medicine. If he used his supply correctly he could enrich himself. He would betray Vorru to the Rebels—not to the government on Imperial Center, but to the constituent governments on the various Rebel homeworlds, thereby increasing distrust between them and the rulers on Imperial Center.

Or I can enrich myself, buy a world all my own, and put Boba Fett on retainer to slay my enemies. That thought brought a smile to Loor’s face. The list would not be long, but it would not be an easy one to complete. A fitting challenge for a man with his skills.

Loor closed his eyes and gently massaged them beneath his eyelids. As satisfying as enriching himself would be, he realized he had to be very careful. Killing Vorru and Isard would provide him short-term pleasure, but he had to be looking at his long-term position. His first step was to guarantee his survival, his second to maximize his potential for power. Hijacking the bacta worked just as well to hurt the Rebellion as did destroying it, but it left him vulnerable to accusations by Isard that he wasn’t devoting himself to his duty of destroying the Rebellion. She could easily see the hijacking as a move to make him independent of her, and she would not like that.

I can always argue that I wanted to get out from under Vorru’s influence and nothing more. He doubted that such an argument would insulate him from her anger and retribution when she found out what he had done. And he knew she would find out—it was a question how much time he had until she did. If he could keep her in the dark for a month, either he would have gained enough power that he did not need to fear her, or she will have had me killed.

He realized once again that only by escaping her could he possibly survive. This gives me no choice.

He carefully began to compose a message. He told her of his intent to use the duplicate Rogue Squadron to “eliminate” the convoy. He would later argue that he would have said “destroy” if that’s what he had meant to do. Time being of the essence, I can’t give her the whole plan, I can merely let her know I am dealing with the problem.

He scanned his message, then prepared it for sending. He almost sent it immediately, then hesitated. No, if I send it now, she could possibly countermand my orders. I’ll give her a day’s warning. By the time she considers what will happen, it will all be done.

And Kirtan Loor would be one giant step closer to being free.

29

Four minutes to reversion to reakpace. Nawara Ven began a quick systems check on his X-wing. Lasers were powered up and linked for offside firing in pairs. He had six proton torpedoes, and had configured that weapon system to shoot them one at a time. Fuel was good; acceleration compensator was set .05 off full, giving him a feel for his position in space, and his life-support systems checked out—including the heated stockings into which he fit his lekku to protect them if he got blasted out of his cockpit.

He shivered. He’d been shot out of an X-wing during the first battle of Borleias. The concussion of ejecting had stunned him. He’d floated in space, helpless, in the midst of a roiling dogfight. Cold nibbled away at his fingers, toes, and lek-tips, while a little Chronographic indicator flashing on the inside of his helmet’s evac-visor counted down the minutes until his air supply quit. Watching the seconds slip away, he’d felt time was moving a lot faster than it should have.

I knew I was going to die. He shook his head. Then Captain Celchu showed up and saved me. He didn’t have to do that. In fact, he was insane to do that. After he pulled me to safety, there was no way I could ever think he was an Imperial agent.

A beep from his R5 unit marked 30 seconds to reversion. “Thanks. Even up my shields forward and back. I don’t expect trouble, but I want to be ready.”

The droid complied with the request and Nawara prepared himself for the rendezvous with the bacta convoy. Rogue Squadron’s Two flight, led by Lieutenant Pash Cracken and including Gavin and Shiel as well as Nawara, was supposed to break off and head sunward to cover the tail end of the convoy. The last ship was to be the Pulsar Skate, so they’d form up on it. One flight, with Wedge in the lead, would take the head of the convoy, and Three flight, which was still one pilot short, was to orient itself toward any trouble.

Not that there should be any. The shards of Alderaan formed an asteroid field commonly known as the Graveyard. The majority of traffic into the sector came from Alderaanian expatriots returning to see the sun beneath which they were born one more time and to leave grave-gifts among the asteroids. Others came to plunder those grave-gifts, and some even claimed to have seen a massive armory ship named Another Chance among the planet’s ruins—though Nawara thought that ship as much a legend as the fabled Katana fleet.

I wanted to ask Tycho if he wanted me to leave anything for him, but I wasn’t allowed any contact with him after I was briefed. Nawara had recorded a message and saved it in the computer for Tycho in case he didn’t make it back, but the mission was supposed to be little more than ceremonial. Aside from their timetable slipping by three quarters of an hour because of a fuel pump failure that delayed their takeoff, the mission had gone exactly as advertised. But it’s the ones that are supposed to be easy that hurt the most.

The white tunnel through which his ship had been hurtling exploded into a million separate pinpricks of fire. Some of those pinpricks resolved themselves into distant stars, while others refused to shrink. Green darts stabbed into some of the brighter points in the system, then those points exploded. “Sithspawn!”

“S-foils into attack position.” Wedge’s voice came through the helmet comm unit strong and cool. “Twelve, get me a full scan of the sector. One and Two flights, on me.”

Nawara reached up with his right hand and flicked the switch that split his stabilizer foils into the cross pattern that gave the fighter its name. Nudging his stick to port, he brought his fighter in on Pash’s starboard flank with a fighter-length separating them. “I’ve got you, Five.”

“Thanks, Six.”

Aril Nunb broke into the comm channel with her report. “Caught a flash of something big heading out—a Super Star Destroyer. It’s gone, but in system we have two dozen eyeballs, two lambs, and a Strike Cruiser designated Termagant.”

“What about the freighters?”

“We just saw the last one explode.”

Nawara’s stomach folded in on itself. “Gone? They’re all gone?”

“An Imperial SSD wouldn’t leave much behind.” Fear and revulsion filled Rhysati’s voice, and Nawara could easily visualize the hard look in her hazel eyes. “We’re going in, right, Rogue Leader?”

“Twelve, any sign of the Skate?”

“No, Commander.”

“Nothing at all? No beacon?”

“There’s no beacon from half the hulks I have on my scan.” Aril’s voice softened a bit. “A Super Star Destroyer has enough power to completely vape any of the ships in the convoy.”

“Right, right.” Wedge’s voice trailed off and no one spoke to fill the void. “Blast it! All right, listen up. We’re going in, and we’re going in hot. The Strike Cruiser is our primary target. Proton torps, dual-fire. I want it down and out immediately.”

Erisi’s voice crackled through the comm unit. “That means the TIEs will have no way to get out of here.”

The edge in Wedge’s voice came through unadulterated. “Is that a problem?”

“Not for me, Lead.”

Nawara keyed his comm unit. “What about the lambs?” The two Lambda-class shuttles carried weapons and could be tougher than TIEs to handle because they also sported shields.

“We give them one chance to run. After that, they can go away, too.”

Aril again spoke. “I’m downloading tac-data to everyone. Termagant isn’t straight Imp, it’s allied with Zsinj.”

“Was allied with Zsinj.” Wedge’s ship began to lengthen its lead over the others. “Come on, Rogues. Warlord Zsinj apparently wanted the Alliance’s attention. Here’s where we make him pay for that mistake.”

Following Wedge, the squadron sped in toward Zsinj’s forces and the convoy debris. The convoy had been ambushed out beyond the Graveyard and a bit below the system’s orbital plane. Rogue Squadron had come in on the other side of the orbital plane. Because of this, and because of the way Zsinj’s forces chose to orient themselves respective to the system, by flying down to them, Rogue Squadron was, from their perspective flying in up at their bellies.

Nawara watched his tactical screen. Because the TIEs were making strafing runs on what were left of the freighters, they had no unit cohesion. With the enormous amount of debris in and around where they were flying, Nawara would have been surprised if they had any clue about Rogue Squadron’s approach. So the ambushers get ambushed. How fitting.

With the flick of his thumb he brought his weapons-control over to proton torpedoes. Another touch of a button and he linked both launching tubes. Range to the Termagant stood at 4.5 kilometers. The X-wings closed fast as Wedge led them down and around the freighter debris field, then over and in at the Strike Cruiser. Nawara’s head’s-up display went from green to yellow as the cruiser filled his sights, then blazed red as his R5’s keening wail announced he had a target lock.

“Rogues, launch now!”

On Wedge’s command the squadron fired their proton torpedoes in near-perfect unison. Twenty-two torpedoes streaked in at the lozenge-shaped Strike Cruiser, coming up toward the ventral hull. The first couple detonated brilliantly white against the ship’s shields, but the rest pushed on through. Several exploded against the hull, shredding and blackening armor plating, while still more burst inside the ship. Argent fire gushed from the ragged hole in the ship’s hull, then geysered out of several smaller openings on the upper part of the ship.

The Strike Cruisers, as a class of ship, had been highly lauded because of their unique construction. Built around a central skeleton that bound the bridge to the engines, their other components were completely modular. A cruiser configured to carry troops could, after a short stay in some spaceyard, emerge a TIE carrier like Termagant. Strike Cruisers allowed the Empire to change the makeup of the Imperial fleet without building entirely new ships.

That strength is Termagant’s weakness. As the torpedoes exploded inside the ship, the ship itself began to break apart. The prow drifted upward as if the ship had run into an invisible wall. Armored hull plates shattered where they had covered the seam between the bow and the starboard TIE hangar. The forward part of the hangar started twisting as it ripped free of the skeleton. The cruiser began to roll, then the whole front half of the ship spun off as the ship’s waist evaporated in the inferno the torpedoes caused.

“The eyes of the Warlord are upon us,” Gavin quipped. “TIEs inbound.”

Nawara flipped back to his lasers and broke to port with Pash. Coming up over the top, they climbed toward the incoming eyeballs. He punched all power to his forward shield and prepared for a head-to-head pass. He dropped his crosshairs on the growing speck that was an approaching TIE starfighter. He watched the range close, then popped a quick shot off. A pair of laser-bolts glanced off the eyeball’s port panel, imparting a spin to the ship. Nawara started to dive after it, but with his speed, he overshot it.

“I got the other half of it, Six.”

“Thanks, Gavin.” Nawara evened out his shields and pulled back up. Inverting his ship, he completed a big loop and followed the rest of squadron back into the fray. In the boiling cloud of fighters, friend and foe flashed past so quickly that it was impossible to account for everyone’s position. Nawara knew a number of the other pilots in the squadron had a “situational awareness” that was superior to his own, but he figured this battle had to be taxing even them.

And if you take long enough to line up a shot … The hiss of lasers gnawing away at his aft shield completed his thought and sent a jolt through him. “I have one on my tail. I’m going to try to shake him.”

Nawara hit the right rudder pedal, swinging the X-wing’s aft to port. He kicked the ship up onto the starboard S-foil, then pulled the stick back and curled down into a corkscrew dive. He throttled back a bit, hoping his pursuer would overshoot him, but the aft scan showed the pilot pulling a twisting roll and dive that covered more distance, keeping him in behind Nawara.

The Twi’lek punched the throttle forward and enlarged the gap between them, then broke hard to port and started to climb again. Maybe that will get rid of him.

Lasers hissing on his aft shields again told him the tactic hadn’t worked. Nawara rocked the X-wing back and forth and bounced it up and down, making it a tough target to hit, but the TIE pilot stayed with him.

I have to do something. Sweat formed on his upper lip and leaked in at the corners of his mouth, coating his tongue with the taste of copper. His lekku twitched in their fabric prisons. Maybe if I run into the Graveyard …

He started to pull up and head for the asteroids, when something behind him exploded. He glanced at his aft monitor and saw no TIE there. “Thanks.”

“My pleasure, Six.” Erisi seemed pleased with herself. “My wing would be distraught if you were hurt.”

“I owe you, Four, for the both of us.”

“Acknowledged, Six.”

Aril Nunb’s voice broke in on the comm channel. “Lambs are running.”

“Thanks, Twelve, let them go.” Wedge’s voice lacked none of its earlier vehemence. “We’ve got plenty to do here.”

Nawara brought his X-wing up and evened out the shields. Trailing Erisi back in toward the fight, he saw two or three TIEs explode. Another came shooting out of the dogfight, then barrel-rolled in on Erisi for a broadside shot at her.

“Four, break up!” Nawara snapped his fighter up on the port S-foil, then climbed. He swooped in on the eyeball, stayed with it as the pilot juked down, then hit his trigger. The first pair of laser-bolts only melted holes in the starboard solar panel, but the second hit the ball cockpit dead on. The TIE began to spin out of control, then exploded in a cloud of brilliant incandescent gas. Debris sparked off his forward shield as he flew past the outer edges of the fireball.

“Lead, Five here. The TIEs are breaking off. They’re heading for the Graveyard.”

“I copy, Five. Rogue Squadron, let them go.”

“You can’t be serious, Lead.”

“I am, Gavin.”

“But what they did—”

“Doesn’t matter right now. They’re dead and they know it. I don’t want any of us getting dead. Regroup in your flights and stand by.” A momentary squeal ended Wedge’s transmission, telling Nawara that the commander was shifting over to a different comm unit frequency.

Nawara rolled his fighter and dove down to where Pash and the other two members of Two flight were orbiting. Peering out through his cockpit canopy, he got the first good look at the remains of the convoy. If humans can bring themselves to do this to a convoy of ships hauling bacta, I am glad I’m not human.

A few of the freighters were still recognizable as such. Hull compartments had been blown open by explosions. Bacta that had geysered out through the holes had flash-frozen into monuments to the terror the ships’ crews must have felt. Fires burned deep in the hearts of several ships, consuming the last remnants of atmosphere. Pieces of other ships drifted through the area, slamming into one another, breaking up yet further to careen into other dead hulks.

The worst image Nawara saw was of one small ship—one barely bigger than the Skate—that appeared, from the prow to midships, to be intact. Back of that point the ship did not really exist—at least, nothing recognizable as a ship. Turbolaser fire had hit so fast that the latter half of the ship had been liquified. An amorphous blob of metal fringed with condensed metal mist, like the down from a silvery bird, trailed in the ship’s wake.

The sheer violence of the attack that had destroyed that ship shook Nawara. The transparisteel cockpit panels on the ship had blown out. He realized the Super Star Destroyer’s turbolasers would have superheated the atmosphere in the ship. The crew would have been cooked inside and out in the blink of an eye. They would have been dead before they knew what had happened to them, but their last moments must have been full of terror because of the SSD’s presence.

Nawara keyed his comm unit. “Hypothetical question: you’re part of a convoy with minimal arms and you come out of hyperspace in the shadow of a Super Star Destroyer and a Strike Cruiser that’s deployed its TIEs. Do you provoke an attack?”

“Ooryl cannot see how anyone would be that suicidal.”

“Right, so you’d surrender and tell the SSD that you’re hauling bacta, which is currently very valuable.” Nawara frowned. “It makes no sense for anyone to have killed the convoy.”

“That’s why to know Warlord Zsinj is to wonder about his sanity.” Disgust filled Pash’s voice. “He’s definitely someone who needs a lot of killing.”

“Count me in.”

“Me, too.”

A squeal came through the comm unit, then Wedge spoke. “I’ve just had word with the TIEs. They’re giving up—they were uneasy with the mission and they don’t like the fact that we showed up. They’re going to recon the hangar sections of Termagant and see if they can reboard.”

“Why, that hulk’s not going anywhere? The engines are in the other half and it’s headed for the Graveyard.”

“I noticed, Four. They’re going to check for survivors and try to pick up enough oxygen to survive for as long as they can. Pash, I want you to take Two flight out of here and make for Tatooine. It’s about eight hours out, give or take. Gavin can guide you in to Mos Eisley. Refuel there and hire a freighter that can carry a dozen TIEs. Get it here and haul the pilots clear. I’m sure your father would like to debrief them, so you should probably bring them to Coruscant with you.”

“As ordered. We fly cover for the freighter in case our friends have any ideas about trying to commandeer it?”

“Right, though I don’t think you’ll find much opposition.”

“How so?”

“Scan the debris. There’s a lot of TIE parts out there and—”

Nawara looked at the readout his R5 scrolled up his screen. “X-wing debris. But we didn’t lose anyone.”

“No, we didn’t.” Some of the anger drained from Wedge’s voice. “Of course, that’s not what Zsinj’s people say. They say they already killed off Rogue Squadron, right here, defending the convoy the way it was supposed to. Then we arrived and showed them we were tougher to kill the second time around.”

Nawara blinked. “But that makes no more sense than attacking the convoy in the first place.”

“No it doesn’t, but there’s no time to try to figure it out now. You get to Tatooine. We’ll check for survivors here, then head back to Coruscant and report. See you there in a day or so.” Wedge sighed. “If by then you come up with any brilliant thoughts on what’s happened here, I know I, for one, will be more than willing to listen to them.”

30

Kirtan Loor would have been trembling with outrage, but the lethargy of despair had a higher priority. He knew his days were numbered, and he wouldn’t have bet on double digits even if given the longest of odds. He freely assumed the only reason he still lived was because Ysanne Isard enjoyed the thought of him cowering in fear, dreading each new day.

Yet even facing certain death at her hands, Loor did greatly admire how Isard had gotten him and Warlord Zsinj and the New Republic in one simple set of maneuvers. Rogue Squadron would also have been caught in the trap had their operation not fallen behind schedule—and if I had not been playing my game.

Within 24 hours of the ambush at Alderaan, Zsinj had sent a message to Coruscant via what was left of the Imperial HoloNet system, indicating he and his people had attacked the bacta convoy because, according to his sources, the bacta was tainted and would have exacerbated the Krytos virus problem. He further claimed that Rogue Squadron had been present, had indicated they knew the bacta was tainted, and had fully intended that it should be distributed on Coruscant to “get rid of the xeno-trash” the Empire had left behind. He said he had no choice but to destroy the convoy and Rogue Squadron, then beseeched people to overthrow the New Republic’s government and flock to his banner.

The only problem with his message, which was broadcast worldwide, is that it followed by roughly six hours a report about the attack on the convoy. This attack report had been delivered by the government and included holographic images created by and with commentary from members of Rogue Squadron. Zsinj’s claim that he had destroyed the unit were proved false, and helped make the rest of his comments appear likewise untrustworthy.

Loor shook his head. Ysanne Isard had clearly leaked to Zsinj the information about the convoy. His report that he was sending a Rogue Squadron of his own to eliminate the convoy clearly would have arrived too late for her to get it to Zsinj. Loor had only given her 16 hours’ notice of what he was doing, yet the timing of Zsinj’s message to Coruscant suggested strongly that it took him at least a day to make it to Alderaan from wherever the Iron Fist had been.

All of this meant the message that had been routed to Loor and warned of the squadron’s mission had also, somehow, made its way to Isard. She had acted based on that original message, then got Loor’s follow-up message later. The appearance of his Rogue Squadron meant that Zsinj didn’t wait around for the genuine unit to put in an appearance—he just struck and destroyed them all. Rogue Squadron had embarrassed him in the past, and this was his chance to get back at them, which he truly believed he had. The tainted bacta story clearly was an afterthought to mollify those people who might be upset by his destruction of so much bacta.

The loss of the bacta had struck quite a blow to the hopes of people on Coruscant. Coupled with that was a report from a governmental accounting office that indicated there was less ryll available than previously thought. Several Provisional Council members suggested it had been stolen, but statisticians showed how the shortage was actually an artifact of good distribution. The previous supply, which had been supposed to last for two months, was down to seven weeks because more was getting out to more people.

It struck Loor as amusing that the government was still fighting the Emperor’s ghost; it was the Empire’s doing that had prompted everyone to look for the truth behind government statements. The fact that the Republic might be telling its citizens everything there was to tell did not stop people from thinking there might be something more to the story. Teaching trust is a long process; learning it is an even longer one.

And Ysanne Isard has, in short order, learned she can no longer trust me.

Had he done nothing and simply relayed the message to her when he got it, her plot would have discredited Zsinj, resulted in the loss of the bacta, and caused the destruction of Rogue Squadron. While she had no proof that he intended to steal the bacta and use it for his own gain, he knew she didn’t need proof to condemn him. She knew he was smart enough to see how powerful that bacta could have made him. If he had succeeded he would have amassed enough power to begin to play on her level.

Now he was just a failure.

And failures, as far as she is concerned, are worthless. She would discard him as soon as the optimal use for him arose. Which means I must find something to do with myself before she does.

Loor allowed himself to laugh and banish some of the fear. He had plans to make, big plans. Plans for the future and plans to get me to the future.

Gavin Darklighter cleared his throat and rapped gently on the doorjamp of Commander Antilles’s office. “Excuse me, sir.”

Wedge looked up from his desk, a bit haggard and bleary-eyed. “What can I do for you, Gavin?”

“I’d like to speak to you if I might. In private, sir.”

Wedge straightened up in his chair, then nodded and waved Gavin to the seat in front of the desk. A couple of keystrokes killed the holographic lists of numbers hanging in the air above Wedge’s holopad. They looked like quartermaster reports to Gavin, but he couldn’t be certain, since he was reading them from the back side of the hologram.

“What is it, Gavin?”

How to begin? Gavin seated himself, then looked down at his hands. “Ah, sir, we, the squadron that is, have been discussing the situation at Alderaan. It was really pretty bad. I mean, those of us in Two flight got to see it a second time when we went to get the TIE pilots, and the destruction seemed even worse than we’d thought.”

Wedge nodded and rubbed his eyes. “I know. I helped edit and narrate the government’s report on the ambush. Warlord Zsinj’s Iron Fist did a first-class job of ripping the convoy up from one end to the other.”

Gavin frowned. “When I talked to the others, they said you’ve been pretty quiet about all that—about Mirax dying and all. I mean, I didn’t know her nearly as well as you did, of course. I got to know her on the run into Coruscant when we came in secret, and I liked her. Not romantically, you know—not that there was anything wrong with her, but even I could see she was interested in Corran. Anyway, I remember you coming to talk to me about Lujayne Forge when the Imps killed her, and how much it helped and I thought—”

“You thought it would help me to let my grief show?”

“Well, your best friends aren’t here for you. Captain Celchu is in jail, Princess Leia has dropped out of sight, and you and Mirax were close, so …”

Wedge smiled and sighed, then leaned back in his chair. “I appreciate this, Gavin, more than you know. I guess, with Mirax, I’m still in shock. There was no trace of her or the Pulsar Skate, so part of me wants to believe she had an astro-gation error and jumped someplace else, that she wasn’t there at all.”

“I think we’d all like to believe that, sir.”

“It’s ridiculous, of course, but that’s part of the reason I’m not ready to let her go, you know.” Wedge frowned. “It seems as if everyone I know, all the friends I make, are getting ground up by the Empire or some malignant little offshoot of it. Fighting against the Death Stars—well, someone dying there somehow had meaning. The convoy, though, they were just bringing bacta to a sick world. Even though their deaths have catalyzed the Provisional Council into making a decision concerning Warlord Zsinj, their lives were wasted, and I guess I’m tired of that sort of waste.”

Gavin looked up. “We’re going after Zsinj?”

Wedge tapped his datapad. “I was going over information concerning our supplies for deployment against him. I don’t know many details, and couldn’t tell you any of them if I did, but this convoy hit has made Zsinj a big target. Admiral Ackbar wants this data rather quickly, so I really should get back to it.”

“If you say so, sir.”

Wedge leaned forward on his elbows. “Look, Gavin, I appreciate your coming here and talking to me about Mirax. I don’t think I’m ready to go into this all the way right now, but I’m coping. It hurts, but I’m coping.”

Gavin nodded. “Yes, sir.” Walling it away just delays things. “If you ever decide you want someone to talk to—”

“You’ll be the first person I call.” Wedge smiled and sketched Gavin a brief salute. “Go get yourself some rest—and that goes for the rest of the squadron. If we’re going to be going after Zsinj, I want us ready to move as fast as possible.”

Borsk Fey’lya stood behind his desk and smoothed the creamy fur around his face. “Please, Asyr Sei’lar, do come in. I am honored that Rogue Squadron’s newest ace has time to visit with me.”

The black-and-white-furred Bothan bowed her head respectfully, then stood at attention as the door closed behind her. “I am honored a member of the Provisional Council noticed me.”

“Noticed you? My dear, you are quite impossible to refrain from noticing. Aside from your performance in the squadron, you were positively stunning at the Dan’kre party the other evening. Please, be seated. No need for formality here, is there?” Fey’lya remained standing until she had taken her seat. She moved with an ease and strength he recalled possessing in his youth. Though he was not that long past his physical peak, he could already see how much he had lost from when he was her age.

Borsk Fey’lya also realized that had he been her age again, he would have been lovestalking her. He found her quite attractive, freely acknowledging that the white blazes in her fur gave her a dangerous look. The fire in her violet eyes likewise threatened to seduce him, but with maturity—unlike humans—he had moved away from personal vanity. Whereas a man might take a mistress her age to prove his continued virility, for Fey’lya that choice would prove he had not yet sufficiently focused himself on what was truly important in life.

The pursuit of power.

“I wish to communicate to you, Asyr, the congratulations and adulation of the people of Bothawui. You are well on your way to taking your place in the constellations of Bothan heroes like the Martyrs and even your predecessor in Rogue Squadron, Peshk Vri’syk. You liberated Coruscant and now fly with the New Republic’s most famous fighter squadron. Your parents are very proud of you, and other Bothan parents everywhere have virtually no reservations when it comes to their children choosing you as a role model.”

“Thank you, Councilor.” Asyr’s violet eyes blinked. “I would think parents could find far better role models for their children than me.”

“Perhaps, but I should not be concerned about your liaison with the human, Galen.” Fey’lya purposely misidentified her lover and was rewarded by a flash of anger rippling the fur of her neck and head. “Xenophilia is not unknown among us, and your dalliance adds a hint of romance to your image. Your Galen seems very capable of handling himself in a wide variety of situations—case in point being the way he defused the Kre’fey problem. Moreover, you are quite discreet—admirably discreet, actually.”

“His name is Gavin, Gavin Darklighter. His cousin was one of those who died destroying the first Death Star.”

“And our Martyrs died to enable the Alliance to destroy the second Death Star. It is fitting that heirs to two heroic traditions should find comfort together.” Fey’lya raised a hand to calm her. “Please, forgive me if this mention of your personal affairs angered you. I did not mean to cause you any discomfort. I fully understand the sort of bonds that can be forged between people who endure adversity together. Others are not so accepting of things they see as different.”

“Thank you, Councilor.” Asyr frowned heavily. “Some other members of the Bothan community here are positively imperial in their xenophobic attitudes.”

“That is not good at all. If you will permit me, perhaps I can help you with this problem. I have ample opportunity to speak with various groups—Bothan and other—here and back on Bothawui. It does no one any good for you to be persecuted for things that really are beyond your control. I was young once. I know how hot one’s blood can be. I will use my influence to get attitudes to change.”

“That would be most kind.”

“I’m glad to be of service.” Fey’lya smiled. “In fact, I had hoped to be of service to you when I invited you here, but this was not the subject I wanted to address.”

Asyr met his gaze unflinchingly. “Yes, sir?”

“You were part of the mission to Alderaan, as I recall, yes?”

“Yes. I flew wing for Commander Antilles. I got the kills I did because he hung back and covered me.”

“I see.” Fey’lya pressed his hands together, fingertip to fingertip. “The timing of your arrival in the Alderaan system has become a point of interest for those conspiratorially-minded individuals within the government and without. You were late and the convoy was destroyed.”

The younger Bothan’s eyes narrowed. “If we had been on time, we would have been destroyed, just like the convoy.”

“Quite so, quite so, and it is a good thing you were delayed. Still, you realize that tests on the samples of bacta ice that were brought back to Coruscant do show the bacta to be tainted and spoiled—in accord with Warlord Zsinj’s allegations.”

“Forgive me, sir, but those samples were blown up, flash-boiled, and peppered with debris. That they show up contaminated and useless is really no surprise.”

“Under normal circumstances I would agree with you.”

“What do you find unusual about these circumstances?”

Fey’lya gave her an indulgent smile. “Clearly the convoy’s timetable was leaked to Warlord Zsinj. Since the Xucphra faction on Thyferra has seen fit to send bacta to the New Republic, it is safe to assume it was the rival Zaltin faction that tipped Zsinj about the shipment. Even so, we cannot rule out the possibility that members of this government sabotaged the effort to bring bacta to Coruscant.”

“You can’t be serious. That would make Mon Mothma or others out to be monsters who had sunk to Ysanne Isard’s level or below.”

“Of course I don’t believe that is the case, but the problem is that others do think it possible. I am afraid that you could become implicated in all this because of your membership in Rogue Squadron.” He pressed his hands flat on his desk and leaned forward. “I want to insulate you from any possible disaster coming down the line.”

“Disaster?”

“Rogue Squadron will be sent out with the task force being used to punish Warlord Zsinj. It could very well be that this Alderaan incident means certain superior officers in the military see Rogue Squadron as a problem. Committing you in an action that destroys the squadron would eliminate that problem. I’m not saying this is what will happen, of course, but it could and I would like to put some insurance in place that prevents this from coming to pass.”

Asyr’s head came up. “What kind of insurance?”

Fey’lya gestured toward her with opened hands. “I would like you to prepare a report that indicates the delay in Rogue Squadron’s arrival was a product of human error.”

“Such a report could be used to strengthen the conspiracy theory.”

“If I were to use it in such a capacity, yes, it could, but I would never do that.”

“Never?” Asyr raised an eyebrow. “You know the Bothan saying—‘Never means the right opportunity has not yet arisen.’ ”

“Then I should amend my statement—I would never use it except if I deemed it necessary to curb human excesses. You know—and the Krytos virus is but one example—mankind’s capacity for cruelty to its own is infinite. The human members of the Alliance have not turned on us or on Rogue Squadron, but that’s not to say they will never do that.” Fey’lya tapped his desktop with a talon. “You are a Bothan. You were born with obligations and responsibilities. Writing this report is just one of them.”

Asyr nodded. “I understand, sir.”

“Good. I’ll want that report within 72 hours. Don’t fail me.”

“No, sir.” Asyr rose from her chair and bowed her head to him. “I understand the price of failure, sir, and I have no intention of incurring that debt.”

31

It’s too easy. Though everything was going absolutely according to his plan, Corran Horn felt some unmitigated disaster was lurking ahead of him. The Imps who hung out near the mouth of the cavern hadn’t bothered to make comments as he and Urlor headed off down the dark corridor toward the latrines. They walked close together, letting the infrared images of their bodies merge into one, creating a single image for the IR monitors at either end of the corridor.

Once inside the latrine area, Corran had doffed his tunic and soaked it in the single sink, then pulled the clammy garment back on. He likewise soaked his head, then smiled up at Urlor through the water running down his face. “I’m set.”

Urlor raised a bushy eyebrow.

Corran nodded. Yes, I have to go. I have no choice. Corran slapped him on the arm, then headed to the entrance. Urlor followed, patted him on the back, then walked back toward the billet cavern, weaving slightly from side to side to widen his IR image. Thanks, my friend.

Corran, still sodden, turned to the left and walked on toward the mine. He kept his pace slow and turned sideways to present a narrow profile to the IR monitor near the gate. He wasn’t certain that this would really minimize his heat image, but it was worth a try. His wet hair and tunic would be more effective in that department. Urlor’s efforts to present a big target farther up the corridor might also help eliminate him from notice.

Thirty paces beyond the latrines he reached the doublegate. In the darkness he groped along the flimsy metal surface for the lock and chain. His fingers gently brushed across the number pad on the lock, but he resisted the temptation to try random combinations. He didn’t know if a failure would set off an alarm somewhere or not, but he did know that trying to figure out the right combination would take enough time to make him drier than a Tusken Raider. Unless I got lucky, and no one is that lucky.

From the lock to the opposite door Corran counted sixteen links and winced. Seventeen links had provided him a tight squeeze two nights previously. Corran gripped the gate-halves, pulled them as far apart as possible, then tucked his right shoulder through the opening. He exhaled as much as he could, worked a leg through, then pushed and pulled himself the rest of the way to the other side.

He squatted on the other side of the gate and rubbed at his chest. Just as well none of the others wanted to try to get out. Aside from some of the older prisoners and a few of the sick ones, no one could have fit through there. Staying low, he worked his way forward. When he reached the entrance to the mine corridor, he turned into it and allowed himself a quiet sigh.

I can’t believe how stupid they’ve been. Corran realized his criticism of the guards was not fair, primarily because their lack of security seemed deficient only in light of his theory about the orientation of the prison itself. No prisoner in his right mind would attempt to escape and head deeper into the bowels of the planet. The laxity in securing the path to the mines served as a strong clue that the mines did not offer a way out—if they did, they would be more secure.

Security is predicated on two things: the odd orientation of the prison and the fact that even if someone gets out of the prison, getting off whatever world we’re on is by no means assured. Corran shivered. If we’re in the depths of Hoth, or in the desert of Tatooine or on the back side of Kessel, this escape attempt will end quickly enough.

Despite those inauspicious thoughts, which sparked new feelings of unease in him, Corran pushed on. He reached the hatchway leading into the caverns and found it open. Well, perhaps I am lucky, just a bit. He would have felt luckier if he had a light of his own, but the prisoners had no access to anything more technologically sophisticated than a shovel. To navigate through the darkness all he had to guide him was the faint glow from the amber ready-lights at the base of the floodlights they used when working in the mine. Corran had mentally mapped them the way an astronomer mapped constellations, and he knew exactly where to head to get to the gravel loader. Having oriented himself toward his goal, he stood straight and started to make his way down the slope.

Pain exploded across the middle of his back, numbing his legs. He pitched forward and tried to tuck into a ball, but his legs ignored him. He knew from the pain in his back and knees, as they alternately struck the stone slope in his tumble, that his spine hadn’t been severed. While this was good news, it paled within the larger context of his having been attacked in the mines.

He hit bottom and skidded to a halt on his back. He could feel the burning tingle of sensation returning to his legs, but they felt like lead and had no strength in them. The poor footing provided by the gravel combined with the weakness in his legs to keep him down, which he saw as a distinct problem as a massive, bulky shadow eclipsed several of the amber lights. The orange glow, though very weak, clearly illuminated the edge of the upraised shovel the man held.

“Nothing personal, Horn, but you’re my way out of here.”

Derricote? “How did you get past the gate? You couldn’t have squeezed through.”

The shovel remained at the top of the arc for an overhead blow. “I have money hidden away, in numbered accounts. I bribed a guard for the combination to the gate lock, same as I bribe them for ingredients for my nectar.”

Appeal to his vanity. Buy yourself time to be able to move. “Very clever, General.”

“And too clever to let you recover. Good-bye …”

The shovel began to fall. Corran rolled to the left and felt the shovel bounce off his right shoulder. He expected another blow, but instead heard Derricote gurgle and the shovel clatter to the ground. Gravel hissed as the Imp’s bulk twisted around into Corran’s line of sight. He heard someone grunt, then the sound of a falling body, but Derricote’s silhouette remained upright.

Reaching back with his right hand, Corran grabbed the shovel’s shaft, twisted his grip, and whipped the metal end around. He caught the Imp in the back of his legs, upending him. Gravel sprayed Corran as Derricote hit the ground. Rolling up onto his knees, Corran smashed the shovel down on the man’s stomach, and when Derricote’s hands dropped to cover his belly, Corran caught him with a blow to the head.

Derricote went limp.

“Is he dead?”

Corran looked over to where the voice had come from. “Jan?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

The older man came close enough that Corran could hear the wet rustle of his tunic. “I noticed Derricote wasn’t around—he’s too big not to see. Urlor told me you were off. I assumed he was informing on you, so I came to stop you. When I saw him standing over you, I had to do something.”

Corran reached out to check Derricote for a carotid pulse and found the braided cord Jan used to tie his hair back wrapped around the man’s neck. He handed it back to Jan, then checked Derricote’s pulse. “Weak and thready. I must have broken his skull.”

“Leave him. They’ll think he fell trying to escape. We can get back before they notice.”

Corran shook his head. “Can’t do it. If they find him here, they’ll know we know Lusankya’s secret. We’ll never get out.” He grabbed the upper part of Jan’s right arm. “Come with me. We can drag the body off and deposit it somewhere. They’ll never find it until we’re long gone.”

The older man laughed lightly. “Oh, they will notice my departure more quickly than anyone else’s. I can’t go for that reason.”

“And because they’ll kill the others.”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to come back for you, you know. Whenever I get clear, I’m going to have Wedge bring the squadron in and we’ll get you out.”

“I know that, son. I’m counting on it.” Jan clapped him on the shoulders. “I might never have known your grandfather, but I’m certain he’d be proud of you. I am. May the Force be with you.”

“And you, sir.”

“I’ll clear away signs of the struggle. If you drag Derricote with you, I’ll give you a head start and then I’ll report he’s missing. They’ll be searching for him, but they’ll not be looking in the places where you could hide. We’ll cover for you as long as possible, but anything more than twelve hours is optimistic.”

“I copy, Jan.” Corran got up and began to drag Derricote’s body by one arm toward the gravel loader. Jan grabbed the Imp’s other arm and helped. Together they hefted him up on the safety railing. Corran checked Derricote’s neck for a pulse. “Nothing. He’s gone.”

“Someday, perhaps, no one else will need to die in service to the Empire.”

“Agreed.” They upended the man and let him fall. Though Corran couldn’t see Derricote hit, he did hear a crunch.

“Again, Corran, may the Force be with you.”

“Thanks. Until we meet again.” Corran shook Jan’s hand, then climbed the railing and slowly lowered himself into the darkness. He stepped on Derricote’s body, then crouched and scuttled under the conveyor belt. Beneath the belt itself, where it fed back into the drive-engine compartment, Corran felt around the outline of a hole in the sheet steel lining the pit. He’d first seen it a week earlier when shoveling gravel out of the pit, and knew it was what he wanted in the way of an escape tunnel.

Now, if only Derricote will fit. Corran wrestled the fat man’s body over to the 60-centimeter-wide hole and stuffed him through. He heard another muffled impact, then slipped into the hole himself. This has got to work.

Corran had previously noticed that there was no access panel for the drive-engine compartment. If the engine broke down, it had to be accessed from another point entirely, which meant there was another way into the compartment. Down inside it Corran found himself on a steel-grate catwalk. He crawled around, reconnoitering by touch. Finally, off to the left side of the compartment near an access hatch, he found a light switch and punched it on. One dim panel provided the illumination for the chamber. Corran quickly dragged Derricote over to the closed hatchway, then he turned the light off again.

He listened at the metal hatch but heard nothing. His mouth dry, his nostrils filled with gravel dust, Corran took hold of the hatch’s internal handle and eased it back. The latch system squeaked just a bit and rasped some, too, all of which sounded to Corran like the sounds issuing from an Imperial torture chamber. Certain he had alerted all Imperial forces in the facility to his presence, Corran carefully opened the access hatch.

The rectangular room on the other side of the opening was empty. Corran let out his breath—not realizing until that point he had been holding it. Just to be on the safe side, before he entered the room himself, he dragged Derricote’s body over and shoved it through the hatchway. So far he’s been a good point man.

Derricote fell to the floor of the room, and Corran slid easily through the hatch after him. He closed the hatch behind him and dragged Derricote’s body to the doorway. Beyond it lay a cylindrical corridor roughly three meters in diameter. A red stripe of tiles spiraled down through it, starting at the center of Corran’s side and ending up on the ceiling fifteen feet away. Decorations! And who says the Imps are all gloomy?

Corran started off into the corridor and found himself stumbling to his left. To make matters worse, Derricote’s body slid in the same direction. Waves of dizziness slammed through Corran as he tried to walk the corridor straight through. He finally lost his balance and fell, ending up with his spine pressed to the red line about a meter into the corridor.

Oddly enough, lying there felt normal, even though he could see he was lying firmly against one of the tunnel’s side walls. He shook his head as if that would clear up the problem, then he let his head slip back and rest on the red tiles. Of course! This has to be a transitional corridor. Gravity is directly oriented on the red strip. It takes you from upside-down to rightside-up.

With reason thus injected back into his world, Corran scrambled to his feet and started hauling Derricote along. His shoulders ached from the exertion, but he had no intention of leaving the man behind. Finding a place where Derricote’s body could be hidden, or allowed to fall from a height before being discovered, would provide the Imp searchers with what they wanted and buy Corran time to complete his escape. As long as they’re looking for a fat man, they won’t be looking for me.

At the far end of the tunnel Corran straightened up. The room he found himself in, though dimly lit, appeared to be a utility room. He saw panels dealing with climate control as well as electrical power and other conveniences he had so recently lived without. From the number of different zones on the climate control panel, he knew the facility beyond the door was fairly large. He listened at the fiberplast door, but heard nothing from beyond it.

He drew in a deep breath, then hit the door release and crouched in the shadows as the door cracked open. The doorway provided access to a fairly opulent hallway which reminded him, rather faintly, of images he’d seen of the Imperial Palace. Great, I escape a prison to find myself in some Imperial Moff’s palace. It’s certainly better than the hole I just got out of, but getting out of here unnoticed is not going to be that easy.

He shrugged. But easy isn’t the object of this exercise—escape is. Escape I will.

32

Nawara Ven traced a talon through the ring of moisture left behind on the table by his mug of lomin-ale. I shouldn’t be here. This is madness. He drank more of the bitter and spicy ale. This is insane.

By rights he shouldn’t have been anywhere near a tapcaf, much less a dim, smoke-choked place like the Hutt Haven. The prosecution had rested its case and had left Nawara in a serious bind. While the evidence presented had been, for a large part, circumstantial, it was a mountain of circumstance. He had character witnesses, but nothing to refute the basic facts upon which the prosecution was basing its case, which meant he ultimately had nothing.

Which is why I’m here. Two hours earlier he had received a message requesting the meeting. He would have ignored it, but it had been signed “Hes Glillto,” the name Lai Nootka had assumed on his last trip to Coruscant. Whistler had gotten the name from Iella, and that had prompted the droid to flag the message when it came through to Nawara. Whistler also reported there was no way to trace it back to the sender—it had come through a public terminal.

It’s not a good thing when a lawyer is given to meetings with mystery witnesses to bolster his case. If the person he was to meet was really Lai Nootka, the state’s case against Tycho would fall apart faster than a Jawa-fixed droid. Nootka could prove he’d met with Tycho on the night Corran said he saw Tycho meeting with Kirtan Loor. Once that fact was established it showed Tycho had nothing to fear from Corran and, hence, had no reason to want him dead.

Of course, I’ve got no reason to suppose it will be Nootka. Probably will just be some glitbiter looking to make money in return for some rumor. Nawara raised his glass to finish it, but before he could swallow the liquid, he saw a tall, slender figure enter the tapcaf. The figure wore a hooded cloak that hid him entirely. It’s just the way Nootka appeared in Corran’s description of him. Nawara straightened up as the figure cut through the crowd, then slipped into the booth’s other seat.

Nawara offered his hand. “Nawara Ven.”

A pair of long-fingered human hands came out from beneath the cloak and pressed flat against the table. “I know who you are.”

“And you’re not Lai Nootka.” Nawara’s eyes narrowed. “Are you going to take me to him?”

“No. I would apologize for the deception, but I am not sorry. Lai Nootka will not be coming. He is dead.”

“What? Can you prove that?”

“He’s dead, and I cannot prove it.” The man’s voice came low but strong from within the shadowed hollow of the cloak’s hood. “I can, however, prove your client was not meeting with Kirtan Loor on the night Corran Horn saw him.”

Nawara’s lekku writhed as disbelief flooded his voice. “You deceive me and then expect me to believe you? How can you prove that?”

The man tugged the hood back far enough to admit some light, and Nawara felt his heart ache. He looks like the ghost of Grand Moff Tarkin.

“I can prove it, Nawara Ven, because I am Kirtan Loor and I was nowhere near Tycho Celchu that night. In fact, I have never met him.”

“And you can verify where you were?”

“Yes. I have evidence enough to satisfy you.” Loor smiled slowly. “And evidence about spies throughout the New Republic that will satisfy even General Cracken.”

What! This is too good to be true. This can’t be happening. Nawara’s jaw shot open. “You’re lying. You can’t be who you say you are.”

“I can and I am. I will testify on your client’s behalf provided the New Republic is willing to offer me immunity from prosecution for any activity I have undertaken on behalf of the Empire. They will pay me a million credits, create a new identity for me, and get me off Coruscant. I will tell them everything they want to know, and then some. Every Imperial agent on Coruscant will be exposed. It is that simple.”

“But …” Nawara’s mind was reeling. The implications of what Loor had said were staggering. “How can we be sure …?”

Loor grabbed Nawara’s hand and impaled his own palm on one of Nawara’s talons. A bead of blood bubbled up. Nawara heard the sound of cloth tearing, then saw Loor blot the blood with a strip torn out of his tunic. He tossed the bloodied cloth to Nawara, then tore another strip from his shirt and bound his hand.

“Take the cloth to Commander Ettyk. Have her duplicate my Imperial file, then run a DNA comparison between the duplicate and the sample. She must run it against a duplicate of the file—if she runs it against the file itself, others might discover you’re checking me out. Once you’re certain I am who I say I am, you will broker the deal for me. It is a take-it-or-leave-it deal, no negotiation. Once you have the deal made, you will hold a press conference. At one point during the conference, whenever you wish, you will say ‘I am very confident, supremely confident, that we will win.’ I don’t think I’ve heard you say that so far in the proceedings, so that will be the signal.”

“No, I don’t think I’ve said that. I know I haven’t felt it.”

“When you give the signal, I will send you another message to arrange pickup. At that time you and Iella Wessiri will get me. I don’t want to see anyone else, just you and her. You I have to trust, her I know well enough to trust. You can’t betray me and she won’t. Anyone else, anything fancy, and no one will benefit from my information. Got it?”

Nawara nodded slowly. “I understand.”

“Good. You have five hours.”

“Five hours! That’s not much time, especially starting at midnight.” Nawara frowned. He almost added that he couldn’t call a press conference at two or three in the morning, but the media operated in a frenzied enough atmosphere that he could tell them to meet him on Kessel at noon and they’d find a way to be there. “I need more time.”

“You don’t have it.” Loor nodded once and the hood slid forward to again hide his face. “I don’t have it. This all happens on my timetable. If it doesn’t, if there is trouble, a lot of people will be sorry. I can give freedom to your client and Coruscant to the New Republic, for which I am asking so little. See that it gets done.”

33

Corran squeezed himself back in the corner of the library’s cabinet and waited. He decided it was just as well that he didn’t have a chronometer, because he would have constantly been looking at it. It seemed as if he’d been hidden away for years, though he knew it had hardly been more than fifteen minutes. I can only hope that some of the criminals I hunted felt like I do now while stormtroopers are hunting me.

Corran had been able to make a basic scouting run on the facility where he found himself and had concluded two things. First, the utter lack of windows suggested that this facility was underground. Given the general taste for grand vistas and high towers he’d seen in Imperial architecture on Coruscant, this led him to believe that whatever the planet’s surface looked like was not worth seeing. This, in turn, made him think the surface was inhospitable and, therefore, not a place he wanted to travel without proper equipment.

Second, he concluded there had to be a secret exit from the facility. Aside from the tunnel back to the prison, the only visible means of leaving was a lift that had a keypad and clearly required a code for operation. While he assumed the Moff who owned the place would have had the code for the lift, he couldn’t imagine the Moff did not also have a private bolt-hole. Unfortunately his hurried survey of the area hadn’t given him any obvious candidates for its location.

One thing he had found was a garbage disposal chute. He dragged Derricote’s body to it and dumped it in. He distinctly heard a splash; then a disgusting odor wafted back up, so he closed the hatch. It was only when he realized that he didn’t smell much better himself that he decided, if things got tight, he’d go through the chute and take his chances getting out that way.

The Imperial facility had a layout that was a lot like a TIE starfighter’s cross-section. The lift, garbage chute, and utility area formed a central core through which ran a long corridor. It intersected two corridors at right angles, one at each end. All of the corridors had high ceilings and doors running off them every seven meters or so.

His first impression of opulence had not been diminished in his survey of the facility. The entire place had been decorated with golden-brown wooden panels and hand-carved trim. Not being often treated to the lifestyle of the rich, Corran couldn’t identify the wood, but he was fairly certain the faint rose scent filling the air came from it. He made a mental note to ask Erisi what kind of wood it was, since he assumed she would know.

More impressive than the wooden furnishings were the huge xenoscapes that took up whole walls in some of the rooms. Some were filled with water and had brightly colored fish swimming through them. Others contained dense, foggy atmospheres or boggy environments in which things flapped and slithered. Each room had its own private xenoscape and while most of the creatures looked harmless, a couple looked positively lethal.

Despite getting frightened by the sudden appearances of several luminous beasts along the wall of a darkened room, Corran was glad for the xenoscapes’ presence. Some specimens were large enough that lifeform scanning equipment might have trouble differentiating him from them, frustrating a search. In his experience that sort of equipment was most valuable in determining where lifeforms were not, so that searches could be confined to the places where they were found. He assumed that if searchers were forced to go over the level carefully, he could elude them in a deadly game of hide-and-seek.

But then, he’d not been counting on the methodical nature of stormtroopers and how they did their work. During his scouting run a squad of eight came up through the turbolift and immediately posted two men in the facility core. The remaining six broke up into two teams of three and proceeded to go through each wing room by room. Once they finished in a room they closed the doors and used a datapad to set the locks and seal the room.

He’d fled from them as carefully as he could, but they pushed on. Finally he’d found himself herded into what, in the golden glow of the large aquatic xenoscape along one wall, appeared to be a very nice library. The shelves on three walls were lined with box after box of datacards. Both desks in the room had tabletop datapads with holoplates that could provide a fully tri-dimensional data-scanning experience. The chairs all seemed comfortable, and had the room not been built on an immense Imperial scale, Corran could have considered it cozy.

It had its quirks, though. In stumbling about he stepped into a circular design on the floor. He would have thought it a continuation of the inlaid wooden pattern, but it felt cold and synthetic to his bare feet. He had barely stepped into it when a holographic image was projected down from the ceiling and filled the circle. Corran leaped back and raised his hands to protect himself.

Ten feet tall, an image of the Emperor stared down at him. The figure looked strong and almost majestic—not at all the image of the twisted, malignant man who had overthrown the Old Republic and created the Empire. The hooded and cloaked figure stood there, then slowly raised his hands toward the ceiling. They returned to his side, vanishing as the cloak slid closed, then the figure shrank to more human proportions and melted away through the circle.

That display so unnerved Corran that he immediately sought cover. He noticed a long low row of cabinets beneath the xenoscape. He opened one of the cabinet doors but found he couldn’t see much inside. The space smelled cramped and close; it reeked of mildew and reminded him of the location Tycho had found for the Rogues to hide while they prepared to liberate Coruscant. Had there been another choice he would have taken it, but the crisp click of boots on the floor outside the door told him his time had run out.

He crawled over some small boxes and into the narrow space, then pulled the door closed. The cabinet had been compartmentalized—he found himself in a cubicle barely a meter high and wide, though it did extend back nearly two meters from the door. A thick metal crossbeam framework supported the weight of the transparisteel xenoscape above him and the water it contained. Fiberplast panels lined the compartment on all sides and felt as solid as rock as far as his buttocks and spine were concerned. He pulled himself through the crossbeams and into the compartment’s back half. He arranged the boxes and canisters in the front of the cabinet to shield him, but he knew even a cursory look would reveal his presence.

I hope they have a nice place in the shrine down there for my head. Stomach acid burbled up into his throat, but he choked it back down and endured the burning. Probably doesn’t hurt as much as blaster-bolts will. He tried to recall the pain from the times he’d gotten shot—at Talasea, and in the mines—but sensation seemed distant, and unrelated to what he knew he would be feeling in short order.

He heard muffled voices from the other side of the cabinet door. Clicks and hisses accompanied them. What can they be discussing? Despite the ache in his spine and the burning in his throat, Corran smiled. Maybe one of them decided searching these cabinets is stupid because there’s no way Derricote could be hiding in here.

Then, through the soles of his feet, he felt a slight vibration shake the cabinet framing. If searching the cabinets was what they were arguing about, my team lost, which means I’ve lost. Another cabinet door closed, this one closer if judged by the strength of the vibration. Then he felt the quiver of a cabinet being opened, followed by a strong tremor when it was shut.

That’s it. He’s getting frustrated. No one is in the cabinets. No one can be in the cabinets. They’re too small to hide anyone, much too small. Corran pulled his legs up to his chest and wrapped his hands around his knees. He actually heard the cabinet next to his open. A comlink clicked. He thought he heard the word, “Clear.”

Then he definitely felt the cabinet slam shut.

Corran pressed himself back into the corner. There’s no one in here. There’s nothing to see here. No one is hiding in here. It’s all clear.

The door opened.

There’s no one here. This cabinet is empty.

A light flashed in. It started at the far end.

Empty, empty, empty. All clear.

The light swept across toward him.

What a waste of time searching this cabinet. It’s empty. There’s no one here.

The light snapped off before it hit his face. The stormtrooper helmet, which had taken on the proportions and ugliness of a Hutt’s ghost in Corran’s sight, pulled back. “It’s empty. There’s no one here.”

Corran clutched his knees more tightly to prevent his heart from pounding its way out of his chest.

“Are you sure?”

Despair exploded in Corran. What sort of an idiot would trap himself in these cabinets?!

The door slammed shut and bounced back ajar when the magnetic latch failed to catch. Corran caught part of a heated exchange between stormtroopers. He missed the initial comment, but the sharp reply came through loud and clear.

“If he’s stupid enough to try to escape, he’s stupid enough to hide in those cabinets. Finish checking those last two cabinets, then seal the room. This level is clear, so we move up.”

Corran heard the other cabinets open and close, but it was the thunder of a storm that had passed him by. He dared not relax, and bumped his head against the top of the cabinet when a stormtrooper reshut the door to his compartment. The burning in his lungs matched that in his throat, then he slowly exhaled and drew in a new breath. He wanted to jump out of the cabinet, escape its coffinlike confines, but he didn’t know if the stormtroopers had left the room yet.

Again he waited. He knew he had gotten lucky, but he was able to convince himself that it wasn’t just luck that had saved him. In his time with the Corellian Security Force he had participated in countless searches for suspects. There came a point where he knew, in his gut, that the suspect had fled and his attention flagged. From what one of the storm-troopers had said, he concluded the library was the last room to be searched on that level; if so, the stormtrooper checking the cabinets was probably bored out of his mind.

Because he was bored, he got sloppy. Corran smiled and started breathing more normally. Good thing he had his helmet on, otherwise he would have been able to smell me.

He waited a little longer, even beyond the point where he wanted to crawl out of his skin. He fought against the panic rising in his heart. If I panic, I die. Cool. Calm. You’ve been in tighter situations before. Take it easy. He concentrated on breathing and waited for his pulse rate to go down, then slipped from the cabinet.

He found himself alone in the library. The lights in the xenoscape provided him ample illumination to find his way around, but he still wasn’t certain what he was looking for. He assumed it was too much to ask for any of the boxed datacard sets to contain plans that would allow him to escape the room. Still, he’d conducted enough searches of criminal strongholds to find it easy to imagine that one box of datacards might be a dummy that, when pulled out or tipped up on edge, would open the door to a secret hiding place or, better yet, the Moff’s bolt-hole.

It would have to be something obscure—something no one would ever choose to look at on purpose. With that as his search parameter, he found a lot of choices. The sheer variety of datacard collections impressed him. But each box he tried contained the appropriate datacards. At least I can improve my mind while trapped here. Given enough time, I could become the galaxy’s expert in all sorts of things, including worlds I’ve never heard of, like this Corvis Minor.

He pulled the slim box labeled The Complete History of Corvis Minor off the shelf and was disappointed when no secret door opened up. He was about to put it back when he noticed the weight didn’t seem quite right. He opened the box and dumped a compact holdout blaster into his hand. If a blaster is considered the complete history of Corvis Minor, I’m thinking it’s not a vacation spot.

He put the box away and checked the blaster’s power pack. A half-dozen shots. It probably won’t get through stormtrooper armor, but it can make them dive for cover.

Keeping the blaster in his hand, he continued his survey of the library. He found no more surprises and gave up hoping there was a history of Corvis Major that would contain something more substantial in terms of weaponry. Like an X-wing.

Frustrated by the lack of success of his search, he turned his attention to the datapads. He wasn’t sure the computers would be much more help than the library’s inventory had been, but he assumed he could get some basic information to help him out. Most dedicated datapads included basic information about their surroundings. Something as simple as a map showing the evacuation route in case of fire or rebel invasion would point him toward exits.

Provided I can get into the system. Had Whistler been with him, the droid could have sliced into the system with ease. While he did know a few things about codeslicing himself, he’d relied on Whistler’s skills so much that he could only perform rudimentary assaults on a system. If there’s a password for gaining access to the system, I’m blocked right there.

At the smaller of the desks he flicked the holopad on. He opened some of the drawers, looking for the sort of datacard that might contain password information, when a word appeared suspended above the holopad:

[INQUIRY]:

Corran’s smile blossomed. Whoever had last used the datapad had finished by turning off the holopad instead of logging off the computer. This deep in a secret Imperial facility, the chances of an Alliance spy getting to that terminal were slender, and if the security procedure for getting access was laborious enough, merely shutting the holopad down could seem like a tempting, if unsecured, alternative to making the system secure. Whatever the reason, I don’t mind.

Corran called up a system catalog and shifted to the Lusankya database. Hundreds of names scrolled past too fast for him to read, so at the next prompt he called up his own record. It seemed fairly complete and decidedly up-to-date on data about him since his joining Rogue Squadron. Tycho’s doing, no doubt. He highlighted a datalink labeled Lusankya and saw a brief history of his stay in the prison. Comparing the date given for his arrival with the dateline on the bottom of the holographic image, he realized he’d been in captivity for six standard weeks. That was longer than he’d been able to count, but his interrogation had been full of lost and warped days.

He highlighted another datalink. Next to the legend “CStatus:” was the code “Rl.” Corran chose it and got a quick explanation floating above the desk.

R1: Resistant in primary phase.

Notes: The subject could not be induced to fire upon positive icons despite being subjected to their hostile intent in simulation. His resistance in the second round of testing occurred sooner than in the previous round. Subject is unsuitable for conversion.

Corran stared at the green words burning in the air above the desk. When he had thought about it, he had assumed the simulator flights he had taken were just part of an interrogative technique. The technique let him fly, which made him feel good. If things were done correctly, that good feeling could be transferred to the Imps, then he’d tell them what they wanted to know. He could imagine it working just that way with any number of folks—they’d be seduced into giving up information without realizing what they were doing.

Clearly that was not what Isard had been trying to do with him. She was trying to make me over into a monster, just like Tycho. She wanted me to become a tool she could use against the Alliance. He shivered and wished he could somehow open his skull and scrape the memories of what he endured from his brain.

His eyes narrowed. Well, your conditioning didn’t work. I’m not your tool. I’m your enemy, and when I get out of here, I’m going to hurt you.

He got back to an inquiry prompt and called up Tycho Celchu’s file. Finally, I’ll have proof!. Corran summoned up the Lusankya data and had highlighted the “CStatus” code before he really looked at the value listed there. R1. No way. That was my code. He called up the data and sat back, stunned.

R1: Resistant in primary phase.

Notes: Though the subject’s initial response to Imperial icons was positive, this appeared to be an artifact of his years spent at the Imperial Academy. It did not last long. Subject aggressively attacked Imperial icons. When those icons were overlaid with Alliance datastreams, the contradiction caused the subject to become catatonic. Subject is unsuitable for conversion.

But that’s not possible. Tycho’s a spy. I know it! Anger tore through Corran and immolated his brain. He wanted to believe that Ysanne Isard had planted this information so he’d not believe Tycho was a spy, but she had no way of knowing he’d get where he was to see it. Besides, his having that knowledge would serve no purpose to her benefit. Even supposing Tycho were killed by the Republic and Corran were allowed to escape and point out that Tycho had been innocent: that would cause strife in the New Republic, but how much? Was it worth the elaborate charade of letting him escape?

Corran got up from the chair and began to pace around the room. Isard had fed his hatred of Tycho and supported his conviction that Tycho had been a spy. That made no sense. From his file she would have known that he’d have been far more tortured inside by being told that he’d been wrong, and that his mistake was the foundation for Tycho’s treason and murder trial. His own sense of personal honor would have eaten him up inside when he realized an innocent man was going to be convicted of a crime because of his mistake.

Lost in his thoughts, he stepped into the circle in the middle of the floor. The Emperor descended upon him and Corran jumped back. He snarled up at the image and marched on through it. “Quite the mess you created with your Empire, you know.”

Corran realized that Isard’s actions made no sense to him because she was coming at things with an Imperial sense of ethics—ethics that frightened him. She fed his hatred of Tycho because it gave her a button to which she knew he would react. His hatred was unthinking, and she didn’t want him thinking at all. Once she got me reacting through emotions, she could manipulate me. The problem was that my feelings in favor of the other members of Rogue Squadron overrode my hatred for Tycho. And, maybe, just maybe, somewhere deep down I didn’t doubt him.

However, there is evidence of a spy being connected with Rogue Squadron. He returned to the datapad and punched in the names of all the personnel in the unit or support staff. They all came up blank. Feeling a bit frustrated, he called up Tycho’s file again and read over the parts concerning his time at Lusankya. The details were pretty much in keeping with what Tycho had told him: he didn’t remember much of his time there, then he was transferred to Akrit’tar. The Lusankya file made reference to his escape from that facility and included a couple of notes about Tycho’s life since then, but didn’t include much detail until data started flowing from the Rogue Squadron source.

Pacing again, Corran began to work things out in his mind. If Tycho was not an Imperial spy, then he wouldn’t have been meeting with Kirtan Loor. As much as Corran was certain he had seen Loor that night, he admitted that having seen the man earlier in the day at the Imperial Palace had rattled him, and could easily have made him misidentify a Duros in a hooded cloak as Loor.

Bits and pieces of things began to drop into place for him. By a simple process of elimination he narrowed down the list of possible spies, and one name rose quickly to the top of the list. No doubt about it—but then, that’s what I thought about Tycho. I have to get clear of here and check some things out. I can’t afford to be wrong this time.

He looked up as the Emperor towered above him. Corran stepped back. “You know, the sheer ego it takes to plant your image in your own facility is unbelievable. This display does nothing but take up space.” It struck him as another useless bit of Imperial ostentation. Then it occurred to him that just as the cabinets hid the structure that supported the xenoscape, the holograph did do more than one thing.

It stops people from standing on this spot.

Corran stepped forward and oriented himself to face in the same direction as the Emperor. The world hazed out slightly as the hologram settled down over him, but out of the corner of his left eye he caught the momentary red spark of a low-grade spotting laser being shot at him. It flickered on and off a few more times, then the Emperor’s hologram collapsed around him. As it did so, the circle shifted and began to descend beneath the level of the floor.

The cylindrical hole closed over the top of him, then a man-sized panel slid open in front of him. Through it he saw the entry portal to a luxurious private tunnel-shuttle. Similar to what we used to move prisoners from the detention center to court on Corellia, though this is much, much nicer.

The panel closed and the circular platform began to ascend again. Corran found himself once more in the library and smiled. He went to the datapad, got back to the prompt he’d found initially, then shut the holopad off. Picking up the holdout blaster, he inserted himself again into the Emperor’s image. The lift again took him down and he entered the tunnel-shuttle.

In the forward compartment he found a keypad and controls, but he had no idea how to program destinations. Up at the top he saw a red button marked “Return” and poised his hand above it. I don’t know where this will take me, or how long it will take for me to get there, but anywhere is better than here. He hit the button and sat back in the hope he’d enjoy the ride.

34

That’s it, then. Loor smiled and killed the sound accompanying the holographic images of Nawara Ven’s press conference. The Twi’lek had said the phrase. The New Republic would become Loor’s new home. It’s just as well Corran Horn is dead—our being on the same side would have killed him anyway.

Loor folded up a small transportable datapad and slipped it into his pocket. Once he left his office he would use a public access site to plug in and send the directions for his pickup to Nawara Ven. Sending it from his office would have been easier, but would have increased the probability that a copy of the message would fall into Isard’s hands. Though he planned to be hidden well away by the Rebels by the time she discovered he was missing, he wanted as much time for his disappearance to take place as possible.

At his desk he copied files from his desktop datapad to a datacard. “Helvan, come here.”

One of his Special Intelligence operative cell leaders entered his office. “Sir.”

Loor held the datacard out to him. “There has just been an announcement concerning the Celchu trial that leads me to believe there will be a fair amount of attention centered on the proceedings today. We shall take advantage of that. These are the plans and authorization for a strike at the largest of the Republic’s bacta storage areas, the one in Invisec.”

“The one guarded by Vorru’s militia?”

“Is there a problem with that?”

“No, sir, the target is no more secure than any other Rebel facility. It is just that we have refrained from hitting targets he is guarding so far.…”

“Indeed.” Loor shrugged. “An oversight on my part. Vorru thought himself immune to our wrath. He learns now he was wrong.”

A smile tried to squirm its way into the SIO man’s face, but failed to do more than tug at the corners of his mouth. “Sir, when do we strike?”

“Court begins early in the morning. Time the strike to occur with the first witness. That gives you approximately five hours.”

“It’s done, sir.”

“Very good, Helvan. You make me proud.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The SIO man turned and practically ran from the office. Loor would have laughed, but he feared that might have betrayed his true intentions. The attack he had designed would call for a strike force of thirty SI operatives—three cells’ worth. He designated a bacta facility as the target because he knew Isard would approve of it and might set aside, even for a moment, her fears about him. He chose Vorru as a target both to strike at the man’s vanity and so he could hurt the man personally before he sold him out to the Rebels. Stick the vibroblade in and modulate the oscillation rate.

Loor prepared the plans for transmission to Isard by adding a note stating he intended to personally supervise the operation, and then sent them. He shut down his datapad, then took one last look out the window of his sanctuary at the brilliant galaxy of synthetic stars below him. There will be other towers and other chances to rise to such heights.

On a whim he turned on all of his lights and left them burning like a beacon in the night as he abandoned his office and set out on the most dangerous mission he had ever undertaken.

Rubbing sleep from her eyes, Iella Wessiri entered Halla Ettyk’s office. “You look as haggard as I feel.”

Halla looked up at her with bloodshot eyes. “You don’t know the half of it. Nawara Ven called me just past midnight. I’ve spent two hours meeting with him and various Provo Council members. This is all madness.”

“Why tractor-beam me into it?”

Halla smiled. “Because you’ve been the one who’s harbored little doubts about Tycho Celchu’s guilt. We’ve got a witness now who can confirm his innocence. We have to bring him in, and you’re going to help Nawara do the job.”

Iella blinked her eyes. “A witness? Lai Nootka came forward?”

“Nope.” Halla sat back and mischievous light played through her brown eyes. “Someone who demanded your presence. Said he’d only trust you to bring him in.”

Who could that be? Iella’s eyes narrowed. “Give me a name.”

“Can’t. This office isn’t secure enough.” Halla pointed toward the office window and the drapes drawn over it. “Someone you knew well, once upon a time.”

Iella frowned. Drapes? Curtains? Her jaw dropped open. Kirtan Loor? “It can’t be.”

“It is. Code name is Behemoth.”

“Right.” He’s the biggest Intelligence agent we’ve brought in so far. “What’s the drill?”

Halla yawned. “Sorry. Nawara just gave his little media conference so Behemoth knows the deal is set. Nawara will be coming here and will be waiting until Behemoth can get him a message about pickup. I’ve arranged for you to get an armored airspeeder. You’ll take Behemoth to a safe house, Nawara Ven will depose him, then you’ll pack him up and bring him here in time for court. We want him in and out fast—we’re counting on secrecy because he should have enough information about Imperial ops that almost anyone could want him dead.”

Iella nodded. “You’re not afraid I’ll kill him?”

“Not before he clears Celchu of Horn’s murder, no, I’m not. Cracken will want him after that, but my only concern is his impact on this trial.” Halla shrugged, then blew a lock of black hair from in front of her face. “I’ve already told you he cut an immunity deal, so the only justice that will be done in this case is getting Celchu off. You know how these deals work.”

“Yeah, they stink worse than Hutt-sweat, but you give something to get something.” Iella sighed. “Don’t worry, I’ll bring him in safely.”

“Never was worried about it.”

Iella pointed to the hololink on the office’s other desk. “I need to speak with Diric.”

Halla frowned. “Not a good idea.”

“If I don’t, he’ll wait up. He always has, but he’s really not that strong anymore.”

“No details, right?”

“Right.”

“Go ahead.” Halla stood and smoothed the wrinkles in her skirt. “I’m going down the hall to brew up something hot, dark, and stimulating. Can I bring you some?”

“Please.” Iella sat down at the desk and entered her home link number. She smiled reflexively when Diric answered. “It’s me.”

“So it is, and with a smile.” Diric stifled a yawn with his hand. “Forgive me. How are you? Is there anything you need? I can run it over.”

“No, no, I’m fine, really.” She forced her smile to broaden. “I just called to let you know I’m not going to be coming back home this morning.”

“Anything wrong?” Irritation washed over Diric’s face. “No, can’t be if you’re smiling. Something good, then?”

“Work, work I can’t tell you about. You’ll find it fascinating when I can.”

“I can’t wait. Sounds as if you have a big day ahead of you.” He glanced off to the side for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll get some fruit and put it together with your lunch so you can snack on it if there is a break. Will that work?”

“That’ll be perfect, darling.” Iella touched the hololink’s screen and caressed her husband’s face. “It really is going to be a big day tomorrow. You’ll see why I can’t say anything.”

“I understand. Thank you for letting me know you’re safe. I can try to get back to sleep now.”

“Please do, Diric. Get all the sleep you can—enough for both of us.”

“I’ll do my best.” He smiled at her. “Be careful. I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Iella hit a button and broke the connection. She sat back and sighed deeply. It’s very strange to find myself having to safeguard a hated enemy so he can exonerate a man in the murder of a good friend. I’m not sure Corran would appreciate the irony of the situation, but I do know he wouldn’t want an innocent man imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. I think that’s as close to peace of mind as I’m going to get out of this. I just hope it’s enough when all is said and done.

35

Never, in all the time he had secretly worked for Ysanne Isard, had he gotten a message that revealed her to being close to panic. The messages she had sent concerning the remnants of Rogue Squadron and the need for their elimination had been more controlled and confident. Even after the Alliance took Coruscant and she disappeared, her messages had revealed a core of confidence that her activities would bring about the destruction of the New Republic.

He had to admit that she had not been far wrong in her beliefs in that regard. The Krytos virus had created such a demand for bacta that the New Republic had all but bankrupted itself trying to meet the minimum demand for the lifesaving liquid. They had been desperate enough to strike a deal for ryll with the Twi’leks, a gamble that could have caused angry Thyferrans to cut off the bacta supply completely.

Confidence in the government had begun to erode because of the bacta crisis. Warlord Zsinj’s predations on a bacta convoy had dealt the public’s belief in the government a serious blow from which they would attempt to recover by sending a task force under Han Solo’s leadership to kill Zsinj. In fact, however, the more insidious damage to the government had been done by the government itself with the Celchu trial. Originally Tycho Celchu had been held up as an example of the evil perpetrated by the Empire, but Nawara Ven’s spirited defense had pointed out that the evidence against Celchu was circumstantial and probably manufactured. The obvious displeasure expressed by Rogue Squadron’s cherished heroes at Celchu’s trial helped underscore the weak foundation for the government’s case.

He neither knew nor cared if Celchu was innocent. Isard was very capable of arranging it so an innocent man appeared to be guilty or vice versa. He did know she was using the trial to hurt the government, and her efforts clearly were succeeding—which is why the tenor of the note surprised him.

In addition to summoning him to a meeting place, the note directed him to dispatch teams of his people to various sites in the Imperial Palace and Senate Hill areas. They were to go armed and shoot on sight the individual whose file she’d appended to the message. Many of the locations would be all but impossible to get to at this hour: a forty-third floor foyer in the Imperial Palace, an unused area of the Galactic Museum, an old Imperial Senate subcommittee room. Moreover, it struck him that the only place she wasn’t asking him to send his men was the Imperial Courthouse. Since she wanted everyone in place before court could open, and since the target apparently possessed information she didn’t want revealed, he assumed she had the Courthouse covered herself.

Fliry Vorru frowned. She should have gotten Loor to send people out to these other sites, too, not just the Courthouse. He flicked on his datapad and called up the reports from the people he had monitoring the activities of Loor and his operatives. Of Loor there was no report within the last hour, when he left his tower. Loor had gotten much better at eluding surveillance over the past several weeks, but he always showed up again in places that made re-acquiring him painfully easy.

The reports on some of Loor’s operatives, on the other hand, sparked Vorru’s interest. Three teams, a full thirty individuals, had congregated at the warehouse facility Loor used to store his heavy weaponry. That makes for a big operation, and I’ve given Loor no targets for such an operation.

Fliry Vorru realized that one of his facilities was going to be the target of that operation. Isard’s orders were scattering his troops so he couldn’t defend against the assault. It has to be coming against the bacta storage facility—that’s the only target I control which she would see as valuable. She wants to take it down to hurt the Republic, but hitting any of the others would make as much sense. The only thing this gives her is a terrorist strike against me, which strengthens my cover and distances me from association with her.

Ordering him to be in a meeting place at a specific time was meant to get him out of the bacta storage area so he’d not be killed. If she confided in him the reason she wanted him out, he’d refuse to do what she wanted, choosing instead to protect his bacta and the profits he could reap by selling the “wastage” that occurred with each shipment. As well as the other loot I have stored there.

Despite the fact that her summons was meant to save his life, he took little joy in it. If things went as they had previously, she would appear in hologram and berate him for what he had or had not done for her cause. She used the fact that she could betray him to the Rebels as a bludgeon, and he cringed suitably when she did so, which seemed to satisfy her need to see him under her control. As nervous as her message suggested she was, he expected quite a beating.

What she does not understand, what she has never understood, is that I don’t fear her at all. The Emperor considered me a rival. She is nothing compared to him. I work for her because her goals and mine coincide. I can play her off against the Republic and benefit in the meantime.

Fliry Vorru smiled. He prepared orders dispatching militia teams to the sites she wanted, though he reduced her request for a dozen people at each location to three. The rest he ordered summoned to his bacta storage facility. He planned to have them moving as much bacta and other loot as possible to the various storage facilities he had scattered all over Imperial Center.

When she wants to know why I evacuated my facility, I’ll tell her the Alliance tipped me to a strike. And to make that seem true …

Vorru switched his comlink to a secure frequency and initiated a call. He allowed the sleepy individual on the opposite end of the link to awaken enough to understand Basic, then he spoke slowly and carefully. “Forgive the hour of this call, Councilor Fey’lya, but I knew not where else to turn. I have learned of an impending PCF strike at a bacta storage facility. If we act quickly, a great tragedy can be averted.”

All Wedge could see of Emtrey in the darkness was the droid’s glowing gold eyes. “What is it, Emtrey?”

“Forgive the intrusion, Commander, but we have just gotten an urgent message from Admiral Ackbar. There are terrorists about and we have to stop them.”

Wedge shook his head to clear it. “Terrorists here, in our area?”

“No, sir. They’re going to hit a bacta storage site. You’re to fly cover for our troops opposing them.”

The bedsheet slid down around Wedge’s waist as he pulled himself up and pressed his back against the headboard. “Call in the squadron.”

“I have, sir. They’re all coming in except for Master Ven. He’s not answering his comlink.”

“Keep trying. When you get him, I want to speak with him. Get to Zraii and start pre-flight on our X-wings. Tell him I want no fueling delays this time.”

“Done, sir.” Emtrey pointed at the datapad on the desk in Wedge’s room. “The primary briefing document has already been downloaded for your review.”

Wedge smiled. “Thanks.” He threw back the covers and stepped out of bed. “Caf, lots of it, for me and for the ready room. I have a feeling this mission is not one we can fly in our sleep.”

36

A tone brought Corran awake. A jolt of fear ran through him when he couldn’t recognize his surroundings. He knew he wasn’t in Lusankya anymore, or at least he hoped that was the case, but the thought that his whole escape might have been some elaborate charade staged by Isard to break him down gnawed at his spirit.

He hauled himself off the very comfortable bantha-hide divan. He’d not intended to fall asleep, but the tunnel-shuttle’s appointments were plush and seductive, especially in comparison with what he had endured in Lusankya. This is more impressive than the Hotel Imperial. The shuttle had a small refresher station which had allowed Corran to take his first shower since his capture. The Lusankya diet had not been very high in protein content, so his hair, beard, and fingernails had not grown much during his captivity; still, he could have used a shave. Then again, in this tunic, I’m hardly presentable. He laughed. If it were really that luxurious, there would have been a closet with a full wardrobe on board.

Holdout blaster in hand, Corran walked over to the egress hatch and opened it. Waiting for him was what looked like a private lift. The box, paneled with dark greel wood, was otherwise featureless. This made Corran a little apprehensive; without controls, he had to assume it was programmed to go to a specific place. I don’t know if I want to be there, but I suspect it will be better for me than here. He entered the lift and the doors closed behind him.

The car ascended quickly and quietly. Corran shook the lees of sleep from his head. He squeezed himself into the corner of the car just left of the doors, out of direct line with the opening. Blaster in his right hand, he was ready to pivot on his left foot, duck low, and come out shooting if he had to.

The lift slowed, then stopped.

The doors opened whisper-quiet.

The musty scent of stale air rolled into the lift. Corran brought the neck of his tunic up over his nose, then dropped it again, realizing it smelled slightly worse than the chamber beyond the doorway. He peeked out quickly and beyond a gauzy wall of spider webs saw a grey room and shadowy figures scattered about it. He ducked back, then looked out again.

No one is moving. Aside from the spiders and whatever they snack on, there’s nothing living in here.

He sliced the web-wall in half with his left hand, then stepped into the long, rectangular room. Dust billowed up around his feet and coated his soles. Slender, dust-laden web-strands hung down from the ceiling like vines in a forest. Some of them attached themselves to the figures in the room, as if etheric umbilical cords maintaining the figures in their twilight existence.

Corran had no idea where he was, but the taint of evil in the room threatened to overwhelm him. That surprised him because he saw no active threat and didn’t feel directly menaced. The sensation reminded him of his days back in CorSec, when he entered the scene of a particularly violent massacre of spice runners who had angered Durga the Hutt. It was all destruction, but not wanton—it was completely calculated and deliberate.

The figures he saw were all statues and mannequins. As he approached the first one, a little light flashed on in the space before it and resolved into a hologram of the head and shoulders of a man. A voice from the base of the statue said, “Avan Post, Jedi Master from Chandrila, served with distinction in the Clone Wars.”

Corran looked up at the head of the white marble statue to see if it matched the hologram, but the face on the statue had been destroyed. The stone had melted back to the level of the ears and streamed down over the figure’s torso. Nothing else about the statue’s shape enabled Corran to figure out if it was Post or not. Then again, why would the hologram of Post be connected to this statue if it isn’t him?

Corran frowned. And why remove his face?

Corran moved deeper into the room. The muted illumination came from glowtiles set near floor level and enabled Corran to pick out two darkened doorways set into one of the longer walls, but he didn’t feel compelled to head out and explore the area beyond them. He couldn’t explain it, but he had a hunch there was something important in the room, something he had to find. While intellectually he knew running far and fast was the best thing for him, his father had always encouraged him to follow his hunches. Doing that has kept me alive. No reason to change now, especially now.

As he moved through the chamber it became obvious that the statues and display cases were all exhibits in some sort of museum. A Jedi museum. Everything pertained in one way or another to Jedi Knights and Masters, with the vast majority of them having served in the Clone Wars. Just over forty years ago, all of these people were alive.

Without fail, whether the representation was a static hologram with little mementos, or a life-size statue, or a mannequin dressed as the person it represented, the Jedi’s image had been ruined. Some statues lay in pieces on the ground. Some of the mannequins had limbs missing or holes pounded through the torsos. All of them had been defaced—most literally, though some had only had their eyes carved out. He could not discern a pattern to the damage—beyond the fact that all the faces were maimed in one way or another—but Corran knew there was one, keyed to the mind of the person who had done it.

Discarding his prison tunic, Corran pulled some clothes from one of the broken dummies and got into them. The rough-spun brown trousers and pale pull-over tunic itched against his bare flesh and threatened to drive him crazy. From what I remember of Jedi stories, a Jedi would have chosen such clothes just to force himself to learn to ignore the physical sensations distracting him—his clothes become an exercise in concentration. He couldn’t remember where he’d heard that—it had to have been from his grandfather or father, because the Jedi were extinct by the time Corran had learned they had existed, and people who wanted to avoid Imperial scrutiny didn’t display much interest in the Jedi Knights of old.

Corran’s hand went to his throat to touch the medallion he’d worn since he’d inherited it from his father—a medallion he’d left with Whistler for safekeeping before his mission to Coruscant. Mirax Terrik had identified it as Jedi Credit, a medallion issued in limited numbers to mark a Corellian Jedi’s elevation from Knight to Master. I guess carrying it around was my father’s way of covertly defying the Empire.

Corran pulled on a Jedi’s brown cloak and fastened it at his throat. He swirled it around himself, sending lint-nerfs scurrying across the floor and leaping from the top of a display case. A glint of gold in that case caught Corran’s eye. He stepped closer and swept dust from the glass with his hands.

His mouth went dry. That medallion, it’s just like the one I wore, save for the way the eyes have been gouged out of it. Who is that? Irritated that the holographic legend didn’t play, Corran jiggled the case. A hologram began to glow, creating an image of a slender man hovering above the glass, about twenty centimeters high. A voice, starting low and slow, then speeding up into a soprano, accompanied the display. “Nejaa Halcyon, a Jedi Master from Corellia, died in the Clone Wars.”

The light from the holographic projection bled below into a static hologram. It showed Halcyon standing with a boy. The Basic legend running down the edge of the image read, “Nejaa Halcyon and an apprentice.” The projection snapped off and the hologram went dark, but it took Corran several seconds to become cognizant of that fact.

That boy. That was my father.… He’d seen holograms of his father as a child, and the boy in the image looked very much like Hal Horn had at that age. He even looked a bit like me. But that can’t be, can it?

Corran frowned mightily. Mirax had told him that the commemorative medallions were given to family, friends, students, and Masters by the Knight who appeared on them. If my father had been his apprentice, that would explain how he got the coin, but he never said anything about knowing a Jedi or training with him. My grandfather did, but he never mentioned this Halcyon. That hologram has to be wrong, I have to have seen it wrong.

He jiggled the case again, but the projection did not return. He stepped back and up to it again without results. He jogged and then shook the case, but that only moved the medallion around and tipped over the hologram. I need light to see who’s really in that hologram.

Swaddling his left fist in his Lusankya tunic, Corran hammered it against the display case. The glass shattered into hundreds of sparkling shards. Looking around nervously, waiting for some alarm system to start blaring, Corran shook the canvas wrap off his hand and cast it aside. He carefully plucked out the medallion and put it in his pocket. To it he added the hologram and would have walked over to one of the footlights to examine it, but the third memento of Nejaa Halcyon attracted his attention.

Shifting his blaster to his left hand, Corran reached into the case and pulled out a thirty-centimeter-long silvery cylinder. A concave dish capped it, a thickened knob served as the pommel, and a black button rode in a recessed niche precisely where his right thumb naturally rested. Pointing the cup away from himself, Corran hit the button.

A silvery white shaft of light just over a meter in length hissed to life. It hummed low and mournfully as its cold illumination turned all the Jedi images into ghosts. Corran twisted his wrist around, bringing the energy blade through a set of interlocked loops. The sound quickened slightly as the blade transformed a strand of webbing into a drifting tendril of smoke.

Corran turned, thinking to sweep the lightsaber blade through one of the mannequins, but stopped before he struck. These images have endured enough abuse. I won’t add to it. He knew he was correct not to contribute to the further despoiling of the monuments. Moreover, there had seemed to be a subtle pressure, a hidden malevolence in the room, that encouraged and condoned the destruction.

Corran felt good defying it.

He hit the button under his thumb once to shut the blade off. It remained lit. Corran frowned for a moment, then hit the button twice in quick succession, and the blade vanished. The double hit to turn it off guarantees it won’t go down in combat if the button is hit accidentally.

As shadows reconquered the room, Corran shivered. Trying to integrate this storehouse of Jedi memorabilia with Lusankya was enough to make his brain hurt. I’d probably have a better chance of figuring out what all of this stuff is doing here if I had a clue as to where I was. It’s good to have clothes and equipment, but somehow I doubt disguising myself as a Jedi Knight is a way to become less conspicuous in making my escape. And that’s still my first priority—getting out of here.

Corran smiled and let the lightsaber roll back and forth across the palm of his hand. “I bet you’ll make a wonderful door opener.”

Suddenly a short, sharp pop echoed through the complex of rooms. A shockwave started dust swirling through the room, centered on a doorway back along the wall to the right. Sounds like someone else is finding novel ways to open doors. This room is too open, nowhere to hide.

Three figures dressed in black moved into and through the doorway. They paused there and swept the room with the harsh white beams of the glowrods fixed to the barrels of their blaster carbines.

Having no other option, Corran froze in place. The lights flashed over him, lingering only as long as they had on the other unmoving figures in the room.

“Nothing here.”

The tallest of them nodded. “Then we wait.” His voice trailed off for a second. “Hey, there was something funny about one of the dummies over here.”

He played his light over Corran again and his friends likewise brought their lights to bear on him. “This one’s got a face.”

“Yeah, I have a face and I’d like to keep it.” Corran thumbed the lightsaber to life. “I hope that’s not going to be a problem for anyone.”

37

Wedge walked over to the circular holopad sitting atop a pedestal in the center of the briefing room. “We’ve only got time to go through this once, so listen up.” He hit a series of keys on the holopad, causing a holographic map of the Palace district and environs to spring to life. The whole scene rotated up 90 degrees to give the pilots a chance to look down through the network of towers, tunnels, and causeways which clogged that section of the city. Deep in the lower reaches of the display a red square pulsed with life.

“We have a report that the Palpatine Counter-insurgency Front is staging from this location for a strike on a bacta storage facility in Invisec. We’re flying cover for a commando force that is going to go in. The fact is that these PCF folks are very dedicated to their jobs and are likely to scatter when our forces hit. We expect speeder bikes, swoops, and speeders to be heading out of there. Since they used an airspeeder bomb to hit an earlier site, we have to assume that any and all such vehicles are moving bombs. We’re going to take them down.”

Wedge pointed to the empty seat beside Pash Cracken. “Nawara isn’t here because our strike is going to hit the PCF about the same time Nawara normally runs the gantlet of holojournalists. If he’s not there on the day Tycho’s defense is supposed to open, they might think something is going down and move too soon. Ooryl, you’ll fly on Pash’s wing. Normal assignments for everyone else.”

Pash glanced up at Wedge. “If we’re going to be hawking targets through the city, isn’t there a good chance we’ll lose some of them? There are places an X-wing might not fit, but a speeder bike will.”

“Your father’s getting us a tracking feed from the security office onboard the Emperor’s skyhook, but there is a chance some might get away.”

Erisi’s hand went up. “There will be a lot of civilian traffic up. How badly are these guys wanted? How much collateral damage do we risk?”

Wedge winced. “If any of them get through to their target, a lot of people will die. Thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands. When we go in the municipal authorities will issue a sector-wide emergency grounding call. Anyone who ignores that call, especially after we start lighting the area up, is making a very big mistake. We don’t want to shoot civilians, but if you have a positive ID on a target, take it. Shooting in the city isn’t going to be real pretty, but letting a PCF terrorist get through is going to be worse.”

Erisi nodded. “What if the PCF people go to ground with the civilians?”

“Then they won’t be blowing up a bacta storage facility.” Wedge grinned grimly. “We’ll spot them and call in someone who can help neutralize them.”

“Ooryl believes this is a must-win, no-win scenario.”

You have that right. We’re busting open a rat’s nest and hoping to kill all of them before they can do damage when they escape. The chances of collateral damage are high, and while a Corellian usually doesn’t have any use for odds, in this case I wish they were much lower against us. “There is no denying that the probable outcome of our exercise is the loss of some innocent folks on the ground or in a building. We have to be careful but thorough. I can’t tell you to shoot with children on a causeway backstopping your shots. I’m just going to trust that you’ll be smart enough to avoid finding yourself in that situation.”

He sighed. “Your astrogation droids have the map of the Palace sector and Invisec. The bacta facility is protected and you’ll get a warning tone if you enter the exclusion zone around it. If you find yourself there, get out. They’ll take your target. Anything else?”

He looked around the room, but no one had any comments or questions. “Great. Hit the hangar and mount up. Fly your best out there. We might not be up against a Death Star, but this mission is still vital. And may the Force be with you. Dismissed.”

The pilots started to file out. Wedge noticed Asyr give Gavin a quick kiss, then stroke his cheek with her left hand. She said something to Gavin that Wedge couldn’t hear, then she turned toward him and held a hand up. “Commander, if you have a moment.”

“Just a moment, Asyr.”

Asyr nodded to Gavin and he departed. She approached Wedge and the fur on the back of her neck rippled up and down. “Do you recall a conversation we had six weeks ago? About my having to make a decision?”

Wedge nodded. “I told you there would come a point where you had to choose between the squadron and your allegiance to the Bothan Martial Intelligence.”

“You said at the time that you trusted me, and wanted to continue to trust me.”

“Right. And I told you that if you chose to leave the squadron, I’d respect your decision.” Wedge shook his head. “Of course, if you’re doing that right now, I might not respect your choice of timing.”

Her violet eyes flashed coldly for a second as she looked up at him. “I want you to continue to respect my decisions and my timing. And I want you to continue to trust me.” She dug into the pocket of her flightsuit and pulled out a datacard. “I was ordered to prepare a report about the bacta massacre at Alderaan. It was felt a document that suggested our delay in getting there might, in some way, have been deliberate and the result of human action. That datacard has the only copy of said report. If anything happens to me, you’ll dispose of this correctly, I would hope.”

Wedge nodded. “And if you survive, what will you do with the report then?”

“I’m a member of Rogue Squadron, Commander, which means I only take orders from my superior officers.” Asyr smiled. “What I do with that report, sir, is whatever you tell me to do with that report.”

“You’re taking a big step, cutting yourself off from your people.”

“I know that, and I know it won’t be easy, but the squadron is my home now. You’ve only ever asked me to fight and fly and possibly die. That I’ll do for people I can trust. Those who ask me to betray friends, well, they’ve shown they don’t want me to be trustworthy, so they clearly aren’t. Those facts don’t make the choice any easier, just more imperative.”

Wedge tucked the datacard away in a pocket, then clapped Asyr on the shoulders. “Glad you’re with us and on my wing. I always like flying with someone I can trust.”

38

Though Iella’s eyes burned from fatigue, the adrenaline pumping through her system had her hyper-alert. She effortlessly wove the armored airspeeder through the canyons and chasms of Coruscant, slowly closing in on the Justice Court building. Nawara Ven and Kirtan Loor sat in the back, the lawyer continuing to ask questions and Loor replying with haughty disdain.

Seeing Loor again had been a shock for her. She recognized him instantly, but not without difficulty. He had always been lean and cadaverous, though now his flesh had greyed a bit and tightened over his cheekbones and around his eyes. He played himself up to be supremely confident, but his clipped answers and terse comments clued her to his fear.

Iella had no doubt that if Corran had been with them at the safehouse where they deposed Loor, Loor would have crumbled like stale ryshcate. Corran had always had a way of zeroing in on a suspect’s weaknesses. He would figure out the thing about which they were lying, then push and push on those points, pounce on inconsistencies, then increase the pressure until the suspect confessed.

Loor had resisted giving them a full confession. He produced a datacard on which, he said, he had encoded and encrypted complete dossiers on the Empire’s operatives within the bureaucracy. He had also guaranteed them that on the stand he would reveal the identity of the traitor within Rogue Squadron. After that, provided the other details of his surrender deal were carried out, he would provide the key to the datacard’s encryption routine.

“Fine,” she’d said, “but can you give us Corran’s murderer?”

Loor had smiled coldly. “The traitor set him up, and the traitor I will give you. Corran’s murderer, on the other hand, was Ysanne Isard. Her you’ll have to get yourself.”

And get her I will, somehow. Iella checked the advanced scanning system on the airspeeder’s console. The scanner compared the profiles of all the traffic it had encountered so far against everything it was detecting as the journey continued. Matches would indicate they were being followed, but nothing had passed the computer’s standards for a threat. Good. We’re clear, so far.

“Coming up on the parking facility. We’re going into the secure level, then down into the Justice Court.” She wanted to add that the next few seconds, as she slowed to enter the building, were the most vulnerable in the whole flight. A single proton torpedo or concussion missile could destroy the airspeeder in the blink of an eye. A timed or proximity warhead could be launched from anywhere and catch them.

The airspeeder slid into the darkened tunnel and slowed. Ahead a green holographic projection cycled through various alphabets. The words “Facility is Full” appeared in Basic above and below whatever language was being displayed in the middle. The green backlight illuminated a gate that barred further passage.

Iella hit a button on the console keypad, then punched in her security code. Instead of giving her a new security code to use in bringing Loor to court—the addition of which might have alerted Imperial agents to strange goings-on—Halla Et-tyk had just locked everyone else out with code that made the lockout look like a computer glitch.

The gate retracted into the floor. “We’re in.”

Loor shifted in his seat in the back. “Does it bother you, Iella, to be shielding me this way?”

“No more now than it did the first time you asked the question, Loor.” She moved the vehicle forward into the darkened parking area, and midway between the gate and the lift doors, she slung it around, swapping it end for end, so the nose pointed back out toward the exit. She let the speeder drift to a stop approximately twenty meters from the lift. “Does it bother you having to depend upon me?”

Loor shook his head. “Not at all, my dear. You have a facility for loyalty—I don’t imagine you are wasting it on me—and to your mission you will be true. Your job is to deliver me to court, then watch me walk away, shedding my crimes like a Trandoshan shedding skin.”

“Reminding me that you let the Trandoshan who murdered Corran’s father go isn’t the way to get me to feel good about helping you.”

“No, I suppose it isn’t.” Loor sighed nonchalantly. “I’ll have to trust you’ll want Corran’s betrayer more than you want me dead, won’t I?”

“That you will.” Iella cracked her door open and emerged from the speeder. She took a quick look around, saw nothing, then rapped on the top of the car. “Come on out. It’s clear.”

As the other two left the vehicle, Iella pulled out her blaster and checked the power cell. Full charge, good. “Let’s go. We get to the lift, I input the code, we head down and through the prosecutor’s office. Simple, swift, and no one will get hurt.”

Loor pulled up the hood on his cloak. “After you.”

Iella growled at him and moved toward the elevator, taking up a position on the right side of the group. She held her blaster in two hands, up by her face, with the barrel pointing toward the ferrocrete ceiling. As she walked toward the lift she kept looking about, backward, forward, and side to side, trying to pick up on any movement, anything out of the ordinary. Across from her, unarmed though he was, Nawara looked about vigilantly as well.

Between them, his cloak billowing out to inflate his silhouette to the size of his code name, Loor strode confidently. Though she could not see his face, his stance and stride indicated he was blithely amused by her caution. The grant of immunity has made him feel invincible.

Iella felt the slick caress of a strand of webbing brush against her right cheek. She swept it away with her left hand and heard it snap near her ear. That struck her as odd, then sinister, as she saw Nawara bat at a similar thread with one of his brain tails.

The lift doors, barely ten meters away, opened with little more than a whisper.

As the lift doors parted, Loor felt his pulse quicken. Time slowed until nanoseconds took hours to pass. His emotions spiked, fear braiding itself together with triumph. The fear came from the realization that he might die, for surely an assassin or assassins lurked in the lift. I could well be dead before those doors close again.

The triumph that wove in with the fear came from the realization that Ysanne Isard saw him as enough of a threat to kill him. She had always dismissed him before, patronized him, used him, and threatened to discard him. Now she saw how truly powerful he was. The desperation that marked this attempt on his life gave full measure to her concern over what he could do to destroy her.

Loor began to smile. In this you show me I have won!

Iella began to turn toward the unlit box, her blaster coming down as she squared her stance. Something black moved within the lift, a shadow that resolved itself into the form of a man dashing forth, a blazing blaster held in each hand. “Die, Derricote, die!” he screamed.

Scarlet bolts of blaster energy burned toward the trio. One caught Nawara Ven on the right hip. It spun him around and flung him through the air.

Before the Twi’lek could hit the ground, a pair of blaster-bolts lanced through Kirtan Loor’s chest. The first, which drilled him high on the left side of his body, lifted him from his feet. The second struck him high in the abdomen and centered on his midline, driving him back and down. He landed beside Nawara Ven’s tumbling body and slid halfway over to the airspeeder.

Years of training overrode conscious thought in Iella. As bolts began to track in her direction, she coolly triggered a double-burst that stopped the assassin’s charge only a stride or two from the lift. The bolts stabbed deep into the man’s gut, snapping him forward. Blaster-bolts from his guns traced parallel lines down the ferrocrete as he hunched over, dropped to his knees, then fell forward on his face. His blaster pistols clattered down beside him, abandoned as his hands clutched at his ruined belly.

Keeping her blaster on his form, she ran forward and kicked the pistols away. The assassin made a sound, a little moan, and it cut her legs out from under her. She sank to her knees beside him and rolled him onto his back. Even before she saw his face, the sounds he made and the feeling of his bony shoulders told her who he was. Intellect momentarily overrode emotion, providing her the clues she needed to confirm his identity, then it retreated as pain and despair exploded in her.

She pulled his head into her lap and brushed strands of hair from his face. “Why, Diric, why?”

“Lusankya.”

Iella’s breath caught in her throat. “No, no, that can’t be.”

“She broke me. She made me into one of her own. She had me placed in Derricote’s lab to watch him.” Diric winced fiercely, and his body went rigid for a moment. “She sent me to kill him before he could betray her. I had no choice. That wasn’t him, though.”

Iella shook her head. “No. It was Kirtan Loor.”

Diric managed a weak smile. “Good. I never liked him.” He reached a hand up toward her face, but it never got there. “I’m dying.”

“No.” She fished for a comlink in her pocket. “I’ll get emergency medical droids here.”

“No, Iella, no. Isard made me what others accuse Tycho of being. He isn’t. She had me reporting on him, too. From what she did, I cannot be saved.” His tongue wet thin lips. “I can’t live in suspicion, as a puppet. It would make life too … boring.”

“Diric, no, we can help you.”

“It’s over. I love you. She wanted me to kill you. I couldn’t resist.” He smiled weakly. “I could defy—the trigger that opened the lift was supposed to be linked to a bomb. I did what I could. So you could stop me from betraying myself by killing you.” Pain contorted his face. “Thank you for freeing me.”

With her hand, Iella smoothed the pain on his face into peace, then realized he’d slipped away. Her throat thick, her eyes welling with tears, she gently lowered his head to the ferrocrete floor and kissed him one last time.

Kirtan Loor lay on the ferrocrete and could feel nothing. He knew this was not good. That he was dying was an inescapable conclusion and it outraged him. He tried to feed that outrage as much fuel as he could, but he simply ran out. The anger and fury in him collapsed in on itself, imploding into a black void that sucked the last bits of life from Kirtan Loor.

At the heart of that void existed one fact, the one true thing that had marked his entire life. Gil Bastra had seen it. Corran Horn and Iella Wessiri had seen it. Ysanne Isard had seen it. Loor had done all he could to combat it, but it was a defect that was inborn and immutable. I make assumptions. I refuse to look beyond them for reality. I am defeated by them.

He stared up at the ferrocrete ceiling, seeking in its haphazard patterns some cosmic truth, but the only truth he found ground away at him. She did not send an assassin to kill me, she sent him to kill Derricote. I am dying in his place, for his crimes. Is there anything worse?

For some reason the image of Corran Horn came to him. Horn said there was nothing worse than dying alone. He fought to dismiss that idea, but as darkness nibbled away at the corners of his sight, he allowed as how that, just once, Corran Horn had been right.

39

Despite his fatigue, Wedge couldn’t remember having felt better. Strapped into the cockpit of his X-wing, with Mynock behind him, Asyr on his starboard wing, and atmosphere below his fighter, Wedge felt as if the galaxy’s reset button had been hit. His mission was clear: safeguard the forces making a run on an Imperial terrorist cell. He didn’t know if this was all that was left of the Palpatine Counter-insurgency Front, or if this was just one tentacle of that foul kraken, but he had no doubts they’d destroy it.

Gone were the ambiguities that had been forced on him. Tycho’s trial was political. The run to Ryloth and the convoy escort mission from Alderaan had both been political. Even the raid on Zsinj’s space station had been political. While he realized the whole Rebellion had, in essence, been political, his role in it had been military. The targets we were given were military, picked because of their military value, and the mission parameters were ones that could be fulfilled through a military effort.

Wedge keyed his comm unit. “Hunter One, this is Rogue Lead. We are on-station.”

“I copy, Rogue Lead. Stand by for tactical team directives.”

“As ordered.” Wedge glanced down at his scanner. The squadron had broken itself down into five pairs of fighters. Four of the pairs orbited the target district with 90 degrees of separation between their positions. The last pair, Erisi Dlarit and Rhysati Ynr, flew high cover up around the level of the skyhooks. The lower fighters were meant to assist the raid and pick up stragglers, while the high-orbit pair would cut off any PCF terrorists that made it out of the district and in toward their target.

“Rogue Lead, this is Hunter One. We are taking heavy fire from the western approach. Help is needed.”

“I copy. On the way.” Wedge hit a button on his console, shifting the comm unit to the squadron’s tactical channel. “Rogue Two, did you get that?”

“I copied, Lead.” Asyr’s voice betrayed no nervousness. “After you.”

“Five, you and Ten with the next call, then Seven’s element, then Twelve’s element.”

“As ordered.”

Wedge kicked his X-wing up on the port S-foil, then hit the left rudder and pointed the fighter’s nose at the ground. He let the fighter succumb to gravity, then rolled it and prepared to glide out onto the target. The Justice Court building flashed past, then Wedge hauled back on the stick and leveled out. Target is five kilometers out and coming up fast.

Even in the distance he could see blaster fire spraying out to cover the approaches on the west side of the building. As he swooped in, he saw one smoking speeder-ferry slowly drifting down toward the unseen ground. Wedge flicked his lasers over to single fire and dropped the crosshairs on the focal point for the blaster fire. As range dropped to a kilometer, he tightened down on the trigger and feathered the left rudder pedal to keep his fire tracking on target.

The X-wing’s four lasers fired in sequence, peppering the middle level of the building with a staccato hail of energy darts. They swept across the wide doorway, some of them scattering half-hidden individuals inside the warehouse. Other laser-bolts shredded one of the two E-Web Heavy Repeating Blasters just inside the doorway, killing the soldiers crewing the weapon.

Asyr’s X-wing came in right behind Wedge’s and repeated his strafing run. As she flew through the area, Wedge chopped his thrust back, hit his rudder, and turned his fighter around. He punched the throttle, killing his momentum, then cut his repulsorlift coils in. Asyr sailed on past him and pulled up to begin a loop, while Wedge goosed his X-wing forward and brought it up in line with the warehouse opening.

“They’re running!” Wedge hit the trigger and scythed fire back and forth across the gaping warehouse entryway. Two laser-bolts caught a small airspeeder in the middle and aft, slicing it into three equal parts. The pieces flew across the open area and rebounded off a neighboring building, then tumbled into the urban canyon depths.

The rest of his shots missed the legion of targets because what he was trying to hit tended to be small and moving very fast. Speeder bikes with and without sidecars corkscrewed their way out and down or up to elude him. One airspeeder just sailed out and dropped like a freefalling Hutt, sinking out of sight before he could track it. Others banked hard and flew fast to escape, though from comm unit chatter, each of them had been tagged and had pursuit on its way.

An ugly green light strobed through the warehouse. Wedge nudged the X-wing forward, and saw boxy silhouettes, each supported on twin pillars, bobbing up and down in the warehouse. A shiver ran down his spine, then he keyed his comm unit. “Scout walkers, three of them, with two coming our way. I’ve got them.”

Wedge flicked his weapon’s-control over to proton torpedoes. His aiming reticle went from yellow to red as the targeting computer locked on. Mynock shrieked with a lock-tone and Wedge hit his trigger. A proton torpedo streaked out, crossing the fifty meters between the X-wing and the warehouse in the blink of an eye.

The proton torpedo caught the rightmost AT-ST in the outside leg, just below the upper joint. The torpedo sheered the leg off, and the impact spun the scout walker around. It crashed into the walker next to it, then rebounded and bounced to the ground. Ten meters behind it the proton torpedo exploded, detonating the walker’s concussion grenade magazine.

The second walker, which had awkwardly skipped forward after being bumped, ended up being slightly off balance when the grenades went off. A burst of green light from deeper within the warehouse outlined the upright walker as the downed walker’s good leg whipped around and caught it across the ankles. The standing walker staggered as the pilot tried to widen its stance and remain upright. His efforts almost paid off and the walker had begun to straighten up, when its left foot ran out of warehouse floor. The machine wavered for a moment, then slowly keeled over in an ungainly plunge toward the ground.

The green light, from the last AT-ST’s twin blaster cannon, again lit the interior of the warehouse. What is it shooting at? In the time it took him to form that question in his mind, he also came up with the answer. No, can’t let that happen.

He nudged the throttle forward and picked up some speed. Flying into the warehouse, Wedge got to see the AT-ST fire one last shot at the far wall, widening the breach. An airspeeder—heavily laden, judging from the way the aft end struck sparks as it slewed around the scout walker—shot in toward the hole. The remaining walker squared off to face him and protect the airspeeder.

The other vehicles were decoys! This one is the bomb. Wedge hit enough left rudder to track the airspeeder, then fired a proton torpedo. The projectile hit the ferrocrete decking and skipped off, rising quickly. Instead of passing between the AT-ST’s legs, it slammed full into the cockpit. The explosion filled the end of the warehouse with a firestorm. A black cloud billowed up with red-gold flame-claws slashing their way clear of it, while pieces of debris and shrapnel ricocheted and bounced throughout the warehouse.

Swirling tendrils of smoke curled out through the hole, and Wedge knew instantly where the airspeeder had gone. He guided the X-wing straight for the center of the hole the scout walker had opened in the other side of the warehouse. He made it through with centimeters to spare on both sides, then cut the repulsorlift generators and dove.

“This is Rogue Leader. The warehouse is clear. I’m out the other side.”

Hunter One sounded faintly amused. “We would have let you come back out this way, Rogue Leader.”

“Thanks, Hunter One, but I’m in pursuit of the bomb.” Deep below him he saw the airspeeder level off and head toward Invisec. “Let the bacta storehouse know it’s incoming, and so am I. With luck, only one of us will get there.”

40

“He’s not the fat guy,” said one of the three men facing Corran.

“Doesn’t matter. Kill him anyway.”

Corran pulled his right arm back and whipped it forward, sidearming the lightsaber toward the trio. The blade spun through a flat arc. The men on either side of the grouping dove for cover, but the center man’s eyes grew wide and glowed in the blade’s icy light. He shot twice at the light-saber, but missed with both bolts.

The lightsaber’s silver shaft scythed through his middle and dropped him in two parts to the ground. Two wet, meaty thumps swallowed the clatter of the blaster carbine against the floor. The glowrod attached to the barrel flared, then went out.

Corran dove to the left, rolled, and came up in a crouch. He tracked a moving cone of light and fired at its base. He heard no scream to indicate he had hit his target, then a spray of blaster-bolts from the right forced him to duck again. As he slipped back into the shadow of a statue, his two foes extinguished their glowrods, leaving the footlights as the only illumination in the larger room.

Two assumptions I can make: first, they have comlinks and are going to be coordinating their attack. Second, they can or have called for backup, which means they win the waiting game, I have to get out of here, and the only way to do that is by going out the way they came in. He glanced over at the doorway which the lightsaber’s glow backlit. They’re moving out to surround me, so now’s the best time to go.

Corran bobbed up and down twice, using the light-saber’s light to silhouette the obstacles in his way. The path looked fairly clear. He reached into his pocket and ran his thumb over the ruined face of the Jedi medallion. You’re not the one I used for luck, but here’s hoping there was some left in the dies when you were struck.

He took off at a dead run, cutting around one statue and then a display case before heading toward the doorway. Little holograms flickered to life behind him, drawing attention first to themselves, then to him. The first few shots fired at him burned holes in his cloak, but then his assailants shifted their aim and raked the doorway with blasterfire—blasterfire that should have exploded his heart and reduced his lungs to cinders.

And it would have except that the Jedi cloak caught the corner of the display case. It yanked Corran from his feet, then the throat clasp snapped. With his momentum thus slackened but far from depleted, he flew through the doorway feet first, centimeters below the line of blasterfire. He hit hard on his right hip and cracked his right knee on the granite floor, then slid toward the middle of the room.

His right hand closed on the hilt of the lightsaber. He switched it off and scrambled back toward the doorway through which he had just flown. He hoped to find the dead man’s blaster carbine, but as he settled his back against the wall beside the doorway he saw its outline two meters away on the wrong side of the opening. Hopeless, Gotta get up, gotta run for the exit—wherever it is. Even though he knew running was the only viable plan, the stiffening sensation in his knee and hip told him a weak limp was going to be the best he could manage. And I’ll get vaped for the effort, I’m dead.

Then he felt something solid thump against the wall behind him. Even before he heard the click of a comlink, he twisted around and rose up on his left knee. Jamming the lightsaber’s cup against the wall with his right hand, he flicked it on and raked it upward. It pulled free of the wall at the top of its arc, spitting and hissing as blood evaporated from the silvery shaft of light.

The bisected man on the other side of the wall fell across the doorway just as the third man, who had been approaching the doorway from the opposite side, opened fire. The dead man caught two bolts that would have killed Corran before the man shifted aim and started tracking the light-saber’s arc. One bolt singed the hair on the back of Corran’s hand, but the rest passed by without hurting him.

Corran’s left hand came up and he snapped off two shots toward the blaster carbine’s muzzle flashes. Both hit. The third man crashed backward into a display case, then hung there at odd angles. In the footlight Corran could see his hands twitch once or twice, as if still working the trigger of the weapon that had fallen to the floor, then the man lay still.

Corran extinguished the lightsaber, then clipped it to his belt. He shifted the belt around so the weapon hung at his left hip and wouldn’t bang against the bruised one. Pocketing his holdout blaster, he crawled over to the body of the first man he’d killed, loosened the chinstrap on the helmet and pulled it off. Inside it he found a comlink in a clip. He pulled it out and listened for a moment to see if other troopers were on the way, but the comlink remained silent.

He retrieved the second man’s blaster carbine and turned on the glowrod. He played it over the dead men and frowned. Their black uniforms weren’t any sort of Imperial uniform he’d ever seen before, and the men themselves were mismatched enough that he knew they weren’t storm-troopers. I’ve never seen a stormtrooper without a helmet on, but I can’t see them looking quite this ordinary. Still, the uniforms were paramilitary, so he assumed the three dead men were members of a local constabulary force. Another time I’d have thought you were allies, but in CorSec we didn’t shoot someone just because he wasn’t the suspect we were looking for.

Corran played the glowrod over the bottom of the com-link and adjusted the frequency. Now to find out where we are. While he had long detested the Empire, it did manage to do some things with a remarkable amount of efficiency. One of them was the establishment and maintenance of standard measures. On each world broadcast stations had been set up to provide the exact time, both local and in relation to Coruscant. By tuning into that signal he could find out where he was and what time it was. It occurs to me I’ve not seen outside for a long time.

He held the comlink near his ear and slowly limped over to the hole the trio had blown in the wall on the far side of the chamber. “Must be a real backwater planet if they only sent three guys to catch an escaped prisoner—even if they thought I was Derricote. I wonder if I can ever get off it?”

Over the comlink he heard a mechanical voice announce, “8 hours, 45 minutes, Coordinated Galactic Time.”

“Great, I’m on a world that’s set its clocks to Coruscant time, no matter what the local situation is.” He hefted the blaster carbine, glanced at the power level indicator, then played the light out through the hole into the next room. Unlike the one he had found himself in, the room beyond the hole was clean and orderly. Even better, there is an open doorway to the outside.

He was about to step through the wall when two irreconcilable ideas collided in his brain. It was rather clear that he was inside some sort of storehouse filled with Jedi memorabilia. The mansion from which he had escaped had obviously been an Imperial Moff’s retreat, but what Imperial Moff would risk his position by hoarding so much Jedi material? The only Moff who could do that would be a powerful one, and powerful Moffs weren’t found on backwater worlds.

Actually, there were no Moffs so powerful that they would have dared defy the Emperor and Vader by hoarding this stuff. Only the Emperor could have … Corran’s jaw dropped open. And the clock here is set to Coruscant time …

Corran slumped against the wall. It can’t be. I can’t be on Coruscant. It makes no sense. I remember traveling on a ship. Then again, I was so doped up … Maybe I am on Coruscant and Isard just wanted me to think I wasn’t on Coruscant. He chuckled. It would explain why no one ever found Lusankya—it was here all the time, which means she is, too.

He glanced back at the dead men. And she has enough pull with local authorities to have them out hunting Derricote. I may be out of her clutches, but I’m not free, yet. He glanced at the comlink and thought about tuning into the military frequencies Rogue Squadron used, but rejected that plan for two reasons. I’m not going to have the right scrambler codes to let me hear and speak with them, and even if I did, there’s the traitor to consider.

He shook his head. I need someone I can trust. It’s a long shot, but it’s the only one I have. He set the comlink and opened a channel. “This is Corran Horn calling. I’m not dead—I only feel like it—and I could use some help returning to the land of the living.”

41

Wedge pulled back on the X-wing’s stick and leveled out approximately 300 meters behind and above the airspeeder. He had to trim his speed back because even though the X-wing could close fast, the airspeeder could turn faster within the close confines of the city. Part of Wedge knew racing speeder bikes through the forests of Endor was safer than doing what he was doing, but he had no choice. That bomb has to be stopped.

“Mynock, make sure you’re getting a solid tracking feed on that airspeeder.”

The astromech droid shrilled out a confirmation of that order. Wedge watched the tracking data get updated, then rolled up on the right stabilizer foil and dove. He cruised down below the speeder’s line of flight, entering a large boulevard that sped him forward toward Invisec. If I can head him off … “Mynock, plot all his routes from here to the target.”

The droid shrieked like wind howling off the S-foils.

Wedge wove his way through the undercity, cutting around buildings, over walkways, and through tunnels, all the while marveling at the intricate labyrinth that was Coruscant. Making his way in and out, up and over or around tested his skills as a pilot. While not much of the dawn’s light penetrated that deeply in the city, he did have enough to navigate by, but only just barely.

A shiver ran down his spine. Corran and the others were flying out here at night when we took Coruscant. I never really appreciated what they did until now.

Mynock hooted at him. Wedge glanced down at his monitor and saw various schematics flash past. “Slower, Mynock, I’m flying here, too.” Wedge marked the location of the airspeeder and compared it with the maps. As the air-speeder sank to his level and below it, something clicked in the back of his mind. That’s it. I’ve got them.

“Give me the lowest route in you can find, Mynock.” Wedge banked starboard, chopped his thrust back, and brought the repulsorlift coils online. He hovered and drifted forward, remaining just outside the corridor described by the map Mynock had brought up. As he watched he saw the airspeeder move onto the route and begin to follow it in.

Wedge smiled. It struck sparks in the warehouse and dropped like a rock outside. It’s still going down because it’s carrying too much weight. The speeder-ferry that was going down when I first flew in must have been meant to haul this bomb to a point where it could head down in at the bacta store. Now they have to go low because they don’t have enough power to go high.

He switched his fire control over to lasers and linked all four to give him a quad burst. As he did so, the airspeeder cruised through the thoroughfare. Wedge picked his speed up and dropped straight in behind it. Someone in the speeder spotted him and started shooting at him with a blaster rifle, but the bolts harmlessly impacted on Wedge’s forward shield. The pilot tried to make the airspeeder juke, but every sideslip and turn just brought the vehicle lower and lower.

And into Wedge’s sights.

He hit the trigger and sent a quartet of scarlet laser-bolts to converge on the blocky vehicle. The lasers vaporized the roof and filled the passenger compartment with fire. The speeder began to fall faster, with the aft end sagging downward. Something exploded up front, starting the speeder into a backward somersault. Two more quad bursts from the X-wing reduced the large chunks of vehicle into mist and metal hail.

The vapor cloud—made up mostly of gaseous explosives—ignited in a flash, momentarily blinding Wedge and prompting a scream from Mynock. Wedge kept a light but steady hand on the stick and rode out the shockwave. The X-wing’s shields held, saving the fighter from damage. As his vision cleared and he flew through the smoke, he saw no trace of the airspeeder.

He smiled. “See that, Mynock? That mission wasn’t so tough.”

The droid brayed in what Wedge took to be a vaguely triumphant manner.

“Rogue Leader here. The bomb is gone. Report.”

“Three here, Lead. We are over the Manarai Mountain district and have big anomalies out to the southwest. I have TIEs coming in, at least one wing.”

“I copy, Three. On my way.” Wedge hauled back on the stick and jammed his throttle full forward. The X-wing rocketed straight up. “Confirm thirty-six TIEs, Three.”

“Confirm thirty-six, Lead, eyeballs and squints. They’re coming this way and there’s something else out there.” Rhysati sounded shaken. “My sensors aren’t picking it up at all well.”

“Standby, Three.” Wedge punched his comm unit over to another opchannel. “Antilles here. What’s down there to the southwest?”

“Palace district control here, Rogue Leader. We’re not sure. Civilian side is reporting groundquakes and massive destruction. We’re just turning a satellite in that direction. Data coming up—I’ll give you the raw feed.”

“I copy, control.” Wedge looked at the scan splaying itself across his sensor monitor and felt his spirits sinking as low as Mynock’s mournful whistle. “That can’t be. It just can’t be.”

“You’re getting what we’re getting, Rogue Leader.”

Wedge flicked the comm unit back to the squadron’s tactical frequency. “Three and Four, get back here. Now.”

“What’s out there, Lead?”

Wedge shivered. “It’s something that shouldn’t be there, Three. IFF beacons report it’s a Super Star Destroyer that goes by the name Lusankya.”

42

Admiral Ackbar took his seat at the high bench, with Generals Madine and Salm below and to the left and right respectively. He waited for the defendant and prosecutor to be seated, then he looked out over the sparsely populated courtroom. “Today’s session will be abbreviated. Even the most simple voyage can be ended by an unanticipated wave, and the wave affecting us here was titanic in proportions.”

He glanced down at Tycho Celchu and the two droids at the defense table. “Captain Celchu, your lawyer is not here because approximately an hour ago he was shot and seriously wounded in the parking facility on the upper floors of this building. The assassin has been killed, but we have sealed the building for security reasons nonetheless. Nawara Ven was shot while in the process of bringing to court a witness who had recently surfaced to provide proof of your innocence. The witness offered his testimony on your behalf in return for a new identity and repatriation to another world. He provided a datacard filled with encrypted information that backed his claims concerning you as well as claims concerning the Imperial espionage net here on Coruscant.

“Unfortunately the assassin who wounded Counselor Ven succeeded in killing this witness.” Ackbar looked over toward where Airen Cracken sat on the prosecution side of the court. “General Cracken has assured me he has people working on the datacard to see if they can slice the information out, but there is no telling if or when they will succeed.”

Tycho frowned. “Where does this leave me?”

Halla Ettyk stood. “Admiral, the prosecution would be amenable to a continuance until Counselor Ven has recovered.”

“Granted.” Admiral Ackbar raised a gavel. “If there is nothing more we will stand in recess until Counselor Ven is able to continue.”

Tycho held a hand up. “Wait, please, isn’t there something I can do? Isn’t it possible for me to represent myself in his absence?”

“That has always been your right, Captain Celchu.”

Halla looked over at Tycho. “The admiral is correct, but really there is nothing you can do.”

“I can call and question a witness.”

The prosecutor shook her head and pointed at her datapad. “Not really. I have before me the list of witnesses Counselor Ven said you were going to call. None of the members of Rogue Squadron are here and available. The Duros Lai Nootka is not here and, unfortunately, is probably dead. You have no witnesses.”

Whistler tooted.

Emtrey’s clamshell head came up. “Whistler says we do have a witness.”

Halla frowned. “Who?”

Tycho stood. “I can testify on my own behalf.”

“It would be a mistake to do so, Captain. I would rip you apart on cross.”

The R2 unit blatted rudely.

Tycho patted Whistler on the dome. “I agree.”

Emtrey canted his head to the side. “Ah, sir, Whistler was agreeing with Commander Ettyk. You’re not his witness. Your testimony won’t put this whole business to rest.”

Halla shook her head. “The only witness who could do that is dead.”

Whistler trumpeted loudly, whirling his head full around in a circle. The droid bounced excitedly and his tone became a piercing shriek.

Ackbar’s gavel cracked once, sharply, jerking Emtrey to attention. “Tell Whistler to calm down or I’ll have a restraining bolt put on him.”

The little droid stopped and hummed mournfully.

“Now what was he talking about, Emtrey?”

Whistler answered.

Emtrey glanced sharply down at him and gave him a good clout on the dome. “Make sense, Whistler. They’re waiting.”

Whistler repeated his previous answer.

The 3PO unit raised its arms and looked up at Ackbar. “I am sorry, sir, but he makes no sense. The stress—circuits must have become polarized. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

Ackbar sighed. “Answer my question. Who is he saying this witness is?”

Before Emtrey could answer, a man spoke from the court’s open doorway. “Begging your pardon, Admiral, I think Whistler intends for me to be called as a witness.”

Ackbar’s barbels twitched. From the black depths all manner of beasts can swim. “This is impossible.”

“It wasn’t easy,” Corran Horn smiled, “but as for impossible, Admiral, you know impossible is what Rogue Squadron does best of all.”

43

Wedge snaprolled up on the port S-foil, then pulled the stick back to the box over his breastbone. He rolled the X-wing into a dive, then came up and around to starboard in a horizontal loop that brought him back head-to-head with the pair of eyeballs that had been bucking his exhaust. He spitted one on his crosshairs and hit the trigger, filling it with coherent light. The cockpit instantly combusted, and, trailing thick black smoke, the TIE fighter corkscrewed down to slam into a ferrocrete tower.

The TIE’s wingman tried to avenge his partner, but Wedge never gave him a chance. He hit the left rudder pedal, pulling the aft end of the X-wing off to the right. The maneuver skidded the fighter out of the TIE’s line of flight and fire. The TIE pilot tried to match the stunt, but as he did so he brought his fighter’s hexagonal solar panel perpendicular to the ship’s flight-line. In the vacuum of space that move would have given him a good shot at Wedge, but in atmosphere, it made the TIE jump and begin to roll.

Wedge brought the X-wing up on its port stabilizers and dove after the TIE. Just as the pilot began to regain control, slowing his spin, Rogue Squadron’s leader tightened up on his trigger. A quad burst of laserfire blasted the port solar panel off the fighter. The TIE began to tumble uncontrollably toward the ground, but before it could descend into the black bowels of Coruscant, it bounced off an aerial walkway and exploded.

Pulling back on his stick, Wedge nosed his fighter toward the sky. He wanted to feel some remorse for the pilots he’d just killed. He waited for concern to bubble up in him for the people who could have been hurt when those TIEs fell into the city below. He wanted something other than cold concentration filling him, but he didn’t expect it to come. Those thoughts and emotions are normal, but normal doesn’t exist at this place and time.

All around him TIEs and the X-wings of Rogue Squadron swooped and climbed, rolled, dove, and looped. Laser-bolts, green and red, filled the air as if each fighter was a renegade cloud spitting abbreviated lightning bolts at its enemies. TIEs exploded with regularity, showering the cityscape with half-molten bits of metal and staining the sky with oily black streaks that were the mortal remains of their pilots.

As exciting and dramatic as the dogfight raging above the mountain district was, Wedge remained cold and in shock. Out there a white needle stabbed skyward. The Lusankya—a Super Star Destroyer eight kilometers in length—laid waste to the area beneath which it had lain buried for years. Green turbolaser bolts pounded the cityscape, freeing the ship from the ferrocrete and transparisteel prison in which it had laired.

Wedge knew Super Star Destroyers had only come into service after the Battle of Yavin, which meant the Lusankya had to have been created and hidden on Coruscant before the battle of Endor. Unless the constructor droids just built it there, then built over it. The idea that a hundred-square-kilometer area of the planet could have been razed and rebuilt to hide a Super Star Destroyer seemed beyond belief, especially with no one noticing the ship’s insertion into the hole. Could the Emperor’s power through the dark side of the Force have been sufficient to compel thousands or millions of people to forget having seen the Lusankya being buried?

As hideous as that idea seemed, Wedge hoped it was the truth. The likely alternative—that the Emperor had ordered the deaths of all the witnesses—seemed that much more horrible.

“Lead, you have a squint coming up from below.”

“Thanks, Five.” Wedge rolled to port, then dove into a looping roll that took him out and around the Interceptor’s attack vector. He let his dive carry him down into the upper reaches of the city. Using control telemetry from a skyhook to keep track of the squint, he cut around one of the star-raking spires and came up at it on a nearly vertical run.

It started to roll to elude him, but a little left rudder kept his lasers tracking. Half the quad burst missed, shooting past the cockpit windscreen, but the other two bolts hid dead on. They cored through the Interceptor’s starboard solar panel and pierced the cockpit. The squint continued its lazy roll, then tightened it into a spin that sped the ship in an ugly, squared-off tower.

Out to the south the Lusankya’s aft came free of the planet. The superstructure of the Super Star Destroyer and its general outline fit with what he remembered of Vader’s Executor at Hoth and Endor, but the Lusankya hull appeared to be resting on a massive platform made up of hexagonal cells. It fit the bottom of the starship perfectly, with openings in the hexagonal field so weapons could fire down at targets below and TIE fighters could launch from the ship’s belly.

Wedge frowned. What is that? It reminds me of a Hutt’s repulsor-lift couch, hut the Lusankya is a warship, not a lounging crime boss. Suddenly he realized his analogy wasn’t that far off. The Lusankya is built for space travel, not fighting its way free of a planet. That must be a lift-cradle designed to get it up and out of the hole in which it was entombed.

With the prow stabbing up into the sky, the Lusankya’s thrusters ignited. Searing blue plasma vaporized huge chunks of cityscape beneath the ship’s aft end. The destroyer began to move forward and upward out of the column of smoke that marked its birth. A ship that boasts a crew of over a quarter of a million individuals must have killed ten times that many lifting off.

The massive ship turned its attention on a skyhook floating off its starboard bow. Altering course slightly, the ship gave more of its turbolasers and ion cannons a chance to bear. A Super Star Destroyer possessed enough weaponry to reduce a city to rubble from an orbital assault. At point-blank range, the weaponless skyhook offered the gunners a deliciously easy target.

The turbolaser batteries in the bow started firing at the skyhook as they came into range, then the broadside assault shifted to other weapons as the ship slid past. The verdant laser-bolts came so fast and so close that whole sheets of energy seemed to pulse from the Lusankya to the skyhook. In seconds what had once been an elegant disk with an Ithorian jungle paradise at its heart became a melted demilune with a forest fire crashing into the mountain district’s towers.

As the Lusankya picked up speed, the gunners shifted their aimpoints and began firing at the upper atmosphere. Their shots hit and splashed color into the lower of the two shield spheres encasing the planet. Created to stop starship assaults from without, they proved just as powerful against an attack from within. Even so, after twenty seconds of the Lusankya’s withering barrage, a hole opened in the lower shield.

The TIEs fighting Rogue Squadron turned and launched themselves on an intercept course for the Super Star Destroyer. Because they were not capable of entering hyper-space themselves, if they did not rendezvous with the Lusankya, they would be stuck on Coruscant. Those who weren’t shot down would be taken prisoner. And if my ship had done that much damage heading out, I’d not be expecting very gentle treatment at the hands of my enemies, either.

“Mynock, give me the range to the Lusankya.”

The droid centered an image of the Lusankya on Wedge’s monitor, and the rangefinder showed it to be 25 kilometers distant. And it still looks that big. A shiver ran down his spine.

“Rogues, form up on me. We have three minutes at speed before we’re right on top of the SSD. Let’s harvest those remaining TIEs before she gets a chance to recover them.” Wedge waited a few seconds for the cries and shouts of assent to die down. “Remember, that thing is bristling with turbolasers, ion cannons, concussion missile launchers, and tractor beams. When I call, you break off your attacks. Got it?”

Wedge fed shield power into his engines, boosting his speed. He saw Asyr pull up on his starboard stabilizer foil. “No heroics, Flight Officer Sei’lar, I want to return that datacard to you.”

“As ordered, Commander.”

Wedge glanced at his monitor and then the TIE they were closing on fast. “I have your back. He’s yours.”

“Thank you, Commander.” Asyr’s X-wing pulled ahead, then sideslipped down and to port. She stayed below and behind the TIE fighter until she’d closed the range to within 250 meters, then she nosed her ship up into the eyeball’s exhaust. The X-wing’s lasers fired two dual offset bursts. The first grazed the inside of the port solar panel, burning two long streaks along it. The second pair of bolts stabbed in through the exhaust ports. The whole eyeball shuddered, then silvery fire jetted out through the forward cockpit canopy, killing the ship’s momentum.

The dead TIE dropped from sight with the grace of a Hutt in freefall.

“Nice shooting, Deuce.”

“Thanks, Lead.”

Wedge glanced at the Chronographic readout on his monitor. “Two-point-five minutes to range. Mynock, give me a warning at thirty seconds.”

The Lusankya continued to pour fire into the planetary shields while what little ground fire that came up at it splashed harmlessly on its shields. The midship and stern guns fought to keep the hole in the lower shield open while the bow guns blasted away at the upper shield. The ship’s assault sent waves of Rodian green energy skittering along the underside of the shields. The shields held at first, then began to erode, and finally collapsed.

Cutting his stick to the right, Wedge followed Asyr through a banking turn that put her on a pair of TIEs. “I have the leader, Commander.”

“I copy. I’ll pick up the tail, Deuce.” He widened the separation between them, then cut back hard to port as the TIEs broke and Asyr came around in a looping turn that slipped her in behind the lead TIE. She fired and melted off a third of the TIE’s starboard solar panel.

“Break left, Deuce!”

Asyr rolled to port as the second TIE fired. Its first shots splashed harmlessly on the X-wing’s aft shields, but the subsequent ones went wide. The eyeball rolled to follow Asyr, but as he leveled out he drifted straight into Wedge’s sights. One burst of scarlet laserfire and the eyeball disintegrated into one long, flaming streak in the sky.

Mynock gave Wedge the 30-second warning tone. “Break off, Rogues. The rest are just running.” It looked like a half-dozen of the TIEs had survived the battle. As a screening force they’d done their jobs and kept local fighters off the Lusankya while it emerged. While it was trapped beneath the city I bet it couldn’t power its shields up. Without them, a concentrated volley of proton torpedoes might have been able to breech the hull, disable that lift shell, or destroy the bridge.

Wedge glanced at his sensor display. “Four, this is Rogue Leader. Break off pursuit.”

“Just a couple seconds more.”

“Four, break off, now!”

“I’ve almost got him, Lead.”

“You’re too close, Four. Break off immediately!”

Erisi’s X-wing fired a quad burst that caught an Interceptor on the starboard solar panel and right side of the cockpit. Something at the rear of the craft exploded, then seconds later the whole Interceptor came apart. A huge golden-red ball blossomed in front of Erisi’s X-wing, then imploded into black smoke as she flew through it.

“Report, Four.”

“I got him, Lead.”

“And got crisped. Get back here.”

Fear injected itself into her voice. “Rudder’s gone, stick’s sluggish.”

“Erisi, you’re too close to the Lusankya. Get out of there.” Wedge brought his X-wing around to the left in a long, orbiting loop. “Mynock, pull status data from her R5 unit, now.” He keyed his comm unit. “Erisi, roll and dive. Gravity is your friend.”

“As ordered. No, wait.” A wail as frightening as any Mynock had ever made shot through the comm unit. “They have a tractor beam on me. I’m at full thrust, but I can’t break loose. Help me, help me!”

Pulling back on the stick, Wedge came up and pointed the nose of his fighter at the Lusankya. The big ship hung like a sliver of ice stabbed deep into the morning sky. He thought he could see Erisi’s X-wing as a little speck against the Super Star Destroyer’s bulk, but a sheet of turbolaser fire heading back toward him eclipsed her.

Hugging the stick to his chest, Wedge brought the X-wing over the top and pointed it back toward the planet. “On me, Rogues. We’re going home.”

“But, Lead, we can’t just leave her—”

“Enough, Gavin. That’s a Super Star Destroyer. It’s impossible to stop if it doesn’t want to be stopped.”

“But impossible is—”

“I know, Rogues, I know.” Wedge glanced at his monitor and let the cold shiver running up his spine bleed into his voice. “Impossible is what Rogue Squadron does, but right now that would cost us too much for too little gain. Just because we can do the impossible doesn’t mean we always win.”

44

Corran Horn mustered a smile in response to Admiral Ackbar’s blinking expression of disbelief. “If someone is inclined to call me as a witness, I think I can shed some light on the murder charges against Captain Celchu.”

The Mon Calamari’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times, then he nodded toward the prosecution table. “Perhaps, Commander Ettyk, the prosecution would like to reopen its case?”

The dark-haired prosecutor nodded. “Thank you, sir. We call Corran Horn.”

Corran limped his way up toward the front of the court. He placed his blaster carbine on the prosecution table, then turned and approached the defense table. He squatted down beside Whistler and wiped a speck of dust from his optical lens. “Thanks for guiding me in here, Whistler. Without you, I’ve been lost.”

The droid hooted softly, then opened the storage compartment in his dome. Corran reached in and pulled out his own unblemished Jedi medallion and the gold chain from which it hung. Corran fastened it around his neck, then fished the ruined medallion from his pocket and put it into the storage compartment. “Not quite a fair trade, my friend, but I’ll make it up to you.”

Coming up from his crouch, Corran looked over at Tycho. He nodded and lowered his voice into a whisper. “I owe you an apology, a huge apology, and a debt I can never repay. All this is my fault, and I’m sorry I caused you to go through it.”

“You’re wrong, Corran.” Tycho shook his head. “You were manipulated by the Empire. So was I, so was everyone here. I’ll accept your apology, but I won’t acknowledge your debt.”

“I’ll still pay it, or at least make a down payment on it.”

Tycho smiled. “Getting the murder charge removed from the indictment is a good start.”

“I can do much better. Watch me.” Corran nodded, then dropped a hand on Emtrey’s left shoulder. He bent in close to the droid’s aural sensors and kept his voice low. “Emtrey, say nothing. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.”

The droid’s head swiveled around to look at him. “Sir, I understood the first request. Quadruple redundancy in orders is hardly required in my case.”

Fixed you, have they, Emtrey? That’s it, then, the last piece falls into place. Corran straightened up and shot General Cracken a quick nod. Turning back toward the front of the courtroom, Corran bowed his head to the Tribunal. “My apologies to the court, but there were things that needed saying.”

Ackbar nodded. “Understood.”

General Salm frowned. “Lieutenant Horn, I have to ask, how did you get here?”

“I started, at least this morning, from the Museum next door. Big metal doors sealed the aerial tunnel between the buildings, but, well,” he said, brandishing the lightsaber, “you’d be amazed how effective these things are in opening doors. Your security personnel were stationed at the more accessible entry points, so I made it here without any other trouble.”

Salm frowned. “I appreciate the critique of our security, but I meant the question in a more general sense. You, ah, are dead.”

Corran limped his way into the witness box. “I think you’ll want me sworn before I answer that question. It won’t make the answer any more believable, but it’ll give you some peace of mind.”

A bailiff swore Corran in and Halla Ettyk approached him cautiously, as if he were radioactive. “I hardly know where to begin. Perhaps you can tell the court what has transpired since you were reported dead.”

“Sure.” Corran took a deep breath, then started. “I’m certain General Cracken will debrief me, and some of what I have to say probably shouldn’t be said in open court, but I’ll try to keep it cogent and coherent.”

Ackbar nodded down at him. “Your discretion is appreciated.”

“Yes, sir.” Corran smiled at the prosecutor. “To answer your question, Commander, I was captured by Imperial Intelligence and taken to Lusankya. Ysanne Isard wanted to do to me what she tried to do to Captain Celchu: make me into an agent who would do her bidding when and where she wanted.”

Halla frowned. “You said she wanted to do to you ‘what she tried to do to Captain Celchu.’ Don’t you mean she wanted to do to you what she did to Captain Celchu?”

Corran blushed. “I thought, for the longest time, that she had programmed Captain Celchu and that his lack of memory about Lusankya was a blind to keep his Imperial ties hidden. The fact is, however, that his amnesia about Lusankya is not uncommon among those who wash out of Isard’s indoctrination program. Other prisoners at Lusankya remembered Captain Celchu as being a sleeper—their term for someone who is rendered catatonic by the indoctrination process. I didn’t become a sleeper. Later I had a chance to access computer files about prisoners at Lusankya. I reviewed my own file and then I called up Captain Celchu’s file. I wanted it as proof that he was one of Isard’s creatures, but he had the same susceptibility rating I did, which is to say that he had no susceptibility to her techniques at all. As far as she was concerned, we were as dense as duracrete.”

“But his file could have been altered and left there for you to discover it.”

“Possible, but not likely for two reasons.” Corran held up two fingers. “First, the datapad I used to access the files was in a secure area that provided me with access to a working blaster and the means to go from Lusankya to here. Given the precautions Isard took to hide the location of Lusankya when I went in, I doubt any prisoner was meant to have access to that area. Second, at the time I accessed the files, Isard had no way of knowing I was in a position to access them. She believed another prisoner had escaped, not me, so any ruse would have been designed to ensnare him, not me.”

Halla hesitated, concentration sinking her brown eyes into shadow. “That notwithstanding, we have to take into consideration the possibility that you might have been turned and are here so that both you and Captain Celchu could be put into positions of trust in the future.”

“True, but the fact is that once the shadow of suspicion was lifted from Tycho, I was able to eliminate him as possibly being the traitor in the unit. If he is taken out of the hologram, there is only one other logical candidate for that position.”

Before Corran could reveal the traitor’s identity, a soldier burst through the courtroom doors and ran over to General Cracken. He said something quickly and urgently to the Alliance Intelligence chief. Cracken shot to his feet and pointed at Corran. “Lieutenant Horn, I order you to say nothing more at this time. Admiral Ackbar, we need to use the adjoining jury room, now!”

Corran hesitated, then frowned. “I wasn’t going to reveal any of your secrets, General.”

“Horn, shut up. That’s an order.” Cracken walked across the courtroom to the door in the southeast corner. He opened it and swore. “This can’t be happening.”

Corran vaulted from the witness box and followed on Cracken’s heels into the large, rectangular room. Transparisteel made up the room’s entire southern wall, with a small doorway cut in the middle of it to allow access to a balcony. Cracken worked a set of controls on the wall, fading the sequestration opaquing of the transparisteel to nothingness. Corran looked out to the south and felt his heart sink into his bowels.

A colossal white wedge knifed its way into the sky. A fearsome broadside silhouetted a skyhook against a green background, then sent a smoking crescent crashing planet-ward. The ship—Corran knew it had to be a Super Star Destroyer because of the size—continued its upward flight and turned its weapons on the lower defense shield.

Corran found himself drifting through the doorway and onto the balcony with Admiral Ackbar and the others from the court. Above the city TIE fighters and X-wings tangled together in a complicated dance punctuated with fireballs and underscored with laser light. Corran couldn’t get an accurate count on the X-wings, but he didn’t see any of them go down. That’s gotta be Rogue Squadron up there.

The Super Star Destroyer moved up through the first defense shield. The TIEs started to run back to the ship that had launched them and the X-wings flew on in close pursuit. Corran smiled as more TIEs exploded or augured into the planet, but that appeared as a minor bright spot in comparison to the damage the Imperial ship had done to the defense shields.

Corran frowned. “Where did that ship come from?”

Whistler popped a sensor dish from his dome and let it spin around a couple of times before keening cautiously. Emtrey’s head jerked up and down, from the ship to Whistler and back again. “Sir, he says that ship’s transponders report it to be the Lusankya!”

Corran’s jaw dropped open. The bulkhead doors closing off access to the gravel mine wasn’t salvaged from a ship, it was part of a ship. The turbolifts, too, were part of the ship. Our whole complex must have been one tiny part of the ship with bulkheads trimmed out with stone. The mines were outside it, but we lived all snugged up in the belly of an Imperial Super Star Destroyer.

Cracken held a comlink up by his ear. “The ship appears to have been buried beneath a portion of the cityscape southwest of the Manarai Mountains. It came up firing. Freeing itself it devastated over a hundred square kilometers. Millions are missing, presumed dead.”

Corran pointed at the platform made of hexagons hugging the ship’s hull. “What’s that below it, some new type of armor?”

Whistler hooted sharply and Emtrey translated. “Whistler says it appears to be a massive collection of repulsorlift cells grafted together to float the ship free of Coruscant.”

“Ah,” said Cracken, “so that’s what they did with the lift-coils. Well before Endor, we uncovered an Imperial operation to collect an incredible number of repulsorlift components. We feared they might be planning to produce some new planetary assault vehicles with them, but could never trace the shipments. Now we know where they went.”

He looked over at Ackbar. “Can you stop it?”

“Most of the fleet is staging at … elsewhere in preparation for the operation against Zsinj—to hunt down his Super Star Destroyer. The rest of the fleet is on an assignment for you. Can you get them here?”

Cracken shook his head. “From Borleias? Not in time.”

“The Golan stations don’t have enough power to bring Lusankya down, but they can hurt it.”

Emtrey’s eyes dimmed. “We’re defenseless.”

General Crix Madine shook his head. “The Lusankya started inside our defense shields—the point assault forces usually see as a goal. The fact that the ship is headed out means escape, not conquest, is its goal.”

A Quarren aide slipped through the crowd to Admiral Ackbar’s side and handed him a comlink. The Mon Calamari flicked it on. “Ackbar here.”

“Antilles here, Admiral. We’ve broken off our pursuit of the TIEs and are returning to base to refuel and get ready to go out again.”

Hearing Wedge’s voice again sent a thrill through Corran. He smiled and saw Tycho mirror his expression. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Tycho nodded. “If I had Rogue Squadron on my tail, I’d be running, too, even in a Super Star Destroyer.”

Ackbar gave them a wall-eyed stare. “I concur with your plan, Commander, but you needn’t have informed me of it at this time.”

“No sir, I know that.” A cold edge crept into Wedge’s voice. “The reason I called is to tell you to let Tycho go. He wasn’t the traitor. I know who is and I can prove it.”

“What?” Ackbar’s mouth hung open. “Who?”

Corran smiled. “Erisi Dlarit.”

“I was asking Commander Antilles.”

“Who was that?” Wedge asked remotely. “How did he know?”

Cracken made a quick adjustment to his own comlink. “Commander, this is General Cracken. Use no more names on this opchan—it might not be secure.”

Ackbar shook his head. “How do you know who the traitor is?”

Corran pointed at himself. “Are you asking me?”

“No. Commander Antilles, please answer me.”

“Simple. Because of Horn’s death I had a subroutine added to the unit’s astromech droids allowing me to pull diagnostic data from them. She reported damage over the comm unit that her R5 didn’t report. She claimed the Lusankya had a tractor beam on her and pulled her aboard against her will. Work back from there and it’s obvious.”

Corran nodded. “Right. She was in a position to forewarn the Imps about Bror Jace’s return to Thyferra—and there was no love lost between them. I told her that when we’d taken Coruscant I was going to search out the traitor in our midst. She’d helped me check out my Headhunter so she knew the codes, the same as Captain Celchu. She comlinked the data to Isard and I was taken.”

General Salm shook his head. “Why would she do that? Why work against us?”

Wedge provided an explanation. “The bacta cartels were formed under the Empire. She and her people might have figured their monopoly would end if the New Republic succeeded in destroying the Empire.”

Tycho pointed toward the sky. “It’s through the second shield and outbound.”

Barely visible above them, the Lusankya exchanged fire with a Golan Space Defense Station. Gouts of green energy passed back and forth between them. The station’s fire buckled the Lusankya’s shield, collapsing the energy sphere that had kept the big ship safe. Explosions played along the huge ship’s hull, but in their light Corran saw the Lusankya begin to pull away from the station.

The Golan Station continued to blaze away at the Super Star Destroyer, causing more explosions, but they seemed to form a wall between the station and the ship itself. It took Corran a moment to realize what was happening.

“They jettisoned the lift-cradle, sacrificing it so they could escape.”

Cracken nodded. “Nothing to lose by doing that—the Lusankya isn’t going to be trapped on a planet again.”

“But it will be trapped again.” Corran nodded solemnly, recalling his promise to Jan to return and free him and the others. He glanced at Whistler. “Can you determine the damage to the Lusankya?”

Whistler blatted negatively and retracted his sensor dish.

Corran squinted but couldn’t see the Super Star Destroyer anymore. “Gone to lightspeed. I wouldn’t like to be where that ship ends its journey.”

“Being where it started from was bad enough.” Cracken shivered. “Isard was here all along, and now she’s gone.”

Halla Ettyk folded her arms across her chest. “I take it I should assume the evidence against Captain Celchu was largely manufactured by her?”

“I’d say that’s a safe bet.” Corran nodded assuredly. “If Captain Celchu had been convicted and executed, she would have revealed the truth and made the New Republic look as bad as the Empire ever did. It probably wasn’t the most brilliant of her plans, but it didn’t take much effort, either.”

He turned and looked at Airen Cracken. “After all, the General here knew Tycho wasn’t the spy all along.”

Halla blinked. “Excuse me, what?”

Cracken slowly smiled. “Not bad for a man who’s been in prison for the past month and a half.”

General Salm glowered at the Intelligence chief. “You mean you knew Tycho Celchu was not an Imperial agent and you let me put him through all sorts of difficulties?”

Cracken shook his head. “Horn’s right, I knew he wasn’t the spy in Rogue Squadron, but I did not know whether or not Celchu was an Imperial agent.”

“General Cracken took precautions to guard against Tycho being a Lusankya-style agent.” Corran patted Emtrey on the shoulder. “General Cracken had Emtrey assigned to Rogue Squadron to monitor Captain Celchu. Emtrey had some special circuitry and programming installed in him that transformed him into an invaluable tool for a spy. If Captain Celchu had used him in that manner, General Cracken would have known what was going on. For General Cracken to have done anything less would have been grossly irresponsible on his part.

“Because of Emtrey, General Cracken knew Captain Celchu had not been meeting with Kirtan Loor the night I saw him at the Headquarters. I suspect Captain Celchu’s prosecution was allowed to go forward to lull the real spy into a false sense of security.”

“And to distract Isard.” Cracken smiled briefly. “She has always enjoyed these little games.”

Halla stared at General Cracken. “But you made Captain Celchu into a pariah. People were likening him to Prince Xizor and Darth Vader. What you did was unforgivable.”

“No, it was precisely what had to be done.” Cracken looked over at Tycho. “I needed to use you to find out who the spy in Rogue Squadron really was, true, but there was a side benefit to you in all this. The fact that Isard would set you up to be convicted and executed means that you were of no greater use to her. If you were one of her Lusankya agents, she would have framed someone else so you’d have been absolved of guilt and trusted with greater responsibilities. She would have fine-tuned you, not discarded you.”

He turned back toward Halla Ettyk. “As for the negative image of Captain Celchu that has been created, I can undo what has been done.”

“Never.” Salm shook his head adamantly. “Impossible.”

“Though I am not a member of Rogue Squadron, I think it is quite possible.” Cracken opened his hands. “We have a public ceremony rewarding the efforts of Rogue Squadron for their operations on behalf of the Republic. We let it be known that Captain Celchu was aware of the deception concerning his trial.…”

Tycho smiled. “Things did seem arrayed rather well against me.”

“… And his rehabilitation will be complete.” Cracken clasped his hands at the small of his back. “That is pretty much what I had intended all along the way. Lieutenant Horn’s appearance here merely makes Captain Celchu’s innocence that much more obvious.”

Halla looked over at Admiral Ackbar. “Sir, on behalf of the New Republic Armed Forces, I withdraw all charges against Captain Tycho Celchu.”

The Mon Calamari opened his mouth in a smile. “It is with great pleasure, Captain Celchu, that I say this case is dismissed. You are truly free to go.”

45

Wedge Antilles kept his face impassive as Mon Mothma stepped up to the podium at the front of the dais on which they stood. The ten days since the Lusankya’s escape from Coruscant had been grueling. Abandoned Palpatine Counter-insurgency Front cells had begun to strike out anywhere and everywhere. Rogue Squadron, reinforced by Corran and Tycho, had flown numerous pursuit and cover missions, which seriously curtailed the PCF’s activity.

Cracken’s efforts to slice Loor’s datacard had proven fruitless until its existence had been mentioned during one of Corran’s debriefings. Corran noted that when Loor was working as the Imperial Intelligence Liaison with the Corellian Security Force, he’d had a trick for creating his encryption keys: he had memorized one day’s listings of the Imperial Stock Exchange and used stock listings and prices as his keys. Corran had Whistler give Cracken the date of the listing Loor had used and they quickly discovered he’d keyed the encryption with Xucphra’s listing on that day. The information on the decrypted datacard included a list of PCF safehouses and warehouse facilities, which Rogue Squadron and Cracken’s people quickly destroyed.

Diric Wessiri’s funeral had been tougher on Wedge than any of the flight missions. He found himself going over everything Diric had ever said to him, searching for any clue that would have revealed Diric’s compelled service to the Empire. Wedge couldn’t get Diric’s kind words after his testimony at the trial out of his head. That much compassion should have earned him a different end.

Iella barely managed to hold herself together, and Wedge thought only Corran’s reappearance allowed her to avoid a total emotional collapse. She’d mourned her husband once, then she got him back and had to kill him. Corran, having known her and Diric both, was able to recall for her the Diric of old. The pleasant memories seemed to soften the horror of what had happened, but only just a little and only occasionally.

Bright lights flashed on as a dozen holocams began recording the New Republic’s Chief Councilor. “Citizens of the New Republic, it is a great honor and privilege for me to be speaking to you from Coruscant—a Coruscant that is now safe and finally free of the Empire’s direct and evil influence. I am here, now, in the facility that is home to Rogue Squadron. You all have heard of this legendary unit—its pilots have ever been in the thick of the war with the Empire. Rogue Squadron won for us the opportunity to rescue Coruscant from the Empire, and since then they have been the bulwark that has preserved us from Imperial predation.

“In recognition of their efforts to defend the New Republic, the Provisional Council has created and is awarding to the unit and its members a medal intended to be the highest award our government can bestow upon military personnel. It is the Coruscant Star of Valor. The citation itself reads, ‘For service and bravery beyond the bounds of what can be asked of a citizen by a government, and a willful commitment to put the good of the many above their own personal welfare, the Provisional Council unanimously and joyfully awards to Rogue Squadron and its members, the Coruscant Star of Valor.’ ”

As Mon Mothma turned and looked back at him, Wedge came forward and accepted a transparisteel plate into which the citation had been etched. A hologram of the medal itself had been embedded in the transparisteel above the words, and a ghostly hologram of the unit’s members had been placed behind them.

Mon Mothma shook Wedge’s hand. “Congratulations, Commander. You and your people deserve this even more than I probably know.” She then stepped back and waved him toward the podium.

Wedge hesitated, then stepped up to the microphones. He had been warned he’d be asked to say something, and a number of people had made suggestions, but it was Admiral Ackbar’s advice he decided to heed. Be brief, he said, and remember all those who need to be remembered.

“This citation is not just for those of us who stand here behind me, but really for all those who fought in Rogue Squadron. None of them would have balked at making the sacrifices we have. All of us—everyone in Rogue Squadron and in the Alliance itself—have risked all we are to defeat a government that took joy in the sorrow and terror of its citizens. Winning this award, taking possession of Coruscant, these things are not ends in and of themselves, but blazes marking the trail we must all tread if the galaxy is ever to be truly free.”

Gentle applause from the dignitaries and guests gathered beyond the dais accompanied Wedge’s retreat back into line with the other pilots. As Mon Mothma walked past him, she let her left hand brush against his arm. He glanced at her and she gave him a smile. I guess I didn’t do that badly.

She resumed her place at the podium and began speaking again. “Of the events that have transpired over the last year, there are many rumors and far fewer facts. Those rumors could all be dispelled by having an exact chronology of events created, and perhaps, in another generation or two, such a chronology could be made public. While we were a covert force fighting against the Empire, there was no questioning the need for stealth and secrecy. It was what kept us alive and allowed us to fight on against the Empire. Because of this secrecy we have defeated them in battle after battle.”

Mon Mothma nodded in the direction of the holocam to her right. “With the New Republic in possession of Coruscant, it might seem that the time for such secrecy is past, but it is not. The Empire is not yet dead, and the dozens of petty warlords tearing at it have already and will continue to study us for signs of weakness. Their drive to restore the Empire, with themselves in Palpatine’s place, means we cannot reveal all of our secrets.

“We can, however, reveal some of them. Doing so is not only a vital necessity, for secrecy can breed arrogance and we have all seen where that can lead, but a pleasure. It provides me a chance to right a great wrong and prevent possible future tragedies.”

She turned and pointed toward Tycho. “This is Captain Tycho Celchu, as loyal a son of Alderaan and the New Republic as ever lived. He willingly chose to subject himself to a surrendering of his basic freedoms in order to bring the Empire down. Because of suspicions about what the Empire might have done to him, it was felt he could not be trusted, yet this man refused to let those suspicions prevent him from doing all he could to destroy the Empire. On numerous occasions he put his own life in jeopardy, flying unarmed into combat zones to rescue pilots who otherwise would have died.

“Most recently you have all seen him on trial for treason and murder of other members of Rogue Squadron. This trial, as public and as ugly as it was, played a crucial part in an Intelligence operation to uncover Imperial agents within the New Republic. Despite being held up as an object of revulsion to the New Republic, Captain Celchu did not shirk his duty. He allowed himself to become such a target because it would mean that Imperial agents felt free to operate more openly while Captain Celchu was the subject of such fierce scrutiny. Imperial agents, in helping to manufacture evidence against Captain Celchu, revealed themselves to us.”

Mon Mothma opened her arms. “Let there be no citizen of the New Republic who harbors suspicions about Tycho Celchu. His devotion to the New Republic is unquestioned. His return to active service with Rogue Squadron is a joyous event for us, and an event that should be feared by those who would attack the New Republic.” She initiated applause for Tycho and everyone else joined in, including Wedge once he tucked the unit citation beneath his left arm.

Tycho bowed his head toward Mon Mothma, but declined an invitation to speak with a curt shake of his head.

Mon Mothma nodded back at him, then resumed her place at the podium. “It is said of Rogue Squadron that doing the impossible is what they do best, and another member of the squadron has shown himself to be perhaps the best of the best at it. Is there anyone in the New Republic who has not heard of Corran Horn? He was the pilot who flew through the worst storm in Coruscant’s recorded history to bring the defense shields down, only to be slain through the treachery of one of his comrades. It was a story that touched all of us because it spoke to the best in one individual and the worst in another. We mourned Corran Horn because his untimely death seemed yet one more tragedy caused by the Empire at a time when the Empire should have been decidedly less virulent.

“We know of Captain Celchu’s innocence because of a number of things, greatest among them Corran Horn’s return from the grave. He was not killed on the last day the Empire held Coruscant. He was captured instead. When Ysanne Isard could not break him and transform him into a puppet, he was placed in a prison where she intended him to live out the rest of his life. Though he had been told that a failed escape attempt would result in his death, Corran Horn risked his life to win his freedom. He alone has gotten away from Lusankya, and his escape precipitated Ysanne Isard’s own departure from Coruscant.”

Mon Mothma beckoned Corran forward, but he followed Tycho’s lead, acknowledging her gesture with a slight bow and a smile. That smile remained on his face as he straightened up, though he did give Wedge a covert wink. Wedge nodded in return, pleased that both men were content with allowing the focus of the ceremony to remain on the squadron instead of shifting it to themselves.

“Citizens, Ysanne Isard’s flight from Coruscant and her subsequent actions have given birth to more rumors than can be counted. It is true that with the resources available to her she did travel to Thyferra and support a revolution that put the Xucphra faction in charge of the bacta cartel. She does now rule there and has effective control over the output of the entire bacta cartel. Given that she introduced the Krytos virus to Coruscant and directed covert Imperial operations to destroy bacta storage facilities here on Coruscant, this would seem to place her in a most powerful position. Literally, it would appear that millions will live or die depending upon her whim.”

Mon Mothma’s voice took on a more serious tone. “Her action would have caused a crisis except for two things over which she had no control. One was a direct and unwitting result of her own haste in taking action against us. When she ordered the creation of the Krytos virus, she wanted a virus that would mutate quickly and spread between species easily. Her scientists complied with her orders, but they failed to take into account what would happen if the spread of the virus was hampered. The Krytos virus was very deadly—in fact, too deadly for her plan to succeed. Infected persons died fast—in many cases too fast to be able to spread the disease very far. An illness that kills too quickly runs itself out of hosts and dies along with them. Those individuals who lasted long enough to spread the virus did so only because, as the virus mutated, it became less virulent. Since it did not kill them so quickly, they had a chance to pass it on, but it was no longer as deadly a virus as Iceheart wanted it to be.

“This high rate of mutation also weakened the virus’s defenses. Analysis of the virus allowed a Vratix verachen to be able to synthesize a specific medication to combat the virus by growing the alazhi component of bacta in a ryll-rich environment. The resulting product, known as rylca, is now being produced in a hidden location by the New Republic. More than enough to eradicate the virus will be available here well before our bacta supply runs out.”

Mon Mothma glanced momentarily back toward Wedge and he saw the glimmerings of a smile on her face. “Rogue Squadron itself did not produce the rylca, but they provided support for the product and were instrumental in obtaining both the ryll and the bacta used to create the rylca. Qlaern Hirf is a Vratix verachen from Thyferra and is the creator of rylca. Equally instrumental in the success of this effort is the woman who transported the components for the rylca and rescued the Vratix from the most dire of circumstances, Mirax Terrik. You may have heard that Mirax was killed in the ambush at Alderaan, but it appears her long association with Rogue Squadron allowed her to do the impossible as well and return from that tragedy to help us deal with the Krytos virus.”

The New Republic’s Chief Councilor led the assembly in a round of applause for both Qlaern and Mirax. The Vratix seemed utterly nonplussed by the demonstration, but Mirax blushed fiercely. She gave Wedge a fearsome stare that he recognized by virtue of having seen it many times before, and he knew what it meant.

She’s right, it is all my fault that she’s being embarrassed by the attention, but I’m glad she’s alive to be blushing. As nearly as Cracken and his Intelligence people could make out, Erisi had betrayed the bacta convoy to the Empire for two reasons. The first was to eliminate a lot of bacta, dashing hopes on Coruscant and driving the price yet higher. The second reason was to get Mirax killed, since her Pulsar Skate was one of the ships in the convoy. Mirax recalled Erisi threatening her if Mirax continued her relationship with Corran, and the destruction of the convoy offered Erisi a way to kill her rival for Corran’s affections. Given that everyone thought Corran was dead at the time, the act was taken as a reflection of Erisi’s vindictive and petty nature.

Then again, Isard might have told Erisi of Corran’s survival and promised him to her as a reward for her continued loyalty. Wedge shivered at that thought. Luckily for Mirax, the Pulsar Skate didn’t go along with the final convoy jump. Mirax had instead shipped out to Borleias, where the captured Alderaan Biotics Facility was put to use synthesizing rylca. The plan had been for it to appear as if Mirax had just stolen a portion of the bacta going to Coruscant—what smuggler could have resisted taking such a prize? She would have remained out of sight until the production of rylca could allow the New Republic the freedom to anger the hacta cartel by announcing their possession of a facility that could produce enough bacta-like products to break the cartel. The death of the convoy provided an even better cover for her operation, so she remained dead until an opportune moment to reveal the deception.

Mon Mothma faced the holocams one last time. “Citizens of the New Republic, the last vestige of the Empire’s evil has been rooted out of Coruscant. What was once an Empire is now just a collection of bitter people clutching at whatever power they can find to keep themselves apart from those they have hurt. What they do not realize, and the reason they are doomed to failure, is that all power in the galaxy comes from the free and willful investing of power by one person in another. Human and non-human, gendered or not, young, old, hale or infirm, we can only give power, we cannot take it. Stolen power evaporates and when it does, the empires that were built on it and of it collapse, never to rise again.”

46

Wedge found it mildly annoying that he was able to resist the generally festive atmosphere of the reception following the awards ceremony. Various guests mixed and mingled with members of the squadron while holocams made the most of every holo-op. The images would be distributed throughout the New Republic, winning a small measure of the unit’s fame for the politicians and other celebrities present.

Though he was inclined to view such opportunism with a cynical eye, he didn’t condemn it. The Rebellion had won. Hundreds and hundreds of worlds flocked to the New Republic’s banner. The New Republic fleet was poised to go after Warlord Zsinj in a campaign that would strike fear into the hearts of all the other petty warlords in the galaxy. Even Ysanne Isard had to know her days were numbered, since there was no way the New Republic could let her remain in control of the bacta supply. With the installation of Fliry Vorru as Thyferra’s Minister of Trade, bacta prices had already started to climb, making that situation one that could not be tolerated.

The reason the celebration failed to reach him went beyond his sense of mourning for Iella Wessiri. She had declined to accompany him to the reception, and he understood why. No one saw Diric as anything but one more of Iceheart’s victims, but Iella clearly thought she should have been able to spot something, to have known Diric was under Iceheart’s control. The obvious implication of that thinking was that if she had been more vigilant she never would have had to shoot him and the guilt over that act would be one with which she would wrestle for the rest of her life.

Ultimately Wedge’s reservations about the celebration came from the past. He remembered well the celebration on Yavin 4 that followed the first Death Star’s destruction. Our joy was this transparent, this unguarded. Then we evacuated the base and began running from the Empire. I know it’s stupid to associate a victory and celebration with impending disaster, but …

Borsk Fey’lya cut through the milling crowd and nodded his head toward Wedge. “I wanted to congratulate you, Commander, on a game well played.”

“I beg your pardon?”

The Bothan tapped claws against the barrel of his lominale mug. “There was a report concerning Rogue Squadron’s intervention at Alderaan. I understand it has been classified as ‘Most Secret.’ ”

“Indeed it has.” Wedge suppressed his desire to smile. “It struck me that the information about the situation at Alderaan could have compromised our rylca operation. I suggested that classifying the report that highly would be a good thing.”

Borsk Fey’lya’s creamy fur rippled up the back of his head. “Good for you.”

“No, Councilor, good for you.” Wedge let his voice drop into a low growl. “You would have found the report less than satisfactory for your ends, which would have prompted you to try to destroy one of my people. I can assure you that would have caused problems.”

“If you want to play at politics, Antilles, I would welcome you onto my battlefield.”

“I don’t want to play at anything, thank you. I didn’t join the Rebellion to play.” Wedge opened a hand and pointed to the various members of the squadron. “My job is to make certain my people do their jobs and stay alive. What I do isn’t about me or garnering power, it’s about people: my people and the people we defend by going after the Empire.”

“And doubtless you see politics as some dirty enterprise beneath your notice.”

Wedge arched an eyebrow at him. “And you can convince me otherwise?”

“You’re intelligent enough, Commander Antilles, to convince yourself I’m right. You already know everything is political. You know, for example, that what you have done for the Rebellion has granted you power—power you might well wish to use to advance your own plans and desires. You have things that will require support to accomplish, and building a coalition of support is political.”

Wedge’s brown eyes narrowed. I had hoped to advance the Vratix case for joining the New Republic, and I thought hard’s taking of Thyferra would make that job just that much easier. Is Borsk Fey’lya trying to suggest that something so obviously right and necessary might flounder because I’m not going to play his game?

Anger began to build in Wedge, but before he could give it vent, he felt the weight of a hand on his right shoulder. His fury drained away as he turned from the Bothan and began to smile. “As stars live and die! I didn’t think you’d be here, Luke.”

The tow-headed Jedi Knight enfolded Wedge’s hand in a firm grip, then he pulled Wedge forward into a backslapping hug. “I wouldn’t have missed it for all the Tibanna gas on Bespin. I was a bit late because, quite frankly, the Jedi exhibits your man found in the Galactic Museum are, well, absorbing. I’ve been chasing all over trying to locate traces of other Jedi, then it turns out a repository of a lot of stuff is on the planet from which I’ve been basing my searches. While very little of it deals with training, there is a lot of material that lets me piece together some history.”

“Corran mentioned he’d found quite a haul. He said it was rather macabre.”

Luke Skywalker nodded solemnly as he stepped back from Wedge. “Once the Emperor isolated those rooms, they became his own private playground. As the Jedi in there were hunted down, the Emperor defaced their monuments. There’s enough evil there to be palpable, but I think things can be set to rights again.”

Borsk Fey’lya came around on Wedge’s left side. “The Council is already discussing an appropriation to allow for the rehabilitation of those exhibits.” The Bothan extended his hand to Luke. “Councilor Borsk Fey’lya, at your service.”

At his own service. Wedge caught a mischievous glint in Luke’s eyes, as if the Jedi Knight knew what he was thinking.

“It is an honor to meet you, Councilor. The efforts of your people in eliminating the second Death Star and in liberating Coruscant speak to the nobility in the Bothan spirit.”

“You are most kind, Jedi Skywalker.”

Wedge laughed. “That’s just because you’re not a womp rat scurrying down some canyon, Councilor.”

“No chance of his being mistaken for that, Wedge.”

“Ahem, thank you.” Fey’lya smoothed the fur at the back of his head. “Jedi Skywalker, you have made strides in reestablishing the Jedi?”

“Some, though I hope for more.” Luke shrugged almost imperceptibly. “Progress is seldom measured in great leaps except when viewed with hindsight.”

“It is much the same with nation-building.”

“So I can imagine.” Luke nodded, then turned and extended his hand to the male half of the couple walking up. “Tycho, good to see you again, and now out from under suspicion.”

Tycho shook his hand. “Thank you, Luke. I believe you know Winter?”

The Jedi Knight nodded and offered Winter his hand. “My sister’s friend and confidant? We are well acquainted. It seems I speak with her more than I do Leia, especially with my sister off on her embassy to Hapes. How are you doing, Winter?”

“Much better, now that Tycho is free.” Winter slipped her hand from Luke’s and again held Tycho’s hand. “I understand you are spending most of your time in the Museum.”

“True. There is a wealth of material there.” Luke looked over at Wedge. “I was hoping you’d introduce me to this Corran Horn.”

“Gladly.” Wedge looked around, caught Corran’s eye, and waved him over. Corran headed in their direction with Mirax on his arm and Qlaern Hirf following them like a shadow. “Luke Skywalker, it is an honor to present to you Lieutenant Corran Horn, Mirax Terrik, and Qlaern Hirf. This is Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight and founder of Rogue Squadron.”

Corran smiled and shook Luke’s hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you, sir. One of the first things Commander Antilles ever said to me was that I was ‘no Luke Skywalker.’ You set a very high standard for all of us to shoot for.”

“Not my intention, but I’m not averse to being used as a motivational tool.” Luke smiled, then shook Mirax’s hand. “What you and Qlaern Hirf have done to save lives here on Coruscant is worthy of much praise and even more thanks.”

Mirax shrugged. “I’m strictly transport, sir, Qlaern did the hard work.”

Luke shot a glance back at Wedge. “A Corellian smuggler without an attitude?”

Wedge shrugged. “She’s smarter than most.”

Mirax laughed. “No profit in bragging, only working.”

“Indeed.” The Jedi held a hand up and brushed it along the Vratix’s arm as Qlaern touched his face. “Our thanks to you for creating rylca.”

“Verachen is what we are. Our joy is in our success.”

“And your success will make many people very happy.” Luke withdrew his arm—forestalling introductions to the rest of the squadron as they crowded around—and, for a moment, his dark cloak closed around his body. When his hands again emerged from beneath the garment, he extended a slender silver cylinder toward Corran. “This belongs to you, I believe.”

“No, sir. I returned it to the Museum, and the Jedi Credit, too.” Corran tapped his breastbone. “I borrowed them when escaping from there and returned them when everything calmed down.”

“I know that, Lieutenant Horn.” Luke’s hand remained halfway between them with the lightsaber held loosely in his grip. “What I mean is that this lightsaber belongs to you. They’re often passed down from one family member to another.”

Corran frowned. “I think you’re making a mistake here. That lightsaber belonged to a Jedi named Nejaa Halcyon. It should go to his family.”

“So it shall.” Luke advanced it toward him. “Nejaa Halcyon was your grandfather.”

What? Luke’s remark, spoken in a low, calm voice, surprised Wedge as much as it seemed to surprise Corran. “Corran, you never said anything about your grandfather being a Jedi Knight.”

“He wasn’t. My grandfather was Rostek Horn. He worked for the Corellian Security Force. He wasn’t a Jedi. He once partnered with one—liaised with him so CorSec could work with the Jedi on things on Corellia—but that was it.” Corran unfastened his tunic at the neck and pulled out the medallion he wore. He unclasped the gold chain and gathered the Jedi medallion in his right hand. “The Jedi on this medallion may have been his friend, but he wasn’t my grandfather.”

Luke’s voice remained even. “Your father was Hal Horn?”

“Yes.”

“And his given name was Valin Horn.”

“Yes, but everyone called him Hal.” Corran blinked. “You don’t think that was a rhyme for part of his name, do you? You think that was short for Halcyon, right?”

“What I think, Corran, is that Nejaa Halcyon died in the Clone Wars, and his friend, Rostek Horn, was there to support Nejaa’s widow and son through the tragedy. Rostek married your grandmother and adopted your father.” Luke frowned momentarily. “When the Emperor began to hunt down the Jedi and kill them, Rostek Horn, given his position in CorSec, managed to change records so that Nejaa’s family was hidden from Imperial scrutiny. You and I are alike in that we come from families with a strong Jedi tradition, yet neither of us were aware of our heritage until later.”

Luke reached out and took Corran’s right hand in his left. He pressed the lightsaber into it and closed Corran’s fingers around the shaft. “You may want to consider finding this lightsaber a coincidence or luck, but there’s no such thing. I’ll have you know that of the other two-dozen lightsabers in those rooms, only three worked without recharging, and this one had lain in a case far longer than any of the others.”

“You mean my grandfather wasn’t my grandfather?”

“Oh, he was very much your grandfather. He accepted the responsibility for directing you and your father into the sort of life that would honor Nejaa Halcyon and insulate you from the dark side of the Force. It was a difficult and courageous thing for him to do, and clearly he did it well.” Luke smiled. “In fact, he did it very well. So well, in fact, I have an offer to make you. For thirty generations the Jedi Knights safeguarded the galaxy, and the Emperor was only able to succeed in our absence. I am dedicating my life to reestablishing the Jedi Knights. I want you to join me. Come with me. Train and learn with me. Become a Jedi Knight.”

Wedge felt something hollow open up inside his gut in the wake of the hushed gasps of the rest of the squadron. He instantly recognized the void—I’m jealous! That surprised him for a moment, then he realized how the emotion had been born. Luke had always been a special friend, but as he had grown into his heritage as a Jedi Knight, distance had formed between them. They still got along well and had a great time in each other’s company, but Wedge’s inability to understand what it was to be a Jedi also forced them apart. Now someone who does not know him as well as I do, someone he barely knows at all, is being offered the chance to learn about a side of Luke I can never know.

Corran lifted the lightsaber up in front of his face. “You want me to become a Jedi Knight?”

“Yes. Together we can make certain no more Emperors can rise up to enslave a galaxy. Everything you were raised to do within CorSec you will be able to do in the whole of the New Republic. The Empire is but one manifestation of the Force’s dark side and we will stand as a buffer between it and good people everywhere.”

Mirax hugged Corran’s left arm. “A Jedi Knight. This is quite an honor.”

Corran shook his head. “No.”

Wedge nodded at him. “Oh, it is quite an honor, Corran, one I envy you.”

“You’re not hearing what I’m saying.” Corran’s head came up. “I realize it’s an honor to be asked to train and become a Jedi Knight. Believe me I do, but my answer is no.”

Borsk Fey’lya’s jaw dropped open. “No?”

“No.” Corran frowned. “I have things I have to do. Erisi and Iceheart have crimes to pay for.”

Luke’s cloak closed around him and his face became impassive. “Beware revenge, Corran. Such black emotions open the way to the dark side of the Force.”

“This isn’t about revenge.” Corran shook his head and pain washed over his face. “It’s about obligations I have to people. People who helped me, other prisoners were on the Lusankya when it blasted out of here. I promised them I’d come back for them. Well, we know where they are: Thyferra. It’s time we go get them.”

Wedge nodded. “We clearly cannot leave Ysanne Isard and Fliry Vorru in charge of the galaxy’s bacta supply. We’re producing rylca now and might be able to produce some bacta later, but that’ll never be enough. We’re going to have to go after Iceheart, and I’d prefer it to be sooner rather than later.”

Borsk Fey’lya’s fur rippled. “But, in fact, Commander Antilles, your quest will never take place.”

“What?”

The Bothan clasped his hands together at his waist. “The Provisional Council will never sanction an operation against Thyferra. We have your orders to join the Mon Remonda and head out after Warlord Zsinj.”

“Those orders were issued before Iceheart escaped with Erisi and Fliry Vorru. It was before she took Thyferra. We can’t be expected to follow those orders.” Wedge stared disbelieving at the Bothan Councilor. “That’s not right.”

“Oh, it is quite right, Commander. Remember, the people of Thyferra overthrew their own government and installed Ysanne Isard as their leader. This makes the revolution there nothing more than a case of internal political maneuvering.”

A cold chill ran down Wedge’s spine. “And the Provisional Council cannot allow itself or its agents to interfere in the internal politics of a world, because that would frighten off potential member states from joining the New Republic.”

“It might even convince some others to leave and break the New Republic apart.” Borsk Fey’lya glanced at Corran Horn. “You might as well accept the Jedi’s offer because your unit can do nothing on Thyferra. Rogue Squadron has other duties now.”

Corran arched an eyebrow at the Bothan. “Okay, I quit.”

The fur on the back of Fey’lya’s neck rose like a rocket. “You cannot. Antilles, talk sense into him.”

Wedge snorted. “I’ve heard sense, and it’s coming from him.” Fey’lya’s tone of voice had told Wedge there was no way he could advance the Vratix case before the Council. The Vratix were the backbone of the Ashern, the native independence movement on Thyferra and Isard’s only opposition. His proposing that the Provisional Council back the Vratix and their claims to self-determination would meet with equal enthusiasm as any other idea about interfering with Thyferran internal politics. I promised Qlaern I’d do what I could for its people, but the New Republic is preventing me from keeping that promise.

Wedge rubbed a hand along his jaw. “I joined this Rebellion to fight the Empire’s tyranny. Just because we have Coruscant doesn’t mean it’s ended. The New Republic might not be able to strike at Thyferra, but there are Rebels around who can.” He smiled. “I quit, too.”

Borsk Fey’lya turned to his left. “It would appear, Captain Celchu, that Rogue Squadron is now your command.”

“I don’t think so.” Tycho shook his head. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been a civillian. I’m out as well.”

Corran’s Gand wingman rested a hand on Corran’s shoulder. “Ooryl resigns.”

“Nawara and I are out,” Rhysati Ynr chimed in.

Gavin smiled. “I quit, too.”

Aril Nunb, Inyri Forge, and Riv Shiel all nodded in agreement. “We’re out.”

Asyr Sei’lar slipped in under Gavin’s arm. “I resign.”

Borsk Fey’lya stiffened. “You’re a Bothan. You cannot.”

“I’m a Rogue. It is done.”

The Bothan councilor snarled. “You can’t do this. You have no ships.”

“Begging your pardon, Councilor, but I never signed my X-wing over to the Rebellion. I have a ship.”

“Very well for you, Lieutenant Horn, but no one else does.” Borsk Fey’lya’s amethyst eyes burned with fury. “The rest of you have no resources for getting ships. One X-wing and some broken-down tramp freighter will take on a Super Star Destroyer?”

Mirax shot him a nasty glance. “The Skate isn’t broken down. They need ships, I can find them.”

“And pay for them with what?”

Tycho smiled. “As I recall, the New Republic made a great deal of noise about a number of bank accounts belonging to me with a significant amount of credits in them.”

“That money was supplied by Isard to frame you.”

“So much the better to use it against her, wouldn’t you say?”

“This is insanity! You cannot do this.” Borsk Fey’lya raked his fur back down into place. “Jedi Skywalker, convince them of their folly. They will fail if they try.”

“As my master told me, there is no try: one can only do or do not,” Luke nodded solemnly. “It seems, Wedge, those are your choices.”

“No choice at all, Luke.” Wedge smiled broadly. “We’re, ah, we were Rogue Squadron. We do.”

DEDICATION

To the memory of
Patty Vardeman

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank the following people for their various contributions to this book:

Janna Silverstein, Tom Dupree, and Ricia Mainhardt for getting me into this mess;

Sue Rostoni and Lucy Autrey Wilson for letting me get away with all they have in this universe;

Kevin J. Anderson, Timothy Zahn, Kathy Tyers, Bill Smith, Bill Slavicsek, Peter Schweighofer, Michael Kogge, and Dave Wolverton for the material they created and the advice they offered;

Lawrence Holland and Edward Kilham for the X-Wing and TIE Fighter computer games;

Chris Taylor for pointing out to me which ship Tycho was flying in Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi and Gail Mihara for pointing out controversies I might want to avoid;

My parents, my sister Kerin, my brother Patrick and his wife Joy for their encouragement (and endless efforts to face my other books out on bookstore shelves);

Dennis L. McKiernan, Jennifer Roberson, and especially Elizabeth T. Danforth for listening to bits of this story as it was being written and enduring such abuse with smiles and a supportive manner.

STAR WARS: THE BACTA WAR
A Bantam Spectra Book / February 1997

SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

®, ™ & © 1997 by Lucasfilm Ltd.
All rights reserved. Used under authorization.
Cover art by Paul Youll.
Cover art copyright © 1997 by Lucasfilm Ltd.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: Bantam Books.

eISBN: 978-0-307-79624-0

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1745 Broadway, New York, New York 10019.

v3.1

Contents

Master - Table of Contents

The Bacta War

Title Page

Copyright

Dramatis Personae

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42

Dedication

Acknowledgments

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

The Rogues

Commander Wedge Antilles (human male from Corellia)

Captain Tycho Celchu (human male from Alderaan)

Captain Aril Nunb (Sullustan female from Sullust)

Lieutenant Corran Horn (human male from Corellia)

Ooryl Qrygg (Gand male from Gand)

Nawara Ven (Twi’lek male from Ryloth)

Rhysati Ynr (human female from Bespin)

Gavin Darklighter (human male from Tatooine)

Riv Shiel (Shistavanen male from Uvena III)

Asyr Sei’lar (Bothan female from Bothawui)

Inyri Forge (human female from Kessel)

Iella Wessiri (human female from Corellia)

Winter (human female from Alderaan)

Elscol Loro (human female from Cilpar)

Zraii (Verpine male from Roche G42)

M-3PO (Emtrey; protocol and regulations droid)

Whistler (Corran’s R2 astromech)

Mynock (Wedge’s R5 astromech)

Alliance Military

Admiral Ackbar (Mon Calamari male from Mon Calamari)

Captain Pash Cracken (human male from Contruum)

Alliance Intelligence

General Airen Cracken (human male from Contruum)

Crew of the Pulsar Skate

Mirax Terrik (human female from Corellia)

Liat Tsayv (Sullustan male from Sullust)

Thyferran Forces

Ysanne Isard, Director of Imperial Intelligence (human female from Coruscant)

Fliry Vorru (human male from Corellia)

Erisi Dlarit (human female from Thyferra)

1

Somehow the dead of night amplified the lightsaber’s hiss, allowing it to fill the room. The blade’s silvery light frosted the furniture and gave birth to impenetrable shadows. The blade drifted back and forth, prompting the shadows to waver and shift as if fleeing from the light.

Much as criminals would flee from the light.

Corran Horn stared at the blade, finding the argent energy shaft neither harsh nor painful to his eyes. He lazily wove the blade through joined infinity loops, then, with the flick of his right wrist, snapped it up into a guard that protected him from forehead to waist. Relic of a bygone era, it still can conjure up images and feelings.

He hit the black button under his thumb twice, and the blade died, again plunging the room into darkness. The lightsaber did conjure up images and feelings in him, but Corran doubted they were at all the images and feelings commonly felt by most others on Coruscant. To everyone, including Corran, Luke Skywalker was a hero and was welcomed as heir to the Jedi tradition. His efforts at rebuilding the Jedi order were roundly applauded, and no one, save those who dreaded the return of law and order to the galaxy, wished Luke anything but the greatest success in his heroic quest.

As do I. Corran frowned. Still, my decision has been made.

He’d felt it the greatest of honors to be asked by Luke Skywalker to leave Rogue Squadron and train to become a Jedi. Skywalker had told him that his grandfather Nejaa Halcyon had been a Jedi Master who had been slain in the Clone Wars. The lightsaber Corran had discovered in the Galactic Museum had belonged to Nejaa and had been presented to Corran as his rightful inheritance. Mine is the heritage of a Jedi Knight.

But that was a heritage he had only heard of from Skywalker. He did not doubt the Jedi was telling the truth, but it was not the whole truth. At least not the whole of the truth with which I grew up.

Throughout his life Corran Horn had come to believe his grandfather was Rostek Horn, a valued and highly placed member of the Corellian Security Force. His father, Hal Horn, likewise was with CorSec. When it came time for Corran to choose a career, there was really no choice at all. He continued the Horn tradition of serving CorSec. His grandfather had always admitted to having known a Jedi who died in the Clone Wars, but that acquaintance had been given no more weight than having once met Imperial Moff Fliry Vorru or having visited Imperial Center, as Coruscant had been known under the Empire’s rule.

Corran found it no great surprise that Rostek Horn and his father had downplayed their ties to Nejaa Halcyon. Halcyon had died in the Clone Wars; and Rostek had comforted, grown close with, and married Halcyon’s widow. He also adopted Halcyon’s son, Valin, who grew up as Hal Horn. When the Emperor began his extermination of the Jedi order, Rostek had used his position at CorSec to destroy all traces of the Halcyon family, insulating his wife and adopted son from investigation by Imperial authorities.

Since exhibiting any interest in the Jedi Knights could invite scrutiny and my family would be very vulnerable if its secret were discovered, I probably heard less about the Jedi Knights than most other kids my age. If not for various holodramas that painted the Jedi Knights as villains and later reminiscences by his grandfather about the Clone Wars, Corran would have known little or nothing about the Jedi. Like most other children, he found them vaguely romantic and all too much sinister, but they were distant and remote while what his father and grandfather did was immediate and exciting.

He raised a hand and pressed it to the golden Jedi medallion he wore around his neck. It had been a keepsake his father had carried and Corran inherited after his father’s death. Corran had taken it as a lucky charm of sorts, never realizing his father had kept it because it bore the image of his own father, Nejaa Halcyon. Wearing it had been my father’s way of honoring his father and defying the Empire. Likewise, I wore it to honor him, not realizing I was doing more through that act.

Skywalker’s explanation to him of what his relationship to Nejaa Halcyon was opened new vistas and opportunities for him. In joining CorSec he had chosen to dedicate his life to a mission that paralleled the Jedi mission: making the galaxy safe for others. As Luke had explained, by becoming a Jedi, Corran could do what he had always done but on a larger scale. That idea, that opportunity, was seductive, and clearly all of his squadron-mates had expected him to jump at it.

Corran smiled. I thought Councilor Borsk Fey’lya was going to die when I turned down the offer. In many ways I wish he had.

He shook his head, realizing that thought was unworthy of himself and really wasted on Borsk Fey’lya. Corran was certain that, on some level, the Bothan Councilor believed he—not Corran—was right and his actions were vital to sustain the New Republic. Re-creating the Jedi order would help provide a cohesive force to bind the Republic together and to drape it in the nostalgic mantle of the Old Republic. Just as having various members of nation-states placed in Rogue Squadron had helped pull the Republic together, having a Corellian become a new Jedi might influence the Diktat into treating the New Republic in a more hospitable manner.

Skywalker had asked him to, and Fey’lya had assumed he would, join the Jedi order, but that was because neither of them knew of or realized that his personal obligations and promises exerted more influence with him than any galactic cause. While Corran realized that doing the greatest good for the greatest number was probably better for everyone in the long run, he had short-term debts he wanted to repay, and time was of the essence in doing so.

The remnants of the Empire had captured, tortured, and imprisoned him at Lusankya, which he later came to realize was really a Super Star Destroyer buried beneath the surface of Coruscant. He had escaped from there—a feat never before successfully accomplished—but had gotten away only with the aid of other prisoners. He had vowed to them that he would return and liberate them, and he fully intended to keep his promise. The fact that they were imprisoned in the belly of the SSD that now orbited Thyferra made that task more difficult, but long odds against success had never stopped him before. I’m a Corellian. What use have I for odds?

His desire to save them had increased with a chance discovery that embarrassed him mightily when he made it. In Lusankya the Rebel prisoners had been led by an older man who simply called himself Jan. Since his escape, Corran had caught a holovision broadcast of a documentary on the heroes of the Rebel Alliance. First and foremost among them had been the general who led the defense of Yavin 4 and planned the destruction of the first Death Star, Jan Dodonna. The documentary said he’d been slain during the evacuation of Yavin 4, but Corran had no doubt Dodonna had been a prisoner on Lusankya. If I hadn’t thought him dead, I might have recognized him, too. How stupid of me.

Dodonna’s celebrity had nothing to do with Corran’s desire to save him. Jan, like Urlor Sette and others, had helped him escape. They had risked their lives to give him a chance to get away. Leaving such brave people captives of someone like Ysanne Isard not only failed to reward their courage but repaid them by leaving them in severe jeopardy of death or worse—conversion into a covert Imperial agent under Isard’s direction.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

Corran started, then turned and smiled at the black-haired, dark-eyed woman standing in the bedroom doorway. “I guess not, Mirax. I’m sorry I woke you.”

“You didn’t wake me. Your absence awakened me.” She wore a dark blue robe, belted at the waist with a pale yellow sash. Mirax raised a hand to hide a yawn then pointed at the silver cylinder in his right hand. “Regretting your decision?”

“Which one? Refusing to join the Jedi Knights or”—he smiled—“or hooking up with you?”

She raised an eyebrow. “I was thinking of the Jedi decision. If you have reservations about the other decision, I can relearn how to sleep alone.”

He laughed, and she joined him. “I regret neither. Your father and my father may have been mortal enemies, but I can’t imagine having a better friend than you.”

“Or lover.”

“Especially lover.”

Mirax shrugged. “All you men who’ve just gotten out of prison say that.”

Corran frowned for a moment. “I imagine you’re right, but how you came by that information, I don’t want to know.”

Mirax blinked her eyes. “You know, I don’t think I want to know that, either.”

Corran laughed, then crossed the room and enfolded her in a warm hug. “After my escape, Tycho expressed his regrets concerning your death to me. He told me how Warlord Zsinj had ambushed a convoy at Alderaan and destroyed it, including your Pulsar Skate. Everything inside of me just collapsed. Losing you just ripped the emotional skeleton out of me.”

“Now you know how I felt when I thought you’d been slain here on Coruscant.” She kissed his left ear, then settled her chin on his shoulder. “I hadn’t realized how much you had become part of my life until you were gone. The hole the Lusankya created blasting her way out of Coruscant was nothing compared to the void I had inside. It wasn’t a question of wanting to die, but of knowing my insides were dead and wondering when the rest of me would catch up.”

“I had it luckier than you. When he got the chance, General Cracken pulled me aside and told me how you’d gone on a covert mission to Borleias to deliver ryll kor, bacta, and a Vratix verachen. Zsinj’s ambush conveniently covered your disappearance so the Thyferrans didn’t know what you were setting up on Borleias with their bacta.”

“Yeah, they would not have liked it if it were known we were using the Alderaan Biotics facility there to make rylca and, eventually, enough bacta to dent their monopoly.” Mirax shivered. “I would have preferred the original plan working, because as much as I didn’t look forward to being reviled and hunted down for stealing bacta from the convoy, I would have rather endured that than having all those other people killed.”

“Nothing you could do about that.”

“Nor was there anything you could do about your fellow prisoners being whisked away by Isard when she escaped in the Lusankya.” Mirax backed up a half-step and held Corran at arm’s-length. “You do realize that, don’t you?”

“Realize, yes. Accept, no. Tolerate, no way.” Corran narrowed his green eyes, but the hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “You know, if you keep hanging around with me, you’re going to get into a lot of trouble.”

“Trouble?” Mirax batted her brown eyes. “Whatever do you mean, Lieutenant Horn?”

“Well, I precipitated the mass resignation of the New Republic’s most celebrated fighter squadron and vowed that we’d liberate Thyferra from Ysanne Isard’s clutches. So far, toward that end, we have a squadron’s worth of pilots, my X-wing, and if you’re really in this with us, your freighter.”

Mirax smiled. “Versus three Imperial Star Destroyers and a Super Star Destroyer, not to mention any sort of Thyferran military forces that might oppose us.”

Corran nodded. “Right.”

Mirax’s grin broadened. “Okay, so get to the trouble part.”

“Mirax, be serious.”

“I am. You forget, dear heart, that it was an X-wing and a freighter that lit up the first Death Star.”

“This is a little bit different.”

“Not really.” She reached out and tapped his forehead with a finger. “You and I, Wedge and Tycho, and everyone else knows what it takes to defeat the Empire. It’s not a matter of equipment, but of having the heart to use that equipment. The Empire was broken because, for the good of the galaxy, it had to be broken. The Rebels were given no choice, and because of that, they pushed themselves further than the Imperials did. We know we can win and that we must win, and Isard’s people know nothing of the kind.”

“That’s all well and good, Mirax, and I agree, but this is a massive undertaking. The sheer amount of equipment we’ll need to pull this off is staggering.”

“Agreed. I don’t think this will be easy, but it can be done.”

“I know.” Corran massaged his eyes with his left hand. “Too many variables and not enough data available to begin to assign them values.”

“And three hours before dawn isn’t the time you should be wrestling with such things. As bright as you might be, Corran Horn, this is not an hour when you do your best work.”

Corran raised an eyebrow. “I seem to recall you singing a different tune last evening about this time.”

“At that time you weren’t concerned with Ysanne Isard, you were concerned with me.”

“Ah, and that makes the difference?”

“From my perspective, you bet.” She took the lightsaber from his hand and set it atop his dresser. “And I think, if you’re willing to work with me, I can share that perspective with you.”

He kissed her on the tip of the nose. “It would be my pleasure.”

“That, Lieutenant Horn, is just half the objective here.”

“Forgive me.” Following her toward the bed, he stepped over the silken puddle her robe made on the floor. “You know, I just got out of prison.”

“For that I won’t forgive you but perhaps”—she smiled up at him—“I will make some allowance for good behavior.”

2

Wedge Antilles felt decidedly uncomfortable out of uniform. Actually, I feel uncomfortable out of the service. During the covert mission to Coruscant, he’d not been in hailing distance of an Alliance uniform, and he’d even worn Imperial uniforms a couple of times, but that had not bothered him. He’d spent most of his adult life as part of the Rebel Alliance and now he had chosen to leave it.

There was no doubt in his mind that the decision to leave was the right one to make. He fully understood why the New Republic couldn’t attack Thyferra and bring Ysanne Isard to justice. Since she was installed as the Chief of State through an internal revolution—as opposed to an invasion—her holding office was not a case of Imperial aggression, but of self-determination. If the New Republic rejected that idea in this one case, plenty of other nation-states would think long and hard before joining the New Republic or would consider leaving.

Wedge forced himself to smile and looked up at the light-brown-haired man with bright blue eyes sitting across the table from him. “Have we bitten off more than we can chew?”

Tycho Celchu shrugged. “It’s a mouthful, but with some more teeth, we might be able to choke it down. There is some good news on this whole front you know. We have the ten million credits that Ysanne Isard placed in accounts to frame me. That money is mine, which means it’s ours. We have the five Z-95 Headhunters that were used to help liberate Coruscant.”

“But they’re not hyperspace capable.”

“True, but that’s not going to be their value for us.” Tycho began to smile. “The Z-95s are part of history. They’re collectible. I’ve already had offers from museums and amusement parks to buy them. We can probably get one point five million for each of them—the Bothan Military Academy wants the one Asyr flew so badly they’re not even trying to hide their desire for it.”

Wedge’s jaw dropped. “That would give us quite a war chest.”

“It should take care of many of our needs.”

“Provided we can find places where we can buy weapons that are restricted or illegal on most civilized planets.”

Tycho nodded. “Winter and Mirax are working on that problem. Winter, from her work locating Imperial supply depots for us to raid, knows where there are bits and pieces of things that we can buy, borrow, or steal. Mirax is fairly certain she can locate sources for pretty much anything else we need. And we are getting donations of material.”

Wedge smiled and looked around the small office in which he and Tycho sat. After their resignation, they had been forced out of Rogue Squadron’s headquarters facility. Various citizens had turned around and offered the ex-Rogues apartments and offices. They’d been feted and celebrated and praised as if they were the only people in the galaxy who still had in them the rebel spirit that defeated the Empire.

“Do you think the Provisional Council ordered the grounding of all skyhooks just to spite us?”

Tycho shook his head. “That’s a popular rumor after we were offered the SoroSuub skyhook, but we know the safety concerns over the things are well founded. The Lusankya blasted most of one out of the sky, and the falling debris obliterated a couple of square kilometers. Grounding the skyhooks in that area and where the Lusankya blasted out of Coruscant provides housing for the survivors of those disasters and allows the resources used to keep the skyhooks airborne to be diverted to other projects.”

“Too bad for us, because a skyhook would have been perfect. It would have enough storage to let us house our equipment when we get it.”

Tycho raised an eyebrow. “I think you’re more concerned that it would provide Isard with a single target to hit when she comes after us, which she will. It minimizes collateral damage.”

“Unless you’re living beneath us.”

“True.”

“As was your speculation.” Wedge frowned. “The fact is. that we’ve declared war on Isard, but we’re not going to be indiscriminate in waging that war. She knows no such restriction on her actions. In reality, we shouldn’t be looking at any headquarters anywhere near Coruscant. There are a bunch of old Rebel bases we could convert.”

“Even if we could get it, I’m not going back to Hoth.” Tycho shivered. “I saw enough snow there to last me a dozen lifetimes.”

“Which is about what it takes to burn that Hoth cold from your bones.” Wedge shook his head. “No, I was thinking about Yavin 4 or Talasea. Endor would be nice, but the Ewoks would be targets for her.”

A chime sounded from the door. Wedge looked up and said, “Open.”

The door slid open to reveal a flame-haired man of above-average height wearing the uniform of a Captain in the New Republic Armed Forces. He started to salute, then hesitated, then completed the gesture in a crisp and respectful manner.

Wedge smiled and stood behind the table. He returned the salute, then waved the man into the office and toward a chair. “Good to see you again, Pash. I see you’ve got your rank back. You’re rejoining your flight group?”

Pash Cracken nodded, then shook hands with both Tycho and Wedge before seating himself. “Good to see both of you as well.” His green-eyed gaze flicked down at the floor for a moment. “I really wish I were going to be with the rest of you. Just say the word, Wedge, and I’m a civilian.”

The pain in Pash’s voice started a sympathetic aching in Wedge’s chest. “We’d love to have you with us, but there’s no way you can resign and join us. Your father’s the head of Alliance Security. If you came with us there would be no way anyone would believe we’re operating independently. I know you’d not be reporting to your father, but the appearance would cause trouble for the New Republic.”

“I know.” Pash took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m back as part of Commander Varth’s wing. While the bulk of the fleet is off chasing Warlord Zsinj, we’re being pulled Core-ward to cover some of the sectors where Zsinj used to run around. It’s going to be something of an adventure for our people, because we’ll be staging from Folor, that moon base orbiting Commenor.”

“I remember it well.” Wedge smiled. “Not a lot of creature comforts there.”

“It’ll beat what we’ve got out on Generis. It’s backward enough that most folks there don’t even realize the Old Republic has fallen.”

Tycho smiled. “And they’re wondering why nothing new is being shipped from Alderaan.”

“That’s pretty much it.” Pash leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Our patrol area includes Yag’Dhul, the system that is home to the Givin. One of our initial exercises involves going in and rendering the space station there uninhabitable so Warlord Zsinj won’t have it as a place to which he can retreat.”

Wedge frowned. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but Zsinj hasn’t been anywhere near that station since we hit it and stole his bacta.”

“So it seems.” Pash shrugged. “Anyway, my flight group has the job of denying this station to Zsinj. I was thinking that perhaps you might like to stage your operations out of that station. It would deny it to Zsinj and would provide you a decent fighting platform from which to work. It’s convenient to Coruscant and Thyferra as well as to a number of other worlds.”

Wedge’s brown eyes narrowed. “And would allow you to wander by and help out if we got into trouble.”

Pash sat back and feigned surprise. “Why you didn’t think that was what I had in mind, did you? Not at all. I mean, yes, my people might avail themselves of the station if we needed to stop—no way I’m going to set down on Yag’Dhul. The weather is too unpredictable to allow us to use it as a viable staging area.”

“Point taken.”

Tycho nodded. “The station would make for a good staging area. If Pash were to report that it had been rendered uninhabitable, then Isard might be led to believe it’s junk. There’s no doubt in my mind that at some point she’ll find out where we are and come after us, but an operational space platform has to be a bit more daunting than a skyhook or a warehouse here on Coruscant.”

“Definitely seems like this is our best choice.” Wedge nodded, then smiled at Pash. “Thanks a lot. You’ve solved one of our major problems. We now have a home.”

“I hoped you’d say that.” Pash smiled broadly. “I ship out at the end of the week. I’ll be back in an A-wing, but that’s not so bad. We’ll keep the station safe for you until you can come out and take possession, and we’ll transmit reports about its destruction just to keep folks guessing.”

“I appreciate it.” Wedge frowned for a moment. “Pash, when you joined Rogue Squadron, you said you wanted to join to get a perspective on how well you fly and fight. You wanted to be part of the best unit going to find out if you really were as good as you have been told you are. Did you get that perspective? Are you comfortable going back to your own unit?”

Pash sat back, his brows knitted with concentration. “I think I did get that perspective, Wedge. Granted, I’ve only been with the Rogues for a short time, but we did some fairly nasty flying. I don’t think any fight I’ve been part of before or since flying a Headhunter through a blacked-out city in the middle of the mother of all thunderstorms will match that experience. That was flying by instinct, by skill, and by luck. I made shots and pulled maneuvers I never would have thought possible. After that performance I almost wish there was another Death Star up there for me to take a shot at.”

“I’d not go that far, Pash.” Wedge shared a grin with Tycho. “You are good, very good. The Imps have every right to fear you.”

“Thanks, Wedge. It means a lot coming from you.” The pilot brushed fingers back through his red hair. “As for my being comfortable returning to my unit, yeah, I’m okay there, too. One thing being with Rogue Squadron taught me is that to be a unit, everyone has to pull their own weight. I’ve been afraid that my people wouldn’t think for themselves and would follow me into disaster if I make a mistake. What I’d missed is exactly what you do. You give your people responsibilities and make them rely on each other. If we’d just followed your lead while on Coruscant, the Imps would still own this world. I need to do just that with my people. If I give them responsibility, they’ll learn that I trust them. Once they realize that, they’ll also trust in themselves and won’t follow me blindly when I do something stupid.”

Wedge stood and offered Pash his hand. “You’ll be sorely missed, Captain Cracken, but our loss is your unit’s gain. We’ll see you soon at the Yag’Dhul station.”

“Thanks, Wedge, Tycho. I look forward to seeing you there.”

The door closed behind Pash, prompting Wedge and Tycho to exchange glances again. “Well, Tycho, it seems our housing problem is solved. Now all we need is a dozen or more X-wings, munitions for same, droids, techs, foodstuffs, and other supplies, not to mention all the equipment necessary to repair any damage to our new base.”

Tycho winced. “That’s quite the tall order. Dare I say it?”

“What?”

“I wish we had Emtrey to help us put this whole package together.”

Wedge smiled as he thought of the black 3PO droid with a spaceport controller droid’s clamshell head. Installed as the unit’s Quartermaster, the droid had really been meant to keep an eye on Tycho in case he was a spy in the Empire’s control. Despite his espionage duties, he had been a wonder at procuring supplies in a timely manner. Even so, he could be annoyingly voluble, which is why Wedge spent as much time as possible away from him.

Wedge sighed. “Yeah, I guess I miss him, too.” He shrugged. “In his absence, I guess we’ll just have to do the best we can.”

“True, and hope that’s going to be good enough.”

3

His move to Thyferra left Fliry Vorru in a perpetual state of simmering anger. After years spent in the spice mines of Kessel, with its thin, arid atmosphere, and then his short stay on Coruscant—similarly dry but decidedly more metropolitan and to his tastes—Thyferra was all but unendurable. Green predominated, from the deep and dark tones of the tropical planet’s rain forests to the lighter shades used in decorating, fashion, and even cosmetics. After Kessel’s barren mines and the gray canyons of Coruscant, Vorru found the omnipresence of verdant life oppressive.

The world’s humidity dragged on him as he walked the halls of the Xucphra corporate headquarters. One does not breathe the air here, one drinks it. The heavy humidity meant most of the fabric used on the world was light and thin, in many cases quite sheer, while the fashions themselves tended to be abbreviated. Although this did offer some distractions—for the women of Thyferra tended strongly toward tall, lean, and beautiful—many of the people he had to deal with were short, hairy, lumpen creatures who should have been swathed in bolts of the most opaque cloth available. Their positions as the scions of the various families that ran the Xucphra corporation and, now, the civil government, required him to be polite and even deferential.

This requirement to courteously entertain the most stupid of ideas ground on him most of all. Under the Empire’s rule, the Xucphra and Zaltin corporations had been given a monopoly on the production of bacta. Thyferra served as the heart of the operation, with alazhi harvesting and kavam synthesis taking place primarily on Thyferra, but also at a few colony worlds elsewhere. The monopoly had resulted in both corporations becoming slothful and greedy—with their profits guaranteed, there was no need for expansion or diversification. As a result, people rose to positions of importance with no eye toward merit, just seniority.

Vorru’s installation as Minister of Trade had given him oversight over the production and sale of bacta. His initial review of the whole production and distribution process had revealed to him hundreds of places where potential profit was being ignored. For example, bacta produced at a satellite facility would be shipped back to Thyferra before being transshipped to a world a dozen light-years away from the facility where it was produced. The only reason for such an activity was so the shipping firm, which was owned by Xucphra, could earn a profit, which ended up back in the pockets of the owners of Xucphra anyway—though it had been pared down by the cost of ship maintenance, crew, bookkeepers, and others.

This hardly surprised Vorru because of the way the Zaltin and Xucphra corporations had been set up. Ten thousand humans formed the management cadre for the corporations, and they oversaw the operations carried out by approximately 2.8 million native Vratix laborers. The Vratix were very efficient, requiring little or no supervision, so the galaxy-wide operations hardly required the legion of administrative personnel in place. Each corporation discouraged mixing and mingling with individuals from the other corporation, hence they became insular and fierce rivals. While their isolation had not caused problems with genetic inbreeding—though Vorru thought that was only a generation or two away—there certainly was philosophical inbreeding that led to sinecures being created for incompetent members of the corporate family.

I assume my last order to eliminate some of these fiefdoms is the reason Iceheart wants to see me. Xucphra had displaced Zaltin in the recent coup and installed Ysanne Isard as the world’s leader. Most of the Zaltin folks had fled or been killed, making the Xucphra family the sole masters of a world they had long shared. As such they had no desire to listen to or comply with the orders of an offworlder like him. Even so, they were so thoroughly socialized to accept a hierarchy of command, that they would complain about him to Isard, another offworlder. It made no sense to Vorru, and in this lack of comprehension he felt fortunate. The day I start thinking like my charges is the day I choose to die.

Rounding a corner, Vorru strode past the desk of Isard’s secretary, refusing to allow himself to be distracted by her spare costume. That is a pleasure I will save myself for solace after Iceheart is through with me. The secretary, a woman whose long black hair covered more than her clothes, smiled at him, but made no attempt to stop him or even announce him.

The Imperial Royal Guards flanking the doorway to Isard’s office did not react to him at all, which reinforced the pity Vorru felt for them. Unlike everyone else on the planet, they still wore the uniforms they brought with them from Imperial Center. A thick scarlet cloak covered the red armor and though no puddles formed at their feet, Vorru knew they had to be roasting inside it. Even more burdensome to them, though, had to have been the orders to relent and not treat everyone like a potential assassin. The Thyferrans reacted badly to the strict security Isard’s Royal Guard imposed initially, so she has orderd her bodyguard to relax—something that will probably require gene therapy before they feel at ease doing it.

As he entered Isard’s office, he immediately felt a bit more comfortable. The only greenery in sight was located outside the building and ensconced safely behind large, amorphous transparisteel viewports. The room itself had been paneled with very blond wood, giving it a Tatooinish cast. As had been the case with her office on Coruscant, it remained largely empty and free of clutter. Furnishings would be of use only if one wanted to linger here, and with her being present, this is not likely, even if she has gone native.

On Coruscant the black-haired woman with white temple locks had been given to wearing a uniform similar in cut to that of Imperial Grand Admirals, though hers was colored blood red, not white. On Thyferra she had chosen to wear clothing that was more loose and flowing. The fabric she chose was still blood red—in keeping with the uniforms worn by the Imperial Royal Guard—but she eschewed the nearly transparent cloth others wore happily. Pity, she is striking enough to wear it well. Vorru had long since heard the rumor that Isard had been one of Palpatine’s lovers and could not deny she was attractive.

Her eyes, and all that lies behind them, is undoubtedly what drew the Emperor to her. The Hothlike icy blue orb of her right eye contrasted sharply with the fiery molten red of her left. They seemed windows into the duality of her nature. She could be cold and calculating in the extreme, but also given over to towering incendiary angers. Vorru had, to date, avoided being immolated in one of them, but he had been scorched a time or two.

He bowed his white-maned head toward her. “You sent for me?”

“I have had information from Imperial Center that I thought you might find of interest.” She kept her voice light, but that did not mean it lacked force. “You had been wondering after Kirtan Loor.”

Vorru nodded. The Intelligence agent and leader of the Palpatine Counter-insurgency Front had disappeared just hours before Isard had fled from Coruscant, bearing Vorru away with her. “My assumption was that he had been taken and broken in interrogation. That was the only explanation for why so many of your operatives still on Coruscant were swept up in the aftermath of your departure.”

“He was certainly the cause of the sweep, though it appears he gave the information up voluntarily.” Isard’s eyes narrowed. “He attempted to use an operation of his own to deal with the bacta convoy headed for Coruscant through the Alderaan system.”

“The convoy that Warlord Zsinj hit.” Vorru nodded slowly. “Loor had told me he had a squadron of X-wings painted up to represent Rogue Squadron. He wanted to use them to strafe the squadron’s headquarters, but I stopped him. So the Rogues that Zsinj destroyed there really belonged to Loor. Amazing.”

“Indeed.” Her eyes flashed pitilessly. “Loor realized, after the disaster, that I had leaked word of the convoy to Zsinj so he’d strike at it. I assumed his need for revenge upon Rogue Squadron would make him hit it and destroy them. It would have, too, had the real squadron not been delayed. Loor apparently assumed I would realize he had attempted to deceive me, since his transmission of the report about the convoy and his plans to deal with it came too late for me to countermand them. He chose to run over to the Rebels and seek sanctuary with them.”

Vorru nodded. “There are ways to deal with him. Boba Fett could find and kill him, I have no doubt.”

“His skills will not be necessary.” Isard smiled in a way that managed to mix glee with cruelty. “I had learned from another agent of mine about a secret witness to be brought forward in the Celchu treason trial. I thought it was General Evir Derricote and set traps to prevent him from reaching the Imperial Court. You’ll recall I asked you to post a dozen people at various places in Imperial Center.”

“Yes.” And I only sent three to each location, since I needed the rest to evacuate my bacta storage facility. “None of them found Derricote.”

“No, he probably was not there after all. Loor was their witness. I had thought Derricote had escaped from Lusankya, but he apparently died at the hands of Corran Horn, during his escape. Horn killed your men in the Galactic Museum, in fact.” Isard pressed her hands together, fingertip to fingertip. “The agent I set as my failsafe to stop Derricote instead shot and killed Loor and, in turn, was killed by his own wife. She was one of Loor’s escorts—she had known him from Corellia.”

“Iella Wessiri.” Vorru felt a moment’s pang of sympathy for her. She had been an influential and intelligent member of the cabal that succeeded in stripping away Coruscant’s planetary shields and opening it to the Rebel invasion. Though her background with the Corellian Security Force made him view her as an enemy, he did admire her skill and dedication. If she had to shoot her husband, it will tear her up inside. She does not deserve that sort of pain.

Isard smiled. “I find it rather delicious that she was forced to shoot Diric. He was useful, but really just a pawn. His love for her was enough, apparently, to get him to reinterpret some of my orders to him, though, ultimately, he belonged to me, not to her. I hope that hurts her more than killing him did.”

Vorru frowned. “If Loor was killed, how did Alliance Security sweep up your agents?”

“Loor apparently encoded a datacard as a safeguard against them just killing him. It seems the key, which he believed known only to himself, was also known to Corran Horn.”

“Ah, and Loor believed Horn dead.” Vorru chuckled lightly. “I find the irony something that would have tortured Loor.”

“Yes, but now his stupidity tortures me. The information coming to me from Imperial Center is severely limited. The official information service tells me more than my spies. This Horn has much to answer for.”

“I could have told you he would be trouble, but even I believed you’d killed him. Horn’s father and even his grandfather were very driven men. Of course, you have ample evidence of his drive, and now it’s focused on us, here.”

The color in Isard’s red eye seemed to flare for a second. “You refer to the mass resignations from the squadron and their vow to liberate Thyferra?” Her laughter, which sounded quite genuine and unforced to Vorru, nonetheless had few of the pleasing tones usually associated with laughter.

“I appreciate the contempt you might feel for their effort, but it cannot be discounted. Yes, we have three destroyers, two of the Imperial, one of the Victory-class, and a Super Star Destroyer to defend us, but your confidence in them is as misplaced as the Emperor’s misjudgment of the Rebel Alliance.”

Isard’s face became a frozen mask. “Oh, you think so, do you? You think I am repeating the mistakes the Emperor made?”

Vorru met her stare openly. “You undoubtedly don’t see it that way, but it is my place to remind you of the errors others have made so you don’t repeat them. You are correct, Horn, Antilles, and the others have nothing right now, and it does seem apparent that the New Republic does not support their effort, but that could change. And, yes, we control the bacta output for the galaxy, but we must be careful. If we make it too dear, forces will join to oppose us, and the former Rogues are in an excellent position to make the most of that opposition.”

Isard stared at him for a moment or two more, then abruptly broke her stare off. “Your caution is noted.”

“I will also point out that we still have the Ashern to deal with here. They may be a minority among the Vratix, but they have struck in the past at key production facilities. Their strikes over the past year or so have become more precise and effective. I think they will become even more so because of the rumors that some Zaltin personnel have joined them.”

“Yes, the Black-claw Rebels are a bother, but that’s why I have deployed stormtroopers to defend our facilities.”

Vorru smiled. “That was a good move, as was restricting them to play a defensive role. Establishing a Thyferran Home Defense Corps that will allow Xucphra volunteers to fight the Ashern themselves was also brilliant.”

“Thank you. Xucphra’s people will come to see themselves in an alliance with my stormtroopers in no time. Once a THDC force gets in over its head and my people rescue them, the humans here will see my stormtroopers as the stalwart white line that separates them from death. Those who are dubious about us will be won over.” Isard spread her hands apart. “Erisi Dlarit is heading up the fighter wing I have given to the THDC. She is a hero among her people, and having her so elevated proves to the Thyferrans that I understand how superior they are.”

Vorru nodded slowly. There is no denying it, she is excellent at analyzing and utilizing the psychology of a subject people against themselves. Still, when there is someone she can’t break down, like Horn or Antilles, she has no way to defend against what they might do. He looked up at her. “And what are your thoughts on this rylca Mon Mothma pronounced a cure for your Krytos virus?”

“Propaganda, clearly, meant to calm the masses. The fact is that its existence and efficacy against the virus are immaterial. If Derricote had been successful in creating the virus I asked him to create or if Loor had delayed the conquest of Imperial Center, the New Republic would have been broken beyond repair. As it is now, they are hard put to deal with the demands their populace is making on them. As we restrict bacta flow to the New Republic and its worlds, we will alienate member states.”

“You mean we will be playing the same game we did on Imperial Center but on a larger scale here?”

“Exactly.” Isard glanced up, looking well above his head. “My goal has always been to destroy the Rebellion, then move to rebuild the Empire. In effect, by letting them take Imperial Center, we have destroyed the Rebellion. They are no longer an elusive force that can strike at will. They now have to take responsibility and deliver on the promises they have made. When they fail to do that, the people will look for the sort of stability they had before. If we play things carefully, we will not have to reconquer Imperial Center, we will be invited back to resume our rightful place at the head of the Empire.”

“Interesting analysis, and accurate, I think, except in one thing.”

“And that is?”

Vorru’s dark eyes shrank to bare slits. “Antilles, Horn, and the others. They have the freedom the Rebels once had. They are a problem we will have to deal with and deal with swiftly.”

“Or else?”

“I was in a position to see them render Imperial Center defenseless.” Vorru’s voice hardened. “If we don’t deal with them I fear they will become a problem with which we cannot deal.”

4

It didn’t surprise Corran Horn to find Iella Wessiri in the Corellian Sanctuary, but the expression on her face threatened to crush his heart in his chest. Her light brown hair had been pulled back into a single braid and her broad shoulders were hunched forward. She sat on the front bench in the small chamber, leaning over and balanced precariously enough that he expected her to fall at any second. The way her grief pulled at her face, arching the corners of her mouth downward, made it seem as if gravity would, in fact, tug her to the floor.

Corran hesitated in the doorway of the small domed building. Because of the hostile relationship between the New Republic and the Corellian Diktat, repatriating Corellians who died away from the planet of their birth had become impossible. The Sanctuary had been created by exiled Corellians to give their dead a resting place. Unlike Alderaanians, who often sealed their dead in capsules and shot them into orbit within the Graveyard, allowing them to float forever amid the debris that marked where their planet had once been; Corellians cremated their dead exiles and used industrial-grade gravity generators to compress the carbon residue into raw synthetic diamonds. This imparted a physical immortality to the dead. The diamonds were then brought to the Sanctuary and imbedded in the black walls and ceiling to create a glittering series of constellations as seen from Corellia.

The sheer number of diamonds glinting in the ceiling sent a shiver through Corran. We’ve given a lot to the Rebellion, though other worlds have given as much or more. As beautiful as this display is, it is also horrible. The Imperials who wished to make the galaxy over in their own image have, in fact, created here a small galaxy that is entirely given over to mourning.

Corran walked forward and slid onto the bench next to Iella. She didn’t look over at him, but melted against his shoulder and chest as he put an arm around her. “It’s going to be okay, Iella, really.”

“He never hurt anyone, Corran, never.”

“I don’t imagine Kirtan Loor would agree, but I’ll concede the point.”

He felt her chest convulse once, then she looked up at him with red-rimmed brown eyes. “No, you’re right.” Her mouth made a weak attempt at twisting itself into a smile. “As much as he admired your drive, Corran, Diric really appreciated your sense of humor. He said it marked your resiliency. He thought that as long as you could laugh, especially at yourself, you’d always heal from any trauma.”

“He was a wise man.” He tightened his embrace a bit. “You know he’d hate to see you like this, to think he was causing you this much pain.”

“I know. That hasn’t made it any easier, though.” She dabbed at tears with a handkerchief. “I keep thinking that if I’d seen something there, I could have prevented what happened. He wouldn’t have been a traitor.”

“Whoa, wait, Iella, that is not your fault. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, you could have detected or done to help him.” Corran shivered and felt his flesh pucker. “I know what Isard did to those she wanted to warp and convert into her puppets. I resisted, I don’t know how. It could have been personality or genetics or training or anything. Tycho and I both proved unsuitable for her—as did a few others, but I think she would have had an easy time of breaking Diric down.”

“What?” Iella’s hissed question carried with it undercurrents of betrayal. She tried to pull away from him, but he held on.

“That’s not a strike against Diric, honestly it isn’t. Diric was a victim, and you have to know that he resisted her mightily because even after his capture Imperial Intelligence didn’t find you. I think he built a mental reserve around you and was willing to sacrifice everything to protect you. Even altering her orders at the end was designed to protect you, and in his mind, sacrificing himself to do so was not too much to pay.”

Corran frowned. “The one thing about Diric that characterized him was his curiosity. We both saw it in the way he’d ask us about cases and push us to look at other explanations. He was thoughtful and thorough—espionage was a natural place for him. You said yourself that Isard first placed him in Derricote’s lab to spy on the General. She probably suggested to him that his success in that role determined whether or not she’d let you live. She undoubtedly told him that lie concerning any actions he took after he rejoined you.”

Iella’s defiance melted into despair. “Great, now you’re telling me that he’d not have been in that position except for me.”

“No! You had nothing to do with where he ended up—that was entirely due to Isard and no one else.” Corran sighed. “Look, think about the good Diric did. Aril Nunb pointed out that he was the only person in Derricote’s lab that was kind to her and who helped her through her recovery from the Krytos virus. And after he came back, he was a great comfort to Tycho through the trial. He even pushed you to look for evidence to break the frame Isard had settled around Tycho. And, like it or not, he did kill Loor, and I can’t fault him for that.”

“He thought he was shooting Derricote but knew it wasn’t him. He was happy he’d gotten Loor.”

“Well, I did kill Derricote and I’d have been more happy to kill Loor myself.” Corran brushed a hand along her cheek and wiped tears away with his thumb. “Diric wasn’t happy existing the way he did, but he regained himself in defying Isard and doing all the little things that sabotaged her plans. In the end he won. He’d often complained his life had no meaning …”

“But it did.”

“Agreed, and at the very last he finally got to see how much it meant. He’d saved you, he saved Aril, he saved Tycho. He’s at peace, and he’d want you to be at peace with his death, too.”

“I know, but it’s just not going to be that easy, Corran. I was there, I held him as he died from wounds I’d inflicted.” Iella sniffed, then swallowed with difficulty. “Your father died in your arms. How did you get through it?”

Corran felt his own throat thicken. “I won’t kid you, it wasn’t, isn’t, easy. There are things you expect, like seeing him again in the morning or at night or being able to call him to tell him about your day or to ask a question, and then he’s not there. You know you feel hollow inside, but you don’t know just how hollow until things like that help you define the edges of the void.”

She nodded slowly. “There are things I see or hear and I think, ‘Diric would like that or would be intrigued by that,’ then his death comes crashing back in on me. It seems to me that such things will never stop happening.”

“They won’t. They go on forever.”

A tremor shook Iella. “Great.”

“The thing of it is, Iella, they become transformed. Now you feel the loss and the grief, and part of that will always be there. In addition to it, though, shining through it will be the triumph of having known Diric. When I hear that stupid Lomin-ale ditty or eat part of a ryshcate, I remember my father. I remember his booming laugh and that secret smile of contentment he could flash you when things were good.”

“And the way that smile would carry on up into his eyes and how, with a slight shift, it would harden into something that would make the most fearless of Black Sunners begin to tremble in interrogation.” Iella gave out a little sigh. “I can see it with your father, but not Diric.”

“Not yet.”

“No, not yet.”

“But you will.” Corran kissed her forehead. “It won’t be easy, but the only way I got through it was because of you and Gil and my other friends.”

“You didn’t have any other friends.”

“Yeah, well, that may be, but you do. Mirax and Wedge and Winter and all of us, we’re here to help you. You’re not alone. We can’t feel the same depth of pain you do, but we can help you bear it.”

Iella nodded. “I appreciate that, I really do.” Her brows arrowed in toward each other as she concentrated. “I have decided I can’t remain here on Coruscant. The memories are mostly bad and overpowering. I have to get away—even if it means leaving all my friends.”

“I understand. I wanted to run after my father’s death, too.” Corran smiled. “The trick of it is, for you, that your running doesn’t mean you lose your friends.”

Iella’s eyes sharpened. “What do you mean?”

Corran looked around the Sanctuary, then lowered his voice into a whisper. “We’re leaving Coruscant, and we want you to come with us. You’re part of our family, part of the squadron. We’re going after the monster who warped Diric. We’re going to make sure she doesn’t do that to anyone else. We need you to come along and help us get her.”

Iella pulled back and sat up straight. “The odds against success are astronomical.”

“About the same as taking Coruscant from the Empire.”

Iella nodded coolly. “Odds are for those who want to minimize their own risks. I want to maximize Isard’s risks. Count me in.”

5

Brushing brown hair out of his eyes, Wedge looked up at the people seated in the small, amphitheater-style room and smiled. “I want to thank you all for showing up for this meeting. This is our first organizational meeting, but some decisions have already been made. They will stand unless they meet with overwhelming protest. No one should hesitate to voice a question or make a comment—this is going to be a bit more democratic than the squadron was, primarily because plans and orders are originating with us, not being passed down from above.”

Everyone nodded in assent with his remarks, so Wedge continued. “Corran Horn began this whole thing by resigning from Rogue Squadron first, but he’s agreed to let me lead this group. I’ve appointed Tycho Celchu as my second in command. Lady Winter is our Intelligence Officer as well as handling part of the Quartermaster duties. Mirax Terrik is handling the other half of those duties. Tycho will let you know what we’ve got in the way of supplies.”

Tycho turned around in his seat. “We have a fair number of credits—approximately seventeen million, give or take.”

Gavin laughed. “Seventeen million, I’ll take.”

“So would a lot of other folks, which is precisely what they want to do.” Tycho frowned. “Rumors of what happened at the reception, despite the spin the New Republic Information Ministry tried to put on it, have spread quickly. While we are getting a lot of support, the folks who deal in the things we need to accomplish our mission know how desperate we are. Right now we have one X-wing—Corran’s ship—and the services of Mirax’s Pulsar Skate. Other ships are fairly dear. I would imagine, to get the fighters we need, we’ll probably end up hiring mercenaries who come with their own equipment. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, though the prices might. All the little Warlords out there are looking for fighters, so its a seller’s market.”

Standing at the front of the room, Wedge nodded. “That’s getting a bit ahead of ourselves, but it’s worth keeping in mind. We’ve got some basic data to mull over first, concerning our objectives. Winter has put them together.” Wedge pointed to the holoprojector toward the front of the room. “Winter, if you please.”

Winter stood and walked to the front of the room with a stately grace that left no question in Wedge’s mind why people on Alderaan had frequently mistaken her for Princess Leia Organa. Though Winter wore her white hair long and, today, in a thick braid, she carried herself with a nobility that matched her exquisite features. Slender and stunning, she seemed somehow incongruous with the dangerous missions she’d been on during her career as a covert agent for the Rebellion.

Which is exactly why she was never suspected.

Winter picked up the datapad that was connected by a cable to the holoprojector. She hit one button, dimming the glow panels in the room and bringing up a holographic projection of a planet. “This is our objective: Thyferra. It is a fairly normal terrestrial planet with a breathable atmosphere and two moons, neither of which has atmosphere or is inhabited. Thyferra is covered with rain forests and enjoys a day that is roughly twenty-one point three standard hours long. The axial tilt is negligible so there are really no seasons. Because of its proximity to the system’s star, a yellow star, and the mildly elevated levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it maintains a tropical climate year round. The way Coruscant felt after the storms that took down the power grid is pretty much what this planet experiences all the time.”

Wedge frowned. To take the power grid down and eliminate the defense shields on Coruscant, Rogue Squadron had caused a lot of water to boil off into the atmosphere, creating a huge thunderstorm. For a week and a half following that storm the air had been thick and heavy. No wonder the plant that goes into bacta thrives there.

“Thyferra has three stellar-class spaceports—one at what is now being called Xucphra City. The other two are located on separate continents and are primarily used for the loading and unloading of bacta. Inbound ships stop at Xucphra City first for Customs and Immigration inspections, then are sent on to the spaceports to do business. They leave from those spaceports and head directly out to the destinations.”

Nawara Ven raised a hand. “I presume the metropolis’s name change came about when the Xucphra corporation took over. What was it called before that?”

“Zalxuc City, which really is not much better.” Winter directed the computer to zoom in and supply an aerial view of the city. “As you can see, it’s not really a metropolis at all. The human population of Thyferra was only ten thousand before Isard took over. Many Zaltin families fled, and their housing is being used for Imperial Army and Navy officers and enlisted folk on leave from their ships. The Lusankya alone carries twenty-five times the human population of the planet, so there is no question about the possibility of occupation when or if Isard orders it. So far she has refrained and is using Imperial personnel and equipment to train and supply the Thyferran Home Defense Corps.”

Winter nodded to the six-limbed, insectoid alien standing in the back of the room. “The native population of Thyferra refers to themselves as the Vratix. The production of bacta—literally the brewing together of alazhi and kavam—appears to produce an almost mystical amount of satisfaction for the Vratix. Qlaern Hirf here is a verachen—a master blender—who commands subordinates and creates bacta. A verachen is very much equivalent to a brewmaster at any Lomin-ale brewery, though a verachen also has highly defined rights and responsibilities within the Vratix society.

“I should also note that the Vratix are neither male nor female—those roles are played at different times in the life cycle, so referring to Qlaern as ‘he’ or ‘she’ is inappropriate. Moreover, since the Vratix do constitute something of a low-grade hive mind, they are more comfortable with a plural pronoun, so they and them will have to suffice.”

The Vratix in the back clicked its curved mandibles. “Your dissertation honors us, Lady Winter.”

“Thank you. Because of their desire—even need—to produce bacta, the Vratix welcomed the influx of humans who were willing to set up and run businesses that created a demand for more bacta, allowing and even compelling the Vratix to do more of what they enjoyed doing. While individual Vratix are part of the corporate ownership for both Zaltin and Xucphra, Imperial laws made it necessary to remove them from active leadership and decision-making roles in the companies. Zaltin and Xucphra were given Imperial monopolies on the production of bacta, presumably in return for bribes paid to the local Moff and the Emperor. This has made Thyferra a very rich planet and the humans who live there very wealthy. The Vratix, on the other hand, live very modest lives in tribal groups within the rain forests.”

She typed a data request into the datapad, which switched the image of the city for a trio of individuals. “Ysanne Isard was installed as Chief Operating Officer and Head of State for Thyferra in a coup d’etat approximately two weeks ago. Preparations had been made well before that, since the revolution was completed prior to her Super Star Destroyer, Lusankya, arriving in orbit. Not much is known about her for certain—rumors abound about her having been one of the Emperor’s lovers, for example; but there is no confirmation of that. We do know her father was the Director of Imperial Intelligence before her, but she turned over to the Emperor evidence that her father was going to join the Rebellion, causing his downfall and her elevation to replace him.”

Nawara Ven raised a hand. “Was her father going to come over to the Rebellion?”

Winter shrugged. “If he was, I have no knowledge of his planned defection. There is no doubt his daughter was ambitious enough to have manufactured evidence against him, so she is very dangerous. Dislodging her will be difficult and probably require a ground assault. She is not, as nearly as we know, a pilot, so the chances of any of you getting to vape her in a dogfight are nil.”

Winter pointed to the next figure. “Fliry Vorru, on the other hand, might well be able to fight you in a ship. He was a former Imperial Moff from Corellia, which this squadron liberated from Kessel. Vorru fled with Isard to Thyferra and is now the Minister of Trade. It is unclear when Vorru began to work with Isard, but the possibility that he struck a deal with her upon planetfall on Coruscant cannot be ruled out. While we put much of our misfortune concerning the operations to take Coruscant down to having Zekka Thyne and other Imperial spies in our midst, it is entirely possible Vorru was working directly for Isard at that point. He certainly was in her employ by the time he was appointed a Colonel in the Coruscant Constabulary.”

She waved a hand at the third individual, a tall, slender woman with black hair worn short. “Erisi Dlarit should be familiar to all of us. She is from a Xucphra family and was the Imperial mole inside Rogue Squadron. Her actual value to the Empire was minimal. At best she was responsible for Corran’s capture, Bror Jace’s death, and the betrayal of the bacta convoy at Alderaan to Warlord Zsinj. While she did provide information on our operations on Coruscant to the Empire, the fact that Wedge allowed no outside contact prior to the final attempt to destroy the planetary shields meant she could not warn Isard of our plans. Short of crashing her Z-95 Headhunter into the construction droid we used, she could do nothing to stop the plan from unfolding. What she did do was transmit the codes that allowed Isard to take control of Corran’s ship and bring him down.”

As Winter dispassionately outlined Erisi’s involvement with the Empire, Wedge watched the faces of his people. Erisi had been one of them, fighting alongside of them in numerous engagements. She’d been shot out of her X-wing, and Tycho had risked his life to rescue her. Even though her aid to the Empire was, as Winter had indicated, really insignificant, it had been enough to kill people who didn’t deserve to die.

In himself, Wedge found anger mixed with chagrin and a little admiration. Erisi Dlarit had successfully played through some very difficult situations without revealing her role. Until she was fleeing Coruscant, Wedge hadn’t known she was a spy. Some signs were there, but not all of them.

Wedge caught Corran looking in his direction and half-smiled. “She played the game well.”

“True, but she’s going to have to play much better when we come to visit.” Corran’s only concession to the emotions he was feeling came in the edge to his voice and the thin-lipped smile he offered. “As a spy she was good, but the next contest is one of pilots, and in that one she’ll lose.”

Winter changed the holographic image again. “If she loses it’s not going to be because she’s lacking the equipment she needs to win. Defending Thyferra are four Imperial warships: a Super Star Destroyer, two Imperial Star Destroyers, and one Victory-class Star Destroyer. Lusankya, Avarice, Virulence, and Corrupter, respectively. Lusankya is the ship that blasted its way out of Coruscant. It was previously unaccounted for, causing us to raise our estimates of how many ships the Kuat Drive Yards and the Fondor Yards produced. Oddly enough, both places claim to have produced Vader’s flagship, Executor. It appears two ships were manufactured under that name, with one having been turned into Lusankya and buried on Coruscant—probably to serve as the Emperor’s get-away ship. The other Executor, the one from Fondor, was destroyed at Endor.”

She circled a finger through the hologram, encompassing the trio of smaller ships. “Avarice, Virulence, and Corrupter have hardly had sterling careers, but the crews are competent. I’m in the process of assembling files on all the staff officers, but the most dangerous of them, Captain Ait Convarion, commands the smallest ship. Corrupter has done very well in the Outer Rim hunting down pirate groups which, for better or worse, we resemble.”

Wedge stood as Winter shut the holoprojector down. “As you can all see, we’re dealing with a fairly formidable foe that is well armed. One of the things we have to face is that we may be unable to accomplish our goals in this operation. Unseating Isard may, in fact, turn out to be impossible.”

Seated behind Gavin, Corran reached out and tapped the younger man on the head. “Gavin, this is where you’re supposed to tell us that unseating her isn’t tough and relate the whole thing to varminting on Tatooine.”

Gavin blanched. “I didn’t hear anyone mention a trench or canyon or womp rats. Taking a planet is beyond me.”

Wedge smiled. “It’s beyond most of us. I’ve sent communications out to some individuals who might be able to help. The problem is enormous. First we have to eliminate the ships, then take the world. The key to nailing the ships is to get them spread out so they can’t support each other. We can do that by forcing Isard to use them to cover bacta convoys, but to kill the ships we need weapons, and a lot of them.”

Riv Shiel, the Shistavanen wolfman, curled his lips up in a snarl. “It sounds as if we need the Katana fleet.”

“That would be nice.” The legendary ghost fleet of warships was supposed to be skipping through hyperspace, just waiting for someone to come and claim it. Wedge frowned. “We could also hope that the Outbound Flight Project finally produces results, with a host of nonhuman Jedi Knights coming from outside the galaxy to help us, but I don’t think it’s likely.”

Gavin raised a hand. “What about that ship that Alderaan loaded all of its weapons on when it demilitarized? I can’t remember the name, but I thought it was supposed to go through space and return if needed. Maybe Princess Leia has a way to summon it or something.”

Winter shook her head. “You are thinking of Another Chance. While it is not as much of a legend as the Katana fleet, or Jorus C’baoth’s mission outside the galaxy—the ship did exist—it is not the solution to our problem. The Another Chance was actually recovered by Rebel sympathizers prior to the debacles at Derra IV and Hoth. The weapons recovered were all of Clone Wars vintage and suited for use by infantry. They were useful in filling the gap caused by the loss of the convoy at Derra IV.”

Gavin’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, I never knew all that.”

“Not that you should have, Gavin.” Winter smiled. “Aside from the individuals who found the ship, a few smugglers who helped transport the merchandise, and higher-ups in the Rebellion, no one does. The Empire devoted resources to trying to find and take it, diverting them from pursuing us.”

“Finding a miracle ship is not our only hope, people.” Wedge held a hand up. “One of the things Winter has done for the Rebellion is locate old Imperial supply dumps. Most of them have been thoroughly stripped, but not everything is accounted for. We’re going to go back over some of those sites and see what we can find. In fact, we have one mission that will be heading off tomorrow. Mirax will be taking Corran and you, Gavin, to Tatooine. One of the arms caches we found a couple of years ago had been plundered by Biggs Darklighter’s father.”

Gavin raised an eyebrow. “Uncle Huff?”

“The same. He said at the time he used some of the cache to arm his own security force then sold the rest off. But I don’t buy it for a moment. There is no way he would have gotten rid of everything.” Wedge smiled. “So, you’re going to go home, Gavin, and talk your uncle into sharing the wealth with us.”

“I don’t know if he’ll listen to me.”

“That’s why we’re sending Corran, too. Your uncle has secrets to hide, and I expect Corran can ferret them out. That will help.”

Gavin’s face froze for a moment, then he began to smile. “I can get behind this. Serves him right for always seating me at the children’s table at family gatherings.”

“Gavin, he did that because you were a kid. Big, but a kid.” Corran scruffed up Gavin’s blond hair, then looked at Wedge. “While we’re on the world that water abandoned, what are the rest of you going to be doing?”

“We’re moving to our new home.” Wedge held his hands up to calm the sudden buzz of voices. “This move is a covert op, so we’ll be taking a lot of precautions to get there. There’s no chance we can keep the location secret from our enemies forever, but as much time as we can get up to that point is what we want. Pack your things and get ready to move. The Bacta War is about to begin.”

6

Corran Horn sneezed violently, initiating a wave of dust rippling across the cantina table toward Mirax. “How can anyone live on this infernal world? Even the dust has dust.”

Mirax stretched languidly. “It’s really not that bad, Corran, as worlds go. On Talasea things would mildew from plate to mouth.”

“Sure, but there you had ovens to bake things, not a whole world to do it.” Corran swiped a hand across his forehead, then shook the perspiration from it in a spray that spattered a pair of hooded Jawas, who themselves stank of ronto sweat. “I hate this.”

She looked at him over the lip of her Corellian whisky glass. “At least it’s a dry heat.”

“So’s a blast furnace, but that doesn’t make it any less hot.” Corran arched an eyebrow and tapped the stained and patch-welded top of the round table where they sat. “And why are we here? This table has seen more combat than most of the squadron’s X-wings. The patrons here make this place look like a maximum security compound at Akrit’tar.”

“Keeping up appearances, dear heart.” Mirax shifted to the left to give her a full view of the t’bac-smoke-choked bar. “Chalmun’s cantina is known as the place that hotshot pilots hang out. I certainly qualify on that count, as do you. Right now I don’t need work, but it could be that some of these folks need cargoes hauled, and those cargoes might be the kind of thing we want. Can’t hurt to be here. Besides, Gavin recommended it as our rendezvous.”

“Right. That’s because he’s never been in here before and didn’t want to come in alone.” Corran allowed disgust to pour through his words, but he mitigated it with a smile. “If I’d been asked to raid a place like this, my plan would have begun with the phrase, ‘After the strafing runs are completed …’ ”

Shock rode freely on Mirax’s face, but was exaggerated enough that Corran figured she was really only mildly horrified at his suggestion. “This might not be the most savory bunch of characters ever gathered together in the galaxy, but they’re not that bad. My father used to bring me in here all the time when I was a kid. Some of these hard cases may be crusty on the outside, but they were very kind to me. Wuher, the bartender over there, used to synth up a sweet fizzy drink for me, and more than one of these guys would bring me little trinkets from the worlds they’d visited.”

Corran shook his head. “I’d have loved to see those Immigrations forms. ‘Purpose of the visit to our world?’ ‘Murder, mayhem, glitterstim smuggling, and purchase of a gift suitable for a small Corellian girl.’ ”

Mirax giggled. “Yeah, I imagine there are a couple like that in databanks somewhere.”

The sound of her laughter managed to cut through the dulled buzz of conversation in the cantina. Corran sat up in his chair as he noticed two individuals turn from the bar and look in their direction. One was a Rodian and the other was a Devaronian, yet they both shared a lean, hungry look that made Corran feel antsy. They started toward the table, and Corran took it as significant that they abandoned full drinks at the bar, primarily because that left their hands empty.

The Devaronian nodded curtly. “You are sitting at our table.”

Seated with his back to the alcove’s wall, Corran had protected himself against ambush from behind, but it also allowed the two ruffians full view of the blaster he wore. No way I can draw it and shoot them before they get me. It seemed obvious to him that the simple way out of the situation was to graciously offer them the table and buy a round for them. “We were unaware of the situation here …”

“And we couldn’t care less.” Mirax jutted her chin forward and poked her left index finger into the Rodian’s middle. “If a pair of gravel-maggots like you are sandsick enough to think we’re moving just because you mistake us for Jundland dew-pickers, you better get used to careers as Sarlacc bait.”

Corran’s jaw dropped. “Mirax?”

The Devaronian thumbed his own breastbone. “Do you have any idea who I am?”

“Do you have any idea how little we care?” Mirax jerked her head to the left. “Tell it to the Jawas so they get your name right when they bag your body.”

The Rodian began buzz-squawking, but the loud thwap of a street club being pounded on the bar stopped him.

The human bartender pointed a finger toward the alcove. “Hey!”

His horns gleaming in the half-light, the Devaronian waved his protest off. “We know, ‘No blasters.’ ”

Wuher’s face scrunched up in a sour expression. “Not that, sand-for-brains. Do you know who you’re talking to? That’s Mirax, Mirax Terrik.”

The Devaronian’s grayish skin lightened appreciably, and the Rodian paled to a new-shoot green. “Terrik? As in Booster Terrik?”

Mirax smiled.

The bartender nodded as he pulled their drinks from the bar. “Now you’re thinking. She’s his daughter. Now’s the part where you apologize to her or the Jawas continue measuring you for luggage for your final jump.” He glared at the little knot of Jawas jabbering to each other. “Dibs on the Rodian.”

The Devaronian bowed deeply to Mirax. “I, ah, we, beg your pardon for disturbing you. I am, well, that’s not important, but if I can be of service to you, please, don’t hesitate to ask.” His apology came accompanied by Rodian buzz-squeak, which Corran took to be a simultaneous translation.

Mirax raised her chin and gave them a chillingly Imperial stare. “You’re blocking our light.”

The two of them backed away bowing profusely. Laughter ran through the cantina, bold in some spots and hushed in others, but amusement at their predicament united the cantina for a moment or two.

Corran licked his lips and realized his throat was absolutely parched. “Ah, Mirax, what possessed you to do that?”

“As I said before, keeping up appearances.” She smiled broadly at him. “You’ve really only seen the kind, sensitive side of me.”

“I seem to recall you burning down a stormtrooper on a speeder bike on Coruscant.”

“Oh, yes, I guess there was that, wasn’t there?”

“Yeah, there was, but even so there’s no reason for provoking a fight like that.”

She shrugged. “I wasn’t worried. You could have taken them.”

I could have taken them? Corran stared at her for a moment. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, but …”

Mirax reached across the table with her left hand and gave his right hand a squeeze. “I knew Wuher would intervene—this is an old game we’ve played from time to time.” Her right hand, the one that had been hidden from the open edge of the table, came up and she deposited a small hold-out blaster on the table. “I had things covered; but the moment Wuher mentioned who I was, I knew we’d not have any more trouble.”

Corran frowned. “Does everyone but me have relatives here? We land at Docking Bay Eighty-Six because some cousin or something of Gavin’s owns it, then he takes off to set up a meet with his uncle Huff. Your father’s got enough pull here so that two guys who’d suck the eyes out of a dead bantha’s head run like droids being pursued by Jawas.”

Mirax shrugged. “Tatooine is really a fairly small community. The Darklighters are a well-known and powerful family here. That estate we flew over on our way in here was Huff’s place. And as for my father, well, he had quite the reputation before your father tossed him into the mines on Kessel, and his surviving his time there didn’t hurt his rep at all. I’m sure that in some CorSec bar back on Corellia your name would be taken as being just as impressive.”

“Maybe, but let’s not test the reaction to it right now, okay?”

“I don’t think even invoking my father’s name would save you if you ran into an old enemy here.”

“And invoking my name would doom me if we ran into your father here.” Corran shot Mirax a sidelong glance. “Have you sent your father a message letting him know that you’ve developed an affection for the son of his nemesis.”

“ ‘Developed an affection,’ have I?” Mirax toyed with the hold-out blaster. “I thought we were a bit beyond that stage.”

“True, we are, but no fair dodging the question.”

She frowned. “No, I haven’t told him. While you were dead, there was no sense mentioning it—I didn’t want to be dealing with his anger while my heart still felt ripped out of me. And in the time since you came back from the dead, well, I’ve been busy; and ever since he retired, I’m never really sure where he is.”

“Most folks, when they retire, settle in one spot and relax.”

“Most folks aren’t my father.” Mirax smiled slightly. “For Booster, retirement means he still does deals, but he does them for friends, not for profit. Folks use him as a negotiator—he works out terms and the like. It keeps him getting the best of the business without the risk. He’s happy, which is better than the alternative.”

Which is why you’ve not mentioned us to him. Corran nodded. I fully understand. My father wouldn’t have, so not having to explain it to him is about the only good thing I can think of concerning his being dead.

Gavin came in through the doorway and paused in the foyer near the droid detection unit. He twisted left and right, shaking a cloud of Tatooine’s fine dust from his tan cloak. Beneath it he wore what was once a white shirt, a black vest, dark brown pants, and knee-high boots. Around his middle he had strapped on a blaster and had tied the lower end of the holster around his right thigh.

“Looks the fair pirate, our friend.” Mirax raised a hand. “Gavin, over here.”

Corran agreed with Mirax’s assessment, though Gavin’s sloppy grin kind of marred the image. “Everything set?”

Gavin nodded. “I have a landspeeder waiting out front. It’s not much, but it was the best I could do. I tried to borrow one off Uncle Huff, but he said the last time he loaned a landspeeder to someone from Rogue Squadron it wasn’t returned in the best of conditions.”

“We might as well head out, then.” Mirax stood and clipped the hold-out blaster to her belt. She dug around in a pouch for some credits as she headed toward the bar. “How much?”

Wuher shook his head. “Your friends got it.” He glanced toward the Rodian and Devaronian.

She smiled. “And they took care of you, too, yes?”

“The spirit of generosity, they were.”

“Good.”

Mirax followed Gavin from the cantina and Corran brought up the rear. He poked his head through the middle of his desert tabard and settled it down around his shoulders. The side flaps allowed for quick access to his blaster or the lightsaber, but he hoped he would not have need to resort to either.

He felt kind of awkward wearing the lightsaber. It had always seemed to him to be something of a genteel weapon of limited use. In his line of work, a Stokhli spray stick and a blaster were usually considered more than enough to handle any situation. Lightsabers had been all but unknown while the Empire considered them a sign of being a Jedi, but now that Luke Skywalker was a great hero, some folks had developed an affectation for them. It seemed to be the sort of weapon one carried if one was afraid to carry a blaster.

That characterization of it made Corran uneasy to wear the weapon, but flipping the bit the other way, he felt proud to be heir to one. He felt as if he had the right to wear it. At first he thought doing so might show disrespect for his grandfather, but then he realized Rostek Horn had risked his own career and life to protect Nejaa Halcyon’s wife and child from Imperial Jedi hunters. Not only had he valued them for who they were, but he had valued them in memory of his fallen friend. I think grandfather would be happy to see me wearing this lightsaber and that’s all the reason I need to wear it.

Corran hooded his eyes with his hand as he emerged into the harsh twin-sun noon. Gavin waved him over to the landspeeder. To Corran it looked a lot like the old SoroSuub XP-38, but the normally compact, dart-shaped craft had been heavily modified. The passenger compartment had been boosted forward by the addition of more seating and cargo space between it and the engines. More disturbing than how the addition had destroyed the fine lines of the vehicle was the fact that beneath the dust Corran saw a pink and puce paint job.

Corran hooked an arm over Gavin’s shoulders. “You know, the womp rats you bull’s-eye in a thing like this might be color-blind, so they don’t care what your speeder looks like, but, really, look at this thing.”

Gavin smiled wryly and spun out from beneath Corran’s arm. “It beats walking, which was the other alternative given our operational budget. Get in. This baby will still hit three hundred klicks per, despite the modifications, and the krayt dragons don’t see the color scheme as edible. We’ll be there in no time.”

The trip actually took half a standard hour, which wasn’t “no time,” and speeding through trackless wastes actually seemed close to forever. If it weren’t for the cloud of dust billowing out from behind them, Corran would have been hard pressed to cite evidence that they were going anywhere at all. The Jundland Wastes mountains became a heat-warped stain on the horizon, and nothing else came even close to serving as a landmark.

Despite the lack of signposts or other waymarkers, Gavin got them to his uncle’s estate without incident. The brief glimpse of it Corran had gotten from the Pulsar Skate as they came in had not prepared him for what it really looked like. From above it looked fairly normal—a compound surrounding a number of buildings including a tall tower. From the ground what became apparent was that, aside from the entryway and the tower itself, the buildings he’d seen were all constructed below the planet’s surface. Gavin slid the landspeeder to a stop near the entryway beside several other land-speeders and then led Mirax and Corran down through the stairs to the compound’s main courtyard. The stark white color of everything aided the suns in producing glare, but Corran realized that white absorbed far less solar energy—too much of which already made Tatooine unbearable as far as he was concerned.

A slender, gray-haired woman emerged through one of the arched doorways and immediately smiled. “Gavin Darklighter, how you have grown!” Boiling out around from behind her came a number of small children, ranging from toddlers to curious preadolescents.

“Aunt Lanal!” Gavin trapped the woman in a hug, then freed her and performed introductions that included her and the half-dozen cousins. Corran shook hands all around, but immediately lost track of names.

Lanal explained that she was Huff Darklighter’s third wife and all of the children were hers. “Biggs’s death shook Huff. He decided he wanted more heirs. His second wife decided she wasn’t interested in having any more than the one she’d already borne. She left, and Huff married me.”

“Biggs’s mother died before I was born. Aunt Lanal is actually my mother’s sister, so she’s my aunt on both sides.” Gavin gave her a kiss on the forehead. “Is Uncle Huff available?”

Lanal nodded. “He asked me to put you in the library. He’s meeting with someone else right now, but he should be free shortly.”

“Great.”

The Darklighter estate struck Corran as an expensive compromise between the practicalities demanded by Tatooine and the essence of elegance as defined in other places within the galaxy. Fountains and pools would have been a foolish waste, but Huff succeeded in providing water features by encasing them entirely in transparisteel. Whereas a simple decorative column in any other home might have been painted brightly, Huff filled it with water and bubbled air up through it. Tiles on the thick walls were decorated and colored in such a way that they created optical illusions meant to diminish the blockiness of the house’s design. Liberal use of transparisteel gave the dwelling an openness that it would not have otherwise had, yet elsewhere in the house more traditional design and decoration made Corran feel as if he’d never left Coruscant.

The library into which Lanal guided them was just one such room. Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined all the walls except where the doorways split them in two places. They entered through the south wall, and a closed double doorway bifurcated the east wall. The shelves and the doors were probably of duraplast, but Corran couldn’t rule out actual wood having been used. If that’s true, it had to be imported from many light-years away and probably cost as much as a squadron of X-wings.

Corran felt a chill run through him as he entered the library. Box after box of datacards filled the shelves, though trinkets and other odds and ends spaced them out a bit. What made Corran feel odd about the room was that it reminded him very much of the library in the Lusankya annex facility through which he had escaped from Isard. Though no trace of it was found after the Lusankya blasted its way free of Coruscant, the setup had been almost identical to the Imperial library in the private floor of Imperial Palace. At least it seemed so to Corran when he viewed a broadcast hologram about the palace.

I suppose a businessman like Huff Darklighter would want a decor that made Imperial officials feel at home. The briefing files Winter had given Corran about Huff Darklighter left no doubt that Huff had worked out an accommodation with the local Imperial officials that had given him free rein to operate on Tatooine. Those same arrangements also got his son Biggs his appointment to the Imperial Military Academy and, in the end, led to Biggs’s death. Since Darklighter isn’t prone to accepting blame for anything himself, the favor Imps had done for him was seen as the cause of his son’s death. Conversely, because Biggs is a hero of the Rebellion, Darklighter is willing to deal with the New Republic.

Gavin looked around at the shelves, then smiled. “Huff’s working office is up in the tower. His negotiating office is next door. Once he ushers out whoever is in there, we’ll get to go in. Once he learns you’re from Corellia I bet he finds you some Whyren’s Reserve whisky.”

Mirax smiled. “I’ll take that and maybe make a side deal for any extra he has stashed away.”

“Sure, but remember our main mission.” Corran held up a finger. “We’re looking for weapons, munitions, and spare parts. Anything else we get is extra.”

The two of them nodded, then turned toward the eastern doors. One-half of them slid into the wall and Huff Darklighter entered the library. His belly preceded him by a second or two, but therein the resemblance to a Hutt ended. A coronet of white hair surrounded a pate the color of tanned leather. Darklighter’s arms and shoulders looked powerful and were somehow complemented by the luxuriously full moustache he wore. His dark eyes glittered coldly as he instantly assessed his visitors, but then the corners of his mouth rose.

“Gavin, it is a pleasure.” The tone of voice didn’t seem to quite match the smile as far as Corran was concerned, but the elder Darklighter pulled Gavin into a polite hug, so he assumed there was no problem between them. Huff fingered his moustache. “Darken your hair and grow one of these, and you’d be the spitting image of my Biggs.”

Mirax shot Corran a hooded glance. Corran didn’t think Gavin and Biggs looked anything alike, but he realized Huff Darklighter wasn’t viewing Gavin through the same frame of reference. Huff made Biggs into a hero long before the Rebellion ever did.

Huff drew back from his nephew and smiled toward Mirax and Corran. “I just stepped in here to let you know I’d be a bit yet. Negotiations are delicate.”

“I understand, sir.” Corran started forward and extended his hand toward Huff, but the larger man made no move to match his gesture. “I’m Corran …”

Huff held his hands up. “Time for introductions later, I’m sure. Really, I hate to be rude, but …”

Corran’s emerald eyes shrank into crescents. “Just as I would hate to report to the New Republic that one in ten of the freighters bearing Darklighter products from here burns seven percent more fuel than is necessary—if they’re actually carrying the cargo on the manifest. Suspicious minds might think that means they’re carrying seven percent of their weight in illegal or exotic items, and the trouble you’d have to go to to straighten that mess out would be more than rude.”

What little was left of Huff’s smile melted clean away. “Nasty friends you’ve got here, Gavin.”

“Corran used to be with CorSec, Uncle.”

“Out of your jurisdiction, Corran.”

“True, but I can still be trouble.” Corran turned toward Mirax. “This is Mirax Terrik.”

“Terrik?” Huff’s smile struggled to return to his face. “Related to Booster Terrik?”

“He’s my father.”

“I see.”

“I’m sure you do, sir. Something else you should see is that we’re here to negotiate with you for weapons, munitions, and spare parts you have left over from the looting of an Imperial weapons cache several years ago.”

The smile blossomed in full on Huff’s face. “Imagine that. My current visitor was inquiring about the very same things. This could be amusing.”

Corran saw Huff’s eyes glaze over just imagining the profit potential. “Hey, no one is going to make you a better deal for that stuff than we are. No one.”

“Oh, how interesting.” Huff walked back toward the doorway and rested his left hand on the door that remained closed. “I have some people here who want what you want. They say no one can make me a better deal. Fascinating, no?”

Corran heard a bellow from the other room. Huff shoved the other door open to reveal a huge, powerful man freeing himself from the clutches of a spindly chair. The man, whose hair was a short bristle of white and gray, dwarfed Gavin and even made Huff look small. Where his left eye had been, burned a red replacement, though his right eye was a normal brown. “Come to deal, have you?”

Corran gave him a hard stare. “Listen pal, you can leave right now because your dealing days are over.” Thinking back to the cantina, he let a smile slowly spread across his face and jerked a thumb over his shoulder back at Mirax. “That’s Mirax Terrik, Booster Terrik’s daughter. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll go.”

The large man stopped, his jaw hanging open, then he reared his head back and laughed.

Corran turned and looked at Mirax. “How come that scared people at the bar, and this guy laughs?”

“It worked on the people at the bar because they’re afraid of my father.” Mirax smiled sheepishly at him.

“And what’s wrong with this clown?”

“Well, Corran,” she winced, “he is my father.”

7

“Oh,” said Corran, without missing a beat, “I guess you take after your mother.”

Though he saw mirth and astonishment mix on Mirax’s face, and saw a smile begin to blossom on Gavin’s face, Corran wished for nothing so much as a chance to inhale and suck those words out of everyone’s ears. Could there have been a more stupid remark you could have made? A dozen different candidates flashed through his mind, including several that could have reminded Booster of his stint on Kessel. Okay, it could have been worse, but not by much.

Booster Terrik’s laughter died. “Mirax, who is he, and why shouldn’t I show him why others fear me?”

A smile fitted itself on her face, but her eyes tightened. “This is Corran Horn.”

“Horn?” Booster’s voice descended into bass tones. “This is Hal Horn’s boy?”

Corran turned to face Mirax’s father. “I am.”

Booster’s hand’s balled into fists the size of Corran’s head. “So, then, there’s no reason I shouldn’t give him the beating I owed his father. If you don’t mind, Huff.”

The rotund Darklighter shook his head. “I’d prefer it to happen outside, otherwise, beat away.”

Mirax stepped up beside Corran. “There is a reason, Father.”

Booster’s face slackened for a moment, then he frowned. “I’ve heard that tone of voice before. You don’t want me to take a round out of him. You even want me to like him, but there’s no reason in the galaxy why I’d like him.”

“Yes, there is.”

“Why am I going to like the son of the man who sent me to Kessel?”

“Because I do.”

“What?!”

Mirax slipped her hand into Corran’s. “You heard me. Corran’s saved my life, I’ve saved his, and we like each other. A lot.” She gave his hand a squeeze. “You can jump in any time, Corran.”

“Me? You’re doing fine.”

Her father’s face went through all sorts of contortions. “No, no, not a daughter of mine. If your mother weren’t dead, this would kill her, you know that.” Booster snarled, then spitted Corran with a stare. “And you! Your father would be mortified. Your grandfather would tear his hair out. A Horn keeping company with my daughter! It’s unthinkable.”

Mirax’s face twisted down into an angry mask the equal of the one her father wore. “It’s not unthinkable at all, at least not for someone who is willing to use more than one synapse on it. Wake up, Father. The Emperor is dead. It’s a new galaxy.”

Booster shook his head, then looked toward Huff. “The Emperor dies, and the natural order gets its double helix all twisted the other way. Next thing you know it will start raining here on Tatooine, and you’ll have tourist trade for seaside resorts.”

Huff smiled. “Actually, I have some sites picked out to cover that eventuality.”

“I bet you do.” Booster frowned at his daughter again. “A Horn! Hal Horn’s son! I wouldn’t have wanted this for you for all the glitterstim in the galaxy.”

“What you want for me, and what I want for me have long been different, Father.” Mirax let Corran’s hand fall away, then walked to her father and gave him a big hug and kiss. “That doesn’t diminish my pleasure at seeing you again.”

Booster returned the hug and swung his daughter off her feet so his broadly muscled back hid her from Corran’s sight. Corran couldn’t hear what father said to daughter, but the smiles on their faces as they again turned around told him their exchange had not been acrimonious.

Booster kept his left arm draped over Mirax’s shoulders and posted his right fist on his right hip. “I was sorry to hear about your father’s death. No love lost between us, but I respected his tenacity.”

“And my father respected your ingenuity.” Corran gave Booster a thin-lipped smile and got the same one in return. He lifted his chin. “Huff indicated that you’re here to negotiate for the remains of an Imperial arms cache. I’d gotten the impression from Mirax that you were retired and only dealt in collectibles.”

“You’d be surprised what prefall Imperial artifacts are going for today.”

“Lots of weapons collectors out there?”

Booster shrugged. “You Rebels made going to war against the government so popular that everyone is taking it up these days.”

“So you’ll supply them?”

Booster smiled. “I’m merely a broker.”

Huff rubbed his hands together. “So, we can have an auction here. Opening bids.”

Corran shook his head. “No bids. We need what you have. We get it.”

Booster blinked his eyes in surprise. “You need? You need? You’re not on Corellia, Horn. You have no authority here. Your needs are immaterial.”

Mirax twisted out from beneath her father’s arm. “It’s not Corran who needs this stuff. Wedge needs it.”

The elder Darklighter’s smile broadened. “Good, get Wedge Antilles here, and then we’ll have our auction.”

“Wedge, eh?” Booster frowned at Mirax, then glanced over at Huff. “Give it to them.”

“Fine, if you don’t want in, that’s all right by me.” Huff’s smile shrank as he turned toward Corran. “What I have will cost you two million credits—four if you expect me to trust the New Republic for it.”

Booster reached out and slapped Huff on the shoulder. “I told you to give it to them.”

“I am.”

“No, you’re negotiating when I said you should be giving.”

Huff looked confused for a moment, and Corran could sympathize. “You want me to give it to them for free?”

Booster nodded. “If not, I think you’ll find that records of certain transactions that could be considered Palpatinistic could come to light.”

“That’s extortion.”

“No, that’s deal making. I have something you want—my silence—and you have something I want—the weapons to go to Wedge. We exchange wants and everyone is satisfied.”

Mirax interposed herself between Huff Darklighter and her father. “Extortion or deal making, it doesn’t make a difference. We’re not doing it that way, period. If we take things away without compensation, we’re as bad as the Imps. If we let ourselves pay inflated prices, we’ll be as stupid as the Imps. That isn’t what’s going to happen. We’re going to be fair about this.”

She pointed a finger at Huff. “You will get me a complete inventory of the material we’re looking at and will let us inspect the merchandise, choosing random bits to examine ourselves. My father will prepare a list of the prices for all these things in the prevailing market. We’ll pay something below the going price because everyone knows the father of Biggs Darklighter wouldn’t try to make a profit off his son’s comrades, but you will be capitalizing assets for which you have little use here on Tatooine. We’ll pay half now and half when we take possession of the items.”

Huff’s jowls quivered as he shook his head. “You’ll pay fifteen percent over the current—”

Mirax held a hand up. “Stop. I said we’d be fair, I never said we were negotiating. If you want to negotiate, we’ll start from my father’s position and work down to the details of your paying the freight to move the goods we’re taking off your hands.”

Huff Darklighter stared at Mirax, his jaws agape. “Do you know what you’re asking?”

Mirax smiled sweetly. “Only what’s fair.”

Gavin laughed. “Admit it, Uncle Huff, you’ll accept her terms, because you’re not going to get anything better.”

“True, I accept.” Huff nodded his head slowly. “Listen to me, young lady. If you ever find yourself in need of a steady job, please come see me. You have talents I could use.”

Huff Darklighter invited them to remain as his guests for the duration of their visit to Tatooine. They accepted—not only were the accommodations he offered far nicer than those they had booked in Mos Eisley but Gavin’s family traveled from their farm to see him. With Booster’s presence and the extended Darklighter clan getting together, the visit began to feel like a big family vacation.

Corran enjoyed meeting Gavin’s parents. His father, Jula, looked similar to Huff Darklighter in the face, but the lack of a moustache on Jula made telling them apart rather simple. Likewise, the fact that Jula’s hard work on a moisture farm had left him harder and more weathered than his prosperous brother helped differentiate them. There definitely seemed to be affection between the brothers, though Huff tended to keep Jula in his place by referring to the cost of this item or that and feigning astonishment when Jula said he didn’t own one.

Jula, for his part, showed incredible restraint and even resignation over his brother’s lack of manners. Corran shook his head. If I had a brother and got that treatment from him, my sister-in-law would be a widow. Jula’s responses were polite, and in some ways his forbearance seemed to bother Huff more than any direct confrontation would have.

Gavin’s mother, Silya, could have been Lanal Darklighter’s twin. Her concern for Gavin rolled through every question and comment, though she managed to avoid tears all but once or twice. In the way she looked at Gavin, Corran recognized the same expression his mother wore when he graduated from the Corellian Security Force Academy. Pride and fear—a mother’s dreams and her nightmares—fight for supremacy.

The focus of the gathering quickly became Gavin. He thrilled his cousins and younger siblings with stories of what he’d seen and done, though Corran noted that he downplayed nearly getting killed on Talasea. That didn’t surprise him, but it was also clear to Corran that Jula had not missed what had gone unsaid. The specter of Biggs’s death formed the foundation for every question and comment.

And the comparison of Gavin with Biggs fuels the analysis of stories he’s telling. There was no doubt that Biggs had been a hero and had acted heroically. His death at Yavin had allowed Luke Skywalker to blow up the Death Star. His death marked the extreme danger of the situation and was not unexpected, given the circumstances. Even so, the situations in which Gavin found himself were no less perilous, yet he had survived them. To Corran’s mind, Gavin’s parents had to be thinking that made him better than Biggs in some undefinable away, and for Huff it planted the seeds of doubt about how great his son truly was.

Because he had been an only child born of only children, the Darklighter family gathering gave Corran a window into a whole different family dynamic. Because there were so many children among whom things were shared, personal boundaries and the ideas of ownership were weakened. Younger kids seemed to see every adult as part of the family, fearlessly climbing into laps or asking permission or asking for help.

At first this threatened Corran—in part because of the utter chaos of the situation but mostly because the children thrust responsibility into his hands. The fact that none of the Darklighters seemed to mind their children paying him attention—as long as the kids didn’t seem to be bothering him or to be ill-mannered—meant he had to accept that responsibility and act on it. The openness of the families drew him in and they accepted him, but Corran was uncertain if he was ready to be accepted.

Mirax and her father, by way of contrast, formed a little insulated party within the grander goings-on. The hushed tones of their conversation, their quiet laughter and their general ease with each other reminded Corran very sharply of the relationship he’d had with his own father. Hal Horn had been friend and confidant as well as parent and work associate. Corran had always thought of family as a place where he could open himself up and get advice without fearing censure or ridicule. Shared blood meant a bottom-line alliance that no disagreement could shatter. He and his father had disagreed on plenty of things, but that which united them was far stronger than anything that could divide them.

Despite the efforts of everyone to include him in what was going on, Corran began to retreat a bit as melancholy over his father’s death slowly seeped into his heart. It was all too easy for him to imagine his father at the gathering, again hearing his laughter and watching the others react to the stories Hal used to tell. They would have loved him here. And he would have loved being here, too.

A chill ran down Corran’s spine. The openness of the families twisted like a vibroblade into his guts. His father, Hal Horn, had known his own father, the Jedi Master Nejaa Halcyon. Hal had never told Corran anything about Nejaa. I know he did that to protect me, but I know he had to have been proud of his father. When I told my father that I had “hunches” and he told me to go with them, he knew they were manifestations of my—our—Jedi heritage. That was his quiet way of telling me of his pride, but it must have torn him up to have to remain silent. Perhaps he anticipated telling me about that stuff later, after the Rebels had destroyed the Empire, but he never lived that long.

Corran absented himself from the gathering, walking up the steps to the surface of the planet. The twin suns had set, letting the day’s heat begin to bleed off into space. The chill creeping into the desert likewise began to gnaw at him. It found a willing ally in the sorrow sloshing around in Corran’s guts.

“Excuse me, Lieutenant Horn, I don’t want to intrude.”

Corran looked back and saw Jula Darklighter silhouetted against the glow from the pit mansion. “No intrusion, sir. I came from a small family, so this is rather overwhelming.”

“I came from a big family, and it’s overwhelming.” Jula glanced down at the ground and toed an alkali crust into dust. “I wanted to say thank you for taking care of my son out there.”

Corran smiled, but shook his head. “Gavin takes care of himself out there.”

“He said you had confidence in him and that you got another pilot to stop picking on him. He didn’t say it that way, mind you, but he’s not hard to read.”

Corran laughed lightly. “No, your boy—young man—does tend to digitize and broadcast his emotions. The situation he refers to, though, was one where another pilot, Bror Jace, and I were having a bit of a conflict, and Gavin just happened to find himself in the middle. I’m glad he took heart in my having confidence in him, because I did and do believe in him and his skills, but he needs no protection. You raised a man of whom you can be proud.”

Jula smiled and nodded, then looked Corran straight in the eyes. “He’s almost ended up like Biggs, hasn’t he?”

“We’ve all almost ended up like Biggs, sir. The Empire may be in retreat, but there are plenty of folks still willing to fight for them.” Corran raised a hand to his breastbone and unconsciously stroked the Jedi medallion he wore. “Gavin has been wounded and did almost die, but the fact is that he was too tough to die. As a pilot, he’s getting better and better and has vaped his share of the enemy we’ve faced. He’s brave without being stupid. He’s the sort of person who is the Rebellion’s backbone and the reason it has succeeded as well as it has.”

“What you’re saying, Lieutenant Horn, makes me very proud indeed.” Jula sighed. “It also fortifies me against anticipating the worst. I imagine your parents are equally worried about you and proud of you.”

Corran frowned. “My parents are dead, sir.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.”

Jula jerked a thumb back toward the sounds of the gathering. “This isn’t very easy on you, is it?”

Corran shrugged. “Compared to an Imperial prison, it’s actually very nice. The trick of it is that there I had a focus for my negative thoughts—the people who had me imprisoned. Here there is no such focus.”

“Perhaps that means that you should just let your negative thoughts go.” Jula patted him on the shoulder. “Nothing wrong with feeling and acknowledging sorrow and pain, Lieutenant Horn. The crime is letting them hold you prisoner. Come on back, and we’ll do all we can to set you free.”

He’s right. Mourning is appropriate, but not here and not now. Corran smiled. “Thanks. I think I will rejoin the group. In fighting the Imps I’ve been in so many places where I’ve been reviled, it’s great, just for once, to be welcomed so openly and graciously.”

“I’m glad you feel that way.” Jula threw an arm over Corran’s shoulder and steered him back toward the light. “Darklighters believe in treating friends like family and family like friends, and we’re always glad to add yet one more to the family.”

8

This has to be a dream. A nightmare even. Wedge cracked his left eye open and let it slowly attempt to focus. At first he noticed nothing unusual in the unlit room, but then he caught sight of little motes of light streaking like shooting stars across night sky. The possible presence of something in his quarters did convince his sleep-besotted brain that he should continue his trek toward consciousness, but until he heard the voice a second time, he wasn’t wholly certain he wasn’t enmeshed in a nightmare.

“Good morning, sir. It is very good to see you again.”

Wedge rolled over and reluctantly opened both eyes. “Emtrey?”

“How kind of you to remember me, Comm—I mean, Master Wedge.” The black 3PO droid with the clamshell head stood beside the bed with its hands splayed out. “I realize you may not have fully recovered from your journey here, and were it up to me I’d have allowed you to sleep longer, but this is the time at which you requested awakening.”

Wedge groaned. Shortly after Corran, Mirax, and Gavin had left for Tatooine, Winter located a possible store of X-wings and parts on Rishi. Using some of the unit’s money,

Wedge rented a modified Corellian YT-1300 light freighter named Eclipse Rider and headed out with Ooryl Qrygg to check out the report. The trip out from Coruscant went well, but once they arrived in-system they ran into trouble. The freighter lost a repulsor-lift coil upon landing. Ooryl worked on replacing that while Wedge wound his way through a labyrinth of H’kig religious laws that seemed, to him, to prohibit or limit anything that could make life easier.

He did locate the cache of X-wing parts and managed to purchase it. He estimated two fighters could be cobbled together from the parts, which was something, but far short of what he’d hoped when he set out at first. Regulations on the use of repulsor-lift vehicles complicated the loading timetable and, ultimately, delayed their departure from the world by twelve hours.

When he and Ooryl finally did make it to Yag’Dhul, Wedge was four days behind schedule and exhausted. He docked the freighter, then had someone show him to his quarters. I thought twelve hours of sleep would be enough, but apparently not, because I’m hallucinating the presence of a droid that should be on Coruscant.

He rubbed his eyes, then opened them again. Emtrey was still there. “What’s going on here? Did General Cracken send you to keep an eye on us?”

“Since I do not have eyes per se, sir, I would have to say no.” The droid’s head canted to the right. “I do not recall any orders being given to me by my former owner.”

“Former owner?” Wedge realized he was becoming more awake all the time, but nothing seemed to be getting much clearer to him, and that caused him some concern. Someone has to be having fun with this. “Get Tycho for me.”

Tycho cleared his voice and Wedge turned to see him leaning against the doorjamb of the bedroom. “Thought you’d like to wake up to a familiar face, since you’re in unfamiliar surroundings.”

“Right.” Wedge narrowed his eyes. “As I recall, I’ve not gotten you back for the other trick you pulled—that postmortem message from Corran at Borleias. You better watch your step.”

“Or what? You think you can cause me more trouble than a treason trial and a stay in an Imperial prison?” Tycho thrust his chin out defiantly, but softened the gesture with a smile. “You’re welcome to try any time you want, Antilles.”

Wedge shook his head. “One hopeless battle at a time. Got any caf out there?”

Tycho nodded. “Brewed hot and strong enough to dissolve transparisteel.”

“Great.” Wedge rolled out of bed and slipped into the thick robe Emtrey held out for him. Knotting the belt around his middle, he followed Tycho into the small parlor attached to his bedroom. The furnishings were a mixture of styles and colors, but all of them were fashioned from hollow metal tubes and light but strong cloth. Less mass means less cost in transport and energy to maintain the gravity generation for the station.

Wedge dropped into a chair across a low table from Tycho and wrapped both hands around the barrel of a steaming mug of caf. The steam caressed his face and could have been melting his eyebrows for all he cared because the caf tasted wonderful. He felt the warmth spread out from his belly and a layer of fog in his brain began to dissipate.

“So, Tycho, how is Emtrey here?”

Tycho’s smile broadened considerably. “Politics.”

Wedge sipped more caf. “Okay, give me the exploded view because I’m not seeing it.”

“It gets weird, but I’m not complaining.” Tycho leaned forward. “Before his capture at Yavin 4, Jan Dodonna designed the A-wing fighter. The Alliance got it into production and introduced the A-wing late on in the Rebellion. Most of them were made in locations that weren’t so much factories as they were private shops. They all worked from the same design, but were constructed on an individual basis. The one I flew at Endor, for example, had Fijisi wood panels in it—I’m guessing it was built on Cardooine.”

“I recall how reinforcements of those ships used to dribble in.”

“Right, well Incom and Koensayer are afraid their X-wing and Y-wing fighter designs are going to be supplanted by the A-wing and B-wing designs, so they’ve been trying to get the Provisional Council and the Armed Forces to open bidding on new contracts. Incom thinks it has an edge on winning a contract for new X-wings, when all of us up and resign. Koensayer starts the rumor that part of our disaffection is because we don’t trust the X-wing anymore.

“Incom turns around and says that it’s working on some new designs and would be happy to bring Rogue Squadron’s ships up to the state of the art. What they offer are A-wings manufactured by them that have been modified so the laser cannons can swivel and cover the rear arc.”

Wedge nodded. “Nice adaptation, but it doesn’t explain how we ended up with Emtrey.”

“I’m getting there, and you’ll appreciate the flight, trust me.” Tycho pressed his hands together. “Someone in the military—probably General Cracken, but maybe even Admiral Ackbar—decided accepting Incom’s gift was appropriate, so all the equipment in Rogue Squadron was inspected, listed as missing parts, and surplussed out. Winter found out about it before anyone else, and we scooped up the lot, including Emtrey and our astromech droids.”

Wedge blinked. “Surplussed out? Our stuff was sold as surplus?”

“Broken surplus. It was missing parts.”

“Such as?”

“PL-1s”

Wedge frowned. “PL-1s? I’ve never heard of them.”

Tycho shook his head. “That’s the designation for pilot.”

Wedge immediately began laughing. Someone back on Coruscant favors what we’re doing or perhaps just wants to give us the tools to destroy ourselves. I’m trusting it’s the former. “Emtrey was just thrown in on the deal?”

“He cost a little bit extra, but I thought he was worth it.” Tycho coughed lightly into his hand. “Zraii and his technical staff resigned and followed our ships over. We’ve got a full squadron, and the parts you brought in should keep them operational for a long time.”

“Good. How does the base look?”

“Not bad.” Tycho pointed back toward the bedroom. “I’ll give you a half an hour to get cleaned up, then I’ll give you a tour of the place. It’s not exactly a Death Star, but I think it will work fine for our purposes.”

Clad in a tan jumpsuit, Wedge followed Tycho through the space station. The small suite he’d been given turned out to be one of the more luxurious ones on the station. Because of construction costs space was at a premium. Refresher stations were communal, as were dining facilities. While there were private rooms for dinner meetings, all food was prepared in a central galley and delivered to the half-dozen dining facilities on the base. Those same rooms also served as lounges and recreation facilities.

Tycho led him to the core of the station and punched a button on the wall. “Here at the core we have nine turbolifts: six are for personnel and three are for freight.”

Wedge reached up and tapped a knuckle against the gray duraplast ceiling. “Everything seems shrunk down a bit. I feel like a giant.”

“It is very compact. I think it was built this way to cause stormtroopers problems if they ever invaded.” As the turbolift door slid open, Tycho passed through the opening. “There are twenty-five living levels above the docking facility and twenty-five below it. We’re starting at sub-twenty-five. I’ve got Emtrey working on the moves that will be necessary to clear the last ten sublevels for our personnel.”

“Moving everyone but our people off would make me feel better, since we know Isard will eventually figure out where we are.”

“Agreed, Wedge, but if we send people away she’ll find out about things all that much sooner. Because we hit this station not too long ago, and because Warlord Zsinj evacuated his folks, what’s left behind is pretty much of a skeleton crew. If we do get rid of them, we’re going to have to use our people to perform a lot of nonmission-specific duties.” Tycho winced. “I seem to recall the meal you tried to make out of tauntaun meat on Hoth and …”

“I get the hologram, Tycho.” Wedge frowned. “Do they know there’s danger here?”

“They seem to think that after Zsinj, Isard might be taken as a change for the positive. I’ve spoken with the key employers here, and they know there could be trouble. They seem to think that with us here it’s actually going to be safer because the scum of the galaxy isn’t going to be drifting in every time they have liberty.”

“True, but their revenues are going to be down, and that could make for trouble.”

The turbolift stopped and opened onto the docking facility. Tall transparisteel walls gave Wedge a spectacular view of Yag’Dhul. Though small and dense, the world took on a curious appearance because of the three moons orbiting it and the tidal forces they generated as they orbited in the opposite direction to the planet’s rotation. The atmosphere boiled and swirled, with storms sowing lightning through the gray clouds and flashes of red stone visible even from the station.

“Hard to believe life could have arisen in that maelstrom.” Wedge folded his arms across his chest and shivered. “No wonder the Givin have an exoskeleton and can exist in a vacuum.”

“It’s a good thing they can. Our attack here apparently opened some of the station up to the vacuum, so they used Givin to make the repairs. Everything is fine now, though, with one exception: the old Station Master died while on an inspection tour of the repair work.”

Wedge frowned, recalling an old Twi’lek with a pockmarked face who had been as oily as Darth Vader had been evil. “His name was Valsil Torr, right?”

“I guess so. Apparently he tried to force a Givin task leader to pay him a bribe. They agreed to discuss it in Torr’s office, and there was a catastrophic loss of atmosphere.” Tycho winced. “The Twi’lek was sucked out of his office through a hole the size of, say, a blaster bolt. The Givin lived and patched the hole.”

“So now no one is running the station.”

“The merchants here have formed an Economic Council and seem to be running things fairly well as far as they are concerned. We’ll need to put someone in to control them, but I don’t have a candidate in mind yet.” Tycho opened his arms. “This is the main docking area, which contains ten levels all its own. The middle six deal with cargo transfer and storage. The outer two on each side contain crew housing, some small shops and two tapcafs—home away from home for freight haulers. The tapcafs serve exactly what the rest of us eat, but they lower the lights and hike the price.”

“You know, with the right ambiance, that tauntaun would have tasted fine.”

“Sure, Wedge, believe that if you want.” Tycho pointed to the triangular landing extending out into space. “Ships land here, unload, pick up or exchange cargo, and head out again. If the crew wants to stop over, its ship is parked in orbit and the station shuttle service brings them to and from the station. Hangar space is rare, and what this station has is being reserved for us right now, though there is some space for repairs if a ship needs it.”

“Fair enough.” Wedge watched a small yacht make an approach on the station. Its sleek lines and down-curving wings reminded him of a native Corellian fish. “Looks like the Pulsar Skate is coming in. Have you had any word from them?”

“No, but there was a funds transfer to the account of Huff Darklighter, so I assume things went well.”

“Good.” Wedge pointed back at the lift. “Let’s go down, greet them, and see exactly what our money bought us.”

9

Wedge wondered if he weren’t really still trapped in a dream as the turbolift door opened and he stepped into the squadron hangar. A dozen X-wings occupied the deck, and techs swarmed over them. That wasn’t what had struck him as unrealistic, however, since the hustle and bustle of a hangar was something he’d witnessed countless times before.

He glanced over at Tycho. “What’s going on here?”

Tycho gave him a grin. “Well, since we’re no longer part of the New Republic’s Armed Forces, we can’t have ships bearing its insignia or colors, can we? Now, Corran’s ship has always been green with that black and white trim, like his droid, so I thought we might just go ahead and repaint our X-wings to look like whatever we want them to be.”

He pointed very specifically at an X-wing that was bloodred except for where white had been splashed at a diagonal down across the nose and the tips of the S-foils. A broad black stripe parted the white from the red. “That one’s mine. I did some checking, and before Alderaan disarmed, that was the color scheme the Alderaan Guard unit near my home used to sport. I’ve also had Zraii switch my Identify Friend/Foe beacon over to an old Alderaanian code—the one from the Another Chance, in fact. Individualizing the paint and switching our IFF codes to those of our home planets provides further evidence that we’re not a New Republic unit.”

Wedge chewed his lower lip for a moment. Makes sense, all of it. And the fighters do look a bit more, ah, ferocious with the new paint jobs. “I like it, Tycho, but I don’t know what to do with mine. Corran’s got the CorSec green, but he’s earned it.”

“How about a dark blue, with red stripes up the sides?”

“Corellian Bloodstripes?” Wedge chuckled. “I never was in the Corellian Military, so I never earned Bloodstripes. Han Solo wears them on his trousers because he went to the Imperial Academy and won them through his bravery.”

“Oh, and you’ve not been equally brave?”

“That’s open to debate, but the fact is I’ve never been sufficiently military to earn them.” He smiled slowly. “Make everything from the cockpit back black, including the S-foils, and give me a green-and-gold check pattern on the front fuselage.”

Tycho’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t recognize the color scheme.”

“No reason you should.” Wedge hesitated for a second. “Back when my parents operated a fueling station at Gus Treta, my father was saving up to buy the station and start his own chain. The green, gold, and black were going to be the colors he used for the logo and the uniforms. Your colors tie you back to your home, Corran’s do the same thing for him, and I imagine the same is true for everyone else. Mine will tie me to the home I should have had.”

“I’ll put the order in immediately.” Tycho started walking over toward where the Pulsar Skate had come through the hangar’s magnetic containment bubble and was setting down. Following it in came a boxy station shuttle, but it landed further back. “Your ship and Gavin’s will be the last ones finished.”

Wedge glanced at Ooryl’s white fighter. “You need to include Ooryl’s ship on that list.”

“No, it’s done.”

“But, it’s so … plain.”

“Apparently not, if you can see in the ultraviolet range.” Tycho shrugged. “Zraii says it’s a masterpiece.”

“That explains why I’m a warrior, not an artist.” Wedge waved as he saw Corran, Mirax, and Gavin walk down the gangway from the Pulsar Skate. Wait a minute, who’s that? The fourth individual proved taller than Gavin and much bulkier, yet wasn’t slovenly or Huttlike. Then, when his head cleared the interior of the ship and Wedge saw the bristle of white hair, he recognized him.

“So that’s why Corran is looking a bit subdued.”

“What?” Tycho frowned at Wedge. “Who’s the last guy?”

“Mirax’s father.”

“Oh. Oh.”

Wedge trotted the remaining distance and thrust his hand at Booster Terrik. “It’s been far too long, Booster.”

The larger man’s hand engulfed Wedge’s. “You grew up quite a bit during my five years on Kessel. After I got out, well, about that time you were freezing on Hoth, then you were on the go. I assumed I’d run into you sometime, and now seems as good as any.”

“Indeed it is.” Wedge glanced over at Mirax. “Your daughter’s been a lifesaver, you know, and for more than just me.”

“So I gather from what I heard during the trip.” Booster Terrik threw an arm over Wedge’s shoulders, then tightened it against his neck. “I would have hoped, though, you would have found a way to protect her from the likes of Horn there.”

Wedge gently dug an elbow in the man’s ribs. “First, if you can’t control your daughter, how can I be expected to control her? Second, just as I told her, Corran isn’t his father. He’s one of the best men I know.”

“You need to get out more, Wedge.” Booster opened his arms and released Wedge. “Interesting place you have here. Not enough to stop a Super Star Destroyer, but you know that. Still, if you have to die in a box in space, this looks as good as any in which to do it.”

“Tycho’s taking me on a tour. You’re welcome to join us.”

“I’d be happy to.”

Wedge nodded, then looked over at Gavin. “How was Tatooine?”

“Good, sir. We got a fair amount of personal armor and weapons, as well as some TIE parts and assorted other things Mirax thinks we can trade. Uncle Huff said that was all that was left from the Eidolon material.”

“It all looked pretty good, Wedge.” Corran leaned against a pilot-mover. “We’ve got enough in the way of small arms to supply a decent insurgent force. The armor is stormtrooper grade.”

Corran’s voice trailed off as the sound of footsteps drew closer. Wedge turned and saw a pair of individuals coming around Pulsar Skate’s stern. The hulking brute of a man, with a shaved head and a big bushy beard, dwarfed his petite female companion. Wedge hitched for a moment, then started to laugh. “How is it possible that you’re here so soon?”

The auburn-haired woman smiled sweetly. “And I’m happy to see you, too, Wedge. You’ve not changed much, Tycho, or you, Mirax.” She nodded to the others in the group, then offered her hand to Corran. “Elscol Loro and Sixtus Quin.”

“Elscol joined the squadron just after Bakura and flew a few missions with us.” Wedge jerked a thumb toward her taciturn, dark-skinned companion. “Sixtus Quin was a Special Intelligence Operative who was betrayed by his Imperial commander, so he helped us out in a mission on Tatooine.”

Corran nodded. “We can always use more pilots.”

“But that’s not why we’re here, kid.” She shot Wedge a sidelong glance. “The reason we got here so soon was because we were inbound before your summons reached us. We’d heard of the coup on Thyferra and figured we’d ply our trade there.”

Corran stiffened. “And what would that trade be?”

A lopsided grin contorted the left side of her face. “I do what I was doing at the time Wedge recruited me—I find worlds with Imperial tyrants, and I liberate them. Sixtus, what’s left of his squad, and a group of other ne’er-do-wells come with me. We organize local resistance movements; provide them with expertise, weapons, and support; and help them get rid of their local Imperial officials.”

Wedge smiled. “I think you’ll recall that no one at our first meeting had any good idea about how to go about overthrowing a planetary government. Elscol has had more practice at it than anyone I know. She’s never been much of a joiner, so she’s been working outside the New Republic.”

She shrugged. “Haven’t formed an opinion about the New Republic yet, though during Tycho’s trial my thoughts were none-too-positive. The Empire, on the other hand, left me without my family, so I’m doing what I can to strip them of theirs.”

“Have you had a chance to review the material I sent you?”

Elscol nodded. “If the ratio of loyal humans to Vratix is at all accurate, the actual conquest of the world should be simple. The big problem there is the presence of those Imp ships. Anything we do can be undone by a planetary bombardment. If those ships can be scattered or neutralized—preferably both—we can stage an uprising that should topple Ysanne Isard. I’m confident we can do it, but I’ll have a better idea of exactly what we’re going to do after I get in there and take a look.”

Mirax raised an eyebrow. “You’re talking about going to Thyferra?”

“Yes, the sooner the better.” Elscol held up a hand and started ticking points off on her fingers. “We have to liaise with the Ashern, or we’ll fight them as much as we’ll fight the Imps and their Xucphra allies. We have to determine the nature of the targets we’ll hit, so we can be properly supplied for the strikes. We need to gauge the reaction of the populace to a countercoup, and we have to find a local leader who can handle being put in charge. If this were just some backwater world that no one cared about, we could be a bit more hasty. Thyferra, however, is of vital importance, so we have to be careful and surgical in what we’re doing.”

“Agreed.” Wedge folded his arms across his chest. “We don’t have enough in the way of personnel or equipment to allow us to be sloppy.”

Sixtus rested his fists on his narrow hips. “How long do you anticipate being able to keep the location of this station a secret from Isard?”

Wedge shrugged. “I have no way of judging that. We’ll take all precautions possible, but we’re as vulnerable here as the Alliance was on Hoth or Yavin 4. If Isard finds us, we’re in for a difficult time.”

“Then the sooner we’re on Thyferra, the sooner she’ll have to think about leaving at least part of her fleet at home.”

Gavin frowned. “But I thought the fleet needed to be scattered.”

“True enough, but scattered in a way that you can nibble it to death. I know you Rogues are hot hands on a stick, but a dozen snubfighters can’t take four capital ships all by themselves. Isard has to be induced to send the ships out so you can eliminate them, but she also needs a reason to leave some of them at home so you don’t get overwhelmed.”

Corran raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like you’re suggesting the only way we win this thing is if Iceheart starts getting stupid.”

“Not at all, flyboy. What we need to do is to give Isard too many things to think about. She likes to be in control—that’s clear—and she’ll do outrageous things to remain in control.” Sixtus smiled in a way that made it seem as if smiling were an effort for him. “We have to present her with enough problems that she’s reacting to what we do, not acting by herself. We set the pace and determine what she does.”

Tycho’s eyes narrowed. “And if she doesn’t dance to the tune we call?”

Elscol opened her hands. “Then we dance around her. Make no mistake about it, defeating her is going to be neither pretty nor swift, but it can be done. People are going to die, but if she remains in charge of the bacta supply in the galaxy, that’s a given anyway.”

Wedge nodded and felt his shoulders begin to ache as if someone had settled a lead-lined cloak across them. While none of the Rogues had ever attempted to minimize the difficulty of what they had set out to do, neither had they taken a close look at the realities of it. It is almost as if we began to believe in the legend of Rogue Squadron—that impossible missions are for us just run of the mill. We know death and dying are part of any operation, but since we’re the ones putting our lives on the line, we’re accepting responsibility for our own lives. Elscol’s pointing out, quite correctly, that a lot of other people can and will be hurt in all this.

He nodded slowly. “Okay, we’ve got to start planning this all in earnest. We’re gathering weapons and the ships we need already, but now we’re going to have to designate mission goals, outline parameters, set rules of engagement, and establish just how far we’re willing to go to accomplish the end we desire: the liberation of Thyferra. I take it that the fact that you’re here means you’re willing to help us do this, Elscol?”

She winked at Wedge. “Actually I was coming here to give you folks the joy of flying cover for me while my people handled the problem, but I think throwing in with you is the only way to get this done. We’re in.”

“Great.” Wedge clapped her on the shoulders. “So, where do you suggest we begin?”

Elscol’s smile blossomed. “I think the first thing we want to do is to make Isard very mad.”

10

Corran made one last check on his instruments, but everything seemed fine. His screen showed him to be fifteen seconds from reversion to realspace. “Hang on, Whistler, this could be very strange.”

He knew it shouldn’t be at all out of the ordinary, but he couldn’t escape the feeling that something odd would happen. He felt it was not because of any unknown factors attached to the mission, because there really were none. Their intelligence about the bacta convoy had been very good and double-checked. The squadron should be able to hit it and get away well before Iceheart could mount any sort of rescue operation.

Corran’s uneasiness came from the fact that in this mission he was being asked to do something against which he had fought all his life. His father and grandfather had fought against it all their lives. Even Nejaa Halcyon had ventured out against pirates who preyed on interstellar convoys. Corran, who had once been an officer in the Corellian Security Force’s antismuggling, division, had become a pirate.

Rationalizing and justifying what he was about to do was simple in the extreme. Elscol Loro had said from the start that getting Isard angry was important, and stealing a convoy of bacta certainly would do that. It would also force her to devote some of her resources to safeguarding future convoys. Even if Rogue Squadron never engaged any of Isard’s troops, the sheer volume of runs the destroyers would have to make would tax the crew and the equipment, forcing her to obtain more supplies from the black market at inflated prices.

All the while wearing her down for us.

The counter in the upper corner of his screen spun down to zero, then the white tunnel outside his cockpit shattered into pinpoints of light that resolved themselves into stars. Out ahead of him, the yellow sun at the heart of the Chorax system took up a quarter of the sky, while the single large planet in the system stood silhouetted against it like the pupil in some huge yellow eye.

Streaming away from the planet like tears, the ships of the bacta convoy headed out, their exit vector identical to Rogue Squadron’s entry vector. Though closing fast with them, Corran could not make out any visual detail on the Thyferran ships, yet Whistler flashed a schematic of them on his screen in short order. Three hundred meters in length, from prow bridge to hyperdrives, the bacta tankers had an almost insectoid feel about them. The ship’s central section had two parts, each of which held six cargo cylinders. In the various systems where the convoy stopped, smaller ships would fly up to the convoy, tease one of the cylinders free from the tanker’s belly, then slip a return cylinder into its place. The returned cylinder might be empty, but most of them contained the world’s native goods, to be sent back to Thyferra or traded yet further along the line.

Corran keyed his comm unit. “Nine here, Rogue Leader. The convoy is right where it is supposed to be. No hostiles yet.”

“I copy, Nine. Stand by.” Wedge’s voice broke for a moment, then flooded through the helmet speakers. “Bacta convoy, this is Wedge Antilles. Prepare to alter course to coordinates I will supply you.”

A new voice came back on the comm unit. “Antilles, this is Thyferran Convoy Delta-Two-Niner. We do not recognize your authority to give us orders.”

“You will. Two flight, make a run.”

“I copy, Rogue Leader.” Confidence bubbled through Tycho’s voice. “Eight, Nine, and Ten on me. Lock S-foils into attack position.”

“As ordered, sir.” Corran nudged his stick to the left and pushed the throttle forward to bring his X-wing up on Tycho’s left. Nawara Ven, in Eight, dropped in back and starboard of Tycho while Ooryl pulled his X-wing into the formation to the port and in back of Corran. As a unit they sped on in at the long string of tankers and tending vessels. The tenders will be the ones that are armed.

The boxy tenders, which really were just freighters hauling food and other supplies for the convoy, quickly outstripped the tankers and positioned themselves to make the fighters shy off their targets. The strategy of forming a wall in front of the freighters might well have worked had the battle been taking place on a planet with the Rogues in land-speeders, but in space the tight grouping of the freighters just made eluding them all that much more easy.

Corran hit a key on his console. “Seven, I show six freighters in that block in front of us, but there were eight originally. They’re screening something.”

“I copy, Nine. The two missing ones are the largest of them. Keep your eyes open for something tricky.”

Suddenly the freighter formation opened up like a flower blossoming and eight snubfighters burst up through the opening at full attack speed. Led by four Z-95 Headhunters with blasters blazing, the Thyferran fighters zeroed in on the Rogue formation. Corran threw all shield power to the forward shields, dropped his crosshairs on one of the speeding Headhunters and hit his trigger.

The quad burst of laser fire pierced the Headhunter’s shields. The red beams sliced into the joint where the port wing joined the fuselage, sheering it off. The engine on that wing exploded and the ship itself whirled off in a flat spin. Corran sideslipped to starboard to cut beneath its flight path, then hauled back on his stick to loop up and onto the trail of the Thyferran fighters.

Evening his shields out, he inverted the X-wing and dove onto the tail of the second set of Thyferran fighters. It was a mixed group consisting of two TIE fighters and two “Uglies”—hybrid ships consisting of a TIE’s ball cockpit married to Y-wing engine nacelles.

“Ten, do you want the Die-wings, or shall I take them?”

“Ooryl would be pleased to take them.”

“Ten, I have your wing.” Corran smiled as Ooryl cruised up and broke to starboard as the pair of Uglies veered away to shake them. While affordable and effective for most convoy security duty, the Uglies were not well suited to engagements against military-grade snubfighters. The Die-wing variant—often referred to as TIE-wing among those who flew them—suffered from the deficits of their component parts. They had a Y-wing’s sloth mated with a TIE fighter’s lack of shields. Corran would have preferred to be handed a blaster and allowed to float his way into a fight than pilot one of those things.

He kept an eye on the location of the TIE fighters as Ooryl went in after the Uglies. Though the Gand’s exoskeleton made him look blocky and clumsy on the ground, his handling of an X-wing was nothing short of fluid and even delicate. Whereas Corran’s passing shot on the Headhunter had been lucky, Ooryl had a facility for doing exactly that sort of damage on purpose. He shoots as if laser bolts were being rationed.

Ooryl triggered a double burst of laser fire, sending two scarlet bolts lancing through the lead Die-wing’s ball cockpit. Nothing exploded, though leaking atmosphere did combust and flare for a moment. The Die-wing hurtled on through space, but began to level out from the looping climb in which it had been engaged. That move invited a second shot, but the first had clearly killed the pilot, leaving the ship to fly on with no intelligence at the controls.

Unfortunately for him, the Die-wing’s wingman failed to realize his partner had died. Flying in perfect formation, he began to level out, too. Ooryl’s sideslip dropped him square on that fighter’s aft. Before the pilot could begin to maneuver, Ooryl fired two laser bursts at him. The first shredded the port nacelle, lacing it with fire before ripping it apart. The second shot weakened the link between the remaining nacelle and the cockpit. The engine ripped free, rocketing off toward Chorax’s sun, while the ball flew on out of control.

A small explosion wreathed the top of the cockpit with fire. A round plug shot upward; then the pilot followed, riding a command couch backed by a rocket booster. It carried the pilot clear of the doomed ship and out into space. The command couch gave the pilot marginal control over his fate—he was no longer bound for deep space in a runaway fighter—but without a pickup in a ship within a half hour, he’d suffocate or freeze to death.

Corran keyed his comm unit. “We have one bad guy EV.”

Whistler’s urgent hooting overrode any reply. “Got it, Whistler—TIEs inbound. Ten, you’re my wing again.”

“Ten complying with your order.”

Corran shook his head as he brought the X-wing up on its port stabilizer and pulled back on the stick. Any other pilot in the unit who had picked off the Die-wings would have been ecstatic, or at least would have had his excitement show up in his voice, but not Ooryl. The only way to tell if he was excited or ashamed about something was to listen to how he referred to himself. Gands felt it the height of arrogance to refer to themselves with a personal pronoun unless it was felt by Gand leadership that the Gand in question had done something so great that every Gand would be aware of who was being referred to. As a result, when Ooryl was happy he referred to himself as Ooryl, when he was chagrined as Qrygg, and when he was really mortified as Gand, allowing himself to sink in anonymity as his shame grew greater.

His ego is just as strong as any of the rest of us—he just has a better grip on it.

Corran inverted his X-wing and leveled out for a head-to-head pass with the TIEs. The lead TIE broke off, but the following one began a corkscrew maneuver that jumped him around enough to make him hard to target. Corran snapped a shot at him, then climbed up and off after the fleeing TIE. He’s the lesser of two evils.

The TIE jinked high and low, but did very little side to side maneuvering. He’s a rookie and has been training in atmosphere. The TIE’s octagonal solar panels caused a lot of problems with maneuvering in atmosphere because of the resistance they offered, though climbing and diving were no problem at all in a TIE. In space there was no atmosphere to limit the TIE’s maneuverability, but the pilot he was chasing had not yet had a chance to learn that lesson.

And the lesson he’s going to learn here is one of an entirely different nature. Corran snap-rolled the X-wing up on the port S-foil. Whereas the up and down juking had made the TIE difficult to hit before, Corran’s roll left it trapped between the X-wing’s lasers. Corran’s finger tightened up on the trigger, spitting laser fire at his quarry.

The quad burst evaporated the port solar cell wing, letting the TIE trail threadlike tendrils of congealing metal on its left side. Corran pushed his stick forward to correct his aim, but before he could shoot again, the hiss of laser fire hitting his aft shield filled his cockpit. Jamming the stick to the left and shoving it forward, Corran kicked his fighter into a corkscrew dive that took him well away from the wounded TIE.

A glance at his aft sensor readout showed the remaining TIE was staying with him. This guy is really good. “Ten, I have one on my tail.”

“Ten is shaking a lock.”

“I copy, Ten.” Corran frowned. “Whistler, find out what has a lock on Ten.” He knew it had to be one of the freighters that had a concussion missile battery or proton torpedo launcher on board. Most freighters did not carry such weapons systems just because of the space needed for storing the missles and the sensor equipment, but those that did could be very effective against pirates, because they could engage them at the missiles’ longer range.

Whistler shrilled at him.

“Yes, I know I have a fighter on my, er, our, trail.” Corran pulled up into a climb, then rolled and shot off at right angles to the line of his climb. “I’ll take care of him, you just tell me what I want to know.”

The TIE stuck with him. This guy is very good. His fighter can match mine in speed and maneuvering. He’s not going to let me go head to head with him because my shields give me an advantage in doing that. He has to stay in my aft arc and keep nibbling away at my shields to get me, so that’s what I’ll let him do.

Corran switched his fire controls from lasers to proton torpedoes and prepped the fighter to shoot them one at a time. He kept a loose hand on the stick and jinked a bit, but allowed his pursuit to take a couple of shots at him. They sizzled in on the aft shield, but didn’t penetrate it.

This better work. Corran chopped his throttle back to zero, then yanked his stick back to his breastbone. The X-wing’s nose came up and over, pointing straight back at the TIE. The TIE immediately shied to port, so Corran hit his left etheric rudder pedal and tracked the X-wing’s nose along the TIE’s flight path. The aiming reticle went from yellow to red, and Whistler screeched out a solid tone indicating target lock.

Corran fired a missile.

The proton torpedo rode a jet of blue flame as it streaked out after the TIE. It actually overshot its target when the TIE pilot rolled the fighter and pulled the starboard solar panel out of the torpedo’s range. The proximity sensors on the proton torpedo caused it to detonate, filling the area around it with a rapidly expanding cloud of shrapnel. Before the TIE pilot could react, tiny bits of metal pierced the transparisteel cockpit canopy, shattering it into a million razor-edged fragments, that proceeded to reduce everything in the cockpit to debris.

Corran watched the TIE fighter begin to spin off lazily through space. When I go, I hope it’s that fast. No lingering for me.

Whistler’s mournful tone seemed to echo that sentiment.

“Nine here, I’m clear.”

“Seven here, Nine. We’re all clear.”

Corran brought his ship around and saw two of the freighters hanging in space with fires raging internally. “Order, sir?”

Tycho replied quickly. “Wedge has convinced the convoy that once it makes delivery runs for us, it can go free. Form up with Ooryl, and take two tankers for your run. They’ll slave their navicomps to yours. Once the cargo has been delivered, let them go and get back to base.”

“As ordered, sir.” Corran let a little chuckle roll from his throat. “Well, Whistler, this isn’t much of a blow to strike against Iceheart, but it’s something. I’ll take it as a down payment on what she’s going to get later.”

11

A cloud of steam rolled toward Corran as the inner door of the thermal lock opened. He and Ooryl stepped through quickly, anxious to be well away from frigid conditions that existed back in the hangar. Corran pulled off his gloves, blew some warmth into his hands, then smiled as a small, balding man approached them. “You must be Farl Cort.”

The smaller man nodded and extended a hand to Corran. “I am. I want to thank you for your mission here. When we put the word out, I had no reason to expect, you know, such a generous response so quickly.”

“Pleased to meet you, sir.” Corran shook his hand, then jerked his head toward Ooryl. “This is Ooryl Qrygg of Gand, I’m Corran Horn of Corellia.”

Farl shook Ooryl’s hand, then waved the both of them deeper into the rough-hewn stone tunnel. “You’ll forgive the lack of decoration and refinement, but Halanit is a fairly small community that is still building to self-sufficiency, so we have little time to devote to anything that is not utilitarian.”

“Ooryl can understand this. You have chosen a difficult world to make your home.”

Corran shook his head at the Gand’s understatement. Halanit was a moon orbiting a gas giant. A thick coat of ice covered the planet, but beneath the frozen crust, the hot heart of the world heated water and rock enough to make life sustainable. The colonists began creating their community during the final days of the Old Republic. They had weathered the Empire and Rebellion all but unnoticed since the planet produced nothing of use and the inhabitants numbered just over ten thousand. It was just one more curiosity in a galaxy full of them, and it would have escaped Corran’s notice except for an urgent message sent to Coruscant to request shipments of bacta.

Farl led them from the tunnel to the edge of a huge chasm that reminded Corran of Coruscant’s artificial canyons. A hundred meters or so above them a double-walled transparisteel shield capped the chasm and spread over the area the diffuse light glowing down through the glacier. On both sides of the chasm lights shone through viewports carved in the stone and silhouetted the various bridges across the gulf. In several places, water streamed down between and over rocks to splash rather beautifully into the chasm’s depths.

Corran raised an eyebrow. “This is a little more than simply utilitarian, I think.”

Farl smiled. “This grand vista is the one concession we make to beauty. Standing here it is easy to see how our forefathers envisioned what Halanit would become. In two generations we have accomplished much, but we are far from our dream of making this world into a Utopia. And, as pretty as this is, it does have utilitarian concessions. The double-walled transparisteel cap keeps warmth in and ice out. The waterfalls are wonderful to look at, but they fill our reservoir down below and feed our ichthyoculture farms.”

“I concede the point.” Corran smiled. “Tell me more about the disease that’s causing you problems.”

“It’s a virus that mutates quickly and sweeps through the colony.” Farl shrugged. “Left untreated the symptoms come and go inside two weeks, though there is lingering weakness for another month after that. The symptoms are congestion, coughing, fatigue, body aches, and a fairly ravenous appetite. Bathing in the mineral springs here seems to help, but a bacta bath will be far more helpful.”

Ooryl’s mouth parts clicked open and shut. “Your virus sounds similar to the Cardooine Chills.”

“True, though that illness can only afflict a person once before he or she develops immunity.” Farl led them on through another atmosphere lock and into a darkened corridor. “This virus mutates so quickly that we can’t create a vaccine. It spreads through the population such that someone just recovering from one strain catches the next. On a larger world there would be more of a lag time between epidemics, and a bigger world would have more resources to be able to deal with the illness. Right now, though, a sick person eats enough food for a family of four, and this threatens the whole colony.

“The most recent strains have been nastier, increasing the appetite and debilitating the victims, which is why we sent out our call for bacta.” Farl sighed. “When we got word from Thyferra about how much it would cost to fill our order, well, we fairly well despaired. Then you showed up in-system with a tanker ship carrying enough to go a long way toward wiping the epidemic out.”

The small man led them into an office and invited them to sit in rickety, rusty chairs. He walked around a makeshift desk and sat on a stool. “So, I need to ask, what do we owe you for this bacta? The market value for it is something in excess of a billion Imperial credits.”

Corran glanced over at Ooryl, then shook his head. “You don’t owe us anything.”

“But this amount of bacta, it is valuable. You must have paid a great deal for it.”

The Gand leaned forward. “Ooryl believes Corran would tell you that the bacta was collected as part of a bad debt. It cost Corran and Ooryl nothing; therefore it’s offered freely.”

The puzzled look of amazement on Farl’s face slackened into an expressionless mask. “I see.”

Corran smiled. “You needn’t think of it as stolen, since the government that would have demanded payment from you is not legitimate.”

A wry grin twisted the lower half of Farl’s face. “Dealing with pirates and smugglers holds no difficulty for us. The transparisteel and other modern conveniences you see here were not made here, so we have traded with outsiders before.”

“If that’s not the problem, what is?”

Farl frowned. “We’ve always given something in exchange for what we took. In some cases we have hidden people from their enemies. The fish we raise here are considered delicacies on some worlds and are extinct on others, so some collectors favor them. The problem is that a billion credits would buy all of them, and most of this colony, too. We will not take charity, but we cannot offer you value for what you have given us.”

“I’m sure we can come to some sort of arrangement. You mentioned mineral springs as part of your treatment for the chills before, right?”

“Yes, but I don’t see—”

Corran held a hand up and looked at Ooryl. “Flying in here didn’t I tell you I’d give half a billion credits for a hot bath and a good fish dinner?”

The Gand hesitated, then nodded extravagantly. “Indeed, Qrygg remembers your using those very words. And Qrygg concurred.”

“There you have it, Farl Cort.” Corran opened his hands. “A hot bath and a hot fish for each of us and we’re even.”

The colonial administrator smiled. “I’ll see to it that you get your money’s worth.”

“Liberating the bacta from Iceheart has already done that.” Corran laughed aloud. “Getting to sit in a hot bath and think about how furious she’ll be will make the experience just that much more perfect.”

The moment Tycho Celchu’s X-wing reverted to realspace, a chill ran through him. He had been to Alderaan—to its Graveyard—before. He had seen and flown through the stony disk that was all that remained of the world on which he had been born and had grown up. His last vision of the world as a whole, cohesive ball had come when he shipped out to the Imperial Military Academy and the pride that marked that memory now mocked him.

He had returned to Alderaan before, but he had not yet Returned. Among the survivors of Alderaan, Returning had taken on a reverence and importance unlike any other tradition he could recall. It seemed as if all the mental and emotional energy that had been funneled into the planet’s pacificistic philosophy had been shifted and focused on a person’s Return. Some people even described their Return as a watershed experience, one that changed their lives completely and profoundly, opening them to the greater truth of the universe.

Those claims had been made by people wearing beatific expressions. They talked about what should be done on a Return. They specified what should be said, what should be offered, and what should be expected in return. They ritualized what Tycho felt should be a distinctly individualized experience, then encouraged each other to share their experiences so they could mutually reinforce their beliefs in the healing nature of the Return.

The Return had become something of an industry to service the Alderaanian community, and Tycho had not found himself immune to its lures. After guiding several bacta tankers to Coruscant, Tycho had set down on the planet and spent some time with a few Alderaanian friends. As a result of their conversations, he had decided to make his own Return, and then went out and proceeded to buy all the things he would need to do it correctly.

Following the dictates of others rankled him, but he could not deny that inside he felt a need to do some of the things bound up in a Return. He purchased a Memorial Capsule, then bought little gifts for all of his dead. He picked out things he knew they would have enjoyed—romantic holodramas for his grandmother and sisters, wine for his father, flower bulbs for his mother, and a datacard of the latest recipes for his mother’s father—the gourmet. For his brother, he picked up a holobio of Luke Skywalker, knowing Skoloc would have thrilled at being able to meet Luke and learning the Jedi would be returning to the galaxy. While part of him rebelled at the idea of buying these things and jettisoning them to orbit amid the Graveyard, the symbology of it satisfied a need inside of himself to place amid the shards of the world items that would mark the lives of people of whom there was no longer a trace.

Choosing something to memorialize Nyiestra had been all but impossible. He had known her all his life, and before he hit puberty, he knew he loved her and would marry her. He had been as certain of that as he had been that the sun would rise and set on Alderaan for the rest of their lives. She had agreed to wait for him throughout his time at the Academy and then even through his first year of duty. If he survived a year as a TIE pilot, then he’d get moved up in the chain of fleet command, making it possible for him to marry and start a family. Never had he doubted, never had she doubted he would survive that first year, so to both of them their future had been assured.

Then the Death Star exploded that future.

Another chill sank through Tycho, puckering his flesh. Because his father was the CEO of Novacom, the largest HoloNet provider on Alderaan, Tycho had been able to make a realtime HoloNet call to his home on the occasion of his birthday. Everyone had been there, all smiles and laughter. They had presents for him and toasted him with wine. Though thousands of light-years distant from the celebration, he felt every bit a part of it; then the transmission went down, the holographic images dissolving in a gray-black blizzard of static.

Tycho had just smiled. Such interruptions had happened before and in each instance he had given his father a hard time about it. Throughout the next week he mulled over what he would say to his father. He had looked forward to the exchange, since matching wits with his father was a true joy in his life.

Then word filtered down through the fleet that Alderaan had been destroyed. Blame had been placed on the Rebels, but he’d known instantly that they were innocent. While his Imperial indoctrination had left him no doubts that the Rebels would destroy a planet to gain their ends, he knew it would not be Alderaan. They drew support from Alderaan, according to the rumors, so destroying it would only make sense for the Empire. The fact that the Emperor dissolved the Imperial Senate before Alderaan died, instead of in reaction to its death, firmly focused blame as far as Tycho was concerned.

So he defected. At the next planet, Commenor, he went on leave and never came back. He joined the Rebellion and for well over seven years had fought to guarantee no other world would face the fate of Alderaan. And guarantee no other man would have to decide how to memorialize the woman he had intended to share the rest of his life with.

Part of what made the choice so difficult were the changes he had undergone since Alderaan’s death. Had he made his Return immediately after leaving the Imperial Navy, he would have encoded a poem on a datacard and set it adrift in a device that would have broadcast it over and over again. The comfrequency traffic that his R2 unit scrolled across his main screen showed thousands of others had thought of the very same thing.

It hurt deep down knowing that the man he had become would not have been a suitable match for Nyiestra. The life they had planned together would have been possible in a bygone age, but only if they refused to look at what the Empire was doing within the galaxy. Wrapped up in its cocoon of pacifism, Alderaan had seemed insulated from things going on in the galaxy. It was as if when we disarmed we set ourselves above and beyond the petty concerns of the galaxy, and we thought doing so would keep us safe.

Bail Organa and his daughter, Leia, had seen the folly of that idea, but Alderaan had been slow to awaken to their call. Many people clung to their pacifism as if it would save them from anything the Empire could do. They had felt that the only way the Empire would win was if it could force them to abandon pacifism. Being sacrificed to preserve their beliefs was not too great a price to pay—an attitude especially easy to hold when no one believed the Empire could or would destroy a planet.

Tycho had long since seen the error of that philosophy. Pacifism for the sake of pacifism is the height of arrogant selfishness when that belief prevents you from acting to save others from harm. While he had no more love for war than any other Alderaanian, he had chosen to go into the military to be in a position to influence and change the military. And when it became necessary to destroy it, I became a Rebel.

In the Rebellion, he had seen and done things that Nyiestra could not have understood. He knew she would have done all she could have to support him and comfort him and help him deal with everything, but the fundamental changes in him meant that they would no longer have been suited to each other. At the most basic level, he accepted as true a concept that Nyiestra would have resisted with every neuron in her brain: There are some people who are so evil and capable of creating such misery, that killing them is the only way they can be dealt with. Grand Moff Tarkin, the Emperor, Darth Vader, Warlord Zsinj, Ysanne Isard, General Derricote, and Kirtan Loor were all beyond reasoned arguments designed to make them repent and abandon their evil ways.

The same events and experiences that would have sundered him and Nyiestra bound him and Winter. In many ways, his relationship with her astounded him because it was so wholly different from the one he had enjoyed with Nyiestra. Whereas they had done everything they could to minimize their time apart, he and Winter simply sought to make the most they could of the time they had together. Both of them had duties that kept them occupied and apart—and would continue to do so more often than not for the foreseeable future—yet the fact that each knew the other was out there somehow staunched what would otherwise have been a hideous emotional wound. He knew both of them—and probably everyone else from Alderaan that had been left alone—feared getting too close to someone in anticipation of losing them again. Despite that fear, they had grown close and provided an incredible amount of support for each other.

Ultimately, it had been Winter who suggested to him the perfect gift to memorialize Nyiestra, a woman she had never met or known.

Tycho found and purchased a perfect crystal sphere onto which had been acid etched the continents of Alderaan. Into the heart of this idealized version of the world he had called his own, he had Nyiestra’s hologram imbedded. From within the depths of the world she had loved, Nyiestra smiled out at him, forever preserved, unchanging, and beautiful.

He keyed the comm unit and flicked on his IFF transponder. “I am Tycho Celchu, son of Alderaan, now orphan of the galaxy. I have come to this place of my birth to pay homage to who I was and those I knew. And those I loved and love still. It is my wish that when life abandons me, I am returned here to be among you, so that for eternity we may be together as we should have been in life.”

He punched a button on his console, opening and purging the storage compartment in the X-wing’s belly. Under the control of the R2 unit, the memorial capsule’s compressed air jets pushed it forward till it emerged from beneath the nose of the snubfighter. A lump rose to his throat as the black oval capsule slowly began its trip into the swirl of stone that once had been Alderaan.

Tycho cleared his throat. “These gifts are but insufficient tokens of the love for you all that still burns within me.” He hesitated for a second, then deviated from the formula he was supposed to speak to do his Return correctly. “This fighter is another. It bears the colors of the Alderaanian Guard and transmits their code. It is my pledge to you—not of vengeance but of vigilance. I hope you rest well knowing you will rest alone, because it is my life’s work to see to it that no one else suffers as you have. I won’t rest until this quest is complete.”

He hit another button, closing the cargo compartment. The capsule continued drifting away, and he was tempted for a moment to blast it to bits with his lasers. He had no doubt that amid the debris, ships waited and searched for things to recover. The individuals who had located and brought in the Another Chance had been on a salvage mission of sorts, and countless were the stories of treasures rescued from the ruin of Alderaan.

Many of those treasures were shown to be forgeries, created and planted by confidence tricksters to prey on the Alderaanian community. Even nastier than they were the people claimed to have been from Alderaan—all rescued by miracle or coincidence—and who subsequently sought to insinuate themselves with families who had survived but had lost relatives. Because of the nature of the Imperial economy, a considerable portion of the wealth of Alderaan had survived the planet’s destruction, making the survivors quite prosperous and, therefore, targets of opportunity for criminals.

He watched the capsule until it vanished into the swirl of debris. “Rest easy. I miss you all.” He punched up the power on his IFF beacon and pulsed its transmission out in one grand confirmation of his vow, then shut it down, turned the X-wing around, and started the long trek back to Yag’Dhul and the war against Ysanne Isard.

12

Fliry Vorru fought the sense of nakedness that his abbreviated clothing inspired in him and braced himself for Ysanne Isard’s tirade. “Yes, the diversion of the convoy has been confirmed by a number of sources. It is not the utter disaster you have made it out to be since Antilles is not holding on to our tankers, but is returning them.”

“Returning them so we can refill them and he can take them again.” Her diaphanous red gown swirled around her like a tornado. “You should have anticipated this sort of strike and taken steps to prevent it.”

Vorru waved her suggestion away. “I did anticipate it and chose to ignore it. The amount of bacta taken was insignificant in comparison to both our supply and the demand for it. In fact, the loss of that bacta has provided me an excuse for hiking prices yet again, increasing our profits. I calculate our losses at between seventeen and thirty billion credits—an amount I will recoup by the end of the month.”

“Bah! We lost more than just money when Antilles hit our convoy. We lost prestige and respect.” She pointed a hand toward the sky. “We have people out there laughing at us because a dozen aging snubfighters were able to pirate bacta from us.”

Vorru let his voice sink into a bass growl as he began to pace through her roomy office. “What we lost was insignificant and provides us an opportunity to cut Antilles off from his base of support. He stole the bacta and made a present of it to many of the worlds it was meant for anyway.”

“My point exactly. He has earned their goodwill.”

“But that will fade to bitterness when he cannot repeat his gesture.” Vorru’s splayed out fingers closed into a fist. “First, we will cut allotments to worlds to cover our losses. Second, we will delay shipments to worlds that accepted bacta from Antilles; and third, we will demand payment from those worlds as if the delivery had been made by Antilles on our behalf. Delinquent accounts will receive no more service from us.”

Molten fury flowed through Isard’s left eye. “You’re giving me bookkeeping. I want blood.”

Of course you do. Vorru’s features sharpened. While Isard had been on Imperial Center—even hidden away after the Rebel conquest—her connection to that center of power had anchored her. She had been patient and prepared to be subtle. Here, on Thyferra, where the omnipresence of plant life and the languid lifestyle of the human masters of the planet made it the antithesis of Imperial Center, Isard seemed prepared to indulge her more primal urges.

“Please, Madam Director, reflect for a moment on how our current position mirrors that of the Empire prior to the death of our beloved Emperor. The Rebel attacks are tiny and really insignificant in every way, except as strikes against our prestige and image. You yourself have often said that destroying the Rebellion must come before the rebuilding of the Empire, and in this you have correctly focused on the core of the problem. This problem we face still because Antilles opposes us and must be destroyed.”

Vorru opened his hands and spread them. “Our problems in dealing with him are significant at this point. We do not know where he is, so mounting a strike against him is impossible.”

Isard folded her arms over her chest. “We will begin operations to locate him.”

“Of course. I have already begun to spread word through the various smuggling networks and criminal organizations offering a substantial reward for reports on his operations. They will bear fruit soon, I am certain.” Vorru allowed himself a smile. “Until then, by manipulating the price and supply of bacta to punish those who deal with him, we can vilify him and cut him off from his bases of support. To wage his little war against us, he needs supplies and allies. If Antilles were not who he is, we would consider him of no more importance than a pirate.”

Isard raised a clenched fist. “I would still take steps to crush him. I will have my ships fly cover missions for our convoys.”

Vorru hissed as if he’d been stung. “Be careful, Madam Director.”

“You caution me? Don’t overstep your bounds, Vorru, or you will be dealt with.”

“I recall the fate of Kirtan Loor, Madam Director, and I have no desire to be trapped in the belly of the Lusankya.” Vorru raised his open hands. “I merely wish to point out that if we accept full responsibility for the protection of our convoys, then Antilles will be our problem alone. This means our resources will be spread too far and will be too diluted to deal with him and his people.”

Isard’s chin came up. “You have an alternate proposal?”

“Certainly. We require the customers to protect our deliveries to their worlds, otherwise we deem their worlds too dangerous for shipments. We bring our convoys to certain destinations and demand our customers meet us and complete their journeys by themselves. If Antilles and his people hit them after the tankers leave our protection, they will anger a neutral party to their dispute. The Rogues will fight people other than our pilots, saving us personnel and equipment, both of which we no longer have in an unlimited supply.”

Isard’s right eyebrow arched. “This would also save us on shipping costs, increasing our profits yet again.”

“True. It also allows us to prepare an ambush for the Rogues at a time and place of our choosing. Mind you, this will be later as opposed to sooner because we need time to let Antilles’s actions utterly destroy his reputation. We want him to be cut off, with nowhere to hide, when we move to eliminate him.”

Isard pursed her lips as she considered what he said, giving him more of a visual indicator of her mood than he had ever seen before. “The steps you are taking have merit, though the delay they necessitate annoys me. Finding myself impatient is also annoying. Antilles has managed to survive and even prosper during the time I should have dealt with him. Horn escaped from the Lusankya. Both of them, and their companions, have chosen to oppose me directly and openly, which has robbed me of the detachment I had when dealing with the Rebel opposition to the Emperor.”

Vorru inclined his head slightly, impressed by her self-analysis. She is loath to entertain fantasies about herself or her situation, no matter how inviting they might, in fact, seem. She has not lost her mind … yet. Whether or not she will is another thing.

Isard stared off over Vorru’s head. “The flaw Rogue Squadron has, a flaw the Rebellion has, is the fact that they have been able to overcome all the challenges thrown at them. Not since the days of Derra IV and Hoth have they known defeat. They are accustomed to winning, and this self-pride can be used against them.” She nodded once, then focused on him. “Carry on, Vorru, continue your scheming. I will let them become accustomed to dealing with you and your methods, so when I strike, the surprise alone will be enough to kill them.”

Wedge stood up behind his desk as Booster Terrik’s bulky form filled the doorway to the station manager’s office. “I appreciate your coming here so quickly, Booster. I know you wanted to spend some time with Mirax before she heads out.”

The older man shrugged. “She’s helping prep this Horn for his part in the mission. There’s only so much of him I can take.” Booster plopped himself down in a steel-frame canvas chair. “I think she took up with him to annoy me.”

Wedge laughed and sat back down. “I’m sure it does seem like that, but I think there’s a lot more there.”

“CorSec has always wanted to steal our women.”

Wedge arched an eyebrow in Booster’s direction. “You can impart whatever motives you want to Corran, but you know your daughter better than that, my friend.”

Booster frowned. “He’s using those Jedi sorceries to addle her mind.”

“The only person confused about his Jedi heritage is Corran.” Wedge shook his head. “Luke Skywalker has been transmitting material about the Jedi to him to keep alive the possibility that Corran will train to become a Jedi, but Corran’s a bit focused right now on getting at Isard and freeing her prisoners. He’s almost obsessive about it—a trait you know something about.”

Booster planted his massive hands on the arms of the chair. “If you want to scold me about disapproving of the man my daughter is seeing, the message is received. Anything else?”

“That wasn’t my intention—that would be like teaching a rancor to dance. It probably won’t work, you will get your head bitten off, and even if you do succeed, the result won’t be very pretty.” Wedge shivered. “Actually, I wanted to offer you the chance to pilot the Mimban Cloudrider on the run to Thyferra.”

Booster sat back and brushed the fingertips of his left hand over his chin. The Mimban Cloudrider was one of the Thyferran tankers. Wedge had pulled the crew from it and, with Booster’s help, had gotten identification files sliced together that listed Mirax, Corran, Elscol, Sixtus, and Iella Wessiri as the crew under various pseudonyms. Once in orbit at Thyferra, they could make planetfall in a shuttle and hook up with the Ashern. Wedge still needed someone to command the mission and thought Booster would be invaluable in that position because of his experience and instincts.

Booster lowered his left hand to the arm of the chair. “No.”

“No? You’ll be able to chaperone your daughter.”

“She can take care of herself.”

“You’ll get to pilot a ship again.”

Booster smiled and his body convulsed with silent laughter. “Closer, but still off the mark. The Cloudrider is too small. Too little to do.”

Wedge frowned. “Wait a minute. When I got my freighter and started hauling cargo, weren’t you the one who told me that being the master of my own ship and fate was the greatest thing to which I could aspire?”

Booster nodded and sat forward. “I did, but that was before Kessel. Five years in the spice mines changed me.”

“Five years spicing would change anyone.” Wedge frowned. “Don’t tell me Kessel broke your spirit, because I flat refuse to believe it.”

Booster’s booming laughter filled the office. “Broke me? It would take more than no air and lots of work to break Booster Terrik. The mines could be a brain cracker for a lot of folks, especially the pols the Empire tossed in there. Others of us were content to wait our time out. Fliry Vorru, for example, is very patient, which makes him very dangerous. We knew the Empire would never let him out, but he was confident he’d be out someday. I knew I would get out, but the time there still ground on me.”

The flesh around his eyes tightened, leaving the red light in his left eye burning like a laser in the darkness. “The time I spent in Kessel was unbelievably boring, Wedge. Monotony. Day after day the same things would happen with the same people. There was no night, no day, just shift after shift after shift. Prisoners might come and go, but that was it. Pain I could handle and fight against, but boredom? It was the enemy, and it had me mashed flat.”

Wedge winced. “I can’t imagine …” There certainly were times when Wedge would have welcomed less excitement in his life, but not year after year of it. I’d have gone out of my mind.

“When I got out, I made one trip on the Pulsar Skate, but the solitude of hyperspace reminded me too much of Kessel. That’s why I retired and gave Mirax the ship. Now I travel and do deals for friends because it means I’m constantly meeting folks and getting to know them and learn about them. I’m trying to fill the void that Kessel left in me, and piloting Cloudrider isn’t going to do that for me.”

Wedge nodded. “I understand, though I wish it were otherwise. You’ve got skills I need.” He sat back in his chair. “Having someone I can rely on doing a job that badly needs to be done would be a big help.”

A smile slowly grew on Booster’s face. “I have an idea for you that might serve both of us and cover up some loose ends.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Let me run this station.”

“What?”

“Look, you have this station that’s been a trade staple in this region for a very long time. You’ve got the Republic thinking it’s been destroyed, which means your enemies think that, too, but ships that come in-system to make navigational adjustments can still see it here. You’re fooling no one, and the fact that you’ve shut the station down to folks who have been here a lot means you’re making them angry. That, in turn, means that someone is going to sell you out to Iceheart.”

“We figured that.”

“Well, you should also figure this: Pretty soon no one is going to want to be trading with Thyferra. You’re giving away what Vorru wants to charge for. His only recourse is to cut off the bacta supply going to folks who deal with you. Once he does that, you’re dead.” Booster pressed his hands together. “On the other hand, if we open this station to trade, we start generating capital for this operation and we have people bringing us information and equipment. We develop suppliers who are in our debt because of this station—which means they won’t want to betray you—and who bring the material here to us instead of having us go out and get it.”

“And running the station would mean you’d be anything but bored.”

“There’s that, too.”

Wedge closed his eyes and thought for a moment. He’d known all along that the location of his base would get out, but Booster’s idea of making the secret’s preservation valuable to smugglers and traders did suggest it might last longer. All the years the Empire searched for Rebel bases, it wasn’t our trade partners who sold us out. And the prediction of Vorru’s action was pretty much what Wedge had figured Vorru’s response would be. Wedge had been gambling that gratitude for the free bacta would keep trade channels open, but he agreed that supplying a profit motive would go much further in that regard.

He opened his eyes. “Okay, that works for me. What do we use as a cover story for why part of the station is restricted?”

Booster shrugged. “Does it matter? We can start all manner of rumors, from your desire to emulate Warlord Zsinj and carve out your own empire to your desire to build a force to wrest Corellia away from the Diktat or even that you and Isard are working a racket to spike the price of bacta. The greater the number of rumors the better, quite frankly, since they will armor the truth and result in folks bringing us information to further our plans—whatever they might be. As long as there is some mystery here, and folks smell profits in trying to figure it out, we’ll be covered.”

Wedge nodded thoughtfully. “I suspect that your taking this position means you’ll be pitted against Vorru in this war to control trade and information.”

“And that won’t be boring at all.” Booster’s smile broadened to the edges of his face. “This will be grand.”

“I hope you’re correct.” Wedge stood and stepped away from the station manager’s chair. “Booster Terrik, this station is all yours. May the Force be with you.”

13

The shuttle ride down to Thyferra from the Mimban Cloudrider left Corran a bit uneasy. A rising storm made the air turbulent and being strapped into a seat in the back made Corran want to scream. He glanced over at Mirax and saw she was having as much trouble as he was sitting still. Either one of us could pilot this Lambda-class cargo shuttle through this storm front without this much bumping around.

Mirax placed her hand over his and gave it a squeeze. “We’ll get down.”

“I figure. Crashing and dying wouldn’t be nearly as interesting as the rest of this run.” Corran closed his eyes and concentrated on regulating his breathing. He tried to convince himself he was doing that just to settle his stomach—and that he’d done such things countless times before for exactly the same reason. It was true, but he also knew his choosing to do it now was a result of reviewing the datacards Luke Skywalker had sent to him.

Corran admired Skywalker’s ability to read him. Very little of the material sent had been dry, boring, procedural stuff—examples of the breathing exercises were pretty much the only things that fell into that class. By and large Luke had provided him with stories of Jedi Knights that pointed to their long tradition of law enforcement and their dedication to virtue and justice and not a little to the bold, heroic tales that had made the Jedi legendary throughout the galaxy.

The selection is perfectly focused to inspire me to join him. The problem with it was that Corran found it rather daunting. It also caused him to start second-guessing himself, which was something he seldom did and hated whenever he did do it. Before reading the Jedi material, Corran would have put the dread coiling his belly down to a reaction to the bumpy ride. Now he wondered if he wasn’t anticipating some disaster through the Force, which in turn made him wonder if he was leading his friends into an ambush.

I know just enough about the Force to be dangerous—more so to myself than my enemies. He had really appreciated Skywalker including information about lightsaber maintenance and fighting styles. He’d gotten a chance to practice with the weapon in the Cloudrider’s galley and began to feel comfortable with it. He was notoriously bad when fighting against a remote—recalling his failure at picking off its stinging bolts made him shift uncomfortably in his seat—but four days of practice had made him feel confident enough with the lightsaber that he sincerely doubted he’d lop off any of his own limbs using it in a fight. In my hands it’s more of a lightbludgeon, but it will do in a close fight.

The shuttle’s wings creaked as the pilot began to retract them. The viewscreens on the interior of the shuttle’s cabin showed a heavily forested landscape up through which occasionally thrust very inorganic stone and transparisteel towers. The buildings didn’t look so much inappropriate for the setting as they did alien to it. Corran knew instinctively these were the human dwellings on Thyferra, because no Vratix could live in one.

Mirax indicated one particularly blobby building with a nod of her head. “I bet she lives there.”

Corran hesitated for a second, wondering which she Mirax meant, but the cold anger in her eyes took the choices from two to one. Anyone else might have been pointing out where Ysanne Isard lived; but Mirax had no use for Erisi Dlarit, so Corran knew it was Erisi to whom Mirax referred. While Corran had not been at all pleased to become a guest of Ysanne Isard’s through Erisi’s efforts, Erisi had engineered the destruction of a whole convoy of freighters specifically to kill Mirax.

Corran turned his right hand over and held Mirax’s left tightly as the ship settled down on the landing pad. “Might want to throttle back there just a hair. You’re probably right, but we’re not going to go on a social call just to find out.”

Mirax gave him a sweet smile. “I was thinking of sending a gift.”

Corran returned the smile. “Ah, but how does one gift wrap a bomb?”

“Bomb?” Mirax shook her head. “Nope, too quick. I want her to linger.”

“Remind me never to make you angry.”

She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it. “You’ll never do that, love … at least not more than once.”

Corran and Mirax slid from the seats and followed the rest of the passengers out of the shuttle. It brought in crews from a half-dozen tankers parked in orbit around the planet, most of which were returning from runs they completed after the Rogues had hijacked their convoy. Of main concern for most of the crews was whether or not they’d be docked pay by their employers for making unauthorized runs. The majority opinion seemed to be that they would be because the Thyferrans never lost sight of the bottom line and were willing to cut costs anywhere and everywhere.

The five infiltrators did not appear to be that different from the rest of the crews going dirtdown. While Thyferrans owned and ran the shipping companies, they hired laborers from throughout the galaxy to actually do the work. On Thyferra these foreign workers were restricted to certain areas around the spaceport, but none of them seemed to find these restrictions that tough to bear. Most of the crews found the Thyferrans arrogant—the word Imperial was used to punctuate this point several times on the trip down—and preferred to keep with other spacers.

Once outside the shuttle, Corran picked up his luggage satchel. He opened it and pulled out the heavy tool belt and looped it over his left shoulder. A big hydrospanner hung at his left hip. He picked the bag up with his left hand, leaving his right hand free to deal with his identity card.

Or the lightsaber. To disguise the weapon, he’d grafted the working end of a hydrospanner onto the butt of the lightsaber. One quick, smooth draw and he had a working weapon in hand. Elscol had pronounced his work useless and suggested he would do better being able to produce a blaster in a pinch. He’d replied that a blaster and hydrospanner don’t look a lot alike.

A tall, slender Thyferran man with blond hair looked down his long, skinny nose at Corran. “State your name and the nature of your business.”

Corran hesitated for a second and immediately felt heat flush up from within his jumpsuit. “Eamon Yzalli. I am here to wait for my ship to be refilled and head out again.”

The Thyferran snatched the identity card from Corran’s hand and ran it through a datapad’s card slot. “Ship’s mechanic?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you always bring your tools with you when you come to a planet?”

“Well, sir, not always, sir, but I have a friend who might get me a berth on another ship so …”

The Customs official’s eyes darkened. “You would not think of overstaying your welcome here and trying to go into business for yourself doing repairs, would you?”

Unless it’s fixing your attitude, nope. “No, sir, never my intention, sir.”

“Very well.” He hit two buttons on the datapad, then swiped the card back through the slot. “Your provisional visa is good for a week. Remain longer than that and face criminal charges.”

Corran looked down as he accepted the card back, refusing to meet the man’s eyes. “Yes, sir. I understand, sir. You have been most kind, sir.”

“Yes, well, be gone. Next.”

Corran shuffled on past and into the spaceport’s main building. Its long, low shape, with softened edges and decorative elements clustered in groups of six suggested to him that the insectoid Vratix had designed and created the rectangular spaceport. The whole structure looked as if it had been worked around and between existing trees, with the roof being open to let some of them grow up through it. While clearly artificial, the two-story building showcased the natural beauty of what had been there before it had been created instead of trying to supplant and surpass the beauty of the native plants.

Inside the spaceport itself, Corran rejoined Mirax. Ahead he saw Elscol and Sixtus, off to the left he saw Iella. Their Ashern contact was supposed to meet them in the spaceport building, but no one appeared to be paying any of them any attention. There were backup contingencies in case contact could not be made for some reason, but Corran hoped they didn’t have to fall back on them because they involved a lot of waiting and, in an emergency situation, sitting around waiting meant disaster.

Seeing that nothing was happening immediately, Corran guided Mirax over to a row of seats set beneath an overhead walkway servicing offices on the second level of the spaceport. The seats were also located fairly near a refresher station of which he wanted to make use. “Watch my stuff for me?”

Mirax nodded and sat while Corran piled his satchel and tool belt in the empty seat beside her. He started to step away toward the refresher station when its door opened and a stormtrooper with a blaster carbine slung at his right hip came walking out. In that armor, how can they …? Corran realized he was staring, then turned away quickly. He realized that looked suspicious as could be, so he leaned down and smiled at Mirax. “What did you say, dear?”

The look of fear in Mirax’s widening eyes and the reflection of a stormtrooper’s helmet eclipsing her brown irises told Corran his attempt to look inconspicuous had failed utterly and completely. He felt a heavy hand land on his shoulder, straightening him up and turning him around. Belly to belly with the stormtrooper, he looked up into the black eye lenses and tried to smile. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“I know you. Identification card.”

Corran’s mind reeled. It had to be impossible for the stormtrooper to actually know him, then he realized the man may have been on the Lusankya and might have seen him there. Then again I could just look like someone else.

Anxiety began to build in Corran as he handed over his identification card. Think, quick, what to do? He forced himself to breathe normally. First thing is to avoid panic. The identification is good and solid. It will hold up.

The stormtrooper held it up and examined it forward and back. “It seems fine, but you’re familiar, and I don’t know anyone named Eamon. Come with me so I can check you out.”

Fighting the urge to panic, Corran flashed on one of the Jedi stories. He settled a simple grin on his face and stared intently into the black recesses of the helmet. “I don’t need to go with you.”

“You don’t need to go with me?”

Corran’s grin grew. Hey, it’s working. I’m influencing his mind. “I can go about my business.”

“You can go about your business?” The stormtrooper shook his head, then grabbed a handful of Corran’s jumpsuit front. “Your business is my business, void-brain.” The stormtrooper’s comlink clicked from inside the helmet. “This is Nine One Five, bringing one in.”

The stormtrooper looked past him at Mirax. “She with you?”

Fear for her cleared Corran’s brain of disbelief over his failure to warp the stormtrooper’s mind. He twisted toward his right to get a look at her, letting his right hip hit the back of the seat containing his luggage. He let himself begin to fall back, using his weight to tear his clothing free of the stormtrooper’s grip. His head went down and his feet came up, letting him somersault backward over the chair. As he did so his right hand grabbed the hydrospanner and slid it free of the belt. Landing on one knee, he brought his head up and looked at the stormtrooper.

Corran found himself staring into the barrel of the man’s blaster carbine.

“Hydrospanner will work better if you have the heavy end pointed toward me, but it hardly matters.” The stormtrooper’s two-handed grip on the carbine kept his aim steady. “Come along with me or the janitorial staff earns its pay.”

“Sithspawn!” Corran swore and hammered the floor with the hydrospanner’s head. As the tool rebounded from the floor, and the head of the hydrospanner went bouncing off to the right, he thumbed the lightsaber on. The silvery blade sizzled out and swept up through the muzzle of the blaster carbine. The weapon’s barrel fell one way, the stormtrooper’s left hand another as Corran whirled to his feet and brought the lightsaber around in a slash at the stormtrooper’s eyes. The blade burned through the helmet, filling the air with the pungent scent of melted armor and burned flesh.

The stormtrooper collapsed like an empty suit of armor. Someone in the spaceport threshold screamed, then Corran saw two stormtroopers stationed near the Customs officer come running. Two more appeared from in front of the spaceport, entering the building closest to Sixtus and Elscol. She pulled a hold-out blaster from her bag and shot at one of them. He went down with a wound to the leg, and suddenly the whole building erupted with blasterfire as stormtroopers appeared on the elevated walkways on the narrow ends of the rectangular building.

Corran dove forward into the row of chairs and pitched them over backward. Mirax went with them and hunkered down beside him. She brandished the smoking ruin of the stormtrooper’s blaster carbine. “I appreciate the rescue, but did you have to destroy his blaster?”

“Can’t parry the bolts, so I just parry the weapon.” Corran ducked his head as crossfire from the far walkway nibbled away at the chairs behind which they hid. Above them, the stormtroopers on the balcony directed their fire toward Elscol and Sixtus. Corran knew more folks than just Elscol were shooting, since he saw one stormtrooper across the way go down, but the Imps definitely had them outgunned and outmanned.

Unless I do something, what I started is going to kill us all. He leaned over, kissed Mirax full on the mouth, then smiled. “Stay here, I have an idea.”

“Don’t get yourself killed.”

“What, and make your father’s day. Not going to happen.” I hope.

Lightsaber in hand, Corran ran low and fast toward the refresher station. He hit the door hard and cut inside as blaster bolts shattered tiles and burned into the duraplast door. He could all but hear the stormtroopers who had shot at him laughing about how screwed up his priorities were, and it struck him that a refresher station, especially in a public spaceport, would be a really ignominious place to die. Which is why I don’t plan to die here.

He kicked open the door to one of the stalls, hopped up on the commode, and climbed up on the edge of the durasteel partitions. He stabbed the lightsaber up through the ceiling and made three quick cuts. A triangular section of ceiling crashed down and a shower of tiles from the floor of the refresher station above spattered down in its wake. Corran worked his way a bit further along the partition, then boosted himself up into the second-floor refresher station.

Emerging from the stall into the empty refresher station, he felt a terrible calm wash over himself. He’d felt it before, long ago and far away, on Talasea, when he’d engaged other stormtroopers in combat. When I come out of here, the stormtroopers across the way will see me and warn their comrades. I’ve got five, maybe six seconds to get all of them. Any longer and I’m dead. He shifted the lightsaber to his left hand, wiped his right hand off on his jumpsuit, then grabbed the hissing blade again. I’m already dead, this is just to save my friends.

He ripped open the refresher station’s door and stepped onto the elevated walkway. One step out he brought the lightsaber around in a waist-high cut that caught the first stormtrooper in the back. He pitched forward, then rebounded off the guardrail, but Corran had already moved past him. In a continuation of the move that had taken the first man, Corran shifted his right wrist, raised the lightsaber, and used a backhanded cut to decapitate the second warrior.

That blow, though grandly struck to great effect, was a mistake and Corran knew it. Though it popped the man’s head off and sent it flipping up through the air, it also allowed Corran’s arm to carry too far back. Sliding forward toward the next stormtrooper in line—the third of the four he faced—he wasted a second bringing the lightsaber back into striking position. He tried a high, two-handed cut that should have split the stormtrooper from outside shoulder to inside hip, but the Imp had already begun to turn toward the attack and ducked it.

The stormtrooper lunged toward Corran, catching him with a shoulder in the ribs. The stormtrooper drove him back, slamming him into the ferrocrete wall. Corran felt something crunch in his chest, then he couldn’t breathe. The lightsaber fell from Corran’s hand as the Imp drove him again into the wall, pinning him there, crushing him. Corran stared into the black lenses of the man’s helmet and heard low laughter.

The laughter died as the stormtrooper’s comlink came alive. “Get clear, Seven Three, so I can shoot him.”

The pressure in Corran’s chest slackened for a moment and he knew he had only one chance for survival. As the stormtrooper withdrew, Corran kicked off the wall and knocked his foe into the guardrail. Launching himself at the man’s head, Corran grabbed him and held on as the metal guardrail shrieked and bent. Overbalanced, they both whirled off the elevated walkway. Corran tried to twist around so he’d land on top of the stormtrooper, but with a short fall and no frame of reference, he only half-accomplished his goal.

He hit hard, his back slamming into the body of the first stormtrooper he’d killed. His rear end hit the ferrocrete floor, sending a jolt of pain up his spine, then the second stormtrooper smashed headfirst into the floor and his limp body crashed down on Corran, sandwiching him between their armored bodies. With his lungs burning for lack of air, he leaned back and found himself looking straight up into the muzzle of the remaining stormtrooper’s blaster.

Unable to do anything but cough, Corran closed his eyes and prepared to die. He heard the whine of a blaster being fired, then felt a hammer-blow to his chest. It didn’t hurt the way a blaster bolt hurt, but he knew he’d been hit. I’m dead, I have to be dead. As much as he knew that was the truth, he immediately felt a need to rebel and live. Open your eyes. If you can open your eyes, you’re not dead.

Corran willed his eyes open and would have laughed if he could have. Standing over him he saw Bror Jace, a member of Rogue Squadron the Imps had killed well before Coruscant had fallen. Though he wished it otherwise, as his consciousness faded, Corran knew there was only one explanation for what he saw. I am dying because only the dead can see the dead. He knew that made little sense, but he was beyond caring as he realized the dead really have little use for logic as well.

14

Wedge shivered as he waited for the shuttle from the Twi’lek freighter dock at the Yag’Dhul station. His shiver had less to do with apprehension about the Twi’leks’ arrival at the station than it did the temperature on the station. Lowering it by an average of five degrees was just one of the few changes Booster Terrik had made since he’d taken over.

Wedge slowly shook his head. Booster had long been legendary for being tightfisted. He’s left dermal ridge indentations on every credit that has passed through his hands. While Booster was more than generous with his friends, in business he was shrewd and capable of saving money in any situation where he found himself. By lowering the station temp, and by refusing to heat unoccupied portions of the station, he lowered its operating costs rather significantly.

More important, by leaving the tapcafs and cantinas on the central levels warmer than any other place, he encouraged people to congregate there and patronize those establishments. Since the station’s vendors were paying him a percentage of their profits and were funneling all their supply needs through Booster, the old man was making credits hand over fist.

Credits that are going to get us the things we need. Booster had put the word out through his network of contacts that he’d taken over the station and deals were to be had and made there. Traffic to and from the station had begun to increase and while Booster told Wedge there were some suppliers he’d have to visit to make deals with, the vast majority of the items they needed would be delivered straight to them at Yag’Dhul.

The Twi’lek shuttle, an octagonal tube that lacked all the elegance of the Imperial Lambda-class shuttle, looked as if it had been extruded from the freighter. It moved sluggishly onto the landing platform. It settled down onto a docking collar, which rose up to meet it and formed itself to the ship’s hull. Lights on the exterior of the collar went from red to yellow and then green, signifying an atmospheric seal had been achieved.

A lighted panel near the viewport through which Wedge was watching showed the progress of a personnel-mover heading out to the Twi’lek ship. Outside, slowly moving across the loading platform area, droid-driven grav-sleds approached the ship to begin to offload cargo. Wedge had no idea what Booster had asked the Twi’leks to bring, but he knew from his visits to Ryloth that an exchange of gifts was customary. He hoped the Twi’leks brought ryll so it could be shipped to the rylca production facility on Borleias and transformed into the medicine that was vital for curing the Krytos epidemic on Coruscant.

The personnel-mover started its trip back to the station’s hub. Wedge walked over to the doorway where it would arrive and positioned himself in front of it. He tugged at the sleeves and waist of his jumpsuit. He knew it might have been good form to wear the Twi’leki warrior togs he’d worn on Ryloth, but they were designed as warm-weather clothes and Booster’s habitat adjustments made it a bit too cool to wear them with comfort.

The doorway opened to admit an obese Twi’lek wearing a robe made from a shiny gold fabric and held closed by a thick red sash. A coral ornament secured a gold cloak at his throat and the cloak’s reflected light jaundiced his pink flesh, especially the flesh of his lekku, which he wore draped over his shoulders. He clasped his black-taloned hands before his belly and executed a short bow.

Wedge returned it. “I am pleased to be able to greet you here, Koh’shak.”

“It is my pleasure to accept the invitation of Booster-ter’rik to visit you, Wedgan’tilles.” The bulbous Twi’lek moved through the doorway. “You recall Tal’dira?”

A second Twi’lek filled the doorway and had to bow his head to make it through. The black flightsuit he wore had been supplemented with a scarlet loincloth and cloak as well as a golden bandoleer running from right shoulder to left hip. The hugely muscled Twi’lek’s lekku had been tattooed with a whole host of designs, the significance of which Wedge could only guess at. He wore a blaster on his right hip and Wedge knew from prior experience that the bandoleer concealed a pair of vibroblades.

“It is an honor to see you again, Tal’dira.”

“And you, Wedgan’tilles.” The Twi’lek warrior gave Wedge a smile full of sharp teeth. “Koh’shak will run off and find his trading partners, leaving warriors to speak among themselves.”

Wedge nodded in the fat merchant’s direction and Koh’shak immediately headed off toward the lift-tubes to find Booster. While Wedge looked forward to spending time with Tal’dira and learning why the warrior had come to the station, he regretted not being able to sit in on the conversations Booster and Koh’shak would have together. They might not be warriors, but the battles they will wage to strike a bargain will be of epic proportions.

Wedge waved a hand toward the threshold of the cantina on that level. “May I offer you the hospitality of the station?”

The warrior nodded. “You honor me.”

“Say that after we get served. Our selections are rather limited here.” Wedge led him into the darkened cantina and wove a serpentine path through small tables to an open booth in the back. The reserved hologram drifting above it proclaimed its glowing message in a multitude of scripts and stood almost as tall as a Jawa. Wedge held his hand over the holoprojector and let it do a quick scan of his palm. The message changed to one of welcome, then morphed into a bill of fare. Wedge sighed and slid into the booth. “Having a table held for me here is about the only benefit of command.”

“Warriors must take pleasure in even the slightest of benefits, because death is ever our companion.” Tal’dira sat opposite Wedge, interlacing his fingers and placing his hands on the table. His lekku flopped over inside his elbows. “You deserve more than this for your great victory.”

Wedge raised an eyebrow. “Great victory?”

The Twi’lek chuckled in a manner that seemed almost menacing. “You took from Iceheart a convoy of bacta.”

“It wasn’t exactly defended very heavily.”

“It matters not. You did what no one would dare to do—you struck at the Bacta Cartel. What you did is memorable and worthy of praise.”

“Thank you.” Wedge glanced at the serving droid that approached the table. “Corellian whisky for me, Whyren’s Reserve, if you have it. Tal’dira?”

“This Whyr’rensreserve will suffice for me as well.”

The droid beeped an understanding of the order and rolled away. Wedge smiled at the Twi’lek. “You did not come here to tell me what you thought of the raid against Iceheart.”

“Ah, but I did.” Tal’dira leaned forward and raised his hands so his chin could rest on his outstretched thumbs. “The galaxy is changing. I am not old enough to remember the prior Republican era, but I have heard tales of the Clone Wars. Since its birth, the Empire sought to maintain peace, but there was much conflict that they ignored, conflict in which a warrior could find a career and build himself into a legend. And then there was the Rebellion …”

The Twi’lek fell silent as the droid returned with their drinks. Wedge plucked the tumblers of the amber liquid from the serving tray and set one before his guest. Hoisting his own glass aloft he offered a toast. “To warriors and their legends.”

Tal’dira nodded and added, “And to those skilled enough to become living legends.”

Wedge touched his tumbler to Tal’dira’s and drank. He let the whisky linger on his tongue for a moment, then let it trail fire down his throat and into his belly. He gave himself a moment to consider what Tal’dira had said and he thought he had a glimmering of where the Twi’lek meant the conversation to go. The thought that he might be right threatened to plant a smile on his face, so he deliberately narrowed his eyes.

“The Rebellion was very much a place where warriors were able to build reputations. Too many of them have become posthumous legends, but that was one conflict that favored the courageous and devoured the weak.” Wedge kept his voice even, but found his words surprising him. It felt natural to refer to the Rebellion in the past tense, as if it were over even before the last bits of the Empire had been smashed. He realized that this thought was not wholly wrong, for the conquest of Coruscant had elevated the Rebellion from being a movement to being a government almost overnight. That’s a transformation I never thought I’d see.

Tal’dira’s black talons clicked gently against the duraplast tabletop. “It is my profound wish I had been possessed of the foresight to join the Rebellion.”

Wedge shrugged his shoulders. “You had responsibilities as a Twi’lek warrior. I had no such responsibilities and could therefore join the Rebellion.”

“True, but to acquit my duties to my people I should have opposed the Empire.”

Wedge frowned for a moment. The political makeup of the Empire had been such that the nonhuman populations always knew they existed at the sufferance of the Emperor. For many of them, remaining unnoticed by the Empire seemed the best way to make sure they were not destroyed. Historically, the Twi’leks found negotiation and deal making preferable to direct confrontation, and this preference had served them well during the time of the Rebellion. They seemed to view both the Empire and the Rebellion as rival heat storms that would annihilate each other, leaving the Twi’leks in a position to thrive afterward. The victory of one side over the other had not been predicted—especially not the Rebellion’s victory. Tal’dira’s lament is genuine, but the product of hindsight.

“I would have been happy to have you fighting beside me, and Nawar’aven has been a boon to my squadron, but you did what was required of you.” Wedge smiled. “Until you put together those fighters I saw on Ryloth, I know you had very little in the way of hyperspace-capable ships native to Ryloth. I have to imagine the Empire deliberately suppressed such technology on Ryloth so they would not have to deal with you as a force.”

“It is kind of you to say so.”

“To even think otherwise would be to do you a disservice. While many think of Twi’leks as traders, I know you have a proud warrior tradition.”

“But our warriors are unproven to the galaxy.” Tal’dira waved a hand toward the half of the station above his head. “As you have said, to most of the galaxy Twi’leks are merchants like Koh’shak or criminals like Bib Fortuna. You have been to Ryloth. You know this is not true, but such is the impression that has been made on the galaxy. Thinking that sapient beings believe all of us to be merchants and thieves preys on my mind.”

Wedge glanced down at his tumbler of whisky. “I thought the fighters you have created were impressive.” The Twi’leks had taken a TIE fighter’s ball cockpit and married to it the S-foils of an X-wing fighter. The S-foils were connected to a collar that allowed them to rotate independently of the cockpit, much in the way the cruciform stabilizers on the B-wing rotated around its cockpit. The design provided stability for the pilot and had proved very effective with the B-wing. “Their maneuverability, I would imagine, makes them very formidable.”

Tal’dira straightened up and smiled with genuine pleasure. “The Twi’leki designation for them is Chir’daki. In your Basic it would be Deathseed. It recalls the spores of a parasitic fungus that invades a larger creature and destroys it. Most unpleasant, as would be facing our Chir’daki in combat.”

Wedge sipped a bit more whisky. “They are hyperspace capable?”

“Indeed. The twin-ion engines are used for main propulsion. The engines on the S-foils are smaller than those in your X-wings, but they provide power for the hyperdrive motivators and shield generators. We have quad lasers for our weaponry—no proton torpedoes because we decided obtaining supplies of them might be difficult.”

“Wise decision—proton torps and concussion missiles are the only things we’re having trouble finding. Booster is using up a lot of favors to get them.” Wedge gave Tal’dira a curt nod. “I envy you your ships.”

“And I envy you your ability to win victories.” Tal’dira played with his tumbler of whisky in a most unwarriorly fashion. “You have proven yourself time and again a most dangerous enemy.”

Wedge glanced down for a moment and stroked his chin with his right hand. “It occurs to me, Tal’dira, that it would be a waste for your ships to go untested.”

A light sparked deep in the Twi’lek’s dark eyes. “Indeed, a great waste.”

“Perhaps it would be possible for you and some of your pilots to join us.” Wedge spread his hands open. “The work is dangerous, and we will find ourselves outcasts everywhere if we fail.”

Tal’dira’s lekku twitched nonchalantly. “Twi’leks have been outcasts before.”

“Can you give me a squadron?”

The warrior nodded. “Fearful that pirates might prey upon Koh’shak’s freighter, we shipped with a dozen Deathseeds and pilots. We would be honored to join your battle against Iceheart.”

Which is what you wanted the instant you heard we were fighting her, but you could never have asked. You wanted to be invited. Wedge sat back. “I know you are aware of how serious this is, but there really are fairly grand problems here. If you join us, Iceheart could cut the bacta supply to Ryloth.”

“Ryll may not be bacta, but it suffices for many of our needs.” Tal’dira shrugged. “Twi’leks pride themselves on being hearty, and bacta is seen in some quarters as a means for the weak to survive. If we are deprived of it we will lose people, but if we do not oppose Iceheart and take our place in the galaxy, what is the reason for living?”

“And you know Iceheart isn’t going to forgive you if we lose.”

The Twi’lek smiled easily. “The implacable foe is the only one worth facing. If we know we have lost everything we will fight that much harder. Such are the battles worth winning and worth taking pride in.”

Wedge raised his tumbler again and clinked it against Tal’dira’s. “Welcome to the Bacta War, Tal’dira. Here’s hoping Iceheart and her people choke on your Deathseeds.”

15

The thing Corran hated the most about floating in the bacta tank was that he could see blurred figures outside the tank, but he couldn’t communicate with them. Even when one or more got close enough to press a hand to the transparisteel window into the tank, he couldn’t make out who was at the far end of the arm. He could guess, but since the room outside the tank was kept dim and lit mostly by a yellow-green glow from within the tank itself, confirming his guesses was impossible.

He had no way of knowing how long he’d been in the tank, but he found the duration of his stay both too long and too short. Pain in his back and guts had been overwhelming at first, but it subsided after a while. In its wake came a tingling in his legs, which was good since he’d not felt anything in them at first. Only after feeling returned to them did Corran allow himself to think about how badly he had been hurt and how close he’d come to death.

I probably broke my pelvis in the fall, then when the stormtroopers landed on me I broke my back and probably ruptured internal organs. Had bacta not been available, those injuries would have been fatal.

That realization sobered Corran and gave him a clarity of mind that allowed him to go back over what he had done at the spaceport. His two mistakes were very clear and gnawed at him. I should have known better. I am not a Jedi. Trying to use Jedi methods without proper training is stupid, as I found out. I’m as bad as wannabe police—a Jedi vigilante. If Jedi techniques were just parlor tricks and illusions, the Emperor wouldn’t have hunted all the Jedi down and had them destroyed. If these abilities are that dangerous, they shouldn’t be used without proper training.

While that line of thought made certain he’d never again try to warp the brain of a stormtrooper, Corran was not as harsh in his self-judgment concerning the fight on the catwalk. Lacking a blaster and pinned down by crossfire, to do nothing would have meant both he and Mirax would be dead. Escaping that trap required action and he’d taken action. His mistake in the fight had been the result of inexperience with the weapon he’d used. I swung wildly, using more power than I needed. If I moderated things, kept the blade more under control, I could have gotten at least the third stormtrooper. The fourth stormtrooper would have shot him, Corran had little doubt, but his attack would have all but eliminated half the threat to his friends.

A gentle tug on the breathing mask he wore caused Corran to look up. He saw a round hatch through which light came and a silhouette of a human head and shoulders in it. Kicking his legs, Corran made his way to the surface of the tank. He removed the breathing mask and hauled himself out through the hatch. The medtech there lowered a grate over the hatch and pointed Corran toward it. As he had done before, Corran stood on the grate as the tech used a water spray to wash the bacta residue from him and back into the tank. Holding his hands high, Corran turned slowly beneath the spray, then smiled as the tech tossed him a thick towel.

“How do you feel?”

Corran shrugged and wiped his face. “Pretty good. How badly was I hurt?”

The tech’s face screwed up tight. “Pretty bad. You were in shock when we dunked you. Internal organ damage, broken pelvis, spine, and ribs—more quantity than quality of damage.”

Corran nodded. “So I was in for, what, a week?”

“Two days.”

“What?” Corran frowned at the tech. “I should have been in there much longer than that for those injuries.”

The tech lifted his chin and gave Corran an imperious stare. “You are used to dealing with export-quality bacta, and Xucphra product at that, friend. The bacta here is more potent.”

“Made by Zaltin verachen?”

The tech bowed his head. “Very good. If you will follow me, your friends are waiting for you.”

Lacking clothes, Corran wrapped the towel around his waist and followed the tech down some stairs and through a doorway. The room beyond it was lit by a ghostly green glow coming from the transparisteel viewport that dominated the left wall. It looked back into the tank, the light from which allowed him to see further into the room than he had been able while in the tank. Low, long, well-padded day beds and high-backed chairs filled the rest of the room and had been arranged so anyone using them could keep an eye on his progress. Shadows shrouded the archway in the wall opposite the one he entered through.

As he came through the doorway, Mirax stepped forward and enfolded him in a hug. She kissed his lips, then his right ear. “I can’t tell you how good you feel. I was afraid you’d not make it.”

“And give your father the satisfaction?”

She laughed lightly. “I’ll tell him that the Horn tenacity is, in fact, good for something.”

Corran kissed the side of her face and held on tight. One of the most unnerving things about being in a bacta tank, with its temperature control and neutral buoyancy, was the feeling of floating in a void. If not for the touch of the breathing mask on his face, he would have had no connection to the outside world. Just being able to hold on to Mirax and feel her body through the thin material of her clothes brought him fully back into the world.

“You weren’t hurt, were you?”

Mirax shook her head. “Nope, I kept my head down and came out in one piece.” She grinned. “And I even managed to recover your lightsaber for you. It and your Jedi credit are safe.”

“Great. Thanks.” He released Mirax and gave Iella a hug. “Yet one more time you’ve had to watch me bobbing in bacta.”

Iella smiled. “As long as you keep coming out whole, hale, and hearty, I don’t mind.”

“Thanks.” Corran let her go, then nodded to Elscol and Sixtus. “Sorry to have inconvenienced you.”

The big man just shrugged. Elscol’s eyes narrowed. “The crossfire was a bit more inconvenient than this. We’ve gotten some work done while we’ve been waiting.”

“And good work it has been.” A tall, slender man came through the archway and gave Corran a once-over. “I’m glad to see you healed. You were in a bad state when I first saw you.”

Corran hesitated. While he’d floated in the bacta he’d mulled over the identity of the man he’d seen standing above him in the spaceport. He’d looked like Bror Jace, but Corran knew that was impossible because Bror Jace had been killed by the Empire. Corran had decided that the man he’d seen was someone affiliated with the Zaltin corporation, as Jace had been, and perhaps was even closely related to Jace. That solution made perfect sense to him and seemed to satisfy all the facts in his possession.

But there’s no mistaking that tone of voice. Corran’s jaw hung open. “You are Bror Jace.”

“Indeed I am.” Jace bowed his head, then graciously waved Corran toward one of the day beds. “You’d like an explanation on why I’m not dead?”

Corran sniffed. “I’ve been reported dead myself. Those things happen.”

Mirax slapped him playfully on the belly. “You’re dying to know what happened to him, just like the rest of us.”

“Well, if the rest of you want to indulge him, then I think the only polite thing for me to do is listen.” Corran sat and adjusted the towel to preserve his modesty. “Go ahead, Bror, knock us out with the story.”

Jace, whose blond hair picked up green highlights from the bacta tank, smiled easily. “I hardly think the tale engrossing enough for you to endure a second telling of it, so I beg your forbearance.”

Corran glanced at Mirax. “You’ve heard this before.”

“Yes, and I’d rather have him tell you instead of having you get it out of me later.”

Corran winced. “Right. Okay, Bror, do it.”

The Thyferran began to pace, clasping his hands behind his back. The short pants he wore and the thin shirt rustled with his movements—and Corran found the whole ensemble a little hard to reconcile with the pilot he’d known and competed with in his early days with Rogue Squadron. The pacing is right, as is the imperious tilt of the chin, but the clothes are what kids wear.

“I joined Rogue Squadron for a number of reasons, not the least of which was to maintain parity between Zaltin and Xucphra. This was important because Xucphra had Imperialistic leanings. They’d been the first of our two companies to be given an Imperial license to be an exclusive producer of bacta, establishing the cartel. Zaltin had been brought in by the Empire to serve as competition for Xucphra—Zaltin had no real desire to become part of the cartel, but the choice we were given was to join or be put out of business. In effect this was no choice, so we did what we had to do to survive.”

Corran raised an eyebrow. That was as close as he’d ever heard any human from Thyferra being critical of the corporations with which they were affiliated. Despite the fact that Jace was attempting to paint Zaltin in a good light in comparison with Xucphra, the honesty was welcome and sparked in Corran a willingness to trust Jace further than he ever had before. How much I trust him depends on the rest of this story.

“The intention behind my joining the squadron was for me to become known and trusted within the New Republic. Zaltin officials had come to the conclusion that the Empire was doomed and wanted to make agreements with the New Republic to provide bacta and the means to expand bacta production back along the lines of the system that existed before the cartel was created. Altruism was not their motivating factor—prohibiting the production, sale, and distribution of something is much more difficult than managing the same. The cartel only worked because of the Empire—with its death, the back of the cartel would be broken. The only way Zaltin could profit was to work out a deal with the New Republic which allowed us to oversee the expansion of production throughout the New Republic.

“Zaltin officials also realized that the Vratix, through their terrorist organization, the Ashern, would make a case to the New Republic for independence. They would ask for help throwing off the yoke of their human masters. Since bacta production is all but impossible without the Vratix, Zaltin began to court them. We supplied money and hiding places for them. We began an alliance that would eventually make Zaltin the agents for the Vratix in spreading bacta production throughout the galaxy, enriching us all.”

Bror Jace stopped and closed his eyes for a moment. “The Vratix do not think the way we humans do. Whereas we would incorporate reports and data produced by someone into our plans, they incorporate such individuals into their planning groups. It is as if they don’t disassociate the report from the person making it. Realistically, this is a societal way of ensuring the spread of information and stimulating more creativity within groups, though its efficiency can be questioned.

“The Ashern, who were being given reports on my impressions of the New Republic, required me to return to Thyferra to join their main planning group.”

Corran nodded. “So you were sent a message telling you that your patriarch was dying.”

“You remember. My course home was set by Captain Celchu. Erisi asked about it, and I told her my itinerary because I wanted her people watching for my return. In my trip I made one deviation—an unscheduled stop. I transferred from my X-wing to a freighter that brought me back here. Into my X-wing we placed a bomb meant to mimic the accidental discharge of a proton torpedo. The X-wing was slaved to a shuttle and dragged off toward Thyferra. We intended to enter the system from quite a distance out, send the X-wing in, then have it blow up where everyone could see it.”

“But the Imps had an Interdictor Cruiser waiting for you, thanks to Erisi.” Corran scratched at his upper lip. “Reports we got said there was no Imp debris where you died. I knew something was up then, but I didn’t think you’d lived. Did the shuttle survive the ambush?”

Jace shook his head. “No, so we had no idea what happened until my family received a hologram from Commander Antilles explaining the circumstances of my death. At that point I’d already returned and had gone underground, so it didn’t really matter how I’d died as much as it mattered that both the New Republic and Xucphra thought I was dead.”

Mirax frowned. “Something just occurred to me—you’re the reason Qlaern Hirf came looking specifically for Wedge.”

Jace nodded. “Wedge is intelligent, resourceful, and respectable, so he was my obvious choice. Corran would have been my second choice, but by the time we sent Qlaern Hirf out, news of Corran’s death had reached Thyferra.”

“You would have sent him to me?” Corran wasn’t certain he’d heard correctly. He’d never had the impression that Jace had seen him as having the same attributes that he ascribed to Wedge.

“Corran, though we established that I was a better pilot than you, this does not mean I have no respect for your skills or experience.” Jace’s tone of voice lightened ever so slightly. “Your long association with the Empire’s criminal class means you understand a host of methods necessary for eluding authority and surviving, which were things I thought would prove useful in keeping Qlaern safe.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“I meant that as a compliment.”

“I’ll remember that.”

Mirax glanced over at Iella. “Too bad the bacta can’t cure annoying personality traits.”

Iella shrugged. “Congenital defect, I’m afraid. Corran’s always been competitive and contrary.”

Corran gave Iella a hard stare. “I always got along with you.”

“Because you knew you’d lose if we ever went head to head where our skills overlap.”

He could have protested her observations, but he knew it was more true than false. “Okay, you made your point.” Corran forced a smile on his face. “Where do we go from here? What’s been decided while I’ve been floating?”

Elscol folded her arms. “Sixtus, Iella, and I will be staying here—taking Jace’s place in the Ashern planning councils because he’ll be going back with you to liaise with the squadron. We’re bringing in expertise on how to take a planet away from its government and how to deal with counterintelligence operations.”

Corran looked at his former partner. “Are you ready for this?”

Iella thought for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll probably get the cleanest shot of any of us at Isard. Diric’s death still hurts, but if I’m to honor his memory, I can’t do it by sitting around and mourning. You made that point very succinctly.”

“Yeah, but here you won’t be among your friends.”

Iella smiled gently and caressed Corran’s cheek. “True, but that means I’ve got fewer things to remind me of Diric and distract me.”

“I don’t think being away from friends would have made it any easier to get over my father’s death, but I understand what you’re saying.” Corran winked at her. “Don’t do anything stupid—especially in the name of revenge. Promise?”

“Sure, as long as you make the same promise.”

“Done.” Corran got up and gave her a big hug, then reluctantly let her go. Looking back at Mirax he asked, “So, what about the rest of us?”

“Our job here’s done. We’ve delivered our charges, and we’ll be safeguarding our liaison officer back to the base, so we’re going home.” Mirax smiled at him. “At least we’ll be doing that as soon as we get some clothes on you, that is.”

“As long as I don’t have to use Jace’s tailor, I’ll be happy.”

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

“I hate shorts.”

“On you, who’d notice?”

Jace’s riposte stunned Corran, then he smiled. “I was thinking I spent a long time in the bacta tank, but I have a feeling that’s going to be like nothing compared to the trip home. I’m glad you’re alive, Jace. Life’s been much too easy since you’ve been gone.”

16

Wedge exerted the effort to wipe the smile off his face as his X-wing hurtled through hyperspace. Bror Jace’s return from the grave had been a most pleasant surprise, both because he wasn’t dead and because of the insight into Thyferra he provided. Zaltin had long kept tabs on Xucphra, and Isard had not changed procedures so much that Jace’s intelligence reports had been completely invalidated.

He was very happy to have Jace back in the squadron. Zraii had put an X-wing together out of parts for Jace. The Thyferran had it painted red with green trim—the corporate colors of Zaltin—and had been checked out on it within three hours of his arrival at Yag’Dhul. Jace had been a hot hand in an X-wing when he was first with the squadron, and his time off had not seemed to dull his skill very much at all. With as few pilots as we have, they all need to be sharp.

Wedge had been less than pleased with learning that Corran had been injured on Thyferra. He’d have been angry with Corran except that the smaller man gave him a full report on what happened, including an analysis of his mistakes. Corran had been quite frank concerning what he had done, reminding Wedge of Corran’s attack on stormtroopers on Talasea. When Corran finds trouble, he never seems to have difficulty just diving in, especially when the lives of others are at stake. Nice trait to have in a friend.

Information Jace had brought with him set the basis for the run the squadron had headed out on. Isard had initiated escort service for the bacta convoys, moving them to centralized locations where the client worlds would come to get their bacta. Wedge saw immediately that if he hit the covered convoys he’d be in serious trouble, but Jace’s people had initiated an operation to get them some of the bacta anyway. The Ashern had sliced new code into the navicomps on three of the freighters that would produce a course deviation in the final leg of the trip. The freighters would fly out from under their cover and be in a position for the squadron to make off with them. The navicomps would remain useless until the squadron sent them the key code or until the crew stripped the computer down and reloaded all of the software.

Wedge knew the operation was chancy, but to refuse to go after the ships would mean that the Ashern’s effort had gone for naught. The risk of the operation had to be weighed against the good that could be done with the supplies of bacta the ships carried. Halanit could still use more, as could several other small settlements that found the Thyferran price prohibitively high. More important, Coruscant needed more bacta to supplement the rylca treatments for the Krytos virus.

He couldn’t discount the possibility of a trap entirely, but for the Imps to ambush him meant they would be leaving another of their convoys open. The freighters that were coming to him were from a small convoy that was being watched over by the Victory II-class Star Destroyer Corrupter. Though the smallest of the ships Isard had in her fleet, it carried two TIE squadrons, equaling his force, and bristled with enough weaponry to be able to lay siege to whole planets.

Complicating matters, Wedge knew less about its Captain Ait Convarion than he wished he did. Convarion was supposed to have served both at Derra IV and Hoth before being given the Corrupter and being sent off on suppression missions—government-sanctioned campaigns of terror against populated worlds on the Outer Rim. Convarion was rumored to be calculating and cruel, with a penchant for quick action that had won battles despite the odds being against him. That was a combination that could cause a lot of trouble for the squadron.

If Convarion knows in advance of the defection, we could be in severe trouble. If he has to deal with having three missing ships from his convoy upon his arrival at the Rish system, he’ll be searching for an atom in a nebula. Depending on the reluctance of the freighter crews to follow us, we’ll need a maximum of an hour to move the convoy farther on. If we have been betrayed, we’ll have to jump back out of the system as fast as possible …

Wedge glanced at his primary monitor. “… and hope against hope that Isard hasn’t convinced any Interdictor cruisers to join her side.” He shook his head and sighed. He knew he was worrying about events that were very low on the scale of probability, but the chance of a problem still niggled at him. He knew he’d have felt better if he’d been in on planning the operation from the first, but he wasn’t in a position to refuse the help the Ashern offered.

“I’ll just make the best of this situation and hope Captain Convarion isn’t as sharp as rumors make him out to be.”

A pinpoint of black expanded up and engulfed the snubfighter as it reverted to realspace in a system with a red dwarf star surrounded by a dust disk. Three bacta freighters hung in space just above the plane of the disk. The captains had oriented the ships so their bellies pointed inward and the two dorsal turbolasers they sported overlapped their fields of fire.

Wedge opened a comm channel. “One and Two Squadrons, S-foils in attack position.” Both the X-wings and the Deathseeds responded to his order, causing their stabilizers to split and lock. The fighters spread out on their previously assigned approach vectors, but they held back from closing with the freighters.

He shifted the comm unit over to the frequency the Ashern indicated the Thyferrans used. “This is Wedge Antilles. I have two squadrons of fighters here. We intend to have your cargo. If you cooperate you will be given a course, be able to drop your cargo, and then go back home unharmed.”

Nervous tremors shot back through the voice that answered him. “Antilles, we were told that if we went with you, we’d be destroyed. We have family back on Thyferra.”

That comment sent a chill down Wedge’s spine, but he fought against the ideas it planted in his head. “Your families will not be harmed. Isard can’t kill families of pilots and expect any more shipments of bacta to go out. It’s a bluff that I have to call. If you decide not to go back to Thyferra, I’ll help you get your people to safety. You’re going to lose your cargo, you might as well save yourself some pain.”

One of the tankers began to move away from the others. Mynock, Wedge’s R5 droid, tagged it as Xucphra Rose. “This is Bors Kenlin in the Rose. We’re yours, Antilles.”

“Kenlin, don’t go. You have a wife back on Thyferra.”

“Isard will be doing me a favor if she kills her.” The Rose drifted further from the other two ships. “Where am I going?”

“Stand by, Rose.” Wedge shifted his comm unit over to the squadron’s tactical frequency. “Nine, you and Ten and your two Deathseed friends will escort the Rose to Halanit. Isard has threatened dependents on Thyferra if the crew goes along with us, so find out who their people are so we can transmit the data to the Ashern and try to save them.”

Corran’s voice came back strong. “As ordered, sir.” Two X-wings broke from formation and made a quick flyby on the Rose. In the first pass they downloaded to the Rose’s navicomp the course for their run to Halanit. As they came back around, the Rose moved on the exit vector with them and two Deathseeds fell in behind. In the blink of an eye all five ships went to lightspeed and vanished.

Wedge looked back at his monitor again. The remaining ships were Xucphra Alazhi and Xucphra Meander. Wedge suspected the first voice he’d dealt with was on the Alazhi. Since the ship was named after a key component in bacta, he assumed the captain had seniority over the other two. Wedge shifted his comm unit back to the Thyferran frequency. “Meander, what is your decision?”

A woman’s voice answered him. “Meander is unconvinced the crew will be safe from Isard’s reprisals.”

“Meander, your cargo will be bound for Coruscant. If you can’t lose yourself there, you can obtain transport to anywhere you want to go from there. I guarantee you that your cargo will alleviate an incredible amount of suffering.”

Xucphra Meander began to drift away from Alazhi. As it did so, the Alazhi began to roll to bring its turbolasers to bear on Meander.

Wedge shifted over to his tactical frequency. “Three and Four, neutralize Alazhi. Five and Six, pick up Meander and head to Coruscant.”

Gavin and Shiel broke their X-wings out of the formation and sprinted in at the Alazhi. They kept their fighters moving in a grand spiral, which made them very difficult to track, especially as they dipped below the turbolasers’ ability to depress sufficiently to shoot at them. Green laser bolts shot out in pairs at the incoming fighters, but they always came in above or. below the X-wings.

Coming up on a turn in the spiral, Gavin’s fighter rolled and spat laserfire at the freighter. One quad burst hit the ship’s hull right in front of the turbolaser battery, then two more caught the battery in the side. Fire tracked up the blocky battery, blasting away at the armor plates sheathing it. Molten globules of armor rocketed off through space, then an explosion filled the battery with fire and ripped it apart.

Shiel’s run on the aft battery proved just as effective, stripping the freighter of its offensive weaponry. The two fighters began to orbit the Alazhi, flashing past the cockpit one after another. Well away from them Rhysati, Inyri, and their two Twi’lek companions led the Meander off toward Coruscant.

Wedge adjusted his comm unit and tightened the beam to focus on the Alazhi. “Alazhi, you are defenseless.”

The man who had first answered him again spoke, but anger had replaced nervousness in his voice. “We can and will oppose you, Antilles. This is piracy. But we have a standoff here, because you only have fighters—you can’t board us. If you shoot us up, you or we will destroy the ship and you lose the cargo. You got some of what you want. Go away. Leave us alone.”

He has a point—we can’t board the ship. I hadn’t expected Isard’s threat to the crew’s families. I’d thought, given that we harmed no one last time, that we would have cooperative crews. Wedge thought for a moment, then forced an edge into his voice.

“Be advised, Alazhi, that the same software that allowed us to bring you here will, when the correct signal is sent, purge your ship of atmosphere and slave itself to our navicomp data. Your choice is not whether you come with us or not, but whether you do so alive or dead.”

He let that sink in for a moment or two. If they call my bluff, I let them off so they can tell others that we didn’t kill them. It’ll win us some goodwill, perhaps. “Your decision, Alazhi?”

Fear had returned to the captain’s voice. “You’d kill us just to get this bacta?”

“I’d kill you to get the bacta to those who need it. Isard unleashed a disease on Coruscant that kills ninety-five percent of the victims who go untreated. Which should I count as more valuable: the lives of a dozen freighter crewmen or the lives of billions?”

“You’ll help our families?”

“You have my word on it.”

Silence fell for several heartbeats, then the Alazhi’s captain spoke in a distant whisper. “I hope you know what you’re doing. Alazhi is yours.”

Wedge went back to the tactical frequency. “Gavin, Alazhi is yours to shepherd on her rounds.”

“I copy, Wedge. Transmitting data to Alazhi now. See you later.” Gavin’s X-wing swung out and around to head toward the exit vector. The two Twi’leks swooped in, taking up positions on either of the Alazhi’s flanks while the Shistavanen curled around and came up in the freighter’s wake.

As the Alazhi came about to starboard and began its run up to lightspeed, a vastly huge white dagger thrust itself through the fabric of space on a course that cut in at the freighter’s line of flight. Dread bubbled acid into Wedge’s throat as the Corrupter reverted to realspace and opened up with its weaponry. Waves of green turbolaser energy washed down from the Star Destroyer’s port batteries. While not made for engaging snubfighters, firing at point-blank range the gunners could hardly miss. The flank Deathseeds evaporated in a cloud of green plasma. The turbolaser fire eroded all the sharp lines from Shiel’s X-wing, reducing it from a sleek fighter to a fluid blob that slammed into the aft end of the Alazhi.

A second volley of fire from the Star Destroyer focused itself on the bacta tanker. In an instant the entire ship glowed orange, then the bacta storage tanks exploded one after another. The superheated bacta sprayed out and instantly congealed into delicate sheets of ice that mocked the violence of their birth. Similarly the transparisteel and quadaniumtitanium alloy plates used in the freighter’s manufacture twisted and flowed, tearing away and exploding outward, before they congealed into a warped mockery of what the freighter had once been.

Of Gavin, Wedge saw nothing.

“Condition Critical. Exit the system now on Critical vectors. Go! Go!”

Asyr’s voice pounded into Wedge’s ears. “Wedge, what about …”

There’s nothing left of Gavin. “Go, Asyr, go now. Waiting around is just going to get you killed.” Wedge hauled back on his stick and punched his throttle up to full. He glanced over to his left and saw Asyr’s X-wing hanging off his S-foil. “Three seconds to lightspeed.”

“I copy, Wedge.”

Wedge hit a button on his console and made the jump to lightspeed. The stars elongated, then sucked him into a tunnel of white light, but he felt as if he left his guts back in the system with the Corrupter. It had always been the plan to scatter and flee if Corrupter showed up, but to do that after taking losses made him feel horrible. Four more are dead because of me.

Part of him immediately rebelled at that thought, seeking to place blame elsewhere. If the Alazhi’s captain had not hesitated, then everyone would have been out of the system before Corrupter arrived. If Isard had not threatened the crews with the safety of their families, everything would have gone well. If Senator Palpatine hadn’t been greedy, this situation never would have existed.

Wedge closed his eyes against the omnipresent light of hyperspace. “What happened back there is my responsibility. The operation had risks, but all operations have risks. Blaming myself for what happened isn’t going to do me any good. What I need to do is learn from the situation because Convarion is very good.”

He punched up a data request and got Mynock to break down the entry and exit vectors of the various ships, then had them overlaid on the system diagram. As the astromech did so, Wedge got his first glimmer of understanding. Corrupter’s entry vector appeared very fortuitous because it angled in on Alazhi’s exit vector, but it really was the same entry vector the freighters used to arrive in the system.

Wedge whistled slowly. What that bit of data told him was that Convarion had waited at the previous transit point, had tracked the exit vectors of all the ships in his convoy, then had his people do an analysis of them. The three ships that deviated from the planned course were discovered, their course plotted, and the Corrupter came after them. Whether the freighters were hijacked or just had a poor navigator, Convarion came after them, intent on destroying them. His ship arrived in-system and shot immediately.

A chill crept into Wedge’s body and puckered his flesh. “Iceheart has never been one for compassion, and now she has a ship’s captain who shares her contempt for it. We’re lucky we only lost four of our pilots. I had hoped this war would be quick—I knew it would be dirty. We’re going to have to be quicker and dirtier, and with Convarion and Iceheart opposing us, that’s not going to be an easy task.”

17

The sound of a thousand individuals stamping their heels and coming to attention echoed through the Corrupter’s hold as Fliry Vorru followed Ysanne Isard from the belly of the shuttle. Vorru looked out over the straight ranks of sailors and stormtroopers and allowed himself a smile. Such a display of Imperial might I’ve not seen since before I was sentenced to Kessel. The Rebels may own Imperial Center and may have proclaimed themselves a New Republic, but they will never know Imperial splendor like this.

At the base of the gangway, Isard paused and offered her hand to a small, lean man in a black uniform. The rank insignia he wore on his jacket’s left breast bore only six color tabs, but the fact that he also wore two rank cylinders told Vorru he was a Commander, not a mere Captain. Even so, because of his position of command on the ship and Imperial tradition, addressing him as Captain would be proper. And the way he genuflects before kissing Iceheart’s proffered hand shows this Convarion is nothing if not proper.

Convarion met Vorru’s offered hand with a strong grip. The man’s sharp features, thick black hair, and blue eyes all combined to grant Convarion an intensity that surprised Vorru. I had thought all such fire-eaters had been killed at Endor. This man is ambitious and, therefore, dangerous. If he were my subordinate, I would have him killed.

“Pleased to meet you, Captain Convarion.”

“And you, Minister Vorru.” Convarion’s mouth smiled, but any pleasure failed to register beyond the boundaries of his lips. “I am honored that you would deign to notice my ship and our exploits.”

Isard, wearing her scarlet Admiral’s uniform, glanced back at him with faint amusement in her eyes. “You have shown initiative, Commander, and I always notice initiative. I should like to inspect your ship, if that is possible, but first I would speak with you in private.”

“Of course, Madam Director.” Convarion bowed, then pointed to an aisle through the middle of the bone white ranks of stormtroopers. “My wardroom is this way.”

Vorru trailed behind Convarion and Isard. He noticed that Convarion matched his pace to that of Isard and that she, in reaction to this, varied her gait and caused Convarion to do the same. Convarion’s face gave no sign he noticed what was going on or if he was annoyed by it or not. He merely looked up at Isard with rapt attention on his face, not sycophantically hanging on her every word, but receiving what she said as if it were advice worthy of his most sincere consideration.

Vorru suppressed a smile as he watched Convarion operate, because he knew the man had to be trying to balance two conflicting scenarios in his head. By sending the Corrupter after the errant ships, Convarion had succeeded in ambushing an Antilles operation and scattering his forces. By Convarion’s estimate Antilles lost a half-dozen ships, including several of the Uglies, known as Deathseeds by the Twi’leks who created them. Just knowing that some Twi’leks had thrown in with Antilles was valuable information itself, and Convarion would have been due some reward for just bringing that tidbit back from his mission.

On the other hand, he had left the majority of his convoy uncovered and open to attack. Antilles had still gotten away with two ships and Convarion had destroyed another bacta freighter on his own initiative. His report had stated that the freighter was moving in conjunction with the pirates and did not acknowledge his initial hail, so he considered it hostile and destroyed it. Such decisiveness was the sort of thing Isard appreciated, but the loss of a bacta freighter was a high price to pay for it.

The hatch to the small wardroom closed behind Vorru, trapping him in there with Isard and Convarion. Vorru moved to the end of the room far from the door and seated himself at the corner of the rectangular black duraplast table that dominated the room. Convarion hovered closest to the far narrow end of the table, ready to take his place at the head of it if Isard did not wish that position for herself.

Isard remained standing just inside the hatchway and stared at Convarion. “Your discovery of the deception concerning the freighters was impressive, Commander.”

“Thank you, but it was no more than should be expected from any of our personnel. I chose to wait for all of my ships to be away because the Rebels used the tactic of misjumping ships in the case of the bacta convoy that Warlord Zsinj ambushed at Alderaan. I had to assume that same tactic might be used again. Because of Corrupter’s speed, I could arrive in synch with my ships at their destination even if I delayed leaving. I had my navigators plot the outbound vectors for my ships and noticed three were off course. We plotted possible stopping points along that route and proceeded after them. It was a fairly basic pursuit operation.”

Irritation flared in Isard’s molten left eye. “And destroying the Alazhi, was that no less than I should expect from our personnel?”

“As I explained in my report—”

“As you lied in your report.” Isard’s eyes narrowed. “Analysis of your ship’s data records show your gunners opened fire three seconds after reversion. A signal went out to Alazhi five seconds after reversion, and the volley of shots that destroyed Alazhi came eight seconds after reversion. You chose to shoot regardless of their response.”

Convarion’s face constricted, pulling flesh taut over his cheekbones. “I shot in response to contingencies I had worked out prior to our arrival. Alazhi was alone, which meant the other ships had already been captured and moved. Alazhi had been disarmed and damaged. Because it was surrounded by hostile snubfighters and was moving in conjunction with them, I had to assume it was under their control. I was aware of your policy of punishing collaborators, and I chose to implement it immediately. Punishment delayed is punishment stripped of connection with the crime that triggered it. While Xucphra Alazhi’s crew will not have a chance to learn from their mistake, other crew of other ships know the policy is not an idle threat.”

“So you chose to implement a policy without asking my permission?”

Convarion nodded. “I did.”

“And you are prepared to take full responsibility for doing so?”

A slight hesitation marked Convarion’s reply. “I am.”

The down-turned corners of Isard’s mouth rose. “Then you will execute the families of those crewmen on the Alazhi. We brought them with us in the shuttle.”

Color drained from Convarion’s face. “If that is your wish.”

“What I wish, Captain Convarion, matters not.” Isard strode toward him and plucked the rank cylinder from the right side of Convarion’s tunic “What I order is all that matters. What initiative you take must be within your mission parameters, it must not exceed them. Do you understand me?”

The naval man nodded, but Vorru detected a stiffness to his motion signifying resistance. Elements of the Imperial military had never accepted Isard’s de facto running of the government, which was why many of them proclaimed themselves Warlords and created their own little empires. Those who had remained loyal, either to her or the concept of the Empire, still could bristle when she gave orders.

Convarion’s head came up. “It is your order, then, Madam Director, that I kill the families of the crew of the Alazhi?”

Isard’s head briefly flicked toward Convarion, but Vorru doubted Convarion caught her slip. “That situation has been dealt with already and does not need your attention. I have another task for you. Minister Vorru, your briefing.”

Vorru pointed to the chair at the head of the table. “Please be seated, Captain Convarion. As you know, bacta is a precious fluid that is produced in limited amounts and only available from us, here, on Thyferra. All bacta in the galaxy is produced under our license and is sold with our approval. If you need bacta, there is only one place to get it.

“At least, that was the situation until Antilles and his people pirated the first convoy. What do you think they did with that bacta?”

“It is rather clear they didn’t sell it, since that is the obvious answer to the question.” Convarion shrugged reluctantly. “I have no idea what they did with it.”

“They gave it away. Much of it went to Coruscant, but we anticipated that.” Vorru pressed his hands flat against the tabletop. “Because they used our ships and our crews to transport the bacta, we know where it ended up. We have shorted future allotments to various worlds to make up for the bacta they were supplied by Antilles, and we have charged them for that bacta.”

Convarion’s expression eased. “And they have paid?”

“Some have. Some have refused to do so.” Vorru smiled. “This presents us with a problem.”

Isard leaned forward, posting her arms on the table. “If some do not pay, we appear weak and others might balk at paying us. If they do not pay, they are as much thieves as Antilles and his people.”

“So you have a policy you are going to order me to implement.”

“How perceptive of you, Captain.” Vorru nodded solemnly. “We have a list of the worlds that received stolen bacta. We have eliminated those worlds that have paid us, have made arrangements to pay us, or have sufficient resources to be able to pay us. We are left with a handful of target worlds that are too poor to afford the gift Antilles gave them. You will select one of them and take our bacta back.”

“And if there is no bacta to recover?”

Isard straightened up and smiled mostly coldly. “If the bacta is used up, it will have granted them health. You will take it back again.”

Convarion nodded. “It will be done.”

Vorru raised a hand. “Not so quickly, Captain, there are some special caveats for what we want you to do. First and foremost, you will be taking along with you two companies of the Thyferran Home Defense Corps and one squadron of their fliers to carry out the work that needs to be done.”

“But my Imperial troops will be much more efficient …”

“Indeed, but we want the Thyferrans to see the crimes of these worlds as crimes against them, not against Director Isard. We want the Thyferrans to get their hands dirty. If they are acting with us, they become complicit in our activities. They will make themselves targets for Antilles, which will bind them more tightly to us. By making them administer the punishment to these worlds, we give them an even greater stake in seeing that we remain here to help defend them, and we give them a reason to defend themselves.”

Convarion’s eyes narrowed. “You sound as if you truly think Antilles and his rabble can actually topple you.”

“Nonsense!” Isard dismissed that supposition with a wave of her hand. “There will come a point, however, when the New Republic considers what it is going to do about us and our control of the bacta supply. They have refrained from causing trouble so far because they are reluctant to dabble in the internal politics of worlds. To do so would split their Republic, since a number of worlds that declared independence and have joined them still have their Imperial officials in place running things. Warlord Zsinj has further distracted the New Republic, but once he has been dealt with, they will again consider us.”

Convarion nodded. “If our client states are afraid of losing their bacta supply, they will not press for the Republic to do something about us. And if the Thyferrans back us fully, the New Republic would have to stage an invasion of Thyferra to oust us.”

“Precisely.”

Vorru let Isard’s comment echo in his ears, but he was not as confident of it as her voice suggested she was. Discounting Antilles entirely was a mistake, and one Isard should have known better than to make. While Vorru believed the Antilles threat could be controlled and minimized, the only way it could be eliminated was by killing Antilles and destroying his power base. The network of contacts Vorru had in place to gather information about Antilles was just beginning to report data to him, but so far it had been useless in trying to locate Antilles or figuring out what his long-term intentions were.

Vorru opened his hands and smiled at Convarion. “So, will you follow orders and punish a world for dealing with Antilles?”

“Shoot me the datafiles on the target worlds and I will get back to you with plans for dealing with them in two days.” Convarion stood. “You may select the final target or leave it up to me, at your discretion. I would ask only one thing in return.”

Isard arched an eyebrow at him. “And that is?”

“As you said before, my initiative is limited by my mission parameters.” Convarion half-smiled. “If you want the lesson to be learned by the maximum number of people, do me the favor of defining my mission as broadly as possible.”

18

In many ways Iella Wessiri could not believe she had decided to come along on the mission after all. She understood how important it was to undertake, and how much good it might do for the Ashern cause, but at the most basic level she opposed it. It’s murder, nothing less.

When Elscol had proposed the operation, she’d used the euphemism sanction to describe what they would be doing to one of Xucphra’s higher-ups, Aerin Dlarit. Dlarit, an older man, had been appointed a General in the Thyferran Home Defense Corps. In the day-to-day operation of the THDC he deferred to Major Barst Roite, but Dlarit strutted about in his uniform at a host of social functions. Local media had shown him any number of times assuring his fellow Xucphrans that the Ashern were under control and that happy days were on the way.

“He’s made himself an obvious target.” Elscol had opened her arms to emphasize her point. “If we take him out we will rock Xucphran society to its foundations.”

Iella had protested the whole idea. “Dlarit is hardly a military target in any real sense. He’s a fop. We can undercut him by hitting other targets and making his assurances lies.”

“We could, but hitting such sites still doesn’t bring the nature of war home to the people. We need to frighten them, deeply.”

“And hitting military targets won’t do that?”

“Eventually. This will be faster.”

Iella frowned. “Wouldn’t just shooting random people accomplish the same thing?”

Elscol shrugged. “Probably. It’s a backup plan.”

“You can’t be serious.” Iella looked at the smaller woman in utter disbelief. “That would be murder. This is murder, for all intents and purposes. You can’t kill innocent people.”

“Look, Iella, there are no innocent people here.” Elscol planted fists on her hips. “Over the years I’ve helped dozens of worlds liberate themselves from the Imps, and part of each fight is making the populace wake up to what’s really going on. People assume that if they say nothing and do nothing they’re not involved in the fight, but the fact is that their apathy is a tacit vote of support for the status quo. They have to be made to see that by making no choice they have indeed made a choice. When they understand that, they begin to think about those choices, and we make choosing the Imps out to be a very bad choice.”

Iella’s head came up. “Black Sun used to use that same rationale to justify murdering all sorts of folks.”

“There’s a difference between Black Sun and us.”

“Oh, do tell.”

“Black Sun was all about greed and selfishness.” Elscol looked around at the humans and Vratix gathered in the room. “We’re fighting for freedom, for the right to live the way we want to live. We’re fighting for the only thing worth fighting for.”

“And if these people want to be ruled by the Empire?”

“They can consider our action an eviction notice.” Elscol’s brown eyes narrowed. “You come from a law-enforcement background where you were out to protect the innocent from the ravages of the criminals. You could do that without resorting to this drastic an activity because you had the weight of the government behind you. You had a justice system that would reinforce the will of the people. I understand that and respect it. By the same token, I also know that you saw criminals out there that you knew could only be stopped by a blaster bolt.

“That’s what we’re up against here. Dlarit might seem harmless, but he’s helping prop up a system that keeps the Vratix in virtual slavery. He’s propping up a system that means billions of individuals suffer needlessly from diseases because they cannot afford the cure. He’s got the blood of everyone who died because of a lack of bacta on his hands, as well as that of the families of the Alazhi’s crew.”

Iella had nodded. “I can’t deny the validity of what you’re saying about Dlarit. Add to it the fact that his daughter spied on the Alliance for the Imps and got Corran captured. The problem still is that I’m uncomfortable with assassinating him, especially in his home.”

“The act has much more impact there. We’ll make a hologram of the execution and start circulating it. That will get our point across, and fast, too.”

“And it will make us into ghouls. What about Dlarit’s staff and his family? What do we do if they find us there?”

The muscles at the corners of Elscol’s jaw bunched. “Blasters do have stun settings.”

Iella had raised an eyebrow. “You sound as if you would kill his children, too.”

“Erisi’s his daughter—Huttlings grow up to be Hutts.”

“But leaving his minor children alive would show us to be capable of mercy for those who realize the error of their ways, correct?” Iella had looked hard at her. “Correct?”

“It’ll make the operation more difficult, but it can be done.” Elscol had looked around the briefing room. “Any other philosophical objections, or can we get to planning?”

There were none, so Elscol immediately moved into planning the assault. And what a job she did. Her experience in planning and executing operations showed through in how she broke down the Dlarit estate’s security setup. Iella had attended countless CorSec Special Operations briefings about raids on criminal strongholds, and Elscol’s presentation was the equal of any of them in detail and foresight.

To everyone’s surprise, including her own, Iella agreed to join the group of a dozen Ashern commandos volunteering for the operation. Elscol, Sixtus, and three of his Imp Special Naval Operations comrades formed the core of the group. Iella, two Vratix, and four humans—all four of them Zaltin refugees—filled out the rest of the team. Each commando was issued a blaster, a blaster carbine, dark clothing, a comlink, and a light armored vest with armored plates that covered them from throat to groin, front and back. Iella knew the armor would be almost useless for stopping a blaster bolt, but even deflecting it from the body’s midline meant the wound might be survivable.

Iella hunkered down behind the bole of a huge akonije tree. The humidity in the air helped retain the day’s heat, and the vest made her none too comfortable. Even so, the slight whisper of a breeze helped cool her. But it also hides some noises and creates others, keeping me on edge. She blew a wisp of her light brown hair back out of her face and peered ahead into the darkness.

Barely visible as hulking shadows, Sixtus and his companions worked their way forward through the rain forest that sheltered the Dlarit estate. The estate itself was set on a small knoll at the foot of high mountains that had once been part of an extinct volcano. Holograms of the estate taken in daytime looked incredibly beautiful, with the natural stone building rising up out of the surrounding jungle like a small volcano itself. Huge waterfalls cascading down the mountainous backdrop added the last element to transform the estate into a paradise.

They also provided the means for entering the estate. Most travel to and from the estate took place by airspeeder. Forty-five kilometers of a twisting, single-lane track connected the estate to the main throughway to the south, but several gates interdicted it, and a number of narrow passes between natural rock outcroppings made for perfect ambush points if an invasion were attempted along it. Likewise, a ring of well-hidden Comar Tritracker Air Defense batteries meant approaching the estate in an airspeeder without authorization could be suicidal. Various sensor arrays positioned around the estate also monitored likely avenues of approach through the rain forest.

Slicing into the planetary computers and making use of Zaltin surveillance satellites, the Ashern team had pulled down realtime holograms of the estate and the thermal images of the guards on their rounds. They also found the placement of the sensor devices in the rain forest and noted the human patrols tended to concentrate on the side of the estate facing the mountains and the waterfalls. After studying the specifications for the sensors in use around the estate, they realized that the sensors on the mountain side of the estate had been muted so the movement of water and the sound from the falls wouldn’t constantly be triggering alarms.

Entering the estate, they made their approach from the far side of the mountain and ascended to the summit by dusk. Once darkness fell, they descended, keeping as close to the waterfalls as they could. They sped their descent by rappelling down beneath one of the longer falls, letting the curtain of water hide them from the estate’s sensors. Once at the base of the mountains, they moved in along the fringes of the sensors’ range, cutting a labyrinthine path through the jungle.

The SpecNav troops led the way. Though they were as big as stormtroopers, Sixtus’s men were deceptively swift and deathly quiet. Iella was more than happy they were on her side. As scary as facing stormtroopers might have been, fighting against these men would have been worse. At one point they had been selected to join the Imperial Navy’s most elite fighting unit, and the product of their skills proved that choice had been a wise one.

Iella heard a single click over her comlink, so she hurried forward, remaining low. She reached Elscol’s side and looked off in the direction where the smaller woman pointed. Silhouetted against the lights from the house she saw two Thyferran Home Defense Corps guards wandering along. Elscol tapped her finger twice against her comlink and huge shadows rose up to eclipse the guards. Iella heard no screams or shots being fired, but another double-click played over the comlink, indicating the guards had been neutralized.

The rest of the group moved up to the edge of the clearing around the estate. Barely twenty-five meters separated them from the mansion solarium. Iella dropped to one knee next to one of the guards and felt for a pulse in his neck, but her hand encountered a sticky wetness that told her all she needed to know. The sound of a stun shot being fired or the light from the blue burst could have been seen. These men had to die.

Elscol tapped two of the SpecNav soldiers on the shoulders and they sprinted forward across the lawn to the shadows beside the solarium. Iella found herself holding her breath, waiting for a reaction from the house. A single click from the comlink told her the SpecNavs felt safe. Elscol sent them a double-click, and Iella prepared herself to run.

The SpecNavs pulled an electronic device from an equipment satchel and slapped it over the solarium’s door lock. Iella saw lights on the device flicker and shift color, then five of them all burned green at the same time. They went out after three seconds at which point one of the SpecNavs pushed the door open. Another double-click came through the comlink, and Iella was up and running.

With each step she braced herself for a shot from the darkness, a burning red bolt that would hit her, lift her up and send her flying across the yard. She’d seen it happen to others before, more times than she could remember. The look of surprise on the victim’s face as confident immortality dissolved into dismay and despair haunted her. In death, especially violent death, no one ever looks pretty.

She made it to the door and passed through, then cut to the left and hugged the wall on the other side of the doorway into the main house, opposite the first SpecNav trooper. After her, came Elscol; then Sixtus. They both ran through the doorway, then double-clicked an all clear so Iella and the SpecNav moved up. Other members of the team fanned out through the mansion’s lower floor and secured it without incident.

Elscol and Sixtus moved up the stairway to the main floor. Iella followed them up and found the main floor dark save for a muted yellow light coming through one open doorway further along the main hallway. The darkness didn’t surprise her terribly much—the raid had been timed to reach the estate halfway between midnight and dawn to take advantage of the fact that most people would be asleep. That a light was still on seemed odd, but carelessness couldn’t be ruled out.

Nor can someone’s working late. That’s supposed to be Dlarit’s office. Iella crept forward cautiously. Though only ten meters separated her from the lit doorway, she took two minutes to make it that distance. At the edge of the doorway she tilted her head and got a quick glimpse into the room. What she saw prompted a smile and made her double-click her comlink and invite the others forward.

She strode into the office and shook her head. Wearing his finest Thyferran Home Defense Corps uniform, Aerin Dlarit sat sprawled in a high-backed chair behind his desk. The holoprojector plate built into the desk displayed a meter-tall replica of a monument featuring a larger-than-life statue of Dlarit atop a pedestal. The hologram slowly rotated in the air, complete with a throng of miniature well-wishers gasping and applauding at its base.

Elscol drew her blaster pistol and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Get the holocam up here. He dies a monument to his own ego and misplaced trust in the Empire.”

Iella laid a hand on her arm. “Wait, I have another idea. One that may work even better.”

“He has to die.”

“With what I have in mind, he will, but a thousand times over.” Iella drew her own pistol and clicked the selector lever over to stun. “We’ve already killed two guards, so they know we’re serious. Trust me, this will work.”

“If I don’t like it, he dies anyway.”

Iella smiled. “You’ll like it. We’ll get more play out of it.”

Iella explained, and Elscol balked until Sixtus cracked a smile. That swung Elscol over, so Iella fired one shot into the sleeping General, then set to work. The party exited the estate the same way they’d come in, and though burdened as Iella was carrying away General Aerin Dlarit’s dress uniform, the journey seemed not nearly as hard as before.

19

Commander Erisi Dlarit’s TIE Interceptor dropped from the belly of the Corrupter and let gravity seduce it down into Halanit’s atmosphere. The cant-winged craft bucked a little as it entered the frigid planet’s atmosphere, reminding Erisi that the Interceptor would surrender some of its maneuverability to friction and drag. Maneuvers she could pull in the vacuum of space would get her killed below.

The Rebels refer to these fighters as squints, but in atmosphere I prefer to think of them as winces. From the moment Ysanne Isard had appointed her to lead the Thyferran Home Defense Corps aerospace wing, Erisi had lobbied hard to equip her two squadrons with X-wings. While slower and slightly less agile than the Interceptor, the X-wing’s shields and ability to use proton torpedoes in addition to its lasers made it a superior fighter.

It mattered not at all how eloquently I argued, what facts I used, Iceheart would never have agreed to my request. Erisi realized her own sense of superiority had collided full on with Isard’s need to see anything and everything Imperial as better than anything the Alliance had to oppose it. Isard sees herself as the pinnacle of Imperial excellence and demands that everything else rises to her level. What I or others know counts as nothing to her because we are not up to her standards.

Erisi really couldn’t blame Isard for treating the Thyferrans and the THDC as the Empire’s stupid, inbred cousins. Though the Corrupter had already been en route to Halanit when the Ashern raid took place, word of it had been communicated to the ship. Her cheeks burned as the image of her father slumped naked in his chair exploded in her mind. Mortifying in the extreme, the incident meant that the Corrupter’s Imperial crew felt no reason to hide their contempt for the THDC personnel on board.

The fact that her father had been involved hurt her deeply. What made it even worse was that Iella Wessiri had been identified from the hologram. The Imps took that as a sign that Antilles had entered into a full alliance with the Ashern, but Erisi read more into Iella’s participation. Iella caused my father to be embarrassed so as to get at me, to avenge herself for my betrayal of Corran and the rest of the Rogues. This was a message directed at me by her—a private declaration of war.

Erisi glanced at her monitor and snarled into the comm unit. “Four, close the formation up.” Behind her four Interceptors came a quartet of the double-hulled TIE bombers. Her Interceptors were nominally flying cover for the bombers, though once they dropped their thermal detonators and proton bombs to open up the main colony, the Interceptors’ mission changed to engaging ground targets and suppressing fire at the stormtrooper-laden shuttles that would follow.

The TIE bombers swooped down through the air and spiraled in on their target. Erisi and her flight came around to follow them in. She couldn’t help but remember countless training exercises where she’d used an X-wing to stoop like a hawk-bat on such lumbering craft. Two would be dead in my initial pass and the others would die as they attempted to flee.

Below her, the bombers began their runs. The thermal detonators fell lazily from the bombers as if harmless. Their explosions flashed golden light through the glacier and bled up into the great gouts of steam they produced. The light breeze below quickly cleared the steam off, revealing a hole roughly a kilometer around and nearly half that deep. Steaming water pooled in the bottom of it, and Erisi knew the thermal detonators had cleared the glacier down to the transparisteel canopy that protected the Halanit colony from the harsh climate of their world.

The bombers’ second pass eliminated the canopy. The high-yield proton bombs shattered the transparisteel shield, fragmenting the sheets at ground zero. A shock wave rippled through the double-walled barrier, ripping whole transparisteel plates free from both layers as it went. The warm air from beneath the shield rushed upward, blowing debris up and out, then condensed in the frigid air. At the same time, around the hole’s jagged edges, cold air poured down into the colony.

Rolling her Interceptor up on the port stabilizer assembly, Erisi spiraled the fighter down in through the hole the bombs had created. The chasm into which she flew stretched out above and below her fighter like the grandest of Coruscant’s boulevards. Long suspension bridges linked both sides of the chasm at various levels and quickly icing-over waterfalls splashed their way down into the depths in front of her. Lights from hundreds of viewports dotted the chasm’s depths with yellow circles and squares.

Erisi hit the triggers on her lasers. A stream of green laser darts scored a ragged line along one face of the chasm, piercing the viewports and reducing them to darkness. As she shot, she glanced at her primary monitor, waiting for the missile warning alarm to be activated. It’s going to be missiles or turbolasers, and if they’re going to use them, it’ll have to be now.

She continued her flight deeper and deeper, strafing targets as she went. One line of fire scattered a crowd on a balcony. Another swept across a foot bridge, chasing a man who foolishly thought himself faster than a laser bolt. Nearing the bottom of the chasm, she chopped her throttle back and pulled up in a loop, but not before filling the ice-crusted pools below with enough laser energy to start them boiling.

She knew, with the canopy being breached and the ichthyoculture pools having been transformed into giant stewpots that the Halanit colony was dead. Those who didn’t freeze to death would starve—each a terrible way to die. She realized that her old comrades in Rogue Squadron would be horrified at the carnage, as she would have been if the Empire had carried this attack out on Thyferra, but she felt no remorse for the people doomed by her action.

They were already dead. Their need for bacta had been desperate, because without it their marginal colony could not survive. They could not afford bacta because their colony was so poor, hence anyone with enough neurons to form a synapse would have seen that the only sensible thing to do was to abandon Halanit or choose a method of exploiting the world to generate enough money so it could sustain itself.

I have no obligation to save the stupid from themselves. Even if we had given them bacta, another crisis would have wiped them out. The fact that they refused to face reality does not make it incumbent upon me to shield them from the disaster they so fervently court. Erisi’s eyes narrowed as she started a strafing run back toward the surface. And they compounded their stupidity by consorting with thieves and using bacta for which they could not pay.

Despite the lack of fire defending the colony, she knew they were anything but a defenseless, inoffensive community. Their accepting the bacta from Wedge and the others was the equivalent of stabbing a knife into the Thyferran economy. If Thyferra allowed them to do what they did, other worlds would similarly duck their obligations. Other individuals would emulate Wedge, and pirates would swarm over the bacta convoys. The rightful reward for providing a vital fluid to the galaxy would be denied to Thyferra in an attack as destructive as the one she was mounting.

Rocketing up through the hole in the shield, Erisi rolled out and began a long elliptical orbit over the breached shield. “Interceptor One reporting. No hostile antiship fire in evidence.”

“We copy, One. The Captain congratulates you on your run and requests you join him for the march through the colony.”

“I copy, Control. As ordered.” Erisi smiled. We’ve shown Convarion that THDC pilots are not the incompetent nerf-brains he thought we were. Now he will show me how powerful stormtroopers are so I won’t forget who is superior to whom. Not that I ever could, but I shall say nothing. Convarion would never believe himself to be my subordinate anyway.

Gavin didn’t realize it was an explosion that had awakened him until a second and third blast sounded. He threw off thick layers of blankets—his Tatooine upbringing guaranteed that he felt cold even in Halanit’s hot baths—and snarled as he thrust his feet into cold boots. He fastened them, then stood and strapped on his blaster belt as Farl Cort appeared in the doorway of his room. “What’s happening?”

Before Cort could answer, Gavin’s ears popped with the change in the colony’s air pressure. Air began to rush out of the room, tugging at the hem of Cort’s cloak. The little man’s face went ashen. “They’ve breached the shield.”

Gavin grabbed him before he could fall. “Who’s they?”

“Imperials, I guess. There’s a Star Destroyer in orbit.”

“Sithspawn! You should have gotten me up when it arrived.” Gavin wanted to pound his head against the wall. He had been certain that he’d been careful enough to hide his trail so the Corrupter couldn’t follow him. When it showed up at the convoy hijacking, he’d immediately broken his flight and dove away from it. The Xucphra Alazhi’s bulk shielded him from the destroyer’s turbolasers. He knew he was dead unless he exercised the only option available to him, a jump to lightspeed, which he did blindly.

He held the jump for fifteen seconds, which were the longest fifteen seconds in his life. Jumping blind into hyperspace was about as stupid as making fat jokes around a Hutt, and nearly always as fatal. Coming out of hyperspace, he made a quick read of the area and had his R2 unit plot another short jump. He put his ship through a series of seven such small jumps, doubling back and forth, then took a long jump out toward the Rim. He landed on a small planet, got into and out of some trouble there, and then began his run back to Yag’Dhul.

Because astronavigation had never been his strength, he was limited in his choices of destinations. To make the trip back as quickly as possible, making a long run to Halanit was his best route because, from there, the trip to Yag’Dhul could be accomplished with several short hops. He also thought there might be an off-chance that Corran and Ooryl wouldn’t have left Halanit by the time he got there. Traveling to Halanit would run him pretty much out of fuel. He hoped the Halanits would give him some in return for the bacta they’d been given, and with Corran being there he was certain they would fuel him up.

Despite Corran’s absence, the Halanits had been more than happy to give Gavin fuel, but the problem was that they needed to synthesize it first. The process of refueling his fighter was to take two days, during which they tried to make him feel as much at home as possible. On a world sheathed in ice, with abundant amounts of water and a cuisine based on fish, making a Tatooine native feel at home was not easy.

And now Corrupter has tracked me here, so I repay their hospitality with death. Gavin growled incoherently, then stopped and forced himself to think clearly. He thumbed on the comlink clipped to the lapel of his flightsuit. “Jawaswag, give me a system start, now!”

His R2 tootled something back at him.

“I don’t care, just do it. Turn on the fuel pumps and suck their synthesizer dry if you have to. Gavin out.” He lifted Cort away from his slump against the wall and set him on his feet. “Get me to the utility hangar, now!”

Cort’s brown eyes unglazed. “Utility hangar, yes. Come, it’s on the other side of the chasm.”

Cort led Gavin from the apartment he’d been given and out into one of the subterranean corridors running toward the chasm. Screaming people had begun to fill the corridor, but the small man deftly cut through them. Gavin shouldered his way through the thickening crowd and caught up with Cort as they reached the walkway across the chasm.

Gavin grabbed the back of Cort’s cloak and yanked him back out of the way of a green laser bolt. More of them played out in a line across the walkway, chasing down and burning the legs from a running man. The man’s screams were swallowed by the whine of a TIE Interceptor as it streaked past and he rolled from the walkway to fall to oblivion.

“Now, go!” Gavin’s shout carried above the screeching of the other Interceptors strafing the chasm. Gavin started running, letting his long legs devour the distance. He let every ounce of panic he felt fuel his run, and he knew he was running faster than he ever had before. His lungs burned and his breath steamed, but the echoed whines of Interceptor engines wouldn’t let him stop until he reached the far side and the safety of the tunneled corridor.

Cort arrived two steps after he did, adrenaline having lent him speed enough to almost match the taller man’s pace. Cort moved into the lead, cutting and weaving through corridors and down ramps until they came out into a huge subterranean cavern with a huge steaming lake, two bacta-storage cylinders, a variety of old Zenomach and other tunneling devices, and Gavin’s X-wing.

His fighter had been painted gold, with light red-orange crescents creating a scalelike pattern. Near the front of the fighter, a mouth had been painted with large, white, daggerlike teeth; the proton torpedo launching ports had become the pupils of eyes. When asked how he wanted his X-wing decorated, he’d chosen to make it over in the image of a krayt dragon, the most fearsome predator on all of Tatooine.

He turned back to Cort. “Look, this is my fault. They’re here after me. I’ll take off and lead them in a chase away from here. Get your people into defensible positions and hold out. These tunnels will make it tough on stormtroopers, so they’ll withdraw when I’m gone.”

Cort shook his head. “We have no weapons.”

The plaintive tone in his voice punched Gavin straight in the heart. “I never should have come here.” He drew his blaster and pressed it into Cort’s hands. “Take this, do what you can. I’ll do something.”

Gavin ran to his X-wing and clambered up on a mole-miner to boost himself into the cockpit. Cort disconnected the refueling lines, then backed away and tossed Gavin a salute. Gavin returned it, then pulled on his helmet and fastened his restraining straps. He left his life-support gear on the floor of the cockpit, disdainful of the time it would take to pull it on. If I go down out there, I’m dead anyway, so it doesn’t much matter.

He cut in the repulsor-lift generators, retracted the landing gear, and feathered the throttle forward. The X-wing headed toward the retracting metal doorway built into the mouth of the cavern. Beyond it, Gavin saw a translucent glowing wall of white that he realized was snow that had drifted in against the door. He thumbed his fire-control to lasers and linked them for dual fire, then hit the trigger. The snow barrier evaporated, so Gavin kicked his throttle forward and shot out into the Halanit sky.

Keeping the X-wing low enough to skim the drifts, he headed out in a long loop through a valley that curved around to the north. Three kilometers out from the cavern he rolled up on the starboard S-foil and began to climb. As his sensors began to pick up Imp fighters, he reached up and flipped the switch that brought his S-foils into attack position and locked them.

A glance at his fuel indicator told him he had ten minutes for fighting before he made his run out of the system. Halanit itself created a fairly insignificant gravity shadow in hyperspace—he needed to get away from the gas giant around which it orbited. No problem—ten minutes is more than enough time to make the Imps angry enough to chase me.

Jawaswag beeped at him and Gavin smiled. “You’re right, the Imps are flying in formation. They want to make this easy. Acquire One, Two, and Three.” With the sensor signature of each locked into his fire-control computer, Gavin kept his fighter on the deck and closed to proton torpedo range. That course had him flying directly at the rising column of smoke and steam coming from the holed canopy.

“Jawaswag get me a sensor record of all this, visual and everything.”

The droid hooted his assent.

Gavin waited until he hit the outer fringes of range, then popped his weapons control over to proton torpedoes. He set them for single fire, then acquired the first Interceptor. His head-up display went from yellow to red and the R2’s keening wail filled the cockpit. He hit the trigger, shifted to the second target, got a tone, and fired a second torpedo.

The first torpedo lanced up from the snowy landscape and smashed full into the Interceptor’s cockpit. The subsequent explosion shredded the Quadanium solar panels, sowing chaff and debris in the path of the other two TIEs. The second torpedo blasted into the left wing of its target, snapping it off, then exploded right behind the cockpit. The Interceptor just disintegrated, its scattered pieces clipping the last Interceptor.

That squint immediately heeled over in a roll and dove for the planet. Gavin tried to get a lock on it, but it fell too quickly. Slight adjustments to its course told him it was still under power, but he doubted the pilot could recover from that sharp a dive. He’s going in.

Gavin braced for the explosion and fireball as he came up over a little crest, but the Interceptor didn’t crash. Instead it plunged in through the base of the steam plume and into the chasm that was the heart of the Halanit colony.

No one gets away that easy. Gavin switched back to lasers and brought the X-wing up in a lazy loop that he took over the top. The black hole in the planet’s white blanket loomed before him like the mouth of a krayt dragon. He ignored the spark of fear in his guts and evened out the power to his shields. The people of Halanit might be defenseless, but I’m not. Now you pay for the fun you’ve had.

Erisi spotted the two Lambda-class shuttles flying down. Their wings began to retract as they prepared to land near the colony’s surface entrance. She brought her Interceptor around and vectored in toward the landing site. With the flick of a switch she cut in her repulsor-lift coils and extended the Interceptor’s landing gear, even though she expected them to sink into the snow. Nice to have a ship with the hatch on top.

She keyed her comm unit. “Bascome, you have command of the flight. Continue to orbit but do not make another chasm run unless it is specifically requested of you.”

“As ordered, Commander.”

The first shuttle landed and disgorged two squads of stormtroopers in their cold weather gear. The stormtroopers dashed into the opening of an ice cavern the colony used as a shelter for visitors’ personal spacecraft. Red lights flashed from within, bathing the snow with the color of blood, then some black smoke slowly drifted up through the narrow opening.

Looks like they’re in. Erisi waited for the second shuttle to land before she popped the hatch on her fighter. The cold immediately cut through her flightsuit; yet despite it, she removed her heavy helmet. The sweat in her hair froze immediately, but she ignored it. Climbing up out of the hatch, she slid down the curve of the cockpit and found the snow crust sufficiently solid to bear her weight. Leaving her blaster in the shoulder holster she wore, she strode across Halanit’s frozen face and fell in beside the black-clad Captain Ait Convarion.

The Imperial officer acknowledged her presence with a nod she felt was calculated to be mildly dismissive of her even though she towered over him. Sandwiched between stormtrooper phalanxes, they wordlessly made their way into the ice cavern and to the heat-lock beyond it. The doors had been blasted open, and the rush of warm air filled the cavern. Steam and smoke hovered in a low cloud, trapped by the cavern’s roof.

Convarion preceded her into a rough-hewn tunnel, stepping over the sprawled body of a civilian. They continued on until they reached a vista point at one end of an elevated walkway bridging both sides of the chasm. Stormtroopers held both sides of it, with the pair guarding that end bringing their blaster carbines up across their chests when Convarion appeared.

Fists planted on his hips, Convarion surveyed the damage. Screams echoed through the chasm, chased by the piercing whine of blaster fire. Red lights lit previously dark transparisteel viewports and red laser bolts reached out to knock fleeing figures from some of the other bridges.

Convarion looked back over his shoulder at Erisi. “You were unopposed in here?”

“Yes, Captain, we were. Flying in here was not easy, but we made our passes without mishap.”

“Good. Wouldn’t want your people to get bloodied in their first engagement.” He waved his right hand around to take in the whole of the colony. “My stormtroopers will neutralize the major pockets of resistance, then your people can come down and finish things up.”

Convarion’s condescension could have been cut with a vibroblade, but Erisi chose to ignore it. “As you will, Captain Convarion. Those of us from Thyferra much appreciate your diligence in helping us prosecute those who would victimize us.”

The scream of an Interceptor diving into the chasm overrode Convarion’s reply. As it passed the bridge, a pair of red laser bolts pierced the ion-engine exhaust vector system, spraying half-melted louvers out in its backwash. The Interceptor began a roll that ended in a brilliant explosion as it hammered one of the lower walkways. The ferrocrete decking undulated out away from the impact point, crumbling with the wave front. It held for a moment or two, then, piece by piece, began to rain stone into the depths.

As terrifying as that was, it was nothing compared to the sight of the X-wing swooping through the chasm. Painted like a brutal, fearsome creature, it appeared more like a predator seeking prey than a war machine piloted by the enemy. Without being able to identify the pilot as he flashed past, Erisi knew it was one of her old squadron-mates.

And she knew the only way she would survive was to get back to her Interceptor and shoot him down.

Gavin flew past the collapsing walkway and saw a hail of laser bolts streaking past him from all angles. Small arms fire. No real threat. He smiled grimly, pulled back on his throttle to reverse his thrust and cut in his repulsor-lift coils. He flipped the X-wing’s lasers over to single fire, then applied enough rudder to bring the fighter’s nose around toward his tormentors. He leveled the fighter out, killed his thrust, then let the repulsor-lift coils propel him up through the chasm.

Using his rudder pedals, he turned the ship left and right. He dropped his crosshairs on the stormtroopers shooting at him and returned their fire. Whereas their laser bolts skipped harmlessly off the X-wing’s shields, his shots proved to be anything but harmless. It wasn’t that they were sufficiently powerful to pierce a stormtrooper’s armored chestplate as much as they evaporated it, and most of the person beneath it.

Part of Gavin rebelled at the slaughter. The stormtroopers had no chance of survival facing him, but they did not break and run. They stood their ground, giving their lives for the dead creation of a dead Emperor. They gain nothing from this. Why? Given enough time, I will kill them all.

Gavin slowly nodded. Right, they’re buying time. The Corrupter is scrambling more TIEs. If I stick around, I’m not leaving.

He kicked his throttle in and sped up his ascent. He still sprayed knots of stormtroopers and concentrated a lot of fire on the uppermost region, trying to get the one black Imperial uniform lurking amid a squad of stormtroopers. Most of them went down, but he couldn’t tell if he got the officer or not. Analysis of the sensor data may answer that question. I hope so.

Realizing he had done all he could for the people of Halanit, Gavin accelerated the X-wing and launched it through the hole in the transparisteel shield. “They’ll pay, Cort, they’ll pay dearly for this.” Rolling out to port, he pointed his fighter west and began his run home.

Erisi pulled the Interceptor’s hatch shut and dropped into the pilot’s seat as the X-wing jetted up and out through the shield hole. She pulled on her helmet and strapped in, then went for an engine start.

Both refused.

Diagnostics scrolled over her primary monitor. Reactor chambers are too cold for a start. She punched up a directory of systems software, then worked her way down through a hierarchy of choices until she got to a list of emergency overrides. She glanced at her weapons display, then picked a program that drained the energy from her lasers into the reactor cores to warm them enough for a restart. She waited until the temperature had climbed sufficiently, then restarted the engines.

The twin ion engines roared to life and sent a gentle thrum through the cockpit. Erisi shunted energy back into recharging the lasers, then cut the repulsor-lift generators in, retracted the landing gear, and throttled up to head after the X-wing. Coming up and around, she dropped her Interceptor on his tail, but saw he already had ten kilometers worth of lead over her. Even with the Interceptor’s greater speed, I won’t catch him before he escapes the atmosphere and goes to lightspeed.

Erisi reached over and punched up a broad band frequency selection for her comm unit. “Fleeing X-wing, this is Commander Erisi Dlarit of the Thyferran Home Defense Corps. Land at once or be destroyed.”

“Erisi?”

She recognized the voice immediately. “Gavin? Listen to me. You have to stop. If you don’t, they’ll get you.”

“Don’t you mean you’ll get me?”

Erisi smiled. “No, the Imps will get you. Surrender to me and I can protect you from them.”

“How should I do that? Give you my override codes so I end up like Corran?” Gavin’s laughter stung her ears. “You want me, come get me.”

“I would if you weren’t so intent on running.” By shunting more energy to her engines, she could increase her speed, but her lasers would have no power to shoot Gavin when she caught him. If I had proton torpedoes, on the other hand … Iceheart is a fool. “I never would have thought you a coward, Gavin.”

Gavin laughed again. “A year ago, maybe even three months ago, you could have gotten me to turn back with that taunt, but not now. I’m not nearly as stupid as you’d need, for me to engage you while Corrupter comes around and cuts me off.”

“Rationalize your cowardice any way you want, Gavin.” She knew she couldn’t get him to turn around, so she tried to hurt him as their ships left Halanit’s atmosphere. “Run away so you can come back later. Know you’ve doomed the people of Halanit. And know I’ll kill you when next we meet.”

“You’ll pay for what you’ve done here, Erisi.” Emotion filled Gavin’s words, pinching their tone. “For you, getting out of this alive will be impossible.”

“Impossible is what Rogues do best.”

“Yeah, but you were never really a Rogue, were you?”

Kilometers began to scroll up impossibly quickly on Erisi’s range finder as the X-wing ran up to lightspeed and entered hyperspace. Erisi watched it vanish, then pulled back on the Interceptor’s yoke and looped the fighter back toward Halanit. No, I was never a Rogue, Gavin. I never relinquished my grip on reality.

She smiled as the Corrupter came into view around the curve of the moon. “I know where the true power in the galaxy is, and I know that if you keep trying to defy the impossible, eventually you fail. This is your time to fail.”

20

The feeling in Corran’s gut was as cold as Wedge’s narration of the holographic imaging from Gavin’s X-wing. At various points in the presentation Winter hit keys on the datapad connected to the holoprojector. The image froze, then the computer enlarged and enhanced an image from the background. They’re all of dead bodies—dead civilian bodies.

Corran shivered and felt Mirax gently rub her hand along his spine. I was there not a week before this happened. I probably talked to some of those people, ate with them, joked with them. Corran realized that, as he had with his comrades in CorSec, he had mentally prepared himself for losing friends who were in the squadron. All of them accepted the risks of warfare and all of them had the same things at stake. Riv Shiel’s death had surprised him, but he was able to tell himself that Shiel had died well, in combat, just as he would have wanted to go.

The people of Halanit however … He shook his head. “They were never meant to find themselves in that situation.”

Mirax leaned heavily against him. “I know, but Isard put them there, you didn’t.”

The glow panels in the small briefing room came up, in no way easing the severe expression on Wedge’s face. “First I want to state publicly that, in my opinion, Gavin could have done nothing more than he did at Halanit. While he has felt he somehow led the Corrupter to Halanit, we know that isn’t true. Halanit stopped asking anyone but us for bacta after our first run, and the tanker pilots knew where they had dropped off a supply. It was easy for Iceheart to tag them as a target—I’m fairly certain she would have found out who we had supplied no matter how we got the bacta to the worlds, but we could have made it tougher for her. The fact is that Iceheart has publicized what happened at Halanit to frighten others into paying Thyferra for the gift of bacta we made to them.”

Wedge’s brown eyes narrowed. “Since Gavin’s departure, there has been no direct communication from Halanit. According to the messages Iceheart has sent out, the Corrupter initiated a planetary barrage that expanded upon the damage the bombers and stormtroopers had inflicted. It is my assumption that no one was left living in the colony. I’m fairly certain that after all was said and done, the place was sown with mines and other boobytraps to kill survivors or rescuers.”

Nawara Ven’s braintails twitched. “So you’re saying we’re not going to try to save any of the people there.”

Wedge shook his head, his reluctance to forgo such a mission thick in his voice. “We do not have the ships we need to help them. If even one-tenth of the individuals there survived, that would dwarf our transport capabilities. I do know the New Republic is sending some ships to Halanit, but they don’t expect to find survivors either.”

He opened his hands. “I know that’s not easy for any of you to hear. Innocent individuals have suffered because of something we did, but what we did meant they lived just that much longer. Had we not acted, that colony would have been dead weeks ago. We kept it going that much longer. We were able to lift a blanket of oppression and misery from them, and this disaster cannot devalue what we did. Iceheart made choices that raised our conflict to another level.”

“She has to pay.” Gavin hammered a fist down onto the arm of his chair. “Iceheart and Erisi and all of them have to pay.”

“And pay they will.” The edge sliding into Wedge’s voice brought Corran’s head up. “Ysanne Isard has forgotten the lesson she taught the Rebellion by giving us a sick Coruscant. She’s forgotten that our strength is our freedom and her weakness is her link to the sources of production for bacta. We can go anywhere and be anywhere, but she’s limited. She is limited in how much she can cover, so we can hit her where she’s open and run when she has our targets protected.”

Inyri Forge raised a hand. “But we ran this time, and she hit an innocent world. How do we prevent that from happening again?”

“Two ways. First, with Booster’s help, we’ll deal the bacta we capture to traders and let them sell it. The price is high enough for them to accept the risks. We can have them undercut Isard’s prices or we cut them off from future shipments. In return we can get the arms, munitions, and spare parts we need to continue doing what we’re doing. We’ll insulate places by allowing them to deny knowing where the bacta came from and we’ll make traders very happy with us. The traders become a cutout for us and Isard can’t complain too loudly about them because if she does, she loses access to the supplies she needs to maintain her forces.

“Second and more important, we have a score to settle with her. Thyferra has dozens of small bacta-producing colonies out there. We’re going to pick one and destroy it. The mission will be dirty and dangerous. What bacta we can’t haul away we’ll destroy. And we’ll let her know that we’ll continue to hit her colonies every time she takes her war to an innocent party.”

He brought his hands together. “There are analogies that can be drawn between Halanit and Alderaan, and I wish neither incident had happened. What’s important to remember is that both worlds died because evil has been allowed to run unchecked. In our pleasure at defeating the Empire, it’s all too easy to ignore the nasty bits and pieces of its evil that survived. The New Republic is out hunting down Warlord Zsinj. I’m sure, out there, somewhere, there are still people who will yet come forward to overthrow what we’ve done and try to reestablish the Empire. This war is really far from over, but if we don’t realize that and act accordingly, there will be more Alderaans, more Halanits.

“All of us have tried to keep this idea uppermost in our minds, but we saw a diminished Isard as a diminished threat. I know I was doing that, not consciously, but I still was doing it. No more.” Wedge’s hands folded down into fists and crashed against each other. “Isard is killing innocents, extorting money, enslaving the Vratix, and holding prisoners we want freed. Each and every single thing we do from this point forward is going to be part of the plan to bring her down.”

“However.” Wedge’s voice took on a huskiness. “This war isn’t going to be over fast. After this strike at a bacta colony, we’ll be moving into a protracted conflict where we’ll be more pirate than we are army. It will be exhausting but, as long as she doesn’t get her hands on an Interdictor Cruiser, we’ll be able to stay ahead of her and wear her down. We’ll frustrate her and make her impatient. Then we’ll have her.”

Corran found himself smiling. Wedge was correct in that without an Interdictor Cruiser to prevent the X-wings from running and hiding in hyperspace, Iceheart’s navy would be ineffective against them. We’re okay unless someone jumps in on top of a ship the way the Corrupter did. Barring that, we can fly in, shoot off a bunch of proton torpedoes, take out some freighters, and flee before Iceheart can stop us. As long as we don’t run out of torpedoes, we should be fine.

Wedge’s head came up. “Tycho and I are working with Bror Jace on compiling a list of viable targets for our punitive strike. When we have a selection made we’ll convene another meeting and begin planning of the operation. Until then, your time is your own, but stay here on the station. We’ll go when we have a plan in place, and I’m hoping that will be sooner than later. Thanks. You’re all dismissed.”

Corran sat back for a moment, then let Mirax tug him to his feet. “Lots to think about.”

She nodded in agreement and slipped her left arm over his shoulders. “I don’t know about you, but I want a drink and something to eat. Do you want to hit a tapcaf?”

“Sure. How about the Hype?”

“Food’s better at Flarestar.”

“Actually the service is better at Flarestar, but I prefer the decor at Hyperspace.” Flarestar tended to be rather dark and quiet, while Hyperspace was as brilliantly lit as its namesake. “The mood I’m drifting into isn’t one I want to aid and abet with dim light.”

Mirax gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Lead the way.”

They walked to the station’s core and took the turbolift up to the first of the docking ring’s decks. Hyperspace’s well-lit opening beckoned to them from opposite the lift. The decor consisted mostly of pinks, yellows, and white jumbled together in an odd, asymmetrical manner that Corran found somehow comforting. He’d decided it was that the color selection was repulsive, but the strange angles and mixing prevented any of it from being overwhelming. The Trandoshan who ran the place seemed to have a quasi-mystical respect for shape and form, often seating people in the tapcaf in a way that accentuated the establishment’s visual chaos.

They followed the large sauroid to a corner booth big enough for the entire squadron. Corran considered it wishful thinking on her part. The booth was far enough away from the other patrons that he felt he could talk with Mirax without surrendering privacy, so the Trandoshan’s choice suited him perfectly. A motley silver-and-gold 3PO droid came over to take their order, then bounced off to fill it.

Corran picked at a chipped area of the duraplast table’s edge with his thumbnail. “Wedge made some good points in there. I think he’s right that all of us had really stopped thinking about the seriousness of what we were doing. Face it, since Blackmoon, aside from me, the squadron had really lost no one. I showed back up and that helped reinforce our feeling that we were invincible. Tycho joined us, then Bror reappears, and we’re suddenly reinforced by some of the best pilots the Rebellion ever had.”

“The unit has felt more relaxed.” Mirax shrugged. “I think that’s only partly because of the successes you’ve had. You are good, but I think you’ve all underestimated your opposition. Sure, Isard had to run, and she’s trapped herself on Thyferra; but she’s still tough. Captain Convarion is very aggressive. Avarice’s Captain Sair Yonka is very smart and calculating—the antithesis of us Corellians because he does care what the odds are and does everything he can to maximize his chances of survival. He’s spent much of his career on ships in the Outer Rim chasing down pirates and protecting convoys, so he understands very well what Isard has him doing.

“The Virulence’s Joak Drysso is a stalwart Imperial. I think he’s working with Isard as much to strike back at the Rebellion as he is for any other reason. I was talking with my father, and it’s his guess that Drysso will move over to take command of the Lusanka—assuming, of course, Isard was in command of it to this point. Drysso’s Executive Officer is Captain Lakwii Varrscha, so she’ll be moved up in his place. I had to outrun her when she was commanding a Customs corvette. Tactics weren’t innovative—standard Imp, utterly by the book—but tactics for an Imperial Star Destroyer have never really been subtle anyway.”

Corran nodded as the serving droid put tumblers of Corellian whisky in front of them, then accompanied it with a steaming, tentacled mass of noodles and thin-sliced vegetables drenched in a green sauce. “Thanks, I think.” He glanced at Mirax as the droid retreated. “Is this what we ordered?”

“I think so.” She stabbed a fork into it, twirled it and lifted a dripping noodle coil to her mouth. She chewed for a moment, then swallowed. “Unrecognizable, but not inedible.”

“Your enthusiasm is underwhelming.” Corran poked around the food with his fork, speared something crunchy and popped it into his mouth. The sauce seemed a bit hot, but it was flavorful and cleared his sinuses, so he decided against complaining. “Not bad. I also think you’re right on in pointing out that we have been underestimating Isard and her people. Part of it is because Erisi joined them—I think we have a vested interest in seeing her in a negative light. That could easily be a fatal mistake. We need our edge back, and I think Wedge is going to beat that idea into our brains from this point forward.”

Corran looked up as Ooryl entered the tapcaf and waved him over. The Gand hesitated for a moment, looked back out into the concourse, then nodded. As he made his way through the jumble of tables, Corran saw three other Gands trailing in his wake, like mynock splitlings drafting off their parent. Only one of them equaled Ooryl’s size—the other two probably massed as much as Ooryl but wore most of it around their middles. I wonder how that works with an exoskeleton?

Ooryl stopped at the edge of the table. “Greetings Corran and Mirax. It is Qrygg’s honor to present to you three Gands from Qrygg’s homeworld of Gand. They are Ussar Vlee, Syron Aalun, and Vviir Wiamdi.”

The larger of the three bowed his head. “I speak for all three of us when I say we are most pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Though the Gand’s speech had the guttural tones and clicks of Ooryl’s normal voice, Corran found himself having a hard time comprehending what was said. He knew he should have understood it easily—it was only a greeting—but the use of personal pronouns surprised him. Ooryl explained long ago that Gands considered it the height of presumption to use personal pronouns to refer to themselves, because it arrogantly assumes the listeners know who the speaker is. Only after having done something so memorable that such an assumption can be made can a Gand refer to himself as “I.”

Mirax covered for Corran. “We’re very pleased to meet you as well. Ooryl is a good friend, so we are honored to meet his friends.”

Ooryl quivered for a second. “Qrygg is sorry for your misinterpretation because Qrygg knows it is Qrygg’s fault, Mirax. These Gands are not Qrygg’s friends. They are ruetsavii.” Ooryl’s mouth parts closed for a moment, then snapped back open. “In Basic they would be something like observers or examiners, but more than either.”

Corran raised an eyebrow. “They’re your superiors?”

The taller Gand—Vviir Wiamdi by order of introduction—exaggerated the shaking of his head. “We have been sent by the Elders of Gand to watch Ooryl Qrygg. We are to chronicle Qrygg’s existence and to criticize it. It is a great honor.”

Ooryl doesn’t seem to think it’s that great an honor by the look of him. Corran smiled. “If there is any way I may be of assistance to you, please do not hesitate to let me know what I can do. Ooryl and I have spent much time together, and he’s saved my life more times than I care to remember.”

All three Gands nodded their heads sagely, but Corran was uncertain he was reading their body language correctly. I’m not sure I can read them at all, and I doubt I’m going to get a good explanation from Ooryl. Corran looked over at Mirax, but she didn’t seem to be any more confident of her judgment of the Gands than he was. One more thing to learn about, which is why this galaxy will never be dull.

Corran pointed to the open area in the booth. “Would you care to join us?”

Ooryl shook his head. “Now it is time for Qrygg to interface with Zraii and tend to Qrygg’s X-wing. After that, the schedule allows for dining.”

Vviir bowed his head again. “I beg your forgiveness for this interruption. We will watch you interact with Qrygg at a later date.” He turned and led the procession back out of the tapcaf with Ooryl drawn along in the trio’s wake like an X-wing tractored to a freighter.

Mirax raised an eyebrow. “What was all that about?”

“Not a clue.”

“And Ooryl’s not going to tell you anything, either.” She pointed in their direction with her fork. “I’ve never heard of, let alone seen, a group of Gands wandering around together. Very odd.”

Corran shrugged and attacked his food. “Twi’leks have joined us, and now we have some Gands with us. I don’t understand it, nor do I need to understand it. I just hope Iceheart gets as confused by it as I am.”

21

Under other circumstances Wedge Antilles thought he might have liked Qretu 5. The ring of asteroids surrounding the planet that provided his people with cover against ground-based early-warning systems had looked wonderful in the night sky in all the holograms he had studied. The world’s moist and warm climate encouraged the growth of lush green foliage, over the tops of which Wedge’s X-wing whisked at dizzying speed. Mountains upthrust by colliding tectonic plates also hid the fighters from their target, providing the personnel at the Q5A7 Bacta Refinement Plant no warning about the impending attack.

Wedge’s force was flying in at a strength of twenty-four—two squadrons’ worth of snubfighters. The three losses to the Corrupter had been replaced by the Gand ruetsavii and their curious ships. The Gands flew heavily modified TIE bombers. The Quadanium solar panels at the front had been cut on the diagonal bias like those of TIE Interceptors and had a central cutout to provide the pilot with peripheral vision. The bomb delivery system in the secondary hull had been scrapped in favor of a concussion missile launching system with a six-missile magazine, then a hyperdrive motivator and shield generators had been added. Two lasers completed their weapons array. While the Gand bombers were still slow, the shields were strong; and Wedge found the ships preferable to Y-wings for the long-range raid they were making.

He had not intended to have the Gands come along on the mission, but Ooryl had insisted they would anyway since they were ruetsavii—and what exactly that meant Wedge was as yet uncertain. In the preliminary and simulator runs they made on the mission, the Gands had proved very competent and skillful, though Wedge thought Ooryl could outfly all of them.

Wedge checked the chronographic readout on his main screen, then glanced up at the horizon. The mountains are right where they’re supposed to be. Over the rise and the valley should take us right in on target. Pulling back on the X-wing’s stick, he brought his fighter up so the sun rising at his back could illuminate his X-wing. He reached up with his right hand, flicking the switch that brought the S-foils into attack position, then keyed his comm unit. “Rogues, we go in. Chir’daki, stand by.”

Tugging his stick to the right, he kicked the X-wing into a barrel roll to starboard, then leveled out and began his run through the valley. The mountains rose up off both S-foils but were far enough away that Wedge didn’t feel as cramped as he did on the Death Star trench run or even the conduit mission on Borleias. His onboard computer matched the terrain to the mission map it had in memory, sounded a mild drift alarm and Wedge corrected the problem almost unconsciously.

Wedge thumbed the controls over to proton torpedoes and linked the fire of both launch tubes. He kept his hand easy on the stick, nudging the craft this way and that, then shot out over the edge of a three-hundred-meter-tall cliff. As he rolled, he saw a black valley dotted with lights and brought his fighter around on a heading for a large dark block with flashing red and yellow lights on each of its corners. His targeting crosshairs dropped into the shadowed outline and he pulled the trigger.

Two proton torpedoes shot out on tongues of blue flame and streaked away at the building. They hit barely nanoseconds apart and detonated just after punching through the ferrocrete wall. Their subsequent explosions vomited argent fire out through their entry holes, then through the roof and out the windows on the upper three floors. The roof collapsed in on itself, leaving the fire on the building’s interior lighting up the night like magma in a volcano’s heart.

With a flick of his thumb Wedge shifted the X-wing over to laser fire and left it firing single shots in sequence. Triggering a burst of fire, he sent a hail of red laser bolts burning through the night. His shots tracked over the main refinery building and down through the darkness. Something he hit exploded brilliantly, sending a red-gold fireball into the air. It imploded but still bumped him around as he flew through where it had been, then he was over the bay and starting a long loop over Qretu 5’s largest ocean.

As he came around he got a chance to look back at the Q5A7 plant and felt his stomach fold in on itself. The cliff wall and the waters of the bay reflected the light from the burning refinery, magnifying it and spreading it all over the valley. The X-wings that had come in behind him had similarly launched proton torpedoes at ground targets. The missiles, which were powerful enough to put quite a dent in an Imperial Star Destroyer, blasted apart unarmored buildings. Lasers filled the night like lightning strikes, melting roads, setting trees on fire and exploding anything even vaguely incendiary when they hit.

Though the targets they had specified had been strictly industrial, collateral damage was inescapable. At least one bright fire burned in what should have been a residential complex for plant workers—clearly one of the proton torpedoes had overshot its mark—and Wedge didn’t know if the ground target his lasers had destroyed had been droid-driven or if it contained innocent bystanders. Coming in prior to dawn had been an attempt to minimize the presence of innocents in the target zones, but even minimal involvement of noncombatants meant some of them would die.

Part of Wedge didn’t want to care because the raid was meant to make Isard pay for Halanit’s destruction. That raid had been collateral damage through and through, but murdering Thyferrans, Vratix, and assorted resident alien workers would hardly make Isard atone for what she had done. The only pain she would feel would be the loss of bacta and her ability to produce it. To her, those we kill are reason enough for continuing her predations, whereas those innocents she kills are just punishment for our misdeeds.

Another part of Wedge wanted to abort the Twi’leks’ run on the valley. The damage done had been rather ample. The Deathseeds would only be able to strafe the ground, sowing more terror in the populace, but probably not doing much to further cripple the refinery. What has already been done should be enough, but I know it isn’t. He keyed his comm unit. “Chir’daki, you are good to go.”

He got a double-click acknowledgment from Tal’dira, then Corran’s voice broke in. “Lead, I have multiple eyeball contacts coming up off the deck to the north.”

“I copy, Nine. Seven, you have command of the ground op. Two, Nine, and Ten, on me to deal with the intruders.” Wedge hauled back on his stick and brought the X-wing up in a loop. Rolling out to port, he saw Asyr pull up on his starboard S-foil while Corran and Ooryl joined him to the left. “How many, Nine?”

“Eight, sir.”

“I copy. Engage at will, but save your last two torpedoes.” Standing off and shooting the TIE fighters down with proton torpedoes would be the safest means of defeating them, but Wedge wanted to save some torpedoes in case they ran into a heavy ship as they tried to get away. As nearly as I can tell all of Isard’s capital ships are five hours or more distant from here, but if one shows up I want to give it a barrage that will keep it off us long enough for us to escape.

The intervention of Thyferran Home Defense Corps pilots had been anticipated. Their intelligence reports about Qretu 5 had indicated the placement of such troops on the world, though after Gavin had described burning three of them down on Halanit, there was open debate as to whether or not the THDC pilots would dare come up and fight. Eight starfighters were enough to discourage someone from bringing their own freighter into Qretu 5’s spaceport and demanding it be filled with bacta or to protect freighters going out to or coming back in from a convoy.

Isard didn’t anticipate our coming in to this place in such strength and with the intention of wreaking total havoc. Wedge linked the fire on his lasers, pairing them, and evened out his shields fore and aft. A pair of missiles from his port sizzled through the dawning sky and impaled distant specks of black. Twin stars twinkled for a moment before the sound of the explosion collided with his fighter, then Wedge was on the TIEs and firing.

Two bursts of laser fire bracketed one of the TIE fighters. The first pair of bolts liquefied one of the hexagonal solar panels, immediately pitching the fighter into a decaying flat spin. The second pair lopped off the upper half of the remaining solar panel, adding a loopy, wobbling element to the spin. The wounded TIE dropped from the sky like the asymmetrical rock it resembled and exploded on impact with the ground.

Pulling back on the stick, Wedge brought the X-wing’s nose up until it pointed away from the planet. He let the climb bleed off just a little of his speed, trading it for altitude, then he came back over the top and started back down into the fight. He selected one target and began to close, but it died in a quad burst of laser fire, so he ruddered the nose to the right and swooped in on a TIE angling for a deflection shot at Asyr’s X-wing.

These pilots know nothing. Coming in from above and in front of the TIE fighter, Wedge knew he should have been easy to spot. The TIE pilots had clearly focused in on getting Asyr, to the exclusion of everyone else. While that kind of focus and concentration might be useful in all sorts of endeavors, in a fighter pilot without situational awareness, it was suicide.

Wedge knew, from looking out his canopy and studying his sensors, where his other fighters were and where the dwindling supply of TIEs was. He couldn’t feel their presence in the way Luke described being able to fix people and machines in relation to himself through the Force, but he did have a sense of where they were. This situational awareness meant he would know if a TIE had begun to close on him and would be able to take the appropriate response, from calling for help to outmaneuvering the other pilot.

Without it I would have died hundreds of times over. Applying a little rudder, Wedge tracked his crosshairs over to cover the TIE and tightened up on the trigger. Four red lances of light converged, melding into one, then skewered the fighter’s ball cockpit. The ion engines exploded, spinning the solar panels away like sabacc cards. Flaming debris sprayed out like sparks in the wake of a passing meteorite, igniting a fire in the foliage below.

Mynock trumpeted triumphantly.

Wedge glanced at his main sensor screen. “That was the last of them, true.” He activated the comm unit. “Nine, take Ten and swing over the spaceport. Suppress ground fire if you get any and report all clear.”

“As ordered, Lead.”

“Chir’daki One to Rogue Leader.”

“Go ahead, Tal’dira.”

“Chir’daki pass complete. We had secondary explosions in the vehicle sheds and machining shops.”

“Good going, Tal’dira. Stand by for phase two of the operation.”

Tycho’s voice entered the frequency. “Wedge, I have someone on the deck complaining. Claims to be the plant manager.”

“I copy, Tycho. Tell him to evacuate the whole area and consider a career change. Resistance means we grid the surrounding town and start melting parts of it.”

“As ordered, Wedge.”

Looking back at Q5A7 and the surrounding area, Wedge saw a lot of fire and rising columns of dense smoke to greet the dawn. Some small ships had set out from the bay’s marina and ground vehicles were beginning to fill the coastal roadway heading north and south. Those who can get away are—those who can’t will just wait in fear.

“Lead, this is Nine. The spaceport is clear. No hostiles and the traffic-control tower is empty but intact.”

Wedge smiled. “You got close enough to determine that, Nine?”

“Whistler has good distance processing equipment from stakeouts, Lead. He’s never been wrong before.”

“I copy. Stay covering the spaceport.”

“As ordered, Lead. Nine out.”

Wedge punched up a new frequency on the comm unit. “Rogue leader to Taskforce Bantha.”

“Bantha here, Wedge. We can spot the city by the fires from up here.”

“I don’t doubt that at all, Booster. It could have been nastier but Iceheart only had eight vape-bait pilots here. They’re gone, so it’s safe to have the freighters come in.”

“Our pleasure. Incoming.”

Wedge smiled. During the two weeks the squadrons had trained for the raid, Booster had arranged for a convoy of independent freighters and smugglers to meet with him, Mirax, and the Pulsar Skate. He told them he’d get them all the bacta they could haul provided they would keep what they earned as a credit against his future demands. Some balked, but most came along, even though Booster demanded they slave their navicomputers to the Skate’s and fly blind with him to their destination. When they arrived in the system and took up positions in the asteroid rings around Qretu 5, Wedge and his people began their run.

Wedge brought the fighter’s nose up until it eclipsed the burning town and started another turn over the ocean. Regret for the damage done to nonindustrial targets began to eat at him. My parents died when a pirate took off from the fueling station they ran, igniting the station. Down there could easily be another kid who has just lost his parents in a blast we caused. I know what we are doing is right and even necessary, but that doesn’t lessen the pain or dull the horror of the people on the ground. I have to believe that opposing Isard and insulating billions of people from her evil is a great good, a vital good, but I can never let myself think that it justifies inflicting pain on innocents. It may well explain why it had to be done, but it can never justify it.

Even as revulsion for the fire and damage began to fill him, sanity provided a means for draining it off. The key difference between us and Isard is that she fully intended to do the most harm to the most people. We did not. We chose our targets well, we set the attack for a time when casualties would be minimized, and we have made no attempt to attack targets of opportunity like the ships or landspeeders fleeing the town. We exerted as much control as possible to keep the strike as clean as we could.

Wedge smiled. Then again, it was said that the Emperor’s throne had been molded of good intentions. We must take responsibility for what we’ve done on the ground and repair what we can. If not, we do by negligence what Isard does in malice.

He keyed the comm unit. “Booster, when you’re on the ground, establish a contact so reparation claims can be forwarded to us. I want survivors and orphans taken care of.”

“This isn’t the Gus Treta station, Wedge.”

“I know, but the kids on the ground don’t have you to see them through the hard times, do they?”

“I copy, Wedge. It will be done.”

“Good.” Wedge glanced again at the city, but the dawn had dulled the brightness of the flames and showed him how much of the area had gone unharmed. “Booster, make sure they know we hit Q5A7 to hit Isard, and we’ll only be back if it’s apparent she’s dependent upon them again. Tell them we’re death itself for our enemies, but the best of friends to have for allies. I’m sure they can figure out for themselves how to join that latter class.”

22

Mirax Terrik gave the rakishly good-looking man a dazzling smile as she stepped into his office. “Talon Karrde, pleased to meet you again. I don’t know if you’ll remember me …”

Karrde returned her smile, his pale blue eyes sparkling. “I could hardly forget you, Mirax Terrik. Because of your efforts, those cases of Alderaanian wine cost me well more than I had expected to pay.” He took her right hand and gently kissed it—his black moustache and goatee tickled her hand and fingers.

“I didn’t realize you were the other person bidding for them.”

“But if you had, you’d not have fought any less tenaciously for them.” Karrde shrugged easily enough that Mirax was almost willing to believe he had dismissed the matter. “What you cost me I put down as the fee paid for a lesson in dealing with exotic items. If you weren’t in the business of hauling things for the Rebellion, I might have had a chance to test what I learned against you again.”

“And my girl would have made you pay even more in your next meeting.” Booster Terrik rested his big hands on Mirax’s shoulders. “I would have expected you to be using something bigger than an old hollowed-out asteroid for your headquarters, Karrde. You can afford it.”

“Pleased to see you again, too, Booster.” The hint of a smile played across Karrde’s lips. “As for this asteroid, Tapper found it, but before he could exploit it he ran into some Imperial problems. After our groups merged, he brought it to my attention. We’re using it until we find something more suitable.”

Quelev Tapper came around from behind Booster and stood next to the chair to the left of Karrde’s massive desk. “While most of the ore has been mined, there’s enough metal in the rock to give sensors trouble.” Though as slender as Karrde, and almost as handsome, Tapper’s manner contrasted sharply with Karrde’s polite grace. “It will do in the interim.”

Karrde opened his hands and indicated the pair of chairs facing the desk. “Please, be seated.”

Mirax accepted his invitation and looked around the office as she sat. The chamber’s stone walls had been smoothed to an obsidian glassiness, but still had a significant texture in the bumps and recesses the mining process had left behind. The room’s furnishings—characterized by Karrde’s desk—were heavy and blocky, more of an industrial grade than they were elegant. Despite that, however, the artifacts and items displayed on shelves and atop tables, did provide an air of sophistication to the surroundings. Mirax noted on the sideboard a cut-crystal decanter full of a pale green liquid and four goblets, prompting a smile.

Karrde’s gaze followed hers and he gave her a slight nod. “Might I offer you some of the wine I paid so dearly for? The best is a dry green from Aldera.”

Mirax nodded. “Please.” She glanced at her father.

Booster perched in his chair as if it were a slender pole and he was a bird topping it, but he nodded. “Thank you.”

Karrde poured from the crystalline decanter. It looked to Mirax to be of Quarren manufacture. She knew from the styling it came from Mon Calamari, but the purple tint to the glass told her the Quarren had made it, not the Mon Cals. Quarren crystal rarely makes it off Mon Calamari. Karrde definitely fishes for items with a very wide and fine net.

She accepted her glass of wine from Karrde, then raised her glass with the others as Karrde offered a toast. “May the bargaining be as sweet as the profit and the next deal not long in coming.”

In tasting the wine Mirax found it very dry, but surprisingly tart without being truly sour. “Perfect with game.”

Karrde sat at his desk and nodded. “I’ve heard it said this vintage was originally intended for a banquet featuring krayt dragon.”

“Oh? What happened, too much wine and not enough krayt?”

“No, too much krayt and not enough hunter.” Karrde held the glass up and let light sparkle through the wine’s receding legs. “The wine was ordered prior to the hunt. The dragon got the hunter, and the widow used the vintage at the memorial service. The wine won praises and since has been a very popular vintage. This particular year was considered very good, but the wine laid down the year of Alderaan’s demise was supposed to be even better.”

Booster cleared his voice. “It’s amazing what you know, Karrde. I’m very impressed. I was wondering if your encyclopedic knowledge includes where I can get some supplies I need.”

Karrde’s blue eyes narrowed slightly. “You need or things Wedge Antilles needs?”

“They’re things that are needed, Karrde.” Booster brought his hands together. “Let’s trim some parsecs off the course of this conversation, shall we? You know I think of you like the son I never had.”

Karrde snorted. “Like the son you never had killed.”

Mirax suppressed a laugh, and her father smiled. “True, I’ve not forgotten how you managed to pick up pieces of my network while I was harvesting spice on Kessel. That did anger me, but it also convinced me that Mirax was right in wanting me to retire.”

“Yet here you are bargaining for Antilles and his band of mercenaries.”

Booster frowned. “They’re not mercenaries.”

“No?”

Mirax shook her head. “Actually, to be mercenaries, they’d have to be paid. They’re doing what they’re doing because of obligations they feel to the Vratix and others.”

Karrde shot a glance at Tapper, then the two of them shook their heads. “Idealists cause a lot of trouble in this galaxy.”

“Just remember it was one of those idealists who killed Jabba.”

“Good point, Booster, but I’ve got no desire to end up like Jabba.”

“Nor will you.” Booster sipped more of his wine. “Wedge and the others may be idealists in some respects, but they’re also practical when they need to be, and I’m here to put that practicality into terms you can understand and respect. What I’m looking for is missile- and torpedo-sensor packages, launch-tube assemblies, and a supply of proton torpedoes and concussion missiles.”

Mirax noted no reaction by Karrde, but Tapper’s eyes widened quite a bit.

Karrde raised his hand to cover a yawn. “I’ve heard that you made a mess of the bacta refinery on Qretu 5.”

“Care to know how much bacta we hauled away?”

“I have my estimates. I also know where you sent a great deal of it.”

Mirax smiled. “It doesn’t take a genius to know we’ve shipped a lot to Coruscant.”

“But it will take a genius to get the rest of it, eh?” Karrde set his glass of wine down. “What sort of numbers are you looking at with your equipment?”

Booster leaned back in his seat. “Three hundred launchers and sensor packages: fifty should be snubfighter systems, the rest can be capital ship systems. Right now I want two thousand proton torpedoes and a thousand concussion missiles, though I expect those numbers to change.”

“Upward, of course.”

“Of course.”

Karrde’s expression sharpened. “You going to be arming your freighters, Booster?”

“Try taking one of them off and find out, Karrde.”

Talon Karrde smiled broadly. “I’m a smuggler, not a pirate.”

“Thin line between them.” Booster thrust his chin forward. “Pirate steals from his suppliers, smuggler just cheats them.”

“You’ve distilled that difference to its essence, Booster.” Karrde sat back in his chair. “You’ll be paying with bacta?”

Booster nodded. “Not a problem, I assume?”

“Not really. The price now is so high that much of what I would be trading for is being sold to buy bacta from the cartel. Oddly enough, with the New Republic somewhat strapped for liquid capital, military surplus and munitions are actually dropping in price. It’s a buyer’s market. I shouldn’t be telling you that, of course.”

Mirax laughed. “Except you know we already know that, and you want to rub in the fact that you’ll be gouging us on the prices.”

Karrde’s eyes glittered with amusement. “She’s very sharp, Booster. You should be proud.”

“I am. You can get us what we want?”

Karrde nodded. “Not all at once, of course.”

“Installments are fine.” Booster glanced at a thumbnail, then looked back up. “Delivery will be a bit peculiar. We’ll arrange for exchanges at various places where your ships will offload material for us. We’ll be transporting it to our final destination ourselves.”

“Not that you don’t trust me.”

“But we don’t trust you.” Booster smiled. “I know you’ve already learned more about our operation than I wanted you to, and I also know that Vorru is trying to learn as much about us as he can. I don’t want you to find we’re a commodity you can trade to him for a profit.”

Karrde held his hands up. “So far I have avoided taking sides in the civil war, and I see this as a simple extension of it even though Antilles has resigned from the New Republic’s military. Since the cartel really isn’t interested in selling bacta to me, and since you need my services, it isn’t going to do me any good to sacrifice you to them.”

“Provided we still are a profit center for you.”

Karrde frowned. “Booster, you make it sound like I don’t value our history together.”

“Oh, I think you do, and the history of your making a profit off me is what you value.”

Mirax raised an eyebrow. “The fact that either one of you would sell the other for a bucket of warm dewback drool isn’t really germane here. Betting against Wedge Antilles’s abilities lost Iceheart the Imperial homeworld and sent her packing for Thyferra. Talon, you’re too smart not to back him, especially since his victory will break the cartel and open up the bacta trade. A little gratitude toward you from the Ashern rebels won’t hurt when distribution is set up.”

“Point taken.” Karrde picked up the datapad on his desk and punched a few keys. “I’m going to have you liaise with Melina Carniss on the delivery details.”

Booster frowned. “Carniss? I don’t know her. Never heard of her.”

“She worked for Jabba on Tatooine. She filled a niche that would have been in the middle of his security apparatus, but she was Jabba’s own agent. Formally, she was his dance coordinator. Good head on her shoulders. She understands a lot of the business, but is a bit shy on experience.” Karrde stood and waved his left hand toward the doorway. “Here she is. Come in, Melina, my dear. This is Booster Terrik and his charming daughter, Mirax.”

Mirax shook the woman’s hand and returned her smile. Several inches shorter than Mirax, Melina wore her dark hair in a rather short cut. It accentuated a white stripe that started with scar tissue near the corner of Melina’s right eye and shot straight back beyond her ear. Her green eyes and full mouth made her pretty and the way Tapper looked at her suggested he was smitten.

“Pleased to meet you both.”

Karrde waited until Tapper slid a chair from over by the wall beside his own and Melina seated herself before he continued. “Melina, you’ll coordinate shipments of material to Booster. He’ll give you the details. The cargo and the delivery points will be hazardous, but we’ll not charge him our normal rates for such things. He’s part of our family—albeit a rather distantly related one.”

She nodded. “I understand.”

Mirax smiled. Great, this means what we don’t pay for transport we will pay for the cost of the items. And Karrde said it was a buyer’s market.

Karrde looked up from his datapad. “Is there anything else you need, Booster?”

Tapper laughed. “Perhaps he wants Another Chance or the Death Star’s womb. I mean, as long as your aim is to break the Bacta Cartel, you might as well go in for other things you can’t get.”

The brow over Booster’s artificial left eye rose. “It’s important in this business for you to be able to tell fable from fact and wishing from thinking. From what I’ve heard, about six months before I got out of Kessel, just after the Imps hurt the Rebels at Derra IV but before they ran them off Hoth, some treasure hunters searching the Alderaan graveyard found Another Chance and turned the ship and its arms over to the Rebels. That’s fact. The location of the shipyard that built the Death Star is likely a fact as well, but it’s one I don’t know and it’s my wish that it’s a fact that went to the grave with the Emperor. I don’t think that’s likely.

“Now it’s Iceheart’s wish we won’t break the cartel and destroy her power.” Booster smiled coldly. “I think—no, I know—she’s not going to get her wish. Her fall will not be fast, and it won’t be bloodless, but it’s coming. Count it as fact.”

Tapper raised his hands. “Sorry, I meant no offense.”

“And none was taken.” Mirax patted her father on the arm and felt the tension begin to flow out of him. “My father just wanted to make sure that you knew betting against Wedge was a mistake.”

Karrde pressed his hands flat against his desktop. “A lesson we have all learned, I am certain. Now let us attend to the details that make sure we all profit from it.”

23

Corran Horn felt tired enough from the recent raid and run home that he knew he should just turn in, but the idea of hitting the small suite of rooms he shared with Mirax didn’t appeal. On his approach back to the Yag’Dhul station he’d gotten a message she’d recorded saying she was taking her father out on another trip to finalize arrangements for supply shipments. She expected to be gone for three days.

Which means I’m alone when I could use a good hug and some sympathy. Corran knew what was happening to him, and he wanted to fight against it, but even by trying some of the breathing exercises Luke Skywalker had recommended to him, he had a hard time putting a dent in his downward emotional spiral. It’s like flying into a fireball. You have to hang on and hope you come out in one piece on the other side.

The fourth anniversary of his father’s death had snuck up on Corran and ambushed him. A lot of hydrogen had been melted into helium in a lot of stars since his father’s death, but the memory of holding his father’s dead body in his arms had the immediacy of an event that had occurred moments before. Corran could still feel his father’s weight pressing against him. The man’s stillness, the stink of blood and blaster-burned flesh, the screams of those in the cantina, including his own, all pounded in on him.

The previous year, things had not seemed to be so bad to him, but he’d just started with Rogue Squadron at that time, so he had a legion of distractions to dull the pain. He also realized that his liaison with Mirax and meeting her father made it tougher on him. Though he loved her and wouldn’t give her up for anything, Corran couldn’t help feeling that his father would have felt betrayed by his love for Mirax. While he knew his father would have accepted her eventually, the fact that he didn’t have his father’s approval gnawed away at him.

Getting to see Booster and Mirax together compounded the problem. Corran was happy for Mirax that her father was around because the love they shared was obvious enough that a blind Givin frozen in carbonite could have seen it. She was lucky to have her father, and he was equally lucky to have her. As much as Corran wanted Mirax to be happy, what she shared with her father reminded him of what he had lost. I thought the void inside me had been filled, but it had just scabbed over and is now plenty open.

On top of that, the next step in the evolution of the Bacta War was pushing him to the limit. Wedge had teams, from full squadrons down to single two-ship flights out harassing the Bacta Cartel. The whole strategy was to hit and run, which worked exceedingly well. Because the Thyferrans scheduled their bacta shipments it was possible for the Rogues to show up, force the Star Destroyers to scramble their fighters, pop off some proton torpedoes to take out a few TIEs, then scatter. He knew the strategy had to be frustrating for Iceheart’s people, since they were taking losses here and there without killing any of the Rogues; but it wasn’t much better for Corran or the rest of Wedge’s people.

Engaging in a straight-up fight with even a Victory-class Star Destroyer like the Corrupter would be suicide for a squadron of X-wings. It was true that the large Star Destroyers were not particularly good at defending themselves against snubfighters—hence the development of the Lancer-class frigates—but even accidentally shooting down one or two X-wings would hurt the Rogues significantly. Conversely, aside from repeated proton torpedo salvos, there was no way snubfighters could cripple or destroy a Star Destroyer. If the whole squadron fired a salvo of torpedoes at the same time, they could certainly bring the Star Destroyer’s shields down, but any captain worth his rank cylinders would roll the ship to present undamaged shields and keep shooting. If all his shields were stripped away he could still go to lightspeed before another torpedo could hit.

Corran had no wish to commit suicide in an attack on a Star Destroyer, but cutting and running made him feel … criminal. He knew that was stupid, but he figured the judgment was based in the fact that Wedge hadn’t given anyone a clear timetable concerning when they would move into the war’s final phase—the phase where Iceheart left Thyferra and the Bacta Cartel would be broken. If I knew how long we were going to run, I could see it as a tactical advantage. Right now it seems as if we’re doing something so we won’t be doing nothing.

Realizing he had no desire to be alone, he headed for the tapcaf known as Flarestar. He hoped other members of the squadron would be there, though the chances of that were slim. Ooryl seemed to spend most of his time with the ruetsavii. Nawara Ven and Rhysati as well as Gavin and Asyr Sei’lar spent most of their time being couples. Tycho and Wedge were either on missions or planning yet other missions. Bror Jace and Corran had never been close, while Inyri Forge and the Sullustan Captain Aril Nunb had discovered they shared a passion for obscure games of chance like contract sabacc and double-draw fendoc. As stunning as they were as pilots, their ability to separate other gamblers from their credits was so remarkable that two of the ships in the Rogues’ growing collection of freighters had joined the fleet to pay off bad debts.

Corran smiled to himself as he entered the Flarestar’s darkened interior. Inyri’s sister Lujayne would just tell me I was holding myself back from getting to know the others, but I’m not sure it’s that simple. I’m just without my close friends—Mirax, Iella, Ooryl—and not really of a mood to make new friends.

“Corran! Corran Horn, come on over here.”

Corran’s smile grew at the sound of the man’s voice. “Pash? What are you doing here?” He cut between and around tables and gave the taller, slender man a friendly, back-slapping hug. “Normally you aces fly your A-wings through this system so fast I didn’t think you even saw us here.”

Pash pulled a chair over for Corran, then pointed at one of the quartet of pilots already seated at the table. “Linna caught an unstart in one of her J-77 engines just as we swung through the fringes of Yag’Dhul’s atmosphere. We called in an emergency and put into the station here. Zraii said he can fix it up—looks like a micrometeorite chewed up the alluvial compressor.”

Corran nodded. “That blows the pressure in the reaction chamber, and the engine pops out of synch with its twin. X-wing’s damper system prevents that from happening.”

Linna, a blond woman with a mouth just a bit too wide, snorted. “Sure, if you want to be piloting something that should be in a museum. Speed is what will keep a pilot safe and the A-wing has plenty of speed to burn.”

Corran looked at Pash. “You let your pilots talk like that?”

The red-haired man shrugged. “Children. What can I do?”

“You can explain to them that going faster doesn’t mean they’re flying better.”

Linna and the other three A-wing pilots regarded Corran as if he and Pash had just taken public loyalty oaths to the Emperor. “If you can’t handle the speed, you’re not much of a pilot.”

Corran shook his head. “Pash, you were just hoping I would walk in here, weren’t you?”

Pash laughed lightly. “Actually I was waiting for Wedge or Tycho, but I figured you’d be up to the challenge. I know you know of times when speed wouldn’t have helped at all.”

Corran nodded. “Or hurt.”

“Sure, as if such a time could exist.” Linna grabbed a half-full pitcher of Lomin-ale, filled her mug, and topped it with foam. “Speed can’t hurt.”

“Oh, the innocence of youth.” Corran took the mug from in front of her and blew off the foam. “Let me tell you about this time we were on a mission and we got jumped by a Lancer-class frigate. If I’d been in an A-wing, well, Rogue Squadron would have a lot more dead on its rosters and Isard would still own Coruscant …”

Though he knew the news he had would make Ysanne Isard happy—in and of itself a feat worthy of monuments—Fliry Vorru kept any sign of it from his face as he entered her office. He intended to surprise her so he could gauge her disposition. The weather becoming hotter and the inclusion of daily rainstorms that hit in the early afternoon had combined with the pressure from Ashern strikes to make Isard more than disagreeable.

Antilles and his antics had further exacerbated the problem. Their hit-and-run tactics were costing the cartel in both credits and prestige. Each raid cost the cartel one or two TIE fighters, which really amounted to insignificant losses, if someone had access to a TIE fighter production facility. Sienar Fleet Systems had numerous starfighter factories scattered throughout the galaxy, but they neglected to put one here, on Thyferra. As a result, the cartel had to trade for replacements with the likes of Supreme Warlord Harssk and High Admiral Teradoc. They gratefully accepted bacta in return for the fighters, but the scorn that came with each delivery could drive Isard into furious tantrums.

When Isard turned to look at him and smiled, Fliry Vorru felt something cold and serpentine slither through his abdomen. “Ah, Minister Vorru, do come in. I was hoping we would have a chance to speak, and here you arrive before I need send for you.”

Glad he had saved himself from being summoned, Vorru nodded graciously and returned a smile of his own. “I have information I think you will find useful and even pleasing.”

Isard’s scarlet diaphanous outfit rustled as she took a seat in a high-backed chair. “Good news is most welcome, Minister Vorru. Would you be seated? Refreshment?”

There is something going on here I do not understand. Have the Ashern poisoned her somehow? “Perhaps I will give you my report and you’ll have a chance to reconsider your offer, Madam Director.”

Isard’s eyes widened. “You can’t think me so capricious that I could rescind my offer because you’ve overestimated what you want to tell me, can you?” She waved away any reply before he’d even made an attempt to open his mouth. “My news is good enough to make me offer you something to drink. Give me your news, then you shall have mine and you can see if you want to drink with me.”

I knew one of us would be surprised here, but I didn’t expect it would be me. He nodded slowly. “As you will, Madam Director. Our main problem in dealing with Antilles and his people is that they are striking at us and running quickly because there is nothing to hold them back. They have no attachments to the systems they are hitting. We arrive, they launch proton torpedoes or concussion missiles, then they scatter like shrapnel from a proton mine.”

Isard nodded, her smile not having shrunk a millimeter. “This has been the course of things to this point. I trust you have found a way to change this.”

“Two aspects of it, yes.” Vorru lifted his chin. “My network of spies has begun to produce information. I have yet to find out what the location of Antilles’s base is. He and his people are being very cautious, but I have no doubt we will discover it in time. Until then I have uncovered two very important pieces of information: Where they are getting their munitions and, more to the point, where the next shipment will be placed in the hands of the Antilles group.”

“Really?”

The hint of falsetto in her voice didn’t escape Vorru, but he did not consider it important at the moment. “It is true, Madam Director. A woman working for Talon Karrde had previously been employed by Jabba the Hutt. Subsequent to his death she spent a couple of years in abject poverty on Tatooine. Karrde took her in and has helped her get back on her feet, but her taste for fine things has never been satisfied—nor has her ambition. Karrde appointed her to liaise with the Antilles people—Booster Terrik, in fact—an old friend from Kessel.”

“Fascinating. Karrde’s name is not unknown to me, though I would not have thought his organization of sufficient size to meet Antilles’s needs.”

“Carniss indicates Karrde’s operation is larger than anyone suspects. Karrde prefers to maintain a low profile to escape trouble with authorities. Booster Terrik placed a huge order for munitions and equipment, which Karrde is meeting in installments. Karrde’s people are shipping the supplies to a rendezvous point, then Terrik is taking them back to Antilles’s headquarters.”

Isard sat forward. “Does Carniss know where that is?”

“No, but I have been given the location of the rendezvous point. They will be making the transfer in the Alderaan system.”

“They probably draw some sort of ephemeral strength from visiting the site of Alderaan’s sacrifice.”

“Undoubtedly so, Madam Director. What is important is that Antilles will have his fighters and his freighters there. If we divert our warships to Alderaan we can ambush the Antilles group and destroy them.”

Isard’s eyes narrowed, but her smile did not die and this contradiction confused Vorru. “No, Minister Vorru, I’m not going to send all my ships in case this information is false. I don’t doubt you or your source, but Antilles might catch wind of our ambush and refuse to show up. He could even hit a bacta convoy and subject us to yet more ridicule. No, I won’t have that.”

She held up her right index finger. “I do know what I will do. I will send Convarion and the Corrupter. He’s ambushed them once and can do it again.”

Vorru shook his head. “But if you only send the Corrupter, Antilles and his people will scatter as usual. We will accomplish nothing.”

“No, Vorru, we will accomplish everything.” Isard laughed aloud, her voice full of triumph. “While you have woven a net of spies to catch Antilles, I have been searching for the means to kill him. I have found it, and in twelve hours it will be here and ready to join Convarion as he goes for the kill.”

Vorru frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“It is rather simple, Minister Vorru.” Isard’s smile became cold. “At great expense I have leased from High Admiral Teradoc a ship, the Aggregator.”

Vorru’s jaw dropped. “An Interdictor Cruiser.”

“Exactly.” She clapped her hands together. “When it arrives at Alderaan and powers up its gravity well projectors, Antilles and his ships will be trapped. There will be another sacrifice at Alderaan—another victory there for the Empire to celebrate. What do you say to that?”

“I say, Madam Director, I will accept that drink you offered”—Vorru smiled—“and raise a toast to victory.”

24

Wedge’s X-wing reverted to realspace above the plane of the elliptic in the Alderaan system. Spread out in a flat disk, the rubble that had once been Alderaan looked like the crumbs left behind after the cutting of a ryshcate. He slowly shook his head. Dying only once isn’t nearly enough punishment for the Emperor to atone for this evil.

Mynock beeped with each ship entering the system. The Rogues in their X-wings had come in first and oriented themselves toward the Graveyard. The most likely threat to them would come from there, from pirates or others hidden amid the debris. Some of the chunks are large enough to screen even a Star Destroyer. If there was one there, the plan was clean and simple: The X-wings would target it with a full salvo of proton torpedoes, giving the other ships a chance to run.

The dozen freighters Booster had rounded up came in next with the Pulsar Skate in the lead. Moments after reversion they made course corrections to get themselves pointed toward their exit vectors. The Chir’daki came in last and split their squadron up so each freighter had a fighter escort. If trouble erupted, the Twi’lek and Gand squadron could reassemble and screen the escaping freighters from any TIEs or other snubfighters, then head out themselves.

Wedge glanced at his screen and saw the names of the various ships in his fleet scroll up. Green letters indicated they were all set to fulfill their part in the mission. At least we’ve gotten here in one piece. Now we need Karrde to do his job.

Booster’s grudging respect for Karrde counted for a lot with Wedge. He’d actually met Karrde years earlier, back in the days before he joined the Rebellion. Wedge had owned a freighter and was hauling cargo all over the Empire. Karrde had inquired if Wedge wanted to move some cargo for him, but Wedge had turned down the offer. He’d heard nothing bad about Karrde and that had set him back a bit. No negative rumors means too little is known about the man, and I wasn’t inclined to trust him as a result.

Since joining the Rebellion, Wedge had not run across Karrde, but he didn’t doubt Karrde’s ability to produce the weapons and equipment they needed. The fact that Booster went to him first is proof enough that Karrde is genuine and can be trusted to deal straight with his clients. The munitions, launchers, and sensor systems would give them what they needed to complete Isard’s downfall.

“Lead, this is Seven.”

“Go ahead, Tycho.”

“Wedge, I’m getting anomalous contacts from the Graveyard on my IFF frequency.”

Wedge frowned. The Identify Friend/Foe system involved the identification beacon all ships carried. It sent out a signal that other ships picked up, telling them the name of the ship and its identification designation. Smugglers often had two or three IFF modules that they could swap in and out to run under clean names. Contacts on the IFF frequency were simple rechecks of a ship’s identity. And if Imps are waiting in the asteroids it’s an unbelievably stupid way to tip us to their presence.

“Tycho, is it the same signal over and over again?”

“Seems so. You thinking an automated beacon of some sort?”

“You are running an Alderaanian code. Perhaps there is an old system traffic satellite in the asteroids wanting to check you for Alderaan control.”

“Probably. I’ll punch up the gain on my passive sensors and see if I find anything in that direction.”

“I copy.” Wedge looked at his main screen as Mynock began beeping again. “Heads up, people, we have incoming traffic.”

A string of freighters entered the system, led by a ship tagged Starry Ice by the IFF system. A half-dozen ships drifted in behind Ice, staggering their positions so strafing runs along any one particular vector would pick up only two targets. Because Karrde’s ships were bigger than most of the freighters Booster had collected, the smuggler only needed half as many to deliver his goods.

A man’s voice broke in on the comm channel. “This is Quelev Tapper for Karrde. We’ve gotten the initial payment for this lot and you’ve got fifty million credits still in your account. In another month we should have another thirty percent of your order ready.”

Booster responded to him over the comm channel. “Fine with us. Begin the transfer.”

One of the freighters began to move forward, but as it cruised in right below the Ice, a huge patch of space went from black and star-strewn to white, angular, and deadly. The Interdictor Cruiser’s bulk eclipsed a massive slice of the Graveyard. The sight of its quartet of domed gravity well projectors caused Wedge’s stomach to fold in on itself. The cruiser will stop us from running into hyperspace, but it’s far too weak to engage us by itself. It’s going to be carrying a dozen TIEs at best, and the freighters can maneuver out of the effective range of its guns. Going after two squadrons of snubfighters, half of us with proton torpedoes, means this cruiser has gotten itself into a fight it really can’t win.

Before Wedge could begin to issue orders, two things happened. The first, the lighting-up of a red warning light on his console, was something he expected. It told him that the Interdictor Cruiser had powered up the gravity well projectors and that none of the ships in the system could jump to hyperspace to escape. Not a wise move to trap us here.

The second thing squeezed an icy fist around his heart. One third larger than the Interdictor Cruiser, the Corrupter appeared to interpose its bulk between the cruiser Aggregator and the snubfighters. Its turbolaser batteries and ion cannons immediately began spraying green-and-blue energy bolts out toward the waiting freighters. Wedge knew instantly the barrage was untargeted, meant more to inspire panic than do damage.

As TIE fighters started pouring from the Destroyer’s belly, Wedge immediately started snapping orders to his people. “Booster, scatter freighters. Move! Tal’dira, give me a flight to orient on me and another to orient on Tycho. Use the others to vape those TIEs, but don’t close with Corrupter. Rogues, slave your torpedo targeting to my signal. Transmitting now. Tycho, I go first, then you follow.”

“I copy, Wedge.”

Wedge’s droid, Mynock, shrieked furiously as Wedge punched the throttle forward and drove straight at the Victory II-class Star Destroyer. “Shut up, Mynock. Distract me with your screaming, and we’ll both end up dead!” The droid fell silent, and Wedge promised himself that if he survived the run, he would get the droid’s memory wiped and rename it something suitably heroic.

Though the droid lacked courage, his assessment of the current situation was dead on. And worth screaming about. The Destroyer and cruiser carried, between them, three squadrons of TIEs. Wedge’s confidence in his people knew no limits, but the Rogues were standing off to shoot their proton torpedoes, which left the Twi’leks to fight against the TIEs. The chances that some TIEs would get through to harass the freighters were overwhelming.

The TIE threat was the least of the problems they faced in the system. The only way to counter the Corrupter’s threat was for the X-wings to hit it with a spread of proton torpedoes. The squadron, firing double shots, could pump out twenty-two proton torpedoes. If they hit—and missing a nearly kilometer-long ship was tough—they could blow through the shields and do some damage. Wedge would fly in close to target the ship for the first volley, then have Tycho follow up for a second, hopefully catching the Corrupter without shields in place. If the second spread hits the Star Destroyer in an unshielded area, it could rip it apart. We’ll get damage on the first spread, but it will be the second that knocks it out.

Wedge pushed all power to his forward shields as he hit a wall of TIE fighters six kilometers out from the Corrupter. Once past them he evened his shields out with a flick of his thumb and then started draining his lasers of energy and pumping it into his shields. At two and a half kilometers he would get a firing solution for the Corrupter. He’d hold it until his squadron had launched, launch himself, then pull up and out. “Coming up on targeting. On my mark. Five, four, three, two, one. Get ready.”

The targeting reticle on his head-up display went red. “Mark!” Wedge pulled the trigger on his stick, launching two proton torpedoes. Launch report after launch report from his squadron scrolled up on his screen. Hey, even the Gands got off two concussion missiles.

Preparing to break off and run, Wedge glanced at his sensors and saw four TIEs in his rear arc. Realizing that pulling up and away would allow them to pounce on him, Wedge rolled his X-wing to port, then took the snubfighter down in a long loop that would carry him below the Corrupter’s hull. If they want to come after me, they get to brave their own fire, too. Juking right and left, Wedge bounced the fighter back and forth between streams of turbolaser fire.

A brilliant incandescence blossomed above him. The proton torpedoes slammed into the Corrupter’s shields all along the ship’s length. The shields acted like huge, invisible parasols to ward off the fierce energy unleashed by the proton torpedoes’ detonations. Roiling plasma curved up and around, following the arc of the Corrupter’s port shields as if some energy creature were trying to take a bite out of the ship. Then several torpedoes arrived late and pierced the shield at its heart, causing it to collapse. The tardy torpedoes and two concussion missiles pounded the destroyer’s hull, blasting apart armor plates and crushing turbolaser batteries.

“Beginning my run now!”

Wedge felt a moment’s joy at the collapse of the Corrupter’s shields, but it died as the big ship began to maneuver. It rotated in space above him, executing a roll that swapped up for down and presented the squadron with its undamaged starboard shields as a target. Convarion knows we have a limited supply of proton torpedoes. If he survived this salvo, we’ve got one last shot to take him down. If he repairs his shields and rolls again, we’re done, because then he can take all the time he wants to come after us.

Wedge keyed his comm unit. “Corran, set up for the third run.”

“I copy, Wedge. Lots of eyeballs out here.”

“Here, too.” Wedge pulled back on his stick and brought his X-wing up between the Aggregator and the Corrupter. He got a good look at the damage the torpedoes had done to the Destroyer and saw fire in the ship’s interior. He knew bulkheads had already been sealed and the fires would go out as soon as the atmosphere drained away. So it’s time to see if I can add to the problem. He started to angle in at the Corrupter, but green laser bolts slashed past him from behind, causing him to break off the run, roll, and dive.

Tycho’s voice boomed over the comm unit. “On my mark. Five, four, three, two, one. Get into firing position.”

Right. The pair of TIEs on Wedge’s tail had no intention of letting him set up on the Corrupter. Wedge chopped his throttle back, then reversed his thrust and ran it up to full. The TIE fighters immediately closed and snapped off quick shots, then bypassed him. Hitting the right rudder pedal, Wedge brought the X-wing’s nose around on the track of one of them. Switching over to quad-fire lasers, he hit the trigger. Three of the bolts hit the TIE. Two lanced through the cockpit while one boiled away a corner of a solar panel. The fighter immediately went into a flat spin and arced out toward the system’s outer orbits.

More rudder brought the X-wing around to point back up at the Corrupter. Wedge killed his reverse thrust and started it forward as Tycho said, “Mark! Fire now!” Wedge thumbed his fire control over to missiles and got a lock, but never pulled the trigger. Sithspawn! What is that?

A ship the size of a Carrack-class light cruiser ranged up from the Graveyard, cutting in past the Aggregator’s stern and in at the Corrupter’s bridge. The ship’s white nose was separated from the bloodred after portion by a big black stripe slashed on the diagonal across it. Wedge realized he’d seen that color scheme on a ship before, but he didn’t connect it with Tycho’s X-wing until the cruiser opened up on the Corrupter with its weaponry.

Five heavy turbolasers and ten laser cannons poured scarlet energy into the Destroyer’s unshielded hull. The laser cannon shots skittered across the white surface, stippling it with black marks and exploding turbolaser batteries. The heavy turbolasers concentrated their fire on the Destroyer’s tower, burning through the hull on deck after deck.

Wedge kicked his thrust in at full and rolled his X-wing so he put the Graveyard over his head and the Destroyer’s hull beneath his fighter. Off his starboard S-foils a silvery glow built as the first of the proton torpedoes hit. The energy storm they created splashed up and around the edges of the shield. Wedge pushed the X-wing lower, skimming it along the Destroyer’s hull. Just like being back in the trenches.

Wedge jinked the ship as turbolasers and the starfighter behind him tried to target him, then hauled back on his stick. The aiming reticle for his proton torpedoes had burned red for the entirety of his flight, but Wedge held back until his true target sank down into the reticle. He saw one Imperial officer standing in the middle of the bridge viewport and watched his mouth open in surprise.

Wedge hit the trigger.

A pair of proton torpedoes stabbed through the transparisteel viewport, filling the bridge with blue fire, then detonated. The bridge’s blocky outline plumped and softened for a second before the aft port corner blew out, vomiting golden fire. Backblast sent smaller golden geysers back out through the forward viewports, but Wedge pulled up between them, then rolled and dove past the Destroyer’s aft.

“Tycho, hit the cruiser!”

“I copy. On me, Rogues. Beginning my run now.”

Coming up over the belly of the Destroyer Wedge got a good look at the battle. Sporadic turbolaser and ion cannon fire came from the Corrupter, but far more numerous were the escape pods exploding from its hull. The Aggregator tried to shoot at the snubfighters, but most were using the dying Destroyer as a shield as they approached, and the Aggregator’s commander seemed reluctant to shoot in that direction.

The light cruiser came back around and made a run across the Aggregator’s stern. The ships exchanged fire, but the Interdictor Cruiser could only bring a few of its weapons to bear on the other ship. Neither ship did significant damage to the other, though the Aggregator’s starboard shields did go down.

“On my mark, launch torpedoes. Mark.”

On Tycho’s command the X-wings launched their missiles. Blue pinpoints of fire blossomed from various points around the Graveyard and shot in at the Interdictor Cruiser. The red light on Wedge’s console went out as the ship’s commander shunted power from the gravity well projectors to his shields. That’s the move to make, but did he do it in time?

Most of the proton torpedoes, beginning with the two Tycho launched, slammed into the port shield. They exploded into a silvery firestorm that billowed up and out, then pressed in on the shield. Unlike the Corrupter’s shield, however, the Aggregator’s did not collapse all at once. Gaps appeared at a couple of points, allowing a handful of torpedoes to skip through and blast into the ship’s hull. Armor plates peeled away like dead, dry skin and secondary explosions ripped gaping holes in the Interdictor’s hull.

Without waiting to pick up TIE fighters or escape pods, the Aggregator suddenly jetted forward. On Wedge’s console, the range finder scrolled off numbers; then the cruiser vanished into hyperspace. Running was his only choice.

Wedge glanced at his sensors and saw no hostile fighters near him. Safe for the moment, he keyed his comm unit. “Tapper, don’t run very far. Booster, report on your fleet.”

“We’re all still here, Wedge. We took some hits from TIEs, but shields mostly held so we’re all operational.”

“I copy, Booster. Rogues and Chir’daki, protect yourselves, but hold back from killing anyone who isn’t being actively hostile for a moment.” Wedge glanced back over his shoulder. “Mynock, scan comm frequencies and get me the command frequency the TIEs are using. I also need the escape pod frequency.”

The droid’s muted beep acknowledged the command, and data began to scroll up on the main screen.

“Thanks.” He punched up the frequency for the TIE fighters. “Imperial pilots, this is Wedge Antilles. You have a choice: get killed here, stranded here, or surrender. If you want to surrender, power down your weapons and engines. If you’re moving under power we will consider you hostile. We’ve got no more reason to want you dead than I would hope you have to be dead.”

A lone male voice came back over the comm unit. “Captain Ardle from Corrupter here. We’re Thyferran Home Defense Corps pilots. Does that make a difference in your offer?”

“Is Erisi Dlarit flying with you?”

“No, sir. I was in her command, but was picked to head up one of the two squadrons coming here with the Corrupter. Mostly trainees. I’ve got eight left. The Aggregator’s squadron only has four left and they’re THDC, too.”

“I copy, Captain Ardle. Follow the instructions I gave you and you’ll not be hurt.”

“What about the escape pods?”

“We’ll recover them, too.”

“And the Corrupter?”

Wedge switched his main screen to a plot of ship positions in the system over time and set his viewpoint from within the Graveyard. “The Corrupter is currently not under power and is drifting down into the Graveyard. Inside two hours the Graveyard’s asteroids will chew it up into unrecognizable bits.”

“Oh.” Ardle sounded subdued. “Alderaan has its revenge on the Empire.”

“And exacts revenge for Halanit. We don’t have the tractor beams to pull it back up, and I sincerely doubt it could be made operational again. Running as fast as possible to Coruscant we couldn’t get anything back here in time to save it.” Wedge knew the run to Corellia would be shorter, but he expected no help from his homeworld and the Diktat. “The Corrupter is gone.”

“I copy, Antilles. I’ll give the order to my people, and we’ll wait to be rescued.”

Wedge switched over to the escape pod frequency and repeated his offer of rescue, then arranged with Quelev Tapper for his ships to pick up as many pods as they could and exact whatever ransom they wanted from the passengers. Tapper sounded more interested in getting the TIEs and their pilots, but Wedge declared them “prisoners of war” and refused to let Tapper have them.

“Okay, Antilles, I’ll let it go, but only because I know you’ll be buying spare parts for those TIEs from us before too long.”

“That’s probably truer than I’d like to admit, Tapper. Have a safe trip home.”

Tycho’s voice broke through on the comm frequency. “Wedge, I have a situation.”

“Yes?”

“Remember that cruiser that took a piece out of the Corrupter?”

“Kind of hard to forget it, isn’t it?”

“Well, it was the source of the IFF queries earlier on. It appears to think I’m the Another Chance. It has identified itself as the Valiant, and now it wants to know where we’re going to go from here.”

Wedge brought his X-wing around so he could see the light cruiser again. There it hung in space, three hundred meters of lethal starship. Having it as part of our fleet would be very good, but how can we convince it to join us? “Tycho, any sign of intelligent life on board?”

“Ah, Wedge, it thinks I’m an Alderaanian war frigate, so I think we can rule out intelligence. If I had to guess, I’d assume this cruiser was slaved to Another Chance as an escort. They got separated and it returned here to wait for Another Chance to show up. I arrived with the IFF code, started broadcasting targeting information, and it did its job.”

Wedge nodded. “I copy. I think I need you to take it back to our base. Emtrey, if I recall his introductory monologue, is supposed to know the rules, regs, and procedures of over six million military organizations past and present. Perhaps he can figure out a way to communicate with the Valiant so we can make full use of it.”

“Got it. Do I leave now, or wait and escort the rest of you back?”

“We’ll go together.” Wedge smiled. “Victory like this deserves a parade, and I’d be happy to have you and your cruiser in the lead.”

25

Corran Horn dropped into the seat beside Mirax at the black round table in the briefing room. He felt bone weary from the fight at Alderaan, which surprised him because he’d actually not shot down any of the eyeballs. Because he had been waiting for fire orders to send proton torpedoes at the larger ships, all he could do was evade their attacks. While the pilots had been clearly green—a fact that 66 percent losses on their part made abundantly clear—their lasers still burned hot and could have vaped him had he not outflown them.

He took Mirax’s left hand in his right beneath the edge of the table. “Sorry I couldn’t cover the Skate out there.”

Mirax gave him a smile that helped energize him. “I’d have felt safer, but that would have spoiled Booster ‘One-Man-Army’ Terrik’s fun. He manned the laser cannon and was a general hazard to any eyeball peeking at us. He says he winged a couple of them.”

Corran gave her hand a squeeze, then looked up and saw Booster glowering at him from the other side of the table. If looks were lasers, he’d be more than winging me right now. “I’m glad there weren’t more in the way of complications. Your father looks ready to rip something apart with his bare hands—like me.”

“Being ambushed by Imps has him in a bad mood. We’ll be heading out soon for a meeting with Talon Karrde concerning security.”

“The leak came from his people?”

Mirax nodded. “My father thinks so. I want you to look over some stuff on it for me—give me your professional opinion about this spy thing.”

“Ah, sure, Mirax, glad to, but you should remember from the Erisi thing, I’m not that sharp on spotting spies.”

“This one isn’t that good.” Mirax gave him a wink. “Let me know what you think. We’ll see if Karrde concurs.”

Wedge and Winter entered the room, followed closely by Tal’dira, Aril Nunb, and Tycho. Winter sat down at the datapad built in at the far end of the table and hit some keys. A holographic image of the Yag’Dhul station hovered over the holopad in the center of the oval table. Wedge took a position at the head of the table, Tycho sat between him and Booster, and Tal’dira took the seat at Booster’s left hand. The Sullustan seated herself to Mirax’s right, facing Tal’dira.

Wedge covered a yawn, then leaned forward on the end of the table. “I apologize for asking you here to this debriefing so quickly after your return, but I want to talk about what happened in the Graveyard while details are still fresh in our minds. We have two issues to discuss: the arrival of the Imps and what to do with the Valiant.

“Before that, however, I want to thank each of you for your action and the action of your people at Alderaan. There is no question about it—we got very lucky at Alderaan. The Valiant’s appearance and action hurt both the Corrupter and the Aggregator. Even so, it was the discipline of our people that provided us the opportunity for such luck to come into play. If it weren’t for your Chir’daki pilots covering Tycho and me on our runs, we wouldn’t have been able to do what we did to either Imp ship.”

The Twi’lek’s braintails twitched strongly. “Your praise is most appreciated, Wedgan’tilles. The loss of two of my pilots is grave, but nothing in comparison to what all of us would have lost were our leadership not so clear thinking in a time of trouble.”

Tycho nodded in agreement. “It was your torps that vaped the Corrupter, Wedge. Zraii’s going to waste a lot of paint adding it to your display of kills.”

Wedge shook his head. “Look, your shots hurt it, I was just in a position to pinpoint a target. Imps have forever dismissed the threat our torps are to their ships. You’d think, after losing two Death Stars to X-wings they’d learn, but their ignorance is our margin of safety.”

Corran smiled. “So you’ll order Zraii to pull the kill from your X-wing?”

Wedge hesitated, then smiled sheepishly. “Let’s not go too far—it was a good pair of shots.” His eyes narrowed. “Convarion got what he deserved, especially in getting the tables turned on him. The fact that he was able to show up, and had an Interdictor Cruiser with him is most disturbing. Winter, any idea where the Aggregator came from?”

Winter tucked a lock of white hair back behind her left ear, then hit several keys on the datapad. The image floating above the table shifted from that of the station to the triangular form of an Interdictor Cruiser. “The Aggregator was last noted as part of an anti-Rebel taskforce led by High Admiral Teradoc. Intelligence on him—at least the intel I’m able to access from here—is sketchy. Most of his duty stations were Rimward. He was diligent in his duties and virulently anti-Rebel, but beyond that unremarkable. He was not at Endor and remained nominally loyal to the Empire until Coruscant fell.”

As nearly as Corran knew, Teradoc’s history was not unique. A few brave individuals declared themselves Warlords as soon as they heard of the Emperor’s death, but many of the others—especially those in the military—remained loyal to the Empire. Sate Pestage, an Imperial Advisor, held power for six months until a cabal of Imperial Advisors ousted him from power. Most of the military backed this group because it seemed disposed to taking action. It was only after Ysanne Isard supplanted them that members of the military began to grab for power themselves. Even so, a fair number of military leaders and politicians proclaimed their loyalty to the Empire until Coruscant fell.

At which point they had to fend for themselves, since they no longer had access to the bureaucracy that made the Empire run. While there were administrative areas and sectors that held themselves together—a tribute to the resourcefulness of their Grand Moffs—Corran expected that within two years nearly three-quarters of what had once been the Empire would be under the New Republic’s control.

Winter looked up from the datapad. “If I had to guess how Isard got her hands on the Aggregator, I would guess she traded bacta for it. The fact that the Aggregator’s TIEs were being flown by Thyferran Home Defense Corps pilots suggests that Teradoc is running low on trained personnel. With a supply of bacta he can keep them alive a bit longer. Without unlimited Imperial resources, he’s having to conserve people the way we did.”

Booster narrowed his eyes, both electronic and natural. “I’d also read into the pilot change a lack of confidence by Teradoc in Isard. Right now you have to figure that Teradoc is getting gigabytes of stories from the Aggregator’s crew about how we ambushed the ambushers. I think if I have my people start asking around what someone is willing to pay for a slightly used Interdictor Cruiser, word will get back to Teradoc. He’ll assume we’re suggesting we’re planning on capturing the next one he loans to Isard, so he won’t be free with his ship.”

Wedge nodded. “That’s worth a try. From this point forward we’re going to have to assume, however, that it is possible another Interdictor Cruiser could jump us. Actually, we have to assume it is probable that we might be jumped again. We’ll continue hit-and-run attacks and will just have to make our exchanges more covert. We can do that by having the incoming freighters guided to a location of our choosing, which means they won’t know where they’re going until the last minute.”

Mirax raised her right hand. “Perhaps you can’t remember back when you were hauling cargo, but I’d never go to a rendezvous without knowing where it was.”

“Good point, but I suspect Quelev Tapper can convince Karrde that we’re trustworthy.”

Booster laughed. “Continue paying in advance, and Karrde will believe it.”

“That we’ll do.” Wedge straightened up. “Remember, we’ve now eliminated one of Isard’s four ships.”

“Sure,” Corran sighed, “but it was the smallest of them all.”

“Agreed, but Ait Convarion was probably the most aggressive of the commanders Isard had working for her. He knew how to fight a Star Destroyer—what chances you could take with it and what chances you couldn’t. He expected us to scatter and we didn’t, which is why he died. The commanders of the larger ships are likely to be more conservative.” Wedge smiled. “The Empire’s boldest Admirals died at Yavin. Regardless, both Avarice and Virulence are the newer-model Imperial-class Star Destroyers, deuces—so they carry six squadrons of TIEs. No matter how good or bad their commanders are, they can overwhelm us.”

Corran smiled. “With targets.”

“Yes, but targets that shoot back.” Wedge shook his head. “Impstar deuces have a crew of nearly forty-six thousand people, if you count the troops they carry in the mix. They have a lot of firepower. Granted that it’s not terribly well suited for use against snubfighter squadrons, but an Impstar deuce will take a lot more pounding than a victim like the Corrupter before it goes away.”

Tycho nodded. “The one thing we have going for us in this regard is that a big ship has a lot more things that can go wrong with it than a smaller ship—maintaining our X-wings is easy compared to maintaining an Impstar deuce. Isard is going to have to be using them to run with convoys, and if we keep hitting them, the Impstars are going to have to be on a near constant state of alert. That will take its toll.”

“But will they wear out before you do?” Mirax looked from Wedge to Tycho, Tal’dira, and finally Corran. “Even before this last operation, you were pushing yourselves very hard. Tycho’s right, repairing an X-wing is easier than repairing a Star Destroyer, and I don’t doubt we can do things to spike the prices on crucial parts for Isard’s ships by buying them up ourselves, but replacing any of you or your people is going to be impossible.”

Corran knew that she was asking the right question, but she was missing clues to the answer. “One advantage we have, Mirax, is that Isard’s forces have to react to us. They always have to suppose we’re out there, whereas we only have to deal with them when we are out there. It will be rougher on them than it is on us. We can’t keep this up forever, but we won’t have to.” He looked at Wedge. “Right, Commander?”

“I hope so, Corran.” Wedge folded his arms across his chest. “I like the idea of buying up some critical parts. Turbolaser focal lenses, power couplers, and the like. Better yet if we can find junk and get it to the other side, that would help a lot.”

“I’ll see what I can do on that count, Wedge.”

“Thanks, Booster.” Wedge frowned. “I also gather you’re going to speak to Karrde about how the Imps found us at Alderaan?”

A braintail twitched its way toward the center of the table. “How do we know the information was not transmitted from our side to Isard’s people?”

Booster looked over at Tal’dira. “Our freighters were slaved for the jumps to the Skate. I didn’t tell my people where we were going. Wedge told you fighter jocks where we were going in your mission briefing, but that was only forty-eight hours before the run. The Aggregator was given over to Isard five days before the strike, and the pilots on it were run through mission-specific briefings about twelve hours after the ship arrived. Karrde had the information about our run a good two standard weeks before that, which means the data squirted from his people to the Imps.”

“Besides, if one of Booster’s people betrayed us, Isard would have showed up here with the Lusankya.” Corran tapped a finger against the tabletop. “Presumably, that’s information Karrde doesn’t have.”

“Nor information he’ll get from me or my people.” Booster snarled directly at Corran. “My people are good people, Horn. Decidedly trustworthy.”

Aril Nunb chittered in Sullustan for a second, then translated to Basic. “Booster, Corran did not mean to suggest your people are untrustworthy—he stated as much by noting we were not attacked here.”

“I know what he was implying, Captain Nunb.” Booster’s frown deepened. “He’s CorSec, through and through, and a Horn on top of that. He assumes no one who’s ever moved a little contraband can be trusted.”

Corran wanted to protest that he hadn’t meant what Booster thought he did, but he had to admit to himself that, deep down, he was suspicious of the smugglers Booster had working on hauling supplies for them. In the past it would have been simply because they were smugglers, and anyone who has once crossed the border between lawful and lawless is likely to do it again and again. Because of that, they can’t be trusted, at least they can’t from the point of view of someone who is lawful. Now, because I’m an outlaw, I know that isn’t exactly true, but I didn’t suspect Erisi until too late, primarily because she was one of us. Because that fact made me blind to her treachery, I want to avoid falling into that same trap again.

He looked over at Booster. Of course, he’ll never believe that.

Wedge rapped a knuckle on the table. “Enough, Booster. Aril’s right, and no matter what Corran might or might not think about your people, I know it’s nothing you’ve not already thought a dozen times over about each of them. We’re in a tenuous situation here, and caution is vital for all of us. The fact is that the leak probably did come through Karrde’s people. Booster, I want you to sort that out with him.”

“Consider it done.”

“Good. You’ll let me know what Karrde says.” Wedge looked up at Winter. “Last topic: the Valiant. Any luck in learning anything about it?”

“A lot of luck, actually.” Winter smiled heartily. “The Valiant is an Alderaanian Thranta-class War Cruiser. All of them were supposed to have been destroyed when Alderaan disarmed, but it seems as if Valiant and two other War Cruisers—Courage and Fidelity—were refitted with robotic controls and slaved to accept commands from Another Chance. They were its escorts. One of them would fly into the system before it, another would fly with it, and the third would take another course to draw off pursuit. The trio of ships would change off, and some of the damage on the exterior of the ship suggests it ran off more than one pirate raid on Another Chance. If Emtrey can talk it into opening up its logs we’ll be able to confirm that idea.”

Wedge gave her a big grin. “That’s a lot of information for so little time to research the ship.”

Winter’s hair spread out in a white veil across her shoulders as she shook her head. “Most of it is information I remember from reading histories when I was younger and by correlating little bits of data I picked up in the Organa household or when I worked with Princess Leia aiding her father. When the Another Chance was recovered, it was clear that a massive power surge had fried circuits, including the controllers for the external communication arrays that allowed ship-to-ship communication. Since Valiant queried Tycho’s X-wing when it broadcast the Another Chance’s IFF code, and followed his lead in picking targets, the Valiant was clearly assigned to protect the Another Chance. Three War Cruisers and a War Frigate frequently comprised a patrol in the Alderaanian fleet, so I concluded there must have been three War Cruisers. The Valiant and the other two were the last three built in that class, were commissioned, and then were immediately decommissioned. Unlike the other ships the Alderaanians had used in the Clone Wars—which were scrapped and melted down into peace medals that were presented to the crews and surviving families as mementos—there were no records of scraps being sent out to crews. Nor are there records of crews having served on them, so I have concluded that they were immediately refitted with droids to accompany the War Frigate Another Chance.”

Booster’s jaw hung open. “You remembered all that and figured it all out?”

Mirax laughed. “Winter has a holographic memory. She remembers everything she sees, hears, or experiences, including that dumb look you’re giving her.”

Booster snapped his mouth shut, then shook his head. “Then remember this: Never have children.”

Wedge snorted out a quick laugh. “Crumbs don’t fall far from the Hutt’s mouth, Booster.”

“Thanks a lot, Wedge.” Mirax gave him a hard stare, but softened it with a smile.

“Sorry, Mirax. Winter, what are the chances that Courage and Fidelity are still out there?”

“Won’t have any way of estimating that until we get a look at Valiant’s inner workings. Emtrey thinks he can find a way in, and he now has Whistler helping him slice some code. Zraii is nearly shedding his carapace over a chance to work on the Valiant, so my guess is that they’ll have it open and functioning to our satisfaction within a couple of weeks.”

“That’s something, then.” Wedge glanced at Booster. “You want the Valiant, or is it too small for you?”

“I’m sure you can find someone else who is better suited to commanding it.” Booster forced a yawn. “Overseeing a crew of droids would be more boring than I care to imagine. You should give the job to that protocol droid of yours.”

Corran laughed. Trying to visualize Emtrey on the bridge of a ship issuing commands produced ridiculous images in his mind. “By the time he informed his crew of his qualifications, they’d mutiny.”

Wedge and the others who had worked with Emtrey joined Corran in laughter. Wedge ended his laugh with a cough, then cleared his throat. “I think Emtrey is better suited to be an Executive Officer, not a Commander. I do think, however, we’ve got someone who has the skills we need and could get more out of a droid crew than anyone else.” He reached out with his right hand and touched Aril Nunb on her left shoulder. “You’ve flown more than fighters. Interested in commanding a War Cruiser?”

Her deep red eyes widened in surprise, then she nodded. “That’s a job I can handle. I may need Emtrey to help me.”

“He’s all yours.” Wedge gave her a nod, then smiled at the others. “Okay, I think we’ve got some directions in which we can head and some operations to plan. We got lucky this time, but from here on out, we manufacture luck. The good we’ll keep and the bad will go to Isard. She missed her best chance to kill us off, and I see no reason to give her another one.”

26

The apathetic mask Fliry Vorru had fitted onto his face cracked. He’d managed to keep his expression utterly impassive as Ysanne Isard dressed down Erisi Dlarit. Both women had maintained rigid control at first, wielding civility and titles with razor-kiss efficacy. Polite phrasings bottled up vitriol; but Vorru knew if he’d tossed a pair of lightsabers between them, they’d have minced each other in a nanosecond.

Then Ysanne Isard had said, “High Admiral Teradoc has withdrawn the Aggregator from my service and that is your fault!”

Erisi exploded. “My fault? What algorithm did you use to calculate that conclusion? Sir.”

“The calculations were simple enough that I would have thought any provincial mind could have grasped them.” Isard’s eyes narrowed as her hands balled into fists. “Your pilots were on both the Aggregator and the Corrupter. It was your pilots who were supposed to deal with the snubfighter threat. They failed, costing me the Corrupter and now making me the laughingstock of the galaxy. Teradoc had the gall to say to me that he’d only lend me toys if I would promise they would not return broken! The Emperor would have had his guts for floss over such a remark. Because of you, I am subject to such indignities!”

“Begging your pardon, but the orders placing my pilots on those ships came from you. I asked you to use our Elite pilots for the mission, but you picked a green unit.”

“Their evaluations—reports you prepared—were outstanding.”

“Yes, but they’d not seen combat before.” Erisi’s blue eyes burned intensely. “You sent them out after a unit that is arguably the best fighter squadron in the galaxy.”

Isard raised an eyebrow. “Even with your participation no longer needed or welcome?”

The sniped quip seemed to pass unnoticed by Dlarit, but Vorru had no doubt she’d cataloged it. “My Elite Squadron is the equal of Rogue Squadron. If you had sent us after them, Teradoc would be prostrate before you, begging you to accept his allegiance. He is laughing because you destroyed three squadrons, because you didn’t heed the warning he offered by refusing to send his own pilots against Antilles.”

Vorru saw Isard preparing for a counterargument and knew if Isard were not checked Erisi might pay with her life for her frank audacity. In the space of a heartbeat, he examined his options. If he said nothing, Isard would destroy Erisi Dlarit, throwing the Dlarit family into further disrepute. The fact that the Ashern had humiliated her father clearly fueled her desire for retribution on the forces arrayed against the Bacta Cartel. She had wanted to fly on the mission to Alderaan, but Isard had refused that request. To turn around and then blame Erisi for the mission’s failure was frustrating enough that Erisi might wish for death.

Intervening on her behalf would open him to Isard’s wrath, but the price might be worth it. Erisi and her family still had considerable influence within the Bacta Cartel. If Isard had to be removed, having Erisi as an ally might make such an operation possible and certainly would smooth over the consequences of it on Thyferra. I could even claim to the New Republic that I joined Isard specifically to work against her from the inside like this. The idea that the New Republic would have to accept him as the leader of the new Bacta Cartel broadened the grin Erisi’s defiance had put on his face.

“I think, Madam Director, you cannot discount the fact that the Rogues clearly had planned ahead against the eventuality of betrayal. Granted an Alderaanian War Cruiser is an antiquated ship, but coupled with the X-wing squadron’s strength, it was enough to make Captain Convarion pay for his recklessness.”

Isard rotated her head around to glance at him over her shoulder. “You presume Convarion made a mistake to blind me to the fact that if our operation was betrayed to Antilles, it was doubtless through a spy you have failed to locate.”

Vorru caught Erisi’s eye, and in a moment he felt he had earned her gratitude. Part of him began to list the various ways she could make it more manifest. Because of her beauty and strength, the idea of a physical union to consummate their alliance in opposition to Isard came to mind, but he dismissed it. He had no doubt it could happen—and might well happen yet—but their need for each other had higher purposes than sating lust. If we are to be allies, our first conjunction must be full of purpose and confirmed by reason, not dictated and muddled by emotional involvement.

Vorru knew he could fall victim to Erisi’s charms, because she realized that it was possible to play to his vanity and desperation. He had always been vain, but he had kept it in check. His age attacked both his vanity and ambition, reminding himself that he had little time to accomplish all the goals he had set out for his life. His time on Kessel had gotten him no closer to the heights he had once seen as his due, and now he knew that unless he acted quickly, his chances of even approaching them would wither and die.

“That possibility cannot be discounted, of course, Madam Director—nor can it be proven, as you are well aware. The fact is that Antilles has been very cautious throughout his career. That he has lived this long is ample proof of that. The precaution taken against our interference could have been nothing more than a concern over whether or not he could trust his trading partner.”

Isard turned so she could watch both him and Erisi. “Yes, his trading partner. I want Karrde dealt with.”

Vorru shook his head. “Under no circumstances. If we treat Talon Karrde any differently than we do now, he will realize we have an agent among his people, and we lose a very valuable resource. Moreover, Karrde’s loyalty can be bought. We will have him when, if, and however we want him.”

He opened his hands. “As for your assertion that Commander Dlarit is to blame for the failures of her pilots, this, too, is disingenuous. Her pilots were inappropriately matched against Rogue Squadron. Captain Convarion always believed the appearance of his vessel would strike terror into the hearts of his enemies. He expected them to panic and run precisely because they ran the first time he ambushed them. Antilles has not lived this long by repeating mistakes. Convarion should have insisted on having the best pilots possible flying with him. He did not, because he assumed their contribution to his victory would be incidental.”

Isard brought her head up. “Ah, well, then it seems I am wrong about everything!” The rising ironic tone in her voice did nothing to hide her anger. “Perhaps you would like to tell me how things are going to go from now on and what we should do about them.”

Vorru smiled and took a half step toward Isard as he turned to face her. “I would guess, despite the possession of the War Cruiser, Antilles and his people will continue their”—he glanced at Erisi—“as the pilots so colorfully put it, ‘hit-and-hype’ raids. In actuality you’ve seen those raids are minimally effective. I would imagine they will also try to infiltrate some of the tanker crews so they can hijack more shipments. Our losses—and we will have some—should be minimal.”

Isard’s eyes half-closed. “Minimal losses to us will still be enough to let them finance their war against us.”

“True, but the fact is that time runs in our favor, not theirs. We have a number of ways to deal with them, but their threat will not be ended until we locate their base and destroy it.”

Isard pressed two fingers against her lips for a moment.

“The elimination of their base has always been the way to deal with them. What other plans do you have in mind?”

Vorru smiled hesitantly. “The prime method of eliminating their ability to fight against us is for us to open up our storage wells and make an abundance of bacta available.”

“No!” Erisi and Ysanne looked at each other in surprise as their joint denunciation of that suggestion echoed loudly through the room. Isard shook her head. “That would kill the price of bacta and loosen the dependency of others upon us.”

“Agreed, but we can survive the momentary weakness, Rogue Squadron cannot. The strength of the bacta price is their strength. Take it away, and they are left penniless. Karrde won’t speak with them. They will be unable to maintain their spacecraft and will no longer appear to be friends worth protecting. Make bacta abundant, offer a reward to bring Antilles and his people in, and hint that bacta will remain abundant if they are captured or betrayed to you and Antilles is done.”

Even as he outlined the plan, Vorru knew Isard would reject it. It is the easiest and most bloodless of the plans needed for getting rid of Antilles. She will reject it because it does not satisfy her sense of revenge. She wants him to suffer, not wither. I doubt she recognizes she should reject it because of the backlash she will suffer among the Xucphra people when their standard of living crashes.

Isard slowly shook her head. “Antilles has defied me directly and has killed one of my Destroyers. I want him dead, I want Horn dead and the others, but I want them to know I was the hand behind it, not market vagaries. Moreover, relinquished power is power that is not easily recovered. Next.”

“The other plan is the current one—a plan that requires vigilance and patience. We keep seeking information and then pounce when we know where he is.” Vorru shrugged stiffly. “The problem with this plan is that it is frustrating, since we cannot act until we know where he is based. That could take three months, six, a year.”

“Unacceptable.” Isard shook her head adamantly. “I am not going to sit back and allow Antilles free rein while I just wait. This situation cannot be allowed to mature further. We need action. I want to kill something, and I want to use her pilots to do it.” Isard pointed an unwavering finger at Erisi. “If your pilots are truly elite, killing something should not be beneath them.”

Vorru felt a cold shiver run down his spine. Halanit was a disaster, yet she would repeat it. “Madam Director, a raid right now would be a waste of people, parts, munitions, and goodwill.”

“But it will show High Admiral Teradoc and that fool Harssk that they should not trifle with me and laugh at me. And what need have I of goodwill? Do I not own all the bacta there is? Others should please me with their actions, not seek to be pleased by me.”

Vorru held his hands up. “There is no question you have power others would do well to respect, but attacking another place like Halanit will inspire more fear than you want.”

Isard gave Vorru a predatory smile, all sharp tooth and pitiless. “But fear is exactly what I want, Minister Vorru. However, I take your point. I will still have my attack, and Commander Dlarit’s people will do it, but we’ll spare off-worlders for the moment.”

She blithely turned her attention on Erisi, and the Thyferran woman paled. “You will plan a mission that punishes the Ashern for their boldness in resisting me. Their antics have been hardly damaging, but I want them to know that to defy me is to court death. Find something—a munitions dump, a rebel camp, a sympathetic village, anything. Find it and destroy it. No warning, no mercy.” She smiled. “No question who the true power here is.”

27

Mirax Terrik found herself surprised by the delighted smile on Talon Karrde’s face. A crescent lined with white teeth split his moustache from his goatee and gave him the rakish air of a space pirate. What surprised her was not that Karrde could smile so handsomely, but that he dared to, given the scowl on her father’s face. Karrde can’t be ignorant of my father’s temper, so he thinks he’s anticipated our trouble.

Karrde, alone in his cabin, waved both of the Terriks to chairs. “I’ll dispense with greetings because I suspect you’d doubt my sincerity after what happened at Alderaan.” Karrde came around to the front of his desk, then leaned back on its edge, crossing his long legs.

Mirax sat in the chair she’d been offered, but her father remained standing. He rested his hands on the back of his chair, then leaned forward to bring his eyes down to Karrde’s level. Mirax knew the posture well—her father lowered his head like a thirst-mad bantha preparing to sprint to a watering seep. She’d seen other creatures begin to cringe as Booster did that, but Karrde did not.

“Karrde, I’ve been over the details again and again. I’ve checked my people.” Booster tapped Mirax’s shoulder with his thumb. “I’ve even had her CorSec suitor look some material over to check this out.”

Mirax covered her reaction to her father’s statement. Booster had asked her for advice about making a final check on his security records, and she had brought Corran in on it. Booster had not been pleased when he found out that “CorranSec” had gone over things, but he accepted Corran’s conclusions. Now he makes it sound like he solicited Corran’s advice. We’re going to talk about this.

Karrde held a hand up. “I know what you’re going to say.”

“Yeah?”

“I think so.” Karrde’s eyes actually twinkled. “You’ll tell me that the leak to the Imps came from my organization.”

Booster’s head came up. “You knew?”

“Not before the fact, no. I had no idea. Afterward, though, it was rather obvious.” Karrde shrugged. “Melina Carniss sold you out.”

Booster straightened up to his full height. “Have you killed her, yet?”

“No. I didn’t want to precipitate action that could not be reversed.”

Booster chuckled deeply. “You are studying her to find her connection to Isard.”

“Actually I wanted to see how far she had spread Isard’s influence in my organization; but, yes, I have been watching her.” Karrde folded his arms across his chest. “Now that you’re here, I thought I would allow you to determine how you want to deal with this situation. Shoving her out into space would probably be the most expedient method of killing her. I heard about a renegade band of Twi’leks who used to run electricity through a vat of bacta, torturing their victims to the point of death, then turning off the electricity and allowing the bacta to heal them up.”

Mirax swallowed against the bile rising in her throat. “Easier just to let the word get out that Melina was a binary-agent: She sold the Imp ambush to us just the same way she sold us to Isard. Let the bacta witch deal with her.”

Karrde nodded. “I also have a Wookiee in my employ who could …”

Booster shook his head. “No, no Wookiees. Armpits are convenient for lifting corpses and moving them to dump sites.”

“I’ll loan you any weapon you want to deal with her. I have things from all over, including a recently acquired Sith lanvarok that promises to be truly elegant, if I’ve figured out correctly how it’s supposed to work.” Karrde frowned. “But you’re not left-handed, so that will complicate things.”

Mirax raised an eyebrow. “You really have a lanvarok?”

“Yes, do you have a buyer?”

“A collector.”

“Good.”

“And he’s left-handed.”

“Even better.”

“If you will give me details on the lanvarok and authenticate its Sith origins …”

Booster cleared his voice. “We have current business to discuss before you get going on this deal.”

“Of course, Booster, of course.” Karrde smiled. “We can holograph the lanvarok in use and that should help spike the price …”

Booster shook his head. “No.”

“You prefer another method for dealing with traitors?”

“I do.” Booster smiled broadly. “I want you to keep her alive and working.”

Karrde frowned. “Why?”

“I have my reasons.”

“Not good enough, Booster. You’ll have to do better if you want her to stay alive. She betrayed one of my customers to an enemy, causing harm to my customer, my people, and my reputation. She has to die.”

Booster’s protestations confused Mirax. She looked up at her father. “Why do you want her to live?”

Karrde’s eyes narrowed. “I believe, for one thing, your father will suggest that with Carniss still in place, Isard won’t try to infiltrate a new spy into my organization.”

Booster nodded. “Better the Hutt you have tagged than one you don’t.”

“Agreed, Booster, but I’m still afraid I can’t accommodate you in this.”

“What?”

“Oh, please, don’t act so incredulous.” Karrde shook his head gravely. “I can’t have her threatening my customers. It’s bad for my reputation and bad for morale and puts me at a serious disadvantage in my business dealings. She’s going to die.”

“You gave me a choice of how she dies.”

“Old age is not one of the options I had in mind.” Karrde waved away Booster’s comment. “No, she has to die. There is no retreating from this point.”

“No?” Booster arched an eyebrow over his artificial eye. “I have more things to buy. I can always take my business elsewhere.”

“If I had a credit for every time I heard that sort of empty threat, I could buy and sell Thyferra and Isard a dozen times over.” Karrde snorted. “I believe our old business is concluded. Now about that lanvarok …”

“Don’t be so anxious here, Karrde.” Booster slowly smiled. “You’ve got our munitions business already—though that could change. This is something more.”

“It would have to be special if you expect to buy Me-lina’s life with it.”

“I think it is. I was going to give it to Billey—pitch some work his way for old times’ sake.”

Karrde nodded. “Dravis, the new guy working for him, is good.”

“So I’ve heard, but you’re better.”

Karrde smiled. “So I’ve heard.”

“Anyway,” Booster growled, “I want a gravity well projector.”

Mirax covered a smile as Karrde coughed and regarded her father with disbelief. So you can be surprised, Karrde. Not easily, but possibly.

“A gravity well projector?” Karrde shook his head. “Billey can’t get it for you.”

Booster nodded. “It’s impossible to get one, I know, but I could use it, and so I thought I’d start asking. If you can’t do it …”

“Reverse thrust there, Booster. I just said Billey couldn’t get it.”

“You can?”

Karrde lifted his chin. “Easily.”

“Sure. That’s the deepest bucket of sithspit I’ve ever heard being sloshed about.”

“I can, and I will, and it will cost you.” Karrde’s eyes narrowed. “But giving me that purchase order doesn’t get you Melina Carniss’s life.”

Booster smiled. “Does it give me six months of her life?”

Karrde closed his eyes for a moment. “Two months, but she’ll be isolated from most of my operations.”

“I see. I also need parts for a squadron of TIE fighters. I want some Y-wing ion cannons and circuitry refit kits that will allow me to put the cannons in the starfighters.”

“That’s custom work. It’ll be expensive.” Karrde looked at the fingernails on his right hand. “And it will get you another month of Melina’s life.”

Booster leaned forward, his fingertips digging into the plush cushioning of the chair’s back. “Take it out of the money you’ll make selling our bacta hauls.”

Karrde laughed as he shook his head. “You’re selling me bantha hides before you’ve killed the bantha, Booster.”

“I’d ask you to trust me on this one, Karrde, but I know that would take more credits than buying Carniss’s continued survival.” Booster frowned. “We have ops planned that will pull in bacta. Locate the items and wait for us to deliver before you order them. We’ll sell the bacta to you at seventy percent of the galactic average price.”

“Fifty percent and you’ll leave the Coruscant market open to me.”

The chair’s nerfhide covering squeaked as Booster’s grip tightened. “The bacta we deliver there is being used to fight the Krytos virus. That’s pure charity and a stopgap that’s preventing the spread of the virus off Coruscant. It’s not a profit center.”

Karrde’s face hardened. “Every place is a profit center, Booster. You know that.” He raised a hand to stop Booster’s growl from growing into an argument. “I’ll donate freely seventy percent of the allocation you’d have delivered to the world, but the other thirty percent I’ll use to feed the black market demand. You have to know that you’re already losing nearly forty percent to the black market now, after delivery, so I’ll get more where you want it to go.”

“And that gives me a stay of execution on Melina Carniss?”

Karrde nodded. “Her life is in your hands.”

Booster glanced down at the deck, then slowly nodded. “You’re a bastard, Karrde.”

“Quite possibly, but you know you’d have let me keep thirty-five percent of the bacta to sell on Coruscant if I’d pressed you for it.”

Booster’s head came up. “Perceptive, too.”

“Thank you.”

Mirax, who slowly shook off the shock the frank bargaining had sparked in her, frowned. “Why didn’t you push for as much as you could get?” Karrde hesitated, and Mirax could see his decision to answer her question was a struggle for him. He plays things so close to his vest that he’s reluctant to let someone else see how he works.

Some of the amusement drained from Karrde’s face. “I’m going to turn the Coruscant black market work over to Billey. I don’t think he and Dravis could handle thirty-five percent of the supply you’ll bring me. No reason I should give them enough of a supply to allow the bottom to drop out of that market. Thirty percent is enough to suit me and them.”

Booster smiled and gave Karrde a nod. “Keep it up and I’ll take back the bastard remark.”

“What, and make me earn it some other way?”

“Good point. I want to still work with Carniss to set up our rendezvous, but we’re going to plan them in a way that will prevent Isard from ambushing us again. I’ll give her a circuit of worlds to travel on. When your ships come into a system they’ll be told to proceed with the journey, or they’ll be met by our people and the exchange will take place. Isard can’t cover all those locations and her bacta convoys.”

Talon Karrde smiled. “A rendezvous circuit, I like it. You know where you’ll meet them; and if the system looks wrong, you know where they will go next, so you let them go. Very good.”

“I think it will work. It will keep Carniss busy and frustrate Isard.”

“So you have a use for Carniss in the future?”

“Perhaps.” Booster smiled. “How soon can you get me that gravity well projector?”

“A month. Maybe two.”

“Good.” Booster extended his hand toward Karrde. “I can’t say it was a pleasure doing business with you, but I’ve spent more time doing less with fewer results in the past.”

Karrde shook Booster’s hand. “It’s a good thing you’re retired, Booster. I wouldn’t like having to split the galaxy between us. Please, don’t leave quite yet. I’d offer you my hospitality.”

Booster smiled. “And you want to talk to Mirax about the lanvarok.”

“Indeed,” Karrde laughed, “it’s a very good thing you’re retired.”

28

Iella drew her knees up to her chest and settled her arms around them, then sighed. Diric would have found this place fascinating. Softly muted moonlight glowed green through the room’s skylight. It managed to make the spare room seem warmer and more inviting, despite the lack of amenities.

Human amenities, she corrected herself. To the Vratix this would be next to luxury.

The Vratix who still lived in harvester tribes were scattered over the face of Thyferra, living in villages much akin to the one in which Iella and the Ashern rebels had sought refuge. The buildings themselves were created out of an air-dried mud and saliva mixture that the Vratix slathered on a twig and branch lattice. While not as strong or durable as ferrocrete, the towers and tunnel houses, if unmaintained, could still last as long as five years.

In the past, before the Vratix became civilized, the elemental dissolution of their dwellings would force a migration to a new area, carefully allowing their previous territory to recover from their habitation. Likewise, in the past, the Vratix themselves had provided the saliva and had done the mixing to prepare the mud. Now they used a domesticated branch of a similar species, the knytix, to create the mud for Vratix masons. The knytix, which resembled the Vratix—though smaller, blockier, and less elegant in form—were kept as pets, as work animals, and Iella had heard, as food for special occasions. When she had said she could never eat a pet, a Vratix had explained that pets were offered as a gift to those the family wished to honor, it became apparent that the level of their sacrifice showed the depth of their respect for the individual to whom the offer was made. That certainly made the practice more understandable, but she still couldn’t imagine eating a creature a young Vratix once called Fluffy or its Vratix equivalent.

Though eating knytix could have easily been seen as a primitive practice by a barbaric society, the Vratix clearly were anything but. The Vratix village consisted of several towers that rose up into the middle reaches of the gloan trees. Concentric circular terraces with little walls at the lip gave each tower the look of a stepped pyramid, though the rounded foundation made it more elegant. Huge arching bridges connected one tower to another and were all but hidden by the thick forest foliage.

Vratix artistry was not limited to the architecture. The green skylight had been made by a Vratix artisan who chewed various rain forest leaves into paste, then fashioned it into a film thin enough to allow light to pass through. It appeared delicate in the extreme, yet was strong enough to ward off rain and survive other climatic conditions.

The stems and veins of the leaves formed a complex and chaotic network that looked visually attractive, but Iella knew that was not its primary purpose. Because both light and sound took time to travel to the eye and ear, respectively, the Vratix considered them secondary and deceptive senses. What one saw or heard was always something that had happened in the past, but what one could feel with the sense of touch, that was immediate and present in real time.

Reaching out she let her fingers play across the inside of the circular skylight. Her gentle touch conveyed a legion of different textures, some soft, some smooth, and others rough or sharp. She likened the progression to that of the music in a symphony, except that in choosing which way to stroke the surface, she could determine what she felt and in what order. If I were worried, soft and smooth would soothe me, whereas if I were manic, sharp might caution me.

Similarly, a whole variety of textures had been worked by the mason who had created the room she had been given. The walls had gentle ridges that swelled like waves on an ocean. They swirled into spirals and opened on smooth voids that encouraged placid tranquillity. The raised platform on which she slept had been cupped like a crater to hold her in, yet the sides and walls nearby were sleek and almost slippery to the touch. Near the doorhole, raised bumps warned of potential harm and the need for caution.

“They’ve thought of everything.”

“Not quite.” A hand reached up and grabbed the sill at the bottom of the door, then the tendons and muscles tensed in the arm attached to it and Elscol pulled herself into view. “The Vratix were nice enough to give us some footholds for climbing up here, but I’d still prefer a rope ladder.”

Iella laughed and helped pull the smaller woman into the room. Because the Vratix’s hind legs were so powerful, leaping up to the doorholes of rooms set well above the ground was simple. The need for stairs never developed, so Vratix architecture never included them. Visiting humans were normally housed in public areas, but advertising the presence of Ashern agents was not a good idea, so they were secreted away in rooms that were difficult for humans to move into and out of.

“Sixtus isn’t with you?”

“No. He’s out wandering through the rain forest.” Elscol shrugged and adjusted the blaster on her right hip. “I’ve known him for years now, and there are just times he has to drift away. I suspect the Imps did some nasty stuff to him and his people when they trained him to be Special Ops and occasionally he has to fight it.”

“Never had anyone exactly like him in CorSec, but I understand the need to get away. What’s going on? Change of plans?”

Elscol shook her head. “Nope, we’ll leave here after dark, as planned, and move to the next haven. Just seeing us here seems to be good for Vratix morale. I don’t really have any sense of how good the Vratix will be in combat, but they’re fighters at heart.”

“You mean at pulmonary arch.”

“Doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?”

Iella shook her head. “No, not really.”

Elscol smiled and seated herself on the foot of Iella’s bed. “Well, doesn’t matter. Armed with vibroblades, force pikes, or blasters, we can get enough Vratix that we can overwhelm humans in Xucphra City. Some of the Ashern indicate their training cadres are swelling in our wake. We come through, they get more volunteers. Sixtus has specified benchmarks for training, and it looks like we’ll have our force in a couple of months.”

“I’d feel better about them if we ever got to see their warriors in action.”

Elscol nodded. “Agreed. From what Sixtus has said, though, because bacta and healing is so much a part of Vratix society, for a Vratix to become a warrior and cause harm is a very solemn decision. The Ashern, as you know, sharpen their forearm claws and paint themselves black. The former is for fighting, but they paint themselves black so they can remain in the shadows, hidden away to protect the other Vratix from what they can and will do to win freedom.”

“Well, their reluctance to be violent explains why they haven’t just risen up and slaughtered all the humans on the planet.” Iella sighed. “It’s too bad they have to resort to war to win the freedom they never should have lost in the first place. I hope we can remain free long enough for the Ashern to be ready to fight. How long do you figure we have until Isard storms us?”

“Good question. Me, I’d have done it in a heartbeat before we embarrassed General Dlarit, but she’s trying to keep the populace happy. If the Xucphra folks see white armor in bulk on their world, they’re going to figure she’s got no more use for them, and I suspect they can cause a fair amount of trouble for her.” Elscol sat back, leaning against the wall. “Of course, Isard has more trouble than just us. That’s what I came to tell you. News from the front.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And good news, too.”

Iella dropped to the circular chamber’s floor and sat cross-legged. Twisting her blaster belt around so she was more comfortable, she smiled up at Elscol. “What did you hear?”

“The Corrupter is no more.”

Iella’s jaw dropped. “What? How?”

“Isard tried to ambush Wedge and the others. Apparently, Wedge had a surprise waiting for them. A steady diet of proton torpedoes put the Corrupter down. No word of squadron losses—at least none that are reliable. Data came from a tap on Xucphra corp news, so it all has an Imp spin.”

“Still, if they’re saying the Corrupter was destroyed, that means its loss was the least of the problems Isard has.” Iella clapped her hands. “Maybe this mission isn’t going to be suicidal.”

Elscol’s face closed down. “We’re a long way from getting out, Iella, but getting shot up isn’t going to get you and your husband reunited.”

“What?” Iella tried to cover her surprise at Elscol’s comment because when she heard the words she knew part of her had been considering the mission in exactly that light. “I never …”

Elscol leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees. “Hey, do I look like some Xucphra clerk who’s going to believe everything you say? No. I’ve been where you are. I lost my husband to the Imps back on Cilpar, and part of me wanted to die with him there. I took off after the Imps for revenge, but always in the back of my mind was the feeling that when I died we’d be together again. Wedge saw that in me and saw the urge for self-destruction grow in me. When he kicked me out of Rogue Squadron, well, that woke me up; and I began to see a lot of things.”

Iella’s head came up. “Are you saying there’s no life after death?”

“I’m saying it doesn’t matter.” Elscol held her two hands out, palms toward the ceiling. “On one hand, if there isn’t an afterlife, you’ll be remembered for the things you did while you were alive. On the other, if there is an afterlife, you’ll be able to share all you did with those who died before you. Either way, living as long as possible and doing the most you can is the only way to go. I decided I didn’t want to be known here or in the afterlife for having quit. I don’t think you do, either.”

Iella frowned. “You’re right, but sometimes the pain …” She clutched her hands against her breastbone. “Sometimes it hurts too much to live.”

“Nonsense.” Elscol’s dark eyes sharpened. “Pain’s the only way we know we’re alive.”

“What?”

“If the afterlife is supposed to be special and wonderful and blissful—and there aren’t many theologies that suggest otherwise—then it follows that pain’s the only way you know you’re alive. Not letting the pain get to you, not surrendering to it, that’s the way you continue living.” Elscol brought her hands together, then glanced down at the floor. “It still hurts me, too, at certain times of the year, but I don’t let it overwhelm me.”

“I haven’t let it overwhelm me, either.”

“No, you haven’t. You’re strong, Iella, real strong.” Elscol gave her a half-grin. “It’s just that as things get going tougher, in the moments when stress is off, you’ll start to feel the pain. Fight it.”

Iella slowly nodded. What Elscol had said made perfect sense to her. While involved in an operation, the stresses of the operation would push everything else into the background. When the stress slackened, she tried to recover a sense of well-being, and would invariably harken back to her time with Diric. The joy would melt into melancholy, then that would congeal into sorrow and pain. I’d come to a point where surrendering to the pain would be more simple than fighting the Imps and everything else.

She realized that she’d not faced this problem before because when Diric had been taken by the Imps there was always a chance that he would be released and they would be able to continue their lives together. Hope had shielded her against despair and the pain of her loss. Circumstances are different now, but I’m also a different person than I was. I will survive and fight the pain.

She looked up and was about to tell Elscol the same thing, when a howling shriek filled the air and sent a tremor through her tower room. No mistaking that for anything else—TIE fighters are coming in. She dove for the doorhole and lying there on her belly stared out at the Vratix village. Other brown-gray towers were all but invisible in the thick foliage of the rain forest until green laser bolts illuminated them and began setting trees on fire. The bolts hissed through the air, igniting a rain of flaming branches and leaves falling on buildings and the forest floor.

Elscol hunkered down beside her with blaster in hand as the TIEs made another pass. Trees split as if they had been struck by lightning. Their boles exploded, spraying the rain forest with fiery hardwood splinters. Impaled Vratix and knytix twitched on the ground or limped along, black blood streaming from their wounds. In other spots, heavy bits of tree fell, crushing Vratix and pulverizing the walls of houses.

“Sithspawn!” Elscol bounced a fist off the floor. “We’ve got nothing that can stop them. They’re just slaughtering Vratix for the fun of it.”

“It’s not fun for the Vratix.” Iella watched as the Vratix began to flee. The whole tableau took on an unreal air. Part of it came from the Vratix leaping high into the branches of trees surrounding the village to escape. If Iella had allowed herself to forget how sophisticated the Vratix could be and just see them as insects, then she was watching a whole swarm of Corellian gluttonbugs clear-chew a forest. They moved in a mass, leaping away as bolts rained down on them, exploding and pitching body parts in every direction.

The most surreal element in the whole scene was the lack of wailing from the victims. The Vratix vocalized no sounds as they fled. They grasped each other and remained close, clearly taking security in the sense they trusted the most. But that’s what’s getting them killed. Massed together like this makes them terribly vulnerable to the strafing runs.

“Elscol, we have to do something.”

“What? These blasters aren’t going to bring down a starfighter, even if they don’t have shields.” Elscol coughed as the breeze wafted smoke toward them. “The only thing we can do is try to get out of here.”

“Agreed.” Iella looked out again, bracing to duck away from more aerial fire, but as the echoes of the last TIE’s shriek died, no new one rose to take its place. Instead the whine of blaster fire started at the north end of the village. She looked in that direction and saw figures in white moving into the burning village. “Stormies.”

Elscol laughed and checked the power pack on her pistol. “Not hardly. Look at the armor and how they wear it. Most of them are too small for it. They’re Home Defense troops all dressed up for this operation.”

“How can you be sure?”

“You think real stormies would raid a jungle village wearing white?”

Iella hesitated. “But on Endor, in the forest there, reports I heard …”

“Trust me, Iella, they learned from that mistake. Getting drubbed by a Wookiee and a bunch of Ewoks convinced them to institute some reforms.” Elscol pulled herself into the door-hole and leaped out. “C’mon.”

Iella followed, making the three-meter drop without injury. Running forward, she caught up with Elscol at the wall that edged the rooftop where they stood. As Elscol swung her legs over the top of the wall, Iella raised her blaster pistol and sighted in on one of the advancing troopers.

Elscol gently slapped her thigh. “Save it, you’ll never hit from here. Too far.”

Iella glanced down and grimly closed one eye. “Too far for you, maybe.” Her head came up and she sighted in on a group of three troopers. She centered the gun on the middle one, fired, then snapped a shot off at the other two. The first shot hit the target square on the left breast, then glanced up off the armor and burned through his throat. The second shot pierced the left eyepiece on the second trooper, spinning him around like a top before he went down. The last shot missed its intended target, passing over the trooper’s head by a couple of centimeters, but only did so because the first trooper’s body had knocked him off balance and he was falling.

Elscol looked up with wide-eyed amazement at her. “A head shot at this range?”

Iella shrugged, then tapped the rear sight. “Shoots high.” She sat on the edge of the wall, then leaped down to the next level and remained crouched at the foot of the wall. Elscol landed beside her. A few red blaster bolts bloodied the smoke in their direction, but none came even close to getting them. “They don’t know where we are or where those shots came from.”

“And because they aren’t Vratix, they’ll have a hard time jumping up here to find us.” Elscol smiled and crept forward toward the edge of the terrace wall. “I can hit from this range.”

Iella came forward carefully, ducking as a fleeing Vratix leaped past. At the edge of the terrace, she saw the troopers moving into the village, shooting into the doorholes on the ground level. Scarlet backlighting sometimes silhouetted a Vratix form. More often than not it seemed as if the blaster-fire started the tower’s lower rooms burning. There is no searching, this is just a mission to destroy this place.

Angered beyond the point of caring about anything, Iella rose from her crouch and began shooting at targets. Elscol rose up beside her, laying down a pattern of fire that sent the troopers scurrying for cover. Iella looked over at her, and they both knew seasoned troops—real stormtroopers—never would have shied from blaster pistol fire. A few of the troopers were down and still, and yet more thrashed in pain on the ground. Iella wanted to feel compassion for them, but their cries for help were her greatest ally. If the wounded infect the rest with a desire to avoid death, they’ll break and run. At the same time she acknowledged that the troopers’ running was her only chance at survival.

Iella ducked down as scattered return fire headed in her direction. She popped a fresh power pack into her blaster pistol and pressed her back against the wall. Though the wall itself was smooth, Iella felt anything but placid at the moment. “Well, we’ve gotten their attention so the Vratix can flee.”

Elscol ducked back beneath the edge of the wall. “You realize it’s just a matter of time before they call for one of the starfighters to come back, don’t you?”

Iella slid further along the wall, then nodded. “I guess we finish them quickly, then.”

Elscol raised an eyebrow. “Your suggestion for Dlarit made me think you might not have the stomach for this kind of fight. I’m glad to be wrong.”

Iella came up and triggered off two more shots before the troopers shifted their aim to shoot back at her. She dropped back down, uncertain if she’d hit anything and disturbed by what she saw. “Bad news. They’ve got a squad moving to flank us.”

The smaller woman shrugged as if Iella had reported she felt a light drizzle starting to fall. Elscol checked her power pack and smiled in the near silence that reigned in the village. “We can give up, or we can fight our way through them.”

“I don’t see surrender as an option.”

“Nor me.” Elscol tucked a lock of brown hair behind her left ear. “On three we’re over the wall to the last terrace. We go forward, take some shots, then over again and at them.”

“Frontal assault?” Iella shook her head. “I may be dead and not know it, but I’m not crazy.”

“They’re scared. We sprint to their line of cover, then we start vaping them close in. CorSec had to train you for that sort of fight and I’ve gotten used to it, too.”

Iella thought for a moment. From the base of the wall to the trees and rubble the troopers were using was only twenty-five meters. Shooting like mad to make them keep their heads down, it might just work. “I’m game.”

“Let’s do it.” Elscol rose into a crouch. “One, two, three!”

With her left hand on top of the terrace wall, Iella came up and over, then dropped the eight feet to the next terrace. She hit, rolled, and sprinted to the next edge. She vaulted it in tandem with Elscol and landed solidly. She shoved off the wall with her right hand, then brought the blaster around to spray shots at the troopers crouching twenty-five meters away. Her hastily snapped shots didn’t hit any of them, but they dove for the ground as if she were a Star Destroyer commencing a planetary bombardment.

As she raced forward, cutting right and left, she waited for a target to show himself so she could drop him with a clean shot to the head or belly. Belly would be better. He’ll scream. She waited for the screams, waited to hear the troopers she was approaching start to scream in terror. She started to scream herself, hoping to spark her foes into panic.

Suddenly one of the troopers did stand. She brought her pistol around, but he leveled his blaster carbine at her and triggered a burst before she could shoot him. She saw a trio of sizzling scarlet energy darts fly at her and for a second considered it nothing short of miraculous that they had missed. Then she felt the tug on her left thigh. Her world whirled, and her chin dug into the moist loam at the base of a gloan tree. She snorted dirt from her nostrils and wondered what had happened, then the first wave of pain hit her.

Iella rolled onto her back and glanced down at her left thigh. Crusted black flesh surrounded a hole oozing blood. Biting back a scream, she unbuckled her blaster belt and pulled it off. She pressed the holster against the wound, then wrapped the belt around her leg and refastened it. Pulling it tight almost made her faint, but she struggled against the darkness nibbling at the edges of her sight.

She didn’t think she’d blacked out, but as the world lightened again she found herself looking up at a trooper standing over her. He was saying something, but she couldn’t focus on the words. All she could notice was that the armor seemed over-large on him, with the breastplate covering half his stomach and the helmet resting firmly on the armor’s collar.

The trooper gestured with his blaster carbine, but Iella still wasn’t able to understand him. She tried, but an odd whirring sound eclipsed his words. An angular shadow dropped down behind him. Iella heard a horrid snapping and crunching as the trooper began to telescope down toward the ground. He twisted around, his legs going limp, allowing Iella to see the ragged parallel wounds slashed down through the back of his armor.

Standing behind him, with claws dripping blood, a black Vratix warrior drew his arms in toward his thorax. His head bobbed once, then his powerful hind legs straightened, propelling him up and out of her sight. If not for the ravaged corpse of the soldier at her feet, she would have had no proof of his intervention.

Her mouth hung open as she looked at the trooper’s body. Those claws sliced through that armor with the ease of a wampa filleting a tauntaun. No way all the bacta on this world could close those wounds. She leaned back against the trunk of the gloan tree, somehow finding comfort in the roughness of its bark. She heard screams that sounded far distant, more whirring, and other crisper sounds she never wanted to identify.

“Iella!”

She looked up. “Sixtus! Have you found Elscol?”

The large man nodded, then bent and scooped her up in his arms. “She twisted her ankle and got pinned down. How are you?”

“Hurt, but I should live.”

“Good. I’ll get you clear.”

Iella tried to point back toward the troopers. “But they’re out there. Another group, flanking us.”

Sixtus shook his head. “The Black-claws got them all. It won’t make up for the Vratix dead here, but it should start making the Xucphrans scared.” His eyes narrowed. “When they find their people dead, they’ll have a hard time sleeping.”

Iella winced against the pain. “Wait.”

“No, the Ashern have a base camp with some makeshift bacta tanks.”

“No, not that.” She shook her head to clear it. “Look, don’t leave the bodies here. Take them away, far away. Just have the troopers disappear. Not knowing will be worse than knowing. Take our bodies, too, hide them. Don’t let Isard know how badly we were hurt.”

Sixtus smiled. “That’s odd.”

“What?”

“Your lips are moving, but I’m hearing the kind of things Elscol would say.” He stepped over a thick gloan branch and continued down a narrow jungle trail. “I’d not have thought you capable of thinking that kind of thing.”

“One thing I know, Sixtus, is that a high body count doesn’t mean victory, it just means a lot of folks died.” Iella tipped her head back toward the village. “A lot of people died there, but not knowing the true story will give our enemies something to think about. If they decide they don’t want to fight because of it, we win.”

29

Captain Sair Yonka of the Imperial Star Destroyer Avarice looked back and forth between the two suits of clothes the silver protocol droid held up for him. To the right he had a conservative black suit, cut along vaguely military lines. He knew it would make him look powerful and might even inspire fear in some people. That is not always a bad thing, he reflected, but not wholly appropriate in this instance.

The other suit was completely civilian, and he would have chosen it in a heartbeat except that it was a bright crimson. Just what Isard wears. Despite the fanciful styling, including the fringes at the hem of the jacket and along the sleeves, the bloody color and memory of Isard robbed the suit of its playfulness. That suit, because it was flashier than the black, would be more noticed, but people might miss him altogether, remembering only the clothes. This is not a bad thing either, and desirable right now.

He shook his head. “Let me think about it some more, Poe.” He waved the droid away, but not before he caught a distorted mirror view of himself on its breast. Tall and slender, his black hair and bright blue eyes combined with strongly chiseled features to win the admiration of many women and the jealousy of their men. The touch of white creeping in at his temples had prompted him to grow a black goatee—something that was strictly against Imperial regulations, but not being in the Imperial service anymore, he had no fear of flouting those regulations.

While the warped reflection did not describe his outsides, it certainly did match how he felt inside. Yonka turned and walked out onto the balcony of his twenty-sixth-floor suite at Margath’s. Strains of music drifted down from the 27th Hour Club, but it washed over him without effect. Even the sight of three moons hovering above the placid ocean, two ivory and one blood red, failed to register as anything more than yet another planetary night sky.

Leaning on the balcony rail, Sair Yonka slowly shook his head. He had the distinct feeling he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that oppressive sensation was one he’d lived with for longer than he could remember. While the Emperor was alive, he was able to hide within the protective shell of the government’s legitimacy. I knew what I was doing was right in someone’s eyes. Patrolling the Rim, keeping pirates away from raiding worlds like Elshandruu Pica here, that was a mission no one could deny was necessary. That Rebels were often classified as pirates and dealt with harshly meant nothing. It was fairly common among pirates to call themselves Rebels to justify their predation on Imperial outposts.

Since the Emperor’s death he had clung to his role as a defender of the Empire to justify what he had been called upon to do. He added to that a very real desire to see to it that his people were not ordered into some futile fray at the whim of some self-appointed Warlord. Zsinj had tried to recruit him, but Yonka had steadfastly refused to take any orders except those coming from Coruscant. He bound himself to Ysanne Isard, because she seemed the best bet for dealing with the Rebels. Her focus on destroying them, then reestablishing the Empire seemed to make the most sense to me.

Then she went and lost Coruscant. Yonka bounced a fist off the railing. He’d followed her orders and helped her establish her presence on Thyferra, but that was before he heard about the Krytos virus. He appreciated her sense of pragmatism in dealing with the Rebels, but the virus targeted all sorts of folks who never so much as raised their voices in support of the Rebels. Her use of the virus meant she was capable of anything and that scared Sair Yonka.

The fear did not surprise him as much as the depth of it did. He knew she had operatives in his crew and had no doubt they’d strike at him were she to give the appropriate orders. Defying her was something that would have to be done—he knew that. But not yet. Escorting convoys is nothing new to me or the Avarice. Perhaps if we’re given a mission like the destruction of Halanit I will balk. Until then, a confrontation has no merit.

He sighed. He had Isard on one hand and Antilles’s Rogues on the other. An Imperial Star Destroyer Mark II, like the Avarice, had little to fear from a squadron of snubfighters. He acknowledged that their use of proton torpedoes could, in fact, hurt his ship, but his own pilots were very good and his turbolaser crews repeatedly drilled in antiship and antitorpedo fire missions. He had no doubt his ship could hurt the Rogues, but, he suddenly realized, he wasn’t certain how much he wanted to hurt them.

They have no choice but to see me as a threat—as the most significant threat Isard has for them. He’d read the performance reports from the Virulence ever since Lakwii Varrscha had taken over as Captain. They were not impressive in the least. The Virulence’s fighters scrambled slowly against Rogue threats and had never even come close to downing any of the Rogues. While his ship had yet to kill any of them either, they did drive them off faster, preventing them from getting off second and even third proton torpedo volleys against the convoys.

He shook his head again and forced thoughts of the Rogues and Ysanne Isard from his mind. The Avarice orbited through the night sky above, forming a dart-shaped silhouette as it passed before the bloody moon. It’s up there, as are all my worries, while I am down here. I came here to relax, so I shall do so, though not so many others would find this situation relaxing.

Elshandruu Pica’s Imperial Moff, Riit Jandi, had married a woman nearly forty years his junior. Yonka had known Aellyn Jandi years before on Commenor. They had grown up together and had slowly begun to realize their attraction to each other when he won an appointment to the Imperial Naval Academy. He lost track of her until, much later, he had come down to pay his respects to the Moff after rooting out a band of pirates that infested the system’s asteroid belt. Once he and Aellyn laid eyes on each other, their feelings were rekindled and, for the past five years, they’d carried on a secret affair.

Kina Margath, owner of the hotel in which Yonka was staying, had befriended Aellyn Jandi and agreed to help her conceal her affair from the Moff. Rumors were spread that Yonka came to Margath’s to romance Kina. Aellyn used her influence with the Moff to get favorable treatment for Kina’s casino and hotel operations, and Yonka always managed to haul a goodly supply of exotic liqueurs and beverages from the worlds he patrolled to Elshandruu Pica, enabling the 27th Hour Club to meet its boast of being able to supply any drink a patron could name.

Yonka turned away from the railing and, looking back through transparisteel viewports, watched the droid brush specks of lint from the two suits he had been shown. A choice based on my mood is not the way to go. I should dress to make an impression. Aellyn will like either suit, but I won’t be wearing clothes very long in her presence, so her tastes do not matter. He slowly smiled. What others think is important. Her husband, for example, what would he like to see me wearing?

“Poe.”

The droid turned to face him. “Sir?”

“Please arrange for the repulsor limo to be ready in an hour. It will take that long for me to refresh myself and dress.”

The droid nodded as best he could. “You have made a decision on what to wear, sir?”

Yonka laughed and strode back into the suite. “Poe, I have indeed. This affair is not without danger—the wrath of a Moff is not often survivable.” He stroked his goatee with his right hand. “If one is going to dress for death, can bloodred ever be a wrong choice?”

Because of his position half a kilometer due east of the planetary Moff’s oceanside cottage, Corran saw the repulsor-lift limousine approaching first. The driver had it speeding along, which would have made it a difficult target for a blaster rifle shot, but he wasn’t sideslipping or changing height to make such a shot impossible. No fear of ambush, which is good.

Corran turned on the comlink clipped to his helmet and tapped it twice with a gloved finger. A single click came back, confirming Wedge’s reception of Corran’s warning about the limo’s approach. Corran watched for any more vehicles following. Their briefing suggested Yonka wouldn’t be bringing his own security detail, and that the Moff’s wife regularly eluded hers; but the chance that her husband had others watching her or Yonka had to be covered.

He waited for one minute, then slowly started working his way back to the rendezvous point. Like the other Rogues on the mission—save Ooryl and the other Gand accompanying them—he wore some of the stormtrooper armor they’d gotten from Huff Darklighter. The dark blue color Darklighter had stained it so it matched his personal security force’s uniforms blended perfectly into the night. He carried a blaster carbine, wore a blaster pistol on his right hip, and had spare power packs for both on his belt. He clipped his lightsaber to the back of his belt, so it dangled down like a stubby tail, out of the way but accessible if he needed it.

Of course, on this mission, if I need it, we’re in deep Huttdrool. In theory, it was a quick hit and run. Though Yonka didn’t know it, Kina Margath had long been a Rebel agent on Elshandruu Pica. Poe, the droid serving as Yonka’s valet, had once been part of Rogue Squadron’s staff. Once Wedge put out feelers to learn more about the soldiers in Isard’s employ, a complete rundown on Yonka’s affairs came back, providing the basic information for the mission.

If any more than one or two shots get triggered, we’ve done something very wrong. So far it had gone completely as expected, and Corran didn’t like that. On such missions—the same sort he’d performed dozens of times when with the Corellian Security Force—nothing ever seemed to go as planned. In going after Yonka, the most likely glitch would arrive in the form of the Moff’s own squad of stormtroopers, and that was a serious complication. Exfiltration under fire is not going to be fun.

Even though he knew that outcome was a distinct possibility, Corran didn’t have a bad feeling about the mission. Prior to his learning he was the grandson of a Jedi Master, he would have put the lack of dread down to his rather foolish and rash belief in good luck. He’d always trusted his feelings about things, but he’d never questioned the mechanism that generated those feelings. To him they just existed, and he had learned to abide by them or deal with the consequences.

Now he knew that his feelings were really based on sensations he was getting of and through the Force. Before they were intangible and even though he gave them weight, others did not. Now, because of Luke Skywalker, the Force had gained credence. Others would accept what he felt as if it were a true measure of what was happening.

That frightened Corran—especially after the disaster on Thyferra. I don’t know enough about the Force and what it means to rely on it. I certainly can’t let others use what I feel as a crutch. If I’m wrong, they’ll pay for my mistake. I won’t have that happen.

He reached the rendezvous point in a little ravine slightly northeast of the cottage. Corran crouched between Ooryl and Rhysati, across the way from Gavin, Wedge, and the tall Gand named Vviir Wiamdi. The other two members of the team waited in Picavil’s spaceport with two X-wings, ready to cover their escape if things got messy. Bror Jace and Inyri Forge will be able to down anything the Moff can put in the air, but if we need them I’m sure the Avarice will scramble fighters, and then we’re stuck.

Wedge looked up at Corran and nodded. He tapped Corran and Rhysati on the knee and pointed off toward the right. Ooryl and Vviir were directed left, leaving Wedge and Gavin to go straight in at the open garden doors and into the back of the cottage. Wedge tapped his chronometer, then held up two fingers.

Two minutes to get into position, then we go. Corran nodded and followed Rhysati. He still felt good about the mission. Let’s hope that holds true. Let’s hope the only surprise is that which appears on Yonka’s face.

Sair Yonka let himself into the cottage and nearly dropped the magnum of Mandalorean Narcolethe he’d brought to share with Aellyn. The door clicked shut behind him, muffling the sound of the repulsor limo’s departure—not that he could have heard it past the thunder of his heartbeat in his ears. He had enough presence of mind to prevent his jaw from dropping open and instead crafted a smile that flashed white teeth at her.

Though neither as tall or slender as he was, Aellyn shared with him black hair. She wore hers long, so it descended well past her shoulders and lay gently along the swelling of her breasts. The gown she wore had been woven of a wispy fiber that had been dyed a midnight blue. It covered her from thin shoulder straps down to her ankles and glowed electrically where the light hit it, yet proved sheer enough to tantalize him with visions of what it sheathed. Her blue eyes sparkled with mischief, promising much and summoning most pleasurable memories to his consciousness.

The slight breeze from the garden brought the scent of flowers to his nose and teased playfully with the skirts of her gown. Her glance darted toward the open doors and the darkness beyond. Yonka fondly recalled having made love with her in the garden, beneath the canopy of stars and the trio of Elshandruu Pica’s moons. His smile broadening, he set the Narcolethe on the side table next to the door and extended his hand toward her.

For a half second, primarily because the dark blue of the armor matched perfectly the color of Aellyn’s gown, the two blaster-toting figures entering through the garden doorway seemed appropriate. Only when Aellyn opened her mouth to scream and the second figure shot her did he realize they were not part of any surprise Aellyn had cooked up for him. Even so, the blue hue of the stun shot that hit her still seemed somehow in keeping with the theme of the evening.

Yonka raised his hands. He heard the comlink clipped to the leader’s faceplate buzz, but he could make out none of the words. The man nodded, then reached up and removed his helmet. Despite the sweat pasting brown locks to the intruder’s forehead and the edges of his face, Yonka immediately recognized the man. It can’t be …

Yonka felt his chest tighten, yet fought to keep his voice even. “You needn’t have had her shot, Antilles.”

“Wouldn’t do to have witnesses, would it?” Wedge nodded toward her without letting his blaster waver from Yonka’s direction. “We could have killed her, but unnecessary bloodshed is not something we revel in. In fact, we don’t like it at all.”

Eliminate me, and you assume my ship won’t function at all well. Yonka found himself flattered, but he was too much of a realist to allow vanity to lift his spirits. “One man does not mean much on a starship.”

Wedge smiled. “You underestimate your worth, Captain Yonka. Like it or not, as you go, so goes the Avarice.”

“Killing me will only have a minor effect on the Avarice.”

“I agree, Captain Yonka.”

“Yet you have come to kill me.”

“Kill you?” Wedge shook his head. “I’ve come to offer you a deal.”

Yonka blinked in amazement. “Deal? What kind of deal?”

Antilles positively beamed. “A deal that starts with making you a very rich man.”

30

Fliry Vorru strode slowly down the ramp from the belly of his Lambda-class shuttle then stopped midway as he saw Erisi Dlarit waiting for him at the edge of the landing pad. She wore a smile that seemed inviting, though her blue eyes seemed focused distantly, well beyond him. He found both her smile and presence pleasing, but his natural wariness prevented him from drawing any true enjoyment from either.

He nodded in her direction and began walking again, this time not fighting gravity but allowing it to make his step more brisk and lively. “Commander Dlarit, so nice of you to greet me.”

Erisi easily returned his nod. “My pleasure, Minister Vorru.”

Vorru matched her smile. “Did I detect a hint of wistfulness in your expression as you waited here?”

The hint of a frown threw a twitch through her brows, then she shook her head. “No, no, I just thought it rather ironic that a man as dangerous as yourself should be content with piloting so docile and meek a ship.”

“Meek?”

“I would have seen you flying an Interceptor, certainly, or a gunship, not a Lambda-class shuttle.”

Vorru nodded. “Ah. I’m afraid, though, this is anything but a normal shuttle. I have made a number of modifications that make this ship far more lethal than it appears to be.”

“I see. I should have expected such clever deception from someone as intelligent as you.”

“You refer to me as clever and intelligent.” He shook his head. “I fear you’ve found my weakness, Erisi. Flattery will win you much.”

“How much to make you willing to act as a shield for me during another tantrum thrown by ‘She Who Cannot Be Defied’?”

Vorru smiled up at her, then offered her his arm. “Even you, most beautiful Erisi, could not flatter me that much. You were summoned, too?”

“Yes.” Erisi’s voice sank into a harsh growl. “The convoy that the Avarice had been escorting appeared back insystem, though three tankers were missing.”

Vorru nodded as they walked through the tall gray corridors. Isard’s vehement demand that he return to the capitol immediately had not been accompanied by any explanation, but more interference by Rogue Squadron seemed to be the only thing that could make Isard so angry. “What was Captain Yonka’s explanation of their loss?”

“I don’t believe he offered any.” Erisi shook her head. “As nearly as I can determine, the Avarice did not return with the convoy.”

Vorru shivered, and the hair at the back of his neck began to rise. “Could Antilles have gotten the Avarice? He does have the Alderaanian War Cruiser.”

“I don’t believe he could have, even with the War Cruiser. There have been no reports I know of that indicate any battle took place out there. You, Minister, would have better sources in that regard than I.”

“Call me Fliry, Erisi. Compatriots in Iceheart’s rage should not use titles between them.” Vorru punched a turbo-lift button and stepped into the box when the doors opened. “As nearly as I know, all things have gone perfectly with the Avarice. Captain Yonka made his rounds, visited his mistress on Elshandruu Pica—he’s seeing the Moff’s wife, though the Moff believes he’s bedding the owner of a local resort. The Avarice left orbit on schedule and continued the circuit as it was supposed to.”

“Clearly something went wrong, Fliry.” Erisi gave his arm a little squeeze as the turbolift stopped its ascent. “Now we just have to determine who will catch the blame.”

Vorru reached out and punched the emergency stop button on the lift before the doors could open. “I have the turbo-lifts regularly swept, so I know we are safe for the moment. I ask you this, realizing I now place us at more risk than ever before. Do you feel, as I do, that Madam Director Isard is not viewing the same reality we are?”

Erisi’s eyes narrowed. “Do I think she is insane?”

“Yes.”

“Quite.” Erisi twisted around and faced him fully. “Antilles consumes her. If he is not dealt with shortly, she could destroy Thyferra. This is not to say I doubt her ability to eliminate Antilles—she is most dangerous in that regard.”

“But you would be in favor of having contingency plans that guarantee the survival of the Bacta Cartel no matter what happens to her.”

“Exactly. You’ve read my mind.”

“Only because our thoughts run in parallel.” Vorru again hit the emergency button and the door slid open. “Let us bravely face out fate and deal with the future it presents us.”

As they neared Isard’s doorway, Vorru held a hand up, stopping Erisi. He preceded her into the room and bowed politely in Isard’s direction. “I came as quickly as I was able, Madam Director.” He half-expected her to jump all over him, but as she turned, she just nodded.

Isard brandished a holoprojector remote control, then let a thin grin tug at the corners of her flatline mouth. “Good, Commander Dlarit is here, too. I only need do this once.” She stabbed the remote at an unseen receptor and suddenly Captain Sair Yonka appeared life size, standing before her. “This is a wonderful display of treachery.”

Yonka’s figure bowed to the room. “Madam Director Ysanne Isard, I regret not being able to bring you this message personally, but not that much. In the time I have been associated with you I have found you to be sociopathically self-centered, prone to irrational and impulsive reactions to situations, and prey to a preference for appearance over substance. I have no doubt these affectations were seen as skills by the late Emperor, and indeed may have enhanced your ability to comply with his orders, but by no means are these the traits that make for great, or even adequate leadership.”

Vorru killed the impulse to applaud. The fact that Sair Yonka wore a black suit of military styling, yet lacking any military insignia, struck Vorru as appropriate. Yonka was not abandoning his military background, just severing his connection to Isard. The first mynock to flee a ship burning into an atmosphere. Yonka’s tone of voice—even, but full of conviction—sharply contrasted with the fury clearly building in Isard.

“I have, upon reflection, come to the conclusion that further service to you would be to condone and support an evil that perhaps would seem insignificant when grouped with the Emperor, Darth Vader, and Prince Xizor. I sincerely doubt, however, the billions of victims who have suffered because of you would be so sanguine about you. I hereby resign your service and renounce allegiance to you and what you represent. The same goes for my crew, save those loyalists you had aboard the Avarice. When informed of the new order of things, they hijacked a Lambda-class shuttle and forced us to destroy them.”

Yonka clasped his hands behind his back. “I know your intent will be to hunt us down and exterminate us. There is no doubt that with the Virulence and Lusankya, you could do just that, but you won’t get that chance. Most of my career has been served in the Outer Rim—I know of worlds and systems that you could never find. Seek out the Avarice, and you will leave yourself vulnerable to enemies who can destroy you.”

The image faded to gray static, then evaporated, leaving Isard staring back toward Vorru. “You once told me he had a mistress, this Captain Yonka.”

Vorru nodded. “On Elshandruu Pica.”

“Have her killed.” Isard spoke softly, surprising Vorru with her ability to keep her anger from coloring her words. “And any children she has, any siblings, any family.”

“And not his family?”

Isard snorted harshly. “I got this hologram three hours ago. Extermination of the crew’s families began then. Do recall, as Director of Imperial Intelligence, I have been through this routine before. I happened to notice the information on Yonka’s mistress was not in his file. You were not collecting it for your own purposes, were you, Minister Vorru?”

The small man half-lidded his eyes. “Merely awaiting confirmation before I committed anything to bytes, Madam Director.” He opened his hands innocently. “I just wonder at your desire to go after his mistress. You don’t imagine she influenced him in this decision, do you?”

“No, of course not.” Isard folded her hands together. “She dies to cause him pain. Have her death holographed—I will play it for Yonka as I work on him.”

“As you wish, Madam Director.” Vorru bowed as he replied to her, but inside he felt only contempt for her. Aellyn Jandi will be far away and out of your grasp because it will frustrate you, Iceheart. “The Avarice’s departure puts us in a curious position. Our ability to guard our convoys has been halved, unless you plan to take the Lusankya out of orbit and press it into that duty.”

An eyebrow arched over her red eye. “And leave Thyferra vulnerable to an attack by Antilles or an uprising by the Ashern? You think me more mad than Yonka did.”

“Hardly that, Madam Director, just a person faced with difficult decisions.”

“This is why I have you to advise me, Vorru.” Isard glared at him, her gaze burning a blush onto his face. “You are correct—we cannot guard our bacta convoys and prevent an uprising here. Moreover, if we do nothing, Antilles will get bolder and might convince a number of worlds to throw in with him so they can take by force what we are afraid to ship out. That would destroy us. In the face of this I see only one clear choice.”

Vorru half-closed his eyes. She won’t surrender, so there must be some new atrocity she is planning.

Isard slowly smiled. “I believe it was you, Minister Vorru, who noted that we could not destroy Antilles until we determined where his base was. Your reports in regards to the search for that base, I have been told by you, have been fruitless because Antilles and his people are very cautious in how they accept goods from outsiders—only the people he trusts are allowed to come all the way into his base.”

Vorru nodded. “That is the problem, Madam Director.”

“No longer. Antilles could operate without taking chances because we gave him time to do so. I intend to deprive him of that time. The Rebels always worked best when no pressure was placed on them and they were allowed to operate on their own time scale.”

“You have found a way to make him act faster?” Erisi’s questioning tone underscored Vorru’s own thoughts. “Threatening an innocent world might do it, but to move sufficient forces there to do such a thing would leave Thyferra vulnerable.”

Isard barked a small, triumphant laugh. “You’ve not seen it, neither of you. I have found a way to pressure Antilles and make Thyferra more secure. I put together an analysis of the bacta production here and determined that the bacta industry needs only one point eight million Vratix to operate all the facilities we have at one hundred percent efficiency. This means there are a million surplus Vratix on the world. I have ordered the round-up and internment of a thousand Vratix a day for the next thirty days. At the end of that time I will have them all killed and begin collecting two thousand a day. I will continue in this manner until we have downsized our worker population or Antilles tries to stop me.”

Isard’s smile marked how proud she was of herself for coming up with the plan, and Vorru found himself inclined to agree with her. Its simplicity and elegance made it a plan that could be implemented immediately, and the deadline factor meant Antilles would have to react. This could bring him out after us and, if it does, expose his base to our ships.

Erisi raised a hand. “Madam Director, I am assuming you will present this policy and plan as something for Thyferran consumption only—making it appear as if it were being used as a means to suppress the Ashern. To challenge Antilles openly would be to raise his suspicion. He is not a stupid man, so he will be careful, but there is no need to make him think things through one more time.”

Vorru immediately chimed in. “An excellent suggestion, Madam Director. If news of the program comes from locals it might appear as if you were trying to keep it a secret. Antilles will certainly feel the pressure to intervene. An added benefit is that we will have increased chances to pick up on Antilles’s local covert communication network and disrupt it.”

“Indeed, those are added benefits. While I would hate to have it thought I was cravenly trying to hide information from Antilles, I could affect an air of disdain, as if the whole thing were, like him, beneath my notice.” Isard opened her hands, then pressed them together, fingertip to fingertip. “I approve of your amendments to my plan. We implement it tomorrow.”

Vorru smiled. “I will alert my operatives to be especially attentive to any of Antilles’s activities.”

Erisi mirrored his smile. “And my people will be ready to pit themselves against the Rogues, either here or at their lair.”

“Excellent.” Both of Isard’s hands curled down into fists. “A month. Antilles has a month yet to live. Then, once he is eliminated, the Empire will rise again and the natural order of things will again be established.”

31

Fatigue made Corran’s eyes feel as if Tatooine’s twin suns had settled into his skull. He knocked at the doorjamb of Booster’s office, but refrained from leaning heavily against it, lest he fall asleep on his feet. He and Ooryl had made a run to Thyferra, hitting some interim systems along the way to make it impossible to backtrack them to Yag’Dhul. A direct trip would have taken them twelve standard hours—their course added another twelve to the total. While he had managed to get a little sleep while in hyperspace, the trip left him feeling like he’d spent the last two days in the belly of a Sarlacc.

Wedge, seated in front of Booster’s desk, looked up. “You could have stopped to get a meal before you reported in, Corran.”

Sure, and have Booster presume I can think only of myself when I’ve been on an important mission like this? “Not hungry, Wedge. The news kind of killed my appetite.”

Booster arched a white eyebrow above his artificial left eye. “You were able to confirm the reports from Thyferra, then?”

Corran nodded. “According to communication intercepts, approximately two weeks ago Iceheart initiated a program in which she’s gathering up a thousand Vratix a day and is planning to execute them when she has thirty thousand total. At that point, if Ashern resistance to her regime has not ceased, she’ll collect more.”

Wedge’s voice dropped into a low growl. “She finally thinks she’s found a way to draw us out.”

Corran shrugged slowly. “I monitored public announcements and privately coded messages from Iella and Elscol. Everything seems to indicate this program is a domestic one only. There has been no mention of us or what we’ve been doing.”

Booster barked a harsh laugh. “You think she would say anything directly to motivate us? That would make us suspicious of a trap.”

Corran frowned. “So since she said nothing about us, it is a trap designed to catch us? You must have a conspiracy theory program working overtime on your datapad, Booster.”

Wedge sat forward and held a hand up to forestall Booster’s reply. “Doesn’t matter what Iceheart intended—though I do think Booster is more right than you are here, Corran—the fact is that we have two weeks to prevent her from slaughtering thirty thousand Vratix. Conspiracy or no, trap or no, we have to act.”

“I wasn’t saying we shouldn’t act, Wedge.” Corran shook his head to clear his mind. “I’m just saying it’s not an obvious attempt to provoke us.”

“CorSec always did miss the obvious.” Booster snorted with disgust, then hit a couple of keys on the datapad centered on his desk. “Do we initiate things?”

“Can we?” Wedge’s brown eyes narrowed. “Where do we stand on the refits?”

“The sensor and targeting units are all in place. If we use the crews from the freighters we have hanging around here, I can have the launchers ready to go inside a week.” Booster looked up. “Karrde even has our last shipment of concussion missiles and proton torpedoes ready to go. An hour after I send him a message via the HoloNet, his convoy should be assembled. We can have it here within a day, with missile batteries and torpedo magazines fully loaded twelve hours later, if all goes well.”

“What about the gravity well projector.”

“Got it, and it’s being installed now.”

“Good. Let’s get things going. Call Karrde and set up a rendezvous for twenty-four hours from now.” Wedge glanced up at Corran. “Will you be ready to lead a flight out to escort them in by that time?”

Corran hesitated, not certain what he heard was really what Wedge said. “Escort them in?”

“I’ll make it thirty-six hours—let him get some sleep.”

“Fine, Booster, that should work.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Corran held his hands up. “You really intend for me to lead Karrde’s convoy here? We aren’t going to work out some transfer thing?”

Wedge shook his head. “No. Time is of the essence.”

“But, Wedge, sir, begging your pardon, if we do that, then Isard will know where we are. The Lusankya and the Virulence could be here just twenty-four hours after we get back with the convoy.” Corran frowned and rubbed a hand over his wrinkled brow. “I thought Booster determined that someone in Karrde’s organization provided Isard with the data to set up the Alderaan ambush. You’re practically inviting Isard here.”

Booster smiled. “No practically about it, Corran, we are inviting her here.”

“But you can’t do that! Even if this station were bristling with missile launchers, there’s no way we could take down a Super Star Destroyer and an Impstar deuce.”

Wedge shook his head. “I understand your protest, Corran, but you’re not privy to the plans Booster, Tycho, and I have put together for dealing with Isard and her fleet. You do know we’ve been taking her forces apart bit by bit, which certainly was part of our overall plan, but we had to make decisions about what to do if Iceheart forced our hand, and she has.”

“Then tell me what the plans are so I don’t think you’ve lost your minds.”

“Can’t do that, CorSec.” Booster flipped his datapad closed with a click. “You’re going to go out and get the convoy and bring it here. If Isard decides to act early and take our pilots hostage, she can’t torture out of you information you don’t have.”

Wedge nodded in agreement. “And I need you to lead the escort flight because Isard and her agent would not believe we were on the level if you or Tycho or I did not bring the flight in. I don’t want to cut you out like this, but the less you know, the less you can reveal.”

Corran felt his flesh tighten around little goose bumps and a wave of weariness wash over him. “I hear what you’re saying, Wedge, but are you certain this is going to work?”

Booster roared with laughter. “Certain? Certain? Of course he’s not certain. The man who would only bet on certainty has no guts.”

“I have plenty of guts, Booster, but I don’t like risking them, or my life, or the lives of my friends, if I don’t have to. Certainty, or as close as I can get to it, is what I want.”

“And you call yourself a Corellian?” The big man snorted derisively as he sat back in his chair. “No wonder you joined CorSec.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I thought it was obvious, CorSec. If you had the guts for life—if you were even to imagine yourself worthy of my daughter—you wouldn’t have spent your life in service to the Empire’s puppet. You played it safe when men with real courage were out there defying the government.”

Corran’s fatigue melted as his anger grew. “Oh, you’re going to use the smugglers are really patriots story to excuse your greed? Let me tell you something, Booster Terrik, you can think of yourself as a noble scoundrel if you want, but the fact is you were out for money when you were running shipments, nothing more. The fact that you didn’t pay taxes on what you imported, the fact that you broke laws, might mark you as some sort of protester against the government in the eyes of some, but I know the truth. You were just a criminal—not as violent or bad as some others, but a criminal just the same. And those taxes you didn’t pay were the kind of taxes that build roads, maintain spaceports, and educate kids. What you did was deny them their due, and provide the contraband that allowed organizations like Black Sun and Hutt bands to thrive on our world.”

Corran thrust a finger directly at Booster. “And as for being worthy of your daughter, I’m the worthiest man you ever met. Every gram of character you think you have, she does have. And brains, too, and courage. And even you, Booster Terrik, don’t want to see her hooking up with a man who has your morals and standards.”

Booster rose from behind his desk, his hands balled into fists. “And if you were the man you think you are, Corran Horn, you’d not have abandoned her on Thyferra.”

“Abandoned her?” Corran’s mind flashed back to his mad dash into the refresher station and his fight with the stormtroopers. I didn’t abandon her. “You want to talk abandonment? I left for five seconds to save her life. You left her for five years, Booster, or have you forgotten your vacation on Kessel?”

“A ‘vacation’ your father got for me, Horn.”

Wedge stood abruptly and posted a hand in the middle of each man’s chest. “All right, stop it. Right now.” He gave each of them a little shove and Corran let himself be propelled back toward the doorway. Wedge turned to Booster, shifted both hands to the larger man’s shoulders, and forced him down into his chair.

“Listen to me, Booster—and you’ll listen because you don’t want to find yourself in the situation of having Mirax say this to you: Corran Horn here is one of the smartest, skilled, and courageous men it’s been my privilege to know. He escaped from a prison that makes Kessel look like a resort world with hourly shuttles in and out. He’s gone and done things on missions that put him at risk because those things save the lives of others. If not for him, Coruscant would still be in Imperial hands and I, as well as your daughter, would be dead or Isard’s slaves.

“When you arrived on this station, you said you thought I would have protected Mirax from the likes of Corran.” Wedge shook his head. “The real story is that I was overjoyed when they became friends. Mirax needed someone as stable as Corran because she’s never really sure where you are or what’s happened to you. And Corran, he needed someone with Mirax’s curiosity and fervor for life because he’d been cut off from everyone he knew and trusted. Both of them were gyros that needed to be spin balanced, and they did that for each other.”

Before Corran could begin to grin triumphantly, Wedge whirled and stabbed a finger into his chest. “And you, my friend, need to get some perspective here. You’re seeing Booster as your father’s old enemy, and your father isn’t here to put him in his place. Well, you aren’t your father. Their fight isn’t your fight, and you can’t stand in for your father in it. And you should be smart enough to know Booster doesn’t have a problem with you because you were Hal Horn’s son—he’s got the same problem with you that every father ever had with any man romancing his daughter. She’s the best thing that ever happened to him.”

Corran nodded. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to me, too.”

“Right, which means the two of you have more in common than either one of you would admit. Now the both of you better think on this: Mirax loves both of you, so unless you think she’s got no taste or character judgment at all, you better figure you both are worthy of each other’s respect.” Wedge folded his arms and positioned himself so he could see both of them easily. “I don’t expect you’ll ever get to the point where you actually like each other, but, when you’re both acting like adults, you’ll be above this sort of bickering.”

Corran looked up and met Booster’s stare openly. Waiting to see if I break, aren’t you? Waiting to see if I knuckle under. In a nanosecond Corran resolved never to give in, never to change his opinion of Booster. While all Wedge had said was true—and made damned good sense—Corran had been raised with his father’s rivalry with Booster Terrik. If I do give in, I’ve betrayed my father.

Or have I? Corran frowned as he thought about his father and the life his father had led. Hal Horn had lived for years with the knowledge that he was really the son of a Jedi and subject to the extermination policy the Empire had put in place concerning Jedi. His father could have done anything to make himself safe. He could have retreated to the hinterlands of some backwater world and become a hermit, but he chose not to absent himself from the duty his father—fathers, really—had acquitted. A Jedi helped maintain the peace and uphold the law. Hal Horn did the same thing as best he could by working with CorSec, no matter that his duties might expose him to the Emperor’s Jedi hunters.

Corran suddenly realized that his father’s rivalry with Booster Terrik had not been personal. Hal Horn had pursued Booster because Booster broke the law. Yes, the fact that Booster evaded him repeatedly did frustrate him, but the basis of his pursuit was always the same. He didn’t let it get personal. I have and in that I’ve betrayed my father. He glanced down for a moment and thought about some of the exercises Luke Skywalker had urged him to try out. By making things personal—Kirtan Loor and Zekka Thyne—I have betrayed the Jedi traditions my father, in his own cautious way, tried to instill in me.

Corran’s head came up as he stepped forward and extended his hand to Booster. “You’re not my enemy. Never have been. I’m not yours. For the sake of your daughter, the people we’ve got to save, and the memory of my father, I don’t want to fight with you anymore. Doesn’t mean we won’t disagree—perhaps even violently at times—but you don’t deserve my ill-will.”

Surprise slowly blossomed on Booster Terrik’s face. He started to say something, then stopped. His hand came up and engulfed Corran’s. “Normally I’d be angry that I had misjudged you so badly, but you’ve reinforced just how good a judge of character my daughter really is. And you’re right, we’ll disagree and I can guarantee it’ll be violent, but that’s okay. We’re Corellians. We can do that.”

Wedge dropped his hand on top of theirs. “Good. You know, the Imps on Coruscant used to call two Corellians together a conspiracy. Three they’d call a fight.”

“More fools they, then.” Corran smiled. “Any Corellian knows three of us together is a victory. It’s time we remind Iceheart and the rest of Imp holdovers of that very fact.”

32

Corran glanced at the chronographic display on the X-wing’s main monitor. “Whistler, confirm that we’re ten standard minutes past the time for the rendezvous.”

The R2 unit blatted out an annoyed tone.

“Fine, so I won’t ask you to confirm how late they are anymore—at least not every minute.” Corran forced himself to exhale deeply and tried to draw in some of the inner peace that Luke indicated such a cleansing breath should bring in its wake. He failed, and that just heightened his frustration. Despite accepting the mission, he had not liked having to be the one to draw Isard’s agent into Yag’Dhul. While he knew the deception Booster and Wedge had planned would certainly make the discovery of their base appear to be serendipitous, every second Karrde’s people were late allowed the image of a Thyferran taskforce appearing to pounce on them grow in his mind.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, but Corran had not come alone. Gavin, Rhysati, and Inyri flew X-wings to give him a complete flight, and Mirax had come along in the Pulsar Skate. None of them knew how dangerous their mission might be—and Corran granted that the odds of their ending up dead on this mission probably were no greater than they were on any other—but he still would have felt better if he could have told them what was really going on. Of course, that would mean I’d have to know what was going on.

A light flashed on his communications console. He punched the button beneath it. “Nine here.”

“Skate here, Nine.” Mirax’s voice sounded good to him and immediately began to take the edge off his frustration. “So, as long as we’re waiting, you want to tell me what you said to my father?”

Corran frowned. “How do you know about that?”

“Well, I could say that you talk in your sleep, but you don’t.” The light tone in her voice conveyed the image of her smiling face to him. “When we headed out, my father shot me a private message. Normally he says I should make sure you take good care of me. This time he said I should keep my eye on you and follow your lead. Bit of a difference there.”

“Yeah, just a bit.”

“So?”

“We had a talk.”

“Are you going to tell me what was said, or am I going to convince Emtrey he needs to spend more time around you?”

“Hey, no reason to trot out the turbolasers here.” Corran hesitated for a moment, then sighed. “Your father and I had it out. He said I’d abandoned you on Thyferra …”

“What?!”

“… and I accused him of having abandoned you when he went to Kessel.”

“What?! You really told him that?”

“Yeah, then I told him that you were everything he wanted to be and that the last person he should want interested in his daughter was someone who held himself to the same level of morality and responsibility he did.”

“And you still have your arms and legs intact?”

“Your father isn’t exactly a Wookiee, Mirax.” Corran forced a laugh. “Besides, it was about that point when Wedge intervened.”

“Ah, that explains why you’re both still alive.”

“Right. Wedge pointed out that since you love the both of us, we’ve got a lot more in common than we do in conflict. He said, in essence, that we should grow up and start acting like adults.”

Mirax laughed lightly. “I bet that went over well with my father.”

“He listened, and the two of us were prepared to get back into it, but I let things bounce around inside my head and I realized I was disliking your father for the wrong reasons. Somewhere inside I figured it was my duty to my father to continue his rivalry with your father, then I realized my father hadn’t let it get personal. He might have hunted your father with a bit more gusto because your father didn’t make it easy, but he didn’t hate Booster. By allowing myself to do so, though, I was really going against everything my father had tried to teach me.”

“I can understand that.” Mirax’s voice softened. “And it kind of bothers you that your father never told you who your grandfather really was, doesn’t it?”

Corran thought for a second, then nodded. “I guess it does, but not in the sense that I would have expected. Part of me thinks I should feel betrayed because he kept that secret from me, but I don’t, really. In keeping it from me, he kept me safe. What I didn’t know I couldn’t reveal. I still don’t know if Grandpa Horn helped other Corellian Jedi families hide, but if one had been found out, more could have been discovered. And my father really did try to instill in me the code of honor the Jedi espoused. He also taught me to trust my instincts and hunches, which are glimmers of whatever talent I have.

“Where it bothers me is that, knowing my father, he had to have been inordinately proud of our heritage. He must have wanted to share it with me and would have, I suspect, after the Emperor died, but Bossk killed him before that happened. I would have thought he’d have come up with a way to get me the information if anything happened to him.”

“What about your grandfather, Rostek Horn?”

“He’s on Corellia, under the Diktat. I haven’t had a chance to communicate with him. Perhaps when this is all over, that’s an option. Still, I would have liked to hear my father talk about his father.”

Whistler tootled.

Corran glanced at his monitor. “Whistler, what do you mean by ‘All you have to do is ask’?”

The droid hooted at him.

“Okay, so the statement is self-explanatory. What will happen if I ask?”

Whistler piped a triumphant tune.

“What’s Whistler saying, Corran?”

“Just a second, Mirax.” Corran reached out and ran a finger beneath the letters glowing on his monitor. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. My father encrypted a holographic file and loaded it into Whistler. Apparently he did this back when I joined CorSec—though Whistler says the message was recorded well before that—in case anything happened to him. Whistler says he was instructed to play the file for me at any point where I asked about it and could provide the encryption key. I’m going to assume the key is either Nejaa Halcyon or my father’s true name, Valin Halcyon.”

Even as Corran explained to Mirax what the droid was telling him, a chill puckered his flesh. He felt as if his father were reaching back out of the grave to touch him, and he marveled how his father had anticipated Corran’s eventually learning enough about his heritage to find the file of value. Before he had ever heard of Nejaa Halcyon, Corran would have put his father’s foresight down to luck or even coincidence, but he knew the Jedi believed in neither. My father knew that someday I would want this information, so he prepared a way for me to get it.

That realization opened a whole new den of Hutts, with every one of them a criminal kingpin. He thought of Luke Skywalker’s invitation to join him and train to become a Jedi Knight. Did my father create this file in hopes that I would do just that? Because the file had been created well before the Jedi’s reemergence had been confirmed, Corran knew his father couldn’t have anticipated the Jedi’s invitation to him. Or could he? Regardless of that, had his father intended his message to inspire Corran to learn more about his heritage?

The droid chirped out a question.

“No, Whistler, save the message. Now’s not the time to look at it.”

“Why not, Corran? We’ve got time to kill.”

“Because, Mirax, I don’t have time to consider all of the questions it might raise.”

“Such as?”

“Such as making me reconsider my answer to Luke Skywalker. Perhaps what my father has to tell me in this message will make me realize I should be learning to become a Jedi Knight. That decision would force other decisions, and some of them I don’t want to make—primary among them a decision to leave you to go off and study the ways of the Force. My other responsibilities—to the squadron and the prisoners we’re going to free—likewise make such a decision difficult. Right now I need to be able to focus on what I’m doing.”

“So you won’t play the message?”

Corran shook his head. “Not right now, certainly not until the Thyferran situation is over.”

“What I hear in your voice, Corran, is that you might not ever play it.”

“You know me very well, love.” Corran closed his eyes for a moment and swallowed against the lump in his throat. He reached up with a hand and pressed the gold Jedi Credit against the flesh of his breastbone. “This hologram is the last thing my father has left me, but he never would have done it if he thought it would completely disrupt my life.”

“Can you be sure of that?”

“Yeah. If it was something I had to hear, for my own good, Whistler would never have been instructed to wait until I asked to hear it.” Corran laughed, and that eased the tightness in his throat. “My father trusted me to make my own decisions and deal with the consequences.”

“That trust, Corran, is the last thing your father left you. It’s a most precious gift indeed, and one well suited to you.”

“Thanks, Mirax.” Whistler shrilled a warning, prompting Corran to look at his monitor. A dozen ships popped in from hyperspace in an arrow formation and headed straight for the Rogue escort. “Whistler, pull manifests from each of the ships, then see if stated mass and performance profiles match.” He hit a switch on his comm unit, bringing him online with the Rogue’s tactical frequency. “Three, Five, and Six, fan out and pull life scans on the ships. If any of those ships are packed with more crew than we expect, I want to know about it.”

Corran waited five minutes for the other X-wings to gather the data and for Whistler to crunch it all down. The various freighters appeared to be massing about as much as they should for their stated cargoes, and none of them was loaded down with troops, so Corran assumed the convoy was legitimate. “The convoy is secure from my standpoint, Mirax.”

“I copy, Nine. This is Pulsar Skate to Empress’s Diadem. You’ve been cleared for continuation of the journey.”

“I copy, Skate. Feed us the coordinates and we can get this thing moving.”

“Coordinates for exit vector, jump duration, and speed on their way.”

Corran watched the data stream flow across the bottom of his monitor and wondered what Melina Carniss was making of it. He imagined she’d be disappointed because the first jump was just a short hop to a dead system. From there they’d get another exit vector that would put them on a straight line for the Yag’Dhul system, but the speed and duration data would suggest they were going to another system well beyond Yag’Dhul. She’ll be anticipating calling in a strike on Folor in the Commenor system.

Corran smiled as he thought about the surprise the convoy would be in for during their journey. The speed that was being set for them would allow them to slip past the Yag’Dhul system in hyperspace, but Booster had thought of a way to end their journey prematurely. The gravity well projector he’d gotten from Karrde and had grafted onto the station would create enough of a gravity shadow to pull the convoy out of hyperspace. The premature end of the flight would deliver the goods where they were most needed and would be a trick clearly meant to conceal the location of the base from outsiders.

Which ought to be enough to make Carniss think secrecy is still important to us. Corran dearly wished he knew the full extent of Wedge’s plan to deal with Isard’s forces, but he respected the security provided by the compartmentalization of such information. I doubt I’ll know everything that goes on unless or until this is all over and I get debriefed.

Corran brought his X-wing around on the appointed exit vector and chopped his throttle back to 51 percent of thrust. In hyperspace, the X-wings were twice as fast as the freighters, save Carniss’s Diadem and Mirax’s Skate. By dropping his thrust to just over half, the X-wing would arrive in-system just before the freighters and could head off any ambushes.

The other X-wings pulled up off his S-foils. “Nine to Skate. Escort is ready to head out.”

“Lead on, Nine, and be careful.”

“As ever, Skate. Wouldn’t want your father to be disappointed in me.”

33

Melina Carniss managed to keep a smile on her face and a light lilt in her voice despite being anxious to leave the Yag’Dhul station. “No, Mirax, no need to apologize. I’ve enjoyed your company over the last two days. I would have felt quite out of sorts and lonely had you not taken me under your wing.”

Mirax smiled. “I’m glad you feel that way. I am sometimes accused of being somewhat smothering.”

Somewhat? Lady, you could smother a Givin, and they don’t need to breathe. “Again your company was appreciated. And let your father know I’m sure Karrde won’t have a problem with my having been kept here awaiting payment. He’s very understanding that way.”

Mirax stepped back away from the turbolift opening. “See you on the next trip.”

“I’m sure. Good-bye.” Melina remained smiling even after the door closed. Be just like her father to have security holocams set up here in the turbolift. I have to maintain the charade until I’m back aboard Diadem.

Carniss had hoped to be away from the Yag’Dhul station as quickly as possible, but the delay in payment meant her ship was the last of the convoy to leave. Despite being a huge station, Yag’Dhul’s docking bays were mostly in use, requiring a piecemeal unloading of the convoy. That delay meant the shipments couldn’t be verified, hence the reason payment was late. Mirax’s insistence that she leave Diadem and enjoy the station’s facilities meant she had no chance to send a message out to Thyferra to report the location of Rogue base.

While it certainly was Mirax’s fault that she’d not been able to make her report sooner, the fact was that she didn’t really want to make it until her ship was outbound anyway. Her navicomputer had worked out the time it would take for Iceheart’s taskforce to arrive at Yag’Dhul from Thyferra. Had she sent out the coordinates when she arrived, she would have been trapped on the station and killed along with all the others. While Iceheart appreciates my information, I don’t doubt I’m seen as expendable.

Carniss exited the turbolift and cut between two battered freighters on her way to her ship. The motley collection of freighters and fighters reminded her of the force Karrde had said had been used to take Coruscant from Isard. Except this force is lacking Star Destroyers and Mon Calamari cruisers. Most of the ships looked as if they had been cobbled together from scrap salvaged from Endor or Alderaan. Isard’s Virulence could defeat this fleet all by itself.

She walked up the ramp on her modified Corellian YT-1210 light freighter, the Empress’s Diadem, and closed it behind her. The disk-shaped ship had a pair of blaster cannons in a turret mounted above and below a boxy concussion missile launch tube assembly that fired into the ship’s aft arc. What I can’t outrun I can discourage from chasing me.

“Peet,” she shouted at her pilot, “get us off this station and bound for Corellia. We have business on Selonia. Once you compute the route and have the times, let me know. I’ll be in my quarters.”

“As ordered, Captain Carniss.”

Melina headed back to her quarters and sealed the hatch behind her. Because space was at a premium on the freighter, her cabin was small, yet not without luxuries. Included among them was a small refresher station which meant she did not have to use the facilities shared by the rest of the crew. Since she was the only woman on board, the concession had a practical side to it, as well as serving to remind the crew of her superior status.

She opened the central drawer on her datapad desk and pulled it all the way out. On the back panel she slid aside a finger-length wafer of duraplast, revealing a small cavity. From it she pulled out a slender, silver capsule approximately the size of her smallest finger. She put it on the desk, then returned the duraplast wafer and the drawer to their proper places.

From her personal gear she got two small batteries and a transparisteel flask with a chrome bottom and capped with a chrome tumbler. She worked two screws loose on the bottom of the bottle and pulled the base off. Into the hollows in the base she snapped the batteries and the capsule. She fastened the flask’s base back on the transparisteel bottle, then tossed the whole assembly into the refresher station’s bowl and evacuated it.

The flush of disinfectant washed the flask down into a holding tank. As the Diadem came about on its exit vector, the pilot hit a switch that dumped the holding tank’s contents out into space. The fluid immediately froze into a mass of blue ice that slowly began to drift in toward the system’s sun. It would be months before the debris finally evaporated in the solar engine.

The sudden drop in temperature around the flask immediately started the capsule issuing orders. A tiny port opened in the tip of the flask’s cap and a spark from the batteries ignited enough of the Savareen brandy to burn the flask free of the ice and jet it away. At the same time, a panel on the bottom of the flask opened up to expose electromagnetic sensors that started feeding system data to the capsule.

The capsule itself was really the heart of a probe droid. Stripped of the armor and devices necessary to let it enter an atmosphere and operate in a hostile environment, the droid took up a minimum of space and could easily function on batteries for a dozen hours. Its mission was simple: pinpoint the location of the system in which it was dropped, locate a hidden HoloNet transmission station, and pulse out a tight-beam message conveying that information to the station. The automated station would, in turn, deliver that information through the HoloNet to Fliry Vorru within seconds of its reception.

With the sensors, it mapped the sky and compared the configuration of stars with what would be available at various systems in the galaxy. While a complete catalog of systems would have required far more storage than the probe droid possessed, Vorru and his people had ruthlessly eliminated systems that lacked habitable worlds, had settlements that were insufficiently developed to help maintain the Rogues and their ships, or that otherwise appeared to be inappropriate.

Within an hour of beginning its mission, the probe droid found a match in its star catalog. It knew it was in the Yag’Dhul system. It oriented itself so it could pulse its message out to a clandestine HoloNet transmission site, but found an obstacle in its way. It did pick up comm frequencies emanating from the obstacle and also saw how many stars it blotted out of the sky, but had no way to identify it as a space station. It did catalog the item’s presence, then it jetted up to a point where it could locate the relay station.

Once it found its target, the droid pulsed its message out. It continued to do so for the next three standard hours before a meteorite shattered the transparisteel flask and reduced the droid to so much junk orbiting Yag’Dhul.

Wedge looked out over the assembly of pilots in the station’s amphitheater. They all looked eager, which was good, but that surprised him. When he began the briefing he expected their hungry expressions to melt into disappointment. “So, there it is: within the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours we anticipate the arrival of Isard’s Lusankya and Virulence here at Yag’Dhul. We’ve already begun an evacuation of the station, with our ships taking up a position on the edge of this system. Their position provides a clean exit vector to Thyferra, which is where you will be going along with them. Is that understood?”

Nawara Ven raised a hand. “Forgive me, Commander, but do you think having all of us fighters scramble and then run away will fool the Thyferran commanders?”

Bror Jace turned in his seat to look at Nawara. “If they were Thyferran commanders it wouldn’t, but these are Imps. They’re used to imagining that Rebels run at the sight of them.”

Wedge smiled at Jace’s answer. “Just as you’ve been simming a lot of antiship attacks, we’ve been simming the likely reactions on the Thyferran command level. We’re pretty certain they’ll believe our retreat, especially when we jump to lightspeed on a vector bound for Thyferra. Captain Drysso will assume, in our desperation to save the station we’re going to strike at Thyferra. Because our snubfighters are twice as fast as the Lusankya, we’ll have twelve hours there to batter Thyferra unopposed. He knows he can’t beat us back there, so he’ll finish our station off, then come after us.”

Corran frowned. “What if his people pick up on the fact that we rendezvous with our freighters before we head out?”

“Still no cause of alarm for him. The Lusankya still out-guns our entire fleet. More ships just provide his gunners with more practice.” Wedge shrugged. “I know there are dozens of unanswered questions you have right now because I’ve been fairly vague about our overall plan and have just concentrated on your roles in what is going to happen. Your squadron leaders have more specific orders on which they will brief you at the appropriate time. Right now I just wanted to let you know that action is imminent, so you should take care to put your affairs in order and prepare any holograms you want sent in case of death.”

Gavin smiled. “But you’re not going to leave those things on the station here, are you?”

Wedge laughed. “No, we’ll have them sent to Coruscant. Make no mistake about it, people, this won’t be easy. A lot of us won’t be coming back. There will be a terrible price to pay to liberate Thyferra, but an even greater one if we don’t liberate it. We’ll be taking a lot of risks, but we have no choice because this will be our best chance to destroy Isard. If we fail now, it could very well be that no one else will ever dare to oppose her.”

Asyr let a little growl rumble from her throat. “So failure is not an option, eh, Wedge?”

“Not for us, Asyr, not by a long shot.”

Fliry Vorru looked at the data scrolling up through the air above his holopad. Beyond the glowing green numbers he watched Erisi Dlarit study the information. “Rather ingenious of them, wasn’t it, my dear, to choose the Yag’Dhul station as their base. You might have guessed.”

Erisi nodded once, curtly. “I did guess and did some checking of my own. The station was ordered and reported destroyed. Pash Cracken signed the report indicating the station had been destroyed, so perhaps I should have been suspicious.”

Vorru waved her remark away. “Don’t berate yourself, Erisi.”

“No, Madam Director will do that for me, won’t she?”

Vorru smiled. “Ah, you know her so well. She does seem to visit injustice upon you with fair frequency. I think that is a situation that should change.”

Erisi arched an eyebrow over an ice blue eye. “What did you have in mind?”

“See if your reasoning parallels my own. It strikes me that after the Lusankya is sent off to destroy the Yag’Dhul station, someone in the New Republic is going to have to take notice of how much firepower she possesses. While Zsinj has been more of a direct threat—and is why the New Republic fleet is out there hunting him down and, with any luck at all, destroying him—Ysanne Isard has succeeded in raising her profile rather considerably. The New Republic will be forced to deal with her sooner or later, and I’m inclined to think they will opt for sooner.”

The Thyferran pilot nodded slowly. “I follow you so far.”

“It strikes me that my position here is no longer going to be profitable. I have managed, in my position, to set aside a certain amount of credits that would be sufficient, say, to purchase a planet. I would require a loyal staff and even a wing of pilots to keep my rivals at bay.”

“I see. And would you be requiring my services as a pilot or my company?”

Vorru bowed his head in a salute. “Your services as a pilot would be most valuable to me. Your company, on the other hand, would be invaluable to me. I leave the choice of role to you, to be modified as you wish.”

“Very well, I shall start as the commander of your pilots.” Erisi clasped her hands at the small of her back. “How do you see this defection being accomplished?”

“After the Lusankya and the Virulence return from destroying the Yag’Dhul station, we will head out on the Virulence on an inspection tour of facilities. There will be an accident, we will disappear. It can be arranged.”

“Then arrange it.” Erisi looked around and toward the viewports displaying the planet’s lush greenery. “Iceheart will find a way to destroy this world I love. I have no desire to be here when that happens.”

“Nor do I, Erisi dear, nor do I.”

34

Corran reached across the table at Flarestar and took Mirax’s hand in his. “Thanks.”

She gave his hand a squeeze. “Buying dinner was no big deal.”

“That’s not what I’m thanking you for.” Corran glanced down at the table, then back up at her. “Seeing you sitting there I remember the first time I saw you, back on Talasea.”

Mirax smiled. “Yeah, the lighting is dim enough in here to resemble that world.”

He chuckled. “I was remembering how beautiful you looked then and how beautiful you are now.”

“And I remember you cut a rather dashing figure in your flightsuit, then I had to go and spoil it by bringing our fathers’ rivalry into things.”

“But we got over that fast. Then I was remembering our last conversation on Coruscant before we headed out to conquer a world.” His smile shrank somewhat. “And then I ruined what we were heading for by getting captured by Isard.”

“Yet another crime for which she should pay.”

“Agreed.” Corran sat back as a serving droid started clearing platters from their table. “A huge chunk of what gnawed at me while I was on the Lusankya, was knowing you thought I was dead. I didn’t want to presume that my disappearance would have hurt you that much, but I knew how I’d have felt were our situations reversed.”

Mirax nodded solemnly. “And now, in less than a day, we’ll be tossed again into a fight where we both might die …”

Corran shot her a wry grin. “You wouldn’t be trying to turn this into a ‘sleep with me tonight because tomorrow we may die’ thing, would you?”

“Me?” Mirax demurely pressed a hand against her breastbone. “Perish the thought. I’d never think of taking advantage of you like that—despite having bought you a lavish meal.”

“Oh, no?”

“No.”

“Why not?” Corran sniffed. “Am I not good enough for you?”

“You are that, but, as I recall, you’re also already sleeping in my bed.”

“Good point. It does sort of make this kind of seduction rather moot.”

“True, but the flirtation is fun.”

“I agree there, too.” Corran smiled and tightened his grip on her hand ever so slightly, doing his best to make sure he didn’t feed the pressure building in his chest into his hand. “And I can’t think of anyone I would rather flirt with and be seduced by than you. In fact, I think we should make it permanent.”

Mirax’s brown eyes grew wide. “Lieutenant Corran Horn, are you asking me to marry you?”

“Look, I know this might seem abrupt. I mean, I know we’ve been living together since my return from the grave, but with all our missions and trips and everything, I’d guess we’ve not had more than three weeks in the last four months where we’ve actually been able to spend time alone with each other. Despite how hectic and chaotic things have been, what I do know is that I want more time to spend with you. I know that I’m never going to find someone for whom I feel more than I feel for you.”

“That’s true, because if you did, I’d see to it that you stopped feeling altogether.” Mirax squeezed his fingers. “Are you sure about this? Don’t you want to talk to Iella about it?”

“She’d tell me I’ve been an idiot for not asking you to marry me sooner. She and Diric were as close as any two people I’ve ever seen; and despite the pain she’s been through, I don’t think she’d have surrendered one moment of their happiness together to make her feel better. For as long as I’ve known her she’s had a habit of predicting how many weeks my relationships would last, and she was always on target. With us, no prediction.”

“Always did think she was smart.” Mirax held her right hand up. “One last thing, Corran: You realize that I’m not walking away from my lifestyle or my father. The Mirax Terrik you get is the Mirax Terrik you know.”

“I think your father and I have an understanding, but even if we didn’t, you’d be worth it. Realize I’m not going to change either.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Corran arched an eyebrow. “So?” He could feel his heart pounding in his chest. “Will you marry me?”

Mirax lifted his hand from the table and kissed it. “Yes, I will, Corran Horn.”

The tension in him exploded in a nervous laugh that freed a single tear to roll down his cheek. He slipped his hand from hers, then pulled off the gold chain and Jedi medallion he wore. “This station isn’t a good place for finding jewelry and I didn’t want to ask Zraii to machine up a Quadanium ring, so all I have to offer you is this.” He held the medallion out by the chain, but Mirax refused to take it.

“Corran, I know how much that medallion means to you. It’s your good luck piece. I won’t take it, especially just before the coming assault.”

“Mirax, you’ve just agreed to marry me. Any luck left in this thing has clearly been drained. You’re the most important person in the galaxy to me, so if this will keep you safe, or even if it will remind you of me, it’s better off with you than hanging around my neck.”

She accepted it from him and stared down at the medallion resting in her palm. She ran a thumb over Nejaa Halcyon’s profile and slowly smiled. “Do you think our children will look like him?”

“Better him than your father.” They both laughed. “At least for the boys, that is. If our daughters look like their mother, I’ll be as pleased as possible and as protective of them as your father is of you.”

Mirax looped the chain over her head and let it slip beneath her clothes. “I’m going to find you something that’s just as special as this is. Maybe I’ll talk to Zraii about fabricating something for you, something you’ll never forget.”

“Like what?”

“A ring, maybe, made from the Lusankya’s hull. It held you captive the way you hold my heart captive.”

“You’re good, Mirax, very good.”

“I’m the best, Corran, and you always push me to excel.”

He smiled. “So, when do we break the news to your father?”

Mirax paled slightly. “The when comes after the how I think. Give me some time to figure that out. We can tell Wedge, though, and some of the others, but that can wait until tomorrow. We have other things to do tonight.”

“Such as?”

“You, Corran Horn, have asked me to marry you, I have accepted and I intend us to do everything right in our marriage.” She stood up from the table and dragged him up after her. “Toward that end, there are certain things I think we should practice until we perform them perfectly.”

Fliry Vorru found it easy to read the emotions running through the two ship captains. The briefing Ysanne Isard was giving them clearly frightened Captain Lakwii Varrscha. Though the woman stood taller and was more muscled than Ysanne Isard, she lacked the vitality that gave Isard her commanding presence. That the woman had risen so high in Imperial service marked her as competent, but Vorru felt her rise had much to do with the fact that she had hitched her career to that of Joak Drysso and his rising star had dragged her along to the limits of her abilities.

Joak Drysso, in contrast to Varrscha, was small and blocky, with prematurely gray hair that was matched by the color of his goatee. Despite his diminutive stature, he had an air of menace about him. Were it not for the perspective supplied by his surroundings, Vorru could have imagined him being a stormtrooper standing a hundred meters distant—lethal and not given to surrender.

Isard had chosen to wear her red Admiral’s uniform for the briefing, despite the heat and humidity. “There it is, then. You will be attacking an Empress-class space station. The armaments and shielding are minimal, though the chance that some upgrades are in place cannot be overlooked. The Yag’Dhul system is twenty-four hours from here. I expect the station to be destroyed and you to return here within sixty hours from now. Are there any questions?”

Drysso nodded sharply. “I have to wonder, Madam Director, at why you are sending both the Lusankya and the Virulence on this mission. The Lusankya, as well you know, has more than enough firepower to obliterate the station. In addition I have twelve squadrons of TIE fighters at my disposal, which is more than enough to overwhelm Antilles’s paltry forces. Even Minister Vorru’s most generous estimates of the Rogue strength gives us a two to one advantage in fighters, and as good as the Rogues might be, they cannot hope to prevail against us.”

Vorru cleared his throat. “You have forgotten the Alderaanian War Cruiser?”

“Its firepower is negligible. A Super Star Destroyer can absorb all the damage it can do and still destroy it at leisure. I will designate two squadrons of TIEs to keep it off me. There is no need for the Virulence to come with me on this mission. Moreover, its departure from Thyferra puts this world at risk.”

Isard blinked. “At risk? From whom?”

“Antilles and his people. Recall, his X-wings are hyperspace capable. If they bolt when we arrive, they will be able to come here and have twelve hours to fly missions against positions here before we could possibly return.”

Vorru frowned. “Toward what end? Antilles can’t take this planet without troops.”

“But he has them, Minister Vorru, in the Ashern rebels.”

Isard waved their exchange away. “No matter—any gains they made in your absence would vanish when your return.”

“Leaving the Virulence here would prevent even minimal gains.” Drysso stroked his goatee. “While I have the utmost respect for and confidence in Captain Varrscha, her ship is not required on this mission.”

“Nor is it required to safeguard Thyferra.” Isard smiled slowly. “I have the Thyferran Home Defense Corps to ward off the Rogues, if they do what you say they will. What few of them the THDC allows to survive will be useless to the Ashern rebels. We can easily hold out for twelve or twenty-four hours—whatever it takes for your return. And the Virulence will be going with you to guarantee your return. Ait Convarion made the mistake you are making in underestimating Antilles. Convarion paid for his arrogance with his life.”

Drysso accepted Isard’s warning without a flicker of reaction. “I assure you, Madam Director, the Lusankya will return from Yag’Dhul victorious.”

“I trust this will be the case, Captain Drysso, otherwise you’ll have no reason to return here at all.” Isard nodded solemnly. “You will find the consequences of failure most disagreeable.”

Isard shifted her attention to Captain Varrscha and Vorru waited for the Virulence’s commander to collapse. “Captain Varrscha, you understand the mission as it has been given to you?”

“Yes, ma’am. The Virulence is to offer all aid and assistance to the Lusankya to complete its mission. I will execute Captain Drysso’s orders instantly.”

“Ah, I see.” Isard’s eyes narrowed. “You have served as Captain Drysso’s subordinate officer for years now, yes?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Following his orders is admirable, but what would you do if you thought he was making a mistake?”

“I don’t understand the question, ma’am.”

Anger curled its way through Isard’s voice. “Are you capable of taking the initiative, Captain? If the Lusankya were suddenly faced with a threat, could you act to head that threat off without an order from Captain Drysso?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Very good, Captain.” Isard strolled over to where the other woman stood, her voice dropping to the level of a growled whisper. “Understand this: The Lusankya is more valuable than you or your ship. Its preservation is vital for our continued success here at Thyferra. You will do whatever you must to see to it that the ship returns here. Captain Drysso may consider your presence to be that of an observer, but I consider you a shield between the Lusankya and disaster.”

Isard spun away from her and addressed all three of the individuals in the room. “If Antilles knows we are coming, he will have something prepared to oppose us. Even if he has not anticipated us, I do not think he will be helpless. He will be desperate, and desperation can inspire people to great feats of heroism. In desperation there is danger for our forces, so you must be careful. If your victory costs us too much, we could be in jeopardy.”

Drysso’s face became a resolute mask. “Victory will be mine, Madam Director.”

“Those are famous last words, Captain Drysso.” Isard snorted derisively. “Do your best to see you do not join the teeming mass of failures for whom those were the last words.”

Iella Wessiri snapped the trigger assembly for her blaster carbine back into place and tightened the bolt to secure it. She picked up a power pack to slam it home, but stopped when Elscol Loro crouched and squeezed through the opening to the Vratix den they shared. “News?”

The smaller woman nodded. “All leaves have been canceled for crew from the Lusankya and the Virulence. Within six hours or so they should be under way.”

“No convoy is forming up?”

“Nope, this is clearly a strike mission.”

Iella frowned. “You mean the strike mission.”

“Isard does appear to be dancing to the tune Wedge has called.” Elscol shrugged. “I just hope Wedge can pay the synthesizer jockey when the bill comes due.”

“He took Coruscant. Freeing this rock isn’t going to be that much tougher.”

“Yes, but Isard wanted the New Republic to have Coruscant. She’s being a bit more possessive about Thyferra.”

“True.” Iella set her carbine down, then hit several buttons on her chronometer. “Well, this news puts us on the clock, then, I guess. Forty-eight hours after the Lusankya leaves Thyferra, Wedge and the others will be here. You’ve already told Sixtus we’re on?”

“He and his taskforce are already heading to their staging points and expect to be in position to liberate the detention center when they get our signal.”

Iella caught a funny note in Elscol’s voice. “And you’d still like that signal to be a lift-truck bomb being flown into the Xucphra administrative headquarters to blow it up, right?”

“Call me silly, but I don’t see why risking injury in an assault so you can capture Isard is preferable to scattering her constituent atoms all over the place with a bomb. And don’t give me the justice line again.”

Iella shook her head. “Look, I know how evil Isard is—she turned my husband into a mockery of himself. I’d like nothing better than to shove a blaster up her nose and melt her brain. I wouldn’t consider it murder—”

“Nor would anyone else.”

“—But her death isn’t the point. Stopping her is. Even more important than that is to let her be tried in a court of law for her crimes. It’s vital to let people know that the laws have purpose and that evil people will be held accountable for what they do.”

Elscol frowned. “And a bomb doesn’t do that?”

“A bomb is just more anarchy. Killing her that way will allow people to say she had to be kept quiet or important people would have been revealed to be collaborators. Blowing her up allows people to say she really escaped the blast. The lack of a trial, because she won’t be held accountable for all of her crimes, means people can begin to think she wasn’t so bad. Twenty years from now, thirty or fifty, there could be a neo-Imperial movement that holds her up as an example to be emulated. Blowing her up will make her a martyr, but a trial will show her up as a monster, warts and all.”

Elscol chewed her lower lip for a moment, then shook her head. “Well, I hate to admit it, but you’re actually making some sense. I must need a vacation.”

“We all need a vacation.”

“Okay, we’ll find some resort on a world where the Empire is just a nasty rumor, if we survive this assault of yours.”

“When we survive it, you mean.”

Elscol smiled. “Right, when we survive it. I hope, though, you aren’t expecting me to go in there with my selector lever on stun. Ain’t going to happen.”

Iella retrieved her carbine and slid a power pack home. “If it shoots back, I’m shooting to kill. With Vorru, Isard, or Dlarit, I’ll go for a stun shot, but only if that’s not going to get me or anyone else killed.”

“Your plan calls for more finesse than the bomb, but I guess we can make it work.”

“We will.” Iella nodded solemnly. “Two days until Thyferra regains its freedom and Ysanne Isard loses hers.”

35

Captain Joak Drysso let a low sinister laugh fill the dark hollow of the ready-room on the Lusankya. He recalled with holographic clarity the image of the Executor plunging into the heart of the half-completed Death Star at Endor. He’d known at that point that the battle was lost, so he’d taken his Virulence and fled from the battle. I always knew I would have another chance to crush Rebels.

He didn’t believe for an instant the fiction that Antilles and his people were outcasts from the New Republic. Theirs was obviously a mission meant to keep Isard bottled up until they could deal with her—and Antilles had done a good job of keeping her attention on him. Had he not preoccupied her, she might have seen the wisdom of creating an Imperial Combine, bringing together the various Warlords out there to put an end to the New Republic. It would have been very successful, he was certain of that, and she could have even led it because she possessed what everyone else wanted: Bacta.

Isard’s short-sightedness in this regard didn’t surprise Drysso, primarily because she thought like a politician, not a warrior. Isard took great delight in being subtle and tricky, then when she decided to wield a hammer, she did it in a very clumsy manner. Sending Convarion out to destroy Halanit was a wasted gesture. An assault shuttle and a squadron of TIEs could have laid waste to that settlement. The attack did nothing but salve her ego and anger Antilles.

He would have handled things entirely differently. Drysso had agreed a strike was necessary, but he would have gone after Corellia and brought the Diktat to heel, adding Corellia and its shipyards to the Iceheart Empire. That would supply them the means of building more ships. He would have then badgered Kuat into making a similar deal, giving him access to those shipyards. And then on to Sluis Van. Once I have those three sites under my control, I can strangle the New Republic by restricting trade—without ships and shipyards, nothing moves between stars.

Drysso had chosen to stay with Isard because he thought she represented the best chance at reestablishing the Empire, and because she had the most legitimate claim to the throne itself. He had supported her decision to abandon Coruscant—a world that does not provide the means to wage war is worth little in a war. The New Republic’s conquest of it did hamper the Rebellion, and Isard’s possession of the Bacta Cartel put her in a very powerful position in the galaxy.

Unfortunately, her power is embodied by this ship. Drysso caressed the arms of the command chair in which he sat. Only through this ship can she project her power to other worlds, command their compliance and punish their defiance. Now this ship is mine and thus is her power ceded to me.

The comlink clipped to his jacket beeped. “Drysso here.”

“Captain, five minutes to reversion to realspace.”

“On my way to the bridge.” Drysso stood and strode from the ready-room to a turbolift for the short ride up to the bridge. As the lift slowed, he composed himself, setting his face with a stern expression. The door opened and he immediately strode out onto the Captain’s walk. “Report, Lieutenant Rosion.”

The Chief Navigator looked up from the pit where he worked. “We’re coming in as scheduled. The station is in orbit around Yag’Dhul, occupying an orbit outside of that of the largest of Yag’Dhul’s three moons, with its position always opposite that moon. We are coming in on the only good entry vector that won’t run us afoul of the world, its moons, or the system’s sun. The station should be clear for an attack once we close into range.”

“Very good.” Drysso glanced over at his communications officer. “Ensign Yesti, when we revert to realspace, please inform the Virulence that we expect it to come in below us at a range of twenty kilometers. Inform Captain Varrscha she is not to power her weapons up except under my direct order.”

“As ordered, Captain.”

Drysso continued to walk forward until he reached the viewing station. The light tunnel through which the ship sped began to break down into long shafts of light. They, in turn, resolved themselves into unwavering gemstones set in a black blanket. Directly ahead of the ship’s distant prow, the system’s sun burned brightly. Yag’Dhul and its moons appeared as colorful spheres hanging in space. Silhouetted against Yag’Dhul’s gray face, the space station appeared to be little more than a cross—insignificant and defenseless.

“Captain, we’re showing signs of snubfighter deployment at the station.”

“Very well, tell Colonel Arl he is free to deploy his fighters in a defensive screen. Have you spotted the Alderaanian War Cruiser yet?”

“Negative,” reported Drysso’s aide. “We are clear for a hundred kilometers around us, and Virulence is reporting similar clearance.”

“Push the sensor sphere out to two hundred kilometers, Lieutenant Waroen, and keep scanning the fringes of the system for that War Cruiser. Time to engagement?”

“Ten minutes to range.”

“Bring our shields up to full.”

“As ordered, sir.”

Drysso stroked his goatee as he watched the station grow larger. The scrambling of the station’s snubfighters did not surprise him. That was the only reaction they could have, which is why he countered with deploying his fighters in a screen. It would be difficult for the X-wings to work their way through his screen and, while engaging in dogfights, all but impossible for them to maintain the sort of unit cohesion needed for a crushing volley of proton torpedoes to be launched at his ship. While proton torpedoes and concussion missiles were certainly a danger to his ship, they were only a danger in vast quantities—far more than three dozen snubfighters could possibly deliver.

“Captain, the snubfighters are going to lightspeed.”

“Thank you, Waroen. Please confirm they are outbound for Thyferra.”

His aide’s surprise rang through his reply. “Yes, sir, that’s it exactly.”

“Good. They will arrive there after twelve hours in tiny cockpits, short on fuel and sleep. The Thyferrans can deal with them. We’ll make certain they have no place to return to.”

Light laughter greeted his comment, then the communications officer raised his voice above the din. “Captain, we have an incoming message from the station.”

Drysso turned and pointed to a holoprojector pad to his left. “Please, Ensign Yesti, route it here.” As the image began to resolve itself into that of a tall man with one artificial eye, Drysso raised himself to his full height. “This is Captain Joak Drysso of the Lusankya. Your fighters have deserted you.”

“I sent the fighters off to play with something more their size.” The tall man’s hologram posted its fists on its hips. “I’m Booster Terrik, and this is my station. Your rate of closure puts you five minutes out from your preferred range for this sort of operation. I’ll give you those five minutes before I destroy your ship.”

“You’re rather bold, Terrik, for having a station with minimal shields, a half-dozen laser cannons, and ten turbo-laser batteries.”

Terrik’s image laughed. “We’ve made some modifications to the station.” The figure nodded to someone outside the image area.

Drysso felt the Lusankya rock a bit. He immediately signaled for Yesti to cut off the transmission, then he snarled at his aide. “What happened?”

“They powered up a gravity well projector. It’s projecting a cone of energy in our direction. It can’t hurt us—the bump was just our own gravity-keeping generators adjusting the gravity on the ship. We have no damage or injury reports coming in.”

Drysso frowned. The only thing the gravity well projector did was prevent them from turning and going to light-speed while still in the cone. “Lieutenant Rosion, compute hyperspace solutions for me.”

“That will be difficult, sir. Because of Yag’Dhul’s density, the array of the moons, and the gravity cone, we’re severely limited in our choices. All we can do is run away from the plane of the elliptic until we escape the current constraints on us, then head out. If you want us to return to Thyferra, our best bet would be get free, take a short jump to the edge of the system, and then head back on our entry vector, since that is the fastest route to Thyferra.”

Something else is going on here. “Lieutenant Waroen, shift assets to scan the edges of the system along our entry/exit vector.”

“Yes, sir.”

Drysso turned to watch his red-haired aide work. The young man’s pale complexion drained further of color. “Sir, I have a small taskforce on the system rim. It is composed of snubfighters and freighters and maybe a larger ship.”

“An ambush?”

“Perhaps, no, wait. Sir, the ships are outbound toward Thyferra. Exit speed is consistent with that of the freighters or our own ships.”

Drysso nodded, then turned back toward the viewport. His assessment of Antilles’s tactics had been correct: the man opted to send part of his force to Thyferra. The fact that the freighters had been waiting at the edge of the system indicated that Antilles had indeed anticipated their strike. Even with freighters and the War Cruiser in support of his operation, he can do little to hurt Thyferra. His troops will be tired because of the journey and unable to fight well. Moreover, once I destroy this station, I can return to Thyferra. I will arrive shortly after he does and pounce on his forces, destroying them. The gravity well will buy him some time, but not enough.

Drysso pointed to the holopad. “Yesti, open a comm channel with the station. Lieutenant Rosion, bring us to range and have us hold there, please.”

“As ordered, Captain. Engines, all stop.”

Terrik’s image appeared again on the Lusankya’s bridge. “I notice you have stopped, Captain Drysso. Do you have surrender on your mind?”

Drysso smiled. “I do. Yours.”

Terrik’s anticipatory smile faded into puzzlement. “I guess you think we don’t want to fight. Believe me, we do.” Again he gestured to someone outside the image area and a much heavier tremor shook the Lusankya. “As your people will tell you, we’ve just powered up all of our tractor beams and have them on you. You can try to break free, but if you do, I’ve got to see a man about a guarantee he gave me.”

“You better hope he works fast. Rosion, engines full back. Break those locks.”

“Can’t, sir. Helm is sluggish and those beams are very powerful.”

Drysso snarled at Terrik. “You give me only one choice.”

“Good. The terms of surrender are …”

“No, you fool, my choice is your complete destruction. Weapons, all bear on the station. Fire on my command!”

“Emperor’s black bones!”

Drysso whipped around and spitted Lieutenant Waroen with a harsh stare, but his aide remained engrossed by a monitor and missed it. “What is happening, Waroen?”

“Sir, we have multiple proton torpedo and concussion missile sensors locked onto us.”

“How many?”

“Many, sir, over three hundred.” Waroen looked up. “We’re dead, sir.”

Drysso turned back to the viewport and imagined the rippling fire of three hundred proton torpedoes and concussion missiles smashing into his forward shield. Under that onslaught it would collapse and the missiles would begin nibbling away on his ship. And that’s only the first volley. The subsequent volleys would consume the Lusankya utterly and completely.

With Drysso’s vision of disaster came the crumbling of his plans for the future. The Lusankya was the key to everything, but he’d been tricked. Antilles had anticipated the strike at the station. He had set up a trap to destroy the Super Star Destroyer. Even if I do shoot and eliminate some of the launchers, some of the tractor beams, all that will get away will be a severely damaged ship.

Drysso hesitated and that hesitation should have lost him his ship and his dreams.

Two kilometers off his bow, the Virulence lanced upward, eclipsing the station. All of a sudden the Imperial Star Destroyer began to shrink, but it was only when he saw stars flashing back into sight at the corners of his vision did he realize why it was disappearing. They’re not destroying my ship, we’re speeding away from the station—engines are still at full reverse. The Virulence broke the locks by interposing itself between us and the station.

Drysso smiled and tasted sweat in the corners of his mouth. We’re free of the trap Antilles laid for us. He thought he had found a way to destroy us, but he did not. Now we get to spring a trap on him.

The Lusankya’s Captain turned to face his bridge crew. “Rosion, plot a course back to Thyferra, as fast as we can get there. Yesti, send Virulence our thanks. Tell them their sacrifice will be remembered—a sacrifice that allowed us to destroy Wedge Antilles and hasten the Empire’s rebirth.”

Waroen looked up at him, disbelieving. “We’re not going to help them, sir?”

“They’re just doing their duty, Lieutenant.” Drysso’s mouth soured with the fear of ever engaging the station. “We now go to do ours.”

36

By the time the Lusankya reverted to realspace, Captain Drysso had constructed a complete rationalization for his actions. He knew it was just that: a thin fabric of facts, circumstances and lies that would probably crumble under Isard’s scrutiny. The fact remained, though, that he needed an explanation, and it was the best he could come up with.

It all started with the premise that Antilles’s station would kill the Lusankya. This he knew and had the sensor reports to back it up. Isard herself had made it very clear that preserving the Lusankya was vital, so disengaging when given the opportunity to do so was the only choice he had. With the station being as heavily armed as it was, the only prudent course of action would be to cordon it off and let the inhabitants starve until they chose to surrender.

Once disengagement had been mandated, the next course of action had also been obvious. He had sensor reports to indicate Antilles, the War Cruiser, and dozens of freighters had headed out for Thyferra. That was a much larger taskforce than Isard had anticipated being used against Thyferra. Only by returning home at flank speed could the Lusankya be in position to destroy that taskforce. In fact, it seemed rather obvious, that without the Lusankya’s help, the Thyferran Home Defense Corps would be overwhelmed.

He had no choice but to return to Thyferra.

He realized that abandoning his TIE fighters at Yag’Dhul could be criticized, but he could even explain that away. The TIEs were meant to supplement the Virulence’s defenses—the fighters could track and shoot down missiles before they could strike the Imperial Star Destroyer. He also expected them to get in close enough to the station to destroy launchers and then complete the destruction of the station. That his pilots were dead if both the station and the Virulence were destroyed meant little to him—they had their duty to do just as he had his. If he remained to pick them up, he would have been destroyed.

Standing before the bridge viewport, he anticipated reversion into a battlefield. As the light tunnel melted away into a scattering of stars, he saw the green-and-white ball of Thyferra above him. No X-wings swooped about. No TIEs filled the void with green laser fire. He saw nothing out of the ordinary, just freighter traffic and a few system patrols.

Drysso slammed a fist off the transparisteel viewport. He’d been had by Antilles. The feint at Thyferra had drawn him off, causing him to sacrifice the Virulence. The Rogues probably abandoned the station except for a handful of volunteers who were willing to trade their lives for that of the Virulence. The convoy I saw heading away from Yag’Dhul probably moved to another base—a base we’ll have to search out, all the while enduring more hit-and-run attacks by the Rogues.

Lieutenant Waroen’s voice cut through the cocoon of mortification closing around Drysso’s mind. “Captain, we have an Imperial Star Destroyer reverting to realspace twenty-five kilometers to our aft.”

How did Varrscha get the Virulence out of there? Drysso looked over at the holoprojector pad. “Yesti, open a comm channel to that ship. Captain Varrscha, how did you get away?”

It took him a moment to recognize the holographic image facing him, but when he did he felt a cold hand tighten around his heart. “Captain Drysso, I fear you’ve mistaken my Freedom for your Virulence.” Captain Sair Yonka smiled at him. “Don’t say you’re happy to see me—you won’t be.”

“Captain Drysso, the Freedom is deploying snubfighters, X-wings and Uglies.”

Drysso stopped before he ordered his own nonexistent fighters into battle. “Contact the planet and have the THDC’s squadrons scrambled. I want all their fighters up here protecting me. Helm, bring us about to engage the Freedom.” He pointed a finger at Yonka’s image. “I don’t think, sir, when all is said and done, you will be happy that I’ve seen you.”

The abundant undergrowth around the Xucphra corporate headquarters provided Iella and her people the means to get within twenty-five meters of the back entrance. They had expected to walk up to it, set a little lock-popping charge on it, blow it open, and be inside before much of an alarm could be raised. Ten meters along the corridor beyond the transparisteel door they’d be in the building’s security center and would be able to control alarms and access to corridors and turbolifts.

But now there are two stormtroopers standing guard at the door. At first glance they looked to be the genuine articles, but Iella noticed they chatted back and forth quite a bit. THDC banthas in rancor clothing. Even so, the strip of open ground she needed to cover was enough that the guards, no matter how poorly trained, should be able to cut her down. Because they had been prepared for a close assault, none of her people carried a blaster rifle, just carbines and pistols, so killing both of them from cover was impossible. We might hit them with carbine shots at this range, but the armor means we don’t have a guaranteed kill.

She needed a diversion, but the only real option she had was to use an explosive charge to distract them. The problem with that idea was that if it didn’t kill them, they’d undoubtedly report the explosion, providing more of an alert to the forces inside than she wanted. She reached for her comlink to ask Elscol to divert some of her people to help out, when a TIE fighter screamed overhead at treetop level.

As a second and third TIE screeched past, Iella saw the door guards look up and point at the starfighters. One even took his helmet off to get a better look, tucking his headgear under his arm. Without a second thought Iella stood and strode from the undergrowth in their direction, shielding her carbine from sight with her body and turning her head to likewise watch the starfighters fly past.

A full dozen of the fighters roared out of their hangar, letting Iella know Wedge and his people had finally arrived. Now if I can just do my part. She looked up at the guards, smiling at them, as she reached the base of the stairs leading to the door.

“ ’Scuse us, ma’am, but you can’t be here.” The helmet-less guard leaned his blaster carbine against the wall and began to fumble with his helmet again. “Restricted area.”

“Oh, sorry.” Iella reinforced her smile, then brought her blaster carbine up. She scythed fire back and forth, burning holes in the white plastoid armor over the guards’ chests and bellies. The helmet fell from lifeless hands and bounced down the ferrocrete stairs as she ran up past it. She stepped over the body of one guard, then leveled her carbine at the door’s lock and triggered a burst of scarlet fire that vaporized it.

Before she could push the door in with her foot, two Ashern Vratix reached the landing. With their powerful legs they kicked the guards’ bodies off the landing. Brandishing blaster pistols fitted with adapters to accommodate their thick-fingered hands, the Ashern warriors bulled their way through the door and stalked down the hallway.

The security station’s duraplast door crumpled beneath a Vratix kick. The Vratix went in, and lurid blue backlighting accompanied their assault. Iella arrived at the doorway seconds behind them and went in with her carbine ready, but all three of the Xucphra security police were out. Two had never even had a chance to draw their blasters and all three lay in pools of steaming caf.

“Definitely picked the wrong time to be taking a break. Secure them so they won’t be a problem when they wake up.” Two human resistance fighters complied with her orders while a third dropped into the chair at the center of the building’s security console. “Can you shut this place down, Jesfa?”

“Can a Vratix jump?” The dark-haired commando pointed at the twin banks of four monitors atop the console. “These provide views of various sites around the building—one for each of six floors and the two towers. I can see everything and,” he added as he settled his fingers on the keyboard, “from here I can shut everything down. This is the same system I used to use when I worked security for Zaltin.”

“Good. Lock everything down except for one turbolift. Secure the shuttle hangars in the towers and open up the main entrance.”

“Consider it done. I’ll shift my comlink to Tac-two so I can keep you apprised of anything I see.”

Iella smiled. “Do that, but don’t be surprised if they shoot the holocams out. I would.”

She patted him on the shoulder, then fished her comlink out of her pocket. “Hook to Blade, we’re in. The way is clear for you.”

“On our way, Hook.” Elscol sounded happy for the first time Iella could remember. “Good work.”

Erisi Dlarit’s anger at having her squadron last in the long line of Thyferran Home Defense Corps fliers heading out to engage the Rebels made her tighten her grip on the Interceptor’s controls. Might Squadron, a group of green pilots that shared hangar facilities with her Elite Squadron, had been scrambled immediately. They take their name to mean strength, but we’ve always considered it the answer to the question “Will they fight?”

She’d had to place a call to Isard’s office to find out why her pilots had not been called up, but no one there answered. Exercising the discretion her position gave her, Erisi immediately scrambled her own squadron. Better we’re destroyed in space than destroyed on the ground.

The instant she became airborne, Erisi pulled tactical data from ground control and didn’t like what she saw. An Imperial Star Destroyer and an Alderaanian War Cruiser were moving to engage the Lusankya. The Imperial Star Destroyer had rolled and was flying along so its hull was perpendicular to that of the Lusankya. This would allow the Impstar’s port gunners to be shooting down the top of the Super Star Destroyer. The Alderaanian War Cruiser worked back toward the Lusankya’s aft; and once it worked its way in past the system’s freighter traffic, it would be able to attack the larger ship’s engines.

The snubfighters deployed by the Impstar were closing in formation on the Lusankya. The THDC fighter squadrons coming up to oppose them were not flying together, but were strung out so the Rogues would engage them piecemeal. That’s suicidal.

Erisi punched up a tactical frequency on her comm unit. “Elite Lead to Virile Lead. Slack your speed and let Might Squadron join up with you.”

“No can do, Elite Lead. We have our orders.”

“Consider them countermanded. Make sense, this is Rogue Squadron you’re facing.”

“And it’s Rogue Squadron we’ll be killing. For the glory of Thyferra.”

Erisi popped her comm unit over the tactical frequency the Elites used. “Stay tight, Elites. We’re going for the Rogues. Let’s hope our comrades tire them out.”

Wedge watched the tactical feed coming from the Valiant and felt a cold chill creep up his spine. “What are they doing? Why are they coming in at us like that?”

His R5 unit whistled curtly.

Wedge glanced at his monitor and smiled. “That was a rhetorical question, Gate. You wouldn’t have sufficient data to be able to calculate an answer.” After his last outing, Wedge had let the techs wipe Mynock’s memory and upgrade his software. Because of the modifications Zraii made on the droid, he also learned the droid’s designation had been changed to R5-G8, which he just truncated into Gate. “Give me a check on the transponder.”

Another quick whistle announced it was in full working order.

Wedge keyed his comm unit. “Thirty seconds to the first wave of TIEs. Remember, our goal is to get at the Lusankya, not to spend our time dogfighting up here. Kill what you must, but keep with the mission. Two, stay with me.”

“As ordered, Lead,” came Asyr’s reply.

Wedge flicked his lasers over to dual-fire mode, picked a target among the incoming TIEs, then waited for his aiming reticle to go red. As it did he tightened up on the trigger, letting two bursts of fire go, then dove away from the hissing green laser fire splashing against his forward screen.

His maneuver prevented him from seeing what happened to his target, but Gate dispassionately flashed the message “Target eliminated” in bloodred letters at the bottom of the monitor. Maybe Mynock wasn’t really that bad. Wedge glanced at his sensor readouts and saw only a pair of TIEs in his wake. Everyone got one, nice shooting. He decided to leave the other two for the Twi’lek Chir’daki pilots following them in.

Gate hooted at him.

“Thanks, Gate, I’ve got thirty seconds to the next TIE wave.” He opened the tactical comm channel. “Tighten it up, Rogues. Two more squadrons, then we should be clear to go in.”

37

Corran suppressed a laugh. “Only two more flights, Lead? I count five, including one of squints.”

“Agreed, Nine, but there is a two-minute gap between three and four, and another two minutes between five and the squints. I thought we could use that time to down the Lusankya. With your permission.”

“Granted, Lead.”

Corran hauled back on his stick as the second TIE flight came in, then barrel-rolled to starboard and came over the top. The X-wing pointed itself straight at a pair of TIEs that broke to follow his climb, but his inversion brought him in below their flight arc. One of them tried to pull a quick loop to bear down in on him while the other tried to force his TIE fighter down into a dive to spot Corran again.

Corran triggered two quad bursts of fire at the diving TIE. Two of the four laser bolts in the first shot missed, but the other two seared scars along the bottom of the starboard hexagonal wing. The second burst struck the bottom of the ball cockpit, slicing off the bottom third of it and severely warping the fighter’s structural elements. The twin ion engines ripped free of their supports and blew through the cockpit canopy, then exploded.

Corran rolled away to port to escape the blast, then hit the right rudder pedal and brought the X-wing’s nose around to starboard. The looping TIE came out of its maneuver and spitted itself on his aiming reticle. It went red, and Corran triggered a shot at it. All four laser bolts converged on its starboard solar panel and punched through to the cockpit. Corran saw a brief flash of light, then the TIE started a corkscrew down toward Thyferra.

“Ten has the next flight, Nine.”

Corran tucked his X-wing back in behind and to port of Ooryl’s fighter. The Gand rolled his X-wing up on the port stabilizers, presenting the incoming TIEs with a very narrow profile to shoot at. Corran aped his maneuver and watched as four TIEs separated themselves from the rest of the formation to come after Ooryl. He glanced at his sensors.

“Whistler, why didn’t you say we were getting ahead of the rest?”

The droid hooted a quick response.

“I would too have listened to you.” Corran keyed his comm unit. “Ten, we’re all alone here for a bit.”

“Ooryl understands, Nine.” Corran caught an edge to Ooryl’s voice he couldn’t recall hearing before. “Ooryl has them.”

Ooryl has them? That sounds like something Jace or I would say.

Ahead of him, Ooryl triggered a quick burst of quad fire that hit a TIE in the cockpit canopy and blew the engines out the back of it. A little etheric rudder shifted his aim point to port, then a second shot disintegrated another TIE’s port solar panel. Ooryl rolled out to port, then dove below the remaining TIEs.

Sithspawn, that’s great flying! Corran inverted his X-wing and pulled back on the stick to follow Ooryl’s dive, but by then the Gand had started his fighter around in a grand loop. Corran rolled again to follow, but a sharp bleat from Whistler made him glance at his aft monitor. “Ten, your playmates are on my tail.”

“Ooryl copies, Nine. Continue on your arc.”

“Continue? They’re coming up fast.”

“No longer.”

Up ahead Corran saw Ooryl’s X-wing tighten its arc impossibly quick, swapping nose for tail in the space of two hundred meters. The ship remained inverted, so Corran couldn’t see the cockpit, but he could imagine the Gand’s mouthparts moving apart in his imitation of a smile. “Ready to break on your mark, Ten.”

“Go to port, Nine. Mark.”

Corran rolled to port, then, as Ooryl had done, he reversed his thrust. Instead of looping the ship, Corran applied rudder until his nose swung back along the path he had just traveled. He came about just in time to see Ooryl melt the wing off another TIE.

Its wingman dove abruptly away from the Gand’s trap.

“Great shooting, Ten. You’ve got a hot hand.”

“Thank you, Nine.”

“Three flight, want to tighten it up here?”

“As ordered, Lead.” Corran started his thrust pushing his fighter forward. “Come on, Ooryl. We’ve got a big target now.”

Captain Drysso watched the holopad’s display of the battle. “Helm, Freedom is trying to slash over the top of us. Roll us so we can track her.”

“Captain, if you do that, we’ll expose our ventral surface to the snubfighters.”

“I know that, Helm.” Drysso looked over at the beefy man heading up his gunnery command. “Guns, use our ion cannons on Freedom. I want that ship.”

“Captain, Guns copies your order, but requests you reconsider.”

Drysso’s eyes narrowed. “We have more ion cannons than that ship has guns, Lieutenant Gorev. I want it, and you’ll give it to me. I don’t want to destroy it unless necessary. Antilles got one of our Impstars, now we’ll have one of his.”

“What about the snubfighters and the War Cruiser?”

“Use our concussion missiles. Use all our turbolasers and heavy turbolaser batteries.”

“The snubs are too small for turbolasers to track them. The War Cruiser is in our aft, so my missiles are having difficulty finding firing solutions.”

“By all that’s Imperial, you’ll find solutions, Lieutenant Gorev, or someone else will be in your position, do you understand?” Drysso’s hand rose with his voice. “Understand me, people. This is a Super Star Destroyer. A handful of snubfighters and a ship a tenth of our size cannot hurt us. Do what you are told and victory will be ours!”

Fliry Vorru had seen the TIE Interceptors flash past the viewports of his office and knew the time to make his escape from Thyferra had come. My shuttle is hyperspace capable. I run suborbital to the far side of the planet, wend my way clear of obstructions, and vanish. He collected a fistful of datacards and tucked them inside his tunic.

He reached the door to his office and found it wouldn’t open. He quickly punched a security override code into the locking mechanism, and it opened. In his outer office he found two stormtroopers and his secretary trying to open the door to the hallway.

“Stand back. Elicia, please do yourself a favor and duck behind your desk. When they come for you, tell them horrible stories about me, and they will protect you.” As the blonde did as she was told, the stormtroopers came to attention. “You two will conduct me to my shuttle hangar in the east tower.”

Vorru punched a security override code into the lock, and it opened as well. Stepping into the hallway, he pointed out the security holocams at either end of the hallway. “Destroy them.”

With a volley of shots his guards complied with his order and Vorru realized they were just Home Defense Corps personnel. Of course, the amount of clattering their armor makes could have told me that. He waved them on after him and quickly worked his way toward the east end of the building, shooting holocams as they went. “Since the locks only respond to security override codes, we have to assume the Ashern are in the building. They will control the turbolifts, so we’ll be using stairs.”

Vorru ignored the grumbles from his escort and got them to the east tower without meeting any resistance. So far, very good. He forced one of them to precede him up the stairs and had the other one follow, but the precaution proved unnecessary as they saw no one and nothing while they climbed up two floors. They emerged from the stairwell on the hangar level. “Down around the corner, to the right. Hurry, I hear the engines powering up.”

This did not please Vorru, since he had intended to pilot the shuttle himself—primarily because he was the only pilot he wanted to know his final destination. The fact that the shuttle had already begun to power up meant someone else had decided to use his means of escape, which created a huge set of complications to be dealt with. Vorru’s displeasure with the situation bled into his words, causing his guards to sprint on ahead of him and around the corner to the hangar.

A volley of scarlet blaster bolts sent the armored guards tumbling back down the hallway. They slammed into the wall and rebounded, but were hit by a half dozen more shots before they landed on the floor. One laser carbine came spinning across the floor to trip Vorru up. He crashed down hard, but bit back a curse and thereby saved his own life.

From the ground he had a narrow view of the hangar and the cloaked forms of two of Isard’s Royal Guards walking from the doorway over toward his shuttle. Isard! She’s using my shuttle to escape. How dare she!

Vorru snatched up the blaster that had tripped him, then sprinted into the hangar. At point-blank range he shot both of the men in scarlet armor in the back, then dove for cover as the shuttle’s laser cannons sprayed the hangar with bolts. He felt the hot backblast of the shuttle’s maneuvering jets as it lifted off, then emptied the blaster’s power cell by pumping shot after shot into the vanishing shuttle’s shields.

Vorru tossed the useless blaster aside and rose from the floor. “She probably thinks I’m stuck here, but I’d have been as stupid as she is if I only had one bolt hole.” He toed one of the Royal Guards, then flipped the body over and pulled the blaster carbine it had been lying on from the floor. “I will survive this, Ysanne Isard, if for no other reason than to make you pay for the trouble you’ve given me.”

As Corran’s X-wing raced in on the Lusankya, the Super Star Destroyer began to roll. “Lead, what do we do?”

“Stay on target. We may not be edge-on anymore, but we can hit the guns from below. Commence weave, thirty seconds to firing position.”

Corran rolled his fighter to starboard, opening up some room between himself and Ooryl. He pulled back on his stick and nudged it to port, throwing the X-wing into a spiral the pilots referred to as a weave. The fighter’s movements were not wholly regular, making it all but impossible for the Lusankya’s gunners to get a good shot at them. Of course, one good shot with those heavy turbolasers and all the bacta in the galaxy couldn’t help me.

The Lusankya’s heavy weapons filled the void with countless bolts of green laser energy. The shots spiraled out as crews tried in vain to target the incoming snubfighters. Corran studied the bases of the cones, mentally recording the location of each battery. Those are what make this mountain of metal dangerous. Destroy them and it’s just a big box in space.

Despite the spiral, getting a target lock on the Lusankya was not hard at all. Corran shifted his weapon’s-control over to proton torpedoes and linked them for dual-fire. The box at the center of his head-up display went red immediately and Whistler sounded a constant tone indicating target lock. “Good, Whistler, good.” He punched a button on his communication console that started green, then quickly shifted to red.

“Nine has double-lock. I’m firing.”

“Launch, Nine, then get clear.”

“As ordered, Lead.” Corran pulled the trigger on his stick and watched two proton torpedoes streak away at their target. “Pull the Lusankya’s fangs and hope we don’t get gummed to death on the way out.”

38

Drysso stared down at his aide. “How many incoming torpedo tracks, Lieutenant Waroen?”

“Twenty, sir.”

Two per X-wing. Survivable. “You see, only twenty.”

“Wait, sir. I have twenty-four.”

“No matter.”

“Now I have forty, no, eighty. Eight zero.”

Drysso’s jaw dropped as he saw a nova flare blossom up over the horizon of his starboard bow. The shields held for a second or two, then collapsed. Warning sirens started shrieking on the bridge as multiple torpedo and missile hits exploded six kilometers away on the ship’s bow. The brilliant fire gnawed at the clean lines of his ship, shattering armor plates and triggering dozens of secondary and tertiary explosions.

Even before the tremors reached the bridge, Drysso started shouting orders. “Waroen, kill those sirens. Give me damage control reports. Guns, what have you lost and why haven’t you gotten me the Freedom yet?”

Waroen’s voice rose above the din. “Captain, we have full bow shield collapse.”

“How did they get that many missiles off, Lieutenant?”

“Sir, I don’t know, sir.”

“Sithspawn! Find out how!” Drysso watched as the Freedom fired down at the Super Star Destroyer. Salvos of red turbolaser bolts pulsed out from the smaller ship, savaging the Lusankya’s unprotected bow. Vaporized armor immediately condensed into metal clouds that hid the full extent of the damage done, but Drysso had no hopes that his bow would look like anything but a blackened, battered lump. Still, that damage is nothing compared to what we can do.

Over a hundred starboard ion cannons fired back at the Freedom in a display so massive it appeared as if sheets of blue energy had erupted from the Lusankya’s side. The Imperial Star Destroyer’s shields imploded, leaving azure lightning to skip and arc all over the ship’s surface. Drysso saw secondary explosions ripple through the smaller ship’s port gun decks, letting him know the Freedom had been badly hurt.

“Captain, I’ve lost fifteen percent of my starboard firepower.”

“Thank you, Guns. Lieutenant Waroen, where did those missiles come from?”

“The freighters, sir, they’re launching missiles that appear to be using the starfighter telemetry to target us.” Waroen glanced at his monitors. “Sir, I can reestablish the bow shield, but it will lower our protection elsewhere.”

“Do it, Waroen. Guns, forget the Freedom. Kill the freighters.” Drysso clasped his hands at the small of his back. “The freighters are our main threat now. Kill them, and this battle is over.”

Tycho Celchu rolled his X-wing to port, then pulled back on his stick. He cruised in on the tail of a TIE fighter and pulled the trigger. Two bursts of dual-fire lasers shot out, stabbing deep into the engine assembly. He rolled quickly to starboard and dove, clearing the exploding TIE’s blast radius.

“You still with me, Eight?”

Nawara Ven’s voice came back a little less calm than Tycho would have wanted. “With you, Seven, just barely.”

“New flight, Eight, then our second run on the Lusankya. You take lead.”

“As ordered, Seven.”

Tycho throttled back a bit to let Nawara Ven pass him, then he sideslipped to the left and took up a position in Nawara’s port aft arc. Coming back off the first run on the Super Star Destroyer, the X-wings had boiled into the fourth TIE flight. Between them and the Twi’lek Chir’daki, the TIEs never had a chance. As they closed on the fifth flight, it lost unit cohesion as four of the pilots pulled away and headed back toward the incoming Interceptors.

“Only eight out there, Nawara. Choose your target carefully.”

“Got one in mind, Seven.” Nawara’s X-wing remained straight and level as it raced in toward the TIEs.

Tycho began to wince. Head-to-head is usually a winner for us, but it burns some shields. In this environment, I’m not so sure that’s wise.

Nawara’s X-wing snap-rolled up onto the starboard stabilizer foils, then fired four dual bursts of lasers at its target. The first two missed wide, as did the TIE’s return fire, but the last two hit the TIE dead on. Two of the bolts sheered the starboard solar panel in half while the other two peeled back the flesh of the cockpit. The TIE started a crazy tumble through space, and suddenly Tycho found himself through the line of TIEs and clear to run on the Lusankya.

“Lead, Seven and Eight are going in.”

“I copy, Seven.”

Tycho rolled left to give Nawara more room, then put his ship into a weave. Coming in at the Lusankya from the front, he dropped his aiming reticle on the blackened portion of the ship’s bow. Guttering flames indicated places where the ship was leaking atmosphere. Tycho picked a particularly bright torch as his aim point. He shifted over to missiles and immediately got a keening target lock tone from his astromech. Seconds later he got a red light from his telemetry transponder.

“Double-lock for Seven. Two away.” He pulled the trigger, sending two proton torpedoes streaking on jets of blue flame at the Lusankya. From all around the larger ship other blue lights suddenly ignited and began to cruise in toward the point Tycho had targeted.

From the very beginning of their operations, Wedge and Tycho had agreed that the only way they could defeat the Lusankya was to overwhelm it with proton torpedoes and concussion missiles. The problem they had was that to do the job correctly they would require twelve or more X-wing squadrons—squadrons they didn’t have. Taking a lesson from the conquest of Coruscant, they decided that freighters equipped with launchers and missiles would give them the launching platforms they needed. By slaving the freighters’ missiles to the X-wing telemetry, they eliminated the need for target acquisition sensors on the freighters—the use of which would have immediately designated the freighters as targets for the Lusankya.

To prevent anyone from figuring out their strategy, Wedge had Booster buy launchers, munitions, and sensor units from Talon Karrde. Reluctant to buy something and not use it, Booster hooked the sensors up to the station, noting that just lighting them up would be enough to make even the Lusankya think twice about engaging the station. As their plans evolved, Booster agreed to stay behind and make the Lusankya think it had been trapped while the Rogues left the system, rendezvoused with Sair Yonka’s Freedom, and rode the rest of the way in relative comfort to Thyferra. The freighters moved on in to set up the ambush while the Freedom waited at the fringes of the system for the arrival of the Lusankya.

Tycho’s missiles exploded against the ship’s shields, but they buckled quickly enough as the rest of the missiles locked into his telemetry hit the ship. Nawara’s shots likewise raced in, sowing explosions over the ship’s surface. Other Rogues continued the assault on the ship’s starboard gun decks, destroying turbolasers, ion cannons, and concussion missile launchers. If we can kill Lusankya’s ability to strike from one side, our ships can operate with impunity.

Toward the other end of the Super Star Destroyer, Tycho saw the Alderaanian War Cruiser Valiant pour fire into the ship. The Lusankya’s tail guns exchanged shots with the Valiant, but Aril Nunb’s droid crew managed to maneuver the smaller ship so shots impacted against shields that were still strong. The Super Star Destroyer’s aft shields appeared to be holding, but the Valiant’s constant battery had to be draining energy that could have been used elsewhere to great effect.

Rolling to port and diving, Tycho sailed his fighter beneath some return fire and noticed the Lusankya had begun to strike out at the freighters. They presented a diverse choice of targets and began to scatter as the big ship turned its guns on them. Evasive maneuvers, as per orders, but that’s going to make missile launching tougher. He glanced at his monitor. Only two missiles left anyway, enough for one more run.

He checked the location of the Interceptor squadron, but saw it had not closed as quickly as anticipated. “Lead, Seven is set for one more run.”

“Negative, Seven. The squints have picked up a lamb and are running it clear of here. You and Nine, with your wings, are to pursue.”

Tycho’s astromech flashed a quick scan of the shuttle onto his monitor. “Shuttle is positive for one lifeform. You think that’s Isard?”

“Like as not. She’s not getting away. Go, Tycho, go.”

“I copy, Jesfa.” Iella crouched and quickly ducked her head around the corner. She jerked her head back and rolled away as three blaster bolts gouged a divot out of the ferrocrete wall. That was closer than I have any interest in getting in the future.

Iella keyed her comlink. “Your report was dead on, Jesfa. Keep telling me what holocams he’s killing and we’ll get to him.”

Elscol came running up and dropped to one knee at Iella’s side. “What have you got?”

Iella jerked a thumb at the corridor. “Trapped rat, it appears. Your people secured the stairwells?”

“Yeah. He’s trapped here on the fifth level.” Elscol gave Iella a half-smile. “You want us to evacuate innocents, or do we just track this guy down?”

“Let’s get him.”

Elscol waved a team of two men and two Vratix forward. “We have a live one. Be careful.”

Two of Elscol’s people took up positions at the mouth of the corridor. Their efforts to look down it produced no fire, so they gave the all-clear signal. The two Vratix then rushed forward to flank the only door in that hallway and then checked it. They indicated it was locked. Elscol and Iella went running down the hall to its end and crouched there, preparing to glance down either branch after their quarry.

Iella pressed her back against the corridor’s left wall. She started to nod to Elscol, inviting her to check her end of the corridor first, but she saw movement back the way she had come. The duraplast door exploded out into the hallway as blasterfire chewed it in half. Two bolts caught the Vratix on the right side of the door in the abdomen, spinning him further into the corridor. As the fire swung back through the doorway the second Vratix took a pair of shots to the thorax, dropping him to the floor with his sextet of limbs twitching.

The two men at the far end of the corridor came running up and rushed the doorway before Iella or Elscol could call them off. The second man in straightened up abruptly, then flew back into the corridor all loose-limbed and burning from a trio of shots to the chest.

Of the first man Iella only saw booted feet that jerked twice, then lay still.

“Jesfa, get me a six-man team up here now.” Iella looked over at Elscol. “We wait, right?”

“For that guy to escape? If he got in that room, he knows override codes. He could have a secret turbolift in there and be on his way out.”

“I doubt it.” Iella keyed her comlink again. “Jesfa, have them bring concussion grenades.”

Smoke drifted out of the doorway, then a blaster carbine came sailing out of it and clattered to the floor in the midst of the dead commandos. “I give up.”

Iella and Elscol exchanged glances, then Iella snapped a command. “Come out with your hands in the air.”

“Do I recognize that voice?”

Iella’s jaw dropped open. Fliry Vorru? She slowly smiled. “Vorru? I’m expecting those hands raised.”

The small white-haired man appeared in the doorway and gingerly stepped between the legs lying therein. “Ah, Iella Wessiri. Someone I can trust to do the right thing.”

Elscol stood and leveled her blaster carbine at the man. “You want the right thing? I have justice in a clip right here for you, murderer.”

Iella reached up and laid a hand on Elscol’s carbine. “You can’t. He’s surrendered.”

“Surrendered? He just burned down four people.”

“More crimes for him to be tried for.”

“Exactly.” Vorru smiled rather smugly. “I’m sure the people of Thyferra will want to try me, if the New Republic will let them.”

Iella frowned as she stood. “Oh, once the New Republic is through with you, the Thyferrans will have their chance.”

“I hope you’re right, Iella, because I know the Thyferran people have a strong sense of justice.” Vorru’s hands slipped down to the level of his shoulders. “Of course, since I know which of the New Republic officials have been hoarding bacta and I know the backdoor deals made by member states to get bacta, well, I suspect this is information they won’t want to have come to light.”

Iella laughed. “You think you’re not going to pay for your crimes because you’ll make some political deal?”

“Alas, Iella, that is the reality of the situation.”

Iella sharpened her laugh and her expression. “You’re assuming, of course, that I don’t have my own brand of justice in mind. I wanted Isard because she killed my husband. If I can’t have her, you’ll do.” She raised her carbine and pointed it at his head. “One shot and a lot of crime files are closed.”

Vorru brought his hands together and applauded her. “Nice bluff, but I’ve read the Imperial and Corellian files on you, my dear. You could never shoot me.”

“True.” Iella lowered her blaster. “But she can.”

Elscol’s single shot caught Vorru in the throat. It pitched him against the doorjamb, from which he rebounded and fell on top of his blaster.

“Nice shooting.”

Elscol looked down at her blaster. “I don’t remember setting this weapon on stun.”

Iella smiled. “I do, when I stopped you from shooting him the first time.”

Elscol frowned. “Why only stun him? Why the charade?”

“Vorru always likes being in control. He was expecting you to burn him down—it would have been his victory because you would have killed a man who had surrendered, and that would make you as much of a murderer as he is. Once he realized I was out here, he decided to play another game. He was in control until the last second, when I let you shoot him.”

The other woman nodded, then snapped her carbine’s selector lever off stun. “What he said, though, about paying for his crimes is probably true. The New Republic will make a deal with him.”

“Sure, if they get a chance.” Elscol smiled. “The Rogues pulled him off Kessel. We can always dump him back there. No deals, only justice.”

Elscol laughed aloud. “You know, you keep this up and you might convince me there’s more to do with unreconstructed Imperials than kill them.”

“Let’s work on it, Elscol, but only after Thyferra is free.”

39

Captain Sair Yonka picked himself up off the Freedom’s bridge deck and staggered to his feet. He swiped a hand at his forehead—it came away bloody so he tore a strip of cloth from the tail of his tunic and jammed it against the wound. Antilles, you paid me a lot, but it wasn’t enough.

“Someone give me a report on what’s going on out there. Lieutenant Carsa?”

“Carsa’s dead, sir. His monitor blew up in his face.”

“Are we blind then, Ensign …?”

“Issen, sir. No, sir, not blind. The Lusankya has been hit again by torps and missiles, but it’s beginning to shoot at the freighters. We’re being left alone.”

“Then it’s not all bad news.” Yonka leaned against a bulkhead. “Helm, can we maneuver?”

A pained voice called to him from the depths of the bridge. “We’ve lost fifty percent of our maneuverability, Captain. We can roll, but speed and turns are going to be tough. I can muster enough to get us out of here, though, sir.”

“Weapons, what’s our status?”

“We’ve still got most of our port weapons, sir, but starboard weaponry is shot. No realistic judgment about repairs.”

“What’s the status of our shields?”

A bald man punched a button on a console, then clapped his hands. “Shields are coming back up. I’ve got seventy percent of power. They’ll hold while we run away.”

Sair Yonka shook his head. “We’re going nowhere. Lieutenant Phelly, roll us so we can bring our starboard weapons to bear.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but we’re not being paid enough to die here.”

“Then let’s make sure we don’t die.” Yonka flung his arms wide open. “We all knew that staying with Isard would get us killed. We also knew that if we left her service, she’d hunt us down right after she killed Antilles. Now we’ve got to kill the Lusankya here, or it will kill us someplace else. This isn’t about money, it’s about our survival, our freedom.”

He pointed out the main viewport. “Out there you have people in freighters and snubfighters pounding on that behemoth. They’re gnats compared to the Lusankya. They can sting it, but they can’t kill it. That job is up to us and we’re going to do it because if we have to die, it isn’t going to be dying while we’re running. The Empire’s dead—we all know that—so this is our buy-in to whatever follows it.”

Wedge saw the Freedom begin a roll as turbolaser fire lanced from the Lusankya at the freighters. One salvo caught a disk-shaped Corellian light freighter and snapped it in half. He saw shields glow and shrink as other ships got hit by one or two shots, but none exploded. He knew that was more luck than skill, and that a lot of the freighters weren’t going to survive to the end of the battle.

“Lead to Two, time for our last run.”

“Negative, Lead, I have a TIE on me.”

“Coming, Two.”

Wedge pulled back on his stick and brought his fighter up into a loop, then rolled out to starboard as Asyr’s X-wing shot past. A TIE streaked by, hot on her tail. As Wedge dropped in behind him, the TIE fired a volley of shots that pierced Asyr’s aft shield. Something at the back of her fighter exploded, then she rolled down and out of sight.

“Two, report.”

Asyr didn’t answer his call. “Gate, assess damage on Two.”

The droid beeped a response, but Wedge ignored the information filling his secondary monitor. Got something to do first.

The TIE rolled to starboard then started to climb. Wedge pulled his X-wing into a steep climb, then snap-rolled starboard and powered the fighter over the top. The TIE danced before him for a second, prompting Wedge to snap a shot off. The dual burst of lasers clipped one of the TIE’s solar panels, but did no serious damage.

This guy is good.

The TIE rolled to port and pulled a tight loop back along its line of flight. Wedge let himself overshoot the TIE, then throttled back as the TIE swung onto his tail. The TIE closed faster than the pilot expected because of Wedge’s chopping the throttle back. Wedge tugged back on his stick, nosing the fighter into a climb. He held it for a second, then shoved the stick forward and broke the climb off.

Green laser fire hissed off his shields, but he didn’t panic. And Gate isn’t screaming! The TIE shot past his position, having started to climb to blast Wedge, then trying to follow him as he started flying straight again. Wedge pulled his X-wing’s nose back up and triggered two more bursts of laser fire.

Both hit the TIE in the undamaged wing, burning it free of the ship’s fuselage. The hexagonal wing went one way while the TIE spun out of control toward Thyferra.

Wedge didn’t watch to see if it exploded. He brought his fighter around and found himself staring at the broad expanse of the Lusankya’s belly. Nearly an eighth of the ship had been nibbled off at the front, but the guns still fired relentlessly. It’s hurt, but not enough. “Lead here. Starting my third run.”

The fact that no one acknowledged his call sent a chill through him, but he shrugged it off. Now’s not the time to mourn the dead. That waits until the mission is done. He tossed his fighter into a weave and pointed it at the giant egress hatch in the bottom of the Super Star Destroyer. We’ve broken your nose, now it’s a shot to the guts.

Switching over to proton torpedoes, he immediately got a red box and a solid tone from Gate. He waited until his transponder button went red, then pulled the trigger. Two jets of blue fire shot away from his ship and another half dozen joined them. It took four of them to blast a hole in the ventral shields, but that left a quartet of missiles to plow into the Lusankya’s hangar deck. The explosions spat decking and debris back out into space, then secondary explosions told Wedge that at least a couple of the TIE fuel storage tanks had ruptured.

Out of torpedoes, Wedge shifted over to lasers and started searching for more TIEs. And if there aren’t any more of them, I guess I’ll just have to get in close with the Lusankya and light it up as much as I can.

“Yes, Madam Director, I understand.” Erisi shivered as the echoes of Isard’s voice died in her ears. When she’d spotted the shuttle coming up she had harbored a hope that it was Vorru, but Isard’s mocking voice dashed that dream to pieces. Erisi switched her comm unit over to her squadron’s tactical frequency. “Elite Leader to squadron. We have a new mission: protect the Lambda-class shuttle Thyfonian. We are to cover it until it gets clear and can go to lightspeed.”

“Six here, Lead. That means we’ll be left behind.”

“Negative, Six. The Lusankya is going to be following Thyfonian out and will pick us up.”

“I copy, Lead.”

“Twelve here, Lead. We have four X-wings coming up fast.”

“I copy, Twelve.” Erisi shook her head. Only four? That’s a mistake you’ll rue, Wedge Antilles. “Keep your formations tight and help each other out. These pilots will be good, but we can be better. Don’t lose your heads and you won’t lose your lives.”

•     •     •

Captain Drysso laughed victoriously. As nearly as he could determine his Lusankya had been hit by over a hundred and fifty proton torpedoes and concussion missiles, but it had lost scarcely thirty-five percent of its combat ability. Maneuvering was hampered and shield power was falling sharply, but the Lusankya still outgunned its opposition. And the freighters have the survival rate of tauntauns on Tatooine.

Lieutenant Waroen called out to him. “Captain, the Freedom is coming back into the fight.”

“Guns, let him have everything!”

“As ordered, Captain.”

The Lusankya fired its starboard weapons at the Imperial Star Destroyer, mauling it mercilessly. Turbolasers crushed the shields while ion cannon beams skittered over the Freedom’s hull. Concussion missiles peppered the smaller ship, opening huge holes in the hull. Explosions racked the Freedom, spraying debris in all directions.

Yet even before the Lusankya’s attack left the Freedom adrift in space, the Imperial Star Destroyer blasted back at the Super Star Destroyer. Turbolasers drilled through the dorsal shields and stabbed fire deep into the Lusankya’s heart. Blue ion lightning capered and danced over the hull, teasing fireballs to life in its wake. The Lusankya shook with the violence of those explosions and others.

Drysso shouted at his staff. “Damage reports!”

Waroen was first. “Ventral shields, down; dorsal shields, down; bow shields, down; starboard and port shields, down.”

“You mean to tell me I only have aft shields?”

Another explosion shook the ship. “Not anymore, sir.”

“Captain,” yelled his communications officer, “I have a priority message from Director Isard. She’s ordering us out of here. We’re to follow the shuttle.”

“What?”

“That was the message, sir. She said you should get out of here before you get killed.”

“Killed!” Drysso’s laugh quieted the bridge. “Killed? We are winning here. The Freedom is dead. Freighters are dying. That War Cruiser is next and we’ve weathered the worst those X-wings can throw at us. We have won! She can run if she wants, but the Lusankya stays here. If she wants to abandon Thyferra, I will take her place and reap what she has sown.”

The crew stared at him, gape-mouthed and silent for a moment, then a cheer spread through the bridge, beginning at Lieutenant Waroen’s station and building around through the crew. For a handful of heartbeats Drysso thought they were cheering him, but those nearest the viewport stared past him, prompting Drysso to turn.

Out there, hovering off the Lusankya’s port bow, was the Virulence.

Drysso clapped his hands. “It’s the Virulence and they have our TIE squadrons. Order Virulence to deploy its fighters! Now nothing stands between us and total victory!”

40

Three squadrons of fighters poured from the Virulence and entered the fray.

Wedge’s heart had sunk when Gate reported the launching of the Virulence’s fighters. He brought his X-wing around and resigned himself to one last glorious battle. That Impstar only carries six TIE squadrons. I always sort of figured Rogue Squadron would go out in a blaze of glory, and this looks like it is it. “Gate, target me one of Virulence’s fighters.”

The droid complied with a beep. Wedge glanced down at the image the droid painted on his monitor. “That’s an A-wing.”

Gate corrected him with a bleat.

“Okay, a Mark II A-wing.” Wedge shook his head to clear it. A-wings? Where did Isard get A-wings?

A familiar voice crackled through Wedge’s comm unit. “Ace Lead to Rogue Leader. Mind if we crash your party, Wedge?”

“Pash Cracken? Where in the Emperor’s dark heart did you come from?”

“Booster’s flagship. The gravity well pulled my unit out of hyperspace right on top of Virulence during their little standoff. Booster talked the captain into believing it was all part of the trap, so she surrendered the ship to him.”

So he finally found a ship that was big enough for him. “The Lusankya is all yours, Captain Cracken.”

“Obliged, Wedge. We’re going in.”

Inverting and rolling out, Wedge reoriented his X-wing toward the Lusankya as the Virulence fired a full broadside into the Super Star Destroyer. The smaller ship’s turbolasers and ion cannons wrought havoc upon the Lusankya’s port gunnery decks. A ribbon of fire raced along the port gunwale and secondary explosions kept it alive long after the Virulence’s weapons stopped firing.

To the Lusankya’s aft, the Valiant closed to point-blank range and blasted away at the big ship’s engines. Sparks cascaded away as turbolasers drilled deep into the Super Star Destroyer. A brilliant flash eclipsed the Valiant for a moment. A violent tremor shook the Lusankya, snapping free a blackened chunk of the bow.

Fast and nimble, Pash’s A-wings slashed in at the Lusankya. They flitted over the massive ship’s surface, shooting concussion missiles at gunnery towers and sensor domes. Fiery craters stippled the Lusankya in their wake. What few weapons did remain on the Lusankya fired ineffectively at the A-wings; all of their destructive power proved impotent against a target they could not hit.

“Rogue Lead, this is Three. We’re going in for a strafing run.”

“I copy, Gavin.” Wedge glanced at his monitors, but the only TIEs he saw were the ones escorting the shuttle. Can’t catch them now. “If you don’t mind, Three, I think I’ll join you.”

Closing with the squints Corran switched his weapon’s-control over to lasers and linked them for dual-fire. While a quad burst would be certain to burn a squint down, dual-fire allowed the guns to cycle that much faster. One shot should still be a kill, but if these guys can put the maneuverability of those squints to good use, I’ll need all the shots I can get. His X-wing still had an advantage because of its shields, but that still didn’t make him immune to damage.

“Nine, let’s be careful.”

“As ordered, Seven. Ten, on me.”

“Ooryl copies.”

“Whistler, scan comm frequencies and bring up whatever one they’re using. Squelch scrambled messages. I don’t care what they’re saying to each other. I just want to be able to talk to them.”

Whistler moaned in a low tone.

“Yes, I do think Erisi is flying with them. I want to let her know who’s coming after her.” The droid hooted derisively.

“She can decide to flame me all she wants, doesn’t matter.” Corran let himself smile. “She already knows I can play hard to get. She’s the reason I went down on Coruscant, and I’m bringing her down here.”

He picked one of the squints in the middle of the formation as a target, but kept his flight path pointed as if he were preparing to attack one of the closer Interceptors. As the close Interceptors broke, Corran rolled on his starboard stabilizers as if he were going to follow them, but then applied some rudder and spitted his target on his aiming reticle. He tightened up on his trigger.

Two sets of two bolts skewered the squint’s ball cockpit. The twin ion engines exploded, launching debris into space from amid a silvery fireball. Pieces of the fighter struck sparks from Corran’s shields, but he reinforced them quickly enough. “Scratch one squint.”

Whistler keened at him so Corran punched a previously unlit button on his comm unit. “Hope that wasn’t you, Erisi. I’d hate to think your flying skill had atrophied so much.”

“It’s my killing skill that should be concerning you, Corran.”

“Eight here. I have a pair on my tail.”

“Seven on the way, Eight, hold tight.”

Corran rolled and came out in a loop with Ooryl in his aft port quarter. Two TIEs were lining up for a run on Nawara’s X-wing. Tycho pulled a tight turn that brought him around quickly, but he only managed to pick off the trailing TIE. Nawara broke hard to port, then twisted back again to starboard, but the squint stayed with him throughout his maneuvers.

That’s got to be Erisi.

The Interceptor fired four times, the first two pairs of green laser bolts burning through Nawara’s aft shield. The other two blew out the port engines and hit the fuselage right behind the cockpit. Nawara’s astromech exploded, then the cockpit canopy flew apart. When fire filled the cockpit Corran feared for the worst, then he saw the X-wing’s command couch jet out from the stricken fighter.

“Eight is extravehicular!” Corran’s green eyes narrowed. “Ten, keep them off him. I’m going after Erisi. Whistler, give me her comm frequency again.”

The droid complied with the order silently.

“Always did pick off the easy targets, didn’t you, Erisi? Couldn’t stand to work hard, could you?”

“Is that you on my tail, Corran? All alone?” Her laughter filled his cockpit. “I thought you’d learned from your father that dying alone wasn’t something to do.”

“That should be your concern, Erisi, because I’m not dying here. Horn out.” He punched the comm unit button that cut frequency off. “Come on, Whistler, it’s time we collect the debt she owes us.”

Corran’s X-wing streaked in on Erisi’s trail, but the squint juked and danced, making it impossible for him to get a good shot at her. As she broke to port, Corran rolled out into a long starboard loop and began a head-to-head run with her. The squint broke to starboard before they could close, forcing him to turn to port to pursue. Okay, she knew head to head would be suicide.

As her ship began to pull away from his, Corran realized killing her wasn’t going to be as easy as he expected. While she hadn’t been a bad pilot in an X-wing, she wasn’t as good as he was. Her Interceptor, on the other hand, has more speed and maneuverability than my X-wing. That might give her the edge she lacked before. And she knows very well all the performance capabilities of my ship.

Corran smiled. You don’t fly against a fighter, you fly against the pilot, and her arrogance is one huge flaw I can exploit. Corran pulled his throttle back to 85 percent of full power, letting her stretch her lead on him. He rolled up on his port stabilizer and started a long loop that would take him back toward the main dogfight. He started in on an attack vector for one of the Interceptors.

While flying along it, he watched his main monitor. The rate of change for the range between his ship and Erisi’s Interceptor slowed as the distance stabilized, then the distance started to decrease. The rate of change accelerated, and when the range hit three kilometers, Corran hauled back on his stick. He tightened his loop considerably, then punched his throttle forward and headed straight for her.

Her hastily snapped shots splashed harmlessly over his forward shields. Corran fired back, catching her squint on the port wing. He inverted and dove, then inverted again and cruised out into a long loop that took him past Thyferra’s cloudy face. “How badly is she hit, Whistler?”

The droid graphed performance statistics on the main monitor. The Interceptor had suffered a 5 percent reduction in speed, which still left it faster than the X-wing, but not by that much. There also appeared to be a reduction in maneuverability, but not enough to cripple her performance. This is going to take a while.

“Nine, are you chasing Erisi?”

“Yes, Seven.”

“Finish her fast.”

“You need help?”

“Ten is handling things, but the shuttle is running. It can clear to lightspeed if we don’t stop it.”

“I copy, Seven. I’m on it.” He glanced at his monitor. “Whistler, give me range to the freighters who were tied to my torpedo telemetry.”

The droid whistled mournfully. “No, it’s okay that they’re all out of range. I didn’t want them wasting any torps.”

Just to be on the safe side, he hit the switch that turned the telemetry transponder off, then shifted his weapon’s-control over to proton torpedoes. Coming about, he picked Erisi up and started after her again. He nudged his nose up and to port, getting a stuttered beeping from Whistler as the droid tried to get a firing solution for the Interceptor. The tone went constant as the reticle went red.

Corran hit the trigger and launched both torpedoes at Erisi. His last two proton torpedoes streaked out at her and she immediately began maneuvering to avoid them.

I have thirty seconds to kill her. Corran switched back to lasers, then drained energy from his aft shield and fed it into his engines. That kicked his speed up to better than that of an unhurt Interceptor, allowing him to close the gap between their ships fast.

As the missiles approached her Interceptor, Erisi rolled to port and broke hard toward Thyferra’s largest moon. The missiles overshot where she had been, then turned and started in pursuit again. She kept her ship pointed straight at the bone white moon and as the torpedoes closed with her again, she rolled to port and pulled her fighter into a glide path that followed the rough terrain of the lunar surface.

One torpedo, unable to fight inertia and lunar gravity both, slammed into the moon and exploded. The second sailed through the gout of lunar dust and started closing with the Interceptor. Erisi bounced her squint up and over a ridgeline and back down again, interposing it between her and the torpedo.

The ridge shielded her from the torpedo’s blast.

It also blinded her aft sensors to Corran’s presence.

As Erisi pulled her squint up to climb away from the moon’s surface, Corran came up over the ridge and pounced. Pairs of scarlet bolts burned into the squint, shredding both solar panels. As the stabilizers disintegrated, the Interceptor’s climb became a loop into a dive that brought it in on a collision course with the moon. Both engines thrusting fully, the Interceptor plowed into the lunar surface, gouging out a huge furrow. The Interceptor hit the edge of a small impact crater, skipped up, then battered itself again and again against the moon. Finally, crushed into a shape that was unrecognizable as any part of a fighter, it rolled to a stop as the engines sputtered out.

Corran circled the spot once. “No explosion, nothing spectacular. Erisi would have hated it.”

Whistler blatted harshly.

“Right, who cares what she would have wanted.” Corran pulled his X-wing away from the moon. “Find me that shuttle, Whistler. I don’t care who’s on it, we’re going to stop it.”

Another salvo from the Virulence ripped into the Lusankya as Wedge swooped low over the Super Star Destroyer and peppered its hull with laser bolts. The Lusankya tried to defend itself, but the surface-mounted turbolaser cannons simply made themselves targets for strafing runs by X-wings, A-wings, Twi’leki Chir’daki, and the Gands’ curious ships. What shots the Super Star Destroyer did get off at the Virulence failed to penetrate the smaller ship’s shields.

The Lusankya is fast becoming defenseless. Much more of this hammering and the ship could begin to break up, and that would jeopardize the prisoners we want to rescue from her. Wedge pulled up and flashed past the bridge. “Gate, get me an open comm channel to the Lusankya.”

The droid complied with the order instantly. “This is Commander Wedge Antilles to the Captain of the Lusankya. We’ll accept your surrender at any time.”

An angry, shrill voice arced through the comm unit. “This is Captain Joak Drysso—no, Admiral Drysso—of the Lusankya. We will never give up.”

“Captain …”

“How dare you insult me!”

“Admiral, then, even Grand Admiral, if it will make you see sense. Your shields are down. Your engines are hit. You have no fighter cover, you can’t hurt your opposition.” Wedge let his damage assessment sink in for a moment. “It’s hopeless. No one else needs to die. Give up.”

“Give up? An Imperial Grand Admiral never gives up. If you think one would, you’ll rue the day you engaged one!”

“That could be, sir, but that day isn’t today! We’ll treat all your people with all due respect.” Wedge fought to keep his voice even. “Surrender.”

“Never! We are all loyal sons of the Empire. We are not afraid to put death before dishonor. Helm, give me all speed. We’re going to ram the planet! There, Antilles, see, a Grand Admiral never …” The comm unit popped and abruptly went silent.

“Drysso!”

“Captain Drysso isn’t here anymore, sir. Ah, this is acting-Captain Waroen.”

“Are you going to crash your ship into the planet, Waroen?”

“Not if I can help it, sir. If you could get the War Cruiser to stop shooting my engines, and if Virulence will pull us a bit further out into orbit so we don’t crash of our own accord, we’ll accept any conditions for surrender you want to offer us.”

“I’m happy to be working with you, Captain Waroen. What you’re doing is no dishonor.”

“I know that, sir, and I think it beats death all hollow.”

Corran found the shuttle easily enough and brought his X-wing in on its aft without a problem. He flipped his lasers over to quad fire. “Whistler, see if you can open a comm channel to the shuttle.” Corran fired his lasers across the Thyfonian’s flight path when Whistler announced he’d found the two frequencies the shuttle was using.

“Just pick one.” Corran punched the button on his comm unit. “This is Corran Horn to shuttle Thyfonian. Stop now and turn back to Thyferra, or I’ll be forced to destroy you.”

A moment’s delay ended with a voice Corran had never expected to hear again coming through the comm channel. “I should have known it would be you, Horn. Go away. You can’t stop me with your lasers.”

“Maybe this will warm your heart, Ysanne.” Corran dropped his aiming reticle on the shuttle’s rear and pulled the trigger. Burst after burst of laser fire splashed against the spacecraft’s shields, but did not penetrate them. What? Shuttle’s shields aren’t that good.

“You can thank Fliry Vorru for me, if he’s still alive. He ordered heavy-capacity shield generators for his shuttle. Cuts down on the passenger room, but I don’t mind. Quite simply, your X-wing lacks the power to burn through them.”

Maybe one will. Corran shifted his comm unit over to the squadron’s tactical frequency. “Nine could use some help here. It’s Isard. I can’t get through the shuttle’s shields.”

“Seven here, Nine. Coming as fast as I can. Keep her from jumping to lightspeed.”

“I’ll do my best, but I need your lasers to stop her.”

“I copy, Nine. I’ll hurry.”

“Whistler, project how long it will be before she’s clear to go to lightspeed.”

The droid splashed an image of the solar system up on Corran’s secondary monitor. He used overlapping circles of color to indicate the boundaries for gravitational effects of the bodies in the system and showed the shuttle as a pinpoint of light at the edge of Thyferra’s hyperspace mass shadow.

Sithspawn, she’s almost there. Corran triggered another burst of laser fire, but it only washed a bloody hue over the aft shield. What if she’s bluffing and just has all power going to the aft shield! That’s just the sort of thing she’d do.

He punched power to his throttle and let the X-wing surge forward. He brought it around in a loop that would give him an oblique shot at the shuttle’s port side. As he sailed in, the shuttle shifted direction and came about to face him. Corran hit his trigger and pulsed energy into the shuttle’s shields.

The shuttle fired back. Green energy darts blew through the X-wing’s forward shield and hit the port stabilizer. Corran rolled immediately and dove, then came back up in a weave that took him in behind the shuttle. “Whistler, what just happened?”

Isard’s voice crackled over the comm channel. “Did I mention that Vorru also upgraded the lasers on this ship?”

I’ll give you an upgrade, Iceheart. Corran snarled as he looked at the diagnostics listing Whistler scrolled up on his main monitor. He winced, then looked to his port S-foil. Where once there had been a pair of laser cannons he had melted metal. And about a meter less of S-foil. A glance at the secondary monitor showed Isard had a kilometer before she could begin the run to lightspeed. Once she gets clear, it’s just level flying and she’s out of here.

Corran slowly smiled. Upgraded that thing, did he, Iceheart? The Corellian pilot flipped his weapon’s-control over to proton torpedoes and dropped it on the shuttle’s outline. Whistler began to beep as he tried for a firing solution. Out ahead of the X-wing the shuttle began to juke, broadening Corran’s smile. Yes, he supplied the shuttle with a missile targeting lock warning system. Only good thing you’ve done in your black life, Vorru.

“So your shields won’t stop a proton torpedo, eh, Iceheart?”

“You’ll find out if you ever get a lock on me, Horn.”

Corran glanced at his monitor and saw Tycho’s X-wing eight kilometers back and closing slowly. As long as you keep dancing, Iceheart, you can’t run up to lightspeed. That means we can burn you down. “I’ll get a lock on you, then you’re done.”

He painted her with a target lock again, but allowed her to break it. He reacquired it again and shifted his ship around to herd her back toward Thyferra’s mass shadow. The shuttle rolled in the other direction, breaking the lock, but Corran came in and got it again fairly easily. “You can’t escape me, Iceheart.”

Isard’s reply came almost languidly voiced. “I’ve stopped trying, Horn. You’re bluffing. If you had torpedoes, you would have used them already.” The shuttle leveled out and prepared for the run to lightspeed.

“I was hoping to take you alive, Isard. I’ll shoot if I have to.”

“Please, Horn, do your worst. Know that when we meet again, to you I shall do my worst!”

She can’t get away. I can’t let her get away! Corran punched his comm unit with a closed fist. His mind reeled as fury and a fear of failure raged through him. My lasers can’t get through her shields and I don’t have any missiles to batter them down. There’s nothing I can do … nothing … wait, maybe there’s something …

“Quick, transfer all power to the forward shield!” Corran smiled grimly and reached for the throttle. “Hang on, Whistler, we’re going to ram her.”

The droid began hooting loudly, but Corran ignored him and focused on the shuttle. “Your logic boards are fried. There’s a chance we can survive, but that doesn’t matter. If we cripple her ship … we have to cripple her ship …”

Before Corran could jam the throttle full forward, two blue darts streaked past either side of his cockpit. The first exploded against the shuttle’s aft shield and collapsed it. The second drilled through the engine housing, skewing the ship to port. The proton torpedo detonated inside the shuttle’s fuselage. Corran saw the angular ship puff up and out before fire lanced out the cockpit viewports, then a golden fireball ripped the ship apart from the inside out.

Corran’s X-wing passed straight through the center of the explosion and by the time he brought his ship around the sparks from debris hitting his shields were the only indication that the shuttle had been there at all. Consumed by fire. Somehow fitting.

Corran keyed his comm unit. “Who did that?”

“Seven here, Nine. Thanks for giving me the target lock.”

“What?” Corran glanced over at the transponder switch and saw it was lit. When I punched the console, I must have hit it by accident. The image of Luke Skywalker came to mind. He’d tell me that wasn’t an accident, wasn’t luck, just the Force. Corran slowly nodded. I prefer to believe it was justice.

“It was a great shot, Tycho. If I couldn’t get her, well, your claim predated mine.”

“Corran, we got her. That’s all that counts.”

Tycho’s X-wing came into view as Corran headed his X-wing back toward Thyferra. “I don’t see any more squints, Tycho. You got a workout.”

“I got my share, but Ten vaped the bulk of them. He accounted for six Interceptors all by himself.” Tycho chuckled lightly. “And it looks like the Lusankya isn’t shooting anymore.”

Corran smiled. “A tyrant dead; a traitor dead; a Super Star Destroyer dead; and, if Elscol, Iella, and the Ashern have done their jobs, a planet liberated. Not a bad day at all.”

41

“Looks different, doesn’t it, Corran, when you’re walking on the ceiling?”

“Yeah, but not any better.” Despite having the lights strung throughout the Lusankya prisoners’ quarters, the warren’s rough-hewn walls still pressed in on Corran. He turned toward Tycho Celchu as he climbed over the low wall into what had been Jan Dodonna’s cell. “It’s very strange to have mounted this whole operation to try to get Jan and the other prisoners out, just to get in here and find Isard had them shipped out by shuttle to other places months ago. Deep down she must have known we’d win, so she did this to frustrate us.”

“You’ve got it all wrong, my friend.” Tycho patted Corran’s right shoulder with his left hand. “When you escaped from the Lusankya, you ruined it for her. She could no longer view her little prison without thinking about how you beat her. Whereas anyone else would have beefed up security, she decided to scrap the whole facility. And it’s just as well, because this section of the ship lost atmosphere—everyone would have died in here. Had Isard really been on her game, she would have let them die that way and would have us blaming ourselves for killing a bunch of the Rebellion’s heroes.”

Corran nodded slowly. In the week since the battle for Thyferra he’d waited for repair crews to restore atmosphere to the prison area on the ship. To the others that had seen it, the whole area was just part of a ship where the bulkheads had been lined with rock. The fact that the primitive latrines had drained into a zero gravity vacuum, then the waste settled wherever it had drifted when gravity and atmosphere had been brought back, did not help things. Everyone who visited the facility could see very clearly why he hated it.

But the stink and the crudity of its manufacture wasn’t why he hated it. Corran frowned. “It feels to me as if despair and failure have permeated these walls. The men who were in here didn’t dare try to escape, and yet most of them could have, I’m certain. Jan could have come with me, but he didn’t because he felt a responsibility to the others. That made him more a prisoner than these walls.”

“But what you saw as a prison for him was not what he saw for himself. Jan knew he was keeping people alive by leading them. He hadn’t surrendered, so they couldn’t quite do it themselves.” Tycho brushed fingers across the rocky surface of the walls. “What he was doing, by staying behind, was as much a part of him as your need to escape was a part of you. I don’t remember much of my time here, but I felt certain I was going to die here. It’s a terrible thing to come back to your senses after having been out of it, to find yourself in a place where you think you’re going to die. Jan told me I wasn’t, and I didn’t.”

“And you escaped from the place where she sent you after you left here.”

“Right.” Tycho smiled. “We have to hope the others will be able to do that, too.”

“It’ll be fine if they do, but I’m still on for finding them myself.” Corran smiled. “Zraii’s already got my X-wing back to normal—well, as normal as it gets after a Verpine messes with it—so I’m ready to hunt. You with me?”

Tycho nodded thoughtfully. “I am, though I think we’re going to have some stiff competition. One of the first ‘repair’ crews in this area was a forensic team from Alliance Intelligence. They are supposed to have swept this place, pulling fingerprints, hair and tissue samples—even samples of some of the solid waste floating around. You know better than I what that sort of evidence can tell them, but I gather they were able to confirm the identities of some of the prisoners from what they got.”

Corran smiled slowly. “Which is why General Airen Cracken showed up two days ago. The New Republic is going to hunt for the prisoners, then?”

“That would be my guess. They couldn’t do it before because they only had your word to go on—my identifications were spotty and old. Since you chose to resign from Rogue Squadron and started all this, they had to disassociate themselves with our effort. Now they have solid evidence, which changes everything.”

“Great, they can race us in finding them.”

“Ah, there you are, Corran.” Ooryl filled the entryway. “I thought I could find you here.”

What? Corran stared at the Gand. “Ooryl?”

“Did Ooryl say that right?” The Gand’s mouthparts snapped open and shut excitedly. “Ooryl wanted you to be the first to hear.”

Corran looked over at Tycho, but the Alderaanian just shrugged. “Yes, Ooryl, you said that correctly, but I thought Gands didn’t use personal pronouns unless …”

The Gand’s fist clicked off his chest. “I am janwuine. The ruetsavii, they have declared me janwuine. They have returned to Gand to tell Ooryl’s, ah, my story. What we did here, Ooryl’s part in the taking of Coruscant, and the battles against Iceheart, these will become known to all the Gand. If Ooryl says ‘I,’ they will know to whom I refer.”

“That’s great, Ooryl.” Tycho extended his hand to the Gand. “The Gands have every right to be proud of you.”

Ooryl shook Tycho’s hand, then Corran’s as well. “There is more. Each of you have been declared hinwuine. This means that when you come to Gand for Ooryl’s janwuine-jika, you may speak of yourselves with personal pronouns and will not be thought vulgar or rude.”

Corran’s eyes narrowed. “You mean to tell me that the whole time you’ve been here in the squadron you felt the way we talked made us vulgar or rude?”

The Gand shook his head. “Ooryl never assumes vulgarity when ignorance suffices as an explanation.”

“Thanks, I think.”

Tycho shot him a sly smile. “That should be ‘Corran thinks.’ ”

“But not often,” Ooryl added.

“Corran thinks Ooryl should practice using personal pronouns more regularly before he tries comedy.” Corran opened his arms wide. “Not much better than the shack we shared on Talasea, is it, Ooryl?”

“The mineral deposits do add some color, but Ooryl, er, I would not like to live here.” The Gand held a hand up. “I would explore this place with you more, later, for the story of your time here will be vital to my janwuine-jika, but there are other things we must do right now. Captain Celchu, Commander Antilles asked Ooryl to tell you he is waiting for you in the Lusankya’s staff officers’ mess.”

“Last minute things before his party?”

“Ooryl, I mean I, believes this is the case, Captain. And Corran, General Cracken has asked to speak with you.”

I wonder what that’s about? “Where do I find him?”

“Ooryl will take you there.”

The trio of pilots carefully picked their way out of the cavern complex and took the turbolift up. Tycho exited first while the Gand and Corran continued on, climbing higher and higher in the Lusankya’s superstructure. When the turbolift stopped, Corran found Airen Cracken waiting for him outside the door to the Captain’s ready-room.

He nodded at the Gand as the turbolift’s door closed behind him, then turned to the older man. “What can I do for you, sir?”

Cracken raked fingers back through reddish hair tinged with white. “I need you to talk some sense to Booster Terrik.”

Corran immediately raised his hands. “Got a Death Star you want killed instead?”

“Close.” Cracken shook his head. “Booster wants to keep the Virulence.”

“And you want him to give it to the New Republic?” Corran laughed aloud. “He won’t listen to me.”

“Mirax suggested I get you up here.”

“Okay, you have me, but I don’t know what I can do.”

“Back me up, or we’re going to have Booster Terrik in command of a fully operational Impstar deuce.” Cracken sighed. “Terrik was never as bad as some of the smugglers out there, but now he’s hooked up with Talon Karrde and …”

“Booster and Karrde are together? Allied? I mean, I knew Karrde had come into the system, but I assumed it was to work a deal with Thyferra’s new government about hauling bacta. Are you sure Karrde and Booster are working together?”

“See for yourself.” Cracken opened the door to the ready-room and allowed Corran to precede him in. Corran found Booster at the far end of an oval table, with Mirax seated on his right and a handsome man he took to be Karrde seated on his left. Corran went over to Mirax’s side of the table and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Booster, you’re looking fit.”

“Captaining a starship agrees with me.”

Corran extended a hand across the table to the other man. “Talon Karrde, I presume. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Better now than when you were with CorSec.” Karrde seemed to be watching him very closely. “The resemblance to your father is unmistakable.”

“Thanks.” Corran sat down, fighting to conceal a shiver. He didn’t know why, but he gained the impression that Karrde knew more about him than perhaps even Airen Cracken did, and that disturbed him. I think I’m happy I didn’t meet him when I was with CorSec as well. He would have been to me what Booster was to my father, but I don’t think I would have been sending Karrde to Kessel.

Booster looked up at Cracken, then jerked a thumb at Corran. “Did you think he could convince me to give up my ship?”

Great, this is off to a good start. Corran glanced at Cracken and shrugged.

“Booster, I just thought Lieutenant Horn here could supply you with some more perspective on why you’re not going to be able to keep the Virulence. That ship presents a rather major danger …”

“Right, a danger to anyone who tries to take it away from me.”

“Let me see if I can rephrase this—the only people with that sort of firepower at their disposal are Warlords and other Imperial renegades. The New Republic has to consider any Star Destroyers that are not under the control of itself or its allies to be an immediate threat to the New Republic’s stability.”

“Fine, General, fine. I’ll just take the Virulence, conquer some planet with it, have the planet become one of the New Republic’s allies.”

Mirax shook her head. “That’s pretty much what they’re afraid of, Father.”

Booster winked at his daughter. “Okay, then try this: I’ll make the Virulence herself a nation. We’ll just move from system to system, trading here and there, and we’ll be sovereign and even join the New Republic. Think of all the guns as ground-based defenses.”

Cracken’s breath hissed in between his teeth. “No, I don’t think that will work. That would constitute quite a large threat to peace in the galaxy. Such a threat would have to be dealt with.”

Booster’s artificial eye’s light seemed to flare for a second. “I think there are several different degrees of threat, General, and I’d have to say, right now, you’re acting more threatening than I’ve ever contemplated being. The Virulence is mine. She was surrendered to me.”

“But only after three squadrons of New Republic A-wings appeared in the Yag’Dhul system, giving Captain Varrscha the impression she had been trapped by New Republic forces.” Cracken pressed his hands flat against the white tabletop. “She thought she was surrendering the ship to the New Republic, and you know that’s true. Your representations to her did not dissuade her of this fact.”

Corran looked over at Booster and shook his head. “You let Isard’s conviction that we were a covert New Republic operation trick Varrscha into believing we actually were part of the New Republic? Not bad, Booster.”

Mirax’s father smiled proudly. “She was looking for any excuse to get out of trouble, so I just used the one she gave me.”

Corran winced. “Unfortunately, that means you’ve given the New Republic a claim on the Virulence.”

“What?!”

“Mirax, tell him. It’s the same as a partnership for salvaging hulks. Just because one partner is ceded ownership, he doesn’t own it—the partnership does.”

“Corran’s right, Father.”

“Nonsense. I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

Mirax laughed. “No? As I recall, that’s how you got your share of the Pulsar Skate.”

Booster frowned heavily. “That’s not the same thing at all, not at all. But, for the sake of argument here, let’s say Captain Varrscha was mistaken about my connection with the New Republic. I still possess the ship, and if they have a share, so do I.”

Cracken nodded. “You do. We will justly compensate you for it, of course, and you’ll earn our undying gratitude. Even a pardon for any indiscretions you might have committed …”

“You can stop there, General. Unless you want to give me back the five years I spent on Kessel, I’m not interested in any judicial rewards, thanks. How much?”

The New Republic’s representative hesitated. “The current situation is such that an immediate payment is out of the question, but I think we could compensate you with five million credits.”

“Ha! This is an Imperial Star Destroyer Mark II we’re talking about. It doesn’t have a scratch on it. It is worth billions and billions of credits. I’ll settle for a billion credits, payable in two hours, or I’m flying it out of here.”

“Ah, Booster, you’re dreaming if you think that ship is going anywhere.” Cracken smiled confidently. “As you know, Thyferra has voted to join the New Republic. Because of this, all ships in the system are subject to New Republic law. In accord with said laws, your navigation and engineering section crews have been taken planetside for debriefing.”

“That’s piracy.”

“No, it’s actually a security concern. As Lieutenant Horn can attest, a number of prisoners who were on this ship are missing. We want to question anyone who might have been used to move them to other locations, and your astronav crews could have been employed in that capacity. Right now, your ship is going nowhere.”

Booster frowned. “Okay, I’ll come down to five hundred million credits.”

The sum seemed to stagger Cracken for a moment, then Karrde spoke. “Booster, be reasonable. Try twenty percent of that.”

Booster stared at him. “You’re being very generous with my money, Karrde.”

“Twenty percent of something, Booster, is better than one hundred percent of nothing.”

“True, but if they can’t deliver, why not think big?”

Corran raised a hand. “It just struck me that we might be arguing about the wrong thing here. Booster, how serious are you about making the Virulence into a hyperspace-capable smuggler’s den?”

Booster scratched at the beard stubble on his throat. “Very. I spent my life hauling cargo from one point to another. It would be nice to own a place where the cargo came to me and I just brokered deals for it. The Virulence would do nicely in that regard.”

Corran smiled. “So would the Freedom.”

“No!” Booster and Cracken dismissed the idea at the same time. They exchanged surprised glances, then shook their heads.

“I don’t want the Freedom. Refitting it will take a lifetime. I’d have to get it to Sluis Van, and General Cracken here would guarantee my work was never scheduled. Stick to flying, Horn, because that idea was really dumb.”

Mirax slapped her father on the arm. “Don’t speak to my fiancé like that.”

“What?!” Booster’s jaw dropped. “No, that’s impossible.”

Corran raised an eyebrow. “Mirax, I’m not sure this was the best time to mention that.”

Booster pointed at Cracken and then Corran. “He wants to take away my ship, and he wants to take away my daughter.” He turned to Karrde. “I suppose you want something of mine, too.”

“Perhaps, Booster.” Karrde smiled in a very genial manner. “I think I want you to reconsider what Lieutenant Horn suggested. It strikes me that General Cracken is primarily concerned with your being in command of a ship with enough firepower to slag an inhabited world.”

“Succinctly put, Karrde.”

“Thank you, General.” Karrde looked at Booster. “Now you’re concerned that your ship would fall prey to all sorts of pirates if they take its weaponry away. Even stripped of weapons a hulk like the Freedom would be quite a prize.”

Booster nodded slowly. “You’re talking sense, Karrde. This scares me.”

“Booster and I agree on something.” Corran narrowed his eyes at Karrde. “Where’s this going?”

“You know the law, Lieutenant. A ship the size of the Virulence, in private ownership, would be allowed to lawfully carry how much in the way of weaponry?”

Corran sat back. “Nothing that size in private ownership, but it would be something on the order of two tractor beams, ten ion cannons, and ten heavy turbolaser batteries.”

“My calculations exactly, which leaves eight tractor beams, ten ion cannons, forty heavy turbolaser batteries, and fifty heavy turbolasers to be pulled off the Virulence. General Cracken, those weapons would pretty much replace what the Freedom lost here, wouldn’t they?”

Cracken frowned. “For having been here less than a week, Talon Karrde, you know more than I’m comfortable having you know.”

Booster shook his head. “Those guns aren’t leaving my ship.”

Cracken snarled, “The Virulence is not your ship.”

Karrde held a hand up. “Ah, but it can be. According to the Admiralty regulations governing salvage disputes, Booster has named a fair price for his share of the salvage rights to the Virulence. Since you can’t meet his price, he can assume control of the vessel by depositing ten percent of that price, in this case ten million credits, with a duly recognized judicial authority—such as the government of Thyferra.”

Booster frowned. “I don’t have ten million credits, Karrde.”

“No, Booster, you don’t, but you do have a lot of surplus military-grade hardware that you’re going to have to get rid of. I’ll buy it for ten million.”

Cracken tapped a finger against the table. “I’m no more comfortable with you having that hardware, Karrde, than I was with Terrik having it.”

“I expected that, General. I’ll sell you the weapons for twenty-five million credits.”

Cracken’s jaw shot open. “You’ll what?”

Booster smiled. “I want fifteen million, Karrde. I have operating expenses.”

“I’ll make it eighteen if you also sell me four squadrons of TIE fighters.” Karrde sat back in his seat. “And the price to you, General, is now thirty-five million, but you’ll find I issue credit more easily than my friend. Once the court here on Thyferra has reviewed the Virulence case, Booster will pay you whatever additional amount they decide he owes you.”

Corran laughed aloud. “The Virulence’s appearance here tipped the balance in the Thyferran war of liberation, so I suspect Booster isn’t going to owe much.”

“I suspect the judges here might be swayed by that fact, but the New Republic will be able to argue its case.” Karrde pressed his hands together. “Booster, you get your ship and, General, you get weapons out of his hands and into yours.”

Cracken remained silent for a moment, then nodded slowly. “You bargain very well, Karrde. Perhaps there is other business we can do.”

“No, General, I don’t think so. I did this for the obscene profit you’ll pay me, which, since you don’t have liquid capital available, will be rendered in trading concessions for bacta and other things. I don’t mind dealing with you, but I’m not of a mind to take sides in this civil war. Isard and Zsinj are two examples of countless Imperial holdouts. I’d like to avoid becoming a victim of future wars.”

“You’d rather be caught between us than with us?”

“I’d rather not be caught at all.” Karrde’s smile carried up into his pale blue eyes. “Have we a deal?”

“The Provisional Council will have a piece of my hide for this, but, yes.” Cracken stood and nodded to Booster. “The Virulence is yours. Please change the name.”

Booster stood at his end of the table. “I already know what I’ll call her: the Errant Venture.”

Corran smiled weakly at General Cracken. “Sorry I couldn’t have been of more help.”

“It wasn’t the solution I wanted, but it was a solution.” Cracken tossed them a casual salute. “Until later.”

Mirax glanced at her chronometer, then stretched languidly. “Two hours until Wedge’s party.” She smiled at Corran. “Any ideas about how to kill that time?”

Booster settled his right hand over her left. “Yes, my dear. We’re going to discuss this engagement of yours. My daughter isn’t going to marry anyone from CorSec—they’re all of low morals and intellect. Not going to happen. Period.”

Corran looked over at Karrde. “You want to help me out here?”

“Do you think you could afford my help, Lieutenant?”

“No, probably not.”

Karrde nodded solemnly. “Definitely not. Fortunately for you, however, now Booster has to pay for my help. We need to head over to the Errant Venture and pull specs on your weapons.”

Booster frowned. “Now?”

“Unless you want Cracken to do it first and leave you with the weapons most likely to break down, we better do it now.”

Booster’s eyes narrowed. “This discussion is just delayed, not abandoned.”

“Yes, Father.” Mirax kissed him on the cheek. “See you in two hours at the party.”

The two smugglers exited the ready-room, leaving Corran and Mirax alone. He shook his head. “How far away from here can we get in two hours?”

“Not far enough, I’m afraid.”

“I’m not looking forward to this discussion of our engagement.”

“My father may growl like a rancor, but his claws aren’t that sharp.”

“Oh, that makes me feel lots better. He’ll be insufferable for the period of our engagement, you know.”

“Agreed.” She took his hands into hers. “However, I think I know a way to deflect him.”

“How?”

“You’ll see.” Mirax stood and pulled him up out of his chair. “Come with me, love, and all shall be made clear to you.”

42

Wedge waited until everyone had been seated in the Lusankya’s staff officers’ mess before he stepped behind the podium Emtrey had found and set up on a table at the far end of the room. He smiled as he faced the motley gathering. Closest sat his pilots; beyond them the Twi’lek Chir’daki pilots who had survived, including Tal’dira; Captain Sair Yonka of the Freedom; General Cracken and his son, Pash; Booster Terrik and Talon Karrde; Iella Wessiri, Elscol Loro, Sixtus, and a handful of Ashern he didn’t know; and several Vratix officials from Thyferra. The only things we need now for a full-fledged victory celebration are a bonfire and a legion of Ewoks.

Wedge held his hands up to quiet everyone and aside from the whirring of serving droids passing between the tables, silence reigned. “I want to keep my remarks as brief as possible because, one, I respect you all too much to want to bore you and, two, I know you’re all quick enough wits that the heckling will be worse than the fight to take this hulk away from Iceheart.

“I have a couple of pieces of business to transact first, though, with your indulgence.” Wedge smiled and nodded over at Asyr Sei’lar. “As you call can tell, Asyr is doing well after spending some time in a bacta tank. The injuries she sustained when her X-wing was hit were fairly minor, but the Onebee droids have already certified her as flight capable.”

A polite round of applause greeted that news. “Unfortunately our other casualty did not get away so cleanly. Perhaps you want to explain, Nawara.”

The Twi’lek nodded. “While I was out of my X-wing I had the misfortune of having a micrometeorite hit me in the right leg. It severed the limb just above the knee and did so much tissue damage all the bacta on Thyferra couldn’t fix it. My suit shut down around the wound, which is why I survived. Actually, the real reason I survived was because of Ooryl vaping all the squints that wanted to finish me off, but the leg was a loss.”

Corran turned in his seat. “They can fit you for a mechanical, right?”

“Yes, which is what the Onebees will be doing.” Nawara rapped his knuckles against the hollow-sounding lower part of his right leg. “Unfortunately I don’t scan as being able to utilize a prosthetic as well as I need to if I want to continue flying. I’ll have ninety-five percent use of the mechanical, but that’s not enough to keep up with the rest of you—not that I ever could before.”

Wedge smiled. “You were a bit rough on our equipment, Nawara. That not withstanding, Nawara will remain with the unit as our new Executive Officer. Tal’dira has been invited to join us and has accepted, so we’ll have a Twi’lek flying with us still.” Wedge led the applause, which started lekku twitching among the Twi’lek pilots.

“Bror Jace has been appointed by his government to head up the formation of the Thyferran Aerospace Defense Force, so we’ll lose his services, at least temporarily. The government has also asked us to stay on here for the next couple of months to help train the new unit. This is an assignment I’ve chosen to accept so we can make sure no one gets too adventurous and tries to repeat what Isard did here.”

He looked over toward General Cracken. “After that, well, General Cracken has communicated to me the contents of a resolution voted by the Provisional Council to congratulate us on what we’ve accomplished here. He also said that, due to a bureaucratic mixup, our resignations were never formally logged to our files. If we want them, our commissions are available to us and General Cracken has assured me that he’s looking for an elite unit to be able to follow up on investigative leads concerning the lost Lusankya prisoners. Once our work is done here, I intend to rejoin the New Republic and I’d like to bring Rogue Squadron back with me.”

Wedge smiled. “I’ve already spoken with Tycho and Corran, and they’ve agreed to rejoin. Aril, are you going to keep the Valiant or come back with us?”

The Sullustan smiled. “I’m coming back to the Alliance, Wedge. I’ll still command the Valiant, but I think we can work out a deal with General Cracken to pull missions together.”

“Good. Asyr?”

The Bothan looked over at Gavin, got a nod from him, then smiled. “We’re both in.”

“Rhysati?”

“I’m in.”

“Nawara?”

“Can’t be an Executive Officer if I don’t stay with the unit, can I? I’m in.”

“Ooryl?”

“Rogue Squadron made me janwuine. I would never say no to the honor of remaining with it.”

“Tal’dira?”

The Twi’lek warrior nodded solemnly. “I could not let Rogue Squadron be without a Twi’lek pilot. I am pleased to accept the offer to join the unit.”

Wedge smiled at Inyri Forge. “I know serving with Rogue Squadron was your sister’s dream, but you’ve earned your own place with us. We’d be proud to have you if you want to stay with us.”

A grin slowly spread across the blue-eyed woman’s face. “My sister always wanted the best for everyone else. Joining the squadron meant she got to fight the evil plaguing others, making things better for them. Her example is pretty compelling. I’m in.”

With her acceptance, cheers erupted, hands were shaken and backs slapped. Wedge swallowed against the lump rising in his throat. “Two more things, then my remarks. First, we’ve been invited to Gand for Ooryl’s janwuine-jika. This is an unbelievably huge honor for one of us who has earned many honors. Second, and equally worthy of celebration, is something I did barely a half an hour ago. As you will recall, the Lusankya was surrendered to me, making me its de facto captain. In my capacity as such, with Tycho and Iella present as witnesses, I had the pleasure of marrying Mirax and Corran.”

“What!” Booster’s shout accompanied an immediate reddening of his face.

Wedge held his hands up. “Take it easy, Booster. They plan another, more formal ceremony we all can attend back on Coruscant, but they figured that if you were going to be upset with them for getting engaged, they might as well save themselves that aggravation and just have you mad at them for being married.”

“I’m not upset about that, Wedge. I was upset when I thought she was marrying someone from CorSec.” Mirax’s father smiled. “Now he’s part of Rogue Squadron again, so I have no complaints.”

“Right.” Wedge shook his head. “No complaints you want to voice at this time.”

Booster hesitated for a moment, then nodded to an accompaniment of good-natured laughter.

Corran frowned at his father-in-law. “Then the red in your face and the anger in your voice wasn’t because of us?”

“You CorSec people always think it’s about you.” Booster shook his head, then jerked a thumb at Karrde. “He bet me a million credits that you’d go and do exactly what you did, and he even conned me into giving him odds.”

Wedge laughed. “Corran, Mirax, I think that’s going to be a major bone of contention for the future.”

“One he’s going to worry like a hungry nek.” Corran brought Mirax’s left hand to his mouth and kissed it. “Not too steep a price to pay, though.”

“Ha,” Mirax snickered, “serves him right for betting against us.”

Even Booster joined the resulting laughter. To Wedge the sound was a tonic. In all the time I’ve been with Rogue Squadron, there has been too little laughter and too many tears. Again his throat thickened, but he smiled and swallowed to loosen it.

“Again, I want these remarks to be brief. It was about a year and a half ago that I first met most of you. You were bright-eyed and enthusiastic, ready to launch into one grand adventure after another. I had seen that before with other pilots in Rogue Squadron. I remember the days before Yavin when we were all young, armored with the invincibility of youth and fired by the belief that the Emperor’s evil Empire could not win. It didn’t, but the cost was more horrible than any of us could have imagined. You’ve all seen the roll of those who died with Rogue Squadron. Had we known at the start of things how few of us would survive, I think many of us would not have answered the call to fight.”

Wedge caught his lower lip between his teeth for a second, then continued. “You all came to Rogue Squadron knowing how few of us had survived. Your decision to join us was an informed decision. Yes, the Emperor was dead, Darth Vader was gone, but the Empire’s ability to grind up our warriors was not significantly diminished. On both sides of the battle the weak and incompetent had been killed, leaving only the most lethal of each force to stalk each other.

“Nothing we’ve done—including the conquest of Coruscant—will be compared favorably with the destruction of the Death Stars and Palpatine’s death, yet as I look back on what we’ve done, I feel a greater sense of accomplishment now than I ever have before. Yavin and Endor were battles we had to fight and had to win because if we did not our movement would be exterminated. We fought with the abandon of people who knew, either way, they were dead; and desperation, while not pretty, can often be very potent and deadly.”

He glanced down for a second, then looked back up. “Our missions have been no less critical in the destruction of the Empire than those that went before, but they were different. We took the war to the Empire. We made plans and successfully improvised when those plans fell apart. We did things that no one—not even the seemingly prescient Talon Karrde—could have expected us to do.

“And we did things no one could have ordered us to do. We accepted the burden of responsibility thrust upon us and overcame the obstacles in our way. That has always been the Rogue Squadron tradition, but you’ve added a new layer to it: You survived those missions. For that I’m most thankful, because I did not join Rogue Squadron to lose friends.”

He reached down, accepted a tumbler of Corellian whisky from a serving droid, then raised it on high in his left hand. “I would ask all of you to lift your glasses and join me in a toast. To Rogue Squadron—past, present, and future. Those who oppose freedom and liberty oppose us. Let that fact give them pause to think and encouragement to travel the path of peace.”

DEDICATION

To
Denis Lawson
The original Wedge Antilles.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank the following people for their various contributions to this book:

Janna Silverstein, Tom Dupree, and Ricia Mainhardt for getting me into this mess.

Sue Rostoni and Lucy Autrey Wilson for letting me get away with all they have in this universe.

Kevin J. Anderson, Kathy Tyers, Bill Smith, Bill Slavicsek, Peter Schweighofer, Michael Kogge, and Dave Wolverton for the material they created and the advice they offered.

Timothy Zahn for being a wonderful co-conspirator and vetting chapters so quickly.

Paul Youll for the stunning covers on the books.

Lawrence Holland and Edward Kilham for the X-wing and TIE Fighter computer games.

Chris Taylor for pointing out to me which ship Tycho was flying in Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi and Gail Mihara for pointing out controversies I might want to avoid.

My parents; my sister, Kerin; my brother, Patrick; and his wife, Joy, for their encouragement (and endless efforts to face my other books out on bookstore shelves).

Dennis L. McKiernan, Jennifer Roberson, and especially Elizabeth T. Danforth for listening to bits of this story as it was being written and enduring such abuse with smiles and a supportive manner.

STAR WARS: WRAITH SQUADRON
A Bantam Spectra Book / February 1998

SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks
of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

®, TM & © 1998 by Lucasfilm Ltd.
All rights reserved. Used under authorization.
Cover art copyright © 1998 by Lucasfilm Ltd.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.

eISBN: 978-0-307-79649-3

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada.

v3.1

Contents

Master - Table of Contents

Wraith Squadron

Title Page

Copyright

Dramatis Personae

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31

Acknowledgments

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

The Wraiths

Commander Wedge Antilles (human male from Corellia)

Lieutenant Wes Janson (human male from Taanab)

Lieutenant Myn Donos (human male from Corellia)

Jesmin Ackbar (Mon Calamari female from Mon Calamari)

Hohass “Runt” Ekwesh (Thakwaash male from Thakwaa)

Garik “Face” Loran (human male from Pantolomin)

Ton Phanan (human male from Rudrig)

Falynn Sandskimmer (human female from Tatooine)

Voort “Piggy” saBinring (Gamorrean male from Gamorr)

Tyria Sarkin (human female from Toprawa)

Kell Tainer (human male from Sluis Van)

Eurrsk “Grinder” Thri’ag (Bothan male from Bothuwai)

Rogue Squadron Support Personnel

Cubber Daine (human male from Corellia, squad mechanic)

Chunky (Tyria’s R5 unit)

Gadget (Phanan’s R2 unit)

Gate (Wedge’s R5 unit)

Shiner (Donos’s R2 unit)

Squeaky (3PO unit, squadron quartermaster)

Thirteen (Kell’s R2 unit)

Vape (Face’s R2 unit)

New Republic Military

General Edor Crespin (human male from Corulag)

Captain Choday Hrakness (human male from Agamar)

Lieutenant Atril Tabanne (human female from Coruscant)

Dorset Konnair (human female from Coruscant)

Tetengo Noor (human male from Churba)

Zsinj’s Forces

Warlord Zsinj (human male from Fondor)

Admiral Apwar Trigit (human male from Coruscant)

Captain Zurel Darillian (human male from Coruscant)

Lieutenant Gara Petothel (human female from Coruscant)

1

Twelve X-wing snubfighters roared down into the atmosphere.

The world below, Coruscant, former throne world of the Empire, was an unbroken landscape of urban construction, a vast city reaching from pole to pole, blanketed by gray clouds shot through with white and yellow flashes of lightning.

The squadron commander, piloting a black fighter with an incongruously cheerful green and gold checkerboard pattern on the bow, shook his head over the grim vista of the world below. Even after all the time he’d spent here—even after the crucial role he’d played in conquering this world for the New Republic—he still could not get used to the arrogance of Coruscant. It was a world that could only rule or perish, for it produced nothing but soldiers, officers, and bureaucrats, and could not feed its population without importing massive quantities of food from around the galaxy.

He took a visual scan of his immediate surroundings. “Rogue Three, tighten up. We’re putting on a show here.”

A green X-wing closed in tighter to the formation. “Yes, sir.” Though distorted by the comm system, the voice sounded indulgent rather than military.

“That’s ‘Yes, Wedge’ until we’re formally returned to duty.” The commander smiled. “Or perhaps, ‘Yes, Exalted One.’ Or ‘Yes, O envy of all Corellia.’ Or—”

A chorus of groans interrupted him. The voice of Nawara Ven, the squadron’s Twi’lek executive officer, cut through it: “Stop complaining. He’s earned his little vacation from reality.”

Then the voice of Tycho Celchu, Wedge’s second-in-command, sharp and military: “Sensors register a squadron of fighters rising toward us. Speed is X-wing or better; sensor profiles suggest X-wings.”

“Maintain formation,” Wedge said, then switched his comm unit over from squadron frequency to New Republic military frequency. “Rogue Squadron to approaching X-wing formation, please identify yourselves.”

The voice responding was brisk, amused, and familiar. “Wrong designations, sir. We’re Rogue Squadron. You’re simply a rogue squadron. But for the next few minutes we’ll do you the courtesy of designating ourselves Red Squadron to avoid confusion. We’re your escort.”

“Hobbie? Is that you, Lieutenant Klivan?”

“That’s Captain Klivan … again, just for the next few minutes.”

The other X-wing unit rose into view, gradually attaining the altitude of Wedge’s squadron. Wedge was startled to see that the dozen snubfighters were painted in Rogue Squadron’s traditional red stripes and twelve-pointed insignia. “Hobbie, explain this.”

“No time, sir. We have a course change for you. High Command has decided to broadcast this entire event across the HoloNet—”

“Oh, no.”

“—so set your new course to ninety-three, follow my rate of descent, and we’ll get you there in one piece. After that, you’re on your own.”

Within moments their destination was clear: Imperial Plaza, a ground-level ferrocrete circle so broad that in spite of the surrounding skyscrapers, it could be seen from high in the air at angles other than directly overhead. The plaza was packed with spectators; even at this altitude Wedge could see banners and fluttering haze that looked like chaff but had to be some sort of celebratory confetti.

A speakers platform had been erected on the plaza’s west side, with barricaded open areas north and south of it—obvious landing zones for the two squadrons.

As they descended toward the plaza, Wedge flipped his comm system back to the squadron channel. “Once around the park, outbound port, return starboard, at five hundred, Rogues. They’re here for a show; let’s give them one.”

Immediately he heard Hobbie’s answer on the same channel: “Same, Reds, but starboard to port return at six hundred meters. Sloppiest flight group buys drinks.”

The two squadrons parted, circling the plaza at its perimeter, the wingtips of the X-wings sometimes only meters from the faces of admirers piled up against the skyscraper windows. The squadrons crossed one another’s positions on the far side of the plaza and rejoined at their first position, then spiraled down toward the landing zones.

Rogue Squadron angled toward the northern area, Red Squadron toward the southern. At three hundred meters, Wedge said, “Landing gear and repulsorlifts, people,” and both squadrons began the safe, vertical descents allowed by the snubfighters’ antigravity engines.

Wedge smiled. “Your Red Squadron looks pretty good, Hobbie. A pity you haven’t had time to teach them anything about precision flying.”

“What?”

“Rogue Squadron, Three Diamonds Parade Formation, execute!”

After a moment’s hesitation—it had been some time since the unit had practiced the intricate parade formations—the Rogues split into their three flight groups, each group maneuvering into a diamond-shaped formation—one X-wing forward, one back, the two others side by side in the middle—with Wedge’s group forward and the other two side by side behind, making a triangle of diamonds, all facing eastward.

Even over the sound of the repulsorlifts, Wedge could hear the cheers from the crowd.

Hobbie’s voice came back immediately: “Red Squadron, same maneuver, but one-eighty to their orientation.” He sounded amused rather than angry. And in moments his squadron was in the same Three Diamonds Formation, but his X-wings faced west.

More cheers—the crowd was going wild over the aerial demonstration.

“A little wobbly, Hobbie.”

“We haven’t been together that long, Wedge, but we still know a few tricks. And you started this. Red Group Three, deny Rogue Group One!”

The three-fighter triangle to Hobbie’s starboard rear broke away from the Red Squadron formation, sideslipped and reversed orientation while maintaining the same internal order, and came into position a mere ten meters beneath Wedge’s group, descending toward the spot where Wedge would have landed.

“Not bad, Hobbie. Rogue Group Two, deny Red Group One!”

Corran Horn, in his green X-wing with the black and white trim, led his group in a similar maneuver and positioned them directly beneath Hobbie Klivan’s group.

“You mynock. Red Group Two, deny Rogue Group Three!”

“Rogue Group One, substitute Red Two!”

The two squadrons’ flight groups crisscrossed above the speakers platform as they descended, a dazzling display of precision flying, until, when all were a mere ten meters above the ground, Rogue Squadron was reassembled over the southern landing zone, Red Squadron over the northern. The two dozen snubfighters set down within moments of one another.

Their pilots climbed down from their cockpits into a whirlwind of celebration: New Republic diplomats and old friends dragging them up onto the speakers platform, clouds of confetti raining down from the skyscrapers ringing the plaza, roars of appreciation and exuberance from the thousands in the plaza. Wedge managed to get handshakes and backslaps from Hobbie and Red Squadron’s second-in-command, Wes Janson, before being dragged into line formation with all the pilots; the crowd’s roar was too overwhelming to allow them to hear one another’s words.

At the front of the platform, at the speakers lectern, stood the New Republic Provisional Council’s best-loved speaker, Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan. Unlike most of the New Republic’s representatives present, she was dressed simply, in a belted robe of senatorial white. She caught Wedge’s eye and gave him a smile and half shake of the head, acknowledging their mutual dislike of public spectacles such as this, then turned back toward the crowd.

With a few waves of her hand she managed to reduce the crowd’s roar to the point her amplified voice could be heard above it. “Citizens of the New Republic, I present to you Rogue Squadron!” Another protracted roar, and then she continued, “Before I bring Commander Antilles up to speak, I think I should put the squadron’s recent accomplishments in perspective. With their efforts, we now have, once again, a steady supply of bacta—a supply sufficient to stamp out the last lingering effects of the Krytos Plague. With their efforts—”

Wedge tuned her out. This was all old news to him. Weeks before, he’d led Rogue Squadron—the true Rogue Squadron, the men and women now in civilian dress—on a mission that the New Republic military command could not support. Resigning their commissions, the members of Rogue Squadron and a handful of professional insurgents had mounted a civilian action against the new government of the world of Thyferra, the world where the overwhelming majority of bacta, the miracle medicine, was produced. That new government was headed by the Empire’s former espionage leader, Ysanne Isard, and could have become the core of a reunited Empire.

But now Ysanne Isard was dead, and Rogue Squadron’s resignations had apparently been creatively misfiled—meaning that they were never civilians—meaning that, with the mission’s success, the New Republic was retroactively making the Thyferran mission an officially sanctioned operation.

None of which explained the presence of a new Rogue Squadron flying the unit’s traditional colors. Wedge traded places with Tycho, his second-in-command, to stand beside Hobbie Klivan. “So tell me about this ersatz Rogue Squadron.”

The pilot with the perpetually mournful face shook his head. “It’s not ersatz. Just sort of auxiliary. For morale purposes, the Alliance needed a visible Rogue Squadron while you were off playing pirate. So they brought me and Wes back from training-squad duty to cobble together a temporary Rogue Squadron.”

“Temporary.”

Hobbie nodded. “We brought in some Rogue Squadron veterans—Riemann, Scotian, Carithlee, several more—and a couple of new pilots each out of Gauntlet and Corsair Squadrons. Now that you’re back, they all return to their original units. Except—”

“Except what?”

“Except me and Wes. We’re back for good. Subject to your approval. That’s the reward we were unofficially promised by High Command.”

“Well, I’ll think about it.” At Hobbie’s stricken look, Wedge smiled. “I’m kidding you. Welcome home. Is Gauntlet Squadron active? I thought they were still in diapers.”

“You’re behind the times. Corsair was our first squadron, Gauntlet our second, and our third, Talon, was just commissioned.”

“Who’s commanding?”

“Lieutenant Myn Donos. A good pilot, smart—”

Lieutenant Wes Janson, still baby-faced despite his years flying for the Alliance and New Republic, leaned in grinning from Hobbie’s other side. “Smart, egotistical, self-centered, arrogant, insufferable—you know, a typical Corellian.”

“As a fair, broad-minded officer, I should ignore that. But as a Corellian, of course, I’ll manage some sort of revenge.” Wedge turned back to Hobbie. “Before your Rogues are disbanded, I want to see their personnel files.”

“Of course. Why? If I can ask.”

“You can. I have an idea for another new X-wing unit  … something based on our experiences taking Coruscant and Thyferra.”

“You’re going to form a new squadron?”

Wedge nodded.

“Just like that? Wave your hand and it appears?”

“Well, I thought I’d tell High Command so they’ll know what they need to give me.”

Hobbie shook his head. “Wes, you were right. All Corellians are like that. Oh, Wedge, the princess—”

Wedge realized belatedly that Leia had called his name and was beckoning to him. He put on his meet-the-crowd smile and advanced, stopping a pace short of the lectern, taking Leia’s outstretched hand.

She gave him her most infectious grin, the private smile she never turned to crowds or official assemblies. She spoke quietly enough that her words would not carry to the amplifiers. “You looked as though you’d been practicing that formation flying for weeks.”

“We were,” he said, straight-faced. “Liberating Thyferra didn’t take up much of our time.”

“You’re such a liar. Go talk to these people so we can all go home.”

Twelve X-wing snubfighters roared down into the atmosphere.

This was a dark world with a polluted sky, its atmosphere formed from gases and smoke hurled from hundreds of active volcanoes. Four kilometers ahead, the TIE interceptor, fastest fighter of the Imperial forces, was distantly visible; it stayed well ahead of the X-wings, though the fact that it was not now outrunning them was a clear indication that its engines were damaged. Further evidence were the sparks and gouts of smoke issuing from its engines, too far away to see except with visual sensors; if the engines failed, the pursuing X-wings could catch the interceptor.

Myn Donos, the X-wing squadron commander, toggled his comm system. “Talon Leader to Talon Eight, any change?”

His communications specialist answered, “No, sir. He’s not broadcasting. As far as I can tell, he’s not homing in on any sort of a signal. And I’m still not picking up any engine emissions, other than his or ours, on the scanners.”

“Very well.”

The interceptor’s speed suddenly dropped and the vehicle began bobbing as if hit by heavy turbulence. It lost altitude, veering to starboard toward a cleft between two enormous volcanoes. Talon Leader saw glittering orange threads of lava crawling down the near slope of one of the black, fire-capped mountains.

“Leader to squad, it looks like he’s losing thrust and going low to lose us with terrain-following flying. Don’t give him the opportunity. Get close and force him down.” He led his squadron in a lazy arc toward the same gap. He watched the numbers changing on his distance-to-target register: three kilometers, two point five; the interceptor was now emerging from the gap on the far side as the X-wings were entering it.

Talon Eight’s voice broke, high-pitched and nervous, over the comm system: “Engines powering up, sir! Directly ahead! I count four, seven, thirteen—”

“S-foils to attack position!” Donos shouted. “Scatter and—”

Shiner, his R2 unit, issued a sharp squeal of alarm. Donos’s console echoed it with beeps and indicators showing that someone ahead had a sensor lock on him—two locks—three locks—

Donos veered sharply to port—directly toward a volcanic flue and the impenetrable stream of gray-black smoke belching from it. As he hit the cloud he pulled back on the stick, rising straight up the concealing smoke. The sensor locks on him disappeared.

He heard explosions, some near, some far, and the excited comm chatter of his pilots. He added to it: “Talon Two, go skyward in the smoke screen; we’ll hit them from above.”

No answer.

There was other comm traffic: “Five, Five, he’s on your tail!” “Can’t get clear, vape him for me, Six—” “Can’t, I’ve got—I’ve got—” “Nine banked into the volcano wall, she’s gone—” Another explosion.

Moments later, at two thousand meters Donos angled to starboard, getting clear of the smoke and emerging directly over the gap between volcanoes.

No one was on his tail. He checked the sensor board—didn’t believe what it showed him, checked it again.

He and Talon Twelve were the only New Republic forces remaining on the board. He counted twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five Imperial blips. A dozen were veering toward Twelve, the remainder toward Donos.

In a matter of seconds, Talon Squadron had been all but destroyed. Glittering pieces of X-wings were still streaming down toward the planet’s broken surface. In another few seconds, he and Twelve would be vaped, and the destruction would be complete.

Through the shock of it, he said, “Talon Twelve, dive for the surface. Trench Run Defense. Omega Signal. Acknowledge.”

“Omega Signal understood. Diving.” The sensor register on Talon Twelve showed decreasing altitude. Donos followed suit, standing his X-wing on its nose and blasting toward the ground.

He hadn’t even gotten a shot off at the enemy. Ten pilots dead and he had a full rack of proton torpedoes left, laser batteries charged to full. Time to change that.

The sensors showed an ominous cloud of TIE fighters—eyeballs, in Alliance fighter-jock parlance—pursuing Twelve toward the ground. If she reached the planet’s broken surface, which was pocked with craters and crisscrossed with rifts, she might be able to elude them; there, her piloting skill rather than the relative speeds of the fighters could allow her to lose pursuit, and any pilot who tried to follow her from above would quickly lose sight of her—this was the classic Trench Run Defense used against the first Death Star. But for now, Twelve would remain within the enemy’s weapons range for long, deadly seconds.

Within moments his sensors indicated that he was coming within range of the weapons of the rising cloud of TIE fighters. He switched his lasers over to dual fire, giving him greater recycling speed, and put the rest of his discretionary power on forward shields, then began firing as quickly as his targeting computer gave him the bracket color changes and pure audible tones of good target locks. He put his X-wing into a corkscrew descent, making it harder for him to hit his enemies, but making it much harder for them to hit him.

Most of his shots hit the ground. One missed his intended target but vaped its wingman. Two more shots hit their intended targets, one shearing off a wing and sending the fighter spinning into the nearest volcanic mountainside, the other having no immediate effect Donos could see—but the TIE fighter ceased all evasive maneuvering, its flight path becoming an easy-to-calculate ballistic curve. Donos almost smiled: It had been a surgical strike, the pilot killed by a beautiful shot straight into the cockpit, leaving the rest of the fighter craft unharmed.

His assault had its desired effect. The oncoming cloud of TIEs spread out and he shot through the gap in the center of their formation. They wheeled, an angry insect cloud, to follow, but now the TIEs pursuing Twelve into the rugged terrain below were in sight. Donos continued firing, vaping one starfighter before the others knew he was upon them; that fighter’s wingman, startled by the sudden explosion, reflexively banked rightward, directly into the side of the rift in which they were flying. His fighter also detonated, filling the rift with flame and shrapnel.

Donos dropped into the rift, pulling out of his dive just before he could scrape his keel on the ground. He had stone formations to either side of him—black rock so blurry from his speed that he could make out no details. “Leader to Twelve, report condition,” he said.

“Minor damage to lower port strike foil,” she answered. “It’s giving me a little vibration, which should go away if we can get out of atmosphere. Some starring on the canopy. Pursuit is hanging back—Wait, here comes one! He’s trying to get a lock on me!”

Donos put on more speed, increasing the risk that he would not be able to make some difficult turn ahead. He whipped around a bend in the rift and almost slammed into the ion engines of a slow-moving TIE fighter immediately ahead. He snapped off a laser shot out of reflex, saw it lance straight into the starfighter’s starboard engine.

The TIE fighter instantly became a glowing fireball of yellow and orange flame and debris. Donos’s X-wing rocked as he roared through the fireball; his helmet and hull were barely sufficient to keep the sound of the explosion from deafening him. Then he was through.

One more turn, a tight starboard bank that almost flung him into the rock wall to port, and he had Twelve in sight. Twelve, and the vehicle pursuing her—the interceptor that had led them into this trap. This was the first time Donos had seen it visually, and he fleetingly noted the nonstandard red stripes painted horizontally on the starfighter’s wing arrays before something else occurred to him: there were no sparks or smoke plumes emerging from its engines now. With the deception done, all the false signs of the interceptor’s weakness had been shut off.

The interceptor had crept up to within meters of Twelve’s aft end and was now skillfully matching all of the X-wing pilot’s frantic maneuvers. This was a demonstration of superior flying technique, a show of contempt by one pilot for his enemy, and there was no doubt that the interceptor could begin firing on the defenseless Twelve at any second.

Donos fired off a desperate snap-shot. At the same moment, the interceptor took its kill shot.

Donos saw his lasers strike and play across the interceptor’s main body, slashing across the engines and burning into the cockpit.

The interceptor’s lasers intersected at Twelve’s X-wing, hitting her aft shields in spite of her desperate maneuvers … and then they penetrated. Both of Twelve’s starboard engines flamed out. The starboard strike foils, softened by the lasers’ intense heat, began to deform under atmospheric friction.

The interceptor slowed. Sparks and flame, real ones now, issued from the engines. It rose, jumping out of the rocky rift, and was immediately lost to Donos’s sight.

Twelve’s X-wing began a portward roll. Donos’s next command was half a shout: “Twelve, bail out! Twelve, eject!”

“Ejecting now! Leader, get out of here!”

Donos watched helplessly as Twelve’s cockpit filled with the fire of an ejection thruster, but the canopy failed to open. The ejector seat smashed Twelve into it. Its transparisteel construction kept the canopy in one piece as the X-wing continued to rotate to port. Under continued pressure from the thrust of the ejection seat, the cockpit finally broke away from the X-wing, but Twelve sat limp in the seat as the ejection seat carried her mere meters from the doomed snubfighter, slamming her into the rift wall to port. In a split second she was gone, lost behind Donos, and her X-wing was nosing over to crash into the rift wall below.

Donos forced himself to look away, to return his mind to mission parameters.

A few minutes of terrain-following flying and he should be able to jump free of these rifts and head for space. But suddenly the prospect of survival didn’t appeal much to him.

Donos’s R2 shrieked at him. Startled back to attention, he looked around, saw that a pair of TIE fighters had gained on him during his reverie.

He could stay and be killed, or flee and describe his failure to his commanders in cruel, humbling detail.

He’d prefer to die. But the families of eleven good men and women deserved to know how their loved ones had met their fates. With an anguished cry, Donos hit the thrusters again and rounded the next turn.

2

The New Republic guard, his face as emotionless as a ferrocrete bunker, admitted Wedge to the office. Within, the walls were a soothing blue, the furniture smooth and rounded with colors of the sea, the air cool but uncomfortably moist. Still, Wedge was back in New Republic uniform, and that alone made him more comfortable than the office’s environment conditioner could have.

Behind the desk, Admiral Ackbar, commander in chief of the New Republic’s military operations, returned Wedge’s salute. Like other Mon Calamari, with their outsized heads and rubbery skins, he looked to most people like a bipedal and intellectual fish, but Wedge knew him to be far more humane and courageous than many who fought for the New Republic.

Ackbar gestured toward the visitors’ chairs. “Commander Antilles. Please, sit. Is it too humid for you? I can make adjustments.”

“Not at all.” Wedge took the seat indicated. “Thank you for making time in your schedule for me so soon.”

“It is not an imposition.” Ackbar leaned closer, focusing on Wedge, his two widely separated eyes sometimes moving independently. “I see no signs of hangover on you, Commander. Must I conclude that you did not celebrate adequately?”

Wedge smiled. “Very adequately. Meeting old friends and new, old Rogues and new, and telling stories until we couldn’t string two words together. But I left the heavy drinking to the younger pilots.”

“Wise of you. Younger pilots. I notice I did not recognize all their names.”

“Rogue Squadron is catching up from attrition, sir. At the end of the Thyferran mission we were down a few pilots. Since then, we’ve brought our numbers up again. We’re still one pilot light, but Aril Nunb rejoined us temporarily for yesterday’s celebration.”

“I’m sure you will employ your customary skill in finding extraordinary replacements. Well, allow me the impatience of office. What brings you to me? Your message hinted at—what was it? ‘Recommendations for a new type of unit, particularly well suited to the search for Warlord Zsinj.’ ”

“That’s correct.” Warlord Zsinj, a onetime Imperial admiral still in possession of a Super Star Destroyer, an eight-kilometer warship capable of pounding a planetary surface flat, was now the New Republic’s most important military objective. His hit-and-run missions against New Republic sites were increasing in bold effectiveness and destructiveness, and the danger that he might assume Ysanne Isard’s role as the center of an Imperial resurgence was not an empty one. “I’d like to form a new X-wing group, sir.”

Admiral Ackbar’s mouth bent in an approximation of a smile. A learned behavior—Mon Calamari did not communicate amusement that way. But Ackbar was well versed in human body language. “Rogue Squadron is no longer good enough for you?”

“Rogue Squadron will always be good enough for me, sir. But in the last several years I’ve bumped repeatedly into a glaring weakness in our military. I’ve tried to address it before and want to try again.”

“Please elaborate.”

Wedge leaned back, settling in for a lengthy discussion. “You’ll remember when I reorganized Rogue Squadron a few years back, I took the best pilots I could transfer or steal … but when it came down to choosing between pilots of equal skill, I always chose the one who had useful ground-based skills as well.”

“Yes. You wanted pilots who could also be commandos.”

“I got them. And they got quite a workout as commandos, especially in the liberation of Coruscant from the Empire and then of Thyferra from Ysanne Isard.”

Ackbar managed to smile again. “You have certainly justified our faith in your experiment. Rogue Squadron performed magnificently.”

“Thank you. Speaking for my men and women, I have to agree. But I’d originally thought that Rogue Squadron would be used opportunistically: a strike mission would reveal a ground-based weakness, and we’d have the training and supplies to go down and perform the necessary ground mission. The way it turned out, we keep landing full-fledged commando missions. So I think we need another commando X-wing squadron, one where we choose pilots so as to have a full range of intrusion and subversion skills. Rogue Squadron was designed as a fighter unit first, commando unit second; this time, I want to go the other way around.”

Admiral Ackbar’s expression, so far as Wedge could read it, was dubious. “Historically, we’ve had few problems coordinating the efforts of commandos on the ground and fighter pilots for aerial support.”

“I don’t agree. Commandos can communicate strike locations to the pilots, but the pilots still won’t have the familiarity with these locations that the intrusion team will. Commandos who’ve had their extraction plans busted might want to seize enemy spacecraft to escape; the way things stand, they can’t count on having enough pilots to make that escape, while commando-trained pilots could. Normal pilots follow orders and conform themselves to standard tactics—and should! But a commando X-wing unit might develop new tactics. New ways of mounting even ordinary raids and pursuits. New ways of anticipating assaults and ambushes.”

Ackbar abruptly leaned back from him, his eyes half closing; it looked to Wedge like a frown of concentration. “What made you say that?”

“Thinking about the subject on the long flight home, and during the time we were garrisoned on Thyferra before that,” Wedge said. “Even though the garrison assignment was cut short from the two months originally planned, it still gave me plenty of time to think.”

“You haven’t heard any news?”

“No, sir. About what?”

Ackbar shook his head. “Please go on.”

“Well, that’s actually about it. I can dress it up in a formal report for you. But one other thing I think is important—I can give you a unit like this for free.”

Ackbar snorted, the sound emerging as a series of rubbery pops. “Can you, now?”

“Yes, sir. First, the replacement Rogue Squadron is being disbanded, its pilots and X-wings being returned to their original units. Correct?”

“Correct.”

“So you’ll be issuing a dozen new X-wings to us, won’t you? To the original Rogue Squadron.”

“Why would we? Your X-wings are in functional shape, are they not?”

“Well, yes, but they’re not New Republic property any longer. They were sold to my second-in-command, Tycho Celchu, at the start of our operation against Thyferra. They’re his personal property, held in trust for all of us, until and unless he decides to vest ownership in their pilots.”

“How uncharitable of you. You could donate their use to the New Republic. I believe one of your pilots has been using his personal X-wing all along.”

“Yes, sir. Lieutenant Horn. And Tycho would be glad to loan his snubfighters to the New Republic, for the use of Rogue Squadron, if …”

“If the next dozen X-wings out of the factories are assigned to your new commando squadron.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s blackmail. It’s unbecoming.”

“Most unconventional tactics are unbecoming until they succeed, Admiral. I direct your attention to the planet Thyferra …”

“Be quiet. There’s still the matter of pilots. Fresh out of the Academy, their training costing hundreds of thousands of credits apiece. That is not ‘free.’ ”

“No, sir. I don’t want new pilots. I want experienced ones.”

“Which is an even more significant expense.”

“No, sir, not with these pilots. I want pilots no one else wants. Washouts. Pilots staring court-martials in the face. Troublemakers and screwups.”

Ackbar stared as if he couldn’t believe his tympanic membranes. “In the name of the Force, Commander, why?”

“Well, some of them, of course, will be irredeemable. I’ll wash them out, too. Some of them will be good men and women who’ve screwed up one time too many, who know their careers are dead but would give anything for one more chance …”

“You’re more likely to get a proton torpedo up your engines than you are to get a functional squadron out of such pilots. The torpedo might be launched accidentally … but that’s no comfort to a widow.”

Wedge spread his hands, palms up, and smiled. “Problem solved. I’m not married.”

“I know you’re not. You know what I mean.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What would become of Rogue Squadron?”

“I’d be happy to remain in charge officially, but for all squadron activities, Captain Celchu is more than qualified to lead … and now that he’s been cleared of the formal charge of Corran Horn’s murder and the informal charge of being a brainwashed double agent, there shouldn’t be any responsible objection to his full return to duties. I’d return Lieutenant Hobbie Klivan to Rogue Squadron as second-in-command and take Lieutenant Wes Janson as my own second-in-command. Once the new squadron is established, of course, I’d hope to return to direct command of Rogue Squadron.”

“You’re committed to this idea, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.” Wedge considered what he was about to say. “Since the battle at Endor, the military’s public relations groups have represented Rogue Squadron as if we were the lightsaber of the New Republic. A bright, shiny weapon to cut down any dark Imperial holdovers who still stand against us. But, sir, not all battles call for lightsabers. Some of them are fought with vibroblades in back alleys. The New Republic needs those vibroblades too, and doesn’t have them.”

“I understand.” Ackbar nodded agreeably. “Request refused.”

Wedge couldn’t speak; suddenly all the air seemed to leave his chest. He’d thought he was so close, thought he had convinced the admiral.

“Unless …”

Wedge found his voice again. “Unless?”

“I’ll make a bet with you, Commander. You get your chance at forming this squadron. If, three months after it goes operational, it has proven its worth—in my sole estimation—you can do as you please. Continue with the new squadron, go back to command Rogue Squadron, whichever you choose.”

“And if I lose?”

“You accept promotion to the rank of general and join my advisory staff.”

Wedge kept his dismay from his face. “I would seem to win either way, sir.”

“Stop it. You’re not fooling anyone. If you had your way, you’d continue flying snubfighters and commanding fighter squadrons until you were a century old. How many promotions have you turned down? Two? Three?”

“Two.”

“Well, if you lose your bet, you accept this one.”

Wedge sighed and thought it over. He needed to keep flying; he wouldn’t be happy in any other way of life. But the New Republic military needed this new tactic, needed many new ways of doing things, before they became as tactically fossilized as the Empire had been. “I accept, sir.”

Ackbar ground out a laugh. “In a sense, you’ve already lost, Commander Antilles. You’re wagering your career for the good of the New Republic. You’re creating new tactics, new weapons for the New Republic, not just for your squadron. You’re already a general … you just don’t know it yet.”

“I guess I’ll accept that remark in the spirit in which it was intended, sir.”

“I have another remark for you, Wedge. News, bad news that you’ll have to take to your subordinates. And I don’t envy you that task.”

Wedge met with the others in the hangar aboard the cruiser Home One where the Rogue Squadron X-wings were undergoing repairs and repainting. He watched with a trace of wistfulness as the black and green-and-gold checks of his snubfighter, colors his father had chosen for the family refueling station and never lived to see implemented, were erased and replaced by New Republic grays and the proud but strident Rogue Squadron red stripes.

Tycho frowned, but not at the repainting job. “So how is this going to work?”

“I act as commander for the combined unit—for both Rogue Squadron and the new squadron. I also act as squadron leader for the new squad. Tycho, until I return, you’re Rogue Leader, with Hobbie your second-in-command; Nawara, you remain executive officer. Wes, you’re my second-in-command. Rogue Squadron is going to be assigned to the hunt for Zsinj; the new squadron will be put together at Folor Base—”

Tycho winced. “Ah, yes, the center of New Republic entertainment and lunar beauty.”

“Once it’s commissioned, the new X-wing squad will also join, covertly, the hunt for Zsinj, assuming he hasn’t been taken out by then. Both squads will fly together when circumstances dictate.”

Wes turned to Hobbie, extended his hand. “Sorry to see that you’re stuck with the flying fossils, while I stay with Commander Wedge on the cutting edge of—”

Hobbie batted his hand away. “Oh, shut up.”

Wedge cleared his throat. “There’s something else. Tycho, Nawara, could you excuse us for a moment?”

The two Rogues withdrew, leaving Wedge with Hobbie and Janson. “I have some news for you two,” Wedge said. “You’re not going to like hearing it. Talon Squad is gone.”

Hobbie frowned. “What do you mean, gone?”

“Wiped out. Ambush. Everyone is dead except Lieutenant Donos.”

Janson leaned against the near wall. Hobbie looked as shocked as though he’d jammed his hand into a power generator. “How?”

“We don’t know all the details yet. Only that they were pursuing an anomaly, a standard TIE interceptor far from any hyperspace-capable ship, into an uninhabited system logged as recently secured by New Republic Intelligence. That secure designation turns out to have been false, sliced into our code at a point yet to be determined. The interceptor led them into a shooting gallery and eleven members of the squadron died. Lieutenant Donos is being debriefed now; I’m having him brought to Folor Base when that’s done. Even if he’s cleared, a lot of squadron commanders will have no use for him, so I want him evaluated for the new squadron.”

Janson’s voice was ragged. “Eleven pilots we trained. Wiped out by a simple ambush. What a pair of incompetents we must be.”

Wedge shook his head. “It was more than a simple ambush. We’ll know how much more soon. In the meantime, don’t tear yourselves up. Any one of us could have been lured into something like that—all we’d have to do is base decisions on Intelligence reports that seemed reliable. You understand?”

Both men nodded.

From a flight suit pocket Wedge produced a datapad; this he handed to Janson. “There are a couple of files on this. One is a set of pilot-data criteria. The other is authorization to run it against pilot profiles across records of all New Republic armed forces. Tomorrow, I want you to assemble a list of all pilots matching the criteria, then begin to contact them, find out how many of them are willing to put in for transfer to my new squadron for possible permanent assignment. I’ll bet pretty close to one hundred percent will be. Those who answer in the affirmative, send to Folor without informing them of their destination; we’ll meet and evaluate them there.”

He turned to Hobbie. “As soon as you’ve had a chance to debrief Donos, I want you to work up a simulator run based on the mission that destroyed Talon Squad. It will be one of the first simulator training sessions the new squad attempts—and the next one Rogue Squad experiences. So it doesn’t happen again.”

“Understood,” Hobbie said.

“After due consideration and review, I think it’s a terrible idea,” said General Crespin.

It was weeks later, and Wedge Antilles stood before another military leader in another office and prepared to plead his case again. Wedge felt irritation well up within him. Crespin might be his superior, but did not have a grasp of small-unit fighter uses and tactics superior to Wedge’s. Few, if any, officers did. But he clamped down on his emotion. It was important to meet Crespin reason for reason, fact for fact; if he let emotion dictate his defense he would lose this argument.

General Crespin, new commander of the fighter training base on the moon called Folor, and personal commander of two training squads of A-wings, paced behind his desk while Wedge remained standing at attention before it. Crespin was a tall, lean man who seemed to know only two expressions, impassive and stern. Since the last time Wedge had seen him, in the briefings before the assault on the second Death Star, Crespin had been promoted from colonel to general, had picked up a limp, and had had his left eye replaced by a glossy black optical; he usually wore a mirrored patch over the mechanical replacement, as the patch was far less ominous than the black, inhuman eye. Wedge suspected the general could see through the patch. Wedge had heard that Crespin had been injured during a bombardment by Zsinj’s Super-class Star Destroyer, Iron Fist, against a New Republic military base established near the border to Zsinj-controlled space.

“We don’t need misfits representing the New Republic,” the general continued. “We need heroes. Men and women with proper character and clean records. Hologenic pilots who’ll look good in the broadcasts, good in the archives.”

“With all due respect, General, that’s equivalent to piloting a course right into the dark side of the Force.”

Crespin’s head snapped around and he glared at Wedge. “You’re insolent. Explain yourself.”

Wedge took a deep breath. Contain your anger. Make him an ally, not an enemy. “First, since the Alliance was first formed, we’ve made it a policy to accept Imperial defectors.”

“I know that. I’m one of them.” Crespin’s chin came up, as if he were inviting Wedge to address the question of his loyalty.

“Yes, sir. So, as you know, sometimes these people had just been waiting for the chance to side with us. Like yourself. Sometimes they jumped when our position was stronger than the Empire’s. Sometimes they jumped for purely selfish reasons. We never cared, so long as they did their jobs, continued to aid the New Republic, and stayed loyal to our goals.”

“So?”

“So all these defectors are retreads, General. Many are men and women with spots on their records. Sometimes more than spots. Here’s an example. We pulled Black Sun criminals off Kessel, introduced them onto Coruscant, and kept the faith with them so long as they did with us. You seem to be saying that their contributions should be ignored, kept hidden—the only people whose efforts we acknowledge will be those with spotless records, uniforms, and faces.”

“Ridiculous.”

“Second, this idea that appearance needs to be a factor in the choice of new pilots so they’ll look good on holograms and broadcasts—sir, I understand your reasoning, and I approve”—the lie nearly stuck in Wedge’s throat but he accelerated past it—“but it exposes the New Republic, the Provisional and Inner Councils, to a danger I think you’ve overlooked.”

“Which is what?”

“If all our pilots have to look a specific way, meet or surpass some arbitrary degree of beauty, we’re exactly the same as the Empire, which kept hundreds of sapient species under its heel because they weren’t human. Because they didn’t meet specific human standards of appearance.”

“Preposterous!” But Crespin looked a trifle shaken by Wedge’s last accusation.

“Of course it is, sir. It’s more than preposterous, it’s idiotic. Especially in light of all the nonhumans in Rogue Squadron and other units. But put that argument into the hands of Imperial insurgents working within the New Republic and you’ll have insurrections, protests from every New Republic signatory race that isn’t represented in the cockpit of an X-wing or A-wing somewhere.”

Crespin grimaced but didn’t answer.

“Third, the new squadron’s makeup allows for better, not poorer, public relations. Every pilot who makes it will be a success story, a come-from-behind story, suited to a holodrama or series. Most importantly, they’ll be common-being stories. Not everyone can identify with Corran Horn from Corellian Security, or with Bror Jace, millionaire prince of the bacta-producing monopoly on Thyferra. But some tug pilot who joined the Alliance, fumbled his career into the gutter, and then recovered it, repaired the damage he’d done to his life—”

“Yes, yes.” Crespin waved for him to be quiet. “Very well, Commander. Your passion for this experiment is obvious. Your reasons are sound. Do it your way for now. Do note that I expect this experiment to be a disaster … and I’ll be on hand to clean it up when it detonates in your face.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ll have to be aware of some changes implemented since the last time you were stationed here. You may have noticed when landing that the base’s emissions are much more contained than they used to be; external visual beacons are lit off only when landing craft need them.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We need the extra security, what with Zsinj’s raids increasing in frequency and boldness … and with occasional lapses such as your own pilot, Erisi Dlarit, turning out to be a traitor—”

Wedge reined in another flash of anger. “I should point out that she was placed in Rogue Squadron for political reasons, not recruited by me. And so far as we have seen, her controllers kept the information she sent them about Folor Base to themselves, not sharing it with renegades like Zsinj. And now they’re dead.”

“Whatever. We still need the improved security. So long as this is border territory, we’re vulnerable to assaults like the ones Zsinj is so fond of making. All your pilots are being brought in without knowing where they are; the washouts will go out the same way.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well.” Suddenly Crespin looked inexpressibly weary. Wedge wondered how many officers regularly brought him arguments and back talk—even when it was as polite and well reasoned as Wedge’s. “Dismissed.”

3

“You look like you’ve fought a few rounds with a rancor.”

“Thanks, Wes. I’m sure General Crespin will appreciate that comparison.” Wedge sat back in his chair with a sigh, put his booted feet up on his desk. His office was a former storeroom with dismal lighting and not even a holoscreen to display a soothing picture of some faraway vista. His chair was a recycled ejection seat mounted on a heavy spring and a cross-brace. His desk was a section of metal bulkhead suspended between two low filing cabinets. It was all typical of the decor in underfunded Folor Base. Janson sat in a similar chair against the wall, and a third ejection seat was situated opposite Wedge’s.

“We have pilots today?” Wedge asked.

“We have pilots, possibly the last group, if some late arrivals make it in.”

“Let’s get started. Who’s first?” Since the first day of evaluations, Wedge had followed a simple interview pattern: Janson kept the data on the pilots, allowing Wedge to meet each one without any foreknowledge. It gave him a better opportunity to consult his gut with respect to each candidate.

Janson consulted his datapad. “His name is Kettch, and he’s an Ewok.”

Wedge came upright. “No.”

“Oh, yes. Determined to fight. You should hear him say, ‘Yub, yub.’ He makes it a battle cry.”

“Wes, assuming he could be educated up to Alliance fighter-pilot standards, an Ewok couldn’t even reach an X-wing’s controls.”

“He wears arm and leg extensions, prosthetics built for him by a sympathetic medical droid. And he’s anxious to go, Commander.”

Wedge slumped and covered his eyes with one hand. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“Of course I’m kidding. Pilot-candidate number one is a human female, from Tatooine, Falynn Sandskimmer.”

“I’m going to get you, Janson.”

“Yub, yub, Commander.”

“Show her in.”

Late in the day, Wedge looked over the list of candidates processed so far.

A Tatooine woman with excellent flying marks, already an ace, but a career in the incinerator because of what was listed as “chronic insolence.” An inability to keep scorn out of her voice when dealing with superior officers she didn’t respect. Failure to maintain military discipline. Wedge wondered how badly this would have affected her record a few years ago, when the New Republic was the Rebel Alliance and the military was a looser, rougher organization where rugged individualism was the norm rather than a common exception.

He wondered, too, whether Falynn Sandskimmer’s attitude toward a certain Hero of the New Republic had contributed to the two demotions that had canceled her two promotions. Asked about Luke Skywalker, she’d said, “Can you imagine being compared to him all your adult life just because you’re another pilot from Tatooine? No, I’ve never met Luke Skywalker. In fact, I wish I’d never heard of him.” It was an attitude that would not endear her to many of Luke’s friends. Wedge, who was among those friends, simply shrugged it off. Her worth was in her performance, not her lack of appreciation of one good man.

The second pilot, a human male from Etti IV, was facing a court-martial for theft. He expressed confidence that he would be cleared and asked for a chance to prove himself to Commander Antilles. A minute after he’d gone, Wedge noticed that the framed holo of his long-dead parents was missing from the tabletop. He sent Janson after the compulsive thief and scrubbed him from the candidate roster.

The third pilot was a Talz, one of the white-furred humanoid inhabitants of Alzoc III. A former Imperial slave, he’d learned to pilot freighters for the Rebel Alliance and had transferred to fighters when the deadly pilot attrition of the year before the Emperor’s death had put a premium on good fliers. But his record showed a history of psychosomatic illnesses and the possibility of mental breakdown increasing in the last several years. His mental evaluations suggested that these problems resulted from conflict between the Talz’s basically gentle nature and the fighter’s mission of destroying enemy targets.

Wedge and Janson put him through a simulator recreation of the fleet action at the battle of Endor—a target-rich environment where the best fighter pilots racked up impressive kill scores. The Talz did well, but Wedge and Janson watched his biomedical readings climb into the red danger zone—a clear sign that even in simulators, stress was eating away at him. They wished the disappointed pilot a good flight home and recommended a transfer back into freighters.

“Number four today,” said Janson, “is Lieutenant Myn Donos.”

Wedge gave his second-in-command a sympathetic look. “Have you had a chance to talk to him?”

“No, he’s just arrived on base. I read Hobbie’s report, though. New Republic Military Intelligence has cleared him of error or wrongdoing.”

“Good. Show him in.”

Janson spoke into his comlink and a moment later a lean man in the standard orange New Republic flight suit entered. He was just over average height, with a round face and a thick mop of black hair. His face betrayed no emotion. He saluted and held it until Wedge returned it.

“Lieutenant Donos, have a seat.”

“Thank you, sir.” Donos sat, military-straight.

“I understand that Command has reviewed the situation on Gravan Seven and cleared you for continued fighter duty. Congratulations.”

“Thank you, sir.” Donos’s expression did not change.

Wedge glanced at Janson, who wore a puzzled look as he watched Donos.

“You’re aware that we’re forming a new X-wing squadron.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Interested in transferring over?”

“Yes, sir.” There was no enthusiasm in the pilot’s voice, nor was there a trace of the pain he was doubtless still feeling from the destruction of his squadron. Wedge again checked Janson’s reaction; Janson was now leaning back in his chair, studying Donos curiously.

“Wes tells me that before joining the Alliance, you belonged to the Corellian armed forces. Sniper for an elite counterinsurgency unit.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you still sharp as a sniper?”

“No, sir. I haven’t had a chance to keep up my skills in the last three years.”

“Do you think you can train up to your previous standard?”

“Yes, sir.” There was no pride, no enthusiasm in his tone.

“Do you have a problem with the role of sniper?”

“No, sir. Whatever my role, my task is the elimination of the enemy.”

“Right. I also understand that you were decorated on Corellia for conspicuous gallantry. This entitles you to wear the Corellian Bloodstripes. Yet you don’t. Why?”

Donos took a while to answer. “It just seems a bit silly, sir. I could also wear a sign saying ‘I’m a wonderful person and I give money to the needy.’ What’s the point?”

“I see.” Wedge tried to discern some hint of anger, pride, regret, anything in the pilot’s expression or attitude, but he could not. “Well, then, for now, welcome to the squadron of candidate trainees.” He shook Donos’s hand. An exchange of salutes later, the lieutenant was gone.

“He used to wear the Bloodstripes,” Janson said. “I didn’t notice until you mentioned it. This isn’t the Myn Donos I trained.”

“Interesting. How long was it from the time Talon Squad left on its last mission to the time he returned? Was there enough time for him to have been grabbed by the enemy, to have been programmed?”

“No, there’s not enough time unaccounted for in his report for him to have stopped into a cantina for a drink. No sign he ever left his cockpit. It’s him, but it’s not him. He wouldn’t even meet my eyes.”

“Well, we’ll see how he performs. If he shows the slightest sign of cracking up, or of needing a protracted off-duty rest for psychological reasons, I’m going to scrub him.”

“Understood.”

“Hypercomm signal detected, Admiral!”

Admiral Apwar Trigit looked down from his command chair into the bridge crew pit. His expression was mild. “Its origin?”

“Header code indicates that it’s straight from Zsinj at Rancor Base!”

“I’ll take it in my private comm chamber.” He rose, aware that with his graying black hair and beard, his lean form, and the silver and black uniform he’d designed himself, he was an imposing figure. He kept his walk graceful and casual as he departed the Imperial Star Destroyer’s bridge—true, he served the Warlord Zsinj, but his chief officers must understand that he merely hired out his services and those of the Implacable, that he was his own master.

In the spherical chamber reserved for his private communications, Trigit hit a switch on the main console. Immediately, a three-dimensional image appeared before him—Zsinj, twice human-sized, sitting in a black command chair, doubtless the one aboard Iron Fist. Zsinj wore the crisp white uniform of an Imperial grand admiral, a rank he had never truly attained—yet his current power was such that no one could protest this presumption on his part.

Trigit smiled at the ego Zsinj routinely manifested. “My lord, you’re going to twist my neck from staring up at you.” He slowly turned a knob and Zsinj’s image shrank until it was just over human-sized. He kept from his face the sheer delight the action of shrinking Zsinj brought him; in the Imperial armed forces, it would have been construed as an expression of pure insolence. He would have been lucky merely to have been demoted to garbage scow pilot.

The warlord—a corpulent man, balding and graying, with a florid complexion and drooping mustachios that gave him an exotic look—favored him with a smile. “I’ve just read the report from your last transmission. I wanted to congratulate you on the destruction of Talon Squadron.”

Trigit gave him a sardonic little bow. “Thank you. The code-slicer who planted the false information about the security of the Gravan system later reported that they have decommissioned Talon Squadron entirely.”

“The pilot who escaped the ambush—was that by your design? Or an accident? The report doesn’t say.”

“No, we made every effort to kill him. His reflexes were just good enough to save him. In the final analysis, I consider it to be just as good as a clean sweep. He’s doubtless told his tale of woe to his superiors; now they can begin to fret about forces cunning enough to wipe out X-wing squadrons without significant loss or effort. A few more such missions, and they’ll begin to develop a supernatural dread about us.”

Zsinj smiled. “What about your code-slicer? What if he’s caught and broken?”

“Impossible. She has already left her Rebel station. I’m having her brought in and giving her a commission aboard Implacable.”

“It would have been cheaper to have eliminated her. Your previous superior would have done it.”

“Ysanne Isard kept all her officers and minions in a state of fear,” Trigit acknowledged. “And when they failed her, or proved in any way to be a liability, she did eliminate them. So they knew that there were no happy endings in their futures, no rosy retirements. They literally had nothing to look forward to except death or escape. That’s not a way to engender loyalty. That’s not my way.”

“Good.”

“But none of this discussion explains why you’ve contacted me at such considerable expense.”

Zsinj’s smile grew broader. “I want to hear early results from the Morrt Project.”

“Ah. Well, the first few thousand Morrt-class parasite-droids have been distributed. I’m getting preliminary reports already. Naturally, there’s a concentration of signal hits from known population centers—Imperial, New Republic, and independent. We’re also getting a few hits from unknown sites, and sites designated destroyed or abandoned. Once we get reinforcement on them, we can go looking.”

“Good. Keep me up-to-date on all your interesting little operations.”

“As always, my lord.”

Zsinj gave him a gracious little nod and his image faded to nothingness.

Trigit sighed. Zsinj was much easier to deal with than Ysanne Isard, also known as Iceheart, former head of Imperial Intelligence—now dead at the hands of Rogue Squadron. Unlike Iceheart, Zsinj understood something about the folly of waste—such as murdering subordinates on a whim. But Zsinj’s desire to be up-to-date on every operation, to have his fingers in each new plan and enterprise, was extremely tiresome.

Ah, well. As long as Zsinj remained reasonable and kept Implacable stocked with fuel, weapons, food, and information, Trigit would remain with him. Far better than setting out on the lonely warlord’s road himself.

That is, until he had power and advantages to match Zsinj’s.

“Any more?” said Wedge.

Janson consulted his chrono. “It’s getting late. But we have only two more candidates to review.”

“Today, or total?”

“Total. Your slave-driving habits have gotten us almost through the first phase of the evaluation process.” Janson consulted his datapad. “Next is Voort saBinring, a Gamorrean.”

“Very funny. You had me going the first time, Wes, but that joke won’t work twice.”

“He’s a Gamorrean.”

The green-skinned, pig-faced Gamorreans were found among untrained guard and police forces on many worlds. They were technologically primitive, disinterested in any of the advanced sciences required for technological professions. “It’s impossible to train Gamorrean males to something as complicated as fighter piloting. They have glandular balances that make them very violent and impatient.”

“He’s a Gamorrean.”

“Just keep up your little joke, then, and show him in.”

Janson spoke into his comlink. A moment later a Gamorrean—1.9 meters of glowering porcine presence, dressed in the standard New Republic pilot’s uniform, the bright orange of the jumpsuit clashing nauseatingly with the creature’s green skin—walked in and saluted.

Janson smiled ingratiatingly at Wedge. “Yub, yub, Commander.”

Whenever the Gamorrean spoke, his natural voice, grunts and squeals not pleasant to the human ear, emerged first. Then, below it, cutting through it, was his other voice, the mechanical one, emerging from the translator device implanted in his throat. “No, Commander. I have not lived among other Gamorreans since I was a child.”

Wedge cleared his throat. “I’m sure you understand that this is new to me. But I am curious, how you, well, overcame Gamorrean biology and learned to fly.”

“I did not overcome my biology. These were changes forced upon me. By Binring Biomedical Product.”

“I know that name. They provide food to the Empire’s armed forces. Nasty green nutrient pastes that take forever to go bad. Perfect for stormtroopers.”

The Gamorrean nodded. “They also engineer animals to adapt to different planetary environments. They have less wholesome experiments as well. I was one of them. For purposes of espionage, the Emperor wanted Gamorreans with humanlike methods of self-control. They made alterations to our biochemistries. My attention span surpasses human norm. My mathematical acumen registers at the genius level. I do not lose control of my anger.”

“This was an Imperial project?” Wedge thought that through. “How many like you are there?”

“None. I am the only success.”

“The other transformations were fatal?”

“In a sense. All the other subjects committed suicide.”

“Why?”

“If I knew, I would be among them. But I am certain it has something to do with isolation. How would you feel if you were the only thinking human in the galaxy, forced to live among Gamorreans, and all the other humans you met were bloodthirsty primitives?”

“A good point.” Wedge sat back and considered that unhappy prospect for a moment. “How did you come to join the Alliance?”

“One of my creators, who had watched his other … children … kill themselves one by one arranged to have me put through a variety of different simulator training programs to measure my capacity. Or so he said. In actuality, he was doing it to teach me to pilot many different Imperial and Alliance vehicles. Then he arranged for me to escape the Binring compound. Eventually I reached Obroa-skai.”

“The library world.”

“I learned much there, and eventually chose to come to the Alliance.”

“Your, uh, creator—he didn’t choose to escape?”

“He was sad because of the projects he had led. He chose to follow his other children.”

Wedge winced. “All right. To more immediate concerns. Your record states that you have temperament problems. You’re facing a court-martial for striking a superior officer, though that officer is willing to drop charges to get you transferred as far as possible from his command. What do you have to say?”

The Gamorrean took a few moments to respond. “There are two types of pilots in the New Republic. Those who have been Imperial pilots, and may carry with them an irrational dislike of nonhumans. And those who have had bad encounters with Gamorreans.”

“I tend to disagree.”

“Your experiences do not match mine. And in my experience, a Gamorrean flyer tends to receive an undue amount of abuse from his fellows. Not just pranks. Sometimes sabotage. Lies. Challenges.”

“You didn’t strike your officer?”

“I have struck several fellow pilots in well-moderated challenge matches. I have never had to strike one more than once. You will notice that charges were filed against me within half an hour of the alleged incident. No one I have ever struck has been able to speak coherently within half an hour of my striking him. Sir, he struck at me; I blocked his blow. He has chosen to remember that as an attack. He is willing to drop charges only because he is not strong enough to accept responsibility for the full measure of his persecution of me.”

Wedge considered. “Well, that’s about all for now. Candidate training begins tomorrow.” He rose. The others followed suit, and he shook the Gamorrean’s hand. “By the way, what do you like to be called? Voort?”

“I am content with Voort. But many others call me Piggy. I am content with it, too, for I can ignore the definite derogatory component that goes with it.”

Wedge and Janson exchanged glances. “The lieutenant and I once knew a very fine human pilot who went by Piggy. There’s no ‘derogatory component’ to it in this squadron. Rather, it’s a badge of honor I hope you can live up to.”

“I will try to do so.”

When the Gamorrean was gone, Wedge said, “I wonder what Porkins would have thought of him.”

Janson shrugged. “We’ll know better when we’ve flown with him.”

“Well, who’s next? A mynock? A womp rat?”

“My, you are getting paranoid. No, next, and last, is a human male, Kell Tainer from Sluis Van. I think he’s exactly the leader type you want to replace you when it’s time to return to Rogue Squadron. Assuming Myn Donos doesn’t return to normal.”

“Good. Show him in.”

A moment later Flight Officer Tainer entered. General Crespin is going to love him, Wedge decided.

Kell Tainer stood nearly two meters tall, with a handsome, sculpted face that holorecorders would adore. Dark hair cut short framed light blue eyes—a couple of shades lighter and they’d make him look like a madman, but at this shade they were piercing, mesmerizing. He was built like an athlete, actually a little too broad in the shoulders to be entirely comfortable in an X-wing’s cockpit, but that was a problem for which he would already have learned to compensate.

Kell snapped to a precision salute and held it until Wedge returned it. “Flight Officer Tainer reporting, sir, and a pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise. Let me introduce you to my second-in-command, Lieutenant Janson.”

Kell had turned toward Janson and was in midsalute as Wedge spoke. Wedge watched as the pilot’s back suddenly locked upright. Tainer’s salute pose and salute became iron-rigid. Kell did not meet Janson’s eyes, but he did ask, “Lieutenant Wes Janson, sir?”

With a bewildered expression, Janson said, “That’s me.” He finally remembered to return the salute.

Kell turned back to Wedge, kept his gaze focused above Wedge’s head. “I apologize, sir. I cannot join this squadron. I withdraw my application. Permission to leave?”

Wedge said, “Why?”

“I’d prefer not to say, sir.”

“Understood. Now answer the question.”

Kell seemed to vibrate for a moment as his muscles strained against one another. Then, his voice low, he said, “This man killed my father, sir. Permission to leave?”

Janson, his expression shocked, came around to Wedge’s side of the desk. His gaze searched Kell’s face, and a shadow of recognition crossed his features. “Tainer—your name wasn’t always Tainer, was it?”

“No, sir.”

“Doran?”

“Yes, sir.”

Janson looked away, his eyes tracing something back through the years.

Kell said, “Permission to leave, sir?”

“Wait in the hall,” Wedge said.

Kell left. Wedge turned to his second-in-command. “What’s this all about?”

4

Janson returned to his chair, finding his way into it by touch; he seemed to look into the past, not seeing anything around him. “My first kill—did I ever tell you that my first kill was an Alliance pilot?”

“No.”

“Not something one advertises. Back then, I was a pilot trainee in the Tierfon Yellow Aces. With Jek Porkins.”

“Good old Piggy.”

“The original. Those were the days when a training squadron might just get picked to do a strike mission that should have gone to an experienced squad—”

“Like today, you mean.”

“Well, it’s much less common today. You know that. That day, our mission was an ambush of an Imperial freighter and its TIE fighter escort. They were to come in to a landing at a temporary Imperial staging base we’d found out about. We were in Y-wings. One unit of the Yellow Aces was to strafe the base and run, leading off the garrisoned flyers, while the rest was to hit the freighter. To take it, if possible; we really needed the food and fuel.”

“So what happened?”

“The first part of the mission went as planned. But as the freighter came in, we saw that the TIE fighter escort was twice as big as advertised. And one of our pilots, a former freighter pilot from Alderaan, Kissek Doran, had a panic attack and took off in his Y-wing. Piggy and I were sent out to bring him back … or shoot him down.”

“And you did?”

The words exploded out of Janson: “Wedge, I had to! If he communicated on any standard frequency, if he crossed into the base’s sensor range, if he bounced high enough that the moon’s horizon no longer concealed him; if any of these things happened, we were compromised and the unit might have been slaughtered. Porkins tried to crowd him down to land, but he couldn’t, and I—” The words stuck in his throat for a moment. “I shot him down. I had to use lasers. Couldn’t risk the ion cannon; its energy pulse might have been detected. The blast cracked his cockpit; vacuum killed him. His scrounged flight suit wasn’t up to it.”

“It sounds as though you did everything you could to keep him alive.”

“Yes, until I killed him. I knew he had a wife and two or three kids back on Alderaan. I figured they’d died when the first Death Star destroyed the planet.”

Wedge took up Janson’s datapad and scanned Kell’s record. “It doesn’t say anything here about Alderaan or the Doran family.”

“They must have changed their family name, falsified records. The unit commander went to visit them, not long after he’d sent them the official notification of Kissek’s death. The story he was going to give her, supporting the one in the notification, was that he died in battle … but Kissek’s wife had already heard the truth from someone. Accused the Tierfon Yellow Aces not only of killing her husband but of ruining the family name. Maybe she tried to fix things by changing their name and moving away.”

Wedge sighed over the datapad. “Look at this. Tainer was a fighter-craft mechanic on Sluis Van. When he came to the Alliance, he trained as a demolitions expert. Served with Lieutenant Page’s commandos, then demonstrated a native talent for fighting in re-creational simulators and got permission to train in the real thing. Have you ever met Page?”

“No.”

“A good man. Teaches his people well. Wes, we really need Tainer … if we can persuade him to stay.”

Janson gave him a look that was all mock cheer. “Oh, wonderful. I killed his father. He hates me. He knows how to make bombs. Come on, Wedge, how does this story end?”

“If he’s an honorable man, you’re in no danger.”

“So he gets to the boiling point, and then he pops like the cork on bad Tatooine wine.”

“All Tatooine wine is bad.”

“Don’t change the subject. Anyway, keep reading.”

Wedge returned his attention to the datapad. “In training, one Headhunter crashed. One X-wing set down hard enough that it took a lot of damage. He claimed unresponsive controls both times?”

Janson nodded. “Typical response from someone who can’t accept responsibility for his failures.”

Wedge looked up and gave his fellow pilot a piercing stare. “So, back when you were hot to add him to our roster, how were you going to convince me to overlook this little crash-landing problem?”

“Wedge …”

“Answer the question.”

Janson looked unhappy. “I was going to point out that he could have been correct. The two crashes aren’t consistent with his skill index. He’s good, and I mean brilliant, in the simulators.”

Wedge considered the information on the datapad for long moments. “Well, I’ll accept your explanation. I want us to try him out. If he doesn’t work out, I’ll scrub him. If he does work out and yet the two of you can’t work together …”

“In the long run, you actually need him in this unit more than you need me.” Janson’s voice was weary. “In that case, with your permission, I’d transfer back to the Rogues. I can swap with Hobbie.”

Wedge nodded, solemn. “Thanks, Wes.”

·  ·  ·

Janson let Wedge do all the talking. Wedge imagined that it felt better not to have Kell Tainer turn any attention toward him whatsoever.

Wedge explained the situation in a few words, then asked, “Tainer, are you an honorable man?”

The pilot, his back once again locked into correct but overtense military posture, said, “I am.”

“Do you think Lieutenant Janson is any less honorable?”

Tainer took his time in replying. “No, sir.” The words sounded as though they were being ground out of him.

“You took an oath to serve the New Republic, and you have to understand that we need your precise skills more than you need to avoid reminders of what happened to your father. Janson took the same oath, though in his case it was to the Alliance to restore the Republic, back when you were still playing with toys. And he understands that we need his skills more than he needs to be free of the dislike you have for him … or of the memory of doing something he didn’t want to do. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So I’m going to ask you to stay. For now. If you two can’t work together, we’ll make arrangements. But I have to warn you, with your record, placement in any other unit means you’re not likely ever to fly a fighter again. You’ll probably end up back in the commandos.”

“I liked the commandos.”

“Yes, but you’ll never be able to repair your father’s name there. You’ll never show the galaxy that the name ‘Doran’ doesn’t translate as ‘pilot and coward.’ ”

Tainer’s head snapped down and he finally met Wedge’s gaze. His eyes were as full of rage as any Wedge had ever seen; Wedge resisted the temptation to take a step backward. “How dare you—”

Wedge kept his own voice low. “Attention.” He waited three long beats, until Tainer again assumed the proper pose and returned his attention to the wall above Wedge’s head. Then Wedge continued, “I dare, if that’s the word, because it’s the truth. I’ll bet you’ve had this dream, a dream of being a pilot and restoring the honor to your family’s name, since you were back on Alderaan. Well, you’ve yet to fly a combat mission and you’re already about to wash out of the pilot ranks. Here’s your last chance. So, do you stay or do you go?”

Tainer’s jaw worked for several moments, but he made no sound. Then: “I stay. Sir.” His voice suggested that he was speaking in spite of a deep stab wound.

“Good. Dismissed.”

When Tainer was gone, Janson let out a low whistle. “Wedge, I’m not criticizing … but that was the coldest maneuver I’ve seen in a long time.”

“You fly through vacuum, you sometimes need cold-space lubricants instead of blood.” Wedge slumped wearily back in his chair. Suddenly he felt impossibly tired, and wondered how many pilots would regularly bring him problems like these.

Kell strapped himself into his seat, an effort made a little difficult because the cockpit was so tight around him, and flipped the four switches igniting his X-wing’s fusial thrust engines—actually, igniting the ersatz engines on this X-wing simulator. Simulators being as sophisticated and realistic as they were, it was sometimes an effort to distinguish them from reality; they even used gravitational compensators to simulate zero gee during deep-space mission simulations.

Around him, in the viewscreens that simulated the X-wing’s transparisteel canopy, he saw a fighter launch bay; he knew the real one was actually half a klick above him, much closer to the lunar surface.

His board indicated that all four engines were live and performing at near-optimal levels. “Gold One has four starts and is ready. Primary and secondary power at full. All diagnostics in the green.”

His comm system crackled. “Gold Two, identical report. Ready to fly.”

Kell didn’t know who Gold Two was; the other pilots in this Gold group mission had been sealed into their simulators already by the time Kell had arrived for the mission. He wondered if they’d been getting in a few minutes extra practice before the exercise. He wondered if he should have been doing the same.

Gold Two’s voice, distorted through the comm system, was not deep but seemed to be male; odd pronunciation suggested that Basic was not his native tongue.

“Gold Three, everything is nominal. Ready to go.” Those were the mechanical tones of Piggy, the Gamorrean. Kell was interested in seeing how that pilot flew; Piggy was the one candidate trainee who was physically even broader than Kell, even more uncomfortable in the standard X-wing cockpit.

“Gold Four, everything nominal, ready to go.” A female voice. Kell had met several female candidates trying out for places in this squadron, but comm distortion kept him from being able to match this voice to anyone he’d met.

Lieutenant Janson’s voice crackled in his ear, not distorted at all; Kell stiffened. “Launch in sixty,” Janson said. “We have incoming spacecraft, eyeballs and squints, screening a capital ship. Engage and hold them ten klicks from base. Your job is to keep them off us long enough to launch our transports. You fail, we die. Training protocol one-seven-nine is in effect. Control out.”

Kell tried to force his shoulder muscles to relax. He switched the comm over to a direct channel to his wingman. “Gold Two, what’s training protocol one-seven-nine?”

“We don’t know, One.”

“We? Who’s we?”

“Gold Two, One.”

Kell opened his mouth to ask for a clarification, saw that the chrono was down to ten seconds, and decided to wait.

At five seconds he activated his repulsorlift engines and rose a few meters into the air. At one second he nudged the stick forward, made sure he was aligned perfectly with the tunnel exit from the hangar, and kicked in the thrusters. A visual check showed the other members of his group doing the same.

His X-wing punched out through the magnetic containment field at the end of the tunnel, into hard vacuum—

Straight into the incoming fire from a group of four TIE bombers, dupes already so close he could clearly see them with the naked eye.

Kell snapped up on his starboard wing, put all shields forward, bracketed one of the oncoming dupes and pulled the trigger even before the brackets could glow with the green of a laser lock, and pulled up in an arc that carried him to starboard and away from the lunar surface. He saw the rear edges of his control surfaces brighten with the glow of an explosion behind him. Communication from his R2 unit scrolled over his data screen: CONFIRM ONE KILL GOLD ONE.

Panicky, incomprehensible chatter came over his comm system; Kell shouted it down. “Quiet! Strike foils to attack position! Intelligence was wrong, the intruders are already all over the base. Two, stay with me, we’re going up after our original objective. Three, Four, do a fly-by over the base and report damage.”

He heard a chorus of subdued acknowledgments and saw Gold Two pull up to his port rear quarter. Then he tried the comm again: “Control, come in. Gold One to Control.”

No answer.

His sensor unit showed three remaining TIE dupes below, at just above ground level—then two, as Gold Three scored a kill. But ahead and above, now at a distance of four klicks and closing, were thirty-six TIE fighter blips: three full squadrons. They maintained separation, were not converging on Gold One and Two.

Gold Four’s voice crackled over the comm system. “One, the launch tunnels are down, all of them. They’ve been bombed out of existence.”

“Even the main tube? The transport exit? That’s the only one that concerns us.”

“A hundred meters of collapsed rubble, One. Nobody’s coming out of that.” Four’s voice sounded upset even across comm distortion. Kell wanted to tell her, Calm down, it’s only a simulator run. Nobody real is dead.

But he had other problems. Control had given him a clear set of mission goals … and then had changed the mission parameters and invalidated all of them. What should he do now? And what was that damned training protocol Control had cited just before they launched?

“One Group, our mission is scrubbed,” he said. “Our status is omega. Three, Four, get to us and we’ll punch a hole out of here.”

Three and Four acknowledged just as the range-to-target indicator dropped below two klicks. This meant the oncoming enemy was within their weapon range … and that Gold One and Gold Two were within range of the enemy’s targeting.

They could either bug out and suffer long-range potshots of the enemy on their way back to Gold Three and Four, or try to punch their way through, get back a little of their own, and loop back to their comrades, hoping that their attack might leave the enemy in some disarray. The latter course was potentially suicidal. Kell said, “Gold Two, let’s get out of here—”

Gold Two’s reply was a weird, warbling yell. His X-wing headed straight toward the oncoming squadron. Little needles of green Imperial laser fire came lancing in, none too close to him.

“Gold Two, return to formation. Gold Two …” Kell cursed. Had Two’s comm unit malfunctioned? That would be in keeping with the foul-up nature of this mission. “All right, Gold Two, I’m your wing.” He continued in pursuit of Two and prepared to cover him.

Two’s course carried him straight toward the center of the port squadron. The enemy’s laser fire now flashed thick around him, and Kell saw some of it dissipating meters ahead of Two’s fighter, stopped by its shields. Two was performing the most dangerous and most effective sort of fighter maneuver, the head-on approach, but against an entire squadron … and twelve-to-one odds made it likely he’d end up being vaped.

Time to change those odds. Kell lost a little relative altitude so that Gold Two would be less likely to wander across his field of fire, then switched his lasers over to dual-fire, giving him less punch but a much higher rate of fire. He hit the etheric rudder, slewing his bow to port while maintaining his current course, then traversed his bow back to starboard—and as fast as his targeting brackets panned across the line of TIE fighters and went green to indicate laser lock, he fired, sending streaks of destructive red light toward the enemy. The musical tones of successive laser locks filled his cockpit.

He saw distant light flares indicating he and Two had managed at least to graze some targets. His data screen showed one kill and a graze for Kell, just a graze for Two. He returned more incoming fire and juked as the oncoming TIEs were suddenly on them, then past them—

Time to come around in a tight loop and hit the rear guard if the TIEs had one, fall upon the TIEs from the rear if they didn’t. But, dammit, he wasn’t lead fighter, the erratic Two was. He found Two visually and on the sensors; the pilot was rolling out and coming around in a tight starboard loop. Kell kept with him.

Sensors showed four TIE fighters coming around to engage them; the other fighters were continuing on toward their objective. Closer to the lunar surface, Gold Three and Four were approaching that remaining line of seven TIEs in the weakened squadron. Good; they were obviously going to plow through the weakest link in the attackers’ chain. There were no blips remaining from the four TIE bombers; Three and Four must have finished them.

Two was lining up for another head-on run, but Kell saw the four TIE fighters spreading out in box formation. “Two, break off. They’re setting up for you. Follow me in; I’m lead now.”

Two ignored him, accelerating even faster and replying with another wavering war cry.

Kell gritted his teeth. All right. Let’s see if I can save him in spite of himself. He let Gold Two continue to increase the distance between them. He switched over to proton torpedoes.

The oncoming fighters were arrayed like the corners of a two-dimensional box, and Two was headed straight for the lower-left corner. All four TIE fighters began spraying laser fire at him.

Kell pointed his nose up, caught the upper-left eyeball in his brackets. They immediately went red, indicating torpedo lock, and he fired. At this range, the TIE fighter had plenty of time to dodge or range the torpedo … but in so doing, he’d have to break off his own attack against Two. Kell rolled up on his starboard strike foil, targeted the upper-right corner the same way, and fired again.

The two TIEs he’d targeted broke off their approach, going to evasive maneuvers in order to elude the torps. The other two continued firing. Kell rolled over to bring the lower-right eyeball into position. That fighter must have had a sensor unit that could detect torpedo locks; it immediately began evasive maneuvers.

He heard comm chatter that reassured him: “You vaped him, Three. I’m your wing.” “Got it, Four. There’s one coming up on my tail—” “He’s mine.”

Then Two’s X-wing, invisible against the blackness of space, suddenly flared back into Kell’s vision. It exploded, an expanding ball of orange and yellow.

A dull weight settled into Kell’s stomach. He knew the real Gold Two was unhurt, probably now emerging from his simulator … but Control would probably blame Kell for failing to save him. Failing to save him in spite of himself.

He flipped weapons control back to lasers, linking them for quad fire. His target momentarily ceased evasive maneuvers, probably thinking he’d broken Kell’s torpedo lock and was out of danger. As soon as his laser brackets went green, Kell fired. His lasers shredded the eyeball, one lancing beam slicing the port wing clean off at the pylon and two others punching through the cockpit. The TIE fighter didn’t blow up, but it did explosively vent its cockpit atmosphere and sailed past Kell on a ballistic trajectory that would end on the simulated surface of Folor.

That left Kell with three immediate foes. No, two: One of his torpedoes caught its luckless target, turning him into a rapidly expanding cloud of gas and shrapnel. But his other intended torpedo victim had eluded the explosive device, and that TIE fighter and Two’s original target were now wingmates looping around to get behind him.

Kell pulled back on the stick, attempting as tight a turn as the X-wing could manage. TIE fighters were actually more maneuverable than X-wings out of atmosphere, but that meant less if they were being flown by indifferent pilots, as these eyeball drivers seemed to be.

He was at the top of his loop, staring relative-down at his pursuers and the surface of Folor beyond, when red laser fire from moonward sliced through one pursuer and a torpedo from the same point of origin destroyed the other. He checked his sensor board and whistled. “Good firing, Three, Four.”

Piggy’s mechanical voice: “Thank you, sir. The eyeballs are breaking off. Shall we pursue?”

They were indeed heading off. But why wasn’t Kell’s canopy fading to black, indicating that the exercise was over?

Kell thought about that long enough to take a couple of deep breaths and steady his nerves. “No, they’re heading back to their carrier. Which means we have more incoming. Did anyone ever get a signal from Control?”

“No, sir.”

“No.”

“Then we have to assume Folor Base is a loss and we’re all that’s left. Close and follow my heading.” Relative to Folor’s surface, he stood his X-wing on its tail, then called up his nav program.

Had this been a real attack and Folor Base unable to launch its transports, he would have been expected to get all viable forces to safety and later link up with other New Republic units. So he plotted a quick jump to get them away from Folor and to an unoccupied spot in space—somewhere from which he could set up a more sophisticated course to Allied-controlled space.

The other two X-wings grouped with him. As soon as he had a navigation solution and had left the moon far enough behind to be free of its gravity well, he transmitted the course to the others. “All right. On my mark, three, two, one, execute!”

But instead of elongating into brilliant stripes of light, the first visual sign that a hyperspace jump was being successfully executed, the stars faded to nothingness. Kell’s canopy rose and harsh artificial light made him wince.

Janson gathered the four pilots together at a table beside the quad group of simulators and Kell got his first look at his wingman.

Gold Two was not human. He was definitely humanoid, with arms, legs, torso, and head arranged in a comfortably recognizable fashion. But, though nearly as tall as Kell, he was very lean, covered in short brown fur, with an elongated face, huge brown eyes, a broad, flattened nose, and a mouth full of squarish white teeth. His were features better suited to a draft animal than a sapient being—but for the inquisitive, luminously intelligent quality of his eyes. He also had a head of hair that would be the envy of many a human, male or female; as Kell arrived at the table, Gold Two was tugging his hair free of an elastic band and allowing it to shake out into a waterfall of midback-length chestnut brown.

Kell tried to rein in his irritation at the other pilot’s blatant disregard of orders and protocol. He extended a hand. “Kell Tainer.”

The alien took his hand and shook it in human fashion. “We are Flight Officer Hohass Ekwesh.”

“We? Is that a royal we?” That would explain the alien’s apparent disdain for procedure.

“No, a collective—”

“Biographies can wait,” Janson said. “We’re here to review performance, remember?”

Kell stiffened up at the reprimand. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. All right. Four, you had two kills and did a good job on your reconnaissance fly-by. Three, three kills, and initiative points for double-checking Tainer’s hyperspace calculations.”

“Triple-checked, sir. I also ran the numbers in my head.”

Kell glared at the Gamorrean. “And did my numbers check out?”

The Gamorrean nodded. “They were inelegant numbers, but perfectly functional, and correct.”

“Gold Two, you scored no kills, disobeyed orders twice—though we have to drop one of those because Mr. Tainer yielded lead to you, even if it was a bit retroactive—and managed to get yourself killed through bad tactics.” Janson paused over the datapad. He kept his attention on the data before continuing—possibly, Kell thought, in order to keep from having to meet Kell’s eyes. “Gold One, very impressive. Five kills, an instant ace if it were real life, including one snap-shot while your strike foils were still in flight position. I’m saving that one for instructional holos. Good choice of new orders when the mission parameters changed. All in all, close to perfect.”

Janson glanced around among them. “Now, for scoring. This mission was worth two thousand, with bonuses possible for exceptional performance. Gold Four, thirteen hundred fifty. Gold Three, twelve hundred. Gold Two, twenty-three hundred. Gold One, zero.”

“What?” The word exploded from Kell. “Lieutenant, I think you’ve got that backward.”

Janson finally met his gaze, and nodded. “That’s right. It is backward. But still correct. Didn’t you hear me cite training protocol one-seven-nine?”

“I did, but I don’t know what that means.”

Janson smiled. “Piggy, it seems to me I heard you telling your wingman over your private channel what that protocol represented. Would you please inform your group commander?”

Piggy cleared his throat; through the mechanical translator, the sound emerged as an ear-popping burst of static. “It is a scoring variation. In order to encourage cooperation, particularly among trainees who have not been together long, each wingman earns the points his wingman scored.”

“That’s—” Kell heard his voice try to crack. He lowered his tone, tried again, but couldn’t keep the anger from his words. “That is manifestly unfair. Is it going on my permanent record that way? A zero for what you called a near-perfect performance?”

“Certainly it’s unfair.” Janson closed down his datapad. “Take it up with the wingman who ended up with all your points. For now, dismissed. I recommend you all talk it over together at DownTime. You’re through for the day, but this is an order: Do not discuss your performance or the mission parameters with other pilot candidates until they’ve concluded the exercise. Understood?” At their chorus of affirmatives, Janson brusquely waved them toward the exit from the simulator chamber.

5

It was just over three hundred paces along one broad cut-stone corridor, down a shuddering, clanking escalator, and through a small chamber to the cantina known as DownTime, and Kell glared at his wingman every step of the way. Finally, in the final chamber before they reached DownTime, the long-faced alien faced him. “I am sorry, Flight Officer Tainer.”

“Why did you do it? Fly off on your own, disobey orders?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? If you’re going to mutiny, you really ought to remember why.”

“It is not so simple.” The alien paused to consider his next words, and the delay brought the four pilots into DownTime.

This was a large chamber cut from living stone back when the Folor Base had been an active mining colony. It was a large gallery, but its size was not what kept visitors from seeing the far wall; the absence of illumination, other than glows from neon decorations and holoprojectors, was to blame.

Kell led them to a four-seat table against one wall, but Piggy pointed to a much longer table nearby. “We’ll be joined by other candidates,” he said, his mechanical voice cutting efficiently through the cantina’s ambient noise, and Kell had to agree.

When they were seated, Kell turned back to the long-faced alien. “You were saying.”

Gold Four laughed. Kell turned his attention to her for the first time.

By the standards of DownTime, they had pretty good available light, most of it a glaring cyan from a nearby holo advertising Abrax cognac, so he got a good view of her—and was stunned by it.

If he could have created a holo of what he thought the perfect female pilot would be, Gold Four would have matched it exactly. She was tall and slender, with light hair, probably blond in normal light, worn long in a ponytail. Her features were even and expressive; hers was the sort of face that could go from military blankness to unusual beauty just by assuming a smile, and she was smiling now.

Kell covered up his sudden discomfiture by growling, “What’s so funny?” He discovered that his mouth was dry.

She stuck out a hand. “Sorry. Tyria Sarkin. You’re just so relentless it struck me as amusing.” Her voice was low and she spoke with an accent, a rich roll that was as enchanting as her appearance.

He shook her hand and grinned a little glumly. “It’s less funny when you end up with vacuum for a mission score.”

“I suppose. I’m sorry.”

“I will answer,” the alien said. “First, please: I am Runt to my friends and fellows, even when they are angry with me.”

Kell frowned. “Why ‘Runt’?”

“It is accurate. Compared to my siblings, I am tiny. None of them would fit into a fighter cockpit. So. You asked why I did not remember doing what I did. I am beginning to remember. But I did not recall before because it was not I doing that. It was the pilot.”

Tyria asked, “Which pilot?”

“Me.”

Kell slumped, momentarily defeated by the circuitousness of Runt’s answers, and put his head down on the table. He immediately regretted it: His forehead adhered to some dark, nameless substance there. He pulled himself free and began scraping away the stain left on his skin. “I’m not reading you, Runt.”

Tyria said, “I think I am. Runt, are you talking about many organisms, or many minds?”

Runt smiled with the relieved satisfaction of someone who has finally gotten a point across. “Minds.”

“You have many minds, and one of them is the pilot?”

“Yes! Yes.”

Kell snorted. “Your pilot mind owes me twenty-three hundred points and deserves a good beating.”

Runt looked solemnly at him. “We know. We are sorry. He, my pilot, has earned many such beatings. And transfers from many units. I think soon you will see the last of us.”

Kell was relieved of the need to respond by the arrival of the waiter, which was heralded by a repetitive squeaking. The waiter was a 3PO unit, a protocol droid, but this one was unlike most of the ones Kell had seen: Most were all gold tone or silver, but the waiter was mostly silver with several gold parts, and squeaked with each step. Kell said, “I’ll have—”

“Wait,” the droid said pleasantly but firmly, in the melodious voice all 3PO units seemed to share. “In the absence of a hierarchy of rank among you, I will default to ancient protocols and have the lady’s order first. My lady?”

Tyria smiled. “Lum. A good one.”

Kell said, “I’ll have—”

“Wait,” said the droid in the same tone as before. “You have now annoyed me twice. This means you will order last of all, but I will still take your order correctly. If you annoy me three times, you would do well not to drink what I bring you.” He turned to Piggy. “My lord?”

“A shot of Churban brandy,” said the Gamorrean. “And a bucket of cold water.”

“That sounds good,” said Runt. “The same for us. Me.”

The droid turned back to Kell. Kell waited until he was certain the droid was ready for him before speaking. “Corellian brandy. And a wet napkin. Please.”

The droid bowed and departed. Kell heaved a sigh. “Not my day. Even the waiters around here are tyrants.”

Tyria turned her smile on him. “That’s just Squeaky. You’ll get used to him. He has a good heart. Or whatever serves droids for a heart.”

“Why is an expensive protocol droid slinging drinks in a stony hole in the ground? That doesn’t make sense.”

“He does what he wants. He was manumitted years ago. The Runaway Droid Ride, you remember?”

Kell frowned. “I don’t.”

She leaned in close, the better to be heard. “Among droids, and some pilots, he’s famous. He was on the Tantive IV when Darth Vader captured Princess Leia Organa several years back. The humans aboard ship were killed, but he and the other droids ended up on Kessel. He kept inventories of spice shipments for the penal colony.

“Then, one day, he arranges for a whole bunch of the colony’s servitor droids to visit an Imperial freighter that had landed to pick up a load of spice. They arrive over several standard hours, so as not to make the guards suspicious, but they don’t leave. And then the freighter takes off and escapes.”

“He flew it? I thought droids were forbidden to pilot spacecraft. Deep-down programming inhibitions.”

“They are, except for Vee Ones and a few special cases. He didn’t actually act as pilot. What he did was reprogram the ship’s autopilot to fly them in terrain-following mode a couple of hundred klicks away from the spaceport, out of range of the port’s defensive batteries, then punch up out of the atmosphere and jump out of the system. But what he forgot”—her expression turned merry—“was that due west of the spaceport was a series of canyons and mountain ridges, and his terrain-following program was strictly height-above-ground …”

Kell caught on before the other two pilots did and burst out laughing. “So all those escaping droids went on a wild ride.”

Tyria gestured with her hand as though she were following the path of a frantic oscilloscope wave. “So imagine you’re on this tub of a Corellian bulk freighter, and suddenly you’re all over the map, up and down, ‘Whee!’ ‘Aaah!’ ‘Whee!’ ‘Aaah!’ for more than a hundred klicks …”

Runt and Piggy joined in the laughter. Runt’s was a hyperkinetic wheezing, nearly an animal bray; Piggy’s was a pleasant, deep gruntlike noise, one which his implant was apparently programmed not to translate.

The laughter settled. “Anyway,” Tyria said, “they survived, and he came to the Alliance with a bulk freighter and a lot of valuable information about Kessel—such as who was sentenced to serve there and what sort of supplies and defenses the Imperial garrison had. So Squeaky was given his freedom. He doesn’t even have a restraining bolt port anymore. And he earns his living like people do.”

Kell nodded. “By offering insult to those he serves.”

“You know what I mean.”

Runt turned to Kell. “So. You would not release us from the subject. We should not release you until it is done. You will forgive us for our mistake?”

“Sure. But tell your pilot mind I’m going to ride him hard if he fouls up again.”

“I will do that. He deserves it.”

Squeaky returned with their glasses and buckets. Kell went to work on his sticky forehead with the napkin Squeaky gave him. As the droid departed, Tyria glanced at the entry-way and straightened up. “The second wave has arrived.”

The others turned to look. Approaching them were two men in pilot suits; with them was an R2 unit. Both men had been through rough times in the past: One would have been quite handsome but for the long, wicked scar that puckered his left cheek, crawled across his nose, and marred his left forehead, while the other, taller man had a prosthetic shell over the upper portion of the left half of his face.

The one with the scar said, “More survivors of Lieutenant Janson’s bait-and-switch mission scenario?”

Kell managed a mirthless chuckle and gestured for them to sit. “You two just get out?”

The pilot with the prosthetic headgear nodded. The portions of his face still exposed showed lean features, a cold blue eye, and a thin, immaculately trimmed mustache and beard that suggested ex-Imperial warlord more than New Republic fighter. “Ton Phanan. This is Loran and his R2 unit, Vape. The others in our group for the simulator mission were Chedgar and a Bothan who calls himself Grinder. Chedgar was still arguing about the scoring when we left, but I think it’s because he knows he’s about to be washed out.” He leaned back in his chair, laced his fingers behind his head in an attitude of blissful relaxation. “I just made out like a pirate on points; shot down one eyeball and got credit for Loran’s three. I could get to like this assignment.”

Kell introduced his companions, then took another look at the man with the livid scar. There was something familiar about the pilot, about the man’s dramatic shock of black hair and emerald eyes, about his poise and ease among the others … “Loran? Not Garik Loran? The Face?”

Phanan sat forward to take another look at his companion; Tyria did likewise. Piggy and Runt merely looked quizzical.

The scarred pilot nodded, looking rueful. “That’s me.”

“I thought you were dead! Seven, eight years ago. The story broke just before the news about the first Death Star.”

“We are sorry,” said Runt. “It is obvious we should have heard of this man, but we have not.”

“Maybe it’s just a human thing,” Kell said. “The Face. The most famous child star of Imperial holodramas. Like The Black Bantha and Jungle Flutes. He made Win or Die and Imperial military recruitment went up five percent. You never saw them?”

The two nonhumans shook their heads. Phanan obviously had heard of Loran; he grinned wickedly at this sudden revelation about his companion’s past.

Tyria had heard of him as well; her jaw was slightly agape. Finally she said, “I had such a crush on you when I was twelve …”

The scarred pilot snorted. “Don’t feel bad. I was hand-picked to be the boy most likely to be the subject of crushes.”

“What happened to you?” she asked. “Everyone said that Alliance extremists killed you.”

He shrugged. “Almost. About the time I was trying to make the transition to teenaged roles, some ex-Alliance extremists kidnapped me. They wanted to kill me as a demonstration to those who aided the Empire in civilian roles.” His voice was melodious, controlled, exactly what Kell would expect in a onetime actor. “They thought it would be a blow to Imperial morale.”

“It was certainly a blow to the morale of young girls,” Tyria said.

“But first they decided to show me what the Empire was all about. I got the hard-core briefing on Imperial military and Intelligence activities. Then, when they were set to kill me, an Imperial commando rescue mission struck. That’s where I picked up my little facial blemish, a graze from a laser blast. The two sides damn near killed each other, with only a couple of commandos left alive. I was a real mess, emotionally as well as physically, so I hid from the Imps. I decided not to be found until I could sort things out. Since my body was missing and never turned up, they reported me dead and claimed kidnapping me was an approved Rebel mission, which it wasn’t.”

Tyria looked delighted. “But where have you been all these years?”

“With some members of my extended family. I grew up on Pantolomin, but my people were from Lorrd originally, so when I got back to civilization my parents arranged to send me there. From Lorrd it was an easy step to reach the Alliance. My parents had invested my earnings pretty well, so I never lacked for money when hiding out.”

“If you don’t mind the question …” Tyria looked a little distressed. “Are you allergic to bacta? Is that why you still have your scar?”

“No. I just kept it. A little reminder I earned from people I helped quite a bit when I was young.” He shrugged.

Phanan held up a hand. “I’m the one allergic to bacta. That’s why I’m twenty percent mechanical, and gaining.” He smiled at Tyria. “But every human cell longs to become better acquainted with this lady.”

She shot him a look of amused scorn. “Is this going to be one of those units where there’s one female pilot, me, constantly being pursued by every jockey with nothing better to do?”

Phanan sat forward and grasped her hand. His voice became low, melodramatic in tone. “Tyria, I’ve just met you, and already I love you. And don’t think I love you for your looks, which are stunning, or your body, which is stellar, or your manner, which is bold and inflames me with desire. No, I love you because I hear you’re a Jedi in training, and I need all the powerful friends I can get.”

She looked distressed and yanked her hand away. “You heard wrong. And you have the manners of a womp rat.”

Kell said, “Are you really a Jedi in training?”

“No. I have just a little, a very little, control over the Force. But I’ve been working on it for years and haven’t improved on it much.” She managed a wry smile. “The Force is weak in this one.”

Satisfied that his forehead was as close to normal as he could make it, Kell discarded his napkin. “Have you ever met Luke Skywalker?”

She nodded. “He put me through some exercises. A lot of them, really. And he was so nice when he told me he didn’t think I’d ever progress very far in my control of the Force. That this dream I’d had for so long was never going to come true.”

The scarred pilot said, “You know, if I had even the tiniest control over the Force, what I’d do with it?”

She shook her head.

“On those long missions, I’d scratch that little spot in the center of my back I can never reach …”

She stood up fast enough to rattle her tankard of lum. “Go ahead, make fun.”

“Oh, come on. You think Skywalker doesn’t do that?”

“I don’t have time for this. I have things to do.” She headed off toward the exit, her stride suggesting she was furious.

Phanan twisted to watch her go. “Can I walk you to your quarters?” he called after her.

“No!” She didn’t look back.

“Can I help you with your things?”

“No!”

“What can I do for you?”

“Shoot yourself!” Then she was out the entry way.

Phanan settled back in his chair, looking morose. “I’ve done that a couple of times. Shooting myself. Accidents. It’s not fun.”

Kell glared. “Thanks, Phanan, Face. That helped a lot.”

The scarred pilot shrugged, apologetic.

Phanan ignored him. He looked around, raised his hand. “Waiter? Hey, you, the bucket of bolts. We could use some service, right now.”

Kell grinned. “Phanan, you just named your own punishment.”

The next simulated mission was an ambush on a volcanic world. Kell escaped that one damaged but alive. He heard that Runt had once again been vaporized without scoring a kill, and that Lieutenant Myn Donos, senior ranking pilot candidate, was not required to undergo the scenario; Kell wondered why.

On another simulator mission, Kell was paired with Runt again. In the exercise, Green Squadron and a squad of TIE interceptors converged on an asteroid field; Green Squadron was to defend the space station concealed there, the interceptors to find and destroy it.

Eight klicks from the engagement zone, Runt let out another wild, warbling whoop and kicked his thrusters, moving out ahead of his wingman.

Kell centered his targeting bracket on his partner’s X-wing. It went red, the computer giving him the tone of a good lock, a split second later.

A moment later Janson’s voice sounded in his ear. “Green Five, what are you doing?”

Kell tensed at the sound of that voice and silently cursed himself for doing so. “Just trust me on this one, Control.”

Runt’s irritating war cry cut off. Then he said, “Six to Five, are you going to fire on us?”

“Negative, Six.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Getting your attention. Do I have it?”

“Yes, Five.”

“Then get back in formation. Right now. I’m lead, you’re wing. Do you read me?”

“Yes, Five.” Runt decelerated a notch, returning to his proper position behind Kell.

Runt was good until battle was well under way. Then, when he and Kell each had one kill, he belted out his war cry again and rolled out of formation, attempting a pursuit of two interceptors.

Kell hastily said, “You have lead, Six,” and followed.

When the lead interceptor tried to peel off and circle back behind Green Six, Kell used his trailing position to cut a tighter circle and vaporized the Imperial craft. It took him a standard minute to pull up abreast of Runt again, and in that time Runt smoked his own opponent with a torpedo.

Kell keyed his comm unit. “Five to Six.”

The war cries ceased, but it was a moment before Runt replied. “Six here.”

“Just checking. Try to rein your pilot in whenever you don’t need him; he’s too noisy.”

“We read you, Five.”

“Good. Keep the lead; I’m on your wing.”

Kell ended that episode with only two kills; an interceptor smoked him with a pop-up shot from behind a rapidly twirling asteroid. Still, he didn’t feel too bad about it; he was actually getting through to Runt, forcing him to respond.

Kell’s canopy seal broke and the simulator canopy opened. Beyond were bright light and Janson.

Kell’s gut went cold and he suppressed the urge to stay under cover. Intellectually, he knew he was in no danger from Janson, but he still felt a jolt of fear every time he saw the veteran pilot. In spite of it, he clambered out of the simulator and stood before the squadron’s second-in-command.

Janson barely glanced at his datapad. “Average earnings this time around, Tainer. But some unorthodox tactics in”—he hesitated over the words—“personnel management worked pretty well. Some bonus points there. Let’s bring up the win-loss ratio a little bit next time; otherwise pretty good. Any questions?”

“Yes, sir. Was it a program that vaped me, or a pilot?”

Janson managed a tight smile. “There’s pilot ego for you—unwilling to accept that a standard program took you out. No, you’re right. It was a pilot. You’ve heard of him. Wedge Antilles. Likes to sit in on these missions from time to time. Dismissed.”

The training took its toll on the roster of candidate pilots.

Chedgar was gone the next day, the victim, Kell believed, of his own paranoia about officer conspiracies against him. The Quarren named Triogor Sllus was washed out two days later, for backhanding a Mon Calamari candidate named Jesmin Ackbar—the niece, Kell learned, of the legendary Admiral Ackbar. A human named Banna, a decent but not extraordinary code-slicer, was caught “improving” his recorded scores; his bunk was empty the next day. Others vanished with no explanation, and Kell wondered if they’d all failed at their last chance at a piloting career. He wondered if he’d be next.

At one of the pilots’ DownTime gatherings, he discussed this with other surviving candidates. “When I arrived to try out for this squadron, I thought I was the only one at the end of my rope as a pilot. But it looks more and more as though all of us are walking in thermal boots on thin ice. Am I wrong?”

Most of the others looked sober. Ton Phanan didn’t; he smiled with diabolic humor. “I have a bit of a problem with luck in combat. Unlike most of you, I’ve seen some of it—”

Tyria snorted. “Braggart.”

“But in five live-fire missions, I’ve been shot down twice and landed successfully three times. Not a good ratio. Between that and all the new prosthetics, I’m sort of an expensive proposition for any commander.”

Runt, his big eyes solemn, said, “We know why we are here. We lose track of ourselves. But Lieutenant Janson says we are doing better, with many thanks to Kell.”

Kell smiled. “You’re worth it. One day you’ll be able to toggle between minds as though they were channels on the holoprojector. Tyria, Face, it’s you two I don’t get. You two don’t act like screwups—”

Phanan glared with his good eye. “Unlike the rest of us, you mean.”

“That’s right. You especially.”

Far from being offended, Phanan grinned at the rejoinder. “Just so that’s clear.”

Face leaned back, relaxed. “I bought my way into the fighter corps, Kell. That’s what my first commander said, and he’s right. I used my own money to purchase an A-wing, under kind of odd circumstances, and to get the training I wanted. Flew two missions with Colonel, I mean General, Crespin’s Comet Group and had to punch out or eat a bomber torpedo. Bought an X-wing next time just for variety … and ended up back at the base run by Crespin, just my luck.

“The general thinks I’m a dilettante who did too much good for the Empire in the old days ever to make up for it. Maybe he’s right … but when he told me I’d never amount to anything, I snapped back at him like an idiot. I said I was just following in his footsteps. Well, that was it for my career. Until this opportunity came up.” He shrugged.

“You’re that rich.”

“Not rich enough to keep buying fighters, no. I hope to be accepted as a real pilot someday. Enough so that if I lose this snubfighter, the Alliance, rather than my personal accounts, will replace it.”

They all turned to Tyria, who looked uncomfortable under their scrutiny. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

“Fair enough,” Face said. “But tell us this: Does whatever it is that brought you here fall within the parameters we’ve been talking about? Something may have wrecked your chances for advancement?”

She was silent, but nodded.

“Interesting,” Face said. “There’s something else. I noticed one of the quartermasters delivering Lieutenant Donos a hard-shell case that suggested ‘laser rifle’ to me—”

Phanan smirked. “There’s another vaped career. You know that sim run on the volcano world? I heard—”

Kell’s comlink beeped. As he reached for it, each of the other pilots’ comlinks also signaled for attention. He turned away from them and activated it. “Flight Officer Tainer.”

The voice was female, impersonal, and, he suspected, recorded. “Your presence is required immediately in the X-wing squadron briefing amphitheater. Repeat, your presence is required immediately in the X-wing squadron briefing amphitheater.” There was a click as the speaker disconnected. Kell heard the comlinks behind him all repeating the same message.

He looked at the others. “I think we have a unit roster,” he said.

6

The briefing amphitheater was a white dome. Several dozen seats were assembled along the wall of one half of the dome; long curved tables, a dais and lectern, and a holoprojector curved along the other half.

Tyria sat at the end of one row of seats. Phanan smoothly moved in to sit beside her, but Kell, uncharacteristically awkward, bumped him out of the way with his hip and sat there instead. “Oh, sorry, Phanan. Were you there? I didn’t see.”

Phanan smiled, unperturbed. “Perhaps you need an optical enhancement. I could arrange for you to lose an eye; then you could put in for one.”

“Thanks, no.”

Ten pilots arrayed themselves among sixty seats; then Wedge Antilles and Wes Janson entered the chamber. The door closed behind them. Kell felt his ears pop as a pressure seal activated.

Janson took a chair by one of the long tables; Wedge stood before the lectern and holoprojector. Without preamble, he said, “I’d like to congratulate you on surviving our initial culling process. We had forty-three candidates; you ten survived. We’d actually hoped to have twelve, a full squadron roster of new pilots, but to put it simply, you ten were good enough and the other thirty-three weren’t.”

Wedge glanced down at his datapad for a moment. “Now to what we’re here for. You ten, plus Lieutenant Janson and myself, are forming a new squadron; that much you know. What you probably don’t know is that we’re doing something a little new.

“Rogue Squadron, the last time it was reorganized, was built with pilots who had a number of intrusion skills. Our new squadron is the reverse: a full-fledged commando unit augmented by X-wing fighters.” He looked among the ten pilots, making eye contact. “As much as anything, it is your secondary skills, some of them barely acknowledged in your records, that have earned your places here. We’ll be doing as much work on the ground—sabotage, subversion, intrusion—as flying.”

Phanan put up a hand. Wedge acknowledged him by pointing. Phanan asked, “Assassination?”

Wedge hesitated over his reply. “If you can find a way for us to infiltrate and surgically destroy an Imperial base without our enemies being able to call it assassination, I want to consult with you after this meeting. Other than that, under my command, members of this unit will never be assigned a task like picking off a speaker at an assembly or walking up to a target and knifing him.”

“That’s fine. I just wanted to know. I actually don’t mind assassination.”

Wedge gave him a cool look before continuing. “At the moment, we are designated Gray Squadron. Put in recommendations for a permanent name; if I see one I like well enough to choose it, the submittor gets a three-day leave on Commenor.

“Now, our roster. Most of you know one another. Because of our shortfall of pilots, Lieutenant Janson and I will be flying with Gray Squadron as well as being in command. Janson, incidentally, is a crack shot with hand weapons and fighter weapons systems; anyone who wants some extra weapons training should consult with him.

“Our next ranking officer is Lieutenant Myn Donos.” Kell looked over to where the emotionless Corellian pilot sat, well away from the other nine. “In addition to his flying duties, Donos is our sniper.

“The rest of you are all of equal rank. For this briefing, I’m going to dispense with the tradition of arranging you by the date of your commission or by your specific flight experience; instead, I’ll rank you by your scoring during our pilot training. So first among equals of you flight officers is Kell Tainer. He’s our backup mechanic when we’re away from our support crew and is our demolitions expert. He also served with distinction among the commandos who helped take Borleias last year.”

Tyria gave Kell a wide-eyed look. She whispered, “Did you really?”

He shrugged. “I planted charges while my buddies returned fire against unfriendlies. Somebody thought it called for extra recognition.”

Wedge cleared his throat to regain everyone’s attention. “Next, Garik Loran—” He was interrupted as Face stood and took a bow; several of the pilots offered mock applause. Amused, Wedge gestured for him to sit, then continued. “Face is one of our insertion experts, proficient in makeup, speaks several languages other than Basic—”

Face called out, “Don’t forget, master actor.”

Wedge nodded amiably. “And sometime cook. You’re peeling tubers on kitchen duty tonight. Do you have anything else to add?”

“Uhhh … No, sir.”

“Falynn Sandskimmer knows a lot about ground vehicles, and is a Y-wing ace.” All glanced at the dark-haired woman from Tatooine; she stared back, an expression somewhere between hard-edged and actively hostile. Her look made her features, which under ordinary circumstances would have been attractive, rather forbidding. “In the absence of our support crew, she’s also in charge of acquisitions.”

Kell raised a hand.

“Mr. Tainer?”

“Speaking of acquisitions, do we have a squadron quartermaster? I’ll want to work with him on the matter of spare parts for the X-wings …”

“We don’t yet, but I’m looking among available personnel for someone who can do that. I’ll let you know.” Wedge looked down at his datapad to find the name of the next pilot. “Ton Phanan is our medical officer.”

Three or four pilots burst out in laughter; the fact that Phanan was at least one-fifth mechanical and not possessed of a healer’s manner was well known. Phanan himself grinned.

Face asked, “Corpsman?”

Phanan shook his head. “No. I used to be Dr. Phanan. Fully licensed to cut you open and weld you shut again.”

Tyria leaned across Kell and whispered, “Why did you give it up?”

He gave her his most diabolic smile and whispered back, “Because I didn’t care for patching up people I don’t care about and do enjoy killing people I hate.”

Tyria drew back with a shudder.

Wedge nodded to the female Mon Calamari sitting on the front row; her chin barbels twitched at the recognition. “Jesmin Ackbar is our communications expert. Voort saBinring, Piggy, is proficient in hand-to-hand combat, and capable of infiltrating Gamorrean units, which will be helpful on certain worlds. Hohass Ekwesh, Runt, has substantial physical strength—nearly three times greater than a human of equal size, and I understand he’s small for a member of the Thakwaash species. Eurrsk Thri’ag, whom most of you have met as Grinder, is our code-slicer.” The Bothan named Grinder sat upright, his gorgeous silvery fur rippling, and nodded at Wedge. Kell didn’t know much about him; he’d kept to himself much of the time, not bonding with any of his flying partners.

Wedge continued, “Tyria Sarkin is one of our intrusion experts; she is a member of the Antarian Rangers from Toprawa, and particularly proficient in silent movement in difficult terrain.”

Kell restrained a whistle. He’d never heard of the Antarian Rangers, but he knew the name Toprawa: a human-occupied planet where members of Alliance Intelligence had staged the critical data that led to the destruction of the first Death Star. Not long afterward, Imperial forces had savagely destroyed the world’s armed forces, incinerated its cities, and sent the entire native population out of the cities to live in undeveloped wilderness. Kell had heard that the surviving inhabitants had to participate in regular rituals of self-degradation before the Imperial conquerors in order to receive food.

Wedge shut down his datapad. “All right, wingmates and designations. I’m Gray Leader or Gray One. I’m taking both designations to limit confusion. Mistress Ackbar, you’ll fly with me as Gray Two.”

The Mon Calamari nodded again. “An honor, sir.”

“Falynn, you’re Three. Grinder, you’re Four.” Both the woman from Tatooine and the Bothan looked unhappy with the pairing. Kell suspected that neither would be pleased with any wingman assignment.

“Kell, you’re Five. Can you guess who’s Six?”

“Runt, sir?”

“You’re developing into something of a genius, Kell.” The others laughed. Wedge continued, “Ton Phanan, Seven. Face, Eight. I want the majority of the squadron’s sarcasm concentrated in one wing pair so we can dispose of it more conveniently.

“Lieutenant Donos, Nine, you’re with Tyria, Ten. Lieutenant Janson is Eleven, paired with Piggy, Twelve. When we break down into four-fighter flights, I’m in charge of One Flight, Kell’s in charge of Two Flight, and Janson’s in charge of Three Flight. Any questions on organization?”

There were none.

“Good. You’re done for the day. Except you, Mr. Tainer: We’ve received the first delivery of new X-wings, four of them so far, and I want you and the mechanics to go over them this evening. Join us in the X-wing hangar in fifteen minutes. Tomorrow, live-fire exercises in the real thing.” Wedge smiled through the pilots’ whoops and cheers, then added, “Dismissed.”

·  ·  ·

Wedge waited until the last of them was gone. “What do you think?”

Janson stretched; tendons popped. “A pretty good roster … if we can keep them out of trouble. Some of them are experienced hard cases.”

“How are you getting along with Tainer?”

Janson slumped in his chair and grimaced. “Oh, outwardly, pretty well. But every time he sees me he shoots me this look of pure hate and knots up into a ball of quivering muscle. He spooks me sometimes. I don’t like being comforted by the presence of my blaster on base; I’d prefer to be able to relax among allies.”

Wedge nodded. “Can you bear up under it for a while longer?”

“I think so.”

“All right. I’d appreciate it if you’d dig us up a squadron quartermaster sometime today. I’ll be with the new snubfighters and then with our guest if you need me.”

Tyria seemed to be in a state of shock as they left the briefing room. Kell asked, “What’s wrong?”

“I was the last one he named,” she said. “I’m last again. The worst pilot in the squadron.”

“No. You’re tenth out of forty-three.”

She glared at him. “The washouts don’t count, Kell.”

“Well, let me put it to you this way. You’re the lowest-rated pilot in a squadron assembled by Wedge Antilles. You’re the worst of this group of elites. Elites, Tyria. And tomorrow, you could be ninth, and the day after, you could be eighth.”

Her expression softened. “Well … maybe. But let me ask you something, Kell. Have you ever been the worst at something?”

He thought about it. “No.”

“I didn’t think so.”

·  ·  ·

The X-wing hangar, so-called because there was only one X-wing squadron on Folor Base and the hangar was given over to its sole use, was cavernously empty. It could have held three full squadrons of fighters, but now was occupied only by nine vehicles.

The largest was the Narra, the Lambda-class shuttle assigned to Gray Squadron. It had been captured not from the Empire but from a rogue Imperial captain who had turned smuggler. This accounted for the way it had been retrofitted, with a hidden, electronically enhanced smuggler’s compartment worthy of Han Solo.

The other eight vehicles were all X-wings. Four had seen combat, the ones belonging to Wedge, Janson, Donos, and Face. Now alongside them were four spotless new fighters. Kell smiled, cheered by the gleaming surfaces, the un-scratched paint and canopies, the sentinel-like quality of the sleeping R2 and R5 units tucked in behind the cockpits, the overall appearance of invincibility.

The man beside him said, “How I hate these things.”

Kell looked at him. Cubber Daine, the squadron’s chief mechanic, was a bit under average height and over average weight, straining a little at the seams of the jumpsuit that might have begun life an orange color but was now so stained with lubricants that it was impossible to be sure. He had intelligent eyes deeply sunk in a face that looked as though it had been sculpted out of chopped meat and hastily decorated with hair.

“You hate X-wings?”

“No, no, no. I hate factory new X-wings. They look so sweet. But then you get in under the panels, and what do you have? Factory defects just waiting to blow up in your face. Assembly mistakes no one noticed. And worst of all, they’re always making improvements at Incom, slipping in these so-called technological upgrades without documenting them, without fully testing them—”

“And without getting your explicit permission.”

Cubber’s face broke out in a broad grin. “You do understand! All right, kid. Let’s pop these things open and see what they’ve done wrong.”

Within a few minutes, Kell decided that Cubber was correct. The rails on which the pilots’ chairs were mounted, so that they could be adjusted forward or back to account for the pilot’s height, seemed to be a glossy black ceramic instead of the stainless metal he was used to; he had no idea how the things would hold up under hard wear. He resolved to make sure there were some of the old-fashioned rails in the replacement parts inventory. The canopy seal on one of the snubfighters was faulty. The inertial compensators, the anti-gravity projectors that kept the pilot from suffering ill effects from acceleration, deceleration, and maneuvering, were smaller than he was used to and lacked the external kinetic rod array that was supposed to supply their internal computers with data about current inertial conditions. One of the four X-wings had a small, rectangular equipment module mounted on its exterior aft of the cargo compartment, but Kell couldn’t find any wiring or other connectors from it into the fighter’s interior.

So when Wedge arrived and asked, “How do they look?” Kell pulled himself out of one engine and said, “Terrible.” Cubber extracted himself from the next one and said, “The worst batch ever.” The rest of Cubber’s crew, crawling over the other two new snubfighters, shouted confirmation in explicit and unpleasant terms.

Wedge stared at Cubber and Kell with the ill-concealed incomprehension with which normal people routinely greet the pronouncements of the interplanetary society of mechanics. He heaved a sigh. “Can they be ready for training exercises tomorrow?”

Cubber looked dubious. “Well, two of them, sure.”

Kell said, “If we get a perfect run-through, first time, on the inertial compensator checks, maybe three.”

Cubber said, “And if a miracle occurs on the extruder valve tests, we could theoretically have all four ready. Maybe.”

Kell kept amusement from his face. There was no such thing as an extruder valve on the X-wing design.

Wedge looked unhappy. “Well, do what you can.”

Kell saluted. “Will do, sir.”

“And when you have a chance, though this isn’t necessary for tomorrow, paint out the red stripes on all the X-wings except mine and Janson’s. Replace them with gray.”

“Will do.”

When Wedge had withdrawn to his personal X-wing on the other side of the hangar, Kell asked, “What do you think? One hour, two?”

Cubber nodded. “One. Unless we do the stripes tonight. Which we won’t. You play sabacc, son?”

“A little. But I’m not very good at it.”

Cubber glared. “Do I look stupid? ‘I’m not very good at it,’ indeed. My six-year-old daughter is a better liar.”

“Well, I lie a little, but I’m not very good at it.”

Cubber snorted and pulled himself back into his engine.

Wedge Antilles wandered around the hangar for the next hour, long enough for the mechanics to grow nervous at his continued, needless presence. They got back at him by loudly telling one another stories of amazing mechanical failures they’d heard about, and the great loss of life that had usually resulted therefrom. Their work was done, but Cubber couldn’t dismiss them while Wedge Antilles was present; it would fly in the face of the story he’d told of the X-wings’ state of readiness.

Finally Kell heard a sound from the far end of the hangar’s exit tunnel: Its magnetic containment field hummed into life, and a moment later the heavy doors just beyond it rolled open. Outside, Kell could see dusty lunar surface, blast craters, the silhouettes of other surface buildings of the onetime mine, the distant lunar horizon, and stars.

Then, a light dot in the distance, gradually growing as it approached. When it was several hundred meters from the tunnel entrance, it resolved itself into a shape Kell recognized.

“Corellian YT-1300 Transport,” he said.

“Not just any YT-1300.” Cubber had moved up beside him. “That’s the Millennium Falcon.”

Kell gave the approaching ship a harder look. “Are you sure?”

“Oh, yes. I was a year on Hoth, passing by that slab of rust and bad wiring every day. I never got to service her—Solo and his Wookiee friend hated for anyone but them to work on her. You can always recognize her by the specific pattern of corrosion.”

Kell heard a distant pop as the ship breached the magcon field, which obligingly permitted the ship through but held the tunnel’s atmosphere within. The twin-pronged prow of the ship dipped a little as it finished navigating the tunnel and reached the hangar proper. The Falcon moved smoothly to the largest bare patch of hangar nearest the tunnel entrance, then rotated in place so the bow was facing back out the tunnel. Only then did it set down, its master displaying considerable skill with the repulsorlift landing engines.

Its boarding ramp descended as Wedge Antilles approached. Down the ramp came General Solo, but not as Kell had seen him on holorecordings. Instead of being an uncomfortable-looking man in a New Republic general’s uniform, Solo wore brown pants and vest and a light tunic much better suited to casual travel. He also wore a broad grin that did much for his craggy features.

He and Wedge embraced, then turned toward the hangar exit. Kell caught a few of their words: “… flight in … diplomatic functions … Zsinj.” Then they were gone.

Cubber clapped Kell on the back. “There’s your brush with greatness, kid. You can tell your children, ‘I saw Han Solo get off his ship once. He ignored me completely.’ C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

“Right.” But Kell lingered and watched for a moment as a gigantic humanoid mass of hair, doubtless Solo’s companion Chewbacca, descended the ramp. The famous Wookiee stood there a long moment, sniffing the air, then uttered a roar—not menacing, but low and resonant, perhaps just announcing his presence or claiming this part of the hangar as his territory. Then the Wookiee ascended the ramp and was gone.

As Kell returned his attention to the X-wing he’d been working on, he heard a scuttling noise. He jumped, then spun around, looking for its source. The sound was what he’d expect if an insect the size of a small floor-scrubbing droid were running around in the hangar. But he caught no sight of such a thing, and the sound ended as soon as he moved.

Cubber was already dismissing the men and waving Kell to follow. “C’mon, kid. Remember sabacc?”

“Right, right.” Kell smoothed down the hair that had stood to attention on the back of his neck. He closed up the last of the X-wing’s engine panels and followed.

“How was your flight in?” asked Wedge.

“Dull, what do you think?” said Han. “But not as bad as a night of diplomatic functions back on Coruscant. Sorry I missed you when you got back from Thyferra, but I was off on another pointless leg of the search for Zsinj.”

They passed through the archway leading into the main access corridor serving most of the hangar chambers.

“You’re not still doing that? I was under the impression that you were on the Mon Remonda and that the Millennium Falcon would be in storage until Zsinj was flushed out.”

Han grinned. It was the roguish grin he offered up when he was among friends and enemies, but never at official functions, never in the presence of holorecorders. “I escaped Coruscant and its endless diplomatic functions with the Mon Remonda mission, but we haven’t had any luck on the Zsinj pursuit in the last few weeks, so it’s all dull procedure and maintenance right now. You know how I feel about procedure and maintenance.”

“So you escaped your escape?”

Han nodded. “Officially, I’m hand-carrying orders regarding the hunt for Zsinj. Unofficially, I’m here to compare and evaluate on-base gambling all over the Alliance.” He sobered. “The orders are variations of the ones Coruscant has sent out recently. They supercede those orders. We’re trying to see whether Zsinj and the other warlords have a tap in on those transmissions.”

“Meaning that if they set up patrols and ambushes that would be really efficient against the old orders but not as good against the new, you have a problem.”

“Right. I have to head out again tomorrow for my next destination—which leaves only tonight for recreation. So, what do you do around here for entertainment?”

“Nothing.” Wedge kept his face straight. “There are no women assigned to Folor Base. Because of the general’s philosophical beliefs, there’s no alcohol, no gambling, and we can’t watch broadcasts from Commenor. This has led to a rather high suicide rate, but there’s no getting around that. We do have some holorecordings of Coruscant diplomatic functions, if you’d like to see them.”

Han wore an expression of growing horror, then it became pure outrage. He pointed a finger at Wedge as though it were a blaster barrel. “You—you—”

Wedge grinned. “I had you going. You believed every painful word. Come on, I’ll introduce you to General Crespin, and then to DownTime, which has the moon’s greatest supply of Corellian brandy. We’ll see if we can put a dent in it.”

“I should never listen to you.”

“No, you shouldn’t.”

“Even Leia finally realized that you’re a liar.”

“Well, she’s right.”

“She always is. But if you ever tell her I said that—”

“I’ll be vaped for sure. I know.”

7

Four X-wings raced through the hangar tunnel and punched through the magcon field into the vacuum surrounding Folor.

“Two Group, form up on me,” said Kell. “Pack it in close. We’re under the eye.” The “eye” was another X-wing, Wedge’s, already on station half a klick above their position.

Runt, Phanan, and Face formed up smartly around him. This didn’t do much to alleviate the tension that had clamped down on Kell as soon as he lit up the engines of the X-wing. Janson wasn’t around to cause his concern; no, this was the old trouble, the tightness, the difficulty in breathing that came to haunt him whenever he was in charge of something. It wasn’t the same in a simulator; now he was piloting a real snubfighter worth a fortune in a mission where sloppy aim or bad maneuver could cost his life or the life of a wingmate.

He forced his shoulders to loosen, tried to bring himself under control. Maybe Wedge wasn’t listening too closely to the comm, couldn’t hear his labored breathing. Maybe no one was monitoring the biodata sensors that were sometimes wired into the chairs of novice pilots. Maybe no one would notice his trouble.

He checked out the data currently reading on his navigational computer—very simple data, as it didn’t involve a hyperdrive jump or even extralunar travel. He transmitted the data to the others, then brought his snubfighter around toward the south. A visual scan showed the rest of Two Group maintaining their positions; sensors showed Wedge still on station and another blip, doubtless related to their objective, straight ahead klicks to the south.

Wedge’s voice broke over their comm systems. “Gentlemen, this is a simple strafing run exercise. The blip on your sensors is not your target. That’s Lieutenant Janson in the Narra, our shuttle. With the shuttle’s personnel retrieval tractor beam, Janson will be maneuvering a target, which will be about three hundred meters behind him. Five and Six will perform their run, then Seven and Eight thirty seconds later. Your orders are simple: Arm at two klicks, fire at a klick and a half, immediately disengage and return to base. There is now a governor on your comm systems; Five and Six will not be able to talk to Seven and Eight, and vice versa. If you hear ‘Abort,’ break off your attack and await orders; it probably means one of you jokers has taken a target lock on the Narra. Any questions?”

Kell said, “No, sir,” and heard Runt repeat it.

“Good hunting, then.”

Kell watched the numbers on the rangefinder spin down at a rapid pace, then saw the faintest shadow of a new blip begin to flicker in and out of existence a short distance behind the Narra. Moments later, he saw the Narra itself, a distant sliver of lightness against the backdrop of some of Folor’s mountains, and saw the target: a sail of reflective cloth about the size of the shuttle when fully deployed. It was not fully deployed now; it twisted and curled in the shuttle’s tractor beam.

With its shape and size continually changing, it would be a challenging shot at one and a half klicks. He addressed the R5 unit situated behind his cockpit: “Reset proton torpedo one to a ten-meter proximity fuse. Communicate with Six’s R2 and instruct him to do the same.”

The R5 beeped confirmation at him. Kell hadn’t given a name to the shiny new droid; that was the privilege of the first pilot to be permanently assigned to this X-wing and its astromech.

At two klicks, he called, “S-foils to attack position.” He reached up and right to throw the appropriate switch, saw the strike foils to port and starboard part into the formation that gave the X-wings their unique profile.

As soon as they locked into place, his heads-up display faded. Kell had a clear sensor view of the target … and no way to lock on to it with his weapons.

“R5, what happened to my targeting?”

The R5’s confused whistle tweeted at him over the comlink, and the data board read UNKNOWN.

“Six, I have no targeting!”

“Five, we have no weapons systems. We have a general failure.”

“Dammit, dammit …” Kell’s guts were going cold so fast it was as though an overenthusiastic refrigeration unit had been installed there. He pointed his X-wing in as direct a path as he could toward the target, corrected to a couple of degrees port to account for the speed of the towing shuttle. With seconds remaining, he checked visually and by sensor to make sure that the torpedo wouldn’t come anywhere near the Narra.

The rangefinder’s numbers rolled down to one and a half klicks. Kell fired, saw the torpedo flash toward the target, saw it miss by forty meters or more. As he pulled up and began the long loop around to orient him back toward Folor Base, he watched the torpedo continue on its ballistic path, eventually slamming into the side of one of the distant mountains, illuminating the mountain slope with a brief, brilliant flash.

“Not too good, Five,” Wedge said. “Seven, Eight, begin your run.”

“Seven, affirmative.”

“Eight, affirmative.”

Kell frowned. Suddenly he could hear Seven and Eight again. Doubtless, since he and Runt were through with the run, Wedge had reenabled their ability to do so. “R5, can you give me views through their telemetry? Seven’s and Eight’s?”

The R5 unit hooted in the affirmative. A moment later two views of the distant target appeared side by side on Kell’s main screen—views that were alike but not identical, so they appeared to be an unmerged stereoscopic image.

“Seven, recommend we set the torps to a broader proximity fuse. That target’s ugly.”

“Good point. Doing so. All right, Eight, strike foils to attack position, now.”

“Affirmative.”

A moment later one of the visual images went to gray. Kell grinned sourly. Seven and Eight were about to experience the same failure he had.

“Eight, my weapons are gone. Some sort of system failure.”

“Seven, my targeting’s shot.”

“Do you still have weapons?”

“Yes.”

“Hold on, I’m transmitting my targeting information to you … wait for the lock … Got it!”

“Firing, Seven. We have detonation … Looks like a kill. But I still don’t have targeting sensors.”

“Mine show a clean kill. Good shot, Eight.”

“You did all the work, I just pulled the trigger. Kind of the way I like it.”

Wedge’s voice crackled in: “Good work, you two. It’s back to base so Three Group can do this. Do not inform anyone who hasn’t gone through this exercise of its parameters. That’s an order.”

“Yes, sir.”

“One out.”

Kell gritted his teeth. Once again, because of one of Wedge Antilles’s oh-so-clever tricks, he had come out looking like an incompetent. He’d worked very hard to overcome that first score of zero in the simulators, worked hard enough to put him at the top of the pilots roster, and now it was starting all over again.

The punching dummy was shaped like a man—that is, if you fed a man until he was so fat that his features half disappeared in folds of flesh, then mounted him on a flexible rod in the Folor Base gymnasium. Kell shook his head; he certainly wouldn’t want to be treated that way. Nor would he want to suffer the damage he was inflicting on the dummy.

He started with a one-two combination that rocked the dummy’s head, deforming it temporarily; in seconds, the puttylike memory material inside began to restore the head to its proper shape, but until then it bore the marks of Kell’s fists. He switched to a knifelike blow with the edge of his hand to the thing’s neck, stepped in for a forearm shot to the nose, stayed in close to bring his knee up into the dummy’s rib cage twice. Both times, he heard cracking from within the dummy; it was constructed to feel like flesh, to give way like flesh and bone when the assaults were powerful enough, then return to its pristine state.

He danced back, bobbing, weaving, threw a left-hand feint, followed up with a right hook that whipped the dummy’s head partway around. Very satisfying … though not as gratifying as if it were the real Wedge, the real Janson.

Kell knew he wasn’t the best hand-to-hand fighter around. His instructor in the commandos was a woman half his weight, a head shorter than he. She could throw him around the mats at will and could hit harder than he ever could. But he was big, fast, and trained, so he figured he was in the top ten percent of unarmed combatants in the military. It was just something he was good at.

Too bad it didn’t help him on Folor Base. He spun, planted a powerful side kick to the dummy’s sternum, watched the rig sway far back on its flexible pole and then snap upright.

Just like his tenure here on Folor. If all his skills were as polished as his fighting, all his objectives here seemed as resilient as that dummy. He gave them everything he had and still they popped upright, unmoved, undamaged, unmarked.

“Are you mad at the dummy? Or is this a mad mind?”

Kell spun. Runt was seated on a balance bar, watching curiously, his brown eyes open wider than usual. The fur that covered his body was fluffed and disordered in places, patchy with moisture in others, clear signs of a recent shower and inadequate drying. “Uhhh … I guess it’s a mad mind,” Kell said.

“It seems to be a competent mind. You seem to be able to abandon it when you want. Else you would be attacking us.”

Kell smiled. He still couldn’t quite work his mind around his wingmate’s logic or figure out Runt’s circuitous approaches to subjects of conversation. “I suppose so. This ‘mind’ works better if you can shut it off at will.”

“Yes. Our pilot mind is getting better that way. Have you noticed? You can cut through its haze sometimes. This is good.”

“I’m glad.”

“But you have another mind that worries us.”

“Us, as in all of Runt?”

Runt shook his head, sending his ponytail swaying. “Us as in all the squadron. All who admit to worry, that is.”

Kell picked up his towel from the floor, threw it over his shoulders, and sat up on the bar beside Runt. “I don’t get it.”

“You have a bad mind in you. You think we do not see it? It speaks to you when you fail, and lashes you with your failure.”

Kell turned away from him, looking back at the dummy. Its features restored to normalcy, it seemed to be grinning at him. Grinning with amused indifference. Or contempt. “There’s nothing wrong with that. Identifying failure correctly is just part of analysis.”

“Then it keeps at you. For days. Weeks. Eating at you. Like some animal that has crawled into you and now wishes to chew its way out.”

“Call it my motivational mind.”

“No. It is not. It makes you think things that are not true. It is your enemy. I am your friend. I wish I could turn my guns on it.”

There was such bitterness in Runt’s voice that Kell turned back to him, surprised. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Falynn and Grinder also failed today’s mission. Do you know where they are? In the cafeteria. Eating. Laughing. Looking forward to tomorrow’s missions. They and others have settled in around Myn Donos and are trying to make him smile. Where are you? In the training room, punishing yourself and a dummy.”

“Is Tyria there?”

Runt blinked at the sudden change of subject. “Yes.”

“Have they been there long?”

“No.”

“Well, I haven’t eaten. I think I’ll take a quick shower and join them. You coming?”

“I do not think you have heard what I have said.”

“Of course I have. I’ll see you there in a few minutes.”

As he walked toward the showers, Kell heard Runt breathe a long sigh.

It was as Runt had said. Most of Gray Squadron was at the longest table in the officers’ cafeteria. Falynn and Jesmin had Donos pinned between them. They were laughing as Kell approached; Runt waved him toward a seat beside him, but Kell took the one beside Piggy, opposite Tyria and Phanan.

Face was speaking. “So here I am stark naked, locked out of my quarters, running around the corridors looking for a towel, a rag, anything, and I turn a corner and bump right into the executive officer. He has about the same sense of humor as a Wookiee with a rash. So I throw my best salute and say, ‘Major, I regret to report only partial success with the Personal Cloaking Device.’ ”

The others burst out in laughter. Even Donos, slowly stirring some sweetener into his cup of caf, managed a faint smile. Falynn asked, “So, what did he do?”

“He turned out to be all right. He made me hold salute for a while, looked me over, returned my salute, and said, ‘It’s obvious this project was a failure. I suggest you go and cover up its shortcomings.’ So I did.”

Falynn snickered, then asked, “What about the lieutenant?”

Face shrugged. “She had a sense of humor like mine. Probably why we got together, and certainly why we got apart just as fast. The next day, they found my clothes just in front of the intake door of the food reprocessing plant. There was a note on them saying, ‘I cannot live with what I have done. Think of me whenever you have a bite to eat.’ She signed my name, of course. I got away clean, so to speak, with the naked-in-the-halls thing, only to be written up for my ‘practical joke.’ I had to clean everyone’s dress uniform boots for graduation.”

Phanan said, “So, Lieutenant.”

Donos looked up. “We’re off-duty. You can call me Myn.”

“So, Myn, do they do that sort of stuff in the Corellian armed forces?”

Donos nodded. “A long and honorable tradition. I’ll tell you sometime about the dead gurrcat that wouldn’t stay buried.”

Grinder sniffed. “Practical jokes. A ridiculous waste of time.”

The others looked at him. Face said, “You’ve never sliced into someone’s secure files and changed them, left messages or something, just for your own amusement? Or to make them look stupid?”

“Certainly not.”

“You’re not like any code-slicer I’ve ever met.”

The Bothan smiled. “I’m better.”

Falynn turned away from him and back to Donos. “So, were you really a sniper?”

The lieutenant nodded.

“Did you ever have to … you know … I mean, don’t answer if that’s too personal.”

“Did I ever shoot someone in cold blood? Without giving him a chance?”

She nodded, somber.

“Yes. Three times I did that. I didn’t much care for it; if I did, I’d probably still be doing it. But better to have dead enemies than dead innocents.” He glanced at his chrono. “Speaking of which, I need to suit up and get in some practice out on the range.” Folor Base had an interior shooting gallery for blaster pistol practice, but the distances for which a laser sniper rifle was best suited were much greater. Donos and Janson had put together a target site on a hilltop outside, in hard vacuum; Donos would be sniping on it from several surrounding hills. “Ten, are you still going with me?”

Tyria nodded. “I’m certainly not going to let you wander around out there alone.”

Jesmin said, “Please, let me. I need the vacuum suit practice.” She rose.

Donos followed suit and, with a short nod for his squadmates, left with the Mon Calamari flyer.

“He certainly opened up,” Phanan said. “It makes me feel all warm inside, seeing the barriers come down. I think we should get him a toy bantha to cuddle at night.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Falynn. “He is better. He talked, a little. He even smiled.”

“Imagining Face naked would make anyone laugh.”

Falynn glared at him. “Ton, would you die for Myn Donos?”

The cyborg chuckled. “Maybe some other day.”

“Would he die for you?”

“I don’t know.”

“He would. I’m sure he’d die for any of us. He wanted to die for his last squadron, but his responsibility wouldn’t let him. As far as I’m concerned, that makes him better than you. Ton, what’s it like to be constantly making fun of people better than you?” She rose, not waiting for an answer, and stormed out of the cafeteria.

Phanan raised his eyebrow. “I say she’s sweet on him.” He turned to Face. “Want to bet? I’ll give you three to one.”

“No, I’m betting your side.”

Grinder leaned in. “I’ll have some of that. I am an expert in human psychology. She is too independent and pragmatic to have romantic yearnings for him. She is merely responding to the pain of a hurt animal. This is a human female instinct. She wants to nurse him back to health.”

Phanan grinned. “Twenty creds?”

“Fifty.”

“Done.”

Kell fixed Tyria with a stare. “What do you bet?”

She shrugged. “They may both be right. Some women see a man who is a mess, feel the urge to repair his problems, and then fall in love with him while they’re working on him.”

“Emotional distress as an attractant. Say, Tyria, I have a sharp pain in my childhood memories.”

Phanan winced. “What a terrible line. I wish I’d thought of it.”

Tyria stood and turned an indulgent eye on Kell and Phanan. “You two go play your boy games. The rest of us have some studying to do. You know we’re going to have a hyperspace nav mission soon. How are your nav scores?”

Kell shrugged. “So-so. But Piggy’s the navigational genius.”

“That’s right.” She turned to walk away, but called back over her shoulder. “That’s why we can be sure Wedge will forbid him to help.”

“You know,” Face said, “she’s right.”

Phanan looked glum. “I hate it when that happens.”

The file appeared on Admiral Trigit’s datapad, its title “Recent Morrt Project Data-Gathering Results and Conclusions.” Its listed author was Gara Petothel, the code-slicer who had been so useful to him in providing information leading to the demise of Talon Squadron.

He brought up the file and read its contents, then skimmed them again. Finally he crooked a finger to summon his XO.

“Prep the TIE squadrons,” he said pleasantly, “do full diagnostics on our weapon and shield systems … and tell Night Caller to prepare a load of the new Empion mines. We’ll plant them in the unoccupied systems closest to Commenor, and then head on to Commenor system itself. It looks as though the Rebels are staging from the moon Folor … and I think it’s time for us to put an end to it.”

8

Over breakfast, Kell told her, “I think I’m in love with you.”

They sat again in the officers’ cafeteria, but this time it was Kell and Tyria alone at one of the smaller tables, early enough that only Face of the other members of Gray Squadron was eating at another table; there were a few of the A-wing pilot trainees about. Kell had arisen early, adjusting himself to Tyria’s hours in order to catch her alone here.

Something like exasperation showed in Tyria’s eyes. “No, you aren’t.”

Kell nodded. “I know you think I’m probably kidding. Like Ton Phanan always does. But I’m not.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’re not kidding. You’re just wrong.”

He laughed. “How could you possibly think that? How could I be wrong? Love is love. You’re not making any sense.”

She stirred listlessly at a nameless green puddinglike mass on her plate, then shoved the plate away. “All right, let’s hear your reasons.”

“Reasons?” He stared at her, genuinely surprised. “Reasons why I love you?”

“Reasons why you think you do, yes.”

He sat back, the cold of panic beginning to spread through his gut. She was not responding the way he thought she would. He’d prepared himself for acceptance, for refusal, for confusion, and let’s-talk-about-it-later, but not this cold-blooded call for analysis.

He took a couple of deep breaths to steady his nerves and organize his thoughts. “Well, it boils down to this: You’re everything I want in a woman. Smart, talented, brave, beautiful. I’ve been attracted to you since that first simulator run.”

“Yet you’ve barely talked to me.”

“Well …”

“You’re aware I have no family?”

“Well … yes.” Face had mentioned that to him in passing, that her family had died when her world of Toprawa had fallen, that she had survived by her ranger skills for years until a New Republic Intelligence reconnaissance mission had brought her and a few other rescuees offworld.

“Now, what I want to know is this. Is my lack of a family a draw because I’ll bring you no in-laws to complicate your life, or because you get to bestow me with the boon of your own family and make me happy again?”

He drew back. “That’s uncalled for.”

“Not the sort of thing you’d expect me to say, is it?”

“No.”

“Proving my point that you don’t know me. You’ve just decided that I match the concept in your mind of what your perfect mate should be, so now you’re in love. We’d be the perfect couple. I’m tall, so you wouldn’t have to bend over too far to kiss me, and we’ll look good on the holograms together. I’m a pilot, so we can be partners. I assume, back when you were in the commandos, that your perfect mate would have been a commando. Right?”

The coldness in his gut solidified into a solid block of ice. “You’re wrong. You’re wrong about me.”

“Then tell me,” she said, “how much time you spent thinking about me yesterday.”

“What?”

“That’s a simple question. How much time? Six standard hours? One? Ten minutes? Kell, give me a truthful answer. Set Honesty to On.”

He thought it over, and as the answer came to him he felt his heart sink. “About fifteen minutes.”

She smiled without humor. “You don’t spend very much time dreamy-eyed for a man who’s hopelessly in love, do you?”

He looked down at the tabletop and didn’t answer. She continued, her voice ruthlessly gentle, “The good thing about fantasy lovers is they don’t need much of your time. They’re very low maintenance. Unlike real people. I’m very flattered that you feel you’ve fallen in love with a fantasy Tyria. But she isn’t me, Kell.” She rose and was gone.

Miserable, he stared into his cup of caf—not seeking answers, just avoiding the eyes of those around him.

She was right. Tyria was his idea of perfection. But the real Tyria? How close did she match his idea? He didn’t know.

Face wandered by on his way out. “She shot you down?” he asked.

“Vaped me. One shot.”

“Cheer up. Maybe this was just a simulator run.”

Nor did the day’s trials end there.

Kell stopped in at his locker to retrieve his datapad. He keyed in his personal code and pulled the locker door open.

Something shifted inside as he did so, then a mass of wriggling tentacles leaped out at him, landing on his chest, wrapping itself around him.

Kell let out a yell, tore the slick creature from him, and hurled it to the ferrocrete floor. He gave it a fast kick to send it skidding up along the aisle of lockers. He drew his blaster from where it hung inside the locker and aimed at his attacker.

It lay there on the floor, a collection of greasy tubes and metal springs. Its parts waved in the air, slowly settling down to stillness.

Chuckles and laughter broke out from all directions. Kell looked around. Other pilots, X-wing and A-wing, peering in down the aisles, ducked away as his gaze fell across them.

Face was one of the other pilots, but he didn’t pull back. “A prank.”

“Very funny. Ha, ha.” Kell wiped the sudden sweat from his brow and returned his blaster pistol to the locker. “That’s the last thing I need. To be reprimanded for shooting up the locker room.”

“Well, maybe the prankster will turn his attention to me. Won’t that be fun? I’ll destroy him psychologically. Put him in fear for his sanity. Cost him the will to live.”

“Sounds good to me. Of course, I don’t know that you weren’t the prankster.”

“True.” Face shrugged.

Most of the rest of the squadron gathered for breakfast a little later in the morning.

“So, I’m curious,” Phanan said. “Commander, Lieutenant, who do the old-timers think of as the greatest fighter pilot in the galaxy?”

Wedge and Janson exchanged a look. “Well,” said Wedge, “we can hardly speak for the old-timers. As a matter of fact, you’re older than I am.”

“I’m sorry. I actually meant your generation of pilots.”

Wedge sighed.

“It depends,” Janson said. “What are the criteria for ‘greatest pilot’? I mean, I’ve seen plenty of pilots with brilliant skill. Luke Skywalker is one of them. On the other hand, he didn’t fly regular combat missions for as long as most, so his kills aren’t up there with other pilots who have been around longer. Other pilots were extraordinary, too, but ended up drifting into the path of some Imp gunner and were vaped.”

He glanced at his commander. “If you want to go by numbers and survivability, of course, there’s only one pilot who has survived two Death Star runs. From that perspective, Wedge Antilles is the best pilot ever.”

Falynn snorted with amusement. The rest looked at her.

Janson asked, “Something funny, Sandskimmer?”

“Oh, no offense, sir.” The sarcastic edge to her voice suggested that avoiding offense was nowhere in her mission parameters. “But piloting is for the young. I’m sure Commander Antilles was very good in his prime. He may have been the best pilot at one time, long ago. And I know he’s a good trainer even today. But, Commander, you’re what? Forty?”

Wedge managed to look amused and regretful at the same time. “Twenty-eight.”

“Exactly! Your reflexes are shot. There’s only so far experience can go to overcome that handicap.”

Janson said, “Sandskimmer—”

Wedge said, “You’re only nine years from that same grim fate.”

“If I should live so long, I’m sure I’ll find some way to make myself useful. Just like you have.”

Wedge stood. “Come along.”

“I’m not through eating, sir.”

“You’re young. You can afford to miss a meal.” Wedge reached over and drew Falynn’s tray away from her. “Come on.”

Reluctant and annoyed, she stood. “Where?”

“We’re going flying. A little competition. If you’re up to it.”

“Now, wait. That’s not fair. Until I’m through training, you still have some points on me in X-wings.”

“How about repulsorlift ore haulers? Do you give up any points to me in those?”

“No, sir!”

“Come along.”

The rest rose to follow, but Janson waved them down. “Finish your breakfasts and assemble in the briefing room. I’ll follow and transmit. This should be interesting.”

It was the oldest, dingiest hangar on Folor Base, and not truly in use by the New Republic military. It held vehicles from the mining colony that had originally inhabited Folor, vehicles that were still functional but not in use by the base garrison.

Among the vehicles on hand were three repulsorlift vehicles large enough to carry four X-wings nose to tail, with beds deeper than a man is tall. The vehicles still bore scratched traces of their original gray coats of paint and their beds were littered with dust and pebbles from the last ore loads they carried, years ago. None of the three had an enclosed cockpit.

Datacards still in place in their simple computers indicated they’d been serviced within the last year, and all three started up when activated. Wedge and Falynn listened to all three, agreed on which two engines sounded best, and flipped a decicred coin to see who’d get the best one. Falynn won.

Minutes later, wearing vacuum suits, they guided the open-air vehicles through the hangar’s magnetic containment field and headed at a leisurely pace toward the near end of the Pig Trough.

The Pig Trough was an anomalous geographical feature of Folor. It was a meandering lunar fissure, created at some distant time when the moon’s surface was not quite cool and tectonic plates were still in motion. Its near terminus was only a klick from Folor Base, and the lengthy geographical feature wandered for thousands of kilometers to the northeast, then cut sharply northwest for an even greater distance. The nearer portions of the trough were too broad, with curves too gradual to be of any use to the trainers, but more distant portions were used by pilot trainees for trench maneuvering and bombing practice.

On the lip just above the first descent into the Trough, Wedge and Falynn brought their ore haulers to a halt. “Comm check,” Wedge said. “You receiving?”

“Yes.”

“Wes?”

“I’m here. I’ve dropped a flare four klicks up the trench. That’s your goal.”

“Sandskimmer, you ready?”

“I’ve been ready since I confirmed seal on my suit.”

“Go.” He issued the command in a mild tone, but there was nothing restrained about the way Wedge kicked his ore hauler forward, roaring down the Trough’s shallow slope as though he were in command of a fast-moving combat assault vehicle.

“Cheater!” Falynn was only a split second behind him. Well before they reached the bottom of the slope, she’d drawn almost even with him to the left. She sideslipped into him.

Wedge felt rather than heard the impact, but it didn’t maneuver him out of line. He grinned. Only the greenest pilot would have failed to anticipate the maneuver and compensate for it. He gunned his engines and leaned into his leftward slide. The nose of his hauler was still a few meters ahead of hers and thus able to push hers out of line. He shoved her until her left side began to scrape along the rift wall; the sudden friction slowed her and he shot out ahead.

“Keep trying, Sandskimmer. I’m old. I might be tiring already.”

Her curses lit up the comm unit.

The other pilot trainees gathered in the briefing room and watched the visual sensor feed from Janson’s X-wing. Janson was pacing the ore haulers at an altitude of about fifty meters. Kell guessed that Janson was running on repulsorlifts, occasionally hitting the thrusters, else he wouldn’t be able to move slowly enough to keep them in his sensor view.

Donos said, “She’s actually moving that bucket around pretty well. She was probably a pretty hot stick back on Tatooine.” He sounded more analytical than admiring, but it was the longest single statement Kell had heard from him.

Kell shook his head. “I’ve serviced rigs like that. They’re not like recreational skimmers. Their repulsor fields extend out ahead several meters. They have to be anticipatory to keep those haulers from gutting themselves on rough terrain. If she doesn’t know that, she’ll bounce—there she goes.” Indeed, the front end of Falynn’s hauler rose an additional two meters as the craft approached a boulder outcropping. The hauler went skyward, gaining enough altitude to lose repulsorlift contact with the ground, and Wedge’s vehicle gained another handful of meters on her.

Donos said, “She’ll take him.”

Kell pulled a handful of coins from his pocket. “Ten credits.”

“You’re on.” Donos’s coin joined his on the tabletop.

The other pilot candidates rummaged through pockets and began pulling out coins, money-transfer cards, jewelry, pieces of candy.

They ran now with Falynn’s bow to Wedge’s stern. Whenever she sideslipped to try to pass, he broke in that direction, blocking her move. The richness and color of her nonstop cursing were testimony to his success.

It couldn’t last forever. She slid rightward, he followed suit—and noticed too late that the maneuver led him right onto a nest of boulders. Their proximity kicked his bow up into the air and she slid around to his left, passing him before he reestablished contact with the rift surface.

He laughed. “Not bad, Falynn. You’ve proved you can learn at least one thing a day.”

“You’re going to look funny spitting out lunar dust while you’re teaching me, sir.”

Ahead, the rift turned leftward. Near the right wall was a tumbled pile of stone; between it and the wall itself the floor curved gently upward. Left of the pile was broad, open ground.

Falynn headed for the broadest open area. Wedge slid rightward, angling between the stone pile and the wall. As he squeezed between them, his repulsors kicked loose stones from the pile of boulders, raining them down on Falynn’s hauler. Her reflex slid her leftward and he gained on her going around the turn; he was a few meters ahead as they came out of the curve.

“Obviously you can’t win by flying fair, sir. What happens when we get to the end? Do you shoot me?”

“I’m thinking about it.”

The end of the run was within sight, a distant red glow where Janson had dumped his flare. The rift bottom was flat and smooth to the right of the straightaway, but grew stony and broken along the center.

Falynn drifted right. Wedge drifted left, toward the more difficult terrain. He saw Falynn turn to look at him; he couldn’t read her expression through the vacuum suit’s polarized shield, but knew she had to wonder what his plan was in giving up the speediest approach to the finish line.

She gained on him as they approached the rockiest portion of rift floor. But as they reached the point where the tumbled boulders were worst, he sideslipped right and his nose crossed over the highest of them. The move kicked him up several meters.

And he came down right on top of her hauler.

His vehicle’s weight forced hers down, compressing her repulsor emissions, slowing her vehicle. His own repulsors kicked him forward off her hauler. He held his control wheel on course by brute strength. His hauler straightened out as it came fully down off hers and onto the rift floor—and a second later he passed the glowing flare, Falynn’s hauler tucked in right behind him.

“You—you—”

“That’s right, Sandskimmer. I won.”

“You cheated.”

He laughed as he slowed his hauler and swung its nose around. “Falynn, consider this. When an Imperial laser cuts through your canopy and hits you, the energy will superheat the water in your tissues. They will literally explode. If there’s enough of your X-wing to retrieve, they’ll have to hose down the inside. When that happens, will you complain that the TIE fighter pilot cheated?”

Her voice was grudging. “No, sir.” She followed him through his maneuver.

“What will you say?”

“I won’t say anything. I’ll be dead.”

“So to keep one of these bad boys from cheating until you’re dead, what are you going to do?”

“I guess I’ll have to learn to cheat, sir.”

“Congratulations. You’ve proved you can learn two things in a single day.”

·  ·  ·

At mission briefing that afternoon, Wedge announced, “We have two pieces of good news. Our other four snubfighters are in, and Cubber’s crew has cleared them for use.” He paused as the squadron applauded, then continued. “Also, we now have a unit designation. Courtesy of Tyria Sarkin, we are Wraith Squadron.”

Several of the pilots made appreciative noises. Face merely looked disgusted.

Runt asked, “What is a wraith?”

“Something I heard about in my childhood,” Tyria said. “Dark things that come in the night for you. That’s what I think we are. For the Empire, for the warlords, we’re the phantoms under the bed, the monsters in the storage cubicles.”

Runt smiled, showing big teeth, and narrowed his eyes. The expression made his long face look sinister. “We like that.”

Wedge said, “So Tyria wins the three-day pass … but not today; we still have a run to do. A full squadron run, for the first time. Other news: we now have a squadron supply officer. Please come on in.”

The pilots turned toward the entrance. The supply officer’s arrival was heralded by a set of rhythmic squeaks.

“We are in trouble,” Kell said.

Squeaky, DownTime’s 3PO server, walked in and up to the speakers podium. He turned to the pilots. “Let me begin by saying that I am delighted to bring my years of experience to this novice squadron. I expect that my skill will keep some of you alive.”

Phanan whispered, “Inevitably, some of us will prefer to die.”

Squeaky continued, “I am also pleased once again to be serving a fine officer named Antilles. A pity what happened to the last one. I am sure we will all pitch together to keep fate from repeating itself.”

Wedge looked pained. Most of the pilots knew that a Captain Antilles, no relation to the commander, had been master of the Tantive IV and had died at the hands of Darth Vader.

“In dealing with you,” Squeaky said, “I will match courtesy with courtesy, insult with insult, incompetence with incompetence. I have transmitted requisition forms to your astromechs and to your datapads; please use them, and always check your spelling. Thank you.” He bowed to Wedge and moved to sit by Lieutenant Janson.

Wedge’s mouth twitched as he too obviously restrained a smile. “Thank you, Squeaky. Wes?”

Janson stood and tapped his datapad. The room’s holoprojector glowed into life, and on it appeared a dark field with a few dozen glowing points arranged within it: a small-area starmap.

He pointed into the mass of stars at a bright golden one. “Here’s Commenor. You are here. Here’s Corellia and more Core systems. Farther out, we reach border and then Rim territories. This star is nicknamed Doldrums for its lovely, featureless, uninhabited planets. That’s our destination.

“Each of you is to spend an hour with your astromechs putting together a three-stage course to get us to Doldrums and a two-stage course to bring us back. These navigational paths should follow normal security guidelines for limiting observers’ abilities to follow our course or trace our routes.

“When you’re done, transmit your course to Control. We’ll choose the one we like best, the one that burns the least fuel and appears the most elegant … and then we’ll fly it as a test of your hyperspace skill and accuracy. Questions?”

There were none.

“Good. We’ll see you in the hangar in an hour.”

The pilots rose to head toward their X-wings and astromech droids. Face looked rueful. “I can’t believe you, Tyria. I thought I had that pass locked up.”

“What squad names did you suggest?” she asked.

“Well, there was Silly Squadron.”

She shook her head. “We’d have to repaint the X-wings.”

“Then there was Rogue Squadron.”

“Taken.”

“I know, but it was a good idea. Then there was Dinner Squadron.”

“I take it you were faint from hunger when you were coming up with these.”

“How did you know?”

Less than two hours later, Wraith Squadron was skirting Commenor, preparing to slingshot past it to get clear of its gravity well and into the proper orientation for the first leg of Piggy’s proposed course. Folor was moments from disappearing behind Commenor’s horizon when Jesmin transmitted, “Wraith Leader, this is Two. I have transmissions on an Imperial channel.”

Kell knew Jesmin had installed an upgraded communications and sensor package in her X-wing, appropriate to the squad’s communications expert.

Wedge’s voice was next. “Squad, break off the exit maneuver. Circle here at a diameter of fifty klicks. Two, are they transmitting in the clear?”

“No, sir, it’s encoded. I’m working on that. But there’s something else. It’s a tight-beam transmission, and the origin of the transmission is pretty close to our flight path from Commenor. Two possibilities are that they’re waiting there for us, or they’re using Commenor as a backstop for the signal so it won’t reach Folor.”

“Right. I’ll inform Folor. Wraiths, maintain station. Make yourselves useful.”

Kell gritted his teeth. Another test. The crucial duties, of warning the base and breaking the transmission code, were assigned; Wedge obviously wanted to find out what additional use the other Wraiths could make of themselves without suggestion from him.

Almost immediately, Face’s voice came back: “Twelve, here’s an idea. Query Two’s R2 unit for the signal she’s receiving. Analyze it for Waveshift and see if you can determine how fast the signaler is coming.”

Piggy’s voice, distorted by the comm unit, was completely mechanical and inflectionless: “Will do, Eight.”

Kell’s shoulders tightened. Once again, Face was jumping right into a useful task, showing leadership qualities. If Kell wasn’t careful, Face would grab control of Two Flight. Kell had to respond, to do something just as useful. He had to think fast.

Commenor was a planet fringing on Core worlds territory. Its government dealt and traded with the New Republic, with the shrinking Empire, even with warlords. So if the incoming vessel or vessels, which were either Imperial or warlords because they were using Imperial frequencies, were transmitting to Commenor, they were either announcing their arrival or making requests of the government. “Four, this is Five.”

“I hear you, Five.”

“In all the time you’ve been here, have you sliced into Commenor’s official computer system?”

Grinder was slow in responding. Finally, “Yes, Five. Just to keep in practice.”

“Good. Can you slice in now, with the gear you have on your snubfighter?”

“In no time, Five. I have my list of key codes with me. Always.”

“Right. Punch in now. We’re going to look for a few things.”

“Making contact, Five. Starting the approval dance. What are we looking for?”

Kell thought back to the sorts of record changes the commandos had taught him to look for. “First, any new mobilizations of government forces. Second, new reservations for ship berths. Sort by ship class, prioritize for military ships and hyperdrive-equipped shuttles. Take reservations made for tomorrow as well as today. Sudden large-block hotel and resort reservations, especially the cheaper ones, just in case there will be some rest and recreation for a capital ship. Also, I want astronomical data, if possible, from any observatories pointed out toward the origin of Jesmin’s signal.”

“Would you like breakfast in bed with all that, Five?”

“That’s right, Four. But that’s after everything else.”

They waited in silence for a few minutes.

“Five, this is Four. I read one government shuttle assigned in the last few minutes to convey documents and an observer to the incoming flight. Granting it the right to perform military exercises above Folor.”

“Thanks, Four. Leader, that marks the base as their probable target.”

“Leader here. I read you, Five.”

“Five, there’s more. Orbital Spaceyard 301 has been ordered to clear a servicing berth for private yacht Implacable.”

Kell frowned. “Implacable is the kind of name they give to Imperial capital ships.”

“Five, the berth they’ve cleared is the largest they have. This is no pleasure yacht.”

“Five, Four, this is Leader. You’re correct. Implacable is an Imperial Star Destroyer commanded by Admiral Trigit. He went rogue when Ysanne Isard died. Good work, you two. We’re going back to Folor, and we’re going to set up a greeting for Admiral Trigit that he’s going to remember for a while. Form up on me.”

Admiral Trigit beamed as he viewed the moon Folor through the bridge’s transparisteel windows. An ugly, mountainous, frost-coated thing, it was well positioned to be of considerable use to the Rebels. He’d put an end to that.

An aide appeared beside him. “Sir, we have low-level beacon transmissions and encrypted transmissions on Rebel frequencies from the far side of the moon.”

Trigit nodded. “Pinpoint the transmissions, then set a course for that location. Launch the TIE squadrons at a thousand kilometers to target. They’ll escort us until we order otherwise.”

“Yes, sir.”

General Crespin’s voice echoed in the ears of all the Wraiths. “They’re coming in on the most obvious heading. They’re a few minutes from arrival. Transports are loading. Four A-wings each from Gold Squadron will escort them. Blue Squadron, Gray Squadron, remain on station for delaying action.”

Wedge’s voice came back immediately, “Wraith Leader acknowledging.” Other voices, pilots of the transports and squadron leaders, responded likewise.

Wraith Squadron sat on an icy field between two hill ridges about ten kilometers from Folor Base. They’d landed as per squad organization, with each group of four snubfighters one hundred meters from the other, arranged in a triangle.

Kell decided against another, unnecessary check of his power levels and weapons readiness. His right leg was getting twitchy, refusing to sit still, a sign of his growing nervousness. He switched the comm system to Wraith Squadron’s frequency and dialed it down to a transmission strength not likely to extend beyond this valley. “Commander, this is Five. Shouldn’t we be up there, engaging them, slowing them down so the transports can launch?”

“That’s a negative, Five.”

“But they’re going to arrive and pound their target flat!”

“That could well be, Five.”

“Sir, I don’t understand.”

“That’s affirmative, Five.”

Kell shut up. He could imagine the other Wraiths, especially Janson, snickering over that rejoinder. Rather than humiliate himself further, he restored the comm system to its default settings and waited, seething.

“No sign of defensive measures, Admiral.”

The Implacable was one hundred klicks from the target. “We’ll just have to lure them out,” Trigit said amiably. “Dispatch the bomber squadron and a screen of fighters.”

“Yes, sir.”

A moment later two squadrons of TIEs blasted past the Implacable, approaching from the rear, popping over the aft command tower and diving so that they seemed to swarm before the bridge viewports as they sped toward their target. As each TIE fighter or bomber dropped into view, it waggled its wings, a show of respect.

Trigit smiled. He appreciated the showmanship. Those squadron commanders deserved a little reward. He’d have to think about that. “Keep me updated on their defensive posture.”

“All squadrons, all ships, this is Folor Base. We read multiple bombing runs and strikes on target.” It was General Crespin’s voice again.

Kell looked to port, to the west. If the report was true, he should see bright flashes of light limning the tops of the hills between their position and the base. But there was nothing.

Crespin continued, “All ready transports, Gold Squadron, launch. Good luck, and the Force be with you.”

Kell sank back in his seat as the truth dawned on him.

“Coming within bombardment range now, Admiral.”

Trigit looked at his sensor screen, which showed the Folor Base site. It was a broad plain of ice situated between two mountain ranges. Now it was littered with craters; the one or two sets of buildings he could make out seemed to be burning. Doubtless they were fuel or chemical depots; otherwise they could not burn in the vacuum around Folor. He frowned. Idiotic of the Rebels to have surface-based fuel depots. “Any communications from them?”

“No, sir. Their beacons are still transmitting, and their coded signals became more agitated, but they haven’t responded to our hails.”

“Commence bombardment.” Why did the matter of the surface fuel stations bother him? Ah, yes. Commenor’s files on the abandoned mining facilities on the moon mentioned numerous surface buildings. The plain Trigit viewed was almost entirely clear of such construction. Obviously, the Rebels had destroyed or concealed the ruins in order to make it harder to find the base. A sensible measure, yet more work than the shorthanded Rebels were typically capable of performing. Nor was it sensible for them to remove most surface traces and yet allow surface refueling depots to remain. It was the contrast that worried him.

His sensors officer looked up at him from the crew pit. “Sir, I’m reading launch of a capital ship. A Gallofree medium transport, from its sensor echo and maneuvering characteristics.”

Trigit stared unbelieving at the little sensor screen on the arm of his command chair. “Where?”

“On the other side of Folor, sir. It just cleared the horizon.”

A cold wash of realization went through the admiral. “Lieutenant Petothel.” He kept his voice cool, calm.

His new favorite data analyst looked up from her station’s screen. She was a lean woman with medium-length hair and a beauty mark on her right cheek. Her features were elegant, mesmerizing; he often had to make an effort not to stare. “Sir,” she said.

“Call up the maps Commenor provided us of Folor.”

“Done, sir.”

“Establish the location of the mining facilities suitable for Rebel occupation.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where are they?”

“They’re …” She winced. “They’re halfway around the moon, sir. The base is at this same latitude one hundred and eighty degrees around.”

Trigit slammed his fists down on the arms of his command chair. A simple trick: plant beacons and false buildings far from the true base location, light them up when trouble is spotted. All he had to do was make sure the base they were targeting was in the same position as the mining facilities … but he’d let the Rebels make a fool of him. “Navigator, set course for the coordinates Lieutenant Petothel will give you. Get us there as fast as possible. Communications, transmit that location to the squadrons; they’re to stay before us as a screen.” There was little to be gained by dispatching the fighters and leaving Implacable vulnerable to an ambush.

“Yes, sir.”

Trigit watched the squadrons in the viewport as they heeled over and vectored north, the across-the-pole route being the shortest one to the target. The horizon tilted as the Implacable slowly followed suit. He couldn’t feel the maneuver take place, couldn’t feel the tilt of the ship; inertial and gravitational compensators eradicated the sensation.

He could feel annoyance. And a certain admiration. Well, if he couldn’t destroy Folor Base with its entire staff complement inside, at least he could annihilate the stragglers, destroy the base itself, and deny it to the Rebels forevermore. A partial victory.

Crespin’s was now the mechanical, condensed voice of a fighter pilot in a cockpit. Wedge wasn’t surprised; if he knew the aging general, Crespin would personally lead Blue Squadron into combat. The training squadron would benefit from his long experience and might, just might, get out of the conflict alive. “Confirm Implacable and escorts oncoming by the most direct course,” said the general. “Borleias, Bright Nebula, are you ready to lift?”

Wedge couldn’t hear the transmissions of the two transport captains, but a moment later General Crespin came back. “Bright Nebula reports ready to launch; they’ll be away before the TIE squadrons get here. Borleias is still suffering a malfunction on the ion engine initializer. Blue Squadron, Gray Squadron—I mean, Wraith Squadron—we’re going to have to buy them some time and hope they can make use of it. Commander Antilles, any suggestions?”

“Yes, sir. If I remember Folor’s geography right, a straight polar shot from the false base to the real one has to bring the invaders across some portion of the Pig Trough.”

“That’s correct, Wraith Leader.”

“I suggest we calculate the interception point the TIEs and the Implacable will most probably pass. Send a unit of spotters to some point even farther north of that point to confirm their arrival, have them power down so they won’t show up on routine scans. When the TIEs reach the trench, Wraith and Blue Squadrons pop up out of it and chew them up. Our spotters can either fall on them from behind or hit the Implacable, if it’s close enough, to cause them some consternation.”

“Wraith Leader, you plan is approved. You send two spotters, I’ll send two.”

“Wraith Five, Wraith Six, get out there. Run along the Pig Trough to bypass any sensor packages they might have ahead of their squadrons.”

“Wraith Five, acknowledging.” Kell powered up his repulsorlifts and turned in place to orient himself toward Folor Base.

“Wraith Six also acknowledge.”

Crespin’s voice came back, “Blue Nine, Blue Ten, join them. Same approach. We’ll transmit your destination and the most likely intercept point when we have them.”

Kell heard acknowledgments from Crespin’s A-wing pilots. Then he brought thrusters up to full and shot toward the closest hill pass between this position and the start of the Pig Trough.

9

Kell and Runt reached the opening into the Pig Trough seconds ahead of the A-wings from Blue Squadron; Kell saw them visually moments before the X-wings banked and entered the mouth of the trench.

No one had said, “X-wing or A-wing, the first fighter to reach the assigned location is the winner,” but everyone involved knew that was the challenge. It was always the challenge. And A-wings were just plain faster than X-wings.

Blue Nine and Blue Ten caught up with them on the first straightaway, blasting past without difficulty; Kell saw the pilot of one of the fighters wave jauntily at him. Keep celebrating, Blue Boys, he thought. Just tell yourself you’ve already won.

By the time they reached the end of the Trough’s first long straightaway, many kilometers of it, the A-wings were out of sight ahead. At the first of what would be numberless bends and zigzags, Kell said, “Follow my lead, Runt,” stood his X-wing on its starboard wing, and roared through the turn, slewing so close to the fissure wall under his hull that he could make out small cracks in the stones.

Runt’s response was his pilot mind’s war cry, but for once Runt didn’t try to pass Kell by. He stayed close on Kell’s tail, a demonstration of precision flying to make his squadmates proud.

After a few minutes of wall-hugging corners and precision turns, Kell caught sight of the A-wings’ thrust emissions ahead. Moments later they could see the speedier fighters, and with each turn in the course of the fissure they found themselves closer.

One more turn, and Kell nearly smashed into an A-wing, his keel to the A-wing’s top, as they navigated a sharp angle in the fissure’s course. The A-wing pilot veered out of reflex to get clear, and since he was already standing on his port wing the maneuver popped him up above the fissure rim for a moment. Kell rolled until he could see the pilot’s helmeted head, waved cheerfully, continued the roll until he was inverted from his previous angle, and whipped around the next turn.

Then there was no sight of the A-wings for several torturous minutes of precision flying. Kell knew that shortly after the Pig Trough turned northwest again they’d reach the broader portion of the fissure where the Y-wing bombers liked to make their runs, a straightaway that would allow the A-wings to regain much ground. If only he and Runt could build up enough of a lead in the winding, snakelike portions of the fissure, they’d be able to keep their lead …

A short straightaway gave Kell time for a moment of reflection. Here, now, though a single slip could put him against the side of the fissure and kill him instantly, he knew no fear, no tension. It was just him and his fighter against the challenge of speed and obstacle. If he fouled up, if he died, Runt would take that as a warning, slow down fractionally, reach the observation sight alive. Or the A-wings would get there. No one was really depending on him, and that was the way he liked it.

Thirteen, his R2 unit, recently assigned to him on a permanent basis when the final X-wing assignments were established, beeped at him. He glanced at his main display. It now showed the path of the Pig Trough, his location, the A-wings’ locations, the oncoming TIE fighters and Star Destroyer, and two projected sites: the spot where the TIE fighters would theoretically cross the Trough, and the spot from which Kell and companions were supposed to surveil the enemy. That was a spot just on the lip of the Trough several kilometers northwest of the projected intercept point.

If Kell had it calculated correctly, he’d be able to give Wraith Squadron and Blue Squadron a bare few minutes of warning from point of first sighting to the time the TIEs reached the Trough. That meant the two New Republic squadrons had to be under way already, following Kell’s path at somewhat less reckless a speed.

Owing to a programming error, Kell’s R2 unit initially responded to any request for a random number with the value thirteen. Kell had arranged for Grinder to fix the programming glitch, but had given the astromech unit Thirteen as a name. He suspected the R2 actually liked it, for it implied that the droid was the thirteenth member of the squadron.

They reached the first bend that would angle them northwest, through the main bomb run and to their destination. “Six, take lead. I’m your wing.”

Runt bellowed out an incomprehensible reply and moved up past him. Kell concentrated on duplicating his wingmate’s maneuvers, anticipating them as much as he could, flying wing just as precisely as Runt had flown it for him.

Then they were in the bombing run. They leveled out and put all energy to thrusters. Kell glanced behind him. Still no sign of the A-wings. Moments later they were halfway along the straightaway and the other fighters had not shown themselves.

Kell felt a sudden grip of guilt. Had he and Runt flown too well? Had the A-wings, wishing not to be shown up by the more experienced pilots, overflown themselves and been destroyed against the fissure walls? But no, just as they arrayed themselves to enter the narrow continuation of the Trough, Kell saw the A-wings’ lights behind, just entering the bomb run.

A bare minute later, with their lead over the A-wings still solid, Runt reduced power to the main engines and cut in the repulsorlifts. Kell followed suit. The two of them angled northward and rose smoothly along a jagged cliff face, clearing its top by a mere two meters, and set down twenty meters from the dropoff.

“Six, cut all power,” Kell said, “except life support, communications, visual sensors. No cockpit lights. Tell your R5 to shut down its exterior lights.”

“Will do,” Runt acknowledged.

A shadow fell across Kell’s cockpit as the two A-wings settled in beside them. Kell switched his comm system from the squad frequency to the general New Republic frequency, but kept power scaled so far down that it would be unlikely for anything more than a klick away to pick them up. “Glad you two could join us. We’ve been here awhile; would you relieve us while we take a nap?”

“Ha, ha,” came the reply. A woman’s voice, Kell thought. “Who are we talking to?”

“Kell Tainer, Wraith Five. To my starboard is Hohass Ekwesh, also known as Runt, Wraith Six.” Kell saw the two A-wings powering down and was relieved he didn’t have to remind them.

“Dorset Konnair, Blue Nine. The pretty boy to my port is Tetengo Noor, Blue Ten. You two got some fair speed out of those outdated piles of junk.”

“Why, thank you.”

“Of course, we would have beaten you if Tetengo here hadn’t remembered he’d left something in the oven back at base. We went back for his supper.”

The other pilot’s voice cut in. “I didn’t want to go into combat on an empty stomach.”

Kell snorted. The affection A-wing pilots had for their fighters’ speed was legendary, as was their contempt for any vehicle slower than theirs. “Let’s just keep that little story to ourselves,” he said. “We don’t want Blue Wing pilots to pick up a reputation for turning tail.”

Blue Nine made an outraged noise; it sounded like a giant insectile buzz over the comm transmission. “Ooh, you’ll get it for that.”

“You have your visual sensors oriented toward their projected arrival zone?”

Blue Nine said, “Naturally.”

Blue Ten said, “Oops.”

“Snap it up, Ten.”

For a few minutes they didn’t speak. Then Blue Ten’s voice cut in: “I have them.”

Kell panned his visual sensor around but couldn’t pick up the enemy. “Blue Ten, feed me those coordinates.”

A moment later his screen brightened with a jittery view of numerous tiny glows—TIE fighter ion engines, far to the north.

Kell fed that sensor data to Thirteen and received back the precise map coordinates of the point on the Pig Trough the incoming fighters could cross—that, and the exact time of their arrival there, assuming they did not change speed. Kell said, “This is Wraith Five. Did anyone else run the numbers?”

“Blue Nine here.”

“I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.”

Their numbers agreed to two significant digits. Kell transmitted them, encrypted, a short burst aimed directly at Folor Base; with luck, the attackers wouldn’t pick up the signal, wouldn’t be able to track it, or would dismiss it as irrelevant.

Kell waited with his hand on the power-up switches. Four minutes until the TIEs reached the Pig Trough. They’d be a long four minutes.

“Wraith Five, I have the Star Destroyer.”

Kell checked his sensors, saw the blip moving in along the wake of the TIE fighters, several minutes back. “The signal wouldn’t be this strong if they didn’t already have their shields up. The captain in charge of that Star Destroyer is pretty cautious. Blues, do you think there’s anything we can do about that capital ship?”

“Wraith Five, Blue Nine. I don’t think so. I suppose we could crash into her bow like bugs hitting a speeder bike. That might upset their frail temperaments.”

“A charming image. Thanks, Blue Nine.” Kell tried to let go of the idea of hindering or diverting the massive vessel, but he couldn’t. If the vessel joined the impending fight between the TIEs and the New Republic fighters, more of his friends and allies would be killed; if it reached Folor Base before the last transport lifted, that ship would never see freedom. He felt the muscles in his upper back begin to knot.

What would turn the Star Destroyer away from its mission, even temporarily? A greater perceived threat? How would they simulate one?

Perhaps a greater prize for the captain to gain … Kell sat upright. “Blues, Wraith Five. Our astromechs are factory-new. No sense of history to them. Does either of you have in your computer records any of the older encryption codes? The expired codes?”

“Blue Ten. I’ve got a whole string of them.”

“Good. Here’s what we do.”

On this final stretch of the Pig Trough, Wedge didn’t bother to check on the formation of the other nine members of Wraith Squadron accompanying him. They’d formed up tight on the straightaways, loosened up for the stretches requiring tight maneuvering, but always formed a screen forbidding General Crespin’s A-wings to pass them.

Up ahead was the fissure bend that marked their exit point—the place where six TIE squadrons would be passing overhead any moment, if Kell Tainer’s math was right. He glanced up above the rim of the cliffs and saw the first of their targets, an oncoming wave of enemy fighters mere seconds from passing overhead.

“Strike foils to attack position,” he said, and followed words with action. “Wraiths, hit the interceptors first if there are any, then bombers if possible. Follow me in—”

“Damned Blue Squadron!” That was Grinder’s voice. Wedge glanced back just in time to see the A-wings, no longer needing to maintain secrecy, rise above the fissure walls and kick in their full acceleration, firing up out of the fissure faster than the X-wings could follow.

“Four, this is One. Refrain from personal comments. Wraiths, they seem to be going after the lead eyeballs and the dupes they’re escorting. That leaves us free to hit the squints. Let’s go.” He pulled back on the stick, punched up both the thrusters and the repulsorlift engines.

Wedge’s X-wing cleared the lip of the fissure wall by only a few meters, but its proximity to the lip kicked in the repulsorlifts, which bounced the X-wing up faster and harder, giving him an extra edge in altitude. He was pleased to see Jesmin Ackbar still with him; she had to have been proficient with the same little trick to do so.

Above and ahead, less than two klicks away, were six full squadrons of TIEs. Wedge set his jaw; they faced three-to-one odds. This was going to be bad.

He homed in on the squadron of squints, interceptors, and swept his targeting brackets across them. The brackets immediately went red and he fired, sending a proton torpedo toward them. He saw other reddish streaks of acceleration as four more Wraiths fired their torps, then pure red needles of light as the remainder cut in with quad-fired lasers. Wedge saw no less than four of the interceptors flare out of existence from that first barrage.

Almost directly above, TIE fighters and bombers flared into incandescence and faded into nothingness as General Crespin’s Blue Squadron hit them. Then all six flights of TIEs were dissolving into flurries, pairs of fighters rolling out and diving toward them, already firing green laser lances.

“Two, stay on me.” He corkscrewed upward, gaining altitude west of the main body of descending TIE fighters.

“One, we have three oncoming.”

“Target the one to starboard, Two.” Wedge transferred more energy to the bow shields.

Three TIE fighters dove toward them, firing continuously. Wedge almost smiled at their lack of marksmanship. Wedge closed with them, half rolling his fighter back and forth to present a more confusing profile, and switched to lasers, linking them for quad fire. He waited until he had a solid lock on the port eyeball and fired.

The shot melted and tore away the entire starboard side of the fighter, sending its severed wing in a plummet toward the lunar surface. The TIE fighter banked as though the pilot were still futilely trying to regain control, then exploded.

Wedge saw a quad pattern of laser fire hit the starboard fighter, coring it through the center of the cockpit. The eyeball, still virtually intact, heeled over and began its final descent to Folor.

Yes, they were beginners. The third pilot panicked, rolled out to begin his escape, and presented both Wraiths with a beautiful side shot. Both linked sets of lasers hit it, melting it to slag in the brief instant before its twin ion engines lost integrity and detonated.

Wedge and Jesmin wheeled around, seeking the area where the interceptors were most likely to be. Over the babble of instructions and outcries occupying the airwaves, Wedge heard Piggy’s voice: “Seven, this is Twelve. Recommend you dive … now. Eight, recommend you fire … now.”

Wedge frowned. Piggy needed to be fighting, not acting as ground control. But Janson was the Gamorrean’s wingmate and could control him. Wedge picked up the blips of a cluster of fighters, probably eyeballs, at the extreme range of his lasers. He evened out his shields, said, “Two, fire at will,” and began taking target-of-opportunity shots as his brackets flashed green.

Then across his comm came the last thing he expected to hear: “Han, can’t you coax any more speed out of that pile of junk?”

Admiral Trigit switched his chair monitor to the plotting graphic showing the fighter engagement. He frowned. They no longer had three-to-one odds; the Rebel fighters were putting up a ferocious fight after an ambush of considerable efficiency. Of seventy-two fighters, Trigit had lost twenty-one, with only two kills among the enemy.

That would change. Numerical superiority would eventually make the difference. But these losses were costly.

“Admiral, new target, designated Folor-Three. About forty klicks to the west and heading west, slowly.”

“Identify it, please.”

“It looks like two groups of X-wings and a ship of unknown type. We’re picking up transmissions.”

“Put them through routine encryption, let me know if you get anything. If they’re headed away, they’re not a threat to us.”

“They’re already decrypted, sir. They’re using an older code, one we cracked a couple of weeks ago.”

“Well, put them on. From the start.”

The voices were crackling and full of mechanical buzz. “Han, can’t you coax any more speed out of that pile of junk?”

A female voice answered: “Han can’t come to the cockpit right now. He’s up to his armpits in what’s left of the main engines. We’ve got only repulsorlifts running.”

“Princess, repulsorlifts aren’t going to get you off Folor. If you can’t get those engines up in a couple of minutes, go to ground and hide out. We’ll try to come back for you.”

“That’s very encouraging, Rogue Two.”

Trigit snapped upright. “Sensors, does this ‘ship of unknown type’ match the parameters of the Millennium Falcon?”

“Sir, they don’t match anything. Some sort of odd-shaped thing with an oscillating shield system we can’t get a good fix on. Those shields can’t be offering too much protection, though. Uh, records indicate that the Millennium Falcon has had three distinctive sets of parameters just since the death of the Emperor—”

“Yes, yes. Continual retooling, and all that.” Trigit drew his sleeve across his brow to wipe away the sweat that had suddenly appeared there. Han Solo and Leia Organa here? Escorted by units of Rogue Squadron? Why? He was under the impression that their respective missions for the Rebels currently had them separated, with the Millennium Falcon not even in service.

But he knew it had to be them. The base was surely abandoned by now, so why would the base’s A-wing and X-wing trainees be waging such a furious defense? It only made sense if they were covering the flight of the princess, one of the most influential figures in the New Republic.

“Pilot, close with target designated Folor-Three. We’re going to capture some famous Rebels.” He smiled at the cheers of his bridge crew and returned to his command seat.

“That’s very encouraging, Rogue Two.”

Wedge realized his mouth was hanging open, and shut it. Rogue Squadron and Leia here? When the Millennium Falcon had arrived and departed without the Rogues days ago? It made no sense.

Then he caught sight of the data screen and the information his astromech unit, Gate, was scrolling across it. These transmissions had been encrypted in the Derra-114 protocol, a code they’d been instructed to abandon weeks ago when they learned the Warlord Zsinj’s forces had cracked it. It was the same as broadcasting in the clear.

New Republic fighter voice transmissions were often crude, part voice and part static buzz. This wasn’t because the New Republic couldn’t afford better transmission gear; it was a tradition dating back to the earliest days of the Alliance. New Republic comm units, by reducing voice data to the smallest set that would convey data and be recognizable, were able to broadcast transmissions across a wider set of subfrequencies, making it more difficult for enemies to jam them. The data reduction had another effect that was vital back when the New Republic was a rebellion: The voice distortion made it next to impossible for Imperial investigators to conclusively match transmissions with those who had sent them, so it was difficult to prove that a given person was the pilot at a given fight. Still, Wedge thought he caught some of Kell Tainer’s vocal mannerisms in the voice of “Rogue Two,” meaning the supposed Millennium Falcon group had to be Kell and his three companions. It was some sort of ploy.

“Leader, Two. Implacable is breaking off.”

The sensor screen showed Jesmin to be correct; the Imperial Star Destroyer was turning slowly to the west, away from the fighter engagement. Wedge smiled broadly. “Wraiths, this is Leader. We’ve been given some extra time. Make the most of it.”

Ahead was the thickest swarm of the dogfight, at least twenty TIEs mixing it up with half that many New Republic fighters. Wedge set his lasers to dual-fire and angled in toward the swarm. “Strafing run, Two. Fire at will.”

Engines wailing, they dove into the thickest of the dogfight, firing as fast as their targeting computers showed green. Green return fire and red crossfire from their own allies flashed before them, above, below, beside, but Gate gave him no indication that he’d been hit.

The comm was live with the fog of communication: “Blue Three is gone, I repeat, gone” “Somebody get this mynock off my tail!” “Wraith Four, this is Twelve. Spin out, now. Three, your target should be coming into range … now.” “Blue Four, this is Three. I’m still here, where are you?” “Then who’s that cloud of debris—”

Wedge emerged from the far side of that cluster of fighters certain that he’d hit a TIE fighter, equally certain that he’d vaped an interceptor and winged one or two other enemies. He glanced beside him and was reassured to see Jesmin still on his wing. “Two, this is Leader. Status?”

“Leader, I’m hit. I show significant damage to etheric rudder.”

“Can your R2 patch it up?”

“I think so. He’s shrieking at me not to maneuver, though. He says it will tear apart the few connections I have left.”

Wedge bit his lip. If that report was accurate and Jesmin returned to the fight, she’d probably lose maneuverability fast—and that would make her an easy target for opportunistic TIE pilots. “Two, break off. Return to Folor Base, maneuvering by engines only. Take up station there and keep me updated.”

“Yes, sir.” Even with comm distortion, there was no mistaking the resignation in her voice. Wedge felt for her; he knew she’d be berating herself for failing the squadron. He’d felt that way himself eight years ago, when ordered to break off his attack on the first Death Star. But he had no time to play morale officer now. He waited until she locked her strike foils back into cruise formation and began her long, gentle curve back toward base, then he looped around in a tight arc and headed back toward the fight.

Sensors showed the TIEs dropping at a good rate, though battle damage was taking its toll on the X-wings and A-wings. If the Borleias didn’t launch soon, Wraith and Blue Squadrons were going to be in deep trouble.

Blue Nine and Blue Ten flew wingtip to wingtip with a precision that made Kell jealous. He’d always thought of A-wing pilots as being a little sloppier than X-wing pilots, because their crafts were not quite as maneuverable, but Blue Squadron was putting the lie to his suppositions. He revised his opinion of General Crespin from “pain in the rear” to “pain in the rear but a fine trainer.”

Wraith Five and Wraith Six paced the two A-wings, and their rate was appallingly slow—about the same as a fast human sprint, the maximum rate of some repulsorlift engines. Though their course was a straight line northwest, they kept the Pig Trough within a kilometer of their position.

Kell checked his monitor, still showing sensor data. The fighter battle was a confusing blur of specks far in the distance. Closer, the Implacable gained on them with frightening speed. They were already within range of the Star Destroyer’s bombardment cannons … though those weapons were not accurate against fighters at this distance.

“Runt, anything from Folor?”

“Negative, Five.”

He switched back to the Derra-114 encryption and boosted his transmission power. “Princess, they’re gaining on us. I give you two minutes before we have to cut and run.”

Blue Nine’s voice was a plea: “Just hang on a little while, Rogue Two. We’re almost there.”

Kell grinned. He and Blue Nine were pretty bad actors, but the crew of the Implacable apparently hadn’t noticed. Maybe, if he survived, he’d get Face to teach him some of the tricks of the trade.

“Five, this is Six. Borleias reports launch.”

“Falcon, sorry, you’re on your own. Go to ground, get to cover. We’ll meet up with you at, uh, New DownTime.”

“I read you, Rogue Two. Be strong in the Force. Falcon out.”

That was their bug-out signal. Kell instructed Thirteen to cut the power boost to the X-wing’s transponder and shields; Runt would be doing the same, and this would drop the signal strength to that appropriate to a pair of X-wings instead of two groups of them. The A-wing pilots would now be shutting down the program that oscillated the energy going to their own shields, which had yielded the odd signal Blue Nine had hoped would attract the Implacable. If this all worked, a presumed Millennium Falcon and six or eight X-wings would magically transform, on the Implacable’s sensors, to a mere four fighters.

The four rolled to port and blasted their way to the Pig Trough, now only half a klick away, then dropped back into the fissure and headed southeast again.

The sensors officer looked confused. “The signal changed. I think they’re trying to jam us. They’ve certainly gone into that prominent canyon formation.”

“Pilot, new course, due south. When you get to these coordinates”—Trigit tapped the point where their southern course would intercept the fissure—“hover. Weapons, prepare the tractor. We’ll pluck them out of that ravine like a Gamorrean plucks morrts.”

“Admiral, this is Tactical. The Rebel fighters at the main engagement are breaking off. We also show another transport well out ahead of them, clearing Folor’s gravity well.”

“Tell the interceptors to keep on their tail, pick off stragglers, plot their jump course if they jump.”

“Sir, the interceptors are all gone.”

Trigit looked up. “Wait. There was another transport?”

“Yes, sir.”

The admiral felt his stomach begin to sink. “Pilot, bring us to flank speed. I want us over that canyon now.”

“Coming to flank speed, sir.”

·  ·  ·

Janson’s voice crackled over the comm unit, “Borleias reports she’s away and within a couple of minutes of entering hyperspace.”

Then Crespin’s voice; Wedge was pleased to hear that the aging pilot was still among the living. “Blue Squadron, Wraith Squadron, break off and regroup. We’ll reunite at Rendezvous One.”

“Blue Leader, Wraith Leader. Acknowledged. Best of luck.” Wedge, just having completed another head-to-head run-through of the most energetic swarm of fighters, began a long circle. “Wraiths, you heard him. Break off. Form up on me.

The surviving TIEs, reduced in number by half and never reinforced by the presence of the Implacable, let them go—all but a pair of overeager eyeballs who pursued and were vaped almost immediately by Janson and Piggy.

Wedge brought Wraith Squadron around to a southward course, toward base. “Wraith Five, Wraith Six, do you read?”

“We read, Leader. We’re coming. Too busy to calculate ETA.”

The Implacable slowed to a full stop with its main tractor array poised over the fissure.

The sensors officer immediately spoke up. “Four ships incoming along that geographical formation. But they’re not target Folor-Three.”

Trigit frowned. “What do you mean? Who are they?”

“Two X-wings, two A-wings. No Corellian YT-1300s.”

No Millennium Falcon. Trigit closed his eyes. Twice. He’d been fooled twice in one day. Not even his own children, bright and malicious as they were, had ever done that to him. He rubbed his forehead, at the headache that had suddenly appeared there. “Forget the tractor,” he said gently. “Maximum laser bombardment. I want them dead.”

·  ·  ·

Kell finished his transmission with the Implacable almost directly overhead. Then the Star Destroyer’s laser cannons began raining columns of pure destruction down on them.

The first blast hit the fissure wall less than a hundred meters ahead, filling the fissure and sky above with blinding light and melting stone debris. Kell headed to starboard of the blast’s center, flying by memory while his sight and sensors were useless, and cleared the blast field, only to run right into another one. He heard stone shards hammer against his cockpit, against the side of his fighter. “Six, we’re in trouble.”

“Five, I’m taking lead.” It was Runt’s voice, but different, neither the polite Runt of ordinary conversation nor the inarticulate screamer who did his best flying.

Kell saw Runt overtake him, could barely pick him out visually and by sensor. Runt continued, “Blues, follow me in. This is an easy one.”

Obligingly, Kell brought his fighter up on Runt’s wing. Each debris cloud they cleared brought them into another one, more hammering sounds of stone shrapnel, more buffeting from the suddenly expanding clouds of gas that used to be ice and solid rock. But Kell maneuvered when Runt did and, miraculously, avoided tearing himself to shreds on the fissure walls.

Then, a sharp right turn and they were beyond the bombardment. Laser blasts the diameter of fighters hammered the fissure rim above them but did not reach the depths. Runt led them down to the fissure bottom and reduced their speed from insane to merely near-insane velocities.

“Great work, Six. Who was that?”

“The student. The one who remembers, who studies for tests.”

“Tell him he just scored very high.” Kell brought diagnostics up on his main monitor. They showed minor damage to both port strike foils and a slow leak, a very slow one, of cabin pressure. “Blue Nine, Blue Ten, status?”

“We’re chewed up, Wraith Five. But we can make it back to the group.”

“Good. This far from the Implacable, I think we’ll save fuel and jump out of the Pig Trough, head in straight.”

“Suits us.”

Kell found his hands were shaking, that his heart was hammering like Twi’lek warrior music. He’d just led a Star Destroyer on a fruitless chase and survived its attempt at retribution—and that called for a celebration.

Just before they jumped out of the fissure, Kell set his comm unit to broadcast in the open. “Attention, Implacable” he said. “Be advised, you’ve just become the victims of Dinner Squadron!”

Runt’s voice came in almost immediately: “And Silly Squadron!”

“Consider yourselves humiliated. And welcome to Folor. Out.”

10

Ten X-wings and the squadron’s Lambda-class shuttle, the Narra, were already lining up for departure as Kell and Runt arrived. The late arrivals slid into formation with Phanan and Face, then Wedge brought the squadron up to speed and oriented them away from Folor.

Wedge’s voice came over the comm unit. “Wraiths, I have the pleasure of reporting no losses among our forces. Ton Phanan has reported some minor injury; fortunately, he has our doctor with him. Everyone else has sustained some vehicle damage, none critical. For a unit’s first engagement against a numerically superior force, that’s brilliant flying.”

“Leader, Eight. How did Blue Squadron make out?”

“Not so well, Eight. Five lost, serious damage to most of the rest. We have two kills today for Face, which brings his total to six—you’re an ace, Loran.”

“Do I get a trophy with that?”

“No, but someone may buy you a drink. I also need to commend Wraith Five and Wraith Six for exemplary tactics in drawing the Implacable away from us—”

“Thank you, sir!”

“Pipe down, Five. Also to mention that I’m thinking of putting you two on report for that stunt with the clear-air broadcast to the Implacable. What were you thinking?”

“Uhhh … I guess we weren’t, sir. I was just shot through with adrenaline because I’d survived.”

“Well, I expect it all balances out, and by way of reward and punishment I’ll just hammer medals straight into your skulls.”

“Thank you, sir. Uh—who’s piloting Narra?”

Another familiar voice cut in. “It’s Cubber, Five. I have Squeaky with me.”

Wedge said, “That reminds me. Wraiths, be advised that instead of taking the first transport off this rock, Squeaky raided your quarters and lockers, bagging anything he thought would be of importance to you, especially personal items; they’re all aboard the Narra.”

There was a chorus of thanks, whistles, and short cheers over the comm. Then Squeaky’s voice: “It was enlightened self-interest, I assure you. Had I not done this, I would have been barraged with requests for replacements for your lost goods. I’m far too busy to attend to such irrelevant requests.”

“Leader, Five. What’s our destination?” Folor had shrunk to a small coin-sized disk of silver-gray behind them; their current course was taking them around Commenor in a wide arc.

“As before, Doldrums. We’re going to take the same navigational exercise as before. We’ll be joining the rest of the Folor Base evacuees at Doldrums.”

“They’re going there, too? That’s an odd coincidence.”

“No coincidence, Five. When I reported the Implacable coming in, I also told General Crespin of our training mission and mentioned that Doldrums would be a good site to stage a regrouping. The rest of the evacuees are going there in one jump; we’re going to do our exercise just because we can use the practice. Which reminds me—I need fuel reports from each of you.”

·  ·  ·

Malicious cheer clearly visible on his face even through the wavering hyperspace connection, Warlord Zsinj’s hologram smiled at Trigit. “Well?”

Trigit didn’t bother to conceal his glum mood. “I have both good news and bad to report. The good news: the base on Folor is gone, and I think I gave it enough of a pounding to make it impractical for the Rebellion to reestablish it.”

“Good! And?”

“Due to some unanticipated reconnaissance and some superior tactics on their part, the Rebel garrison got away without significant loss. We, on the other hand, had substantial losses. Twenty-six TIEs of various types destroyed, another eleven damaged so badly that they withdrew from the engagement. I’ve already transmitted a requisitions request to your bridge.”

“Apwar, Apwar! They outmaneuvered you with such ease, and you expect me to replace your losses?”

“Yes, of course. I don’t ask for unnecessary excesses of supplies when I perform brilliantly for you, and I do ask for ordinary replacements on those few occasions I come up short. So far, I believe you have little to complain about.” Trigit finally let a smile spread across his face. “Besides, I had already set some activities in motion to capture possible evacuees. With luck, I’ll have some better news to report to you in the near future.”

Zsinj sighed, rippling the holographic image. “Very well. I’ll signal you when I have replacements available for you. In the meantime, keep—”

“—you informed. As ever, sir.”

Zsinj gave him a frosty smile and wavered out of existence.

Before they made the jump to hyperspace, Wedge switched his comm over to give him a private channel with Janson. “Wes.”

“I’m here.”

“What was Piggy doing?”

“I’m not sure how to describe it. I think he was running like a tactical planning computer. In addition to doing all his own flying—he vaped one interceptor—he seemed to be keeping track of all the Wraiths and their current opponents. He offered a few suggestions at critical times and gave us a handful of kills we wouldn’t have had otherwise.”

“I’ve never heard of anyone able to do that.”

“Well, he’s not human. He’s not even exactly Gamorrean.”

“What’s your assessment of the overall squadron?”

“They’re not as good as Rogue Squadron was when you reorganized the squadron. But they’re still pretty good. Why?”

“They’re just … different. Hand them an ordinary set of instructions and they’ll carry them out in an ordinary fashion. Hand them an objective without instructions and they accomplish it some strange way. Like that whole fake Millennium Falcon ploy, and what Piggy was doing, and the data they got off Commenor’s planetary computer net. I’m having a hard time anticipating them.”

“Hey, you picked them.”

“I—I picked them? What were you doing during those pilot interviews?”

“Daydreaming.”

“Traitor.” Wedge hit the comm key to send a click, signaling the end of the conversation, and switched back to squadron frequency. “Wraiths, thirty seconds to jump.”

During the first of three long jumps leading them to Doldrums, Kell forced himself to calm down, to settle his nerves.

He couldn’t quite extinguish his jubilation, though. In his first combat mission as a pilot, he hadn’t so much as fired a shot at an enemy, but he’d executed tactics that might have saved the Borleias from destruction or saved some of his fellow Wraiths from death under the guns of the Implacable.

Even Wedge Antilles had been impressed—at least, more impressed than annoyed.

The jump was long enough, though, that he couldn’t just reflect on his recent victory. There was Tyria to consider.

How would he persuade her that she was wrong about his feelings for her? First, obviously, he’d have to think about her more during the day, to answer her objection on that score … What else did he need to do?

He considered that, approaching the problem from a dozen logical angles, but an answer he had not expected and did not like began to lurk at the periphery of his thinking. Finally it moved in, squeezing aside his other trains of thought, and demanded that he pay attention to it.

Tyria hadn’t been wrong. She was right. You don’t actually love her.

Kell frowned at the traitorous voice. What are you, one of Runt’s leftover minds?

You don’t love her. You feel about her the way you did about Tuatara Lone when you were fifteen.

Tuatara Lone was a holo actress on Sluis Van. Short, shapely, so cute she was toxic, she was particularly adept at portraying madcap girls with odd lifestyles or nosy investigators capable of bluffing their way out of any problem. For three years, Kell had been mesmerized by her, seeing every one of her comedies and dramas, agonizing at night over her beauty, projecting himself into fantasy situations where he’d rescue her from harm or solve a crisis threatening her happiness.

Then he’d learned that the actress was in fact extremely happily married, with two children and another on the way. Kell, finding himself out of the running in a race he had actually never entered, was crushed. He moped around his home and was nearly fired from his job as a mechanic. Only when he entered the New Republic armed forces and was too busy to do anything but work and sleep had he forgotten his pain.

Now she was back, Tuatara Lone in all her beauty, hovering before him alongside Tyria. And that drove it home, his two obsessions side by side, as no previous argument had: He really was in love with holograms, images that only dimly reflected the real women they represented.

Tyria was right. You don’t love her.

I know. Shut up. Just go away. He sighed, dejected.

Thirteen beeped at him. Startled out of his painful reverie, he saw the timer on his main monitor counting down one standard minute—time until arrival in the Xobome system, the uninhabited first stop on their route to Doldrums. He did a visual check around his X-wing, seeing only the usual effect of a hyperspace jump, the corridor of light formations in endless, beautiful motion. Everything normal, and he had enough fuel, just barely, for the two farther stages on to Doldrums.

At twenty-seven seconds until the end of the jump, the stars appeared as elongated columns like millions of laser beams extending into infinity, and then snapped into a motionless starfield. Immediately a bright glow swallowed the stars, erased them.

Kell’s instrument panels and forward viewports went dark. A bright flash of light rocked his snubfighter. A shower of sparks erupted from his main monitor, landing on his flight suit, threatening to set his legs on fire. There was more smoke in the cockpit than those sparks could have produced.

He cursed and batted at his legs to put out the sparks. His vision and the viewports cleared, the starfield outside returning to normal. In the distance, he could see one star that was noticeably brighter than all others; if this was indeed the system they were aiming for, that was Xobome, but they’d arrived well outside the region they’d targeted. He could see another X-wing half a klick or so to his starboard, drifting slowly away; he couldn’t make out the pilot, but if it was the closest snubfighter to him, it should be Runt.

His instruments remained dead, and there was no hiss of air to indicate his life-support systems were functioning. Glancing back, he could see lights flickering on Thirteen; the droid seemed to be in the middle of startup procedures.

Kell pulled off his flight suit gloves, then reached under the instrument panel, unhooked latches there, and swung the whole panel up. Here was the source of some of the smoke, several wires burned and semiconductors fried—all delicate diagnostics circuitry, it appeared.

The wiring and circuitry associated with his restart system seemed intact, so he swung the instrument panel back into place and dogged it down. Then he reached past his left shoulder, pried open a small, innocuous panel there, and depressed the red button beneath it. He held down the button there until he heard the comforting, familiar whine of a snubfighter trying to bring itself back on-line.

Immediately words appeared on his data screen: R2-D609 IS ACTIVE. HOW MAY I SERVE YOU?

Kell frowned. “R2-D609, what’s your name?”

The R2 unit beeped irritably at this simple test, I AM R2-D609.

“Can you give me a random number?”

13.

“Dammit.” Thirteen’s temporary memory was gone; it had returned to its default memory and settings, the ones burned permanently into its circuits.

They’d been hit by some sort of ionization bomb, he was sure of it; in his experience, only an ion cannon could scramble all a snubfighter’s electronics this way. But what had hit them was more powerful, and ion cannons couldn’t cause a ship in hyperspace to pop back into real space prematurely.

His communications board lit up and immediately he had voices: “—is just drifting. I have one engine coming up; I’ll try to maneuver over to him.” “Do that, Three. Is anyone else active?”

“Five here,” said Kell. “I’m in the middle of a cold start.”

“Four.”

“Eleven.”

There was a noise over the comm, something like an animal grunt.

“Twelve, this is Eleven. Was that you?”

Another grunt.

“Piggy, is your translator burned out? Once for yes, twice for no.”

One grunt, a short, irritable one.

“Are you injured? Has it done any damage to your throat?”

Two short grunts.

“Good. Stand by.”

“Sir?”

“This is Leader. Who’s speaking?”

“Sir, Shiner isn’t responding.” Shiner was Donos’s R2.

“Nine, is that you?”

“Sir, Shiner isn’t responding.”

“I read you, Nine. Are you injured?”

“No, sir. But Shiner—”

“Isn’t responding. I understand. Let him be for the time being.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kell frowned. Donos didn’t sound like himself. He did sound like someone suffering a concussion or other injury.

Within the next couple of minutes, the remaining Wraiths had reported in, all but Runt, Phanan, and Grinder. Most also reported electronics system damage, some of it trivial, though several engine units and a couple of astromechs were not coming on-line.

Everyone reported total electronic memory loss—from the X-wings’ configuration choices to the astromechs’ full memory banks to the contents of the pilots’ datapads and chronos. That meant their nav course to Doldrums was erased. Even a return to Commenor system was impossible.

Wedge doggedly worked his way through their options. They didn’t have enough fuel to go looking for a safe landing zone in another system; the X-wings were running close to dry.

The Narra had nearly a full load of fuel. The Wraiths could improvise a fuel transfer between the shuttle and the X-wings, but under these conditions this would take hours. If, as Wedge suspected, this attack would result in pursuit by their enemies, such a tactic would doom them.

Or the shuttle could dump all its cargo, the pilots could assemble on board, and they could jump around until they reached a system where they could reacquire navigational data. That would bring them to safety … but would cost them twelve X-wings, eight of them new. That would probably be the death knell of Wraith Squadron.

On the other hand, if he had the Narra use its personnel retrieval tractor to drag the inoperable snubfighters to available cover, where they could be repaired, the energy-expensive effort would burn off enough of the shuttle’s fuel to make the squadron’s escape impossible. But they would be operable and perhaps able to take out the pursuit vessels.

Finally Wedge said, “All right, Wraiths. Two reports a planet and satellites not too far away. I’m pretty sure that it’s Xobome 6, the outermost planet of the system, and it has an atmosphere warm enough for us to effect some repairs, and an asteroid ring—just the thing if we’re being pursued, and I’ll bet my Endor patch that we are. We’ll transit there, with the Narra towing the three nonfunctional fighters with its pilot retrieval tractor.”

“That’ll be slow going and a significant power drain, Lead.”

“I know, Eleven. But we don’t have another choice that will keep the unit in one piece. Once we’re in position, we’ll try to effect repairs, first on the fighters that are out of commission. That means—Five, how’s your suit integrity? Can you stand a few seconds of hard vacuum to make a cold transit to the shuttle’s emergency airlock?”

“My suit diagnostics are down, too, sir, but I think the suit’s otherwise intact.”

“Good. You and Cubber will put on vacuum maintenance suits Cubber stowed on the shuttle and effect repairs as best you can. I’m assuming that we’re going to have pursuers on our tails soon, so work fast and be as messy as you have to. Everyone but Four, Six, and Seven head on over to Xobome 6. Land and effect what repairs you can, all but Five—you remain in orbit. I’ll stay on station with the inert fighters while Narra tows them in one by one. Execute.”

Kell, who had four engines showing ready, brought his fighter up to speed and in line beside and aft of Wraith Twelve—even at proper trailing distances he could recognize Piggy by his profile in the cockpit.

“Demolitions.”

Kell jerked upright. In commando operations plotting, he knew he might be referred to as Demolitions instead of Wraith Five. A check of his comm board told him this was a private communication from Wraith Leader.

“Yes, Control.”

“What do you think hit us?”

“Nothing I’ve ever heard of. But I think I could build something to do this—though I could bank the money and live off it for the rest of my life instead.”

“Describe it.”

“You’d need four basic components. No, five. First, a pretty standard ion projector, probably rigged for a single detonation instead of multiple shots. Second, an electromagnetic pulse generator, with the same area of emission. Third, a sensor rig that can detect hyperspace anomalies—that is to say, ships jumping into the system. Fourth, a gravitational pulse generator like the ones off the Imperial Interdictors. And fifth, a communications device—probably a one-shot hypercomm unit, something to throw off a single alarm at the time of detonation.”

“So you’re talking about a bomb that detects hyperspace arrivals, puts out a gravitational pulse to bring them out of hyperspace prematurely, and then hits them with both ion pulse and electromagnetic pulse.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“I don’t buy it. Energy dropoff is such that it couldn’t be made practical. What if you arrive in a system and this bomb is on the far side? It would detonate and do no harm to the arrivals.”

“I thought about that, sir. And if I think as a bomber, not a demolitions professional, it occurs to me that you plant bombs where people are most likely to be.”

“Explain that.”

Up ahead, a tiny white dot, Xobome 6, appeared among the stars and began to grow. “Sir, most nav courses are plotted from the point of departure to the center of the system where you plan to arrive—that is, the sun. It’s simple and it’s safe; you taught us that. You can set distance so you drop back into real space short of the system, with no chance of hitting any natural gravity well, or you can fire straight into the system, and if you hit a gravity well before you reach your destination, it pops you back into real space before you’re close enough to the center of gravity to endanger you. Correct?”

“Correct.”

“So everyone knows that most courses are aimed at the sun of the arrival system. And if you already know that there’s going to be a jump from Commenor to Xobome’s sun—”

“Oh.” The word emerged almost as a bark. “You set up your bomb on that straight-line path, just short of any normal arrival point at the system, and you’re almost sure to bag your target. Meaning that someone knew, or suspected, there would be traffic from Commenor to Xobome.”

“And since there’s no trade between the two systems, it had to have been planted by the forces that attacked us. They knew we’d flee, and knew or suspected that some of us would flee by way of Xobome.”

“Right. That makes sense. Thanks, Demolitions. Control out.”

Kell had had a little training in zero-gee, hard-vacuum work. He’d done some exterior repairs on a cruiser over Sluis Van and had gone through the standard demolitions training in planting charges on a vessel in orbit.

That didn’t make him proficient. That didn’t mean he liked it.

In the cumbersome vacuum maintenance suit, which had built-in maneuvering jets, he could move around and stay warm. But he and Cubber didn’t have tools rated to the cold of space, just toolboxes cobbled together from the X-wing hangar back on Folor, and this left them cursing over frozen and vapor-locked hydrospanners while Grinder, safe inside his cockpit, watched them impatiently.

Still … Kell could look up for an unimpeded view of an infinity of stars, the sort of vista he could never see on any world with atmosphere and never had time to appreciate while in the cockpit of a snubfighter. He could look down past his feet to see the world of Xobome 6, rotating with a slow majesty. Somewhere down there, on a high plain blasted by freezing winds, most of the Wraiths were trying to make repairs to their own less-damaged X-wings. They were probably looking up now and envying Kell his comparatively warm environment suit.

Kell floated beside the open hatch to Grinder’s port dorsal engine. Its internal diagnostics said it was on-line and ready to supply power, but it was receiving no data from ship’s controls. Kell brought himself back to his task. “Could all four data relays have been shorted?”

On the other side of the X-wing floated Cubber; even through their respective polarized faceplates Kell could see the mechanic shake his head. “All of them identically? No, it’s got to be an interruption farther up the line.”

“Think you could get into his cargo hatch and splice into the data feeds under the cockpit? I’ll monitor here.”

Cubber shrugged, an exaggerated motion. “I’ll give it a try.” Tiny jets vented at intervals across his back, turning him toward the X-wing’s bow, moving him forward.

“Kell?” The voice was faint, eerie … and emerging from within Kell’s own suit.

Kell’s mouth went dry. He used his tongue to hit the microphone-off switch, then said, “Who’s there?”

“Kell, it’s Myn.”

“How did—” Kell sighed and relaxed. Donos had apparently patched in to Kell’s own private comlink, the one he carried in his breast pocket. Kell tugged his helmet forward so he could angle his chin down past the bottom of his helmet, making it easier for him to make himself heard. “Myn, call me on the main squadron channel.”

“No, no. I need privacy for this. I need your help.”

“Go ahead.”

“Shiner’s still down, Kell. I need for him to be up.”

“We have more important problems right now. Shiner can wait.”

“Please, Kell.”

Kell frowned, troubled. The pain and worry in Donos’s voice were clear enough to carry even over standard comlink distortion. “What’s he doing?”

“Nothing! He won’t respond to verbal commands for a warm start, and the reset switches for a cold start don’t do anything. I think he’s … dead.”

“Probably just in need of repairs. Stop worrying.” The droid’s power converter could be down, or it could be powered up but with its programming locked, unable to begin a restart sequence until power was actually shut off throughout the unit and the system was restarted. “Hey, try this. Do you have a restraining bolt? You or any of the others?”

A long pause. Then, “Yes, you have one.”

“All right. Insert it. In him, I mean.”

Donos didn’t laugh at the joke. “It’s in. But nothing’s happening.”

“Right. Now switch it over to power-down.”

“Done. No change.”

“Now switch it back to power-up.”

“No—Hey! It’s working!”

Kell smiled. Among the many features of the standard restraining bolt, an attachment designed to maintain control over a fractious or independent-minded droid, was an external means to shut off a droid’s main power converter. Kell’s guess had been right, and this external shutdown had flushed the droid’s locked-up programming and allowed it to begin a cold start.

“Call me again if you absolutely have to—but don’t call me just because his memory’s gone. All their memories are gone.”

“Right, right. Thanks, Kell. Myn out.”

Cubber summed it up. “Commander, we got Grinder and Runt mobile in record time, but Phanan’s X-wing is a loss until we can get it into a full shop setup.” Within his cockpit, Phanan looked pale. He said he’d gotten bandages over his injuries, but there was no doubt that he couldn’t give himself full medical attention within the cramped confines of the cockpit, without the medical kit now occupying his cargo bay. He also wasn’t moving too well; it was evident some of his cybernetics were still malfunctioning.

Wedge’s voice sounded resigned. “All right. Pop the hatch and get him into the shuttle. Don’t forget his medical gear.

“In the meantime, we can assume that the bomb that stuck us here also sent out a signal to whoever planted it. Meaning they’ll be coming soon. If it was a hyperspace communication and they were signaling the Implacable, the Star Destroyer could be here in another couple of hours. We could make a blind jump to deep space or the nearest star to get away from them, but that’ll probably end up killing us; we don’t have enough fuel to do any significant exploration. Anybody have any ideas?”

Cubber, floating beside Ton Phanan’s cockpit, pressed his faceplate against the transparisteel and began speaking. The words didn’t come over the squadron frequency. From the slow pace and deliberate way he was shaping his words, Kell assumed he was shouting; the sound would conduct through faceplate and canopy, and Phanan would be able to hear him. He saw Phanan nod listlessly.

“Leader, this is Eight. I say we leave Seven’s X-wing up in orbit for them to find, and when they pull it in, we board and seize them.”

“Thanks much, Eight. Anyone else?”

“Sir, I’m serious. I’ve been thinking about this.”

“… Very well. Give it to me step by step.”

“Well, we leave the fighter in orbit broadcasting a distress signal. Put up some debris with it to suggest that maybe another X-wing has been destroyed. Among the debris we have someone in one of the extravehicle suits, carrying Donos’s laser rifle for maximum firepower.”

“And they draw the suit in and the pilot inside starts shooting?”

“Yes, sir.”

“They do this even when their sensors say there’s a live body in the suit?”

“Uh … I’d forgotten about that.”

Atmosphere began venting from around the seals of Phanan’s cockpit. Kell saw Phanan check and recheck the integrity of the bandages he’d slapped onto his pilot suit where shrapnel had cut through it.

“Next plan?”

Kell keyed his microphone. “Sir, wait a second. We could put our intruder in the Narra’s smuggling compartment. Its systems will conceal the presence of a living person. Pull it out of the shuttle, attach a battery pack to maintain its electronic countermeasures, and float it among the debris.”

Squeaky’s voice was distinctly irate: “Cubber, we have an additional compartment in here and you didn’t tell me? I could have packed more gear, more supplies—”

Wedge cut him off. “Continue, Mr. Tainer.”

“Well, that’s all I was going to say.”

“And what do we do if they don’t tractor in our intruder?”

“Make sure he can play some solo games on his datapad?”

“Not funny, Mr. Tainer.”

Face cut back in. “Could we mount a propulsion unit to the compartment? The thrusters from an ejection seat?”

Kell said, “Yes.”

Wedge said, “But it would be pointless. Can you imagine trying to aim a rig like that before firing off the thrusters? Odds are a hundred million to one that he’d miss and shoot off into space. And those are odds even a Corellian will pay attention to.”

Kell said, “Put the thrusters at one end and an astromech at the other end. The astromech can feed visual data to the intruder’s datapad. The intruder steers with the datapad, and the astromech translates that into precise thruster control. That makes the odds pretty good that he’d make it where he was aiming.”

“That’s crazy, Mr. Tainer.”

“With all due respect, no it’s not, sir. It’s merely desperate. Speaking of which, the sniper rifle may not be rated to hard vacuum and the cold of space. It might freeze up. And we can give our intruder a much better weapon anyway.”

“Such as what?”

“Well, if we’re using a battery to keep the smuggling compartment powered, we might as well use the 04-7 power generator off Ton’s X-wing. And if we have that much power available, we could pull the guts out of one of the laser cannons, cable it to the power generator, and rig it with a trigger. That’d give our intruder a few shots with something powerful enough to cut through bulkheads, much less through stormtroopers.”

“A laser cannon is nine meters long, Five.”

“Not the essential components and housing, sir. Strip out all the computerized aiming and synchronization equipment, the diagnostics, the flashback suppressor, I think we could chop it down to a meter and a half, two meters.”

The canopy on the X-wing came up and Phanan clambered out, surrounded by the distinctive glow of a personal magcon field. He immediately began to drift away from the craft. Kell saw from Phanan’s expression that cold was already eating its way through the atmosphere around his compromised suit. Kell and Cubber closed on him, each grabbing one of his arms, and began to maneuver him toward the Narra’s emergency airlock.

Wedge took a long time to answer. “Face, Kell, that’s the craziest idea I’ve heard in a long time.”

Face said, “Maybe, sir, but we’ve answered all your objections. We can do this.”

“Let’s say you’re right. We have one pilot with a powerful, crude, prone-to-failure weapons rig, and he’s in a hangar on an Imperial Star Destroyer. What then?”

“Leader, Eleven. A couple of ideas. If he could get to a computer interlock, he might be able to load in a program that would broadcast a distress to the New Republic. The rest of the pilots might be able to hide out until rescue. Or it may not be Implacable. It could be one of their support vessels, and we might be able to take it.”

“You, too, Wes?”

“Yes, sir. I think this plan is marginally better than dying of asphyxiation or starvation out in empty space, and it has the virtue of novelty. Implacable couldn’t anticipate we’d do it. Only crazy people could anticipate we’d do it.”

“True.” Wedge’s voice sounded resigned. “Cubber, your professional opinion: Can you do this? Patch this aberration together in an hour or two at most and make it work?”

Cubber shut the airlock hatch on Ton Phanan as he answered. “With the kid’s help … yes, sir.”

“The chrono’s running, gentlemen. Do it. And may the Force be with you. You need it.”

Face said, “I have some Force here in my pocket. Kell, Cubber, you can have it if you need it. Oops, no, it’s gone. Maybe it’s in my cargo.”

“Eight?”

“Yes, Leader?”

“Be quiet.”

Weary, Wedge sat back in his pilot’s chair. He switched the comlink over to his private connection with Janson. “Wes?”

“Here.”

“They’re doing it to me again.”

“That’s right.”

“I haven’t reached my thirtieth birthday, Wes. And once again I feel like the conservative old man in charge of a new generation of insane young pilots.”

“That about sums it up.”

“Thanks for the moral support, Wes.”

11

They had to tell Squeaky and Phanan to squeeze into the shuttle’s tiny airlock—fortunately, both were thin—then depressurize the Narra’s interior and open its main boarding ramp. Cubber and Kell could then enter and disassemble the mounting concealing the smuggling compartment. As soon as they had the compartment unplugged and towed back out into space, they saw where their plan couldn’t succeed.

“It’s not big enough,” Cubber said. “These suits, with all the thrusters and life support, are too damned bulky to fit into the compartment. And I don’t recommend we cut ’em down to fit.”

“Good point.” Kell sighed. “Well, our intruder will just have to wear a standard pilot’s suit. This compartment is supposed to be airtight, that’ll help.”

“Airtight enough to fool mechanical sniffers, true, but it’s only rated for pressurized environments. The seals aren’t strong enough to hold in atmosphere against hard vacuum. Also, we’re going to be drilling holes in it to mount the thrusters, to cable the battery to the countermeasures, to get the data feed from the R2 …”

“So we don’t put the intruder into our fake debris field until the last possible moment.”

Cubber shook his head. “And if they just take a few extra minutes to creep up on the site, our intruder freezes to death. It’s not going to work, kid.”

A new voice cut in, a strong and harshly mechanical one. “It can work.”

Kell smiled. “Piggy! They got your voice working again.”

“Grinder and his datapad got it started. I feel much better. And I should be the intruder.”

“Why is that?”

“Physical structure, Kell. My body is swathed in heavy layers of fat. Humans find it unappealing, and it is a detriment in hot environments, but my fat will sustain me against starvation and will insulate me from cold temperatures. In an ordinary pilot’s suit, I’m rated at half an hour’s survival after ejection into space, rather than a few minutes. Too, my suit is intact.”

Kell whistled. “Well, unless we get a better idea, Piggy, I think you’re our man.”

“Your Gamorrean.”

While Cubber and Kell assembled the jury-rigged vehicle, which they nicknamed the Lunatic, Grinder and Piggy worked out the programming of the R2 unit and control datapad. Occasionally Kell listened in on the conversation—Grinder and Piggy had to work from within their cockpits and communicate via comm.

“What sort of targeting model do we use?” That was Piggy.

“Visual pattern recognition, I think. With the starfield as the primary element—it will be static. Perhaps we can limit it to stars of a certain brightness; that will reduce the amount of data to be processed. If the ship is a recognizable type, the R2 can add a detailed map of its configuration to the pattern; otherwise you’ll just have to aim at what you think is a cargo hatch and pray.”

“What if imbalances or faulty thrusters throw me off course?”

“Well, we have to have some sort of correction built in to the R2’s programming. The crudest way is to have it evaluate its visual input and correct—overcorrect, really, with the time involved—if the visual image traverses too far.”

“Very crude. Prone to error. And to overcorrecting, as you say.”

“Yes. Hey, Kell?”

“I read you, Grinder.”

“Is there any way to put some sort of mass sensor in our insertion vehicle? Something to calculate load balance, center of gravity, that sort of thing, to improve flight accuracy?”

Kell thought about it. The X-wings had such a system, of course, which used pulses from the inertial compensator to calculate the snubfighters’ mass characteristics several times per second. “No. Not a chance. I’d have to have exact data on all the components going into this cobbled-together rig, I’d have to have a precise graphical model of it, Piggy would have to remain as still as if he were in a pilot’s seat, and you’d have to have even more time to do all the physics-heavy programming.”

“Forget it, then. Thanks.”

Within an hour the Lunatic took shape. The storage compartment, roughly the size of a large coffin, was the main element. At one end, Phanan’s R2 unit, Gadget, was mounted by way of crude brackets—metal strips cut from some of the cargo crates on the Narra, attached to the compartment’s hull through simple bolts. At the other end were mounted the fuel pods and some of the thrust nozzles from Phanan’s ejection seat; other nozzles were attached near the R2, pointed in four directions horizontal to the plane on which Gadget was standing, to give the rig as much maneuverability as was possible. Metal tubing carried fuel from the pod to the nozzles. A data cable ran from one of Gadget’s ports through a hole drilled in the compartment; inside the compartment, it was attached to the datapad that now held Grinder’s and Piggy’s maneuvering program. A power cable ran from the electronic countermeasures socket on the outside of the compartment, through another hole, into the compartment; it currently floated free.

When Piggy was placed in the compartment, he’d be carrying on his belt the bulky main components of the Novaldex 04-7 power generator from Phanan’s snubfighter. The cable powering the electronic countermeasures would be inserted temporarily in the power regulator fitted to one of its power-out sockets, while another socket was fitted with a cable running to the crude, six-foot-long cylinder that was what remained of one of Phanan’s laser cannons.

“This is, without doubt,” said Cubber, “the most inelegant rig I have ever had the pleasure of working on. Not counting the first still that I ever built, which was even more dangerous.”

“Tests all show in the green. I think we’re done.”

“Call it in to the commander, kid.”

In his cockpit, watching the universe spin around the asteroid on which he’d landed, Wedge relaxed with the calm of the seasoned New Republic pilot. He knew the others, excepting Janson and maybe Donos, would be fretting, ready to go; if they lived long enough, they’d learn to conserve their energy, to catch catnaps whenever they could.

The Wraiths’ X-wings, as repaired as they could be during their stay on the ground, now rested on some of the planet’s larger asteroid satellites in power-down mode. The Narra waited with power up, ready to go, with Piggy standing by in the airlock. Phanan’s X-wing, some stony debris retrieved from the asteroid ring, and Lunatic spun lazily in an orbit closer to the planet’s surface than the asteroids. The X-wing’s comm system continuously broadcast a distress signal, a plea for help recorded by Face; Wedge could not but admire the skill of Face’s performance, the realistic pain and fear he injected in his voice as he begged for rescue.

The comm unit popped. With power output turned so far down, no ship entering the system would be able to pick up their transmissions; in fact, some of the X-wings were having trouble reading them. “Narra, this is Five.”

“Go ahead, Five.”

“Cubber, wasn’t Seven’s fighter the one designated 3-OA when it came in?”

“That’s right.”

“Do you remember some sort of attachment mounted toward the aft end of the cargo bay? A rectangular thing, no ports or screens?”

“No. None of the X-wings have anything like that.”

“Well, one of them did. It was about twenty-five centimeters long, maybe six broad and four thick. It was painted in standard Alliance gray.”

“I’m telling you, kid, there’s nothing like that on any of the X-wings. Wait, hold on.”

A long silence, then Cubber’s voice was replaced by Squeaky’s. “Flight Officer Tainer, there is an attachment like that at the bottom of the main drive unit of the Narra. I noticed it because it wasn’t identical to the drive units on other Lambda-class shuttles. I saw it several times during the many, many trips I made loading the Narra up with the pilots’ personal gear.”

“Cubber, I’ve serviced the Narra. There’s nothing like that back there.”

“I know, kid. Something’s very wrong.”

Wedge started to request that one of the X-wings ease out of the asteroids and make a visual check of Narra’s aft end. But before he could speak, his wingmate’s voice came in: “Wraiths, this is Two. I have faint chatter on Imperial frequencies. Encrypted.”

Wedge finally did speak. “Narra, this is Wraith Leader. Place your package, then scram back to one of the big rocks and power down. Wraiths, observe communications silence. Piggy, good luck.”

He watched as the Narra drifted to within a few meters of the insertion vehicle. The shuttle’s airlock opened and Piggy pulled himself out, hampered by the bulky belt he wore and man-height pole he carried. He shoved off from the airlock with confidence and drifted over to the insertion vehicle, which he grabbed.

The impact of Piggy’s mass sent both pilot and Lunatic drifting away from the wrecked X-wing and debris. But, as Piggy pulled open the compartment’s door and began to squeeze in, the drift suddenly stopped. Lunatic moved slowly back to its original position relative to the X-wing.

It hung there, rigidly unmoving in the grip of the shuttle’s tractor beam, as Piggy hooked up his belt power generator to the compartment’s electronic countermeasures, then pulled the compartment door shut.

Wedge breathed out a sigh. Now it was all in Piggy’s hands.

The compartment interior was lit only by the glow from the datapad’s screen. Piggy patted at the gut of his flight suit, assuring himself that his blaster and the one Grinder had given him were still tucked away there, that the datacard containing the program that might force Implacable’s computers to send out a rescue message was still in his pocket, that the suit’s seal was still intact. Then he seized Lunatic’s control datapad. “Status?” he said. His suit comlink was at minimal output power and set to the standard datapad channel.

Gadget’s reply appeared as text on the datapad screen: OPERATIONAL. I CALCULATE A CHANCE THAT I WILL NOT REMAIN OPERATIONAL.

“I’ll get you out alive, Gadget.”

The words MOVEMENT DETECTED appeared. The screen switched from pure text to graphics on top, text at the bottom, and Piggy got a crude, monochrome view of the stars. From the way the starfield was moving, Piggy supposed that the Lunatic was now rotating slowly, and that Gadget was turning his hemispherical head to keep the camera within it aimed at his target.

A tiny white dot moved across the starfield and slowly began to grow.

More text appeared: THEY WILL DETECT THAT I AM OPERATIONAL.

“That’s all right. They won’t consider an astromech droid to be a threat. R2s are built for hard-vacuum repairs, so many of you have survived the ejection of their pilots into space.”

The dot grew until Piggy could make out its shape. It was not the Implacable, nowhere near so formidable a vehicle: it was a Corellian corvette, a long, narrow vessel with a blocky engine housing at one end; at the other end, the bow looked like an ancient war-hammer head turned sideways.

Even at this distance and through the crude imager of the datapad, Piggy could see a bright vertical slit of light appear at the bow as the hold doors there were opened. Two large silhouettes emerged from the light and rapidly grew as they came closer.

They resolved themselves into TIE fighters.

The two starfighters roared past Phanan’s X-wing and its debris cloud, close enough that Piggy imagined he could feel their wake. They looped and came back, then decelerated for a close view of the X-wing.

THEY ARE QUERYING ME.

“Respond truthfully, but only with data you have in your defaults. You don’t know what happened to your pilot, you don’t know how you came to be here.” Piggy magnified the image of the corvette on his datapad screen, focusing in on the open bow hold. “What’s our range to target?”

THREE HUNDRED METERS.

“Can we make that?”

THE VEHICLE IS COMING STRAIGHT AT US ON AN UNVARYING COURSE. IF WE MAKE NO MISTAKES, WE CAN.

Piggy took a deep breath and brought up the crude targeting brackets Grinder had added to his cobbled-together flight program. He set the brackets in the center of the open bow hold and hit the execute button.

He felt faint pressure against his back as one or two of the Lunatic’s top thrusters fired, orienting its “bow,” Gadget, toward the corvette. Then it was as though he were in a turbolift, sudden weight as the thrusters beneath his feet fired off, and the image of the corvette’s open hold began to grow.

He was suddenly banged up, down, and sideways by thruster corrections and could no longer keep his attention on the datapad. Then gravity had him and he was standing on his head.

He heard a wild, musical shriek, Gadget emitting a sound of pure droid terror, and there was an impact. Something gave way under the blow. Piggy was slammed forward, banging his head, then slammed onto his back.

He had heard Gadget screech; they had to be within atmosphere. He popped the seal on his pilot suit and dragged out one of the blasters with his left hand, then kicked open the hatch of the smuggling compartment. Bright light flowed in to blind him.

He couldn’t wait for his eyes to adjust. He squeezed out of the compartment.

He was on his back on a metal floor. It was a miniature hangar space, mostly filled with four gigantic metal racks situated side by side; the two end racks held TIE fighters upright. He was almost directly beneath the starboard-side TIE fighter. Forward was the open hold door framing starfield and the planet Xobome 6. He could not see the magnetic containment field holding in the hold’s atmosphere, but if it were not there, he’d already be strangling on vacuum.

The sound of a laser blaster’s discharge and the impact of the bolt on the metal bracket nearest him made him jerk. He rolled over onto his belly, dragging the chopped-down laser cannon out of the compartment after him, and aimed the blaster pistol.

Nothing directly ahead but metal stairs going up. But above them was a gray catwalk, and on it men in mechanics’ overalls running toward an exit. And two men in standard stormtrooper armor, aiming rifles his way …

He snap-fired at one, hitting the wall behind the man, and tried to crawl backward from the smuggler’s compartment and under the cover offered by the nearest TIE fighter. But as he crawled the Lunatic came after him. It wasn’t as heavy as it should have been; he saw that Gadget was no longer attached, and the brackets that had held him there were bent and broken.

He swore to himself, a Gamorrean grunt, as he realized the power cable from his belt generator was still plugged in to the compartment’s electronics. He got two fingers of his blaster hand on the cable and yanked it free; a blast from the second stormtrooper hit the compartment dead-on, chewing a head-sized hole in its metal side.

Piggy got back under the cockpit of the TIE fighter. A marginal improvement; they couldn’t see him, but he couldn’t see them.

He felt the air pressure change, then a wash of heated gas rolled over him from behind. Shrapnel clattered across the TIE fighters and little pieces stung the back of his legs. Something had happened just outside the bow hold door, but he couldn’t turn back to look.

Tactics. The stormtroopers would be separating on the catwalk, moving in either direction to bracket him with fire. He half stood and put his shoulder against the TIE fighter’s wing.

The sturdy starfighter resisted his efforts, but some of the brackets holding it in place broke. The TIE fighter rotated, the remaining brackets acting as a pivot, and suddenly he could see the right-most stormtrooper. The trooper fired at him but the TIE fighter’s solar wing, held before Piggy like a shield, absorbed the bolt. Piggy returned fire with the blaster pistol, saw black charring appear on the stormtrooper’s chest, saw the trooper collapse to the catwalk, twitching.

He continued pushing against the wing, rotating the eyeball farther still, firing almost blindly as he went, until the second stormtrooper came under his gun. He hit the trooper twice. The trooper smashed back into the wall behind the catwalk, then stumbled forward and went over the rail.

A moment’s breather. The hold crewmen had all escaped through the door. Then there was also the open hold door leading to space. These were the only ways out.

“Gadget?”

An irritable, nearly musical chittering from the far side of the hold reassured him that the R2 was functional.

Tactics. If he were the ship’s captain, he’d shut the internal door and turn off the magcon field, venting the bay’s atmosphere into space and suffocating Piggy or launching him into the void. Well, he’d have to do something about that possibility.

Wedge saw both of the TIE fighters rotate, trying to track the Lunatic, but only one managed to maneuver fast enough to get off a shot. The shot missed the wildly rocking assembly of parts. Then, at full speed, the Lunatic shot into the open bay door.

Wedge realized his mouth was open. “I’ll be damned. They did it.” He hit his comm key. “Wraiths, power up and target those eyeballs, lasers only, do not abandon your positions.” He switched channels. “Attention, TIE fighter pilots. This is Commander Wedge Antilles of the New Republic. We have you under our guns. Surrender or be vaped.”

The two TIE fighters ceased drifting. One came up to speed, heading toward the corvette, and the other spun back toward Phanan’s X-wing. That eyeball fired, its green lasers shredding the derelict snubfighter.

Wedge grimaced. “Amateurs. Wraiths, open fire.”

Not all the Wraiths had angles on the eyeballs, but enough did. The fighter approaching the corvette was hit by two quad-linked bursts, the one that had destroyed Phanan’s craft by three. Both exploded.

His blaster pistol once again tucked away and the chopped-down laser cannon hanging from its power cable, Piggy climbed the TIE fighters’ landing brackets. He kept a strong grip on those brackets; if the atmosphere vented, he didn’t want to be pulled out with it. He saw the door through which the hold crew had run begin to close.

At the top of the brackets, he was only three feet from the hold ceiling. If he remembered the layout of Corellian corvettes from the training he’d received, there would be a floor of officer and guest quarters above the hold, and the ship’s bridge would be immediately above that. If his cannon would chew holes in both ceilings and he could find a means to keep climbing, he could be in the bridge before anyone knew he was coming.

He dragged up the cannon, pointed it at the ceiling, averted his eyes, and fired.

The light produced by the shot was overwhelming, dazzling him even when reflected from the canopy of the TIE fighter below. The noise was incredible, a shriek of metal and displaced air. Melting metal scraps fell all around him—and on him, burning through his pilot’s suit.

He ignored the pain. As his eyes cleared, he clambered up atop the bracket beams and leaped up through the hole he’d made—

Into the bridge. Around him, lying on the floor where they’d leaped for cover, running toward the exit, reaching toward holsters for blasters they’d never grasp, were the members of the bridge crew.

Where was the officers’ quarters floor? It didn’t matter. Piggy shouted, “Stop where you are! One move and I fire!”

And he aimed the still-smoking laser cannon toward the bow of the bridge, where metal walls and transparisteel windows were all that held in the chamber’s atmosphere.

The bridge officers glanced at one another, then at an officer wearing the insignia of an Imperial naval lieutenant. The lieutenant nodded glumly and raised his hands.

Only when ash began to drift down from the ceiling did Piggy glance up, there to see what was left of another ship’s officer.

“Captain Voort saBinring of the New Republic corvette Night Caller hailing Wraith Squadron. Wraith Squadron, come in.”

Wedge couldn’t restrain his grin. “Captain? That’s a sudden promotion.”

“A temporary promotion, sir. I am in command of this vessel. I thought a captaincy would be most appropriate.”

“Oh, it is. Permission to come aboard?”

“Granted. And please hurry.”

12

Inconvenient as the planet’s weather was, they brought Night Caller down to the surface of Xobome 6 to perform their examination. Jesmin Ackbar remained on station in orbit to alert them to any other enemy arrivals.

Wedge stayed on the bridge, accumulating information, while the Wraiths performed their duties as fast as possible. Wedge could see them, dim shapes moving among the rocking X-wings while the wind drove ice particles past the bridge windows and obscured his vision. He was careful to stay well away from the hole melted in the floor. The object fried to the ceiling above that hole, remains that had once been a man named Captain Zurel Darillian, had fallen free during the ship’s landing and dropped into the TIE fighter hold; Falynn Sandskimmer, unperturbed by their grisly nature, was dealing with them.

Squeaky, just back from his initial tour of the ship, seemed fascinated by what he’d seen. “It’s all so very clean, sir. The captain must have been quite a stickler for cleanliness.”

Wedge gave him a rueful look. “Usually a sign of a diseased mind … What about the structural modifications?”

“It has been very heavily modified from the standard corvette, Commander. Where the Tantive IV had a luxury quarters deck beneath the bridge, Night Caller has eliminated the deck, I suspect to make extra room in the bow hold for the four TIE fighters. The bow has also been widened, the hull armor on the sides of the bow narrowed, electronic apparatus that should be between bulkheads there moved somewhere else. The topside hold has been converted into a skimmer hangar. There are no laboratories; that’s where the luxury quarters are located.”

Wedge nodded. “It appears that this was no retrofit job. It came out of the shipyards this way.”

“I agree, Commander.”

From the main weapons console, Janson said, “They’ve given up one of their bow turbolaser twin cannons and installed a tractor beam instead.”

“Most ships this size have a tractor.”

Janson grinned. “I mean a real tractor beam. Something suited to a frigate or larger war vessel, not just a beam suitable to drag a fighter around.”

Grinder, bent over one of the bridge’s data consoles, called, “Oh, Commander.” He made the rank sound like part of a song. When he straightened and turned, Wedge could see the Bothan’s teeth bared in a meat-eating smile.

“Yes?”

“Piggy got to the bridge so fast—oh, this is sweet. They didn’t have time to shut down, to purge the memory, to activate the most basic security. They have a state-of-the-art Imperial HoloNet system, a real luxury on a vessel this size, and it was hot, ready to go—and they didn’t even get a message off.”

Wedge blinked at him. “Whatever fleet it came from is unaware it’s in trouble?”

“Completely. I pulled up its mission profile, its standing orders, its schedule, everything.”

“Tell me.”

“It belongs to Zsinj—”

“No surprise.”

“No surprise. But it’s temporarily assigned to Admiral Apwar Trigit. Its mission is to lay mines, Empion mines, a type I’m not familiar with—”

“Ask Kell about them. I think I had him redesign them in his head earlier today.”

“Right. Anyway, it’s supposed to plant them, to monitor their hypercomm frequency for alerts that they’ve been triggered, to inform Admiral Trigit of the results when they go off.”

“Go on.”

“I also got their schedule, mostly visiting unaligned planetary systems and demonstrating that Zsinj has muscle, also some routine meetings with refueling ships. A schedule they’re supposed to return to once this minelaying is done.”

“Show me.”

Grinder brought up a list on-screen. Wedge read off the list of planets. “Viamarr 4, Xartun, Belthu, M2398, Todirium, Obinipor, Fenion. Can you plot that for me?”

“I’m way ahead of you.”

“That seems to be a short description of my recent command history.” Wedge looked over the star chart Grinder brought up. It tracked a course through Rimward planets just outside the New Republic’s current zones of control. “And Trigit doesn’t know we’ve captured this vessel.”

Grinder shook his head, sending ripples through his silver fur. “Sir, he can’t.”

Wedge whistled as the first elements of a plan began to percolate in his mind.

Cursing the cold, Cubber and Kell staggered against the gale-force winds of Xobome 6 and reached the stern of the Narra.

There, as Squeaky had described, tucked neatly away in one of the recesses beside the main thruster of the main drive unit, was a rectangle of the dimensions Kell remembered. This one was black to match the surrounding components of the drive unit.

The two mechanics looked at each other. “Doesn’t belong here,” Cubber said. “Let’s pull it off.”

“Let’s scan it first, Cubber. Remember my other occupation?”

“Oh, yes. I’ll wait over there. Behind the outcropping.”

Kell pulled out the sensor pack Squeaky had saved for him, the one optimized for demolitions work, and hoped that it would hold up in this cold environment. He moved it slowly across the surface of the mystery box and carefully watched the sensor’s display.

The heat-based visual display showed intricate electronic components inside, some of which were consistent with advanced comm gear, none of which seemed to include the sort of nondifferentiated material that usually made up the explosive portion of a bomb. There seemed to be some sort of armature attachments on the other side holding it to the shuttle’s surface.

He waved Cubber over, then carefully gripped the box and pried at it. It resisted him; then, as he applied more pressure, it came away from the shuttle. Four mechanical limbs, each articulated, half a meter long, and ending in gripping hands, hung limply.

“I think it’s dead,” Cubber said.

“What do you want to bet that the bomb that scrambled our droids’ memories did the same thing to this?”

“No bet. Let’s get inside where it’s warm and find out for sure.”

Jesmin remained at her station in orbit; Falynn and Runt guarded fifty-plus ship’s officers and crewmen now crowded into the stern lounge. The rest assembled in the small meeting room that was part of the captain’s quarters.

“First,” Wedge said, “I want to commend the principal parties involved in the capture of Night Caller. Piggy, Face, Kell—excellent work.”

There was general applause, and Piggy said, “Can I keep the ship?”

“If you mean as a personal possession, no. If you’d like to remain in command, the answer is probably yes.”

Piggy looked startled. “I was joking.”

“Well, the question would have been a joke in the Imperial navy or the Corellian fleet or a lot of other places, but it’s actually a reasonable one in the fleet of the New Republic. It’s all because many of our traditions are rooted in the more piratical times of the Alliance’s first days. Still interested?”

Piggy nodded, silent. His expression was made up of surprise and confusion.

“The first thing you’d do is transmit an informal request for command of Night Caller to Fleet Command. Then you’d submit a formal application for transfer out of Starfighter Command and into Fleet Command. I’d have little choice except to approve it, and the Navy is nearly one hundred percent likely to accept you. They have a keen appreciation of officers who capture ships to add to the fleet, after all.

“Then you’d receive a crash course in naval traditions and capital ship command, along with a promotion to naval lieutenant … and an immediate temporary promotion to captain. Because of your lack of experience, you’d be given very simple missions for your first several months—guarding convoys of ships carrying nonessential goods, for example. Eventually, within the year, I’m certain, they’d become aware of your competence, begin giving you more critical missions, and make that last promotion a permanent one.

“Let me just say, though, I personally think it would be a shame to take a promising fighter pilot like yourself and turn him into a barge driver. But I have to admit that those are the words of an irredeemable X-wing jockey.”

Janson barked out a laugh, which Wedge ignored. Wedge continued, “What about it, Piggy? Naval captaincy within a year? Still interested?”

Piggy was still for a moment, then slowly shook his head. “Perhaps I am selfish. But everyone remembers Lando Calrissian and Wedge Antilles and what they did at Endor. Who remembers the name of the captain or the gunner on the Home One at the same battle?”

Wedge smiled. “I do. But I know what you mean. And I appreciate the fact you’re staying.” He turned back to the others. “All right, back to Night Caller and our current situation. Cubber, fuel?”

“We’re good. Night Caller’s tanks were almost full, and they have proper refueling equipment. I’ve siphoned off enough to top off the Narra and all the X-wings except Jesmin Ackbar’s.”

“As soon as we’re done here, I’ll bring her down and send Myn up so you can refuel her as well.”

Jesmin’s voice came out of the intercom on the table. “Thank you, sir.”

“Oops. Forgot you were listening. Grinder, did you transfer the nav data?”

The Bothan nodded. “We can jump out of system at any time.”

“Phanan? Your status?”

Ton Phanan looked less pallid than he had up in orbit, but he looked no less unhappy. “They blew up my snubfighter.”

“Your physical status, I mean.”

“Oh. The damage to flesh was all trivial. I didn’t lose any limbs or organs this time, which is quite a treat, I assure you. The damage to the prosthetics is not all fixed yet, though. My left leg isn’t receiving proper neural input and drags a bit. And my right hand works just fine for most things, but when I start to work with a datapad, there’s some sort of leakage of signals and it just goes crazy.” Phanan waved the hand in question. It ordinarily looked like a normal hand, but now it twitched continually, the ring finger jerking rhythmically and the flesh on the back of the hand crawling in an inhuman fashion. Phanan did not seem disturbed by the phenomenon. “But with a little more work with the ship’s computers, I should be able to set everything right.”

“Cubber, Kell, the attachment on the shuttle?”

Kell shrugged. “It’s hard to tell with its memory blown out, but I think it was some sort of parasitic communications device. It was mobile and had a camouflage coating; it can alter its color to match whatever vehicle it’s attached to. It also has a very small, very limited hypercomm ability … but again, with its memory gone, I can’t find out where it was transmitting to. My guess is that it went from ship to ship and occasionally broadcast its current location to its maker.”

Grinder said, “Which is nothing if there’s only one of them … but important if they could build hundreds or thousands. They could build up a map of anomalous hits and find all sorts of things. Smugglers’ bases. Deep-space assembly points.”

Wedge said, “And hidden Alliance bases. Jesmin, add that to the report we’re sending to Command. ‘All ships, be advised …’ ”

“Understood.”

Wedge checked the next item on his list. “All right. We’ve faked up a report in Captain Darillian’s name, with all the appropriate security checks on it, explaining that he jumped into this system, found the abandoned X-wing, assumed that the pilot had ejected, sent over a party to retrieve it—and it blew up, some nasty treachery on the part of its original pilot. We’ve sent that report off. We hope it will forestall any further inquiry on the matter of the Xobome system. Now, we’re going to take some time, rotating you among the guard duties, but giving everyone a chance for a few hours’ rest. When we’re all feeling a bit more recovered, we launch.”

Kell said, “Doldrums, here we come.”

“No, Mr. Tainer. Not Doldrums. First we’re going to three different uninhabited systems to pick up three unexploded Empion mines. Then we’re going to the Viamarr system.”

Kell frowned, confused. “If I may ask, sir—”

“Why this schedule? Because that’s the order of business for Night Caller. Ladies, gentlemen, I’m acting on my own initiative and sending off a request that High Command approve my new plan. Which is this: We’ve just become crewmen in Warlord Zsinj’s fleet … and we’re going to do his bidding until we can find a way to strike at him.”

Kell emerged from his temporary quarters wearing a black TIE fighter pilot’s jumpsuit—one that was, miraculously, large enough for him—and toweling his hair dry.

Night Caller seemed eerily quiet. They were still on the ground, so the ship did not tremble from the efforts of her engines, and she was massive enough to be immune to Xobome 6’s winds. With most of the old crew collected in the stern lounge under guard, and with Wraith Squadron spread thinly through the rest of the ship, there were few noises to be heard.

He headed forward, toward the bridge, along the main corridor running the length of the ship. When he was almost to the bow, he heard voices drifting down a stairwell to port.

He followed them up. Off the main corridor of Deck One, he found himself peering into the ship’s main communications bay, a smallish chamber whose walls were solid, modular blocks of communications gear.

Jesmin and Face were seated there, and another man was with them—a hologram, actually. The man, thin, cleanshaven, with hawklike features, was dressed in a sharp-looking black uniform with Imperial captain’s bars. He was seated in an imposing command chair and was much given to irritating theatrical gestures as he spoke. “We have been charged,” he said, “with weaving the net that will capture any Rebels who are so fortunate as to survive the destruction of the base on Folor and flee. Our assignment: lay Empion bombs along the four most likely escape routes and then wait at the astrographical center of that array to snatch up whatever poor insects fall into our trap.” He leaned forward, eyes glittering. “Personally, I hope some of them can effect repairs in the time it takes us to get to them. I could do with a bit of a fight.”

The Wraiths burst out in laughter. Jesmin hit a button on the main console and the captain’s image froze there, his expression still suggesting he had just let the viewers into his confidence with that little revelation.

“What is this?” asked Kell.

Face leaned back and stretched. “That’s our former ceiling decoration, Captain Zurel Darillian. He apparently kept the ship’s log in full holo.”

“What an ego.” Kell shook his head. “That must take up massive storage.”

Face said, “The ego or the graphics?”

Jesmin turned one eye admonishingly toward Face, then nodded toward Kell. “Oh, it does. But I thought that since Face was an actor, he should see this man’s performance. I have seldom seen anything so florid, so self-satisfied, so … repellant.”

“Oh, I have,” Face said. “I once sat in Ysanne Isard’s lap.”

Kell and Jesmin stared at him. Kell said, “You’re kidding.”

“Oh, no, I’m not. Win or Die had just been released Empire-wide. I played a little boy, a son of two patricians of the Old Republic, only I know that the Empire is the way to go and I try to run away to safety with the new Emperor. But my dad doesn’t see it that way and shoots me in the back, and I die in the Emperor’s arms, begging him to finish conquering the galaxy so that the evil of people like my parents can be eradicated …”

Jesmin burst out in gales of laughter, then clamped both hands over her mouth while she shook. When she had herself under control, she said, “Face, that’s horrible.”

Face grinned. “That was the old propaganda machine. So I got a trip to Imperial Center, I mean Coruscant, to meet the real Emperor. But he’d been called away to deal with some problem—I heard later that he had just received one of the early reports informing him of the degree of organization the Alliance actually had, and he wasn’t in a very good mood. So I saw Ysanne Isard instead, and she sat me in her lap and told me what a good boy I was.”

Kell finished with his hair and slung the towel over his shoulder. “What was that like?”

“Something like being stroked by a poisonous reptile wearing a human suit, only not quite so comforting.” Face shuddered. “The most crushing blow I ever felt after joining the New Republic was learning that Rogue Squadron had killed Isard—meaning that I wouldn’t be able to. Anyway, Captain Darillian is nothing in comparison. He was just a petty guy who reached his ultimate level of usefulness driving a minelaying barge for a warlord and then had to be scraped off the floor.”

Jesmin said, “You’d better finish getting ready, Kell. We take off in half an hour.”

“How are we doing that? I mean, with most of us returning to the X-wings, who’s going to pilot Night Caller and who’s going to deal with the prisoners?”

“We landed four X-wings in the topside hold, strapped them down tight almost on top of one another so they’d fit,” Jesmin said. “And the Narra is hooked up to the corvette’s port docking station. Commander Antilles will be piloting the corvette—he says he used to pilot Corellian freighters—and Phanan, Face, Grinder, Squeaky, Cubber, and I will be aboard.” Her voice turned sarcastically sweet. “I think we will be able to manage.”

“Well … all right. You have my permission.” Kell reflected. “Say, since we’re sending messages to Warlord Zsinj, why can’t we just track them along the HoloNet and find out where he is?”

Jesmin said, “Face asked the same thing. And it might be that simple if we had regular communications with him in the usual fashion. But Night Caller is not actually using the HoloNet for reports. We’re to send hypercomm transmissions along specific courses.”

“Meaning Zsinj’s ship, or just relay satellites, can be anywhere along those courses … across hundreds or thousand of light-years.”

Jesmin nodded.

“That’s why I’m Demolitions and not Communications. Much simple just to blow things up.” Kell gave them a mock salute and left.

In the corridor leading back to the temporary quarters, Kell saw Wes Janson headed his way. The two men passed without comment, each moving as close to the opposite side of the corridor as decorum would allow.

At his quarters, he nearly bumped into Donos emerging from the cabin next door. “Myn. How is Shiner?”

Donos looked rested and uncharacteristically cheerful. “Shiner? He’s fine. Why?”

“Well, you seemed so concerned about him the other day, I was wondering if he’d suffered some sort of physical damage I’d need to repair.”

Donos shook his head. “No. I, uh, we just …” He stopped for a moment and appeared to be organizing his thoughts. “Kell, we leave them hanging out in hard vacuum. I just think we need to protect them.”

“Right.” Kell tried to relate that answer to Donos’s behavior of a few hours ago and couldn’t. “Well, I’m glad to hear he’s in good shape.” He pushed into his quarters and escaped the peculiarly uninformative lieutenant.

It took them the better part of two days to retrieve the three undetonated Empion mines and return them to Night Caller’s belly hold. The X-wing pilots were rotated through duties on the corvette so that everyone got an almost-adequate amount of sleep.

Kell suggested some changes to Wedge and ended up pulling a succession of corvette shifts while he and Cubber implemented them.

They welded metal sheets approximately the size of TIE fighter solar array wings between the escape pods hanging from the corvette’s flanks. They stowed two of the ball-shaped escape pods in the belly hold and painted the others the same dark Imperial shade as TIE fighters. Then Wedge personally flew the two remaining TIE fighters to dock them at the empty escape pod hatches. The end result was that from any scrutiny except close examination, the TIE fighters looked like escape pods—and would actually be faster and safer to launch than out of the bow hold.

With the TIE fighters out of the bow hold, Kell and Cubber disassembled the braces designed to hold them. They used that metal and more from the belly hold to fabricate a new set of braces and rails, three rows of them, one above the other, built at the very rear of the hold.

It would require delicate piloting, but an X-wing could now use repulsorlifts to back into the bow hold and accept instructions from a ground-guiding crew member to slide into rails spaced to accommodate their strike foils. Once they reached the rear of the rails they could be locked there by metal brackets lowered into place.

This gave them an array of three X-wings by three, the strike foils on each row overlapping one another slightly. With the bow doors open, the X-wings in the center column could launch quickly and in relative safety; the six along the sides would have to launch a little more slowly, but the guidance rails would probably keep accidents from happening.

With nine X-wings in the bow hold and two more up in the top hold, Night Caller could now carry eleven X-wings and two TIE fighters.

Cubber cackled and rubbed his hands together. “More than a squadron’s worth, by virtue of superior engineering.”

Wedge said, “Not bad. Not bad at all.” He reached out to grasp the nearest vertical brace and heaved against it. The bracketing rig didn’t budge. He smiled.

Night Caller was ready for action.

13

The records said Viamarr 4 was an agricultural world, somewhat higher in gravity than Coruscant standard; its chief export was a subterranean fungus whose offshoots and tubers sometimes grew to the diameter of a kilometer or more. The fungus, inaccurately called Viamarr Blackroot for its color, was well liked for its meaty texture and nutrient balance.

“Who has TIE fighter experience?” Wedge asked. “Even in simulators?” He held up his own hand.

So did Piggy, Falynn, Face, and Janson.

“Piggy, how were the simulator cockpits for you?”

“Terrible, sir.”

“All right. I want Wes to remain on Night Caller. Falynn, suit up. You and I are going to buzz the capital of Viamarr 4.”

The somber woman from Tatooine gave one of her rare smiles.

Wedge continued, “Squeaky informs me that there’s a TIE fighter simulator in the stern lounge. Not too surprising, since this corvette is trying very hard to be a pocket carrier. I recommend that the rest of you get some experience in it. We may be flying a number of TIE fighter missions.”

·  ·  ·

Wedge looked over the half-familiar array of controls and monitors, let out an irritated sigh, and flipped two switches. The TIE fighter immediately hummed, indicating it was powering up. “We have two lit and in the green,” he said. Automatically, he glanced to port and starboard, a visual check of his surroundings, and bit back another annoyed remark. There were no windows to the sides; had there been any, their view would only have been of the fighter’s wing pylons and large, hexagonal solar array wings. The TIE’s only viewports were forward and above. They showed endless starfield, reminding Wedge that he was hanging from what until a few days ago was an escape pod dock.

No shields. No ejection seat. TIE fighters were disposable attack vehicles for disposable pilots, and Wedge never cared to feel disposable. “Laser cannon readings nominal. How am I transmitting?”

Jesmin came back, “Sir, until you launch, your communications are coming in over direct connections.”

Wedge grinned. “Sorry. I’ll ask again after launch. Gray Two, what’s your status?”

Falynn’s voice sounded a bit nervous. “Twin ion engines are live and running at optimal. Ship’s systems all in the green. Two laser cannons at full power. Shields—damn. I mean, uh, sorry, sir.”

“That’s all right, I feel the same way.”

“And I don’t look forward to landing this thing. Sir, even in the simulators, I’ve never landed straight onto a docking station.”

“You’ll do fine. Just remember to crank the hand yoke over to minimal responsiveness. That’ll make you feel like you’re crawling along centimeter by centimeter, but you won’t crash into anything on landing. Watch what I do.” Now, he had to match action to words. He cranked the knob on his control yoke down as far as it would go, then cut the connection with Night Caller and kicked in the ion engines.

He drifted free of the corvette. When the rangefinder said he was fifty meters from the ship, he rotated in place, looking back across Night Caller’s belly. On the far side, Falynn’s TIE fighter was also in a slow, smooth descent relative to the corvette’s keel. “Good,” he said. “Ready to fly?”

“Ready, sir.”

“Gray Flight away.” He pulled back on the yoke and twisted its adjustment knob, feeding more power into the engines. The TIE fighter glided smoothly forward; he heeled it over toward the distant planet of Viamarr 4. He was pleased to see Falynn follow him with adequate skill; apparently her simulator time had been put to good use.

A while later they dove into the atmosphere of Viamarr 4 and headed toward Velery, the planetary capital, a community of a hundred thousand on the largest continent of the southern hemisphere. The land surrounding the capital was largely forested, with numerous tiny communities of wooden buildings.

Finally someone was alerted to their presence: “Incoming craft, this is Velery Station. Please identify yourself. Do you read?”

Wedge switched his comm to broadcast in the clear. “Velery Station, this is Gray Flight, escorting private yacht Night Caller.”

“Ah, yes.” The voice became noticeably more agitated. “Gray Flight, please come to heading two-five-five and make landing here at Velery Station.”

“Can’t do it, sorry. Not in our mission parameters.” The mission assigned to Night Caller’s TIE fighters was a simple one: Buzz the town of Velery a couple of times, spook any air traffic, ignore attempts by the local government to impose its authority, and return to the corvette. Simple. The agrarian settlers of the planet didn’t have any significant defenses—nothing even to make TIE fighters worry.

“Uh … may I inquire as to what those parameters are?”

“Stay where you are and you’ll see them in just a minute.” He could see the interruption in the forest ahead that had to herald the presence of Velery.

The sensor board beeped a strident signal Wedge recognized. He switched to Night Caller’s frequency: “Follow me, Two, someone’s trying to paint us for laser fire.” He pulled back on the yoke and went skyward.

As he climbed and then looped backward, he could see their pursuers through the viewport atop the TIE fighter’s cockpit. Two stubby fighter craft, their noses similar to X-wings except for the bubble canopy—“Headhunters,” he said. Evidently Viamarr had picked up some fighter defenses when Zsinj wasn’t looking.

“Mark Ones,” Falynn said. “See the swing wings? They’re pretty old.”

“Maybe, but they’re as good as TIE fighters in atmosphere, and their lasers can cause you to have a bad, bad day.” Wedge saw the Headhunters climb in an effort to stay on the TIE fighters’ tails.

Then they were on the comm: “Gray Flight, this is Blackwing One. You need to comply with Velery Station’s instructions. Right now.” The voice was male, young, rustic.

Wedge shook his head. Farmboys in Headhunters trying to point laser cannons at him. “Oh, we can’t have that.”

He snap-rolled and dove, pushing the TIE fighter’s atmospheric capabilities to their limits in an effort to come down in firing position behind the Headhunters. Atmospheric drag on the solar arrays caused him to slew to port, but he kept the fighter in line through experience and brute strength.

He had a moment’s worry wondering if Falynn could keep up with him, tried to spot her visually and couldn’t, then caught sight of her blip on the sensor monitor. She had lost ground to him, but was in control.

Mere meters above the treetops, he rolled upright and began another climb, this time with the port-side Headhunter in clear sight. He brought up the TIE fighter’s targeting equipment and immediately had the Headhunter’s jittery silhouette bracketed. “Blackwing One, if I were in an irritable mood, one of you would be dead now.”

“So you say. These things can take a lot more punishment than those pasteboard boxes you’re flying.” The Headhunter in his brackets juked left, then rolled up on its starboard wing and began a tight roll to starboard.

“And they’ll do just that if you don’t stop annoying me.” Wedge easily stayed on the Headhunter’s tail, anticipating the fighter’s banks and turns, gaining on the older vehicle until he held at a mere fifty meters back.

He glanced at his sensor board. Falynn wasn’t talking, but she was still behind the other Headhunter, mimicking its maneuvers. Finally her voice came across on Night Caller’s channel: “Sir, it won’t be hard, but I really don’t want to vape these plow-pushers.”

“Keep your guns on them and outfly them, Two. Maybe they’ll grow a brain stem.”

Wedge’s target rolled left and suddenly lost altitude, diving straight toward the trees. Wedge followed him in, blinked in amazement as the Headhunter crashed down through the top layer of branches.

Follow or break off? That pilot was young and arrogant, but didn’t seem suicidal. Wedge followed.

He felt his solar arrays tear through branches, then suddenly he was below the level of the treetops. His target was angling to starboard, following the course of a low river. Wedge tucked in right behind him. “Blackwings, are you ready to break off and go home?”

“Gray One, you’re about a second from me turning around and giving you six laser cannons’ worth of dental work—”

The voice of Velery Station cut in again. “Blackwing Flight, break off and return to station. That’s an order.”

“Sir …” Blackwing One’s voice was sulky, frustrated.

“That’s straight from the governor. Or do you want your pilots’ licenses transferred to tractor operations?”

“No, sir.” With no further taunts for the TIE fighters, Blackwing One reduced speed, then punched up through the light canopy of tree branches. On the sensor screen, Blackwing Two was also headed toward the Velery Station coordinates.

“Good flying, Gray Two. Now, let’s buzz their administrative buildings.”

“Sounds like fun, One.”

·  ·  ·

Jesmin leaned back from the comm station. “Lieutenant, we’re receiving a communication from Velery House. That’s their capitol building. They’re asking for a specific encryption that’s in our computer. Obviously they’ve talked before.”

Janson, lounging in the captain’s seat, looked confused. “There’s no provision in the mission profile for this. They weren’t supposed to call. They were supposed to batten down hatches and ride out the TIE fighters’ overflight.”

Jesmin gave him a very human shrug. “I know.”

“Well, take the call. Tell them the captain is taking a bath or something.”

“Sir, Night Caller followed Imperial protocols under Captain Darillian.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning it wouldn’t have a Mon Calamari communications officer.”

Janson uttered an irritable hiss. “Well, I can’t take the call. My face is fairly well known.”

They both looked at Face, seated at the navigational console. He straightened up. “Uh, even with my scar, they might recognize me. Some of the Wraiths did.”

Janson didn’t bother to conceal his frustration. “Face, you’re an actor. Do something.”

Face stood, looked frantically around the bridge. There wasn’t much on hand: items dropped by the bridge crew behind consoles, plus Cubber’s toolkit over where the mechanic had been cutting the sharp edges away from the hole in the floor, preparatory to putting down a metal sheet.

He ran to the toolbox, pulled out Cubber’s welding goggles. Then a cylinder of orange paint used to mark spots on a ship’s exterior where repairs were necessary. He sprayed the interior of the goggles until they were opaque.

Containers of grease, hydrospanners, cables, sensors, tubing … He took a tube half the length of his forearm, inserted one end in his nose, the other in his right ear. Then he put the goggles on, resting them on his forehead, and hunted up one of the bridge crewmen’s hats. “Give me the chair.”

Janson vacated it. Face settled in, pulled the goggles over his eyes, pulled the hat down low on his brow. “How’s that look?”

He couldn’t see their faces, but Jesmin responded with gales of laughter. He could barely hear Janson’s reply: “It’s disgusting.”

“But they won’t recognize my features. All right, put him up on the screen.” He turned toward the bridge’s main viewscreen.

He could dimly see the light intensity in the room change, then he heard a voice: “Captain D—Oh, my.”

Face took a deep breath and ran his voice down into the bass range where it could vibrate rocks and desktops. “Captain Darillian is having his bath. I am Lieutenant Narol. Who are you? What do you want?” He injected both boredom and contempt into his voice.

“Um, I am Governor Watesk. I would very much like to speak with Captain Darillian.” The man’s voice was a plea.

Face angled his head down so he could peer between the top of the goggles and the bottom of his officer’s hat. The face on the viewscreen was of a graying, bearded man, dressed in rustic brown tunic but with expensive wood paneling behind him. “Was Basic your first language? Do you not understand? The captain is in his bath.”

“You could give me voice-only access.”

“He’s dictating his memoirs and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

“In the bath?”

“Of course, in the bath!” Face’s tone was an explosion of anger. “Where else? The captain is a very busy man! He’s not some deskbound colony governor with enough time to pick his nose with one hand and skim the cream off taxes with the other! If you have anything to say, you can say it to me. Or perhaps we’ll just jump on to our next destination and I’ll give the captain a report of your bad manners. And the manners of your pilots, who for some unknown reason decided to play tag with ours.”

“No! Lieutenant, please forgive me.” The governor looked appropriately contrite. “Our air force is very new, the pilots not yet very experienced. They acted on their own initiative. They will be punished. But that’s not what I’m calling about.”

Face contrived, with posture and the set of his mouth, to look bored. “Go on.”

“I’m calling about the agreement. I’m ready for Viamarr to become a signatory. A proud signatory.”

Face glanced at Jesmin. Her fingers flew over her communications console. Then she began a wild pantomime that said clearly to Face that there was nothing about this in the ship’s records.

“It has been a while,” Face said smoothly. “What makes you think that the original offer is still available?”

The question caught Governor Watesk off guard. The man had to take a couple of gulping breaths before he answered. Before he could reply, the wall panels behind him vibrated and Face could clearly hear the sound of a TIE fighter screaming by near the governor’s position. The governor tracked the TIE fighter’s movement with his eyes, then returned his attention to Face. “Sir, the warlord said I’d have until your next visit to decide.”

Face gave him a cold smile. “And what did the warlord say after the last time he talked to you?”

The governor looked stricken. “I don’t know, sir. I couldn’t possibly know.”

“Correct. Well, you tell me what you think the warlord offered and I’ll tell you what part of it is still on the table.”

Janson smiled broadly and gave Face a thumbs-up of approval.

“Uh, yes.” The governor glanced down, apparently looking at a datapad or documents the screen didn’t show. “We are to provide his army with supplies equivalent to one-tenth our exports.”

“And?”

“And you are to … and you would give us a location where we could transmit requests for aid in case of attack or invasion. You’d protect us.”

“And?”

“And we would of course provide you with information about any dealings with the New Republic, the Empire, other warlords.”

“Of course. And?”

The governor’s lip trembled. “That was all.”

Face looked steadily at him. There was something in the governor’s manner, something that said obsequiousness was his nature but that he was actually simulating it now. That suggested he was holding something back.

Face turned to the side. “Ensign Ack—” He coughed. “Ackran, inform Gray Flight that they should blow a few things up before returning to us. We’ll be jumping out of system as soon as they return.”

“No, wait!” The shrill desperation in the governor’s voice seemed real. “Sir, you have to realize, the warlord told me not to talk about the last part with anyone but him.”

“Well, after you’ve convinced me, I will support your claim to the warlord that you told me nothing. Now, go ahead.”

“The land is ready.”

“Ah, good.” Face waited.

The governor looked more confused. “That was all.”

“No. Does the land conform to the warlord’s specifications? Location, size, documentation?”

“Of course it does!”

Face slammed his arm down on the armrest. “Of course it doesn’t! It doesn’t until I know it does! I don’t see the file appearing on my datapad, Governor. Where are those specifications?”

“But—”

“But nothing. Unless you transmit me that information, I have no way of knowing whether you’ve given him exactly the location he wanted. And you’ve probably sliced back the dimensions of the property to save yourself a few credits—”

“No, sir!” The governor’s voice was at full bellow, the yell of a new soldier inductee just learning to fear the noncommissioned officers. “I’m transmitting that information now, sir!”

Face glanced over at Jesmin, waited until she nodded to indicate that she’d received the file. “Lieutenant, does this data match what we’re supposed to be getting?”

She shrugged, at a loss for how to answer. Out of the corner of his eye, Face saw Janson nodding. Jesmin said, “It does, sir.”

“Good.” Face turned back to the governor. He made his voice pleasant, soothing. “Watesk, I commend you. You are unusually cooperative and forthcoming for a planetary governor.”

“I am?” The man sagged in relief and used his sleeve to blot at the perspiration sheening his forehead.

“You are. And the warlord will be pleased. We’ll forward to him the information of your acceptance, and he will arrange for a formal document to be delivered that everyone can sign. Will that be satisfactory?”

“Oh, yes, Lieutenant.”

“Good. I look forward to sampling some of your fungus. Narol out.”

Jesmin cut the signal.

Face slumped and pulled off the hat and goggles. “I hate improvisation.”

They gathered in the ship’s conference room.

“What in the name of the Sith is Zsinj up to?” Wedge asked. “A trade of supplies for protection I understand. But land deals?”

“There’s more,” Jesmin said. “The records they sent us have the land transfer registered to a person named Cortle Steeze. I must assume that’s an alias for Zsinj, but we should look for the name anyway. Whoever Steeze is, he has his choice of how the land is to be subdivided and zoned.”

“How much of it is there?”

“A good-sized island. Fifty klicks long by about thirty wide.”

“Interesting.” Wedge glanced at Face. “Good work. By the way, you still have some of that paint on your face.” Around the lines and spots of paint, the unscarred portion of Face’s skin was red from scrubbing.

“I know.” Face’s voice held a hint of complaint. “It won’t come off.”

Cubber snorted. “It’s not supposed to. It’s supposed to mark work sites. Very reflective, and shows up very well under ultraviolet. You need the solvent to get it off.”

“Solvent? Do you have some?”

There was malice in Cubber’s smile. “Sorry. Used the last of it cleaning out my goggles.”

14

When they jumped into the Doldrums system, two ships were on station waiting for them: the transport Borleias and the Mon Cal MC80 Star Cruiser Home One.

Wedge, piloting Night Caller, whistled as he saw the smooth, almost organic lines of the cruiser. “Admiral Ackbar’s command ship. Maybe our recent communications struck a nerve.”

Ton Phanan, at the sensors station, snorted. “Let’s hope we can off-load a whole lot of whining, mewling, boring prisoners and take on some decent food to replace the slop they stock their galleys with.”

“Communication from Home One” Jesmin Ackbar said. “A request from the admiral to come aboard. He’s sending a shuttle over.”

“Acknowledge, with permission and greetings, of course. Starboard docking station, please.”

Wedge’s tour of Night Caller began and ended at the bridge. Admiral Ackbar looked off through the viewports at his own vessel in the distance and said, “Am I mistaken, or are your methods becoming even more unorthodox?”

Wedge smiled. “I think you’re mistaken. It may just look that way because the new unorthodox methods are stacking on top of the old ones.”

Ackbar’s barbels twitched with amusement. “So. Well, I come with news in addition to congratulations.” From a pocket he pulled a datapad; Wedge brought his own out in case Ackbar decided to transmit files.

“First,” Ackbar said, “based on this training squadron’s exemplary performance at Folor, Xobome, and Viamarr, I have the pleasure of declaring you fully commissioned and operational.”

Wedge rocked back on his heels. “I’m … delighted to hear that. Thank you.”

“You are also worried that it is premature?”

“No, sir. The Wraiths are a little rough around the edges, but they perform like a unit that has completed training. I’d just forgotten that we weren’t officially operational.”

“Ah. How anticipatory of you, General Antilles.”

“How anticipatory of you. It’s still Commander Antilles, sir.”

“Of course. Second, we are in the process of alerting the armed forces about the small parasitic droids you described. We’d already had reports of rectangular apparatuses with melted parts aboard some ships; it appears the devices do have a self-destruct mechanism that fuses their interiors when they are forcibly detached from their host vehicles. But with your examination of the one you captured—and the device itself, if it is still intact—”

“I’ll have Grinder deliver it to you, sir. And one or more of the Empion bombs.”

“With a sample to examine, we should be able to capture more of the parasites ‘alive’ and begin releasing others with false data. Use them as a tool against Zsinj instead of simply suffering their effects. And with the Empion bombs, we may be able to equip our ships with shielding against the precise frequencies they emit, in order to reduce damage.

“Third, we have brought you some replacement equipment and supplies. Including gear, suited to commandos, from Special Forces and Intelligence.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Do we have a replacement X-wing, sir?”

“No, not yet. None to spare, but you’re at the top of the replacement list. The Borleias will deliver to you one of the X-wing simulators and backups of all your astromechs’ memories. We also have food, fuel, X-wing replacement parts, and a piloting and maintenance crew for this corvette so you can free up your own pilots. Have your supply officer transmit requisitions for further items.”

Wedge nodded. “I know we’ve needed some vacuum-rated tools. I’ll have Squeaky get on that.”

“Not Squeaky the 3PO unit? Of the Runaway Droid Ride?”

Wedge nodded.

Ackbar shuddered, then returned to his list and continued. “Fourth, your plan for retaining Night Caller and continuing on with its orders—that has neither been approved nor disapproved. I must know, what end do you hope to serve?”

“After some additional thinking, sir, my plan is to let Night Caller go through her assigned duties, but in those systems that are obviously in collusion with Zsinj, Wraith Squadron jumps in shortly afterward and makes strikes against the collaborators. Eventually Zsinj or Trigit should get the idea that somebody is following Night Caller around. My hope is that we can lure Zsinj out that way—have him arrange a trap for us and trap him in it instead.”

“How appropriately vague.” Ackbar considered. “For the time being, consider your plan approved. But how long do you think you can keep up this deception?”

“Quite a while, sir. The fact that Warlord Zsinj obviously had some special, unrecorded instructions for Captain Darillian is a problem; it may trip us up. But we’re going to try to compensate with a trick or two of our own. For instance … Flight Officer Ackbar, is the demonstration ready?”

“Standing by, sir.”

“Orient it toward us instead of the captain’s chair and initiate.”

Jesmin went through a series of control manipulations. Then the air hummed as a hologram appeared before Admiral Ackbar and Wedge.

The hologram showed a man in a control chair, his uniform black and nattily spotless, his manner energetic and haughty. He looked up as if startled and said, “Who in the hells of the Sith are you?”

Ackbar glanced at Wedge, who gave him no cue to go by. “I am Admiral Ackbar of the New Republic. Identify yourself.”

“I am Captain Darillian, master of the private yacht Night Caller. I demand to know why you have interrupted me.” The captain glared at the Mon Calamari officer; his anger was so palpable that if holograms had been able to project energy Ackbar would have been struck dead by lasers.

Ackbar turned back to the commander. “I thought you said he was dead.”

Before Wedge could speak, Captain Darillian roared an interruption: “Dead! I’ll show you dead! Ensign Antilles, kill this intruder.”

Wedge barked a laugh. “Ensign Antilles, now? I’m all over the rank chart today. That’ll be enough, Face.”

Captain Darillian smiled. He reached to his right farther than the sensor on him could track and his hand disappeared. He must have manipulated something, for his image wavered … and became that of Face Loran. “Yub, yub, Commander.” Then he disappeared.

Ackbar turned both eyes toward Wedge. “A holographic overlay of some sort.”

Wedge nodded. “That’s right. Captain Darillian was such a massive egotist that he kept his ship’s journal and personal journal in full holo. That gave Grinder Thri’ag a huge sample that he could encode. He compiled a computer model of Darillian’s body from the waist up, and his voice into an overlay, both of which we can project over Face. We have near-instantaneous translation of sight and sound. As long as we don’t have to let anyone meet Darillian in person, and as long as Face can bluff his way through situations where the enemy knows more than we do, we can keep fooling them.”

“I see. Very encouraging.” Ackbar consulted his datapad again. “Fifth … Could you relieve Flight Officer Ackbar of duty for a few minutes, so that my niece and I might visit?”

“Consider it done, sir.”

There weren’t many places to go on the cramped Night Caller. Jesmin led her uncle first to the bow lounge and was lucky enough to find it unoccupied.

“You will understand my surprise,” the admiral said, “when first I hear that Commander Antilles is assembling a squad of pilots who are chronic misfits … and shortly thereafter I see your name on the list of pilots assigned to that squad. I am not displeased to see you serving with him … but I do not understand. Your record is spotless, exemplary.”

Jesmin gave him the barbel-twitch of knowing amusement. “My record shows I am a complete failure, Uncle.”

“No.”

“Try to understand. I was first in my class on graduation. Then, whatever unit I was assigned to, whatever type of fighter or field of engagement, I ended up flying routine scouting missions … or desk assignments.”

“With your marks?”

“With my name, Uncle. My commanders were afraid of putting me in the line of fire, for fear that I’d be killed … and that you’d blame them.”

The admiral rolled his eyes in different directions. “That is preposterous. General Cracken’s son Pash has been in the path of danger since he joined the military. He even flew with Rogue Squadron, hardly the safest place in our armed forces.”

“Perhaps there’s still some Imperial-style overprotective-ness of females—or contempt for us—also at work, Uncle. But preposterous or not, I was a waste of training. I wasn’t doing anything. I can’t tell you how happy I was when Commander Antilles accepted me to the new squadron … and how much happier I was the first time I was put out in the line of fire. Finally, I am a pilot instead of a waste of volume.” She gave him a steady look. “If I do come to my death in this unit, I hope you will not hold it against Commander Antilles.”

“Are you happy here?”

“I am.”

“Then I will hold him blameless. But if you do everything he says and learn whatever he tries to teach you, you might not ever give me cause for such grief.”

“I’ll try, Uncle.”

After the last of the prisoners had been transferred over to Home One, the next shuttle trip brought them their new crew for Night Caller. Wedge was introduced to a small, neat man with a weathered face, Captain Choday Hrakness of Agamar, the new ship’s captain, and to a tall, elegant-looking brown-haired woman of Coruscant, Lieutenant Atril Tabanne, his second-in-command, as well as to a number of technicians and mechanics.

Together they all watched Borleias and Home One jump out of system, then they set about reorganizing Night Caller.

The expanded mechanics crew, under Cubber’s direction, reinforced the brackets holding the X-wings in the bow hold, making them steadier and more durable.

Officers and crew were assigned permanent quarters. Since many of the former crew of Night Caller had been stormtroopers and had not been replaced by New Republic ground troops, their departure left the ship comparatively empty. Every pilot received his own small stateroom, and Wedge, as commanding officer of a provisional group that now included the corvette, Wraith Squadron, and Rogue Squadron, was obliged to accept the huge and garishly over-decorated captain’s cabin. He immediately sent the velvet drapes and antique furnishings collected from around the galaxy off to the hold and converted the captain’s private audience chamber into a second conference room.

Meanwhile, the pilots settled into a new routine.

For Kell, it was less than a pleasant one. Night Caller was a much smaller environment than Folor Base, and consequently he could not avoid running into Wes Janson several times a day. Most were simply incidents of passing one another in the hall, but even those brief and innocuous encounters brought cold fear to his belly and the lockup of all the muscles in his back.

After one such ordinary encounter, Runt told him, “You think he means you harm.”

“I think he’s waiting for me to make a mistake. I just don’t know whether he intends to send my career into a trash receptacle or literally vape me in combat.”

“I think you are wrong,” Runt said. “I think your bad mind is imagining things.”

“I think all your minds ought to go out and play in a mine field sometime so that only one or two come back.”

Runt responded with a braying laugh. Kell shook his head; he could never tell what his wingman would find amusing.

Runt, too, was putting new skills to the test. Because of the multiplicity of his minds he was charged with reading the mail the ship’s former crewmen had received and writing responses for those who had been active correspondents—a small number, fortunately. He submitted his efforts to Face for both a human’s and a performer’s input, then broadcast them. He told Kell that the duty was strange and sometimes tedious, but was very helpful at teaching him to switch from one mind to another with greater speed and less effort.

Meanwhile, the ship’s two simulators were almost continuously occupied. The X-wing simulator became the near personal property of Tyria, who flew its missions obsessively, trying to bring her scores out of Wraith Squadron’s basement. Meanwhile, Falynn Sandskimmer monopolized the TIE fighter simulator, a tactic, she admitted, she hoped would make her the default choice for a wingman whenever Wedge flew TIE fighter missions. Tyria prevailed upon Grinder to program simulations of launches and landings in the difficult bow hold of Night Caller.

·  ·  ·

In the ship’s mess, Kell and Phanan settled in on either side of Tyria. Intently studying her datapad, she was slow in noticing their arrival. “Oh. Hello.”

“We’re the committee to force you to relax once in a while,” Kell said.

Phanan nodded. “According to our mission chrono, it has been thirty-six standard hours since you enjoyed any aspect of your life, and twenty-three since you even cracked a smile.”

She managed one now, a very faint one.

Grinder, seated opposite her, said, “You’d think she was facing her final pilot’s examination. Relax, Tyria. You made it.”

“You don’t know anything about it,” she said. “Besides, I’m still the bottom-rated pilot in this unit.”

“Not in kills,” Kell said. “Because of the way Folor Base came off, Runt and I still have zero. You got one there.”

She waved away his objection. “You sacrificed one combat’s worth of kills and came up with a tactic that probably saved the Borleias. That’s a bright spot on your record, Kell, not a black one.”

“Well,” Grinder said, “there are ways to bring up your scores. Techniques a lot more effective than flying simulators hours every day until you’re bone tired and stupid from lack of food.”

She looked at him dubiously. “Such as what?”

“Well …” He looked around conspiratorially. “I shouldn’t do this, because if you improve your rating, that leaves me at the bottom of the squadron. But I don’t particularly mind. I could slice into your simulator records and bump them up a few points. Put you out of the danger zone. By way of compensation, I wouldn’t ask much—”

She came over the table at him, knocking him off his bench to the floor, and landed on him hard. She struck him in the face three times, over his shouts of pain and surprise, before Kell and Phanan could shake off their shock. They scrambled around the ends of the table, converging on her, and seized her arms before she could continue turning Grinder’s face into a bloody mess.

The other diners, a tableful of Cubber’s mechanics and technicians, watched in surprise; some were laying down bets just as Kell and Phanan yanked Tyria upright.

Her face was flushed, her expression not just furious but hate-filled as she glared down at the Bothan. “You bastard” she said. “How dare you—”

“You want me?” Grinder scrambled to his feet, his nostrils streaming blood. “A fair fight, not an ambush? Bring her to the lounge, boys—”

“Attention!”

All of them snapped upright, mechanics included. Wedge and Janson stood in the doorway. Both pilots looked grim as they strode in. “Explain this,” Wedge said.

Tyria didn’t immediately respond; she seemed to be concentrating on catching her breath. Phanan said, “Well, sir, we were discussing some fine points of a specific hand-to-hand combat takedown maneuver, and—”

Wedge looked as pained as if Phanan had stabbed him. “Flight Officer Phanan. How many times do you suppose I’ve heard that ‘We were discussing a boxing maneuver’ excuse?”

Phanan looked confused. “I, uh, don’t know, sir.”

“That was a rhetorical question, Phanan. Do not reenter this conversation.”

Pale where his skin could be seen under his skull prosthetic, Phanan shut up and stared off through the near wall.

Wedge dropped his voice. “Grinder, Tyria, come with me.”

In his ridiculously well-appointed office, with Janson beside him, Wedge glared at the two junior officers and asked, “Grinder, did you do anything to provoke this?”

If possible, the Bothan’s posture became even stiffer. “I didn’t think so initially, sir. But in jest I did offer to do something unethical for her. I suppose she may not have gotten the joke.”

“Tyria, did you ‘get the joke’?”

“I suppose I didn’t, sir.”

“Grinder, a good comedian adjusts his jokes for his audience. Watch Face and Phanan sometimes. They’re annoying, but proficient. Dismissed.”

Grinder saluted and made good his escape.

Wedge turned his full attention on Tyria. “It appears to me that your response was completely out of proportion to the offense.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Explain yourself.”

“I have no excuse, sir.”

“I’d like to help you here, Flight Officer Sarkin. Your record already has one notation for gross insubordination. It would be good not to make it worse.”

Tyria bit her lip. Wedge could tell that she recognized that his use of her full rank and name meant this discussion had reached a more official level. “Thank you, sir. But I have no excuse, sir.”

“Very well. Consider yourself on report. For the time being, your X-wing will be reassigned to Ton Phanan. Dismissed.”

For a moment she could not keep the dismay from her face. Then she recovered herself, saluted, and followed Grinder’s escape vector.

Wedge sighed. “Any ideas?”

Janson shook his head. “This really came out of the asteroid belt. I thought she was one of the most steady of them.”

“Me, too. Do me a favor and write up this incident report, would you? But keep the language flexible. I’d like to be able to monitor the situation and make adjustments to the report up until the time I have to file it.”

“Will do. You going to make her apologize?”

“No, I’m going to find out if she apologizes. A forced apology is worth nothing.”

“True.”

“How are things going with Tainer?”

Janson grimaced. “Worse than ever. And now I understand he’s received some demolitions components from Home One.”

“I told you, you don’t have to worry about that.”

“You also told me Tyria was one of the most steady of them.”

Wedge glared in mock anger. “You don’t want to get into a ‘let’s recall who has screwed up the worst’ contest with me, Wes.”

“I think I’ll be off to write up that report. Sir.”

“Good.”

Tyria entered her quarters and switched on the lights.

At her table sat Kell and Phanan.

“Oh, great,” she said. “One reprimand, you get one pilot in your quarters. Two reprimands, two pilots.”

“You may doubt this,” Phanan said, “but we’re not part of your punishment. We’re worried about you.”

She fell over, full length, onto her bed and buried her face in the pillow. Her voice came out muffled. “Well, don’t be.”

Kell dragged his chair beside her. “Tyria, what happened in the mess was crazy. We’d like to help, but we can’t if we don’t understand it.”

Phanan said, “Your wingman ought to be in here. But Donos is about as warm, tender, and helpful as a methane ice comet. So we’re here. Tyria, we’re your friends.”

“No, you’re not. You just want to jump into bed with me.”

Phanan looked crestfallen. “I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. Yes, I do want to jump into bed with you. It’s nothing personal. You’re talented and beautiful, and for some reason I find that appealing. But I’ll break off my most ardent pursuit, forever, if you wish, if you’d only talk to us.”

She pulled some of her flowing hair from over her eye and stared at him. Then she looked up at Kell. “You, too?”

He winced. “Whatever you like. I really wasn’t assigned to this unit to make you feel worse.”

She managed a low chuckle. Then she rolled up on her side, her back to the cabin wall, and looked them over frankly. “Look, you two. I’ll tell you this, but if it gets out, it’s the end of my career. Literally and without recourse.”

“I understand,” Kell said. Phanan nodded.

“All right. I got into the New Republic Academy pretty much for one reason: because I demonstrated I had a little control over the Force.”

Phanan said, “They were hoping you’d train up to be a new Luke Skywalker.”

“That’s right. But in my early simulator work I flew more like a drunken dinko. I was on the verge of washing out when I was transferred to a squadron for, well, remedial pilots in training.

“The unit commander, Colonel Repness, seemed to be a pretty good instructor. My scores came up into the acceptable range. Then, just before final examinations, he came to me and said, ‘Would you like to make sure your final examination and average scores don’t just earn your wings, but also bump you out of the bottom quarter of this class?’ ”

Kell grimaced. “I can see where this is going.”

“Well, maybe not. He wanted me to take a training run in an X-wing and simulate equipment failure. A very sophisticated simulation, backed by transmissions from my astromech. I’d ditch in the ocean and the rescue crews would pick me up … but the X-wing would have sunk thousands of meters to the bottom, where no one could recover it.”

Phanan nodded. “Except Repness would actually have been waiting for you at the ditch site and would make off with the X-wing. Which he could put on the black market.”

“That’s right.”

Kell whistled. “What did you do?”

“I said no. And I said that I was going to turn him in. He seemed shocked. He started begging. He said, please wait, give him a day to tell his wife and set his affairs in order.” She took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Like an idiot, I told him I would. I was actually naive enough to think that I was the first one who’d ever refused him, that I was in charge of the situation.”

Phanan grimaced. “So naturally he took the extra time to cover his tracks and set you up.”

“Basically, yes. I reported for duty the next morning and found out that he had put me on report for gross insubordination. He claimed that I had made advances toward him—talk about unchecked ego—and had also made horrible disparaging remarks about his wife. With a blot like that on my record, I’d have to score very high on my final examinations and keep my record clean for a long time afterward to stay in the service.

“So I went to him and told him to take that off my record. And he said, ‘You can either turn me in and see your career go straight into the incinerator, or leave the record as it is and go on to a career as the mediocre pilot you’re destined to be.’ I didn’t understand what he meant until he showed me. He’d been falsifying my records all along, since the day I transferred to his unit, recording my scores as higher than they were—I’d actually have washed out weeks before. If the truth about his offer to trade my services in stealing an X-wing for grades went on the record, so would my true scores.” She looked very, very tired.

“So you kept quiet,” Kell said.

“Yes, I did. I shut my mouth and accepted the reprimand and graduated at the very bottom of my class. And immediately the offer to try out for this squadron came in—and I later learned that it was just because of my Ranger experience. I’ve tried so hard to improve … and now Grinder comes up to me with this same suggestion—”

Phanan’s voice was gentle. “I truly doubt that he was offering to raise your scores for profit, Tyria. He was just being a code-slicer.”

“Maybe. I didn’t think about that. I wasn’t capable of thinking. I just wanted to smash his face in. To smash Colonel Repness’s face in.”

Kell said, “Another thing you have to understand. Wedge Antilles would never let an inferior pilot into a squadron he commanded.”

“He’s probably anticipating that I can learn more control of the Force. He’s investing in that. He hasn’t yet figured out it’s never going to happen. In the meantime, Ton here gets my X-wing.”

Phanan said, “I’m sorry.”

“Which means,” Kell said, “that whenever Falynn is asleep or something, you should be training in the TIE fighter simulator. You might get some time in one of the TIEs. And also do some shuttle training. I’ll drop a word in Cubber’s ear and see if I can get him to give you some instruction there.”

“All right,” she said.

“So,” Phanan said, “are you going to hold me to my deal?”

She looked confused. “What deal?”

“You did talk to us. Must I now abandon my pursuit of you? That would sadden me beyond measure—”

Tyria’s pillow bounced off his face.

“Ah. Well, I’ll just put it on hold, then.”

“Tell me about these Rangers,” Kell said.

She gave him a curious look. “Why?”

“Because I’d like to know.”

“All right.” She turned on her back and stared up at the featureless ceiling. “It’s an old order, the Antarian Rangers. Founded centuries ago to aid Jedi Knights. A few of them, anyway; most of the Jedi tended to be pretty solitary. But some of them appreciated having loyal, reliable warriors to help them. Freedom’s Sons were one such order, and the Rangers were another.

“To be a Ranger meant knowing how to move in any environment. To blend in with the forest or grassland, to sail, to swim, to dive, to pilot. To be masters of our surroundings. We were good spies, good warriors, very adept at intrusion and escape.

“In the old days, there were communities of the Rangers on several worlds, including Toprawa. There was some intermarrying between the Jedi and the Rangers, which may be where I inherited my own nearly useless talent with the Force. Gradually, there were fewer and fewer Rangers around. The Clone Wars killed off whole clans, and then most of the rest were purged with the Jedi. The rest went underground. My family stayed hidden for decades, and then before we could emerge, Toprawa was bombed into barbarism by the Empire. That’s when the last of the Antarian Rangers on Toprawa died.”

“Except you,” Phanan said.

“I’m not sure it’s a matter of ‘except me.’ I expect that I will die in this service, without continuing my line. The Sarkins are gone. I’m just a living reminder, hoping to make something of myself before I join them. That’s why I make few plans for the future.” She turned toward Kell as he opened his mouth. “Don’t say it. Don’t tell me that I may doom myself by being fatalistic. I’ve heard it before.”

“Then why haven’t you listened?” he asked.

Instead of being offended, she smiled. “Kell, I’ve failed at everything I wanted to do in life so far. I failed to keep my family alive. I failed to learn the ways of the Force and uphold my family tradition. I failed to enter the fighter corps on my own merits. But I got in anyway, by way of a cheat I shouldn’t have accepted. Now all I want to do is find some sort of grace, something that will make up for my failures. Just once before I die. Can’t you understand that?”

Kell thought back to his family’s last days on Alderaan, the meticulous scrubbing of their true family name from every aspect of their lives, the way his mother cursed and mourned her husband at the same time. “Believe me, I can.”

“Then you don’t need to preach to me that what I’m doing is the wrong path.” She motioned as though to shoo them away. “Go on, you two. Let me get some rest.” As they rose, she added, “And, Ton?”

“Yes?”

“Take care of my snubfighter. I want it back.”

15

“Captain Darillian and the warlord will be very pleased,” Face said.

This time, he was not wearing a disguise cobbled together in a matter of seconds.

His entire face was covered in a sheath of flesh tone polymer that allowed his skin to breathe yet concealed his true features and scars. The polymer took makeup well and was decorated with a luxuriant mustache and the usual assembly of small scars, moles, and other defects a normal person acquires over a lifetime. He could not feel the nighttime wind in his face, but otherwise the mask was fairly comfortable. Face also wore an Imperial lieutenant’s uniform, modified to bear the extravagant rank insignia unique to Night Caller.

The man before him, Governor Nojin Koolb of the Outer Rim world of Xartun, smiled in appreciation of Face’s words. “I am delighted to hear it.”

Face brought his voice down, made it a trifle ominous. “One thing disturbs the warlord, however. The fact that Xartun is a recent signatory to the New Republic. Do you not feel a certain conflict between the word you’ve given the Provisional Council and the one you’ve just given the warlord?”

Governor Koolb did not lose his smile or aplomb. “Of course not, Lieutenant. It was my illustrious and so widely mourned predecessor who signed the accord with the New Republic. I did not. My loyalty is with Zsinj … even if practical circumstances prevent me from declaring it publicly at this time.”

Face smiled in return. “We’ll see to it that you can make your true feelings known as soon as possible.” He extended his hand.

The governor shook it. “I look forward to it. By your leave.” He and his subordinates withdrew from Face and the shuttle, standing far enough away on the ferrocrete landing pad that an ill-considered pivot of the shuttle on takeoff would not carry the thruster wash across them.

Face trotted up the shuttle’s boarding ramp, felt it rising to close even before he reached the top. He dropped into the copilot’s seat beside Cubber, who wore the uniform of an Imperial ensign. “Are they on station?”

“They should be, by now. Let’s find out.” Cubber double-tapped a button on the shuttle’s comm.

Face looked out across the ferrocrete. Ahead of him, the first of Xartun’s two suns was just beginning to rise over the innocuous bunker where he had just spent a couple of informative hours; the governor had given him the very detailed grand tour reserved for Captain Darillian. Face had seen the underground levels, the manufacturing equipment that turned out transparisteel products such as blastproof windows and fighter canopies. All of it, the governor explained, now owned by Lord Houghten Ween … another alias of Warlord Zsinj.

Beyond the bunker was the parking area and arrival zone where the plant’s day laborers left their personal vehicles, and beyond that was the land road leading to the nearest community. All around the complex was thick forest … forest where the commando team was now supposed to be waiting. But Face saw no signal, heard nothing over the comm. “No sign of them,” he said.

“Look at your chest.”

Face glanced down. Dancing around on his chest was a bright red spot, the wrong end of the laser targeting sight from Donos’s sniper rifle.

Face half crawled out of the chair before he could bring himself under control. “All right. They’re ready.” He took a couple of deep breaths to bring himself under control. The red light disappeared. “I’m going to get him for that.”

“Sure you are.”

Face took off his lieutenant’s cap, pulled the concealed device from within, and plugged it into the shuttle’s communications console. “Tour data compressing … compressing … Ready to go.” He turned on the comm. “Shuttle Adder’s Bite ready to depart. Requesting communications signal integrity check.”

“Adder’s Bite, this is Tower Six, copy. Go ahead.”

“Prepare for thirty seconds of nasty Verpine music, then report signal strength.” He hit the transmit button.

The file began broadcasting. Coming in over an audio link, it would sound like discordant, jarring shrieks only a very few alien species could love. Acquired as data and then translated by a program written by Grinder, though, it would expand out into a holographic record of Face’s tour through the manufacturing bunker.

The file cut off. “Signal strength nine,” Tower Six reported. “And that’s nasty.”

“Don’t let your children listen to it. They might get a taste for it … like mine did. Adder’s Bite out, and away.”

“Good luck, and good flying. Tower Six out.”

Cubber cut in the repulsorlifts and the Narra smoothly rose off the ferrocrete pad. As she rose, her wings came down from their upfolded position and locked into cruising configuration. Cubber elevated the bow and cut in the thrusters, punching the Narra up toward space at an abrupt angle.

Face, bounced around by the crude maneuvers in spite of the inertial compensators, hurriedly strapped himself into place. “Hey, where did you earn your pilot’s license?”

“License?” Cubber broke into laughter. “Listen to the boy. I don’t have anything as fancy as a license. Just a few hours instruction from a couple of pilots I did some favors for. You want a smoother ride? Give me some lessons.”

“Oh, yeah? Will you trade a favor for them?”

“Sure. Something mechanical?”

“A modification to Vape, my R2.”

“Sure. Just let me station this flying can at our waiting zone and you can tell me all about it.”

A hundred meters from the landing pad, in a glade a few meters from the forest edge, Grinder looked over his datapad. “It uncompressed fine. I told you.”

Kell squatted down beside him. “Don’t be defensive. I just like to have things run through over and over again.”

“You’re obsessed with preparation.”

“Yes, I am. Meaning I want you to study that recording until your eyes bleed. I’m going to do the same.”

Grinder sighed.

They wore dark jumpsuits in dark green broken by irregular swaths of black—camouflage wear suited to deep forest or nighttime in most overgrown areas. All the Wraiths but Face were present … and despite the rank disparity between them, Wedge had assigned command of the mission to Kell, due to his specific commando experience.

“All right,” Kell said. “Everyone, settle in for some sleep. I’ll take first watch; Janson, you take second. We go at nightfall.”

As the day progressed, large personnel skimmers and private vehicles delivered workers and managers to the factory. From their vantage point, the commando party couldn’t see much of what went on at the front, or business, end of the complex. But shortly before noon, four X-23 StarWorker space barges landed and took on cargo through the bunker’s rear cargo doors. Kell and Wedge took notes on their registry numbers while Jesmin recorded all transmissions. The barges took off an hour later and Kell went off-duty, settling into sleep.

He woke as dusk was settling. He was a little stiff and suffered from new aches, his sleeping roll not being adequate defense agains the hard ground and tree roots beneath him or the local stinging insects. The other Wraiths looked as though they felt the same.

Runt, his fur spotted with twigs and crumbled pieces of leaves, handed him a hot and extra-stout cup of caf. Kell took a sip and winced. “More of Cubber’s solvent?”

Runt looked at him in slight confusion, then something in his eyes and manners changed and he uttered a soft chortle. “I understand.”

“Has everyone eaten?”

“Everyone but you.” Runt picked up a small gray case a third of a meter long and pressed a recessed button at one end. The whole package began to crackle as its contents, Kell’s supper, began to cook within.

“Good.” Kell raised his voice slightly to get everyone’s attention. “People, do your final equipment checks. We’ll move out as soon as it’s fully dark.”

He ignored his own directive; he’d done his equipment check before falling asleep. Shaped charges. Grenades. Explosives. Adhesives. Detonators. Detonation comlinks. Miniature datapads optimized to detect complex sets of circumstances and then trigger detonators. Sensors. Tools. Hand lights. Headband lights. Lights with temporary adhesives to stick to all sorts of walls and other surfaces. A full-sized datapad with permanent memory stuffed full of data about explosives in use by the Empire, by the New Republic, by warlords and individual worlds. All of it arranged by straps or in pockets so he could find any item by touch. All of it was fine. He opened his meal case and began absently pulling nameless meatlike balls from it and eating them.

Grinder waved a hand to get his attention. Kell moved over to him, still unsteady from sleepiness, and drank more of the poisonous caf.

“I have something for you,” Grinder said. He was staring intently at the oversized screen on his datapad.

Kell moved to loom over him. “Show me.”

On the screen was a panoramic camera view of the front of the bunker. Kell knew it had been taken through the fisheye camera rig in Face’s hat. With the touch of a button, Grinder set the view into motion; the heavily armored door into the bunker slid open, the planet’s governor and some of his cronies moved ahead of the camera view into the small vehicle hangar beyond, and Face’s point-of-view followed.

One of the governor’s men pointed, drawing Face’s attention toward a long, open vehicle, which Kell recognized as an Ubrikkian cargo skiff. This one was different from the standard model; at the rear was a small passenger bay enclosed in a globular transparisteel canopy. Inside was a reclining couch large enough for two. The governor’s man wore an expression Kell interpreted as amused, and the camera vibrated a little, possibly from Face laughing.

“Here,” Grinder said, and paused the image. He tapped the lower-left corner of the display. It showed a man holding a comlink, but not orienting it toward his mouth. Grinder started the image in motion again. The man pressed a button on the comlink. Behind him, in the corner of the display, the bunker door began to close. “What does that suggest to you?”

“The door closed on a signal instead of a wall switch or a timer,” Kell said. “And possibly the governor’s man drew Face’s attention away to keep him from seeing it; that whole scene in the corner would have been behind him as he looked at the skiff. That suggests a security measure. Maybe an alarm on timer; if they don’t switch it off with the comlink within the appointed time, the alarm goes off.”

“That’s my guess, Demolition Boy.”

“I’m leader here; call me Demolition Boy Sir. Uh, roll that sequence back to the point at which he hit the button on the comlink.”

Grinder did.

Kell consulted the numbers on the text screen of the datapad. “Jesmin, how long have you been recording?”

The Mon Calamari stood at attention. “Since we came on station, Demolition Boy Sir.”

Kell gave her a look suggesting she had just betrayed him to the Imperials. “That’s an awful lot of time to record, isn’t it?”

“Not really. My gear records everything off the airwaves, but analyzes it as it goes, and only commits discrete strong signals or repeating patterns to its memory. So after hours of recording I have perhaps an hour recorded.”

“Did you record a transmission at two hundred oh eight oh three?”

She picked up her heavy communications gear pack and opened the flap giving her access to the main control screen. After a few moments, she said, “Something within eight seconds of that time, sir. Acceptable within normal variations on individual chronos. The transmission was fairly complex but lasted less than half a second.”

“Make sure that eight seconds is the interval between your gear and Grinder’s datapad.” Kell frowned at the Bothan. “Didn’t I tell you to synchronize the chronos between everyone’s datapads?”

Grinder looked abashed. “I have no excuse, sir.”

“Oh, so when you’re in trouble, I stop being Demolition Boy?”

Grinder grinned.

“That’s the interval,” Jesmin said.

“All right. Note that transmission and be prepared to broadcast it, in the frequency it came in on, at my command.”

There was a faint rustle in the trees between them and the landing pad. Wedge, Kell, and Tyria had blasters in their hands within a split second and had them trained on the intruder before he, Donos, emerged from the trees.

Donos blinked at them. “The suns are down and the last of the worker transports is gone.”

“Good,” Kell said. “People, remember: Once we reach the bunker, always use your numbers. Never your names.

“Here are the final orders … until circumstances and screwups dictate that we alter them. Ten, break trail, with One as your backup.” Tyria and Wedge nodded. “Four and I follow fairly closely.” Grinder, obviously still abashed from his failure to calibrate chronos, merely hoisted his pack onto his shoulders and saluted.

“Nine remains on station here as our long-distance spotter and sniper.” Donos nodded. “The rest follow in a group until we get to the bunker’s rear door. Eleven, you’ll set up at that door as our secondary spotter.” Janson gave a brief nod.

“Inside, Three will choose one vehicle for our escape; I recommend the cargo skiff, but you’re the expert on the condition of these crafts, so make your choice at your own discretion. Disable the rest. Twelve, you’ll stay with her as her guard and ears.” Falynn gave him a thumbs-up; Piggy nodded.

“The rest of us will enter, acquire all the data we can, plant the charges, and get out. Questions? No one? All right. Move out.”

Wedge, trailing Tyria at a distance of eight or ten meters, marveled at the way she moved.

Hers was not a steady progress. She stopped to listen to animal noises, stray crackings of twigs or other unexplained sounds, and when there was no noise at all. But when the wind stirred the trees, she glided forward at a steady pace, the wind completely blanketing whatever noise she might have made.

Wedge tried to follow her example. After so many ground missions in the last few years, his own intrusion skills were not inconsiderable. On the other hand, he hadn’t needed them to survive day after day for years as she had; it was hardly embarrassing to discover she was better at them.

They skirted the forest edge alongside the ferrocrete landing pad until they reached the closest approach to the bunker. Keeping low, they moved across open ground until they reached the bunker’s shadow, then hugged the bunker wall all the way to the door. Tyria nodded and Wedge clicked his comlink twice to indicate success. The two of them crouched, motionless, blasters in hand, and covered the approach of the next team.

Within a minute Kell and Grinder joined them. “So far, so good,” Kell whispered. “Minimal security.”

“On the outside, anyway,” Tyria amended.

Kell clicked his comlink twice, then nodded to Grinder.

The Bothan held a small light in his mouth and looked at the access panel beside the door to the hangar. “Standard model,” he mumbled around the light.

Kell snorted. “With Zsinj involved? Don’t believe it.”

“I don’t.” Grinder brought out a small sensor and ran it around the join where the access panel was sealed shut. “Ooh,” he said. “Standard keypad. Underneath, simplified circuits. Behind that, a denser circuit panel. Not standard.”

“What’s that mean?” asked Wedge.

“False layer to trip up …” Drool ran out of Grinder’s mouth around the penlight and he shut up, scowling.

“If you open up the panel,” Kell said, “you’ll probably get something that looks like the standard wiring you find in these panels. Odds are good you can even patch into it to run a bypass and get these doors open. But it’s a fake, and the circuitry beneath it will be busy alerting every guard on this hemisphere of the planet. The trick is to open both top layers at once and not trip the security, which is really tough—”

Grinder popped open the access hatch. A panel of dense circuitry in a pattern unfamiliar to Wedge glinted at them. Grinder turned to smirk at Kell.

“All right,” Kell said, “maybe not so tough.”

Wedge had to work to keep a smile off his face. The Wraiths were still surprising one another with what they could accomplish. A good sign. He just wished Kell were not so tense, so rigid; he’d been that way ever since Wedge had announced Kell was leading this mission. Not a good sign.

The others moved up fairly quietly behind them. “All accounted for,” whispered Janson.

Grinder plugged wires and bypass circuitry into the access hatch’s naked circuitry, then flipped a tiny toggle on an equally tiny capacitance charge. The hangar door groaned and slid open before them. It was pitch-black beyond, and the moons, still arising on the far side of the bunker, offered no light.

Tyria pulled her night-sight gear over her eyes and switched it on; it made a faint hum. “Everyone move in, no more than six paces; we’re clear to that point,” she said.

They did as she said, all but Janson.

“Two.”

“Yes, Five.”

“Can you transmit that signal by touch?”

“Yes, Five.”

“Do so.”

The door moaned behind them until it was shut again.

“Hand lights on,” Kell said.

The commandos’ handheld lights sprang to life, tiny beams illuminating small portions of the spacious hangar.

“You all know your assignments,” Kell said. “Let’s go.” He headed toward the doors that gave access to the hallway with the bunker’s main freight turbolift; all but Falynn and Piggy followed.

In the hall, Grinder took only a minute to bypass the turbolift controls. Then he tried to lift the turbolift’s massive top-closing door. It stubbornly refused his efforts.

“Allow us.” Runt stepped in, affecting a swagger Wedge hadn’t seen before, and put his fingers under the door’s bottom lip. He straightened easily, lifting the door to waist height. He showed big teeth in a near-human grin. His long, furred hands were steady as they held up the door’s enormous weight.

Kell ducked to peer inside. The turbolift shaft went down six or more stories, more than the three Face had been shown; the lift car was far below in the dimness. There were access rungs on one side.

On their way down, Grinder spoke to Kell; Wedge barely heard the whispered words. “I haven’t seen any cameras. Microphones. No wiring for them in the wall behind the turbolift access panel.”

“Have you seen enough to be sure there aren’t any?” Kell said.

“No. I’m giving you an impression.”

“Keep looking.” Face’s tape hadn’t shown any armed guards, either. The bunker complex might rely on other types of defense … and not knowing what they were had Kell worried.

The turbolift was a freight model, with no roof to impede them. They dropped the last six feet to its floor. Grinder immediately got to work bypassing the door’s electronics, then Runt, with little apparent effort, heaved the car’s door and then the armored exterior door up.

The door opened onto a loading area. It was full of loading carts and even some repulsorlift vehicles, with transparisteel products loaded onto some of them.

There were crystal-clear cubes three meters on a side, with small circular holes and an opening, one meter by one meter, cut into the side; there were large, thick sheets shaped as irregular polygons; there were curved disks over two meters in diameter, looking like enormous lenses.

Wedge looked at these last items. “TIE fighter front viewports,” he said. “And the big sheets, unless I’m mistaken, are bridge or lounge windows for a capital ship.”

“Sounds like support for Zsinj’s Super Star Destroyer,” Kell said. He dropped his voice to a whisper, tones probably too low for planted microphones to pick up. “But then why wouldn’t Eight have been shown this level?”

Wedge frowned as he considered the question. He responded in a whisper. “The governor on the other world was reluctant to discuss things with Eight when he’d obviously talked about them with Captain Darillian. My guess is that Zsinj is compartmentalizing information about himself. Structuring things in cells, like a resistance movement, so that information is contained.”

Kell nodded. “When one cell falls, the rest remain safe.”

Grinder hissed at them from the doorway to an adjacent chamber. They joined him.

It was an operations control center, banks of computer consoles and black viewscreens that probably showed crucial areas of the manufacturing chambers when live. “The home of data,” Grinder said.

“Drain it dry,” Kell said. “Replicate everything you downlink into Two’s comm gear memory.”

Grinder’s face twisted. “That’ll take extra time.”

“Not much. Do it.”

Wedge guarded Kell while the mission leader explored other chambers of the sixth subterranean level.

This was just another manufacturing floor; it received superheated transparisteel ingots from the larger foundry floors above and shaped them into parts best suited to Imperial warships and fighters, plus those large, inexplicable cubes they’d seen. Kell seemed to pay little attention to the function of the rooms he was in; he simply chose support beams, retaining walls, and power generators on which to plant his demolition charges. Both men preferred to keep conversation to a minimum while Kell was setting up his explosives.

Wedge felt a slight change in air pressure. He turned away from the support pillar Kell was rigging; he moved his hand light beam around the room.

Nothing. Just conveyor belts, receiving receptacles, polishing machinery, phototropic shielding equipment.

Then his beam flitted across something moving. He caught the barest glimpse of the thing, something taller than a man, moving fast and silently. He flicked the beam in the direction he thought it had been heading, but there was nothing there.

“Trouble,” he whispered.

He heard a faint whine as Kell activated the timer on the latest charge, then a scrape of metal on leather as Kell drew his blaster.

It came at them from the side, claws and pinchers extended—

16

“Ten.”

Tyria looked up, in the direction of Runt’s call. Runt was still on station near the door to the turbolift. His eyes were wider than normal. “Yes, Six?” she said.

“Did you hear something? We heard something.”

Tyria glanced toward the door to the operations center. Ton Phanan was still on guard duty there, his blaster pistol up and at the ready. He was peering into the op center and did not look alarmed.

She turned back to Runt. “No, nothing.”

The silhouette materialized out of the gloom behind Runt. Before Tyria could say anything it ran him down, smashing him to the floor like a runaway speeder bike.

An ungainly silhouette, round and heavy on top, trailing arms or tentacles like some invertebrate sea life, it came on straight at Tyria.

The attack caught Kell and Wedge off guard. The mass of the attacker hit Kell head-on, slamming him to the metal flooring. Wedge twisted with the attack, took a grazing impact to the arm, and went down rolling; he ended up under a control console, aiming and firing before he’d come to a stop.

His blaster shot was on-target, hitting the attacker dead center. The laser blast charred what it hit but did not penetrate; it merely illuminated the attacker.

It was a floating mass of machinery. The main portion was a roughly spherical body, the top and bottom hemispheres divided by a narrowed equator that Wedge knew allowed the two portions to swivel independently. A half-dozen articulated limbs trailed below it. The designation A3 was painted on the upper hemisphere. The spherical portion was studded with sensor ports and blaster nozzles. The top hemisphere rotated, bringing one of those blaster nozzles in line almost instantly.

Wedge ducked behind the console support as the thing fired. The blaster shot hit the console, burning through it, showering Wedge with sparks.

Imperial probe droid. Wedge came up in a half crouch, running behind this console and the one adjacent. Beyond it he could see Kell’s foot. The big man was not moving.

Wedge grabbed Kell’s leg and hauled him behind the console. The probe droid fired again, the shot melting into slag the metal deck where Kell had just been lying.

Tyria ducked behind one of the carts loaded with TIE fighter viewports. She fired at the oncoming droid, hitting it once, twice beside the characters A2 painted on the upper hemisphere. Surface armor charred a little but the thing was not slowed.

It fired a return shot. It hit the TIE fighter viewport Tyria hid behind. The viewport instantly opaqued and the laser blast did not penetrate; the transparisteel slowly began to fade to glasslike clarity.

She breathed a sign of relief. These viewports had already gone through their phototropic shielding treatment. They’d stop anything short of the blast from a tripod-mounted laser cannon.

The probe droid sideslipped to get around the impediment of the viewport. A blast fired by Phanan hit one of its sensor eyes, shattering it, but the droid returned fire almost instantly; Tyria saw Phanan duck back behind the doorway to the op center.

“We’re under assault,” Wedge said. “A probe droid, military model. Our hand blasters aren’t going to do it much harm.”

Kell’s eyes opened. “I know that.”

“I’m talking to Jesmin,” Wedge said. “They’re under attack by another one.”

“Shouldn’t we be keeping comm silence?”

“If the probots are active, the locals know we’re here, Tainer.”

“I can kill ours.” Kell lifted his head and groaned. “But I’d like a nap first.”

“No time for a nap. You’re going to use explosives?”

“Of course.”

“How do you plan to plant them?”

Kell grinned. “I was sort of hoping you’d lead the droid around so I could get a good approach on it.”

“Great.”

When the droid glided around the side of Tyria’s cart, she broke the other way, running straight toward one of the repulsorlift carts. Phanan fired a steady stream of blasts to cover her movement; the droid returned fire, superheating the op center’s metal doorjamb to a dripping, golden, glowing mass.

Tyria jumped into the driver’s seat and fired up the engine. Immediately the cart rose a meter into the air. It held a load of large windows, her only protection. She threw the cart into reverse and backed straight at the droid.

It fired at her, the blasts stopping against her transparisteel cargo. Then the cart hit the probot, the great mass of vehicle and cargo pushing it backward. Tyria kept the thrust at full until the cart slammed into the wall; then she held the thrust, pinning the droid in place. It struggled to wriggle free and fired blast after blast into the transparisteel windows. The windows darkened and began to melt under the barrage.

Wedge made a complete circuit of the manufacturing chamber, running along the maintenance alley behind the banks of control consoles. He varied his pace so the probot couldn’t time his passage and take an accurate shot at him as he crossed the gaps between banks. It followed him throughout his circuit, staying on the other side of the consoles. Its accuracy was high and two near misses had charred his clothes—and slightly burned the skin beneath—at shoulder and thigh.

He passed Kell where the demolitions expert crouched. Just before the next gap between consoles, Wedge skidded to a stop. The droid fired, a pattern of three blaster shots flashing between the consoles and melting holes in the wall.

From the corner of his eye, Wedge saw Kell’s attack. Kell rose in a smooth motion, his height and long legs enabling him to step up on the high console counter, and threw himself atop the probe droid.

He bounced off immediately and hit the floor rolling. The probe droid grabbed at him with a claw, missed, and brought a blaster into line, but Kell was already behind the room’s bulky master control console.

Wedge suppressed a groan. “Don’t tell me I have to do the whole thing again!”

“Get behind cover!”

Wedge ducked down fully behind the console just as the droid’s top hemisphere erupted like a volcano. The blast shattered console gauges all across the room and smashed the probe droid into the floor, crushing its trailing armatures.

Wedge rose. “Pretty slick. I didn’t see you plant the charge.”

Kell returned to pick up his bag. He cupped a hand behind his ear and mouthed something.

Wedge realized there was a ringing in his ears. “What?”

He dimly heard Kell’s reply: “What?”

·  ·  ·

Tyria struggled with the cart’s controls, desperately aware that she was losing the battle to keep the probot pinned.

Phanan continued firing at the probe droid. Bit by bit, his shots were chewing away at the droid’s armor. At this rate, he’d have the thing dead in a couple of days.

There was an explosion from the main fab chamber. Tyria froze, momentarily frightened that Kell’s demolitions were going off prematurely … but there was only the one blast. She hoped Kell was well clear of it.

A mass of transparisteel goods slid into place against the wall beside the probe droid. Tyria looked up to see Runt, weaving like a sailor just back from a night of tavern crawling, his flat nose streaming blood, finish positioning the cart and then lock down the parking brake. Runt waved drunkenly at her and ran, with a weaving gait she didn’t imagine he’d be able to duplicate when unhurt, to grab the maneuvering handle of another cart.

He’d just slammed that one home on the other side of the droid and locked it down, blocking Phanan from firing further, when Wedge and Kell emerged from the fab chamber.

Kell shouted, “We’re omega!” He waved the commandos toward the turbolift shaft. Grinder and Jesmin followed Phanan out of the op center and all scrambled into the turbolift shaft.

“What happens when that probe droid gets free?” Tyria asked.

“What?” said Kell.

“What?” said Wedge. He cupped a hand behind his ear.

She shouted, “Probe droid! Will get free!”

Kell shook his head and pulled a timer charge from his bag. “No. Get clear.”

“What if there are more?”

Grinder said, “They’re mine. Trust me.”

Kell shouted, “Six, open up the doors to the fourth and second levels as you go!”

Runt, pressing his sleeve against his nose to stop the flow of blood, nodded.

“Why have him open those doors?” Tyria asked. Realizing that Kell and Wedge were having trouble hearing, she repeated the question, shouting this time.

“Still have to plant charges on the support beams,” Kell answered, unnecessarily shouting. “Hold the top floor. If I’m not out in seven minutes, finish the evacuation.”

“If we’re not back,” Wedge corrected, also shouting. “You still need someone to guard your back.”

“Obviously so.” Kell grinned. He skidded the charge under the blockade of hauling carts. Its timer was already counting down from ten.

They ran.

Kell wasted no time. On the fourth basement level and then the second, he ran from support pillar to support pillar, slapping his explosives in place, keying in the countdown, and activating the charges, all at a record pace.

Wedge kept alert for more probe droids, but none appeared. He thought he might have glimpsed something rising through the turbolift shaft, but it was gone before he could sight in on it.

Probe Droid Al rose into place, hovering in the shaft at ground level, then floated forward through the door.

Grinder, his back to the wall just beside the turbolift, hit the button on the wall.

The turbolift door, its safety governors disabled, slammed down atop the probe droid, crushing its spherical body nearly flat. Lights dimmed in its sensor eyes. Sparks shot out of new tears and rents in its surface.

Grinder raised the turbolift door and smashed it down twice more, then raised and locked it. He stared in satisfaction at the damage he had done. “Do I get to paint a probe droid silhouette?”

Phanan snorted. “Sure, on your datapad.”

“Quiet,” Jesmin said. “Nine and Eleven report we have new arrivals. A flatbed skimmer full of troops and two TIE fighters just landed on the pad outside.”

·  ·  ·

Outside, just beside the hangar door, Janson lay perfectly still and whispered into his comlink. “I count thirty or thirty-five troops. Some of them are deploying around toward the front; I assume they’ll be hitting us from two sides. The TIE fighters are oriented so they can fire in through the hangar door, but the troops back here aren’t approaching yet. I think they’re waiting for the others to get in position. When I give you the go, I want you to open the hangar door just wide enough for me to get in.”

“Acknowledged,” said Jesmin.

Donos did not call in with unnecessary queries about what he should be doing. Janson was sure he would not announce his presence unless ordered to or circumstances meant he had to fire to save a fellow Wraith. In the meantime, he’d provide additional intelligence information when needed.

A minute later, one of the infantry commanders waved forward. He and a half-dozen men, armed with rifles and wearing helmets and breastplates that looked like cast-off stormtrooper scout armor, advanced in a half crouch.

Janson shot the commander in the faceplate. The man dropped, dead before he knew he was hit. The half-dozen men looked at him for a moment. Janson shot a second man in the chest. Then, as the survivors began to drop to the ground, he hit another faceplate and said, “Open up.”

The hangar door began to grind open as the stormtroopers opened fire. Laser blasts hit the door and bunker wall above and around him. Janson grimaced. With that caliber of marksmanship, there was little chance any of the attackers could hit him deliberately, but there was always the possibility that someone firing blind or a ricochet could hit him.

Janson scrambled sideways toward the opening in the door. He fired three more times, scored two hits that he was sure of.

Then someone grabbed his ankles and hauled. He was suddenly inside the hangar, looking at metal floor.

He turned to look up. “Thanks, Twelve.”

“You’re welcome.”

He wriggled back up so that he could see through the partially open doorway. The troopers had not yet begun to advance again. He continued firing steadily, scoring hits against several targets; the others began to withdraw toward the comparative safety of the vehicles on the landing pad.

Grinder, looking over his datapad, plugged by standard interface into a communications interlock on the wall, said, “They’re in the building. Through the east doors.”

Janson asked, “Is the corridor with the freight turbolift the only approach to us?”

“Yes.”

“Who’s there?”

“Six and Ten.”

Janson frowned. Neither Runt nor Tyria was a true marksman. Then again, the approach to the freight corridor, from what he’d seen of Face’s tape, was open and the corridor was short. It would become a killing ground if the enemy charged.

Kell and Wedge emerged from the turbolift shaft a full minute under Kell’s margin.

To their left was one set of doors out of the corridor. A cargo hauler was parked before them; on either side of it were Runt and Tyria, firing through fresh laser blast holes in the doors.

To their right, the doors into the hangar were locked open; on the far wall, the big door leading outside showed a gap and a little night sky. Janson and Piggy were there, firing at intervals. The door shuddered and moaned as return fire from outside hit it.

Grinder and Jesmin were both plugged into communications interlocks on the wall. “Are you all right?” Jesmin shouted.

“We can hear again,” Kell said, “no need to shout. Is everyone accounted for?”

“Yes. But there are troops and TIE fighters on the ground outside.”

Wedge and Kell moved into the hangar. Falynn was at the aft end of the cargo skiff; the bubble top was up and she was lounging on the control couch, fiddling with the controls. Kell said, “Three, can you reenable any of these other vehicles? In seconds, I mean, not minutes?”

She said, “Yes. Which ones do you want?”

“Any landspeeder that can be flown off autopilot or remote. Or even off a datacard plug-in.”

She pulled her datapad from a pocket and pointed it at a flat-bodied XP-38 Landspeeder, so new its paint still gleamed. She hit a button and the skimmer’s console lit up; it rose a meter in the air and hovered, waiting. “Consider it reenabled.”

“Brilliant. Twelve, move that over near the door. Program it to move straight out ten meters, turn ninety degrees to starboard, and run as fast as it can.”

Piggy nodded. He jumped into the skimmer’s passenger seat.

“What’s the plan?” asked Wedge.

“Send out the skimmer as a lure. I expect the troopers and TIE fighters to fire on it. That’ll draw their aim off the doors for a few seconds. We shoot out in the skiff and we can overrun one of the TIE fighters. That reduces the effective odds against us by nearly half. Then we only have to worry about the other TIE fighter.”

Wedge smiled. “If we’re fast enough that’s not a worry. We’re in a cargo skiff, remember?”

“Uh-huh?”

“With a cargo skiff’s load lifters?”

Kell laughed.

“Six, Ten, fall back!” Kell waved them toward him.

Everyone but Runt. Tyria, and Piggy were already in the floating skiff. Runt and Tyria abandoned the riddled door they were guarding. When they reached the skiff, the others hauled them over the rails.

“Hit it, Twelve.”

The Gamorrean pilot slapped the control against the wall. The hangar door began to grind farther open, screeching where its now-deformed surface dragged across the adjacent wall. He ran to the floating skimmer, tapped a control on its console, then leaped up on the skiff and was aided over the rail.

The troopers outside began firing on the skimmer before it began moving, before the door was completely open. Two blasts hit it, slagging the windscreen. Then Piggy’s timer ran down. The skimmer moved forward onto the ferrocrete landing pad, executed an abrupt right turn, and accelerated.

Almost immediately the Wraiths heard the distinctive sound of TIE fighter lasers joining the barrage of hand-laser fire. Kell called, “There, go!”

Falynn put the skiff into motion, slewing at the last moment to bring the craft into the proper orientation to leave the hangar. The Wraiths knelt, each gripping the rail hard with one hand, keeping a blaster pistol ready with the other.

Outside, fifty meters away, two TIE fighters were on the ground flanking a parked personnel skimmer. Men all over the ground and both starfighters were firing away at the ruins of the landskimmer. Some of the infantry noticed the skiff’s appearance, shouted, began firing on the Wraiths.

Falynn sent the skiff in a straight course toward the port-side TIE fighter. The Wraiths opened fire at the ground troops, keeping the troops pinned down.

The first TIE pilot apparently did not notice the skiff bearing down on him; the starfighter did not budge.

The skiff’s bow hit it just above the forward viewport. The impact rolled the starfighter backward on its solar wing arrays, and Falynn brought the skiff’s nose down as much as she could so the hull stayed in contact with the TIE’s bulb-shaped cockpit as the skiff passed over. The skiff shuddered from the contact, and a moment later the Wraiths looked back past the stern to see the still-rolling TIE bouncing along behind them.

Falynn banked to starboard, a move that slewed the skiff’s keel and nearly threw the port-side Wraiths over the rail. She brought the skiff in line with the second TIE.

This TIE fighter was already in motion, repulsorlifts kicking it up into the air, wheeling so it could bring its guns to bear on the skiff. Falynn gained altitude and kept the skiff’s turn tight, not approaching the TIE fighter head-on, angling to pass it port side to port side.

The TIE fighter fired, a snap-shot that passed the port rail and ignited some treetops forty meters away. Then the two vehicles were abreast, passing less than a meter apart.

Wedge, on the port side, activated the skiff’s port cargo loader and swung its armature out. The huge electromagnet hit the TIE fighter’s port solar array and snagged it, yanking the starfighter along beside the skiff. The skiff shuddered but did not slow.

Falynn dropped a few meters’ altitude and the TIE’s solar arrays hit the ferrocrete below, jarring the starfighter so that it looked to the Wraiths as though it were vibrating. Wedge could only imagine what was happening to the pilot within.

Falynn banked again, headed back toward the other TIE fighter. It lay on its back, one of the solar arrays bent so that it half covered the forward viewport. She glanced at Wedge.

“It still has repulsorlifts!” he shouted. “Take it!”

She nodded and came up alongside it, keeping to port of the half-wrecked fighter. Kell, on the starboard cargo loader, swung out his armature and grabbed the second TIE as they passed.

Falynn kept her altitude down—dragging the twin fighters so they jerked and vibrated from continued contact with the landing pad—and headed straight for the verge of trees due south. When the skiff’s prow was within twenty meters, she shouted, “Go go go,” then gained altitude and banked to starboard.

Wedge and Kell cut power to the two cargo lifters. The TIE fighters continued bouncing forward until they hit the screen of trees. Wedge saw the starboard wing pylon shear off his starfighter as it hit a tree; the other rolled to a stop and the twin ion engines in back lit off like one of Kell’s demolition charges.

A hundred meters along the verge of forest, Falynn brought the skiff to a stop. None of the troopers near the bunker was still firing; Wedge saw them streaming into the bunker. He shook his head.

Donos came out of the forest at a run and swung up over the rail. “You people are terrible cargo haulers,” he said.

Wedge smiled. “Probably why we were demoted to be fighter pilots. Let’s meet the Narra, people.” He waved at Falynn to continue forward.

Behind them, the roof of the bunker swelled like a balloon, chunks of ferrocrete firing up in the air, then collapsed. The rumbling roar of explosions followed them as they raced toward their pickup zone.

17

“I’ve consulted precedents on this matter,” Kell said, “and it appears that the TIE fighters will end up being chalked up as gunnery kills for Commander Antilles and myself, rather than as pilot kills for Falynn. Sorry, Falynn.”

The woman from Tatooine smiled. “I still may be the only woman to have dragged two Imperial starfighters around like boat anchors. I want that logged.”

“Consider it done.”

It was the day after the commando strike and the Wraiths, now parsecs from the Xartun system, were debriefing in Night Caller’s conference room. Most of the work was done; they were now cleaning up incidental details.

Kell, as mission commander, had been chairing the meeting, but Wedge leaned forward to assume control. “We’ve had the facts on what we found. Now I want some speculation based on your respective areas of expertise. What is Zsinj up to?”

“This is just a guess,” Grinder said, “but it looks to me like they’re setting up a financial empire to support Zsinj’s ambitions. We know he controls a large area of space; what we didn’t know was that he had such a network of business interests outside his space.”

Kell nodded. “I also think he’s doing it to support Iron Fist, his Super Star Destroyer. Here he makes replacement transparisteel parts. At another place, he refines fuel. Somewhere else, twin ion engines—or maybe complete TIE fighters.”

Tyria said, “I think we’re agreed that he’s almost organizing it as though he were a resistance organization. Cells kept isolated from one another, with ships like Night Caller being the only connection.”

“It makes me feel a little odd,” Wedge said. “In a sense, we’re becoming the Empire and warlords like Zsinj are becoming the Alliance. We’ve become a legitimate government with fixed locations we have to reinforce and protect. They’re operating from secret bases, mobile bases; they’re using the hit-and-run tactics we perfected. The galaxy has turned upside down since the Emperor died.”

Falynn looked surprised. “It sounds as though you miss the old days.”

Wedge looked at her and shook his head. “No. These days, we can wear our uniforms with pride to most worlds we’re likely to visit. We get cheers, or at least words of appreciation, instead of getting turned in to the Imps. Still, I like to think that I can adapt quickly to new tactics … but I know there are plenty of military officers and government representatives in the New Republic who can’t. That’s what worries me.”

Face spoke up, his voice quiet, reflective. “Zsinj is doing something else, too. Something motivational. Those probe droids weren’t made here and weren’t sold to the government on the open market. They’re something Zsinj had to have brought. Maybe the TIE fighters, too. I think that in addition to providing protection to the worlds he’s dealing with, he’s offering goodies to his government contacts. Technology they couldn’t get anywhere—or at least couldn’t get without leaving records everywhere. He’s offering his partners toys their legitimate rivals won’t have. That can be a powerful inducement.”

“Unresolved detail,” Phanan said. “What were those big transparisteel cubes, anyway?”

Obligingly, Grinder keyed his datapad. The room’s holoprojector brought up the appropriate sequence, from Jesmin’s camera, of the large transparent objects.

“They’re cells,” said Piggy. These were his first words since seeing the recording the first time.

The others looked at him. Janson asked, “Prison cells?”

“Something like that.” Piggy jabbed a finger at the image. “See the long side with the holes cut in it? That’s the back side of the cell. This hole is for sewage pipes. This one for clean-water plumbing. This one for air ducts. This one for data cables. The big hole is fitted with an access hatch, though the hatch is almost never used. The other side is unmarred. That’s the side that faces the control room where the observers work. The subject never has privacy.”

Wedge listened to his explanation with interest. “Where have you seen such an arrangement?”

“I grew up in one.”

They all looked at him. Wedge asked, “At Binring Biomedical Product?”

“Yes.”

Janson whistled. “Piggy, do you mean these are like the one you grew up in, or are they identical?”

“These are the same. Exactly the same.”

“So either,” Janson said, “this is a standardized piece of equipment, or Zsinj has some connection with Binring Bio-med.”

“I haven’t seen this model before,” said Ton Phanan. “Either when I was a practicing doctor or later. They aren’t, for example, the same as the cages in which General Derricote kept his test subject for the Krytos Plague. I’d say they weren’t a standard design.”

Wedge nodded. “We may just have to add Binring’s home base to our list of targets. Piggy, where is that?”

“Saffalore.”

“That’s in the Corporate Sector, isn’t it? Currently independent?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well. Unless we have any further questions, it’s time to issue some new orders.” There were no inquiries, so Wedge continued. “We had a good, successful run this time. No losses. Information gained. But we can’t just hope that each official who has dealt with Darillian gets in touch with us and lets us force or trick him into revealing where Zsinj’s new property is, then blow up that site. Zsinj will figure out what we were doing in no time. We want to leave Zsinj with the impression that Night Caller is being followed—not that the ship itself is responsible for the attacks.

“So, first, General Cracken has said that he’s dispatching Intelligence teams to each world on the list I sent him. Our hope is that they can provide us with information as we get there.

“Second, Grinder, I want you to research the ship’s logs. Call up information on every planet Night Caller has visited since the Emperor’s death and note the dates. Since Captain Darillian didn’t make notes of his audiences with these collaborators, if General Cracken’s team hasn’t been able to do so, you’ll try to code-slice into planetary records when we visit those worlds and figure out which properties were switched to new owners during or just after Night Caller’s visits. Then we investigate them … and if they’re Zsinj operations, we take them out. Always a few days after Night Caller’s visit, always when the ship is already in another system.”

Grinder nodded. “Understood.”

“Face, if the planetary governor or anyone reveals to you that he’s Zsinj’s collaborator, that’s just sheer informational profit. Relay the information as fast as possible to Grinder so he can dig out appropriate information. But don’t pry for additional information yourself unless Grinder comes up dry; in that case, you can contact Zsinj’s stooge later and try to get the data.”

Face smiled. “If the miracle Bothan fails, Captain Darillian the Magnificent will save the day.”

Wedge gave him a steady stare. “You don’t have to get into character now. In fact, we might have to shoot you if you do.”

“Alliance audiences are always the toughest audiences.”

“Piggy, I’m sorry to ask this, but I want from you a full, detailed report on your stay with Binring Biomed. Personnel, the site where you grew up, impressions, odd things you noticed that didn’t mean anything at the time, whatever you can remember.”

Piggy took and released a deep breath. “I will do it.”

“Everyone else, standing orders apply. Back to work.”

Face was standing by as Tyria emerged from the X-wing simulator. “Better this time?”

She smiled. “Better. Always better, bit by bit. But if I were you, I’d give it a few minutes to air out before climbing in. I had quite a workout in there.”

“Thanks for the warning. You are a lady and a gentleman.”

She activated the hoist to pull her R5 unit, Chunky, from the slot at the rear of the simulator. X-wing simulators could also simulate astromech interactions, but missions were more realistic if the pilots had their own astromechs plugged in.

Once Chunky was settled on the deck, Tyria glanced at Face’s R2 unit, Vape. “Hey, he’s had a new paint job.” Indeed, the red trim had been replaced with a proper Wraith set of gray stripes.

Face snorted. “That’s actually just a cover for some modifications I’ve had made to him.”

She gave him a suspicious look. “Modifications. A popup screen and a complete set of your holodramas?”

“That’s not such a bad idea. Maybe that will be the next mod. No, this is one anyone can appreciate.” He looked around to make sure no one else was in the lounge. “Vape: cold one.”

A trapezoidal panel on the top of Vape’s dome pulled aside, leaving a hole open. Vape made a noise like an airgun firing. A bottle leaped up a meter from the hole. Face snagged it on its way down and twisted the cap off.

He handed it to Tyria. “Elba beer. Chilled. For you. I’ll have one myself after my sim run.”

She looked at him. “Do you know, you’re getting stranger and stranger.”

He smiled. “Good.”

Things went as Wedge predicted. At least, they did at first.

By the time they reached Belthu, the next world on Night Caller’s circuit, Grinder had already found two likely candidates for Zsinj’s contact: the chairman of the coalition of mining company presidents who effectively controlled the wealthy colony world, and one of the board members, president of the second-largest corporation.

The New Republic Intelligence team on-planet was too newly arrived to offer much information of value. However, Face’s routine communiqués with planetary officials bore fruit.

The chairman of mining company presidents spoke with “Captain Darillian” and helpfully provided a price list for the world’s latest stockpile of ores. The other suspect, the company president, privately let the disguised Face know that a shipment of refined durasteel awaited the arrival of Zsinj’s next bulk cargo hauler. Wedge transmitted that data to the Intelligence team.

After Night Caller jumped out of system, General Cracken’s people spent a day tracking down the site where the unrecorded durasteel shipment waited. Rather than sabotaging or stealing it, they simply noted its location. They also delivered Grinder into the corporation headquarters and helped him ferret out details of the transfer, to another false Zsinj identity, of a small, somewhat outdated durasteel foundry. Two days after Grinder rejoined the Wraiths, the Intelligence team blew up the foundry.

The next stop in sequence was not a settled world; in fact, the planetary system had only a number designation, M2398, in the New Republic and Imperial records. Without any ordinary way to smuggle agents into the system, General Cracken had chosen not to send in a team.

Despite the fact the system was supposed to be uninhabited, Night Caller’s records clearly showed a stop here, though there was no mention of contact with local authorities.

Night Caller jumped to a position well outside the orbit of the outermost planet and took sensor readings on the M2398 system. Within minutes they had trace communications emissions from a moon of the third world, a gas giant featuring a beautiful dust and asteroid ring. The transmissions were coded, but Jesmin, in the comm center, cracked the encryption in a matter of minutes. She called it in to Wedge, who was pacing the bridge, to the amusement of Captain Hrakness. “Simple mathematical substitution,” Jesmin said. “It’s probably only good for one battle or so, just long enough to keep their enemies from knowing what they’re saying.”

“Put it on,” Wedge said.

First there was a hiss of static over the comm unit, then a man’s voice. “How is it, Guller? Cold?”

A pause, then another man’s voice. “Shut up.”

Pause. “I mean, I know it’s cold. But is it just cold, or is it really cold, or is it your-parts-are-numb cold, or is it your-parts-are-falling-off cold?”

Pause. “Shut up.”

Pause. “You see anything?”

Pause. “No.”

Pause. “But are you not seeing anything because there’s nothing to see, or are you not seeing anything because your eyes are frozen?”

Pause. “Shut up.”

Wedge asked, “Two, that interval—I assume it’s transmission lag?”

“Yes, sir. I calculate that they’re about a hundred and fifty thousand klicks apart. I’m pretty sure that ‘Is it cold’ is broadcasting from the largest moon, and ‘Shut up’ is in the asteroid belt.”

“An outpost of some kind.” Wedge considered. “Sound like a pirate nest to you, Captain Hrakness?”

The smaller man leaned back comfortably in the command chair. “Out-of-the-way system, unprofessional and credit-wasting exchanges between members of the group … Probably so.”

“Very well. Jesmin, set up the Captain Darillian simulator and call Face to the comm center. Falynn is to get into Imperial pilot gear and take TIE Two; I’ll be in One. All the other Wraiths to the X-wings. Tell Tyria to take her own snubfighter—she’s temporarily restored to duty—and Phanan to take Falynn’s. Captain Hrakness, call battle stations. I want everyone standing by hot as we go in, but looking cool; we don’t want them to know we’re ready.”

As he began his start-up checklist, Wedge heard the comm pop. Swearing in a female voice immediately came over the communications speaker. He took a look at his comm board. The TIE fighter was still docked, with external communications off-line; this had to be the direct connection to the other TIE fighter port. “Gray Two, is that you?”

The swearing broke off momentarily. “Yes, sir!” Then it continued.

“Refrain from personal comments over this channel.”

“Yes, sir!” Her voice sounded resentful.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing with the TIE fighter, sir. I just had a dead body drop on me out of my closet.”

“What?”

“A pressure suit. Sealed and inflated. With a knife taped to its glove. When I slid open my closet door to get my Imp flight suit out, it fell on me.”

“A prank?”

“What else?”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. But it’s not funny. And if I were as clumsy as some of the old men in this squadron it would have stuck me.

“I’ll do something about this when we get back.”

“I don’t need any help, sir.”

“Maybe you don’t, but your prankster does. Are you live?”

“Two engines green, weapons live.”

“Drop to a trickle charge and prepare for what may be a long wait.”

From his seat in the comm center, Face watched the monitor, saw the hyperspace’s lines of light shorten into stars. Directly ahead was the red and orange brilliance of the third world. Face nodded in appreciation; Night Caller had dropped out of this second hyperspace jump not far from the world, as close as its gravity well would permit.

Almost immediately the comm board lit up as the unseen parties out there began communicating. “Glit One, Glit One, we have unknowns.” Pause. “Got you, Nest. I read one Corellian corvette. Looks like Captain Dandy is back.” Pause. “Confirm one dandy, Glit One. Glit Five, are you online?” The next pause was much longer, then Glit One’s voice came back, resentful: “Shut up.”

Face scanned the comm equipment. He knew the basics of handling a comm unit, but didn’t have the training to try to seek and amplify what had to have been a third transmission point out there.

Then a new voice, a strong broadcast from the occupied moon: “Night Crawler, this is Blood Nest. Respond at once.”

Face toggled his comm and the switch governing the instant translation to Darillian’s voice. “Bloody Nose, this is Night Caller. What do you want?”

“We want to tear your face off and vent what’s left into hard vacuum.”

Face snorted. Was this piratical posturing, or did these people intend to attack Captain Darillian? “You’re welcome to if you can, Bloody Nose. But first, tell me about your wife. I want to know something about the woman I’ll be consoling tonight.”

There was a long pause. Then the voice returned, more somber than before. “Darillian, I told you not to come back.”

“I recall you requesting me not to come back. Do you remember us talking about the possibility of mutual profit?” Nervous, Face tugged at his collar. He was guessing now, presuming that Darillian had followed what seemed to be his predictable pattern in dealing with these people. “Have you really decided to close off all my avenues to more wealth, more power?”

“No … of course not. Very well, Nutcracker. I’m clearing you to land on Berth Two. We’ll dine, we’ll talk. Follow the signal in.”

“Excellent. Night Caller out.” Face disconnected both the microphone and the Darillian voice simulator.

Immediately the comm unit indicated a single strong signal coming from the moon that must house Blood Nest. “Captain Hrakness, this should be your homing beacon.”

“It is, Face. We’ve got it, thanks.”

Night Caller’s TIE fighters were mounted outside the corvette’s artificial gravity field. Wedge, waiting in his cockpit, didn’t care to spend time in zero gravity, but he decided it was marginally better than being shot at.

His right hand twitched. He tightened it into a fist and tried to ignore it. In one of his few protracted zero-gravity experiences, he’d had to keep two components of the external triggering mechanism of a self-destruct device from coming together. He’d done so the simplest way possible: exiting his X-wing into hard vacuum, relying only on his flight suit’s magcon field and a life-support tether to keep him alive, and jamming his hand in between the closing components.

In the long minutes he’d waited, he’d been battered by conflicting thoughts. He’d resigned himself to dying, yet hoped rescue would come. His flight suit inadequate to the task of retaining his body heat, he’d begun to freeze, yet he’d waited there, marveling at the beauty of the starfields above the sanctuary moon of Endor.

When rescue, in the form of Luke Skywalker, had come for him, he’d torn himself free of the mechanism and almost lost fingers doing it … and now those fingers became a bit twitchy whenever he found himself in zero gee for any length of time. The emotions returned, too. He could even taste the bacta they’d dunked him in to heal him after the ordeal. He tried to will the taste away and concentrate on his surroundings.

Just as at Endor, there was beauty here. The gas giant was an extraordinary pattern of warm colors, a mesmerizing painter’s palette.

Eventually the moon of Blood Nest came into view, a large but dismal brown thing. Night Caller descended into its thin, unwholesome-looking atmosphere. Wedge felt himself settling into the cockpit restraints as gravity began to pull at the corvette. There were no seas below, only pockmarked brown and red desert; the corvette passed above it, heading toward high mountains in the distance.

As they approached the first set of foothills, Wedge saw a curved portion of ground below and to the side of Night Caller’s course curl up and retract.

For a moment it made no sense. Then the picture fit itself together into elements he could recognize.

A crater, concealed from above by some sort of colored or dust-covered fabric. Beneath it, a laser artillery cannon, its barrel elevating straight toward the unshielded keel of Night Caller—

Wedge powered up and hit the crude escape-pod ejection switch Cubber had wired to his control board. His TIE fighter dropped. He oriented immediately toward the laser rig. “Bridge, bring up all shields! Gray Two, launch! Follow my lead. Fire at will.” He suited action to words, firing as soon as his laser cannons oriented on the artillery unit below.

His first shot creased and blackened the unit’s barrel housing. “Wraiths, launch. We’re under attack.” He fired again, not yet bothering to arrest his plummet, and saw the TIE fighter’s green lasers penetrate the cannon housing halfway between the barrel end and the control pod at its base.

The cannon operator fired his compromised weapon. Wedge saw the upper half of its barrel glow red, then yellow, then white from heat as it melted from within.

Gray Two sideslipped into position and fired. Her shot penetrated the phototropically darkened bubble over the control pod. Wedge saw the pod light up from within. Inside was a fuzzy-edged human silhouette that almost instantly lost resolution and was absorbed by light. The pod vented gases.

Captain Hrakness’s voice was cool over the comm: “Wraiths, Grays, we have incoming from dead ahead.”

The bow hold doors were sliding open as Hrakness transmitted his message. As soon as they were separated enough to allow an X-wing to exit, Kell saw the distant thruster trails of the incoming fighters.

He was lucky enough to be the centermost of the nine X-wings in the hold. That meant he launched first, and he wasted no time with repulsorlifts, punching forward with a burst from his main thrusters. He’d helped build the blast shield behind the X-wing’s housing racks; he knew it could take punishment from his engines.

He emerged from the hold into dirty air and checked his sensor panel. “Wraiths, I read two full squads of snubbies unknown types, mixed types, distance two point five klicks and closing.”

“Night Caller is vectoring.” That was Lieutenant Tabanne. She sounded as calm as her captain. “Wraiths, compensate for the maneuver or refrain from launching for a moment.”

Kell nodded. Night Caller couldn’t approach oncoming fighters with her bow hold open. Even with shields up, if a laser blast or proton torpedo penetrated them, there would be no ship’s hull to take the shot; X-wings still in the hold could be vaped. So could any of the mechanics on duty there; or the blast could angle up against the ceiling and penetrate the bridge. Hrakness’s maneuver was simple self-preservation, and Kell prepared himself to fly alone for a few long moments.

18

Tyria’s voice came over the comm: “So, you’re making it a challenge?” Kell glanced back to see the corvette in midmaneuver, Wraith Ten firing out of the bow hold. Tyria stood her X-wing up on its port strike foil and angled straight toward Kell.

“Wraith Two away!” Jesmin’s snubfighter was next.

That cleared the center column. The other six X-wings in the bow hold, closer to the sides of the hold, would have a slightly more difficult launch; even ignoring the corvette’s maneuver, they’d be several more seconds. But now Piggy was following Janson out of the topside hold, arcing around to join the group, and the TIE fighters of Wedge and Falynn were rising toward them.

Kell’s R2 unit shrieked at him as the cockpit alarm indicated an enemy laser lock. Without waiting for authorization to break, Kell rolled up on his starboard strike foils and continued the roll, spinning and diving; he could see the other Wraiths break and roll.

Wedge heard Janson’s voice: “They’re Uglies.” Uglies were hodgepodge rigs assembled from components of normal fighters; they were unpredictable to both their pilots and their targets, sometimes characterized by terrible flight performance, sometimes by unusual and effective weapons combinations.

Wedge added, “Wraiths, this is Leader. Fire at will. Forget the standard wing assignments. Form wings as you launch. Three, stay with me.” He shook his head. This was bad. The Wraiths were uncoordinated, still half off balance despite the destruction of the ambushing laser cannon.

His sensors showed a trio of bandits headed his way. He desperately wanted to snap off a proton torpedo to shake up their formation, to put extra energy into his forward shields, but the TIE fighter didn’t give him either option.

Instead, he gave his yoke a little sideways tug, felt the moon’s thin atmosphere yank at his solar wing arrays, and was hurled to starboard. His engines screamed with the change in course. The maneuver was just in time; green lasers cut through the air he had just occupied. Sensors showed Falynn performing a similar sideslip to port.

His Imperial-style targeting screen showed a lock on the closest oncoming enemy. It was visible in the viewport, an unlikely assembly of parts: a classic Headhunter body augmented by TIE fighter solar wing arrays mounted horizontal to its plane of flight on each side. TIE fighter wings were designed to recharge ship’s lasers and to provide some armor, and were never particularly aerodynamic; in this rig, they were wobbly, far too awkward to provide lift in flight, and probably provided tremendous drag. The vehicle had to be entirely dependent on repulsorlifts. Wedge fired at the patchwork vehicle, a snap-shot, and watched it shudder its way into a starboard rising turn. This made its profile longer, larger, and his second shot sheared through its midsection, just behind the cockpit. Wedge saw components and perhaps crew falling out of either portion of the bisected, doomed craft.

He reversed his lateral slide, turning portward again, gaining altitude, and spinning into a corkscrew.

Falynn shot out ahead of him, then abruptly climbed into a loop. In a moment she’d be inverted, then diving, firing. It was a canny move, considering her inexperience in the TIE fighter: If she maintained a course without the slightest port or starboard deviation, regardless of how she gained or lost altitude, she wouldn’t suffer the buffeting TIE fighters took in atmosphere and could keep her engines at full thrust, full speed.

One of the oncoming Uglies, a ball-shaped TIE fuselage attached to a top-mounted fixed wing and a rear-mounted rudder, took the bait and climbed to follow. Wedge oriented toward him, fighting with his stick, and almost immediately got the jittery glow of a laser lock. He fired into the Ugly’s underside, scoring a direct hit on the ionic engines. The Ugly detonated into a brilliant shower of sparks and flaming debris.

At less than a klick, the third Ugly, which looked like a wingless, rudderless Imperial shuttle, fired on Wedge—thin streams of red lasers, a seemingly endless number of them. He juked left, continued that way as the broadening pattern of energy pursued.

He saw the Ugly’s side gout—a side-mounted tube firing a concussion missile. There had been no warning from the TIE’s sensor-lock alarm and the missile came in straight at him at less than a klick’s distance, a blur accelerating so fast there was no chance he could maneuver out of its way.

“Ten, you’re my wing. Let’s go high road.” Kell stood his X-wing on its tail and bled power from his bow shields into his thrusters. He’d have to trust his sensors to warn him of weapons locks for a few long moments.

“Five, acknowledged.” Tyria followed his maneuver almost point for point.

“Nine is away. Two, I’m your wing.”

“Nine, understood.”

Sensors reported twin concussion missile launches from the oncoming squads of Uglies. Kell put on a bit more speed, but Thirteen gave him no indication they were coming after him. Two fighters at the rear of the Ugly formation were showing increasing altitude, however—climbing after him and Tyria.

“Six are away! Bring on your Uglies, your wretched rigs of cast-off parts, your—”

“Six, Twelve. No recitations.”

“Yes, Twelve.”

Kell frowned. Runt wasn’t in his pilot mind; that personality never spoke intelligibly. More changes going on in his usual wingman’s mental processes …

“Four away. Six, I’m your wing.”

Wedge relaxed the pressure on the pilot’s yoke. In the split second his twin ion engines lost thrust, he dropped back into the wash of laser fire he’d been avoiding.

Lasers splashed across him. The concussion missile flashed past his viewport, missing him by maybe ten meters. Then he emerged from the other side of the laser pattern … unscratched.

He smiled grimly. He’d realized almost too late that there were two ways a fighter that size could fire lasers so continuously. One was to have a highly advanced, experimental power generator worth a squad of A-wings. The other was to fire targeting lasers, beams bright enough to see but not to do damage … bright enough to spook a fighter into fleeing before them in a predictable path, right into the line of a fixed missile tube.

Falynn’s TIE fighter roared down from above, linked lasers firing. Her shot hit the shuttle fuselage, crisping a black circle at the aft end. Wedge expected the shot to destroy the shuttle’s engines, sending it into a helpless dive, but the Ugly merely lost altitude, trailing smoke. Its movement suggested that it had been flying all along on high-altitude repulsors.

Falynn dove past, firing once more, hulling the craft at nearly the same point. She leveled off below it, inverted, and climbed toward its belly.

“TIE fighter, break off. We surrender!”

She must have heard; she broke off her firing run, climbing in a dizzying spin until she was on station above and aft of the craft. Wedge grinned, imagining the volatile Tatooine woman cursing at having to give up a kill. Her voice, over the comm, was a furious sputter: “You Kowakian-ugly flying wreck, get to ground right now or I’ll vape you, surrender or not.”

“TIE fighter, we acknowledge. Don’t shoot.” The bizarre shuttle heeled over and began a faster descent.

At the top of his arc, Kell inverted and dove.

The two Uglies that had been climbing to engage abruptly broke off and fled at ninety degrees to his flight path. He rolled down onto his port wing and pursued.

“Five, Ten. I don’t think they’re running. This is strategic.”

Kell eased back on his stick. “What makes you think so?”

“I don’t know.”

Strategic. What would this strategic retreat bring the enemy?

He eyeballed their flight angle, calculated that it would take them beyond the engagement zone, over a series of craters, over one large crater in particular—

“Pig Trough,” he said.

“Five, what?”

“Ten, tighten up. Stay on me.” He dove to the lunar surface and headed through the broadening engagement zone, angling to reach the far side of the battle and beyond.

Jesmin kept up her streaming fire against the nearly stock Headhunter in her brackets. Finally the atmospheric fighter’s durasteel armor gave way under her lasers. The deadly red beams penetrated into the fighter’s aft end. A moment later the Headhunter bent, arching its back like a wounded animal, as the engines detonated, venting through the craft’s belly, tearing the fuselage in half.

“Good shooting, Two.”

“Thanks, Nine. That’s five!”

“Five here.”

“No, Kell. I mean, that’s five kills. I’m an ace!”

“Two, wait for the debriefing. In this unit, your wingman may get credit for your kills. But congratulations.”

“Very funny, Five.” Jesmin vectored toward a pair of oncoming Uglies at the far side of the formation. Abruptly they veered away at right angles to her flight path.

She rolled up perpendicular to the ground and followed. Nine stayed on her wing.

Janson smoked a double-hulled monstrosity that had been firing eight-way-linked laser cannons—firing them inaccurately, fortunately for Janson—and took a look around.

At the very center of the engagement, two X-wings were in trouble, juking and weaving their way through the heaviest fire, diving out of the path of one set of Uglies only to find themselves immediately in the path of another. Janson’s sensors identified the Wraiths. “Seven, Eight, how are you doing?”

Face’s voice: “Not good, Eleven.”

“Seven, what are you doing here?”

“My job in the comm center was done. Do you mind? I can go back if you like—”

“Never mind. Hold tight. I’m coming in to help.”

But help was even faster than that. The entire sky seemed to light up and one of the Uglies—a huge ball that seemed to be made up entirely of TIE fighter solar wings—evaporated, leaving behind only a glowing afterimage and tons of falling liquefied metal.

Janson leaned away from the painful brightness. “What the—” Then he caught sight of the vehicle that had scored the kill. “Good shooting, Night Caller.”

Lieutenant Tabanne’s voice came back, “Can’t let you toy drivers score all the kills, Twelve. Hold tight.” The oncoming Night Caller fired again, her laser cannons converging on a wingless TIE ball that had been firing concussion missiles indiscriminately. The spherical craft emerged from the beam intact, or so Janson thought at first; then it rotated and he saw that one half had been burned entirely away.

Half a pilot drifted out of the cockpit and joined it in its plummet to the lunar surface.

Kell heard two more Ugly pilots surrender. His snubfighter roared over the moon’s surface, mere scores of meters above the irregular ground, occasionally dropping closer as he and Tyria headed over deep impact craters.

They skipped over the ridge that was a common border between two such craters and saw them—treaded vehicles peering just over the far rim. Even as large as this crater was, they were already in weapons range, only a couple of seconds away.

“Switching to torps,” he said. “Firing.”

“Firing,” Tyria repeated.

Their proton torpedoes flashed almost instantly across the distance separating firer from target.

Almost instantly. The treaded vehicles also fired, lasers and concussion missiles, aiming at distant targets. Then the torpedoes caught up to them. Kell’s hit the big one on the left, the too-tall construction body atop a military crawler’s treads, while Tyria’s hit the smaller laser-cannon-armed crawler in the middle. All three vehicles were caught up in the dual blast. They dropped out of the bottom of the resulting ball of smoke and fire, tumbling down the crater’s slope, throwing off treads, doors, shreds of weapon components, chunks of armor, all charred and warped almost beyond recognition.

The comm crackled with Jesmin’s pained voice. “I’m hit.”

Kell and Tyria cleared the crater a moment later and vectored in behind Jesmin and Donos.

The Mon Calamari pilot and her temporary wingman were still together, but both were hit, trailing smoke, and drifting apart.

Jesmin seemed to be the one damaged worst. Kell guessed that the blast had been one of a pulse barrage; nothing else was likely to have been able to knock down her shields and penetrate before the shields came back up. A laser blast had hit her on the port side of her cockpit; from the angle and the deepening black score along the cockpit’s flank, Kell gauged that the blast had done the majority of its damage just behind and below the pilot’s chair. Jesmin also could have caught some of the wash of damage.

Her X-wing was also standing on its starboard strike foils and was in an arc heading toward one of the nearest hills. “Jesmin, straighten up. Two, can you hear me?”

“Hear … you … Five …” If anything, her voice sounded worse than before.

“Level off, Two. Right now.”

“Can’t … reach … stick …”

She was too badly hurt to reach the pilot’s yoke? That was bad, but—then he realized the truth. Her words, and the way she was struggling to say them, added up to one thing: her inertial compensator was shot. The device that made pilots immune to the centrifugal effect of fighter maneuvers was no longer working, and she was being crushed back into her seat by the high-speed arc she was performing.

She was seconds from hitting the hillside. He said, “Thirteen, instruct her R2 to cut her fighter’s thrust by half.”

Thirteen’s answer came up immediately: HE CAN’T, HIS LINKS TO COCKPIT CONTROLS ARE GONE. HE SAYS GOOD-BYE.

“No! Jesmin, punch out!”

There was no answer.

There was other comm traffic going on. Kell ignored it. He was aware only of Jesmin’s dying X-wing meters in front of his own. Of the rapidly growing hillside beyond that.

He closed his strike foils into cruise position and goosed his thrusters until he was just to the side of and beneath Jesmin’s X-wing.

Janson’s voice: “What are you doing, Five?”

Wedge’s: “Let him go, Eleven. I see what he’s up to.”

With his port wing a meter beneath Jesmin’s starboard wing, Kell rolled gently to starboard. His wing contacted hers with a scrape, putting a shudder through his snubfighter, checking and reversing her roll. He drifted to starboard and continued his roll until he nearly completed a three-sixty.

Now he stared at the bottom of Jesmin’s fighter, at the damage to her side and at cables trailing out of it. Because the impact of wing against wing had rolled her, her fighter had gone through nearly ninety degrees of a rotation to port. For the moment, her X-wing was angling away from the hillside, but the roll was continuing. As delicately as he could, Kell rose toward the underside of her fighter.

The hillside flashed below him and was gone. Jesmin’s roll brought her port wing down on top of Kell’s. The stick under his hands shuddered. Behind him, Thirteen shrieked and Kell felt the bump of the R2 unit’s impact with the underside of Jesmin’s fighter.

As Jesmin’s rotation forced his port strike foils downward, Kell’s flight stick jerked and his fighter tried to roll to port. He fought it, trying to keep his fighter in line through sheer strength. If he could just bring Jesmin’s nose up, he might angle her out of the atmosphere, enable the Narra to catch up to her—

He heard a crackle, felt his body tingle. Thirteen made another noise of dismay.

His text display lit up with diagnostics reports:

ETHERIC RUDDER NONFUNCTIONAL.

PORT FUSIAL THRUST ENGINES NONFUNCTIONAL.

STRIKE FOIL CONFIGURATION HYDRAULICS NONFUNCTIONAL.

REPAIRS COMMENCING.

Kell’s port-side engines whined and shut down. Jesmin’s X-wing, now headed in a long arc toward the ground, leaped out ahead of him.

“No! Five to Two, come in.”

Nothing.

“Thirteen, can you query her pilot chair’s electronics?”

THEY REPORT LEVELS CONSISTENT WITH UNCONSCIOUSNESS IN MON CALAMARI.

“Night Caller, can you snag her with your tractor?”

“She’s out of our line of sight, Five. I’m sorry.”

Jesmin had only ten or fifteen seconds to live unless he managed something. “Ten, where are you?”

“Five, this is Leader. Ten is with Nine. She can’t help you.”

“But I’ve got—I’ve got—”

“I’m sorry, Five.”

Jesmin’s fighter hit the lunar surface. It didn’t detonate; it shredded instantly into tons of shrapnel, rolling across the rocks and pockmarks of the moon below, coming to a rest in a swath of litter half a kilometer in length.

Kell wiped tears away from his cheeks. Then the real pain of his failure hit him.

“Nine, answer me.” Tyria tried to keep her voice calm and level. Flying above and behind Donos, she could see that damage to his X-wing was minimal—unless she counted the charred crater that was what was left of his R2’s docking station. If there were any fragments of Donos’s astromech, Shiner, remaining, they would have to be dug out of a deep layer of slag and carbon scoring.

The dialogue between Kell, Jesmin, and Wedge was becoming more desperate. She tried to ignore it, to keep it in the background of her mind. “Myn! Answer me!”

There was a little burst of static that may have been a word.

Tyria pressed her helmet closer to the side of her head, hoping it would help her hear. “What did you say? ‘Gone’?”

It came again, Donos’s voice, still faint but understandable: “Gone.”

She glanced at her sensors. Jesmin wasn’t gone yet, but it didn’t look as though there was much hope for her. Tyria started to correct Donos—then the import of what he was saying hit her.

She dialed her comm system down to minimum transmission power and hoped that her signal wouldn’t carry back to the other Wraiths. “Myn, do you mean Shiner?”

“He’s gone.”

“Myn, damn you, he’s only a droid! Jesmin Ackbar may die and all you’re worried about is a hunk of metal!”

There was no answer.

She accelerated and dropped down in front of Donos. “Wraith Nine, this is Wraith Ten. You’re my wing. Do exactly as I do.”

Again, no answer. She sideslipped a little to starboard but Donos didn’t follow. Exasperated, she moved back in front of him.

Then she saw it, just as, minutes ago, she’d imagined the two flying Uglies leading Kell off to his death. “Talon Leader, this is Talon Two. Do you read?”

There was a delay, then Donos’s voice came back strong and calm. “Two, this is Leader.”

“Leader, you’re damaged. Injured. I’m going to lead you back to base. You’re my wing. Do you copy?”

“I copy, Two, and thanks.”

She slowly rolled up onto her starboard wing and came around in a gradual arc back toward Night Caller. Behind her, Donos skillfully duplicated her maneuver.

She wanted to feel relieved, but trying to imagine what must be going on in Donos’s mind made her shudder.

Then the dot designating Wraith Two winked out on the sensor board.

Wedge and Janson finished the tour of the bandit base in silence.

The base was an elderly, damaged Kuat Super Transport VI container ship. With its engines in the shape they were, Wedge doubted the vessel would ever lift, even from the half-standard gravity of this moon. The engines were just barely functional enough to provide power for artificial gravity, life support, and communications. A smaller hauler, an aging Corellian bulk freighter, apparently served to haul half squads of Uglies through hyperspace to whichever areas they chose to patrol. They had enough firepower to intimidate decent-sized cargo vessels, and their supplies of stores suggested the pirates had been doing quite well.

In the base’s filthy mess hall, the surviving pilots, eleven of them, plus about twenty support crewmen waited under guard. Falynn and Grinder, grim-faced, kept them under the cover of blaster rifles; the two Wraiths stood behind upended tables that would give them some quick cover if one of the pirates produced a holdout weapon the searchers had missed.

Wedge stood before the pirate captain, a beefy, black-bearded man who had admitted to the name of Arratan. “Stand,” Wedge said.

Uneasy, the man stood. “We have a right to be here. We have a right to attack intruders.”

“What right?”

“We’re colonists. This is an unclaimed system. There’s no law here.”

Wedge sighed, suddenly made even more weary by the lie. “Very well. You’re free to go.”

The pirate chief blinked. “What?”

“You’re free to go.”

The bearded man looked among his men and nodded. They slowly stood.

“Of course,” Wedge said, “there’s no law here. So my pilots are free to shoot you if they want to.”

The pirates sat again, all but Arratan.

“Furthermore, since there’s no law here, my crew and I are going to help ourselves to whatever supplies we need. Then we’re going to take off and blow a hole in your beloved Blood Nest, venting the atmosphere. Then we’ll inform the New Republic military that there’s a nice hard-vacuum warehouse here full of other stolen goods and a lot of depressurized bodies.”

Arratan’s face twitched. “You can’t do that.”

“Of course we can. There’s no law here. This is unclaimed territory. Would you or any of your men like passage to some other system before we blow this base to pieces?”

“Maybe.”

“Then maybe you should spend some time thinking about what you have to offer us for passage. Not goods; we’ll take what we want anyway. Information.” Wedge leaned close to the pirate. “Be advised. You filth killed one of my pilots to protect your right to have no laws. So I’m going to be very hard to please.”

Rattled, the pirate chief leaned back from Wedge. The backs of his legs encountered the table bench behind him and he sat clumsily.

Wedge spun on his heel and left the mess, Janson following.

19

On the way back to the wobbly, unreliable-looking extruder tube where Night Caller was docked, Wedge said, “New orders.”

Janson pulled out his datapad.

“Test all the fuel they have in reserve. Whatever’s up to the standards of our snubfighters, transfer to the corvette. But I want Kell to look at everything first in case it’s wired to blow.”

“Kell’s in sick bay.”

“Was he hurt?” Wedge was aware that trailing power cables from Jesmin’s X-wing had shorted out some of the systems of Kell’s snubfighter. Perhaps he’d taken too much electricity himself.

“Violent nausea.”

Wedge gave him a surprised look. “What does our doctor say about that?”

“He says Kell is a real mess and shouldn’t be given a job frying tubers for the Alliance, much less flying X-wings.”

“That sounds like Phanan. Was that on the record?”

“No. He’s hoping Kell will surprise him. By coming out of it.”

“Me, too. I’ll talk to Kell. Any other injuries?”

“Myn Donos. A concussion from the explosion that did all the damage to Jesmin’s snubfighter. Or so Phanan says. I wasn’t able to talk to Myn; Phanan had already sent him to his quarters for rest.”

“Fine. Oh, and transfer Phanan’s R2 unit—Gadget?”

“Gadget.”

“—to Myn.”

They entered the airlock providing access to the extruder tube. Wedge closed the inner airlock door and opened the outer, then stared dubiously at the shifting length of stained man-height tubing. Somewhere beyond its curve was one of Night Caller’s airlocks. “I’d almost rather suit up against the atmosphere.”

“Oh, come on, Wedge. If it’s good enough for those upstanding citizens, it’s good enough for us.”

Wedge managed a faint smile. “Then you go first.”

“Ton, a few minutes privacy?”

Wedge stood just inside the door to sick bay. Phanan gave him a stiff nod and left without a word.

On one of the bay’s beds lay Kell Tainer, somber, pale. He gulped, obviously aware he was in for a dressing-down.

“I don’t know how you do it,” Wedge said. “You do such good work. Then you screw everything up.”

Kell nodded. “It’s my fault Jesmin is dead. I know that.”

“Not that, you idiot. It’s that tank driver’s fault she’s dead. It’s the fault of a failed inertial compensator. It’s her body’s fault for failing her, letting her fall unconscious, when she could have used those extra seconds you gave her to reach her ejection control. The maneuver you pulled, trying to rescue her, was crazy and brilliant. Most pilots in Starfighter Command would’ve cracked up performing it.”

Kell drew back from the anger in Wedge’s voice. He looked confused. “Then what—the screwup—”

“It’s this.” Wedge waved at him, at the sick bay. “You think you’ve failed. You go to pieces. Every one of us lost a friend today, and who’s in sick bay? You. Myn Donos has a concussion and he’s just sleeping it off. You need a doctor’s care.”

Kell started to say something, then clamped down on it.

“Now, get up, get back into uniform. I want you to search the pirate base for explosives. I don’t want any of us losing hands—or our lives—when we’re exploring. We need you.”

Kell started to rise, then pain crossed his face. To Wedge, it looked like a massive cramp.

“That’s part of it, too, isn’t it?” Wedge kept most of the scorn out of his voice—leaving in just enough for Kell to detect. “Someone needs you and you go to pieces. Well, we do need you. We’re relying on you. Our lives depend on you. Right now. What’s it going to be?”

Kell stood up. His face was a curious mixture of fury and pain. That pain doubled him over, but he straightened up almost instantly. “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

“Go ahead.”

“Every time you make one of these motivational speeches I want to beat you to death.”

“And how do you suppose I feel about you whenever some responsibility sends you into vaporlock?” Wedge turned and left.

In the corridor, he realized what his next task had to be. He resisted the urge to turn back. He’d rather argue with Kell for hours than perform his next duty. He’d almost rather let Kell beat him to death than perform it.

He could put it off for a while. He had to dictate the report of the assault on this pirate base. He had to put in a recommendation that the New Republic seize this site, just in case it became useful in the war against the warlords and the Empire. He even had to put in a recommendation for a citation for Kell Tainer—even if the man folded up in a pinch, his efforts today were above and beyond the call of duty.

But then, ultimately, he had to write Admiral Ackbar to tell him that his niece was dead.

Wedge sat under a single light in the captain’s quarters that had once been lavish but were now echoingly empty.

He began writing on his datapad’s touch pad. A terminal keyboard would have been faster, but he knew it was not the interface that would slow him tonight. Slower still would be finding the right words.

He wrote, Sir, I’m afraid this letter comes to you as a bearer of bad news.

He looked at his words. A bearer of bad news. A trite phrase, and it wasn’t correct. The letter wasn’t the bearer. Whoever brought Ackbar the letter would be the bearer. Perhaps it would just be a wall terminal.

He hit the clear button and the words winked out.

Sir, I wish I could find some way to soften the news—

No. With a preface like that, Ackbar, if his emotional patterns were like those of humans, would merely feel a mounting fear of dread … just before realizing his dread was justified.

He hit the clear button.

Sir, I regret to inform you that your niece, Jesmin Ackbar, is dead.

Ackbar knew that Jesmin was his niece.

He hit the clear button.

Sir, I regret …

Even that was formal, impersonal. He and Ackbar were not friends; they were fellow officers. But he had great respect for the Mon Calamari naval officer and felt that Ackbar had similar respect for him.

He felt for Ackbar and his loss. He’d known that loss himself, the day a pirate’s escape had destroyed the refueling station where his family worked and lived. He’d lost his home, his family, his past. All that was left to him was his future, one that had then seemed threatening instead of inviting.

But that was just the opposite of what Ackbar would experience, wasn’t it? Jesmin was not his past. If anything, she was a piece of his future. Was that not even worse? Suffering the pain of the loss of a loved one … and of the future she represented?

He took a sip from his drink and tried to settle his thoughts. He’d had to perform this task so many times. He should be good at it by now. But he felt just a little touch of pride that he wasn’t, that it never came easy to him. That he could never be glib about it.

He hit the clear button.

He wrote, Sir, it is my sad duty to report to you the death of Jesmin Ackbar.

Kell had peeled halfway out of his coveralls when the door to his quarters slid open. Tyria stepped in and hit the door-close button.

He looked at her. She didn’t speak; her expression was tight, worried.

Finally he said, “Isn’t one of us supposed to make a joke?”

“Some other day, maybe. What have you been up to?”

“Making sure Blood Nest wasn’t rigged to blow. Which it was. And trying not to throw up. Fortunately, I succeeded at defusing and failed to keep my stomach under control, rather than the other way around.” He turned his back to her, shoved his coveralls down to his ankles, and stepped out of them on the way to his little closet. He felt light-headed; working for hours on a stomach that was empty and violently protested any attempt to fill it made him that way. “How’s Myn?”

“I don’t know. Ton Phanan doesn’t know. Myn just lies there, staring off into nowhere. He’ll eat if you put food in his hand, drink if you put the cup to his lips. But he’s gone somewhere.”

Kell selected a clean jumpsuit in TIE fighter pilot black and began to put it on. “How long do you think you can keep it under cover?”

“I don’t know, Kell. Long enough to shake him out of it, I hope. Ton says that if this, this collapse goes on his record, that’s probably it for his career as a pilot.”

“Maybe it should be. Maybe he’s too close to dissolving to fly again.”

“That’s not for you to say.”

He finished pulling the jumpsuit up and zipped it up. “I know. That’s why I’m going along with this, this scheme. In spite of the fact that it might kill all our careers.” He shrugged. “It’s the least I can do. I failed to save Jesmin. Maybe I can help with Myn.”

“Don’t say that. I heard what you tried with Jesmin. That was … tremendous.”

“It would have been tremendous if it had worked. Since it failed, it was just futile. Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“You knew those two Ugly pilots were lures. You probably saved my life by making me take the time to think about it. Was that something you’d run into before?”

She shook her head. Her ponytail swayed slowly. “I just … felt it. I almost saw you being vaped.”

“Could that have been the Force at work?”

“I don’t think so. I wasn’t concentrating on using the Force.”

“What’s it like when you do concentrate?”

She gave him a bitter little smile. “It’s like putting my toe into a nice warm river back on Toprawa, and starting to slide in, and then looking over my shoulder and seeing that my ancestors for twenty generations back have all lined up behind me with stern expressions to make sure I’m doing it right, and I suddenly realize that I can’t swim well enough to make them proud of me. If I go into the water I’ll drown. That’s what the Force is like to me.”

“No wonder you want so badly to learn to use it.”

She looked at him as if trying to figure out whether to be offended.

“All right. It was a limp joke. But it was a joke. It fulfills my obligation.”

“Good night, Kell.”

“Good night.”

Wedge reviewed the words on the datapad.

Sir:

It is my sad duty to report to you the death of Jesmin Ackbar.

On the largest moon of the third world of System M2398, Wraith Squadron encountered and defeated a numerically superior foe, a pirate nest that had been in communication with Warlord Zsinj. Jesmin shot down three opponents in that engagement and earned her status as an ace of the New Republic, an event that pleased her. Shortly afterward, a laser cannon attack from ground units damaged her X-wing and sent her into an uncontrollable descent into the lunar surface. As far as we have been able to determine, she was, at the time of impact, unconscious from uncompensated acceleration and did not suffer.

In the time Jesmin served with Wraith Squadron, I found her to be an excellent flyer and a superior officer. Her skills with communications equipment saved Folor Base from a disastrous assault; every person stationed at that base at the time of its evacuation owes her his life. Even in the elite units of the New Republic’s armed forces, there are too few pilots who share the courage and dependability she exhibited as a matter of routine.

I cannot begin to appreciate your loss, but in reflecting on her death, I have come to a conclusion that is important to me. I no longer believe that the momentum of a life headed in a worthwhile direction ends when that life does.

Jesmin Ackbar shot down five enemies, all of whom served evil men. Had she not done so, their actions would have led to further evil, but her actions take their place instead, broadening like a firebreak into the future theirs would have occupied.

Jesmin Ackbar saved hundred of lives at Folor. Had she not done so, a bow wave of suffering would have rippled out from Folor, scarring survivors, leaving behind nothing but loss.

In the future, staring at each new class of graduating pilots, relaxing in the company of friends on some world that has been on the verge of commitment to the Empire but has become an ally of the New Republic, I will never know how much good surrounding me is a legacy of Jesmin’s life. Her future will be invisible to me. But invisible is not the same as nonexistent. I will know that her deeds and accomplishments still move among us, phantoms that represent everything good the New Republic stands for, and I am grateful for it.

With respect,

Cmdr. Wedge Antilles

That, at last, was what he meant to say.

The corner of the datapad showed the time. It was an hour before he was due to rise. He’d lost the whole night trying to express his regrets to Admiral Ackbar. But he never would have been able to sleep until he was done; the short hour he had would, at least, be a peaceful one.

He switched off the light and stretched out on the captain’s bed, finally able to surrender himself to temporary oblivion.

Two days later, a New Republic cruiser came to deal with the fate of the Blood Nest pirates.

They’d been talkative during those days, offering all they knew of Captain Darillian, Warlord Zsinj, and their own piratical raids. But ultimately, they were nothing but a bunch of freebooters, conscienceless men who were too stubbornly independent to join Zsinj’s operation and too stupid to find a tactic other than attacking Zsinj’s emissary.

Still, the fact that Zsinj was interested in dealing with men of this caliber was interesting. It suggesed that his standards were lower than the New Republic had realized. What role would they have played in his organization: disposable shock troops? Wedge didn’t know.

“We jump out of system this morning,” he told Janson.

“We’re resuming Night Caller’s original schedule?”

Wedge nodded. “What’s our squadron status?”

“About like it was yesterday. We’re down two X-wings, two pilots—though in Myn’s case it’s a temporary thing. With the TIE fighters, we have a full squadron’s worth of fighters.”

“Find out if any of Night Caller’s crew has any aptitude for TIE fighters. Lure them to the simulator with brandy or sweets if you have to.”

Janson grinned. “Fuel and food supplies at full. We’re doing pretty well.”

“Very well. I’ll issue the orders within the hour.”

They stood on Night Caller’s bridge, all the surviving Wraiths but Donos and Wedge. In his X-wing, Wedge hovered fifty meters off the bow, oriented, as Night Caller was, toward the sun of this forsaken system.

Face concluded, “Lacking even her mortal remains to say farewell to, in the manner of her people or ours, let us make this show of respect. Let us send out a physical beacon to mark her passing in the hope that there will be a spiritual one to guide her to her destination.”

Kell decided that Face made a pretty good speaker for the dead. He wished he knew how much of this speech, of the emotion Face projected, was genuine, from Face’s heart … how much was merely the artifice of an actor. But he didn’t need to know right now.

Wedge, acting not as Wraith Leader but as Jesmin’s wingman one last time, fired. His proton torpedo shot toward the distant sun and detonated a few moments later, ten kilometers away, creating for a brief moment a brilliant beacon in the sky. But like the mortal life it symbolized, the proton burst quickly faded from sight.

Wedge’s X-wing slowly maneuvered downward, toward the open bow hatch and out of sight. The mourners, all but the bridge crew, began to leave.

“Tainer.”

Kell stiffened. “Yes, Lieutenant Janson.”

“Night Caller did take a couple of shots during the battle. No significant damage, but it appears to have knocked some couplings and fittings loose around the ship. I’d appreciate it if you would join the mechanics in fixing them.”

Kell saluted the man who’d killed his father and watched him leave.

It was punishment detail. He was sure of it. He’d fouled up the rescue of Jesmin Ackbar and would be receiving pointless tasks like this for the duration of his stay with Wraith Squadron.

In the hallway leading to the officers’ quarters, he caught up with Tyria. “Any change?”

She shook her head. “He’s still the same. Another day or two and we’re going to have to convince them that he’s returned to duty. We might be able to take some of his work shifts and just sign his name to them …”

“It gets more and more dangerous.”

She shrugged, obviously aware of the truth of his statement. “Should we only risk ourselves for the safety of civilians?”

“No.” He sighed. “I can’t help you with him today. I have tug-and-plug duty. Maybe it won’t take too long.”

“Good luck.” She rose on tiptoes and absently gave his cheek a quick kiss, then headed off toward Donos’s quarters.

Kell rubbed his cheek. Now, what did that mean? Just when he was at his most wretched, she showed some faint sign of affection …

Ah. He understood. That conversation with the others about wounded males and females who tried to nurse them back to health. He’d finally reached such a low point that she cared about him.

Well, to hell with that. He might have thought differently a few months ago, but now, given the option of feeling as he did and winning her affection, or finding some worth in himself and no longer being miserable enough to attract her, he’d have to go for the second choice.

He headed off to find his tool kit.

“Shall we trade?” asked Warlord Zsinj.

Admiral Trigit expansively gestured. “You go first. You are the warlord.”

“True. You remember Night Caller.”

Trigit snorted. “One of your TIE fighter corvettes. Thank you for forwarding their reports to me. I’m grateful to Night Caller, my lord. It’s good to know there is a ship undergoing an even less eventful mission than my own.”

Zsinj twisted his face into something like an indulgent smile. “What if I told you that Night Caller’s last several stops have all been visited—or, to be more accurate, smashed—by Rebel forces? Sometimes commandos, sometimes X-wing squadrons?”

Trigit took a half step back. “The ship is being shadowed.”

“Correct. I would appreciate it if you would take care of the matter.”

“At once. Well … perhaps not. The matter I called you about may be of more importance.”

“Go on.”

“You’ve heard of Talasea, in the Morobe system?”

Zsinj frowned. “Some sort of agricultural colony world, wasn’t it? An economic failure?”

“That’s correct. It was abandoned. Not long ago, it was temporarily used as a secret base by Rogue Squadron.”

“Ah, that’s it. One of Ysanne Isard’s other pets assaulted them there. And failed to exterminate them, obviously.”

Trigit kept his smile frozen to his face, but the comment about Iceheart’s pets rankled him. Zsinj obviously considered him one of those pets. “Yes, yes. Well, the Morrt Project is recording an unusual number of hits from Morobe. The visual data we’re receiving suggests a wide variety of ships. X-wings, A-wings. Rebel transports. One of them was the Borleias, the last transport to lift from Folor Base.”

Zsinj took a deep breath. “Anxious to avenge yourself on the Folor survivors, Apwar?”

“I’m not too proud to admit it.”

“Then, by all means, deal with it. I’ll send you, oh, Provocateur as support. Night Caller and Constrictor likewise. That should be a sufficiently lethal fleet for a new base, even if elements of the Rebel fleet are lingering there.”

“Thank you.”

“Then you can run off and deal with these forces shadowing Night Caller. I think I can trust you to eliminate an X-wing squadron and a commando unit by yourself.”

“Your faith in me makes my heart drip with goodwill.”

Zsinj gave him an irritatingly superior smile and waved farewell. His holoimage faded.

Trigit gritted his teeth. Owing to Trigit’s failure at Folor, Zsinj had been able to fling out far more barbs in their recent conversations than Trigit could defend himself against. That had to end soon. Perhaps at Morobe Trigit would do well enough to quiet the warlord.

He could only hope.

In a service conduit above the corridor accessing the officers’ quarters, Kell Tainer hung upside down.

It wasn’t a pose he preferred. But the relay box he was servicing was in the vertical conduit halfway between the corridor and the horizontal service shaft above. At this late hour, he could go wake up Cubber or one of the other mechanics and find out where they’d stowed the ladders, or he could hook his legs over the lip where the two shafts met, hang upside down for a couple of minutes, and fix a conductor relay that had been shaken loose by battle damage.

So he played a game with himself, seeing if he could get the relay reseated before the blood rushing to his head made him dizzy.

He had the cover off the relay box and was wrestling with the relay itself when he heard them, footsteps and voices beneath him. He heard the name “Donos” and went very still.

The first voice was Wedge’s. “The first time we have to scramble for action, the secret’s out.”

The second was Janson’s. “Is there anything we can do? We could arrange things so that only a half squadron of Wraiths was standing by at the next target zone. We could arrange it so that Donos was part of the off-duty pilot group—”

“And risk the lives of the others if it’s another ambush like the last one? No, Wes. But keep thinking about it. If you can find anything I can reasonably do—reasonably—I want to hear about it.”

“Yessir.”

Footsteps moved away. Kell looked down. By arching his back, he could see just the back of Janson’s head. The lieutenant didn’t move; he had his head down. He had to be thinking the situation over.

Thinking about Donos. Kell suppressed a whistle. Wedge and Janson both knew about Donos—knew, at least, that he had been incapacitated. They knew the Wraiths were covering it up. But none of the Wraiths had realized that those two were doing the same, giving them time. Time to give Donos a chance to pull out of it.

The thought hit Kell like an electrical jolt. But that meant—

He grabbed the far edge of the perpendicular shaft, levered his legs free, and dropped to the corridor below.

Janson spun at the sound of something hitting the metal floor behind him.

It was a big man in a crouch—Janson threw himself backward, slamming into the bulkhead wall, and grabbed at his blaster. But his hand came up empty; the weapon wasn’t on his belt.

Then the big man straightened and Janson recognized him. “Sithspit! Tainer, you almost gave me a heart attack! Where did you come from?”

“I’m a Wraith, aren’t I? We strike from nowhere.” Kell’s face wore a weird expression, a combination of intensity and bafflement that made the flesh crawl on Janson’s neck.

“What do you want?”

“Why didn’t you turn him in?”

“Who?”

“Myn Donos.”

“For what?”

“Don’t. Just don’t. I know you know.”

Janson let his face settle into determined lines. “Then you know why.”

“You’re giving him a chance.”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll be damned. I didn’t think you’d do that. For anyone.”

“What do you mean?” Janson didn’t bother to hide his confusion.

“I thought, I always thought, with you it was one real mistake, and boom.”

“Boom.” Realization hit Janson like the bow wave of a proton explosion. “No, Tainer. Not with Myn. Not with your father. Not with anyone.”

“I never would have believed that before just a moment ago.”

“But you do believe it now?”

Kell looked away from Janson for several long moments, finally meeting the lieutenant’s eyes again. “Janson, you’re always going to be the man who killed my father. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at you without that coming to mind. But maybe, the other stuff—everything I thought went with it, Janson the Killer, Janson the Lurker—maybe that was just a kid’s fears.”

Kell crouched. Janson stepped to the side, bracing himself for the leap of attack, but Kell jumped straight up, scrambling into an overhead shaft.

Janson watched the pilot’s booted feet disappear. Kell’s face did not reappear overhead. Janson turned away and headed back toward his own quarters, rattled.

20

Twelve X-wing snubfighters roared down into the atmosphere.

This was a dark world with a polluted sky, its atmosphere formed from gases and smoke hurled from hundreds of active volcanoes. Four kilometers ahead, the TIE Interceptor, fastest fighter of the Imperial forces, was distantly visible; it stayed well ahead of the X-wings, though the sparks and gouts of smoke issuing from its engines, unseen but reported by sensors, suggested it could soon lose speed.

Myn Donos, the X-wing squadron commander, looked around in confusion. This wasn’t right. He’d been through this already. This mission could lead only to …

Death.

No. He was imagining things. He had a job to do. But what was next?

Tentatively he said, “Leader to—”

Damn. What was his comm specialist’s name? What, in fact, was his call number?

Oh, that’s right. “Eight. Leader to Eight. Has there been any change?”

“No, sir. We’re the only ones broadcasting. There’s nothing on the sensors but us and the Interceptor.”

“Thanks, Eight.” Eight’s voice had changed. It was more resonant and lacked its usual rustic accent. Things were otherwise as he remembered them. Well, that was all right. Eight would be dead soon, anyway.

Donos’s head swam as he recognized the simple cruelty of that stray thought.

The Interceptor abruptly lost speed and heeled over to starboard. Donos smiled. Its engine trouble had to have worsened. It headed straight toward the gap between two giant volcanoes, straight toward the trap.

The ambush. They were all about to die.

“Talon Leader to squad, break off! Omega signal!” He rolled up on his port wing and curved in a tight are away from the volcanoes. Away from death.

The other Talons did not follow. They sped down their destined path toward annihilation.

“Leader to group! Break off! Follow me!”

A woman’s voice: “Can’t do it, sir.”

“Twelve, is that you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Follow me. That’s an order! The others die down there. You follow me. Maybe you can make it out this time.”

“No, sir. What does it matter whether I die down there or on the way out?”

Donos continued his arc until he completed a full circle. He now sped on in the wake of his pilots. But no matter how much power he diverted to his engines, they seemed to gain on him, heedlessly rushing toward their own dooms.

“It matters, Twelve. Break off.” He felt an unfamiliar weight crushing his chest. It wasn’t acceleration; it was the inevitability of those pilots’ needless deaths. “Please, Twelve.”

Her voice turned scornful. “Don’t ‘Please’ me, Lieutenant. If someone said, ‘Please live’ to you, you’d just ignore him or spit in his eye.”

“That’s crazy.” The pilots ahead of him were moments from entering the pass between the volcanoes. The pressure increased, squeezing his chest so hard he didn’t think his heart could beat.

“No, it’s not. You don’t care enough about yourself to live. So you don’t give a damn about us.”

“You’re wrong. Turn back.”

“Swear it.”

“I swear it! Turn back!”

The canopy of his X-wing went black and the roar of his engines died. A white slit appeared where his canopy should rise, but when it did come up, it opened on a port-side hinge rather than on a hinge behind him.

Sweating, trembling, he stared into the faces of Face, Tyria, Falynn, and Kell. They wore headsets and somber expressions.

The pressure in Donos’s chest snapped. It became a ball of pure rage. He lunged at the faces before him but was restrained by his pilot’s harness. “You bastards—”

All but Kell pulled away. Kell merely pulled his headset off and handed it back to Face.

Donos got his harness off, stood in his pilot’s seat, and leaped at Kell. The force of his leap, the force of his anger, should have taken the big man off his feet, but Kell pivoted, caught Donos’s right arm, and spun Donos down to the flooring almost gently. The walls of Night Caller’s lounge, their colors chosen by scientists to be soothing, twirled around him as Kell manhandled him.

But Kell didn’t pin him. From his kneeling position, Donos took a swing at the big man’s groin. Kell got a hand in the way, angled the blow to the side, and took it on his thigh.

“I’ll kill you.” The force of his scream scoured Donos’s throat raw. “How could you do that to me, put me through that again—”

Kell didn’t speak. He was concentrating on Donos’s movements, which made Donos even more furious. It was Tyria who answered: “What choice did you leave us? You were just lying there. Trying to die.”

“That’s my right!” Donos stood and threw his best punch at Kell’s face. Kell managed to get his hand behind Donos’s elbow, shoving Donos off balance. Then Kell turned away as if to leave, completed the spin, and Donos felt his legs being kicked out from under him. He slammed down onto the hard floor of the lounge.

“You don’t have the right,” Kell said. “Do you remember swearing an oath?”

“Shut up!” Donos kicked out at Kell, but the other man anticipated the move and drew back a pace. Donos’s boot fell short and rang on the lounge floor.

Kell continued, merciless: “Do you have the right to mourn a droid so deeply that you don’t give a damn about Jesmin Ackbar dying?”

“Shiner …” Suddenly all the fight left Donos. Grief so strong it was like a physical thing, like a hole in his body, bent him double.

He became aware that Tyria was bending over him, shaking him. “Myn, don’t go away. We need you here. We need you flying. We need you watching our backs. We’re your squad now.”

“Shiner …”

“What is it about that droid?” Her voice was at once worried and angry. He looked up at her, saw her incomprehension.

“The last …”

“The last what?” She stared down into his eyes, then she looked startled. “The last Talon. He was the last Talon, wasn’t he?”

Unable to speak, Donos nodded.

“And as long as he was still … alive, you hadn’t let them all down, had you, Myn? You hadn’t failed the whole squadron? You still had him to protect.”

Donos spoke around his grief. It made his words thick. He himself would barely have understood if he weren’t speaking. “He’s gone now.”

“Myn …” Tyria looked lost, desperate. “We need you to protect us now. We’re your friends.”

“Don’t want friends. Friends die.”

“Dammit!” She pulled him to her so his head was in her lap. He stared up at her, hoping she’d stop speaking soon so he could go back to sleep. “Myn, I agree with you. When I joined the Alliance, that was my motto. Friends die, so don’t make any. Just go out, kill the enemy, and when death comes, I’ll know I’ve done my best.”

“Then you know.”

“I changed my mind, Myn. When Jesmin died. How could I look her in the eye if I just threw my life away? She fought to live. She’d be angry at me for wasting what she didn’t have a chance to enjoy.”

Donos didn’t answer. He didn’t have a reply for her.

“What about the Talons? Do they want you to die?”

“They must.”

“Stop that. You knew them. Would they want you to die?”

“Their families would.”

“No.”

“They’d want me to die because I led their fathers and brothers and sisters and cousins off to some nothing world to die for no reason.” He looked beyond Tyria’s shoulder to where Kell and Face stood. “He knows. Muscles there.”

Kell said, “I know what?”

“You want Janson to die.”

“No.”

“Don’t lie! He killed your father.”

“How did you know that?”

“Someone told me.” Donos shrank away from the question. No need to implicate Grinder, regardless of whether Donos chose to live or not.

Kell knelt beside Tyria and looked gravely down at Donos. “I used to want him to die. I killed him hundreds of ways in my imagination. But I changed my mind.”

“Just so you could argue with me!”

“No.” Kell seemed to sag. He looked tired and years older. “I doubt that I’ll ever play sabacc with him, Myn. But I want him to live. Because with him in an X-wing, it means that every year there are fewer Imps and warlord flyers out there endangering my sisters. My mother. My friends. And the families of the dead Talon Squad pilots will think even better of you than I do of Janson. Unless you kill yourself. If you kill yourself, they’ll tell themselves, ‘My father didn’t even have a chance; he was led by a coward.’ If they know you were a courageous pilot, they’ll say, ‘He died fighting for us.’ ”

Donos blinked, and for a moment he was far away from Night Caller, flashing at hyperspace speeds through the homes of the families whose members he had led to death. As he’d done so many times in the days and weeks after Talon Squad was obliterated. But this time, the faces he saw were not masks of anger and vengeance. Just sadness, sometimes; sometimes they were just curious and reflective faces turned up toward the stars.

“I’m sorry about Jesmin,” Donos said.

Tyria nodded and brushed a lock of sweat-drenched hair out of Donos’s eyes. “We all are.”

Donos looked up at Falynn. “I’m sorry about you.”

Falynn came forward. She wore an expression compounded of pain and even, Donos thought, jealousy at Tyria’s ministrations to him. “What do you mean?”

“I thought you wanted to get close. I kept you away. I was cold to you.”

“I understand why.”

“I think I need to go to bed now.”

Kell rose and helped Donos up.

Tyria also rose. “Will you be all right?”

“I don’t know.” Donos shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Breakfast is at eight hundred. We’d like to see you there.”

Donos nodded. “I guess I’ll be there.”

On the way back to his quarters, he felt so strange … All the pain he’d known since Talon Squad died was still there, but the exhaustion that had accompanied it seemed to be gone. It was as though toxins he’d been building up for ages had been bled out.

He fell onto his bed and was unconscious in moments.

The others watched him depart the lounge. Falynn followed him at a discreet distance, making sure he made it back to his quarters. Then Face slumped against the lounge bar. Kell sat heavily on one of the long couches. Tyria reached in to the simulator unit to power it down, then sat beside Kell.

“Well, that was fun,” Face said.

“It worked,” Kell said. His voice sounded as heavy as he felt. “And neither Commander Antilles nor Lieutenant Janson walked in on us. We got lucky.”

Tyria leaned back and closed her eyes. “Now, all Myn has to do is actually get up in four hours and we can say we did it.”

Kell said, “Now maybe Runt will get some sleep.”

“Oh?” Tyria asked. “He’s been sleeping badly?”

“On the shifts he pulled to sit with Myn, he talked to him endlessly. Tried every way he knew to get Myn to ‘switch to a less damaged mind.’ Something his people do with fair ease, even the ones who are mentally ill. He’s been lashing himself for his failure to help Myn do the same thing.”

Face said, “Four hours? What am I doing awake? I’ll see you two tomorrow.” He strode from the room.

The two of them sat in silence for a few moments. Then Kell said, “That was a pretty good idea. About Shiner being the last Talon in the weird way Myn was thinking.”

“Thanks.”

“Another insight? Like the other day and the ambush those pirates set up for me?”

“Something like that.”

“I bet it’s the Force. I bet you can only use it when you’re not thinking about it.”

“Oh, that’s great. That’s just what I need. How would you like to be the best pilot in the galaxy, but only when you’re outside a cockpit?”

He snorted.

“Was it true what he said?” Her voice was unusually gentle. “About Janson and your father?”

“Yes.” Kell reached out for the deep wellspring of hatred he’d carried for Janson all these years, but it was still gone. Mostly gone. “Every day, I wish it hadn’t happened. But Janson had reason.” He shook his head, trying to dispel the mood of gloom those memories always invoked. “Was it true what you said? About giving up that whole attitude of ‘I might die tomorrow, probably shouldn’t make any plans’?”

She took a while to answer. “Yes, I meant it.”

“Um.”

“Um? That doesn’t mean anything.”

“You remember a while back, when I told you I loved you, and you told me it was just a puddle on the floor, and then you put my face into that puddle?”

She looked at him as if to gauge his mood. Seeing that he wasn’t mad, she managed a sympathetic smile. “Of course I remember.”

“Well, I have something to tell you. After I realized you were right, I decided that it was enough to be your friend.”

“Good.”

“Then I fell in love with you again.”

Her expression became one of dismay and exasperation, “Oh, Kell—”

“No, bear with me, just for a minute.”

“It’s just the same words again.”

“Same words … different Kell. This time I know what I’m talking about.”

“Of course you do. So. Set Honesty to On?”

“Honesty to On.”

“How much time did you spend thinking about me today?”

“Every chance I got. Every chance I had when Commander Antilles and Janson weren’t working me.”

“Ah, but in how many of those little fantasies of yours was I wearing any clothes?”

He snorted in amusement. “Lots of them. Most of them.” The words, the truth, came easily to him. “I saw us together in quiet times. When the war with the last bits of the Empire was over and we could argue and be confused about what to do next. Deciding things together. I saw myself presenting you to my family … and saw them making a place in their lives and hearts for you.” He saw distress in her expression but pressed on anyway. “I saw a hundred ways for our lives together to be, and the only thing that made me sad was that we couldn’t explore all of them.”

He sighed. “But now, like the galaxy’s worst general, I’ve told you my objective—I’m going to win your heart. I just don’t know how I’m going to do it, you being forewarned and all—”

She lunged at him. Her tackle took him off the end of the sofa. Suddenly she was atop him on the floor, her arms around his neck, embracing him but glaring furiously.

He rubbed the back of his head where it had hit the deck. “Ow.”

“Shut up.” She kissed him.

That went on a while and felt better than a three-day bender on Churban brandy—even better, for the rising heat and excitement he felt were something no brandy could ever simulate. In spite of his confusion, he remembered to wrap her up in his arms so she couldn’t escape when she regained her senses.

Finally she broke the kiss and returned to glaring at him.

“Well, that wasn’t bad,” he said. “But I thought you didn’t feel the way I did.”

“Of course you did. But then, you’re a giant adolescent with no sense. A big shaved Wookiee with no grasp of human emotions.”

“Granted. But how long have you wanted me?”

Her expression went from angry to plaintive in an instant. “Since I met you.”

“What? Then why didn’t you—”

“Because you were in love with that other Tyria, the one who doesn’t exist. We established that weeks ago.” She managed a little smile. “But I think you’re finally over her.”

“I am.”

“You have to prove it.”

“How?”

“Oh, we’ll find a way.”

Wedge stepped into the officers’ mess, took a quick look around, and froze.

Donos was among the other Wraiths. Chatting. Laughing, despite the new gauntness to his features.

Face, on the other hand, didn’t look at all well. There were circles under his eyes. He had obviously lost sleep. But he seemed cheerful enough.

Kell and Tyria looked just as bad, sleep-deprived and weary. Yet they seemed even more than cheerful.

Wedge’s sudden appearance caught the Wraiths’ attention. Their conversation cut off and they turned to look at him.

Wedge straightened and nodded sardonically at Face. In a mild tone, he said, “Captain Darillian to the bridge.”

Face scrambled up and out the door. He wouldn’t be going to the bridge, of course; Darillian’s seat of command was the comm center.

Wedge jerked his head for Janson to join him. His second-in-command was at his side in an instant. They headed toward Night Caller’s true bridge.

“What’s with Myn?” Wedge asked.

“I don’t know. They’re not telling me. But he seems to be functional.”

“Good. One crisis averted. What’s with all the tired faces?”

“I, well, don’t know. Maybe a late-night sabacc game they don’t invite senior officers to?”

“Fine. Anything else you don’t know?”

“Yes. Something happened with Kell yesterday.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

Wedge stopped short and gave Janson a reproving look.

“No, really, I don’t know. We talked. About his father. I got the impression that he’d been thinking of me as some sort of avenging monster who vaped people for screwups. I also got the impression that he really hadn’t been plotting my death every time he came within a few meters of me … in fact, that he might have been scared stiff.”

“That can actually look the same.”

“Anyway, this morning, things had changed. For the first time, he didn’t become a tower of knotted muscles when I sat down to breakfast.”

“Good.” They swept into the bridge. “Lieutenant Tabanne, put the compiled transmission up on the main monitor.”

“Yes, sir.”

Face sat at the comm officer’s chair, activated the voice and visual translators, and put them through the fastest possible diagnostic check. Both came up in the green. The computers controlling the comm center’s cameras thought they were tracking his body motions correctly.

He sat back, thought for a moment about an aging prima donna of a leading man he’d worked with once, and was instantly in character for Captain Darillian. He turned toward the comm center’s main holoprojector, hit the button to activate transmission, and prepared to speak to Admiral Trigit.

The three-dimensional image of Warlord Zsinj materialized before him.

Face took an extra-deep breath and broadened his smile to cover his surprise. “My lord. I am honored.”

Zsinj’s smile was one of condescension and amusement. “But not honored enough to do your job correctly.”

Face let his eyebrows rise. How had Darillian responded to scorn in his memoirs? With outrage. But the man would never direct an angry response to Warlord Zsinj. No, hurt was the order of the day. “My lord … I have failed you in some way? You have called to tell me I no longer deserve your patronage. It’s the life of a pirate for Darillian …”

“Oh, stop being such a baby. It leeches all the fun out of scolding you.” Zsinj heaved an annoyed sigh. “I received the relay of your report on the visit to Blood Nest.”

Pretending not to be fully recovered from the wound to his pride, Face shrugged. “A pity they chose to reject your offer. But since my avoidance of their ambush was so brilliantly successful, I feel I have left them with something to think about. Perhaps they will be more cordial when I return.”

Zsinj shook his head. “I don’t believe so. Blood Nest is gone.”

Face leaned forward and assumed an incredulous expression. “They fled?”

“No, and that’s the problem. Sometime after you departed, Blood Nest was destroyed. In fact, every site you’ve visited in the last several weeks has subsequently been visited … by Alliance pilots or agents.”

“No.” Face knew he looked shaken and hoped Grinder’s program was up to having Darillian show the same expression. “At the next stop in my mission, I’ll pretend to jump out, then lie in wait for them. I’ll destroy them.”

“Yes. But not yet. I have a more important mission for you.” Zsinj smiled. “You’re going to help that fool Trigit finish off the survivors of Folor Base.”

Once everyone was reseated at breakfast, Piggy asked, “Can the Alliance muster enough firepower to Morobe in time to take out Implacable?”

Wedge nodded. “That firepower is in place. We know which system Trigit’s going to strike, even though Zsinj, with his customary caution, hasn’t told us yet. If Zsinj were going in himself, we’d have to draw so many frigates, cruisers, and Star Destroyers away from other duty that Zsinj would be alerted … but, fortunately or unfortunately, Iron Fist isn’t joining in this mission.

“We do have a real problem, though. He told our Captain Darillian to make rendezvous with the supply ship Hawkbat to replenish expended fuel and supplies. And to pick up a load of surveillance satellites we can deploy at our next scheduled stop so they can acquire data on our ‘pursuers.’ He also says he wants the Hawkbat’s master to come over for an inspection tour of the ship and a talk with Darillian.”

“Oh, wonderful,” Kell said.

“Also, if Night Caller is participating in the battle at Talasea, Zsinj is probably going to expect us to field our full complement of TIE fighters. Which is supposed to be four, not two.”

“The TIE fighters are no problem,” Falynn said. “They’re all over the galaxy. Set the Wraiths down on any planet and we can steal two and fly them back.”

“Speaking of which,” Janson said, “we have two more TIE pilots if we need them. Both Captain Hrakness and Lieutenant Tabanne are Imp Academy graduates. He’s done simulators and soloed, and she actually flew a few missions.”

Wedge tried to keep any emotion from his face. “Kills?”

“No. Only since defecting and joining the New Republic Navy.”

“Good.” One of the problems with the New Republic was that many of its pilots had literally and violently been at odds in the past. It sometimes caused trouble when a pilot now under New Republic command had shot down other New Republic pilots. But some people Wedge absolutely trusted had been Imperials: Tycho Celchu, current leader of Rogue Squadron; Hobbie Klivan, who had defected with Biggs Darklighter and the rest of the crew of the Rand Ecliptic; even Han Solo had been an Academy graduate and briefly an officer.

“The rendezvous is no problem,” Phanan said. At Wedge’s curious look, he said, “We simply need to get to the rendezvous site and say, Oh, no, we’re all down with the Tastiged Flu. Sure, come over. Hope you don’t mind when we have sneezing fits all over you and infect you.’ ”

Wedge shook his head. “We’re dealing with an enemy who is proficient at intelligence work. I think that a sudden inconvenient contagion would tend to alert him.”

Face smiled. It was a crooked smile better suited to a member of Black Sun, the criminal underworld of Coruscant. “What if it’s not us who gets contaminated?”

“Go on.”

“Zsinj transmitted us the Hawkbat’s current schedule so we could arrange a rendezvous at our mutual convenience. That means we know where they’re going to make planetfall over the next several days. We choose the planet where they’re most likely to be offering shore leave; we send the Wraiths over there; and we expose them to some sort of disease. Then it’s the Hawkbat’s captain who has to report we couldn’t meet physically because of an ‘inconvenient contagion.’ Zsinj can investigate all he wants … because he won’t be investigating us.”

Wedge rubbed his chin and resisted the urge to say, “That’s crazy.” Instead, he asked, “Where do we get the contaminants?”

Phanan said, “Every modern planet has a hospital, Commander. Some even have centers for disease containment. One of those would be a street market of disease for us.”

Wedge stood. “Wes, Phanan, let’s go back to my conference room and see if we can actually hammer this into a plan. The rest of you—I think a day’s rest is in order. Get some sleep.”

They broke into laughter at his words and he didn’t dare ask why.

21

As the world of Storinal grew in Narra’s viewscreen, the Wraiths still hadn’t finalized their plans.

There were too many unknown factors, Wedge reflected. Storinal was still under Imperial control, but at the very edge of Imperial space, and said to be leaning toward possible alliance with the New Republic or Warlord Zsinj. The Wraiths could count on running into Imps, and might run across factions of the other two groups. Possible complications there.

Exactly which disease agent they’d be using on the crew of the Hawkbat was an unknown. Phanan wanted to make that decision at the last minute, based on what was available on the planet’s surface and what they could find out about the crew of the Hawkbat. It wouldn’t do to use a biological agent that meant mild illness for most of the crew but death to others. Fortunately, many of Zsinj’s ships appeared to follow Imperial recruiting doctrine—employ no nonhumans if at all possible—which helped limit that danger.

There was the matter of stealing a pair of TIE fighters. The planet was probably swarming with them … but how good was Imperial security? The mission called for the Wraiths to locate and select their target fighters and perform all steps of their acquisition except the actual theft … and then wait until other elements of the mission were completed before launching for space with their new acquisitions. In the middle would be a wait that could be very dangerous.

The whole mission offered little but questions at this stage. Fortunately, it will offer nice scenery while we’re chewing the details, Wedge decided. Night Caller’s library record of Storinal displayed image afer image of lushly green countryside, rivers cascading down stepped hillsides, forest-sized tropical flower gardens, and cities of graceful lines and dimensions occasionally interrupting the world’s natural vistas. The people of Storinal were said to be steeped in a philosophy of beautification that extended to their world, making it one of the most gorgeous in what was left of the Empire, and a favorite center of tourism among those who enjoy natural delights. Falynn, of course, had looked through the data and decided, “Looks humid.”

Then there was the problem of clearing customs. Were they coming down to the planet aboard a cruise vessel or as part of the crew of a large military ship, they could blend in with fair ease and be accelerated through the routine inspection offered to large, precleared groups. But they’d be arriving in a private shuttle. They’d receive close, individual inspection. Face’s plan was to make them stereotypes, types very familiar to customs officials so their inspectors would dismiss them and give them the minimum likely inspection … but that could go wrong, too.

There were even unknown factors among his own team. In the space of two days, things had shifted, changed as though a rock slide had come through. Donos was functional again. Falynn Sandskimmer was cozying up to him once more, but this time he seemed to be reciprocating the sentiment. Kell and Tyria, though they did not advertise it, made no attempt to hide the fact that they were together. Kell himself seemed looser, more at ease, his very presence no longer causing fits to Janson. All these changes seemed to be improvements, especially in light of how down the Wraiths had been after Jesmin’s death … but Wedge was slow to embrace so many changes all at once.

At least they did have one piece of simple good fortune involving Storinal. The planet, despite its Imperial ties, had a small but visible population of Gamorreans. Most were guards whose chief role was to be visible and exotic for the entertainment of tourists. So Piggy would be able to move with the other Wraiths.

“Routine planetary inquiry,” Kell announced. “Means we’ve wandered into their outermost sensor zone. Grinder, you’d better get under cover.”

The Bothan heaved a much-put-upon sigh. He moved back into Narra’s cargo compartment and tapped an intricate rhythm against one of the bulkheads. A plate popped open along a weld line, swinging out as a lateral door … giving him access into the same scanner-shielded smuggling compartment Piggy had once used as a vehicle. With one last injured expression directed back toward the cockpit, he swung up into the compartment and pulled the access closed behind him.

“Falynn,” Kell continued, “weld it shut. Make it airtight.”

Falynn smiled but didn’t move from her seat.

Wedge suppressed a smile. It was better for the government of Storinal not to know there was a Bothan on board; ever since the participation of an Alliance-friendly cell of Bothan code-slicers in the acquisition of the plans for the second Death Star, the Imps held all inhabitants or descendants of Bothawui under even more suspicion than other nonhumans. Grinder would serve best by staying an unknown, a wild card for them to draw when needed. Runt, too, was acting as a wild card, charged with the very uncomfortable duty of parking his X-wing on one of Storinal’s distant moons and waiting for an emergency signal. He could be there for three days, eating preserved food, breathing recycled air, and having only a plastic tube-and-bladder rig for a ’fresher, but he was determined to remain of use to the other Wraiths.

“Transmitting passenger manifest,” Kell said. “By the way, not one of you has paid for his ticket.”

“Take it up with a judge,” Phanan said. “You’re in an awfully good mood for a man putting his head in a noose.”

“Maybe it’s because you’re in the next noose over. All right, we’re cleared for approach. Anybody forget his papers?”

Everyone checked pockets or bags for the requisite identification cards, all forged by Grinder with data provided by New Republic Intelligence. Wedge saw Janson, ridiculous in his red carnival costume and long white beard, grow increasingly panicky as he checked pocket after pocket. “Something wrong, Wes?”

“It’s here somewhere,” the lieutenant said.

“Check your boot,” Falynn said.

“Check under your seat cushion,” Phanan said.

“Check your other boot, too,” Wedge said. “Falynn really meant both boots, but she doesn’t realize you wouldn’t necessarily understand that.”

Janson straightened up from his searching long enough to shoot his commander a betrayed look. “Why isn’t Hobbie here to take this abuse?” A moment later he straightened again, wearing an abashed expression. “It was in my other boot.”

“Yub, yub, Lieutenant.”

“Thirty seconds to atmospheric entry,” Kell said. “Strap in, people.”

Five minutes later they were gliding over those beautiful green vistas on a government-dictated course toward the spaceport of the entertainment-complex city of Revos. Grinder’s innocuous consultation of the city computer’s records indicated that ship’s crews enjoying rest and recreation there included the crew of Hawkbat.

Narra’s scanners indicated that a fighter was pacing them, trailing them by a kilometer and a half and one klick higher in altitude. This would have been unfriendly attention on some worlds, but Donos said that many worlds with law enforcement agencies designed to maintain the tourism industry would employ such tactics as a matter of course; it didn’t mean anything.

“Pretty,” Face said. He stared at the gleaming view of Revos appearing before them. The city seemed to be made all of tall, curving towers built of creamy pastel marble in a variety of colors.

The spaceport, built outside the city walls, came into view a minute later. It did not share the idyllic architecture of the city; it was a duracrete circle two or more kilometers in diameter, with landing circles and wartlike ferrocrete bunkers, gaily painted but somehow no less ugly for it, scattered across its surface. The Wraiths counted several small cargo ships, shuttles of various types, light atmospheric craft, and even a few TIE fighters among the vessels clustered around the various bunkers.

Kell landed where he was instructed, at one of the outermost ring of bunkers. A viewscreen on the bunker wall displayed primitive line graphics instructing Kell how to maneuver the shuttle to its exact landing pad and orientation. Two guards in stormtrooper armor were in position on either side of Narra’s nose before the shuttle had quite settled down.

“Doran Spaceways welcomes you to Storinal,” Kell said in his most official voice. “Be ready to show your documentation to all officials of the planetary government, and enjoy your stay.” He lowered the shuttle’s main ramp. “First-class passengers first, please.”

Wes Janson tugged at his lengthy white beard, a gesture that looked habitual but really served to assure him that it was still attached properly. He squared his shoulders, assumed a properly haughty attitude, and descended the ramp, his bodyguards flanking him—Falynn left, Lieutenant Atril Tabanne right, and Piggy, in the full regalia of a Gamorrean warrior, complete with vibro-ax, behind.

The end of an inspection tube connected to the bunker swung out before the shuttle, and a planetary official stepped out from it to join the guards. Doubtless the man thought himself natty in his emerald-green longcoat and shining gold buttons, but Janson knew himself to be a far more brilliant, and possibly ridiculous, spectacle.

Janson wore a glittering red coat cut in the style of a naval officer’s, complete with epaulettes and a double row of buttons, plus matching peaked cap and well-tailored black pants. White belt and gloves, shining black boots and blaster holster completed the ensemble. The clothing ensemble, that is; Janson also wore thick white hair, beard, and mustache, and makeup that roughened the skin on his face and hands. Wes Janson’s face was too well known in Imperial-controlled space to risk a less elaborate disguise.

His bodyguards, in contrast, were beacons of sobriety. Falynn and Atril wore body stockings in light-leeching black. Their leather accoutrements—boots, belt, bags, and blaster holsters—were matte black. Their hair was drawn back in severe braids, and Face had insisted both women dye it black, too, explaining that it was appropriate for the sort of all-controlling personality Janson was supposed to be to have matching bodyguards.

Janson stopped before the government agent, who held out his hand. Janson cleared his throat in what he hoped was an appropriately blustery manner, and Atril handed the official four sets of identicards.

The official slid the first one into his handheld scanner. “Senator-in-Exile Iskit Tyestin from Bakura,” he said. He frowned. “Bakura.”

“Don’t bother to tell me that Bakura is hardly a friend to the Empire these days.” Janson struggled to keep that elusive element of harumph in his voice. “If she were, I would still be there, in my home, instead of here, loyally serving the Empire.”

“Of course. What is your business on Storinal?”

“Business. I’m raising funds for the Bakuran Loyalist Movement. We continue to put pressure on the government to sever ties with the Rebels and return to her true allegiance.”

The official’s hand-reader pinged and he looked at it. “You are in our records. A loyal friend of the Empire.”

Janson harumphed, straightened with pride. The Senator Tyestin identity matched a real person, one of the last of the Empire’s supporters to be elected to the senate of Bakura before that world decided to join the Alliance. The real Tyestin never made it offworld; his escape craft was destroyed when he attempted to flee, a fact that was not yet lodged in the Empire’s datanet.

The official dropped each of the other cards into his reader. “My lady Anen of Bakura. Profession, bodyguard. Licensed to carry exposed and concealed weaponry. Please don’t use it, Mistress Anen; even the most legal and reasonable of shootings leads to tedious investigations. My lady Honiten, likewise, likewise, and likewise. And Guardsman Voort.” He peered at the Gamorrean. “Does it understand Basic?”

“A few words,” Janson said, his tone a grumble. “Too few.”

“Please observe the signs outside each establishment about who and what may enter.” He returned the cards to Atril with a polished smile. “Welcome to the fair world of Storinal. Enjoy your visit.”

Ton Phanan, wearing false prosthetics to conceal even more of his flesh, and playing the part of a test pilot obviously down on his luck—and running ever lower on human components—passed inspection easily, as did Tyria, portraying his long-suffering wife. Then it was time for Wedge, Face, and Donos … potentially the most dangerous part of the deception, as Wedge’s face was on holographic wanted memoranda all over Imperial space.

Wedge tugged at the furious mustachios he wore. They were nowhere near as elaborate a disguise as the set of false prosthetics he’d worn to penetrate customs on the world of Coruscant, but he shouldn’t need such difficult and expensive measures here. And the continuations of his disguise on either side of him should draw attention away from his features.

He and his two companions wore nearly identical clothes. Their rough-country ponchos were woven from a heavy brown cloth that looked gritty and sand-filled even when scrupulously cleaned. Their trousers and shirts were a lighter weave of the same stuff, hard-worn—aged in just two days by having the Wraiths take turns marching across them for hours. Their broad-brimmed hats had received similar, though less extensive, treatment. Their hair and false mustaches were cut to identical lengths. Face again wore false skin to conceal his scars and had managed to mold it to make his features a bit more like Wedge’s. All in all, Wedge knew they looked like three yokels who’d blown their savings on a single trip to a more civilized world.

They descended the ramp and handed their identification cards to the official with an identical flourish. The man looked at them, an expression somewhere between amusement and horror on his face.

He recovered enough to slide the first card into his reader. “Dod Nobrin of Agamar.”

Agamar, an Outer Rim colony world, was a rough place whose inhabitants had to be equally rough to survive. Not surprisingly, the rustic ways, stubbornness, and durability of the men and women of Agamar earned them an undeserved reputation for stupidity across the Old Republic and the Empire. Even today, half of the jokes told in Basic about stupid people cast them as men and women of Agamar. Face had developed the trio’s clothing style and mannerisms after careful consultation with Captain Hrakness, a native of Agamar, to match the most common stereotypical depiction of the people of that world.

Face nodded, a head-bobbing motion more suited to a carrion bird than to a man. Wedge duplicated the motion. A moment later Donos caught on and did the same. The official looked between them as if mesmerized.

“I’m Dod,” Face said. He jerked his thumb at Wedge. “This is my brother Fod. Also from Agamar.” He gestured at Donos the same way. “This is my brother Lod.”

“Also from Agamar.”

“Oyah. That’s right. You’re pretty sharp for a city man.” The official shook his head with the motion of someone resigning himself for a long, long day at work. “Your business on Storinal?”

Face beamed. “Women.”

“Entertainment, then.”

Face looked indignant. “No.”

“Business?”

“No! That’s not the sort of business we’re in.”

Wedge said, “Brides.”

Donos, keeping his voice low, repeated, “Brides.” He stretched the word out as though it had some cosmic significance.

Wedge said, “There are only six beautiful women on all Agamar. And they’re all married.”

Face said, “There are only five.”

Wedge shook his head adamantly. “Six.”

“Five. Ettal Howrider got shot.”

“Gentlemen …”

“Who shot her?”

“Her cousin, Popal Howrider.”

“I thought he was still laid up from getting bit and the wound festering and all. That awful smell …”

“Gentlemen!” The official’s color had risen. “I’m going to put ‘Entertainment’ on your temporary visa. If you’re not here to do financial transactions with someone, you’re here for ‘Entertainment.’ You understand?”

Face nodded agreeably, and again Wedge and Donos matched his bobbing motion. “Oyah. We understand.” Then Face caught sight of something off to the side. “Look at that!”

Everyone, the guards included, looked in the same direction, but the only thing to see was the motion of people walking inside the near bunker, just on the other side of a gallery-length window.

The official asked, “What?”

Face grabbed his tunic, pulled him close, pointed. “Her, her! She’s nearly naked!”

One of the passersby was in a golden, reflective garment that showed a considerable quantity of leg and shoulder.

The official tried to pull himself free. “That’s merely summer wear, sir—”

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t know.” The man tried to pry Face’s hand off but made no headway. He cast a beseeching look over his shoulder toward one of the guards, and Wedge tensed, but the armor-plated trooper didn’t move. He was, Wedge saw, shaking with laughter.

“You don’t know her name? You live in the same village with her!”

The official finally got Face’s hand free. “It’s a city, not a village, and it’s too large for me to know everybody.” As quickly as he could, he cycled Wedge’s and Donos’s cards through the reader.

“That’s not very neighborly.” Face accepted the cards and passed them out among his brothers. “Say, if you could direct us to where the beautiful women looking for husbands are, it’d be worth a credit to you.”

The man looked at him, too drained to be stunned. “A whole credit.”

“Oyah. Always pay for the best, that’s what I say.”

“Try the Howler. It’s a bar. It’s where you’ll find locals with an itch to get offworld but not enough money to do so.”

“Sir, you’re gentleman.” Face dropped a credit coin into the man’s palm and walked into the inspection tube opening.

“A gentleman,” Wedge repeated, and followed. He heard Donos grunt, “Gent,” and come stomping after him.

Kell ambled down the ramp. He saw the inspector’s tired expression and gave the man a knowing smile. “Imagine being trapped aboard a shuttle with them for three days.” He bobbed his head up and down in a fair simulation of Face’s distinctive nod, then handed his identicard to the man.

“Do you think they’ll be any trouble … Captain Doran?”

“Call me Kell. No, none of them is any trouble except the old senator. Just stroke his ego … and don’t shoot against him. I accepted a competition challenge from him, and lost. That’s why I had to carry his damned Gamorrean.” Kell took a step to the side and looked up at the Narra’s flank. The words “Doran Spaceways” and the name Doran Star on the shuttle’s side still looked appropriately weathered, belying the fact that they’d been painted on three days ago and then partly scraped off again.

“Thanks. I’ll make sure the appropriate parties know.” The official handed back Kell’s card. “Are you carrying them back again?”

Kell answered by shuddering.

“Ah. Well, your loss is our gain, provided it’s soon. Please wait in the inspection area. Pending a scan of your shuttle, you’re clear.”

“Thanks.”

As soon as they cleared inspection, the party of Senator-in-Exile Tyestin, known informally on this mission as the Joyride Group, checked into the lodging nearest the spaceport. After they swept their suite against the possibility of listening devices and found none, Janson said, “No reason to go farther away to find TIE fighters. There are some here … and traffic of lots more strangers than on an Imp military base.”

“Atril and I can switch in and out of disguise a lot more easily than you,” Falynn said. It was true; for the two women, all it took was a change of clothing and addition of a wig to cover their severe black hair. “You and Piggy should stay here, in character, for the time being. Let us do the groundwork.”

“Because my disguise is inconvenient,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Not because I’m old and feeble like Commander Antilles.”

She smiled and looked away. “I suppose I’ve had to revise my opinion about old, feeble pilots.”

“Well, you children go and have a good time. I’m going to order expensive meals and expensive entertainments. This is on one of the New Republic’s covert expense accounts, and for once I feel like running up a nice big bill.”

·  ·  ·

Phanan’s group, including Tyria and Kell, was charged with acquiring disease agents. They took the repulsorlift rail passage from Revos to the capital city of Scohar, home of the planet’s largest spaceport and of a medical center designed to deal with diseases both domestic and alien.

The Revos-Scohar railway was a marvel of engineering and public relations. The conveyance itself was a series of lengthy repulsorlift cars coupled together, traveling for the most part along a featureless tunnel. But every so often the train would rise into the open air, long enough for the passengers to enjoy one of the planet’s most beautiful vistas—here a spectacular view of snowcapped mountain peaks, there a long look at valleys purpling under the setting sun—and then descend again. Kell decided that it was a good compromise between giving the tourists the show they wanted and marring the carefully maintained landscape.

Scohar was much like Revos, only far larger, and dotted with recreational complexes that included thrill rides that simulated danger without ever harming a visitor. The Plague Group, as they called themselves, stayed away from the most tourist-heavy portions of the city and checked into lodgings near the Scohar Xenohealth Institute—the innocuous name the government of Storinal had given to their center for disease control.

Wedge, Face, and Donos, informally the Yokel Group, found lodgings at the Revos Liberty, a hostel catering to large ships’ crews on shore leave. Because of its orientation, rooms were small but inexpensive; services and amenities would be rare. However, half the rooms, including the Wraiths’, opened directly out onto an artificial riverside beach.

Face excused himself for a few minutes and returned with a pile of brightly colored cloth. He handed out individual portions to the others.

Wedge shook his out. A short-sleeved tunic in orange and yellow tropical fruit patterns and short pants in lavender. “I’m going to throw up.”

Face smiled. “That would be the final bit of trim on the ensemble, wouldn’t it? I recommend you keep the hat. That really completes the image of an Agamaran stereotype with no taste and no sense.”

“I wish I didn’t agree with you.”

“Yub, yub, Commander.”

Donos looked mournfully at his outfit: a shirt with thin red and green horizontal stripes and shorts with black and white vertical stripes. “Sir, permission to kill Face?”

“Granted. But keep your hat, like Face says.”

Face unfolded his own fashion disaster. A black silken shirt with a variety of insects picked out on it in glittery silver, shorts in a brighter, more painful orange than that of New Republic pilot’s suits, and a red kerchief for his neck. “As you can see, I saved the best for myself. Time to find some brides, brothers.”

22

“Really,” Wedge said. “I thought all you Imperial Navy boys were TIE fighter pilots. Every one.”

They sat in the Sunfruit Promenade, actually an extensive roofed patio flanked by flower gardens. The lounge was thick with recliner chairs and interrupted occasionally by musicians’ pits, most of which, at this late-afternoon hour, were occupied by musicians, male, female, and droid, playing a variety of stringed and percussion instruments.

The three yokel brothers were there, in the midst of a veritable sea of Hawkbat crewmen. Most of the crewmen were doing some light drinking in preparation for going out after dark and doing their heavy drinking. Some were accompanied by local women and men; the recliners were built to accommodate a cozy two. But Wedge, Face, and Donos, garish and loud, were by themselves.

The man opposite Wedge, a long-time Imperial Navy NCO, if Wedge was any judge, built like Kell but even bigger and deeper in the chest, smiled at Wedge’s stupidity. “Now, think about that, Dod—”

“I’m Fod. This is Dod. That’s Lod.”

“Fod. Even an Imperial-class Star Destroyer only carries six squadrons of TIE fighters. That’s seventy-two. Even with relief pilots, you’re talking about ninety or a hundred pilots on one of the big ships. Do you think a Star Destroyer can manage with just a bridge crew and a hundred pilots?”

“Well, I didn’t think about it, really.”

The Hawkbat crewmen immediately around them laughed.

The big NCO, whose name was Rondle, looked sadly into his almost-empty glass.

Face, his motions those of a profoundly drunken man, jerked upright. “We can’t have that. Hey, server! Another one all around.” He collapsed back into his simulated drunken stupor.

The Hawkbat personnel were more than happy to have the Nobrin brothers around. The boys from Agamar obligingly bought drinks for everyone in their vicinity and seemed oblivious to the barbs the spacemen aimed at them. Wedge had noticed some of the spacemen bringing dates to see the supposed men of fabled, idiotic Agamar. He felt like an animal in a cage viewing a procession of zoo-goers.

Wedge continued, “So when it’s time to go home you don’t all just hop in your TIE fighters and blast off for space.”

Rondle smirked. “No. I’m an unarmed combat instructor. Partus over there, she’s the one with the red face, is a navigator. That’s someone who tells the ship how to get where it’s going. Dewback Kord over there, he’s a ship’s mechanic. No, when it’s time to leave, we all hop in a shuttle and go up.”

“A shuttle? A Lambda shuttle? I was in one of those once.”

Rondle nodded distractedly and accepted a drink refill from the droid server.

“Is yours the Doran Star? That’s the one we were in.”

Rondle fixed him with an aggravated stare. “Now, you just arrived from Agamar in whatever bucket brought you here. If that was our shuttle, too, how would we have gotten groundside before you got here?”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“No, ours are the Hawkbat’s Ferch and the Hawkbat’s Vigil.”

“Oh. Hey, that’s some kind of coincidence. Ending up with two shuttles with names kind of like your big ship’s name.”

Rondle covered his eyes with his hand.

“I wish Grinder were here,” Phanan said. He tapped irritably away at the suite’s terminal keyboard, cruising through layer after layer of helpful organizational screens.

Kell and Tyria were behind him, squeezed into an oversized stuffed chair that would have easily accommodated two ordinary-sized people. Tyria said, “What’s wrong? You don’t seem to be encountering any security.”

“No, but I can’t just issue a command for the system to give me information on all biological agents being stored over at the Institute, not without raising some alerts, and I bet Grinder could. Plus, I have to deal with roommates making obnoxious snuggling noises while I’m hard at work.” His tone was only half joking. He’d been annoyed ever since Tyria suddenly made her preference known.

Kell said, “We can go take a walk.”

“You’ve already done your initial look at the Institute’s exterior—hold it. News retrieval. Disease outbreaks. Sort by mechanisms. This won’t be as comprehensive, but it’ll tell us what has actually gotten out into the Storinal population. And whatever’s been out there is sure to be in the Institute’s vaults.”

Tyria and Kell came up to lean over his shoulders.

“Bothan Redrash,” Phanan said. “Too hit-or-miss. Plus, Grinder might catch it, and we’d never hear the end of it. Bandonian Plague, too severe. Blastonecrosis likewise, also disgusting. Big tourist planet like this has seen some odd ailments. Hey.” He abruptly focused on one of the entries on the screen and brought it up to read more.

Kell leaned in closer. “What is it?”

“Bunkurd Sewer Disorder.”

“Yecch,” Tyria said. “Sounds disgusting.”

“Not as bad as it sounds. A couple of centuries back, on Coruscant, the Bunkurd Corporation engineered a bacterium that does a better job of breaking down sewage for recycling. Something like a twenty percent improvement over previous bio-agents used for the same purpose. And believe me, Coruscant needs all the help it can get, that way. But if this bacteria gets in the human digestive system, it basically attacks what you eat as soon as you eat it, making it less nutritional … and giving you the equivalent of food poisoning. It takes a predictable amount of time to incubate and responds very well to standard medicines, so there’s no danger of loss of life except in isolated areas.”

“Sounds like our stuff,” Kell said. “Now all we have to do is get some.”

“I’m going to keep at the records for a while yet, in case there’s something better. But, yes, this is encouraging.”

The Howler turned out to be something less than a drinking establishment where local people vied for the affection of tourists who might have the interest and capital necessary to carry them offworld. It was, in fact, a dive. Its dim lights concealed the fact that the floors and tables were not cleaned as rigorously as they should be and that the locals offering themselves up for inspection weren’t all as appealing as they hoped they were.

The place had flickering holoprojectors on all the walls, cycling between views of Storinal’s gorgeous landscapes and cities, but the style of dress of the tourists in those views suggested they’d been recorded when most of the Wraiths were still unborn.

The Howler had one important advantage, however. On an Imperial-controlled world like Storinal, where nonhumans were second-class citizens on the occasions they were allowed any freedom at all, the Howler made no distinction between human and nonhuman clientele. Its operators obviously wanted every cred they could earn.

Falynn and Piggy were already at a back table, shrouded in shadow and occasional gouts of smoke from the establishment’s kitchen, when Wedge and Kell arrived. Falynn looked at Wedge’s garish costume and burst out in laughter.

“Don’t blame me,” Wedge said, “it’s Face’s fault.” He laid his hat on the table and sat. “Have you swept?”

Piggy nodded. “All clean.” His volume control was turned so low the others could barely make out the mechanical Basic words underneath his grunts.

“This place needs more than a sweeping,” Kell said. “Sand-scouring, perhaps. A good laser vaporization of the top five millimeters of every exposed surface.”

“I meant, swept for listening devices.”

“I know.”

Wedge took a last look around, but after Falynn’s laughter had ceased drawing eyes, no one seemed to be paying them attention. “All right. Yokel Group has luck to report. First, we got some leads on the sources of the supplies Hawkbat carries around; we’ll pass that information on to Intelligence. Second, we were thinking of hosting some sort of going-away feast for the Hawkbat crew and infecting them there, but we found out that the crew transits back and forth between the ship in two ship’s shuttles. If we could put the disease agent on those shuttles, we’ll probably infect a third of the crew. I think it would be easiest if it were some sort of airborne agent. We could put it in the air supply.”

“Airborne.” Kell frowned, concentrating, then pulled out his datapad. “I don’t remember if Phanan said this Bee Ess Dee stuff is airborne … Ah. Yes, it is.”

Falynn grimaced. “Bunkurd Sewer Disorder?”

Wedge said, “You’ve seen it?”

“I’ve had it. The few parts of Mos Eisley that actually have a sewer recycler use a Bunkurd Reclamation System. An old one. An old, broken-down, and occasionally leaky one. I was sick as a womp rat for a week.” She shuddered.

Wedge said, “All of which means Plague Group has a contender.”

Kell nodded. “We really want Grinder for the intrusion, though. I was hoping to be able to take him back to Scohar with me.”

“It shouldn’t be a problem,” Wedge said. “Your landing pad is officially cleared, correct? If you go there to do a little mechanical work today and leave in the company of a Bothan tourist …”

“Assuming we can both get back through security.”

“Grinder will find a way. It’s a matter of professional pride with him. Joyride Group?”

Falynn straightened. “Well, first, I know where your Hawkbat shuttles are. Bunker Twenty-two Aleph. I marked their location in case Kell wanted to blow them up or something.”

“I don’t have to blow up everything I see. I just like to.”

“And there are TIE fighters all over. But if you want a site where you can count on TIEs being, and being hot, ready to fly, the spaceport keeps four in instant readiness, with pilots waiting in a standby room. These aren’t the TIEs they use to escort incoming ships; I think they’re for potential threats. The problem is, the little bunker where they’re kept is one of the best guarded on the port.”

Wedge asked, “How well guarded?”

“The bunker has at least two security doors I can see. I don’t mean two outside doors. One outside door with a security station there, and an intermediary chamber, with a second security door inside. Maybe more.”

“How do the TIE fighters exit?”

“A roof door retracts. Large enough to let two punch out at a time.”

“How about security on top of that roof?”

She shrugged. “I haven’t been up there yet. I’d want to wait for nightfall.”

“Do it tonight. But first, have Donos retrieve his laser rifle from the smuggling compartment. I want him on station covering you. If you trigger an alarm—”

“Thanks.”

“—he can give you the cover you need to escape.” Wedge thought over his options. “All right. Here’s the preliminary plan. Tonight, Plague Group, with Grinder, goes in and acquires the biological agents. Meanwhile, Falynn and Donos will do the preliminary test of the TIE bunker’s security. If all goes well and the bunker looks like we can crack it, we do the rest tomorrow night.

“Tomorrow …”He counted off on his fingers to make sure he accounted for everyone. “Janson, Kell, Tyria, Phanan, Piggy, and Grinder will get into the Hawkbat’s shuttles and infect them. Janson will command that unit. It would also be good if you can find something to do to make it look like some other sort of mission if your presence is detected—some sort of theft, perhaps.”

Kell nodded. “Got it.”

“Myn will find a good, high station from which to provide sniper support to either unit. And Atril, Falynn, Face, and I will enter the TIE bunker and steal all four TIE fighters.”

Falynn looked surprised. “All four?”

“Yes. Unless you can guarantee that the two we steal will both make it intact off world.”

She shook her head. “Guarantees are not my business. How do we get in?”

“Through the doors on top—when the TIE fighter leaves. We’ll grab it when it returns.”

“And how do we make sure a TIE fighter will leave when we want it to?”

Wedge smiled. “I communicate with Runt and ask him to strafe the spaceport.”

Kell nodded. He turned it into Face’s head bob. Falynn and Piggy joined him.

“Stop it,” Wedge said.

Wedge left first, then Kell a couple of minutes later, to help minimize the number of people who would see the Wraiths together.

“Ready?” Piggy said.

Falynn nodded.

Then the music stopped and a spotlight pinned the two of them. Falynn rose and half drew her blaster. Piggy grabbed her hand, stopping her from completing the motion, dragging her back into her seat.

An amplified voice said, “The management of the Howler would like to congratulate Master and Mistress Wallowlot on the occasion of their fifth wedding marker!”

Patrons of the Howler offered scattered applause and a fair amount of laughter. A server swept up to deposit a pair of drinks. Falynn peered around the core of the spotlight beam to spot the man on the lighting board, controlling the beam, and Kell standing beside him. Kell offered her a big grin and a thumbs-up, then headed off for the door.

Then the beam was cut off and the bar patrons’ attention returned to their respective drinks and pursuits.

Falynn glowered at the door through which Kell had fled. “That wasn’t funny.”

Piggy kept his translator voice low. “Why not?”

“Well … well … he might have compromised our identities.”

“These aren’t identities. We leave here in two minutes. You lose your wig and I resume my guard clothes and we’re done with them.”

“It still isn’t funny.”

“I think it is. Though we must have revenge on Kell, of course.” But Falynn looked so unhappy he felt compelled to ask, “Why does this bother you so?”

“People will think I’m, I’m …” She stopped short and looked stricken. She didn’t meet Piggy’s eyes.

“That you’re wed to a Gamorrean?”

“Honest, Piggy, it’s not like that.”

“I think it is.” He kept his tone reasonable, insofar as his translator could express vocal tones and undercurrents. “Tell me the truth. Would this joke have been funny if you had been with, say, Face?”

“Piggy …”

“Please answer.”

She took a deep breath. “I suppose it might have.”

“So the difference is that it bothers you to have people think you might stray outside your species?”

“No …”

“Stoop so low as to become the mate of a Gamorrean?”

She winced, and he knew he had his answer. “I’ve offended you,” she said.

“Not in the way you think, perhaps. But I can’t help thinking that the reason you react with revulsion to the suggestion that we are wed is because of Gamorrean … lowness.”

Finally she met his eyes. “I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.”

“That’s good enough for now.” He drank his celebratory drink in a single long pull. “Ready to leave?”

“Yes.”

“Since we are young marrieds, shall we hold hands?”

She grinned. “All right.”

Once again in the black getup of her bodyguard identity, Falynn crouched in the nighttime shadow of a powered-down landskimmer. In the distance was the near wall of the TIE fighter ready bunker. Between her and that wall were forty long meters of empty duracrete, poorly lit but featureless enough to show clearly the passage of a human, even one dressed as she was. So far as she knew, pressure sensors could be planted under every meter of the open space around the bunker. But she’d manage to cross it if she had to crawl there across a span of four hours.

She was surprised at the determination she felt. It wasn’t just a desire to complete this mission successfully. It was a need to stop being number two at everything.

With her talent for bypassing simple security systems, such as those that attempted to prevent theft of ground vehicles, she was the Wraiths’ number-two security expert. She was number-two TIE pilot behind Wedge … and if Atril was the hot stick with a TIE that everyone said she was, Falynn was probably about to become number three. Her girlhood sneaking around Mos Eisley, making a living on whatever she could successfully steal, made her the number-two scout behind Tyria. Even Donos hadn’t listened to Falynn, to her protests that he needed to live, until he’d heard the same facts from Tyria and others.

Never number one, not at anything. But maybe if she accomplished a few more things no Wraith had ever done, such as dragging those TIE fighters under her stolen skiff the other week, people would stop dismissing her as a second-rater.

She waited there half an hour, seeing one landskimmer arrive at the TIE ready bunker but dismissing the idea of trying to intercept it and jump aboard—the pilot of the small craft would certainly feel it bob when her weight came down on it.

But then, a few minutes later, a bulbous repulsorlift vehicle the size of a multiple-passenger tourist craft cruised in a leisurely fashion toward the bunker. Letters on the side read THOLAN’S COMESTIBLES, and it appeared as though the side panel swung up to become a metal awning.

A mobile restaurant of some sort. She’d seen them, not on Tatooine, but at the New Republic Academy. Late-night garrisons like the men of the TIE ready bunker needed to eat, too …

She gathered herself up as the silvery craft neared its closest approach to her. She took off into a fast sprint, catching up to the vehicle’s squared-off rear, and found nothing there to hang on to but the rear door’s hinges. She leaped up to grab the right top hinge with both hands; her feet swung free.

But it wasn’t far, and she wasn’t stepping across sensor-laden duracrete.

As the repulsorlift food carrier approached the front of the bunker, it slowed, swung to starboard, and continued in sideways, its pilot evidently planning to present the side panel to the bunker’s front door. Falynn pulled herself up, scrambling, her boots sliding off the rear panel as she struggled to gain purchase, and managed to pull herself atop the vehicle. When it settled to the ground just a meter from the front door, she stepped off it onto the near part of the bunker roof, then flattened herself on the bunker surface.

So far, so good. What if there were pressure sensors on top? She’d wait to find out. She froze where she was.

She heard the bunker’s only exterior door hiss open. Metal swung into position with a clank. There was laughter among men working the late-night shift. Hissing of liquids, clanking of coins. Then, finally, the door and panel closed and the flying foodseller maneuvered away from the bunker.

And no one had come out to investigate an anomalous pressure reading on the roof. Excellent.

She clicked her comlink. A double-click answered her. She repeated the click to assure Donos that he hadn’t responded to random garbage from someone else’s sending unit.

Then, slowly, carefully, she inched herself up the bunker roof to the point where it graduated from duracrete to segmented metal, then slid leftward until she reached the bottom of one of the huge TIE fighter access doors; better to be at the bottom and less likely to be seen when the doors opened.

If they opened.

Please, she asked no one in particular, let them have some sort of emergency. Don’t let me wait here all night for nothing.

“Tyria, look up,” Grinder said into the mouthpiece of his headset. He sat at the desk in the Wraiths’ suite in Scohar, and the picture on the portable terminal in front of him was the jittery view being broadcast from the camera in Tyria’s cap. It currently showed the dressed stone rear wall of the Scohar Xenohealth Institute. The view rose along the wall and then became relatively still, now showing the awning and safety light above one of the windowless metal doors on that wall.

Phanan and Kell leaned over his shoulders to watch. Either of them could have executed the image-gathering march around the Institute, but Grinder pronounced them too memorable: Phanan was too mechanical, Kell too tall. Tyria, with her face dirtied, her hair combed out until it was frowsy, got barely a side look from any of the better-dressed late-night tourists on the Scohar streets.

Grinder cycled the picture through a variety of different sensory inputs. The picture on screen polarized, became a negative, and finally returned to a more normal view. “There’s definitely a viewer in the overhang, just like the others. Come on in; I’ve pegged our intrusion point, and we’ve got to acquire some materials before we go in.”

Her voice, muted, came over the terminal’s speaker. “Which is our intrusion point?”

“The only one without a viewer on it. The only one without a lock permitting exterior entry.”

“The waste vent,” she said.

“That’s the one.”

A persistent whine made Falynn open her eyes. Another annoying alarm. She reached out to swat it and encountered only metal.

That snapped her eyes open. She’d fallen asleep! She checked her chrono, determined that a couple of hours had passed, and realized that the whining noise was the sound of the metal doors powering up. She took a deep breath and readied herself.

With a jolt, the seam at the join of the two doors widened and the doors retracted in fitful jerks. Falynn looked scornfully at the door’s edge as it retreated toward her. Servicing the motors and lubricating the rails would make the process smoother and quieter; she hoped the TIE fighters were kept up better than their hangar.

The door slid into place and locked with a distinctive clang of metal. She grabbed the edge and pulled herself partway up, just enough to see over the metal lip.

Below, a repair and hangar bay. She saw carts full of tools, grease-spattered duracrete flooring, four painted blue circles some eight meters in diameter on the floor with TIE fighters parked upon them. Two of the fighters had men beside them, a crew chief and a mechanic from the look of them. As she watched, the men hurriedly withdrew and the TIE fighters rose slowly, with the rumble of repulsorlift engines, into the air. Their smooth ascent brought them to Falynn’s altitude and beyond; when they were a dozen meters above the bunker, they kicked in their twin ion engines and went screaming off into the night sky.

She shook her head. She wasn’t here to watch them. She returned her attention to the remaining TIEs, to the men in the hangar. Those men only watched until the starfighters were out of sight; then one moved to a door on the east wall and another went to a wall-mounted control panel and flipped a switch there.

Abruptly the door jerked and began closing.

Falynn kept her grip on the door edge, letting the metal segment drag her upward while she kept her attention on the hangar. One of the mechanics approached a door on the south wall and waved his hand twice, very precisely, across the doorjamb above his head; the door slid open for him.

Then the door Falynn was holding on to was a mere half meter from closing against its counterpart. She let go, rather than have the closing doors crush her fingers, and tried to hold on by sheer friction.

It didn’t work. When the door edges crashed into place, the jolt shook Falynn free and she began sliding. She grabbed around frantically for purchase, couldn’t find it.

She rolled down the door, then down the roof of the bunker, then off the roof.

It was three long meters to the duracrete ground.

23

Kell, Tyria, and Phanan waited in the shadow of a metal sculpture that depicted, in abstract form, a dance of spirits in Storinal’s mythological past. A block away, Grinder, dressed in black, huddled at the base of the Institute wall just by the hatch leading into the waste-disposal flue.

“Is he actually any good at this?” Phanan asked. “I’ve never seen his record. Never heard of him before joining the Wraiths.”

Kell shrugged, realized no one could see it in the gloom. “I don’t know. But he was good enough for Commander Antilles to pick him.”

Phanan snorted. “Well, if he’s as good a code-slicer and intrusion expert as he is a pilot, he’s, well, mediocre. Sort of warms your heart, doesn’t it? To know our lives are in the hands of a mediocre slicer?”

“I think,” Tyria said, “that you left the profession of medicine because it’s your nature to make everyone feel worse about everything.”

“Ooh.” Phanan’s tone was admiring. “I’ve been skewered. I will now take seventeen hours to reevaluate my life.”

The comlink popped, and Grinder’s voice came across it: “Flue open. Come on in.”

It was an unpleasant entryway.

The flue opened a full two meters above the sidewalk. In opening it, Grinder had spilled out a dozen blocks of compressed garbage, each a meter on a side and smelling of rotted organic material. By the time the other Wraiths arrived, Grinder had stacked them into crude steps leading up to the flue opening.

The flue itself smelled like the blocks, only worse. More concentrated. The Wraiths put on their air-filter masks, spattered with perfume by a thoughtful Tyria, before proceeding.

Phanan was first up the steeply angled metal shaft, not because he was at home with intrusion, but because he was in charge of the powerful spray with which he coated every visible surface of the flue. The spray was not antibacterial, antiviral, or antianything; it was a powerful and fast-setting sealant that he believed would prevent the transmission of any disease agents that might be clinging to the flue’s surfaces.

They gave the stuff a mere minute to set, then began climbing. Once all four were in, they closed the door behind them. Grinder reset the latch, showing the other Wraiths how to unlatch it, and Phanan continued upward, spraying down the sides of the flue.

This shaft took them first into the hard-sided chamber that acted as a trash compressor. A single ill-timed command to the building computer would cause the sides to come together, squeezing the Wraiths into new cubes of garbage, but no such command came. The hatch out of the top of the chamber led to a larger vertical shaft into which trash apparently poured from every floor of the Institute. “See all the ash?” Phanan said. “Most of the accesses into this shaft are through incinerators. So dangerous wastes will be nice safe ash when they’re dropped for disposal.”

One floor up, a hatch gave them access into a small mess featuring a table for six and a food-delivery wall unit.

By agreement, Tyria took point; she was to stop whenever she reached a portal or change in flooring so Grinder could check it for sensors. Grinder was second, with Phanan following and Kell bringing up the rear.

The mess gave way to a hallway. The third door down opened into a terminal room, and Grinder insisted that they crowd into the small chamber so he could try to slice into the building records.

Despite Phanan’s earlier assertions of his mediocrity, the task only took Grinder a few minutes. “Level A-Four,” said Grinder, “that’s Aboveground Four for those of you who haven’t been paying attention to Storinal nomenclature, is where all test subjects and experiments are kept. A sort of tiered security system. Outermost of three tiers is basically a warehouse of animal subjects, animals not especially dangerous. The middle circle holds more dangerous creatures, like toxic reptiles and ex-doctors from Rudrig.”

Phanan muttered, “Much the same thing, really.”

“The inner chamber is where they store what we want. Kell, you’ll be interested to learn that there’s a plasma bomb array there. The sensors detect a leak and it may trigger—the Institute’s way of keeping the world safe from plagues.”

Kell said, “Can any of your intrusion efforts trigger the bomb?”

“Sure. If I’m sloppy.”

“Wonderful.”

Grinder stood. “Let’s go. There’s no time like the dark of night.”

Getting up two floors by a back stairwell was not difficult. Slightly less easy was penetrating the security door from that stairwell into the secure outer circle, but this took Grinder no more time than getting through the trash hatch.

The outer-tier warehouse was a large area occupying most of the fourth floor. Some areas of it were well lit, thick with cages holding live, alert animals from all over the galaxy; their noise level increased as they became aware of the Wraiths moving in the chamber, but the human guard as signed to the floor did no more than approach them and shush them. The Wraiths stayed low, then moved away, deeper into the chamber’s more shadowy regions.

Pausing against a stack of plastic-sheathed boxes, Grinder was startled to feel something scratching—actively scratching—at the other side of the surface he was leaning against. Peering down, he saw that he was propping himself up against a stack of small containers labeled STORINI GLASS PROWLER. The picture on the container showed a translucent arthropod that walked upon two legs and apparently seized its prey with the other two in a nearly humanoid fashion. Whatever was inside one of those containers was trying to claw its way out, hence the scratching sensation.

He allowed a slow smile to spread across his features. An exotic insect from a faraway world—he could use such a thing. Glancing around to make sure none of his companions was watching, he used a fine set of scissors to cut through the plastic netting holding the cartons together, then slipped the carton with the active inhabitant into his tool bag.

“So,” Falynn said, “I got about four hours of sleep. Two just snoozing on top of the bunker, and two lying in a heap along the south wall.”

Janson whistled. “And no one spotted you.”

“I assume not. I’m not in prison.” She shrugged, then winced at the pain the maneuver caused her.

Atril scowled at her. “Be still.” She returned to painting a healing agent onto the largest of the cuts on Faly’s forehead.

Janson continued, “How did you get out?”

“When I woke up, it was still a couple of hours before dawn. The little garrison’s personal vehicles were all lined up on the north wall, and I figured that they wouldn’t put pressure sensors along the wall where all their own people would move all the time, just out in the open area around. So I just walked around, picked the biggest of the groundskimmers, and picked the lock to its storage compartment. Got a little more rest there, too, under a blanket and some boxes before his shift ended and he came out. He stopped in at some place to eat and I crawled out there, the glorious image you see before you.” Falynn’s hair was plastered to her head by sweat, she had scrapes on her forehead, and she walked, when they let her, like a woman who’d avoided a fall’s worth of broken bones but stocked up on bruises and muscle pulls by way of compensation.

Janson said, “I’ll get your information to Wedge. And you get some real sleep.” He rose.

Atril rose and added, “The painkillers should start firing off pretty soon. You’d better be horizontal when they do.” She shrugged. “Sorry I can’t do more. I wish Dr. Phanan were here.”

“It’s fine,” Falynn said.

Janson and Atril left her quarters, but Donos lingered, kneeling beside her chair. “You’re sure you’re all right?”

“I’m going to stab the next person who asks me that.” But she kept her tone light and there was no sting in her words.

“You scared me to death. Falling and not moving. I was getting a retrieval team in position when you reached me via comlink.”

“I’m sorry.” She reached out to stroke his chin, felt the harsh stubble of a day’s worth of beard there. And she began to laugh.

“What’s funny?”

“That mustache. You look like a complete idiot.”

“Oyah.” He bobbed his head in an exaggerated nod and kissed her on the third bob. Then he rose. “Like they said, sleep. We’ve got more planned tonight.”

“Someone else gets to climb.” A wave of tiredness washed across her. She half rose, unwilling to straighten completely up and suffer the muscle pulls such a motion entailed, and crawled onto her bed. “G’night.”

Plague Group returned from Scohar tired but triumphant. They met with the mustachioed idiots of Yokel Group in Wedge’s hostel quarters.

“Effortless, as I predicted,” Grinder said. He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “My companions, inspired by my sheer versatility and competence, themselves showed acceptable performance—”

Kell glared at him and he shut up. “We got in,” Kell said, “we got out with the goods, and the only thing we did that would indicate someone was there was spray a sealant all over the inside of a trash flue. I even reconnected the plasma bomb.”

Wedge came upright. “The what?”

“They had a high-temperature device set to trigger if any of the disease agents breached their security seal and threatened to escape the complex. The thing would have instantly incinerated the Institute and a few city blocks around it—which I assume they consider an appropriate measure to keep some of those diseases in check.” Kell shrugged. “I bet that little safety feature is a secret to their neighbors. Anyway, I disabled the array so Grinder could foul up if he liked—”

“Never happen,” Grinder said, his voice a growl.

“And then, once he was very, very sure everything was safe, reconnected it.”

“Where’s the plague?” Wedge asked.

Phanan held up two plastic cylinders, each no larger than a standard comlink.

“Will those … containers … hold?”

The doctor nodded. “Yes. But to be safe, I’ll be inoculating all of us and the rest of the Night Caller crew against these little bugs. Kell is going to help me mount these containers in little detonation units, nothing explosive, they’ll puncture the sides with a needle. All we have to do is get them into the shuttles’ air-circulation gear.”

“Good.” Wedge leaned back and tried to relax. “We go tonight, then. The sooner we’re offworld, the sooner we can get out of these mustaches.”

Tyria quirked a smile. “Not to mention the lavender short pants.”

“Not to mention them, Flight Officer Sarkin.” Wedge pulled his wide-brimmed hat down over his eyes. “Or else.”

·  ·  ·

They drove at a slow pace toward Bunker 22-Aleph—slow so Piggy, pacing them on foot, could keep up. Not that the Storinal-made refueling and maintenance skimmer was a particularly speedy craft, but it could still outrun a fully armed and armored Gamorrean.

The two human guards and one leather-clad Gamorrean at the bunker’s main entrance came on attention as they neared. In the skimmer’s cab, Kell fingered his blaster to make sure it was still snug in its holster. Beside him, Tyria gave him an amused look and refrained from doing the same. Back in the skimmer’s main bed, hidden among the refueling hoses and swing-out platforms containing diagnostic gear, Janson, Phanan, and Grinder would be making sure the blankets and covers over them were still tied down tight … and making sure their blasters were charged to full.

Kell kept a bored expression on his face and brought the skimmer to a stop about a meter from the point at which he was sure the guards would bring their weapons to bear.

The senior human guard stepped forward. “Orders.”

Kell handed him his forged datacard. “That’s work orders, not orders. We don’t take orders. Not like spaceport security boys.” He gave Tyria a grin he knew to be irritating and cocksure.

“These shuttles aren’t due to be serviced until the morning,” the guard said. “They depart tomorrow afternoon.”

“It’s a slack period,” Kell said. It was true; otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to find and temporarily steal a maintenance skimmer. There had been others lined up, unused. “Control wants us to get a little ahead before the work piles up tomorrow.”

The guard gave him a sour look and stepped back to slip the card into the door reader.

Now, their first test. It would have been far too much work to forge a proper set of work orders allowing them to work on the Hawkbat’s shuttles—a set that would get proper authorization from the spaceport’s main computer. It would have been a mission all by itself to get through that computer’s defenses; security on that system was extremely tight to keep malicious code-slicers from doing things like rerouting cargo craft to pirates’ landing zones or causing craft to crash.

So Grinder had tried to run completely around the wall of defenses. Just after nightfall this evening, he had climbed to the hangar’s roof and sliced into the little retransmitter there. Now, the module he’d planted in that comm device would be intercepting the request for authorization of Kell’s codes, waiting an appropriate amount of time, and sending back the authorization … all without bothering the spaceport computer. The Wraiths had no plans to retrieve the module; it would interfere with no other requests and would let the retransmitter operate normally. It would probably not be found until the next time the transmitter was serviced, whether days, weeks, or months from now.

The guard returned. “You’re clear to work. Under the eye of a spaceport guard.”

Kell gestured toward Piggy. “I thought that was what Smiley there was for.”

“Right.” The guard waved at the two remaining at the hangar doors, and a moment later those doors were rolling open. Maintaining his air of boredom, Kell moved the skimmer through and Piggy paced them in. The Gamorrean guard said something in its own language as they passed and Piggy grunted a reply.

As the doors shut behind them, Kell maneuvered the skimmer to be directly beside the cockpit of one of the shuttles. When it was in place, he lowered the landing struts and shut off the repulsors. Now, the craft would be braced for its mechanical duties. He and Tyria clambered out of the cab and into the aft machinery, Kell swinging a diagnostic module up against the hull of the Hawkbat’s Perch.

The others didn’t emerge from hiding, but Grinder’s voice did. “I’m reading one visual-only scanner, up somewhere in the northwest corner.”

Kell resisted the urge to look. “Can you disable it?”

“From here? Don’t be stupid. Wait a second. Unless I miss my guess …”

Kell and Tyria chimed in together, “Which never happens …”

“Shut up. Unless I miss my guess, it’s piping its data straight through that same retransmitter … Yes! Give me a second. Everybody hold still. I’m recording a few seconds of its transmission … looping it … blending the seam. Now all I have to do is transmit it constantly to my module on the retransmitter and have the module hold the real feed … Done!” Grinder emerged, looking sweaty but triumphant.

Janson and Phanan came out from beneath their respective hiding places. Janson gestured to the side of Hawkbat’s Perch. “Why isn’t that panel open yet?”

“Because we don’t actually have authorization, remember?” Kell felt, once more, the faint surprise that came when Janson’s sudden arrival failed to cause him to tense up. “I need Grinder to run a bypass on it.”

“And on the ramp control.”

Kell shook his head. “It occurred to me as we were driving over here that we can just put the stuff in the air intake scoop. They’ll be running on real air for the first few thousand meters, until they can’t ram it fast enough in to supply adequate air pressure. That’s when they switch to canned air.” He smiled. “We don’t even have to break in.”

Phanan cocked his head to listen. “We read, Joyride.” With his built-in equipment, he didn’t have to hear the buzzing of his comlink and bring the thing on-line; he was always receiving. “Good news, Joyride. Plague out.” He looked at the others. “Runt is counting down for his run from the moon. If everything goes well, he’ll finish his terrain-following run and be here in about an hour.”

“That’s our time limit,” Kell said. “Don’t forget, we actually have to service these shuttles.”

Joyride Group couldn’t rely on the help of a passing vendor’s skimmer. With four people needing transport and a narrow time frame, they had to make something happen.

Of all the vehicles crowding Revos’s spaceport, none were as prevalent as cargo-hauling skimmers, used for transporting everything from standard bulk containers weighing several tons to piles of passengers’ personal bags. It wasn’t difficult to find one unattended, wasn’t even difficult to get it running and move it off a few dozen meters into the deeper shadow thrown by an unoccupied hangar. But what they were planning next would be tricky.

“How’s it coming?” Wedge asked. He and Face were guards on this operation, keeping blasters at the ready and attention on their surroundings; they didn’t often look back at what Falynn was doing.

“How do you think? Slow!”

Wedge heard an electronic crackle and a curse from her. “The trick,” she continued, “is to fry the circuits controlling braking without wiping out everything else on the same board. Then I’ve got to do the vehicle programming you want. Tricky stuff. The jump at the end, the self-erasure, and the data you want left behind—well, I wish Grinder were here.”

Wedge managed a smile. If Grinder knew how much his particular skills were appreciated and needed right now, he’d be insufferable. He managed to ride pretty close to insufferable most of the time.

Atril spoke up. “I handle ship’s programming all the time, particularly navigation. Let me do a rough cut on the program and you can fix it up in less time than it would take you to do it from scratch.”

“Please.”

Wedge’s comlink beeped. He held it up to his ear, heard the message, said, “Thanks, Six.” He turned back to the others. “Thirty minutes and counting.”

“We have a problem,” Phanan said.

Kell lowered the side panel on Hawkbat’s Vigil. “Not much of one. We’re done.” He was covered with sweat and, after only half an hour’s work, tired. On a job like this, there were usually two to four trained mechanics and half an hour to an hour per vehicle serviced; he’d done it in half the usual time with a crew of willing but inexperienced hands.

“Nine says there’s a maintenance skimmer coming this way,” Phanan said.

Janson cursed. “Let’s move out. We’ll bluff them, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll tear out of here like Falynn in a skiff.”

Kell paused as he was entering the cockpit. Lashed to the bed in back were three plastic containers, each about the size of an R2 unit, that hadn’t been there before. “What are those?”

Tyria grinned. “Our reason for being here. Remember? We’re stealing something? Those are recreational holos someone had piled up for loading onto the shuttles. They’ll figure we’re black marketeers or something.”

“I forgot.”

“You had plenty to do.”

Janson’s voice came from underneath his blanket. “Would you two stop smooching up and get us out of here?”

Kell positioned his skimmer to exit. The argument had already started outside, with some words drifting in around the edges of the steel doors: “… tell you, you’re already in there.” “… obviously not, since we just got here.”

Kell nodded to Piggy, who slapped the wall control. The doors ground their way open. The two nearly identical maintenance skimmers faced each other a mere four meters apart.

The lead guard pointed to Kell’s skimmer. “As I told you.”

The driver of the other skimmer leaned out of his cockpit. “Hey! Who are you?”

“I’m Botkins.” Kell glanced again at the name stenciled on the gloves lying in the cockpit. “I’m standing in for Laramont.”

“Laramont’s in the cafeteria, waiting to start his shift!”

“Dammit! They told me he was sick. So he’s going to be servicing the shuttles?”

“No, I am!”

“Wrong. I just did.”

“Listen, scab, I’m not going to let you cost me my piece work for the night.” The mechanic clambered out of his cockpit. He was nearly as tall as Kell and had as much muscle, though a fair amount of it was swathed in fat. Tools swung on his belt as he straightened up.

Kell waited until the man reached the window of his cockpit. “Hey,” he said, “let’s do this like gentlemen. You know, I might not have done such a good job of gauging the hydraulics.”

The mechanic scowled at him. “So?”

“So, you scrub my work as not up to spec. You get credit for the whole job but only have to redo the work you don’t like. But you don’t formally log the complaint, so my record stays clean. That way, you get your pay and I still log the time, so I can keep working toward getting a permanent post here. What do you say?”

The mechanic considered it. “No. I’m just going to scrub your work as not up to spec … and report it that way. Right now.”

Kell glanced at Tyria. A call like that to Central would probably alert the spaceport operators to the unauthorized maintenance job they’d just done. He returned his attention to the mechanic and said, in an overly reasonable tone, “Well, now. That’s my job vaporized. My career at Revos Spaceport. If you’re going to take that from me, I think I ought to have something from you.”

The mechanic twisted his lip in an approximation of a contemptuous smile. “Such as what?”

“Such as about fifteen square centimeters of your skin, a liter of your blood, and whatever you have left of a reputation.” Kell threw open his cockpit door, catching the mechanic off guard and hurling him to the duracrete.

Kell stepped out over him, took a couple of steps to the side, and stretched. He caught the chief guard’s eye. “I say I break three of his bones before he gives up.”

24

The cargo skimmer swung around to the north of the TIE ready bunker, then angled in straight toward the building. It did not build up speed; it maintained a rate just over a walking pace.

Wedge, Atril, Falynn, and Face clustered at the bow of the thing, braced for the mild collision to come. “I forgot to ask,” Wedge said. “Have you ever done anything like this before? The surge at the end?”

Falynn grinned. “Sure. Tried it with a canyon jump back home.”

“How’d it turn out?”

“Broken collarbone.”

“Just checking.”

By now, the sensors in the TIE bunker would show the oncoming vehicle. Guards might even be leaving by the south entrance to come around and see what was happening. The timing had to be perfect.

They were thirty meters away, twenty, ten—then they hit the bunker wall, a bump that merely caused them to sway forward, momentarily off balance.

Falynn counted, “Three, two, one—”

The skimmer’s engines whined as they overrevved, and suddenly the craft bounced an extra two meters into the air.

The four jumped forward as they felt the skimmer drop from under them. They landed, awkward, on the bunker roof. Atril immediately twisted and started to fall back into the skimmer, but Wedge and Face caught her flailing arms and tugged her toward them.

Already there were the sounds of oncoming feet. The four flattened themselves as quietly as they could and hugged the roof.

Then there were voices: “You there! What do you think you’re doing?”

“Wait a second. There’s nobody in it.”

“Check under it.”

Laughter. “That’d be funny. Someone being squashed under a skimmer.”

The other voice became resentful. “You just think it’s funny because it’s never happened to you.”

“That’s right. Never has, never will. Smell that? It’s like an engine bearing has burned out.” The man’s voice changed. “Control Aleph-One, it’s a cargo skimmer. It’s unoccupied. It may be a drifter. Jotay’s checking out the autopilot.”

“I am?”

“You are.”

The other man sighed.

They were silent for a couple more minutes, then Jotay said, “It looks like it was slaved to another skimmer, part of a cargo convoy, and its memory was not correctly purged. It would have shot off as soon as it was activated. Maybe even still be receiving signals from the convoy master.”

“Well, flush the program and take it back where it belongs.”

“Why me?”

“Privilege of rank, sonny. I was hired three days before you.”

Wedge heard the skimmer power up and go gliding off, its driver still complaining. The other man wandered back toward the bunker’s south face, chuckling and muttering to himself.

Falynn chuckled, too. She whispered, “He’s going to have a fine time parking that thing with the brakes not working.”

Kell’s opponent stood, his face red, twisted with anger.

“I really ought to stop you,” the guard said.

“Well, you can do that, or you can get your bets down.” Then Kell twisted to avoid the mechanic’s charge. He swatted the man’s outstretched hand away, continued the twist into a full twirl, and gave the man a slap to the back of his head as he passed. The mechanic staggered, off balance from the extra momentum, and went to his knees.

The mechanic came up with a belt hydrospanner in his hand. This wasn’t a small, around-the-house tool, but a heavy metal implement two-thirds the length of a man’s arm.

Kell dropped his pose of aggressive amiability and assumed a proper fighting posture, left foot forward, hands up, weight balanced. He’d hoped that potentially deadly weapons wouldn’t enter the mix. He’d obviously hoped in vain.

The mechanic charged again, but something in his body language told Kell he was changing tactics. Instead of sidestepping, Kell held his pose, ready to stop-thrust or body-check the man. It was the mechanic, though, who stopped short, swinging the hydrospanner in a horizontal arc that would have connected solidly with Kell’s rib cage if he’d duplicated his earlier move.

Kell twisted aside—and the head of the spanner hit him a glancing blow, an impact that kicked the breath out of him and sent him staggering back. He thought he felt a rib give way.

The mechanic, confident now, followed up instantly with another swing.

Kell didn’t try to dodge this one. Despite the pain in his left side, he twisted, adding energy to the punch that connected with the mechanic’s wrist. Kell felt and heard something break in the wrist. The hydrospanner flew free, clanking into the side of Kell’s maintenance skimmer.

Kell followed through with a left that rocked the mechanic’s head, then spun around in a kick. He tried to make it look more awkward than it had to, but gave it full force when it connected against the mechanic’s jaw. The man uttered a grunt and fell hard to the duracrete.

Kell turned to the guard. “Call this in. He just assaulted me with intent to kill. My career here may be shot, but I’m taking his with me. Get me Central.” He suddenly felt drained and was having a hard time breathing.

The guard shrugged and moved to comply. Tyria took a breath, preparing to jump in with an objection, but the mechanic’s partner, who’d exited his skimmer during the fight, spoke up first. “Wait. Please.”

The guard paused.

Kell said, “Why?” He tried to bring his labored breathing under control. It wasn’t working. Still, that added to his act, made it easy for him to simulate fury.

“He’s a good man. Just tense. Let him sleep this off, I’ll redo the servicing on the shuttles, nobody will report anything, you keep your job, he keeps his job—what do you say?”

Kell took a couple of breaths, as deep as he could bear, and turned to Tyria.

She shrugged. He could read worry for him in her eyes, but her tone was light. “Might as well. Fewer reports.”

The guard in charge said, “Fewer reports.” He made it sound like a goal of considerable merit.

Kell gave a reluctant nod. “Fewer reports. Sounds good.” He moved back to his cockpit door. “I’m doing him a favor, you know that?”

The mechanic’s partner, already struggling to pull the unconscious man upright, said, “Yeah, sure.” He could not have sounded less interested.

A moment later Plague Group’s maintenance skimmer was once again in motion.

Tyria asked, “Are you all right?”

“I want Phanan to tape me up as soon as possible. But I don’t think it’s anything serious. As long as I don’t do too much bending.”

“Well, you bought us the time we needed.”

Kell checked his chrono. Just give us thirty minutes, he thought. Then, it won’t matter how many reports they call in.

Runt’s attack came with such swiftness that even the Wraiths, who’d timed his arrival nearly to the last second, were caught off guard by it.

His X-wing was suddenly over the spaceport, its engines screaming like some mythical demon, its laser cannons blasting at unoccupied portions of duracrete. Men and women on the field ran in the direction of any cover. Some ran to dive into the shadow of refueling tanks. Wedge shook his head as he watched them.

A moment later the shrill keen of an Imperial air-raid alert filled the air. Bunkers all over the spaceport went dark as their occupants or central computers obeyed emergency blackout procedures.

Runt passed over the field, then turned around for another run. His lasers targeted a luggage skimmer and ignited its fuel cell, blowing bags and cases over a fifty-meter radius.

Wedge dimly heard a grinding alarm noise from below. Then the bunker’s top door motors whined and the doors began to retract.

He peered through the crack between them. He could see tiny lights below him: green, red, yellow, white, the myriad glows associated with computer gear. But the little TIE fighter hangar was otherwise dark, its occupants also observing normal blackout procedures.

As he’d expected. As he’d counted on.

He moved with the leading edge of the door. As soon as the doors were locked open, he placed his grappling hook where the door edge met the duracrete roof. A few meters over, Falynn would be doing the same at the other door.

With a chilling engine roar Wedge would always associate with the Empire, two of the TIE fighters below lit up their engines, silhouetting themselves with ionic engine wash, and then leaped up into the sky, not bothering with repulsorlifts for initial takeoff.

Wedge gripped the rope attached to his hook and rolled over into the darkness.

Before Runt could make his third pass over the spaceport, a circular slab of duracrete sixty meters from the Narra rose from the ground. Beneath it was a ball-shaped gun emplacement, an open-air metal framework with a gunner’s chair and a hemispherical durasteel shield from which protruded four linked laser cannons. The rig rose on a metal column, ten meters into the air, fifteen meters, then rotated to track Runt’s X-wing.

Kell, at the pilot’s seat of the Narra, swore and hit his comm. “Six, we have a ground emplacement setting up for your return. Leader reports the roof opening; you’re about to have company.” He flipped the switch to light up the shuttle’s engines and guns.

“We copy, Five.” Runt’s X-wing heeled over and headed west.

“If you do that,” Janson said, “we’re going to have to scramble out of here without our TIE fighter support.”

“What do you recommend? We sit back and watch them flame Runt?” All the shuttle’s occupants heard the roar of the TIE fighters leaving their bunker. “Since that emplacement is taller than the trees, Runt’s going to be within its line of sight for a couple of klicks at least—”

Janson shook his head. “Trust your squadmates, Kell.”

As if to punctuate his words, a brilliant needle of laser energy leaped from the top of the spaceport’s main terminal building and hit the gun emplacement. Kell saw the laser burn through the chair, through the gunner’s body. The gunner slumped and the emplacement continued its rotation, no longer tracking a target.

“Donos,” Kell said. “Sorry. I forgot.”

Two TIE fighters emerged from the target bunker and headed west in pursuit of Runt.

Tyria said, “I’m going out to cover Donos’s arrival.”

Janson nodded. “Be careful.”

Kell added, “Do what the man says.”

·  ·  ·

The bunker’s doors clanged down into place. The crew chief on duty called out, “Back to normal,” and switched on the light.

Two black-clad commandos, a man and a woman, their faces covered in dark masks, stood in the hangar, covering the mechanics with blaster pistols. Another two were already going through the door into the office portion of the bunker—somehow they knew the gesture that told the movement sensor to open the door.

The male commando said, “Not exactly normal. Don’t make a move.”

Face entered the bunker’s command center, his pistol out and at the ready, Atril just behind him.

The officer on duty was turning away from a security monitor and drawing his blaster as they entered. Face snapped off a shot and missed. Atril’s shot was accurate—gruesomely accurate; it caught the man full in the face before he had a chance to fire. He dropped to the polished and waxed duracrete floor, his hair on fire.

Face gestured to the other person in the room, a gray-haired uniformed woman who was already raising her hands. “Put that out before it sets off the fire alarms.” He was annoyed to hear his voice try to crack.

Silent, she complied, taking a jacket from the back of a chair and using it to smother the smoky fire.

Face managed to put a little more authority into his voice. “Now. What’s the standard recall code for the TIE fighters who just left?”

The woman, her task complete, rose to her feet and put her hands up again. “I don’t know.”

Face glanced over his shoulder at Atril. “Kill her.” He saw her eyes widen and gave her the tiniest shake of his head.

The bunker officer said, “Sakira. S-A-K-I-R-A.” Her lip turned downward. “It’s his daughter’s name.”

Face moved to the main control board. Its primary monitor showed the red blip of Runt’s X-wing outbound, two blue blips of the TIE fighters closing rapidly upon it. He typed SAKIRA into the keypad and sent the code.

Almost immediately a man’s voice came over the comm speaker: “Sun Leader to Base, please confirm last transmission.”

Face waved the surviving bunker operator to the panel. She approached, stiff-legged, but her face twitched and she did not use the comm. “If I confirm the code, they’ll know it’s wrong,” she said, her tone sullen.

Face sighed, then keyed the comm. He kept his voice low, making it as bland as possible. “Confirm recall Sakira,” he said.

“Base, copy. Returning home. He had him, Base. Why the change?”

“New orders. Come on in.”

“Base, will comply.”

Face discovered he was sweating. Comm distortion would help a bit, but this was Imperial equipment; its distortion was less severe than New Republic comm gear. If that pilot had any suspicions, he could be calling the spaceport’s control center or another fighter base even now …

But the image on the sensor screen showed the TIE fighter blips looping around and returning.

Face keyed his comlink. “Six, they’re breaking off. Go to terrain-following mode and ease your way back.”

“Eight, we copy.”

Atril led the female officer back into the hangar. Face sat at the main control board. For the few minutes, it was a waiting game.

Alarms sounded all over the spaceport. A detachment of guards reached the gun emplacement and used a remote to bring it down to ground level. They dragged the gunner’s remains out of the chair’s remains and another trooper took his place. Kell hurriedly powered down the Narra’s systems so a sensor sweep would not detect them.

More troopers were running around on the duracrete near the spaceport’s main terminal bunker. Looking for Donos, Kell knew. If the sniper was on top of his game, he’d have rappelled down the side of the bunker moments after killing the gunner. Tyria would know where he was, but he dared not use his comlink to reach her; he might interrupt her at a critical time.

Feet clattered up the shuttle’s ramp and abruptly Tyria and Donos were peering into the barrels of Janson’s and Kell’s ready weapons. “All clear,” Tyria said.

Kell sheathed his blaster and raised the ramp. “Anything from Joyride Group?”

Janson, in the copilot’s seat, shook his head.

The TIE fighters were slowing to hover over the open doors of the bunker when the comm board sounded again. “Control Aleph-One, this is Central. Why did you break off pursuit of Target X-3085?”

Face grimaced and activated his microphone. “Central, the target’s escape profile suggested an ambush. It was not in an escape posture. This indicated to me that it was leading our fighters toward a superior force.”

“You decided that on your own initiative, Aleph-One?”

“That’s correct, sir.”

“Interesting choice, Aleph-One. You know it’s subject to review.”

“Yes, sir. I stand by it, sir.”

“Very well. Your men coming in safe?”

“Two eyeballs incoming hot and normal.”

“Two what?”

Face shut off his mike and swore to himself. Then he switched it back on. “Uh, eyeballs, sir. That’s Rebel talk. I thought you’d be amused.”

“Aleph-One, recite your day code.”

Face switched the mike off and yanked it free of its housing, then keyed his comlink. “Leader, we’ve been made.”

·  ·  ·

The two TIE fighters descended to a smooth landing. Wedge kept his cockpit dark, though his engines were hot, and waited.

The TIEs’ access hatches did not open. A moment later their engines lit up again and they roared skyward.

“Three, fire!” Wedge had a confirmed lock on his targeting computer as soon as the port-side TIE fighter rose over him. He triggered his lasers. The blast shook his grounded vehicle but hit the ascending starfighter dead-on, hulling it. The TIE fighter continued upward only another twenty or thirty meters, slowing, then stalled and dropped.

Falynn, in her TIE fighter, fired twice. Her second shot hit her target where its spherical body met its starboard wing pylon. The blast didn’t sever the pylon, but chopped halfway through it. The vehicle’s next maneuver, a dizzying spin to the side, did the rest, tearing the pylon completely free. The fighter spun out of sight.

Wedge’s target came straight down back into the bay. Wedge instictively leaned away from the descending, burning mess. It smashed down right next to his vehicle, showering his TIE fighter with half-melted debris. His starfighter shook from the impact. “Gray Eight, Gray Thirteen, I’m afraid you’re on foot; your rides are vaped.”

“Acknowledged. Narra, can you swing by for a quick pickup?”

Wedge heard Kell’s voice: “We’re already in motion.”

“Three, Leader. We’re airborne.” Wedge nudged his control yoke and was suddenly roaring skyward.

The replacement gunner swung around to try to track the rogue TIE fighters from Bunker Aleph-One. Then Central was back in his headphones: “There’s a Lambda-class shuttle moving sixty meters west of your position. We think they’re part of the same crew. Target and fire.”

The gunner almost had the lead TIE in his brackets, but the pilot was good, very good, constantly juking around, then dropping nearly to ground level to roar along behind a bunker or bulk cruiser. “I’m a little busy here,” he said. “You’re sure the shuttle is the primary target?”

“They’re not going to have their most important people on the starfighters, idiot. Do as you’re told.”

The gunner sighed, then rotated his cupola around to cover the shuttle, which was moving on repulsorlifts more or less toward the TIE ready bunker.

Toward two dark-clad figures running toward it. The shuttle’s boarding ramp was opening.

He bracketed the shuttle’s midsection—then heard the oncoming roar of a TIE fighter. A glance over his shoulder showed the starfighter swooping at him, lining up for a shot—

He leaped clear. He leaped out over fifteen meters of fall above a hard duracrete landing, and before he was halfway down he saw the cupola explode under brilliantly accurate laser fire from the TIE fighter.

Then he hit, and disobedient shuttles and starfighters were no longer his problem.

Though a squadron of TIE fighters left the city of Scohar and followed them to the outer planet where Night Caller waited, their lead was such that they were able to dock all four craft, orient themselves out-system, and go to hyperspace before their pursuit reached them.

They gathered in the lounge for drinks and congratulations, Atril still, for the moment, a fellow commando instead of a member of the bridge crew.

“Here’s to everyone making it off that rock,” Kell said, and everyone joined him in a “Hear, hear.” “Though Falynn and I managed to get slightly busted up, mostly through our own dumbness.”

Falynn said, “Hear, hear.”

Wedge noticed Janson’s expression; the man seemed pensive. “What is it, Wes?”

“Well, I was just thinking. We’ve really set ourselves on a new mission and have a long way to go.”

“What mission?”

“We’ve now stolen a Corellian corvette and two TIE fighters. That’s good, but it’s not enough. I think we should steal at least one of every type of ship in use by the Imperial Navy or the warlords.”

Wedge smiled. “Ending with a certain Super Star Destroyer called Iron Fist?”

“That would round out the collection, don’t you think?”

25

Night Caller and Hawkbat made rendezvous at the appointed date, in a system whose dim orange sun sustained no life on any of its seven planets. Hawkbat’s captain, Bock Nabyl, apologized for not being able to meet with Captain Darillian face-to-face, and explained that an unseemly illness was spreading through the crew. Quarantine measures were in force. Captain Darillian claimed to understand fully.

So representatives of both crews, working in vacuum suits, transferred a set of stealth satellites from Hawkbat’s main cargo hold to Night Caller’s belly hold, then both ships went their separate ways, their crewmen never having seen one another in the flesh.

A day later Night Caller put in at the Todirium system, whose bleak third planet was home to a colony mining iron and refining durasteel. The corporate computer system coordinating activities worldwide was not easy prey for Grinder’s skills at slicing, but the corporate chief, speaking to Face’s Captain Darillian, asked whether Night Caller wanted to pick up the latest load of refined alloys. Since previous stops had not indicated that the corvette had taken on such loads, Face told the man that Zsinj would send a cargo hauler for the alloys … but he insisted on sending “Lieutenant Narol” down to examine the cargo. Face reported back hours later with the precise location of Zsinj’s warehouses.

“This will be a standard stoop-and-shoot mission,” Wedge told his pilots. “With one difference. We know we’re going to be recorded. We know because we’re setting out the spy satellites ourselves. So as long as we’ll be giving Zsinj information, we want it to be the worst information possible.

“Cubber, I want you to repaint all the X-wings with Rogue Squadron’s colors.”

The mechanic looked unhappy. “If there’s anything I hate worse than redoing a bad job—”

“It’s redoing a good one. I know. And it gets worse, because immediately after the mission, you’ll have to strip all that paint and reapply the Wraith Squadron colors.” Wedge shrugged. “Or we can let Grinder do the repainting and put you in his cockpit for the mission.”

“No, thanks. I’ll paint.”

Wedge continued, “So, we unload and situate the satellites. Piggy, I want you and Grinder to calculate the most likely point where an X-wing squadron would enter the system and what their most likely avenue of attack against the planet would be. We’ll set up the satellites along that path and get the best possible images for Zsinj and Trigit. Since we’ll be doing so much work in vacuum suits, I want Face and Phanan in X-wings flying cover, just in case of trouble. Phanan, you can use mine. As long as you treat it well.”

“I’ll try not to spill my lomin-ale all over it.”

“How professional of you. Then, we load up the X-wings, activate the satellites, and jump out of system. The next day, we come back in the X-wings and perform our ground strike.

“So, spend some time today and tomorrow getting used to calling one another by Rogue call signs. And, Face, when addressing me, don’t forget to call me Tycho once or twice. We’ll be broadcasting in the clear, like most snubfighter units, instead of using Wraith Squadron’s encryption.”

Face nodded.

“After the strike, we’ll jump to rejoin Night Caller. Simple, in theory. Questions?”

There were none.

“Let’s do it, then. We’ll begin deploying the satellites in two hours. Grinder, Piggy, get us some locations by then.”

Grinder was the first one out of the door, Wedge noticed. Eager to begin processing data for his extra assignment?

Grinder literally ran to the locker room adjacent to the Deck Three forward lounge. He took a look around to make sure no one was on hand to observe him, then he keyed in his locker combination. A moment later he palmed the small box he’d taken from the Scohar Xenohealth Institute. Its occupant began scratching at the pressboard sides of the box.

Grinder, increasingly nervous and watchful, headed forward the few steps it took him to reach the upper door into the bow hold. He peered into the hold, was reassured to note the absence of mechanics or pilots.

He pulled out his datapad and keyed in a code for it to transmit. Now, and for about five minutes, the cameras overlooking the hold would show a still image.

He descended to floor level and keyed in another command. When this one was transmitted, the canopy of one of the X-wings on the middle row hissed and opened.

Face’s snubfighter. Grinder smiled. It had taken him considerable effort to acquire the passwords and other special keys that gave him access to the fighters, lockers, and quarters of all the personnel aboard Night Caller, but it was worth it. It gave him lots of opportunities to enjoy himself.

He pried open the top of the box containing the insect and upended the box over Face’s control seat. Flecks of some nameless substance, perhaps insect food, drifted out. Then something black, not an insect, slid free, and he caught it as it fell.

A small, cheap datapad, the kind that was not programmable, with a memory unit only large enough to contain a little data. Its face read “Storini Glass Prowler, Care and Feeding.”

He shook the box again and the translucent insect slid out, dropped wriggling to the seat, and stood upright. It turned to look at Grinder as if evaluating him for a possible meal, then slowly looked around in a circle, analyzing its new surroundings.

Grinder issued another command through his datapad and Face’s canopy closed. Now Face would be in for a surprise. Grinder hoped the insect would be in an inobvious place when the pilot climbed aboard for his guard mission. Face should make some interesting noises when he discovered the weird little creature crawling all over him.

They set up the surveillance satellites without incident, and Face reported no insectile intruder when he and Phanan returned from their guard mission.

Surreptitiously, Grinder looked Face over, trying to find some sign that the pilot had accidentally squashed the insect, but there was no spot of fluid or crushed exoskeleton to suggest he had.

On his next opportunity, Grinder returned to the bow hold, opened the canopy of Face’s X-wing, and spent the next several minutes searching his cockpit, but the insect was nowhere to be found. He even searched the fighter’s small cargo bay, again without luck.

He sighed. A prank opportunity wasted. Ungrateful insect. Next time, he’d find a creature more noisy and aggressive, something sure to make Face want to eject in midmission.

Grinder woke that night sure that he’d heard something scratching at his door.

A dream, he thought. Then he heard it again: Scritch, scritch, scritch. The precise noise the Storini Glass Prowler had made in its box.

He rose and padded over to the door of his quarters, but the noise did not repeat itself. He opened the door, but there was nothing on the floor outside, just Phanan pausing outside his own door.

Grinder yawned, then asked, “Did you hear something?”

Phanan gave him a curious look. “Do you always come to your door naked in the middle of the night to ask questions like that?”

“No, really. Did you hear anything odd a moment ago?”

“Well, actually, yes. Some sort of skittering. Like something small running around.”

Grinder looked suspiciously up and down the corridor, then carefully shut his door.

Eleven members of Wraith Squadron—all but Tyria, whose X-wing was again assigned to Phanan—dropped out of hyperspace in the Todirium system, as close to the mining planet as the hyperdrives would allow. They screamed down to the planet’s surface a hundred kilometers from the colony’s warehousing district, then looped around from an east-to-west heading to a north-to-south, flying in terrain-following mode to confound local sensors.

Thirty kilometers from their target, they overflew a small residential compound. They saw someone outside the compound, a humanoid figure in a blue environment suit, look up at them as they roared past.

Wedge said, “That may have cost us our element of surprise. Stay alert, people.”

“Twenty kilometers,” Janson said.

More roads, most of them still dirt tracks, crisscrossed the brown landscape beneath them.

“Ten kilometers,” Janson said.

Wedge said, “Reduce speed,” and throttled back. “S-foils to attack position.”

They now crossed over some tilled fields, the crops a weird blue-green Wedge would not have thought belonged in nature, and irrigation canals. Some of the roads were paved.

“Five klicks,” said Janson.

Gate, Wedge’s R5 unit, shrieked a warning as his sensor board lit up with an alert—directional sensors seeking a lock. “Break off by wings,” Wedge said. “Deal with the threat first. Worry about the primary target later.”

Four pairs of X-wings rolled away from Wedge, leaving him with his temporary wingman, Donos, in the middle of their new, broader formation.

Moments later the threat came into view. Just above the outskirts of the planet’s primary settlement rose a line of repulsorlift craft: short, stubby vehicles half the length of X-wings, powerful-looking blaster cannons protruding from their rear sections, red and yellow paint jobs suggesting danger.

Janson said, “Ultra-Lights.”

Wedge frowned. ULAVs, or Ultra-Light Assault Vehicles, were still in use—barely—by the New Republic and on backwater planets like this. Their repulsorlifts should not have been powerful enough to lift them to rooftop level; these vehicles had to have been retrofitted with much more powerful engines. “Five, Six, break left,” Wedge said. “Eleven, Twelve, break right. Prepare to do crossing strafing runs on those targets. Everyone else, go evasive and continue on to primary target. Be careful: those rear guns are the real problems.”

He heard their acknowledgments as he stood his X-wing up on its port wing, then continued into a rollover, maneuvering like a corkscrew on toward the target. Sensors showed Donos sticking close to his tail.

Lasers lit up the front ends of the ULAVs; two beams stopped dead twenty meters ahead of Wedge’s nose, stopped clean by his forward shields.

Then he and Donos were past the line of attackers. The ULAVs were indeed floating ten meters up on what had to be improved repulsorlift engines, and immediately behind them and the buildings shielding them were artillery units, small self-propelled missile racks pointed back toward the Wraiths’ direction of approach. The pilots of the artillery units watched the Wraiths fly over, their expressions startled; it looked as though the snubfighters’ speed had caught them off guard.

Wedge continued his roll. The blaster cannons on the ULAVs’ rears opened up, their emissions lighting up the sky behind him; one gunner was good enough to graze Wedge’s rear shields.

He heard Piggy’s voice: “Five, recommend you—”

Wedge spoke up fast, “Twelve, no personal comments.” He couldn’t have Piggy commencing his advisory comments, not if they were to bring off their imitation of Rogue Squadron.

“Yes, sir.”

Face’s voice: “Oh, lighten up, Tycho.”

“Same order to you, Eight.” Wedge grinned. Face had chosen a good point to insert his “mistake” of identifying his mission leader by name.

“Yes, sir.”

“Leader, Eleven. Commencing strafing run.”

Behind Wedge and Donos, the two wings of snubfighters crisscrossed above the line of ULAVs and missile artillery pieces, their lasers flashing down from the skies like red shears. The sky lit up again as one of the missile units detonated.

Wedge’s distance-to-range was down to a klick. Ahead, he saw the tan warehouse Face had identified in his briefing recording. He targeted the building, saw his brackets go red almost instantly, and fired.

The proton torpedo flashed to the target faster than his eye could follow. The torpedo hit an upper-story window and was inside when it went off, blowing the roof from the building in an uncountable cloud of pieces. Moments later, torpedoes fired by the five Wraiths trailing him homed in on the disintegrating target. As Wedge pulled up, the warehouse became a cloud of smoke and bright light, one that swelled so fast that even his evasive course carried him partway through it.

He saw red glowing light, heard thumps as debris from the detonation rattled against his X-wing’s skin, and then he was through the cloud, climbing. A quick check of his diagnostics told him the extinguisher system of one of his engines was reporting failure—which meant that shrapnel had penetrated the engine and might cause more trouble to come.

“All units, report in,” he said.

“Nine is fine. But you’ve got some new vents, Leader.”

“Let me know if anything comes pouring out, Nine.”

“Tych, this is Eleven. Their defensive line is gone. The missile units committed fratricide.”

Wedge winced. That meant the missiles on one artillery unit had detonated, igniting the missiles on adjacent units, and so on up the line—probably taking the ULAVs with them, since they were so close. That defensive line was a bad, sloppy tactic, probably chosen in haste because of the speed of the Wraiths’ approach.

“Four is in the green.”

“This is Three. I’ve lost a laser cannon and picked up some drag.”

“Twelve is intact. Leader, the primary target is a crater.”

The rest of the acknowledgments rolled in, reports of minor damage, no injuries. Wedge said, “Good work, Rogues. Let’s get out of here.”

Falynn looked as though she’d just bitten into sour fruit. Her body language, as she kept her elbows on the conference-room table and propped her chin on her hands, also suggested irritation. “I thought I wouldn’t mind. But it bothers me.

Wedge guessed that it wasn’t too deep a grievance. “That Rogue Squadron gets credit for the raid on Todirium?”

“That’s it.”

“Well, they don’t in the official report. And that will be declassified as soon as our current mission is done.”

“Well, I have a complaint,” Kell said. “I hit my artillery unit dead on and by the time I came around for a second pass, all the ULAVs were gone.”

Wedge gave him a skeptical look. “That’s hardly grounds for complaint.”

“I still don’t have an aerial kill! Three strike missions and a score of zero!”

The others laughed at him.

Face’s comlink beeped. He activated it. “Yes?”

“Loran, this is the bridge. You have a HoloNet communication for Captain Darillian. It’s Admiral Trigit.”

“Night Caller,” the admiral said, “will join the corvette Constrictor and the frigate Provocateur as our forward close support line. As soon as we drop out of hyperspace into the Morobe system, launch your TIE fighters to join theirs; they’ll serve as our escort force.”

“I understand,” Face said. “And your own TIE fighters will be the primary attack force?”

“Correct.” The hologram of Admiral Trigit leaned forward and his tone became more confidential. “Now, I have something further to ask. How might I persuade you to give me the details of your, shall we say, unrecorded adventures at each of your stops?”

Face froze. The admiral had guessed—

No. Trigit had only learned something about Captain Darillian’s private negotiations on behalf of Warlord Zsinj. If he had suspected the true identity of Night Caller’s crew, he would never have given Face the plan of attack for Talasea.

Face swallowed. “Sir … You can’t.”

“I could make it well worth your while.”

“Sir, let me explain.” Face tried to compose himself, to make his lines authentic. “First, if I sold you my honor, I could never buy it back. Second, I realize I may be displeasing you … but I want you to understand that I’ll keep faith with the warlord until I die. People look at me, and see my little habits, and think I am a shallow man, but I am an honorable officer, and will not break faith with my commander.” He gave Trigit his most intent stare, abandoning all of Darillian’s florid mannerisms. “It may be, sir, that I will leave Zsinj’s employ sometime in the future. It may be that I will enter yours. If I do, you will know from this encounter that I will always keep faith with you.”

Trigit drew back. He did not seem to be angered. “Point taken, Captain.”

“Thank you, sir. And may I say, I would be pleased to serve under you in any formal capacity. But until I do …”

“Until you do, let us make no more assaults, no matter how well intended, upon your honor.” Trigit gave him a faint smile. “You surprise me, Captain Darillian.”

“I intend to do so again, sir.”

“Very well.” Trigit gave him an uncommonly gracious half bow. “I’ll see you at the rendezvous.”

“I look forward to it.”

Trigit winked out.

Face swiveled toward the comm center doorway, where Wedge stood waiting.

“We have him,” Wedge said.

Scritch, scritch, scritch.

Grinder awoke with a start. There was the sound again, no dream, no hallucination, but an intermittent scratching.

Scritch, scritch, scritch.

He opened the door to the hall. There was nothing beyond it.

Scritch, scritch, scritch.

No, the sound was coming from up in the ceiling, just above his bed, beyond plates of durasteel. After another few moments, it stopped.

Grinder tore through his pile of personal possessions until he found the datapad that had come with the Storini Glass Prowler. He scrolled his way through the information. What to feed the creature. How many hours of light and dark it should endure each day. What its preferred temperature ranges were. How to tell male from female.

Nothing about how it could find its way out of an X-wing cockpit and come to a chamber it had never visited to find the man who had taken it from its homeworld.

He switched on the chamber’s terminal to the ship’s computer. It was not likely that the computer would contain information about the creature, but it was possible …

And the index popped up the name Storini Glass Prowler.

He brought the data up on his monitor.

Nothing much that he hadn’t seen on the instructional datapad, except for a sophisticated hologram showing the creature’s exterior; on-screen controls allowed Grinder to move his point of view into the creature’s insides and look at its physical structure at a variety of magnifications.

But at the bottom of the entry was a link labeled, “See also Storini Crystal Deceiver.” He activated it.

And read, in growing dismay, the description.

Often mistaken for its nearest relative, the Glass Prowler, the Storini Crystal Deceiver is far less common and far more dangerous.

He skipped down past the description of the creature’s natural habitat.

The Crystal Deceiver’s jaws secrete a poison that is dangerous both to the native life-forms of Storinal and to mammals from other worlds. The creature feeds on creatures that prey on the Glass Prowler. It simulates the Glass Prowler’s movements, luring predators to it; only when they strike does it revert to its natural speed and ferocity, eluding all attacks and ferociously biting its attacker. Its poison is a powerful paralytic that keeps its enemies helpless while it literally eats them alive.

Crystal Deceivers are a particular danger to mammalian life-forms because of their unusual olfactory-based memory retention. A Crystal Deceiver encountering the scent of a mammal will remember it for the rest of its life and follow it whenever it encounters the scent. This unfortunate trait has led to many instances of Crystal Deceivers following wilderness observers from the wild into communities and attacking them in their residences.

The poison of these creatures is not dangerous to healthy individuals. The life of a victim of a Crystal Deceiver assault can be saved by medical treatment if the creature has not devoured an irreparable quantity of the victim’s body mass.

No. Grinder shook his head. The box had said Glass Prowler. Surely the corporation that had captured the insect for resale would not have made a mistake and boxed up a Crystal Deceiver instead.

Rattled, he switched off the terminal, then the overhead light, and returned to bed.

Scritch, scritch, scritch.

He switched the light back on. This time, the noise had come from the bulkhead beside his bed.

He took a close look at the wall. Were there any gaps in the bulkhead, any apertures through which a medium-sized insect could enter?

Yes. Power access ports. Slight gaps in durasteel panel welds. Above, poor fits around lighting fixtures. Night Caller was not a new ship; there would inevitably be ways for the thing to get in.

Ton Phanan answered on Grinder’s third knock, sliding open the panel to his quarters and glaring with his one eye. “What?”

“Do you still have that spray sealant from Storinal?” Grinder asked.

“I see you remembered to wrap a towel around yourself this time.”

“Never mind that. Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Can I have it?”

“You have a middle-of-the-night plastic sealant emergency?”

“That’s right.”

Phanan sighed. “All right. Hold on.” He returned to the door a minute later with the spray bottle.

“Thanks, Ton. I owe you.”

“You owe me about an hour’s sleep.”

“I’ll stand a watch for you sometime.”

Grinder returned to his room and spent the next hour methodically plugging every gap, no matter how tiny, in his ceiling, walls, and floor—except for the air vent. He ran a power cable to the vent so that any creature touching it would be electrocuted. He heard no scratching in the meantime. Perhaps the creature had wandered off.

He switched off his lights.

This time there was no noise.

It took him another hour, but finally he dropped off to sleep.

Scritch, scritch, scritch.

For a moment he was too groggy to understand his own sense of alarm—too groggy, really, to remember his own name. Then he remembered both.

Scritch, scritch, scritch.

The noise was louder this time. Unmuffled. As if—

As if the creature was within his room.

Cold fear gripped him. While he was out getting the sealant from Ton Phanan, the Crystal Deceiver had slipped into his room.

Now it was trapped here, with him. It couldn’t escape if it wanted to.

And it wouldn’t want to. It would crawl on him and bite him and make a meal of his paralyzed body—

With a moan, he reached out to turn on his side-table lamp.

It clicked, but didn’t come on.

He peered around the room, but there wasn’t even the faint green glow from his terminal power key.

Power was out to his quarters. Had the creature chewed through power cables to get in at him? No—it would have been electrocuted.

Was it smart enough to—No. Couldn’t be.

Maybe it was a dream.

Scritch, scritch, scritch.

The creature was under his bed.

He shrieked and leaped up. He charged blindly across his quarters, slammed into the door before he realized he was upon it, and slapped the door switch.

Nothing.

He grabbed the door where it slid into the wall. He tugged at it, trying to accomplish with friction and finger pressure what it normally took servomotors to accomplish, and dragged it open—a fraction of an inch. Beyond was empty corridor.

Scritch, scritch, scritch. Behind him. Still under the bed? Or coming for him, tottering on its glassy legs, with jaws distended?

He got his fingers into the door gap and heaved, slamming the doorway fully open.

A glassy, chittering mass swung into his face from ahead and above.

He screamed and fell backward. He felt himself hit the hard floor of his quarters.

Then darkness claimed him.

26

“He suffered some sort of fit, I think. Tests may tell us more.”

It was Ton Phanan’s voice, and Grinder could see light through his closed eyelids. Cautiously, he opened them.

A ceiling, like the one in his quarters, but this was Night Caller’s sick bay. He turned his head to see Phanan, standing by the door, talking to Wedge and Face, who were just inside the door, and Kell and Janson, who were just outside. All looked concerned.

Kell reacted to Grinder’s motion and the others looked. “Ah,” said Phanan. “He’s awake. I won’t have to amputate.”

Grinder half rose in alarm. “Amputate what?”

“Well, it’s your head that seems to be malfunctioning.”

Grinder cautiously felt his face to make sure there was nothing remaining of the insect. “Don’t joke. I was attacked.”

Wedge asked, “By what?”

“A Storini Crystal Deceiver. It’s an insect. Something like a Glass Prowler, but a lot deadlier.”

The other pilots looked at one another dubiously. Grinder felt irritation rise within him. “You can look it up on the ship’s computer. And unless I killed the thing, it’s somewhere in the ship. Maybe behind the bulkheads.”

Phanan moved to the terminal and tapped his way through a series of menus. “I don’t find anything about a Crystal Deceiver.”

“It’s a link from the entry for the Glass Prowler.”

“I don’t find an entry for the Glass Prowler.”

Grinder stood unsteadily and stared over the doctor’s shoulder.

Phanan was right; there was no entry in the ship’s encyclopedia for any life-form from Storinal.

“I suggest,” Phanan said, “that it was a dream. Something stress-induced, perhaps. But I think I’d like to keep you under observation tonight.”

“I’m fine,” Grinder snapped.

“Do as he says,” Wedge said. “Grinder, your scream woke up half the ship. You cooperate with Phanan or I’ll have him certify you unfit to fly until you do.”

“Sir, that bug is a killer. It bites you and paralyzes you and you lie there while it eats you. If you don’t hunt it down and kill it right now, it’ll make Night Caller its own banquet hall.”

Wedge glanced at Phanan, who shook his head. “You have your orders,” Wedge said. “Get some sleep.” He gestured for the other pilots to accompany him, and left.

Janson followed, but Face lingered and shut the door.

“Face, I’ve got to make you believe me—”

“Sit.”

Grinder flopped down on his sick-bay cot. “Please—”

“Let me show you something.” From his jumpsuit pocket, Face pulled a crude assembly of small mechanical parts. Grinder recognized a standard speaker from New Republic–issue datapads, a tiny battery, trailing wires.

Face touched the bare ends of two wires together.

The speaker said, “Scritch, scritch, scritch.”

Grinder was suddenly standing. He didn’t remember rising, but now he was advancing on Face. “You—”

Phanan seized his shoulders, dragged him back down onto the cot. Grinder struggled and glared up at Phanan. “What the hell is going on?”

“Payback,” Face said. “Do you deny that you put that bug in my cockpit?”

“I—What? What bug? I don’t know—” Grinder saw the implacable expression Face wore and gave up the pretense. “All right. I did. So what?”

“So you also did all that other stuff. The dummy in Falynn’s closet. The leaping tubes and wires in Kell’s locker. Plenty of other tricks. All the while sneering at the idea of pranks.”

“I did not.”

“No one else could have done it without leaving a trace on the ship’s computer. You cracked passwords right and left to do it.”

Grinder set his jaw and didn’t answer.

Face shrugged. “So, payback. My way of saying I don’t appreciate it. My way of saying stop. Because this is about the lowest setting of payback I know.”

“How’d you do it?” Grinder asked.

“Which part?”

“All of it.”

Face finally grinned. “To start with, when that Glass Prowler crawled out from under my seat and onto me—”

“Right, why didn’t you react?”

“Well, I thought it was Phanan’s.”

Grinder turned to the doctor.

Phanan shrugged. “You remember when we were sneaking back out of the Scohar Xenohealth Institute? We passed by a pallet full of little boxes holding these things. The sheeting covering the pile was ripped, so I just took one of the boxes. I’ve always been intrigued by insects, ever since, as a boy, I learned they can make some girls jump. I kept the little thing in a cage in my room. Face, since he’s my wingman, comes in from time to time. He’s familiar with the thing.”

Face said, “Like I told you, I thought it was Phanan’s. I turned my comm transmissions way down and told him. We smuggled it back to his quarters so Wedge wouldn’t see. And we found his bug still in its cage, so we knew it was another prank. And how had the prankster gotten my cockpit open without leaving a trace? It was someone who knew the pass code … and after I cleared Cubber and Kell, that left only someone with the skills of a code-slicer.”

Grinder grimaced. “A case of being too perfect. What about the scratching noise?”

Face tapped the pocket where he’d put away the speaker. “Kell worked the little gadgets up. He was tired of the pranks, too. He put some in your room. He also got up into the ductwork and lowered a couple with comlink controls down into the gaps between bulkheads. We could have made it sound like the creature was crawling all around outside or inside your room if we’d wanted. Kell also built the sensor that told us when you switched your lights on and the little mechanism that swung down into your face when you came out of your room, and he killed the power to your quarters. Which he restored right after you screamed, by the way.

“The encyclopedia entry was something I did, just entering it with my comm center access. If you’d sliced into the entry records, you’d have seen those items were recent additions to the encyclopedia. I got the real data off the datapad that came with Phanan’s creature. Phanan did a medical scan on his insect for the graphic. We made up all the text on the Crystal Deceiver; there is no such thing.”

Grinder sighed. “Well, maybe that does make us even.” He glared at Phanan. “But that doesn’t mean you can drug me, knock me out. That goes over the line.”

The doctor smiled. It was a sinister expression. “I didn’t.”

“Who did?”

“No one. Or, in a sense, you did. Grinder—you fainted.”

“No.”

Phanan nodded. “Brave Wraith Squadron pilot fainted dead away. Now, can we consider your career as a prankster at an end … or shall we tell everyone how you faint when bugs come at you? That’ll be an interesting topic of discussion among Bothan females in the New Republic armed forces, I bet.”

“You—you—”

“You bet? You have a deal? Just what are you trying to say?”

Grinder slumped, defeated. “You have a deal.”

“Well, then. I imagine that when you wake up in the morning I’ll be able to certify you fit to fly.” The doctor rose and stretched. “In the meantime, I’m going to get some sleep in the hours we have remaining.”

“Mynock.”

“Stop muttering, Grinder. It’s bad for your mental health.” Grinning in a fashion Grinder found completely irritating, Phanan led Face from the sick bay and switched out the lights.

Scritch, scritch, scritch.

“Face! Come back here and pick up your little toy!”

It was the most elaborate deception they’d attempted to date.

Captain Hrakness was in the command seat of Night Caller’s bridge, but he was dressed in one of Darillian’s uniforms, his hair dyed to match Darillian’s. This was so that if one of the other ships in Admiral Trigit’s fleet pointed a visual sensor at Night Caller’s bridge, it would see something matching Darillian’s description—something matching the hologram the ship broadcast whenever in communication with the others.

Face was on station in the comm center, acting out Darillian’s part whenever communication was necessary. His broadcast was replayed on the bridge’s main monitor, and the increasingly irritable Captain Hrakness tried, whenever possible, to ape Face’s motions.

At ten minutes until departure from hyperspace, the pilots were in their cockpits, going through start-up checklists. Wedge, Falynn, Janson, and Atril were in the TIE fighters, with the rest in the X-wings.

They emerged from hyperspace a hundred light-years from the Morobe system, into a system with a white dwarf for a sun.

Night Caller was the last ship on station. Already in formation were the Imperial Star Destroyer Implacable, the Imperial escort frigate Provocateur, and the Corellian corvette Constrictor. Provocateur was stationed well ahead of the Star Destroyer; Constrictor was some distance to the port of and slightly behind Provocateur. Without waiting for confirmation from Admiral Trigit, Captain Hrakness headed to the mirroring position starboard and behind Provocateur.

Admiral Trigit’s hologram sprang into life before Face a minute later. “Captain Darillian! Your profile has changed since the last time we met face-to-face, so to speak.”

Face turned his head to display his profile. “I think it’s the same. Regal, yet unbearably handsome. Or perhaps you mean Night Caller’s profile?”

“That is what I meant. You’ve picked up a shuttle and made some other modifications, I see.”

Face turned forward again and gave the admiral a conspiratorial smile. “The shuttle we took from a pirate. And the outer escape pods on either side are actually my TIE fighters, Admiral. A notion of mine. Instead of taking a minute to deploy all four, it now takes me one second. If you like, I’ll have my mechanics dig up the modification specifications. I can transmit them to you and Constrictor.”

“Please do.”

“Speaking of modifications, have there been any made to our mission profile?”

“No. We can jump as soon as you’re in position.”

“Which will be in one and a half minutes. We’ll be awaiting your signal.”

Trigit disappeared.

The New Republic forces could have attacked Trigit’s fleet here, in this unnamed system … but since, in theory, only the ship’s captains knew where they were making rendezvous, that would have been a giveaway that one of them was a traitor. This would not matter if Trigit’s fleet were entirely wiped out or captured, but would have cost the Wraiths their false identity if one or more of the ships got away. By attacking in the Morobe system, they could blame all “treachery” on the “Rebels” should they need to.

Face’s comlink cracked. “Coming on station.” It was Hrakness.

He sighed. He wanted desperately to be in the cockpit of his X-wing, but he had to play out his role if Trigit communicated again. For once he regretted his theatrical skill.

Face saw elements of the comm board light up as Night Caller received a data transmission from Implacable. Moments later the corvette’s engine pitch changed. All four ships would be matching speeds and courses.

A minute later they were in hyperspace.

Five minutes from Implacable’s arrival in the Morobe system, Lieutenant Gara Petothel presented herself to the admiral—unusual, since protocol called for her to speak to him from her console in the crew pit below or to use the intercom. “We have a problem, sir.”

“Something we need to deal with before this assault?”

“If I’m right, this assault will destroy us.”

He blinked. “Make it fast.”

“I’ve been running the data from the Morrt Project. The data that told us that Talasea, in the Morobe system, was the probable site of the Folor relocation.”

“And?”

“Nobody had correlated the data of systems being profiled with the parasite units providing the data. Sir, eighty percent of the statistical hits pointing to Talasea come from the same twenty-two units. For this to happen, those units would have to be attached to ships that jumped back and forth between Talasea and neighboring systems. And when the units changed ships, they would have to have changed to ships doing exactly the same thing.”

Trigit kept his features still but felt cold run through him. “The Morrt Project has reached the end of its useful life span,” he said.

“I’m afraid so, sir.”

The admiral turned to Implacable’s commander. “Captain! Drop us out of hyperspace immediately.”

The captain, a dull-looking fellow from Coruscant whose appearance belied his reliability and intelligence, didn’t ask any stupid questions. He looked up, gauged the seriousness of the admiral’s expression, and nodded to his chief pilot.

A moment later the view in the forward window of hyperspace turned into the end-of-jump vista of stars stretching to infinity. Those stars snapped from lines into sharp, unblinking points, with Implacable still light-years from the Morobe system.

The captain cleared his throat. “What about our fleet, sir?”

“Have Communications prepare an alert. It should tell them that Talasea is a trap; their orders are to exit the system immediately and signal us when they’re sure they have eluded pursuit. Begin broadcasting that over the HoloNet now and continue for twenty minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

Trigit settled back into his seat. “Good work, Petothel. You’ve probably saved us a considerable pounding.”

The lieutenant gave him a cool smile and returned to her station.

He followed her with his gaze. He’d decided that she was very nearly the perfect woman. Intelligent, talented, and beautiful … and somewhat distant, the way he preferred things. Perhaps she’d be amenable to a liaison. If she was, he doubted she’d be the sort to become too attached, too intertwined in his life. An ideal package.

He’d think about it.

The other three ships of the fleet arrived from hyperspace within a second of one another. The planet of Talasea was close before them; they’d used its mass shadow, rather than a timer, to drag them out of hyperspace. Instantly, all three vessels launched their TIE fighters: Night Caller’s four from her former escape pod ports, Constrictor’s four from her bow hold, and Provocateur’s two dozen from her hangar bays.

Implacable failed to appear behind them.

Face saw the HoloNet indicator light up, but allowed the ship’s communications officer to handle initial reception; Face might foul up the process. A moment later Captain Hrakness’s voice came across the ship’s intercom. “Attention, all crew. Implacable has figured out the trap and held back. The other ships are turning to escape Talasea’s mass shadow. We’ll fire on them as we maneuver. All bow guns, prepare to fire on Provocateur’s engines and communications gear. Turret cannons, prepare to fire on Constrictor’s engines. We’ve got to hold them here for the Alliance forces. Do not, repeat, do not target until I give the command; we can’t have them bringing their shields up.” Face could feel the faintest lateral movement as the captain spoke.

He turned on the chamber’s main monitor and split it between a forward visual view and sensor view.

In the starfield before the corvette, he saw the enemy frigate begin to come into range of the arc of Night Caller’s bow guns. The sensor showed that all three ships were turning to port, preparing to come around in a 180-degree maneuver that would end with the corvettes still flanking the frigate.

Face swore. The corvette’s turret guns might cripple the Constrictor even at this range, but her forward paired turbolaser cannons couldn’t be counted on to crack the engines of an Imperial frigate. He hit the intercom button for the bridge. “Captain, this is Face. Recommend you emergency vent atmosphere from the bow hold and open the hold door as you bear. That’ll give you fourteen, maybe sixteen proton torps to fire at Provocateur on your first pass.”

“Thanks, Loran. Good thinking.”

Face headed out of the comm center at a full run, risking broken legs as he charged down the stairs. If he was fast enough, he could get into the hold, get into his cockpit before they vented the atmosphere …

But when he slapped the door control to the bow hold access hatch, it failed to open. The light above the door glowed red. The captain had already vented the hold atmosphere. Frustrated, Face slammed his hand into the door.

In the darkness, Kell waited. Before him, blackness turned into a thin vertical strip of stars; as he watched, it widened, and the frigate Provocateur drifted into position from the left, its stern toward them. That meant Night Caller was taking a hard maneuver to port. Beyond Provocateur was the other corvette, executing the same turn at the same rate.

“Stand by,” Kell said. Captain Hrakness had said all bow guns would go on his command, and he had to wait until all seven pilots in the bow hold had a clear field of fire.

Despite his best efforts, his breathing quickened, became harsh. It sounded like gasping in his ears.

The other day, the assault on Todirium hadn’t affected him like this. Of course, Todirium’s defenders were underpowered. Underprepared. These enemies, on the other hand, can shoot back.

Kell shook his head, trying to send that invidious mental voice away.

You’re about to stare down the cannons of an Imperial frigate. You’re going to be vaped. That’s the end of Kell Tainer.

“Shut up.”

“What’s that, Five?”

“Nothing, Nine.”

The frigate was almost centered in the exit from the hold. Kell grabbed his control yoke, gripped it hard to quell the shaking of his hand. “Get ready … get ready … Target and fire!” Kell activated his targeting computer, swung the brackets over the frigate’s stern, and saw them immediately go red; the computer whined with the tone of a good lock. He fired both torpedoes and saw them streak off toward the Provocateur.

A dozen torpedoes joined them in the near-instantaneous crossing to the frigate. The stern end of the capital ship lit up in a ball-shaped, glowing explosion.

Kell said, “Five away,” and shot out of Night Caller’s bow. Even as he emerged he saw Night Caller’s forward lasers lance in on the frigate’s engines, adding their formidable damage to that done by the torpedoes.

“Four away!”

The sensors showed Night Caller turning away from the frigate. As on the Blood Nest moon, for the X-wings to launch, the corvette had to keep its bow shields down … and to maneuver so neither enemy ship could get a clear shot at its bow.

“Six away!”

The center column of X-wings was clear. Kell switched over to lasers, linked them for quad firing, and brought up his visual sensors. Provocateur, until a moment ago in the process of gathering up its TIE fighters, was deploying them again, a fire drill of confusion. He fired as he raced in toward the frigate’s screen of starfighters, shooting as fast as his shaking hands would let him.

Wedge hovered near his TIE fighter’s landing port as if preparing to dock.

The instant the bow vista lit up with the emissions of proton torpedoes and laser cannons, he announced, “Grays, form up!” He goosed the engines and moved out in an arc that would carry them well around the Provocateur on a course toward the corvette Constrictor. As soon as his range meter read two klicks he began firing lasers.

Night Caller’s turret guns had already struck home, he saw. The corvette’s engines were awash in energy, their insulating sheaths glowing from absorbed energy; a brilliant ribbon of fire from the portmost topside engine was clear sign of a sheared fuel conduit. Night Caller continued fire against the other corvette’s stern. Wedge also directed his fire toward the engines, trusting Falynn to do the same, and said, “Gray Three, Gray Four, take the communications systems. You know where.”

Indeed they did. Different Corellian corvettes had set up their communications chambers at different points, but all had the majority of their comm and sensor hardware at the same position: starboard, in the central portion of the ship, deck two. Atril and Janson swept far to starboard, then angled back in and began firing continuously against the corvette’s far side.

Constrictor finally began returning fire. The stern gun and top turret opened up on Night Caller; the side guns sprayed fire against Wedge and the other TIE pilots.

Face was in the stairwell up to deck two when Night Caller was jarred by a powerful blow; it knocked him from his feet and he rolled across the bone-bruising steps down to the deck three landing. He made it painfully to his feet and hobbled up to deck two a moment later.

Lights in the corridor leading to the bridge flickered and smoke drifted through the corridor. Face limped forward. The blast door to the bridge was bowed in toward him. Paint had peeled and burned from its surface, yielding the smoke Face saw, and the metal of the door was glowing red from heat. The door made a hissing noise like a reptile preparing to strike.

He gulped and hit his comlink. “Captain Hrakness? Any bridge crew? Come in.”

There was no answer.

Kell tore past the Provocateur. His jittery laser fire had missed the first screen of TIE fighters, but his second set of torpedoes had detonated on the frigate’s shields. He grimaced; this was going to be a pounding match.

“Five, Seven.”

“I hear you, Seven.”

“We’ve lost the bridge.”

“What?”

“She took a direct hit from the frigate’s stern battery, Five. The bridge is gone.”

Kell swore and began to swing around for his next pass. Runt was now on his tail. “Was anyone still in the hold?”

“Face’s fighter. He wasn’t in it. I think Night Caller is drifting.” Indeed, the corvette seemed to be locked in the starboard turn that was supposed to bring its bow away from its enemies. In a minute, the maneuver would bring the bow toward the other two ships again.

Kell activated his comm unit and personal comlink simultaneously. “Night Caller, this is Wraith Five. Does anybody read me?”

Wedge and Falynn roared past the Constrictor’s bow, reversed, and fired almost before they looked.

The enemy corvette’s bow hold was opening and her bow shields were down to allow her TIE fighters to emerge. The Wraiths’ linked laser fire went straight down the throat of the enemy ship. As they dove, losing relative altitude rather than follow their shots in, they saw energy spill right back out of the hold at them, evidence that something had lit off in the hold—probably the ion engines of one of the TIE fighters preparing to launch.

The corvette’s belly turret swung after them, firing as they passed, but then the guns froze in position, their last blast being half the intensity of a standard barrage.

Wedge checked his sensors. This close, the corvette’s shields would have lit up the sensor board, but the only thing doing that was the increasing brightness from the corvette’s engines. He swung around to bring the corvette into his firing brackets and switched his comm unit to broad-spectrum Imperial frequencies. “Constrictor, this is the New Republic. You are helpless under our guns. I’ll give you ten seconds to surrender. If you don’t, I’m going to blow a hole through your bridge and fly through it for fun.”

It was only a moment before a strangled voice replied: “Constrictor to Rebel forces. We surrender. Please bring up rescue craft. Our engines are on fire. And please don’t fire on our escape pods.” Two of the escape craft ejected from the corvette’s center section and began a slow drift toward Talasea.

“Acknowledged, Constrictor.”

Janson’s voice cut in. “Wedge, Night Caller’s in trouble.”

At a dead run, Face worked his way down to deck four and to the combined security hold and auxiliary bridge situated just forward of the engines. The door opened to his voice but the chamber beyond was dark, unoccupied.

He slid into the command chair and hit his comlink. “Grinder! You still among the living?”

“I’m here.”

“I’m in the backup bridge. What do I do to bring it up?”

“Why does everyone think that I—”

“Grinder.”

“Type in command wormturns, W-O-R-M-T-U-R-N-S, then ID yourself by voice and issue the vocal password ‘Agamar Rules the Galaxy.’ ”

Face did as he was told and a moment later the auxiliary bridge sprang to life. He redirected all officers’ stations to his command console and immediately stopped the ship’s portward spin.

On the main sensor monitor, Constrictor was reading green—safe, pacified. Provocateur was still red. The board showed a variety of blue dots already in the fight and more onrushing from Talasea and her moons.

First things first. He activated the bow hold door and closed it, then brought bow shields up to full power. “Cubber.”

“Here.”

“Get a crew up to the deck two bridge door. The bridge is gone and the door is losing integrity. Weld it down or something before it blows out completely and takes half the crew with it.”

“We’re on it.”

As fast as he could process the information, Face flipped between the screens for each of the bridge positions he now commanded. I used to think bridge officer was such an easy post.

Provocateur was outbound at full speed, again gathering up the last of her TIE fighters, taking advantage of Night Caller’s momentary lack of responsiveness and the Wraiths’ inability to do her harm.

“Wraiths, form up,” Kell said. “We’re not getting through their shields alone. I want a torpedo barrage. I’ll transmit targeting data; have your torps follow it in. Everyone fire on my mark, except Seven and Nine—you fire exactly one second later.”

He counted off their acknowledgments until he was sure all were accounted for. Tyria and Piggy had finally emerged from the topside hold, and that gave them a total of seven X-wings, fourteen torpedoes, to fire in this barrage.

He finished his arc and swung into position at the head of the X-wing formation. Runt settled in beside him. “Night Caller, come in.”

“Night Caller here.”

“Face?”

“Never mind. What do you want?”

“Sensor data on Provocateur. Where are her shields weakest?”

“Uh, wait a second. Uh—”

“Face, hurry.” The frigate’s guns were beginning to converge on the X-wing formation. A graze from one of Provocateur’s stern laser cannons missed Kell’s X-wing but came close enough to blow through its bow shields, dropping them to zero power. Kell swore and redirected power from aft shields and acceleration to bring them back on-line and shore them up.

“If I’m reading this right, topside, just astern of the short-range communications array.”

Kell gained altitude relative to the frigate, saw the Wraiths following him smoothly through the maneuver, and dove toward the frigate’s topside. His targeting brackets went red as soon as they passed over the frigate, but he carefully positioned them over the antenna rig. “Wraiths, three, two, one—mark.”

He watched the reddish trails of ten proton torpedoes leap away from the X-wings and slam into the frigate’s topside. The next four torpedoes were away before the detonation and debris cloud began to clear; he saw their trails enter the expanding ball and disappear within. The ball continued to swell as the X-wings pulled up and arced away.

“Five, this is Eight. Sensors show shield failure and four hull hits. I—wait a second, something’s wrong, I’m reading two Provocateurs—” Dead silence for a moment. Then: “Five, Eight. The frigate has separated amidships. She’s in two pieces. Her threat index is zero. Do you read?”

“We read you, Eight, and thanks.” Kell tried to wipe away the sweat stinging his eyes, but his hand encountered the eye shield of his helmet. He banged the shield up and mopped at his eyes.

His hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

27

“Foolish of us,” General Crespin said, “to bring along Rogue Squadron, all those A-wings, Home One, and a pair of frigates when all it takes is Wraith Squadron and a battered corvette to deal with the enemy.”

They were in the inflatable dome that served the temporary Talasea camp as an officers’ mess, unwinding over beer and brandy that tasted something like ship’s fuel. The general’s words were sarcastic, but his tone was more regretful than anything.

Wedge said, “If Implacable had come through, we’d have been dead without those extra forces. As it is, we had the element of surprise—a couple of different ways—going for us. Even so, we lost a good, experienced bridge crew.”

Crespin nodded. “I didn’t mean to be facetious. I was just itching to give Trigit back some of what he gave us on Folor.”

“You may yet.” Wedge took another pull from his petrochemical-flavored brandy. “We hit their communications systems hard and fast. They never got off a reply to Trigit. As soon as we’re able, Night Caller is going back out … and we’ll tell Zsinj a story of survival against terrible odds. I’m going to do whatever it takes for us to sidle up next to Zsinj or Trigit and stick a vibroblade in his kidneys.”

The general smiled. “If you have any opportunity to set up a real engagement—”

“Yours and Rogue Squadron will be the first units I call on, sir.”

The general took a look around as though to make sure no one was listening. He leaned close. “By the way, Antilles, about your pilot, Face Loran …”

“Yes?”

“You’re about to receive some news pertaining to him. Now, I’ve had my problems with him, but I’ve also been keeping track of his progress. So, when you receive that news, keep in mind that I had nothing to do with it—one way or the other.”

“Very well.” Wedge gave the general a quizzical look, but the older man merely rose and departed.

Wedge took a look around. The table where Lieutenants Wes Janson and Hobbie Klivan had been swapping stories was empty. Wedge would track down the Rogues again later to catch up on their news. For now, it was time to check up on Night Caller’s progress. He headed out into Talasea’s fogmuted sunlight.

The New Republic encampment was a creeper-overgrown field surrounded by trees. The field was now dotted with inflatable domes and various forms of fighter craft and fighting vessels. All were dimmed by the near-permanent haze that shrouded the planet.

In the middle of the field were the two corvettes, Night Caller and Constrictor, both ships showing considerable damage.

Night Caller’s bridge had been cored, leaving behind a blackened hole with peeling edges. Work crews were hard at work welding armor plates and a single transparisteel sheet across the gap. Wedge had insisted that the repairs look sloppy, unsophisticated; they were supposed to be all his crew had been able to throw together in a few hours.

Constrictor’s bow hold doors were gone. In fact, the hold itself was gone, its hemispherical outer hull torn away by explosions from within; the bow now looked eerily like a skull whose lower jaw had been lost. The ship also had scoring damage along its sides.

Provocateur had been unrecoverable. Internal explosions and venting atmosphere had claimed the lives of any crewman surviving the torpedo attack. The frigate was a drifting tomb well before New Republic rescue forces could reach her.

“Commander Antilles.”

Wedge turned toward the source of that familiar, gravelly voice. “Admiral.” He saluted.

Admiral Ackbar, accompanied by a major, approached. He returned the salute. “My crews tell me you are almost ready for space. Are you sure you want to go back after Trigit so soon?”

“The more time he has to think, the greater the chance he’ll see through our disguise.”

“I’ll leave that decision to your initiative, then.” The Mon Calamari lowered his voice. “I did want to thank you for your kind words regarding my niece.”

“You’re very welcome, sir. I wish—” The extent to which Wedge wished stopped him short. I wish we could have saved her. I wish I could have found words to help your family hurt less. I wish a bad-smelling pocket of womp rats shaped like men hadn’t been there to endanger her. I wish every legacy of the Empire were wiped clean from the galaxy. He gave the admiral a regretful look. “I wish.”

“I understand.” Ackbar looked around, at the people moving between vehicles and vessels, at the areas where inflatable domes were already being brought down. “I, myself, wish I could find the pilot who went to such efforts to save her life. I would like to offer him my thanks.”

“I’ll make sure Flight Officer Tainer wanders across your path.”

Ackbar held out his hand to the major, who placed a large case upon it. This Ackbar handed to Wedge. “It has taken some time for the New Republic bureaucracy to catch up to Wraith Squadron’s exploits. Even this morning I had to modify the contents of this package. I thought it most appropriate for you to issue these items.”

Wedge opened the case and whistled at what he saw.

Wedge had the Wraiths and Lieutenant Atril Tabanne line up in Night Caller’s forward lounge. From their faces, it was evident that no one felt much like celebrating; some of them were somber, others looked more than ready to head spaceward and get back into their fighter cockpits.

“Your sins have caught up with you, Wraiths,” Wedge said. “And just as significantly, High Command has not managed to lose my reports on our mission progress, and appears actually to have read them. Flight Officer Tyria Sarkin.”

She straightened, became impassive.

“I have only a little to offer you, Sarkin. Home One has delivered us a pair of X-wings to bring us back to full operational capacity. And that, plus the fact that your behavior has in recent weeks been exemplary, means I’m restoring you to full operations and to your own snubfighter.”

She smiled. “That’s plenty to offer me, sir.”

Wedge took a step to the side. “Flight Officer Garik Loran.

Face looked startled, came to attention.

“In our tour of duty since being made operational, you have consistently shown fine piloting skills and an exceptional aptitude for leadership, both in planning and in the field. For this reason, it is my pleasure to convey to you your promotion to the rank of lieutenant in the New Republic’s Starfighter Command. Congratulations, Face.” Wedge handed Face his new rank insignia and saluted.

Face, looking surprised, returned the salute. “Thank you, sir.”

“Flight Officer Kell Tainer.”

Kell came to attention, looking uneasy.

“Likewise, you have shown fine piloting skills and a facility for battlefield tactics that benefit the group. In fact, we have noted on several occasions your pursuit of unusual strategies that cost you the opportunity for personal gain but kept your fellows, and those you are charged with protecting, alive. So I’m happy to convey to you also a promotion to the rank of lieutenant.” He handed Kell his rank insignia and saluted. “Congratulations, Kell.”

Kell returned the salute. “Thank you, sir.” Wedge was surprised to see that the pilot was as pale and stiff as he had ever been when confronting Wes Janson.

Wedge chose not to notice and took another step to the side. “Lieutenant Atril Tabanne.”

The sole surviving member of Night Caller’s officer corps came to attention.

“It is unusual for an officer of Starfighter Command to be able to offer commendation to an officer of Fleet Command—even rarer for one to want to, given the history of rivalry between our services.” That drew smiles from Atril and the pilots. “But our circumstances are exceptional ones. Your record, since joining the Navy, has been one of loyalty and service, and our only regret is that attrition is a part of the speed with which you receive this much-deserved promotion.” He handed Atril her new insignia of rank and saluted. “Congratulations, Captain Tabanne. On your new rank, and on command of Night Caller.”

She returned the salute and looked as though she wanted to say something, but words choked up in her.

“And finally, an award as well deserved as all these promotions. Lieutenant Tainer.”

Kell came to attention again. If anything, he looked more worried than before.

“Recently, you were placed in the unenviable position of attempting to save a pilot who had suffered catastrophic damage. I’m not certain that you’ve ever resigned yourself to the truth that her death does not constitute failure on your part. As a matter of fact, a review of the recordings of the incident by Starfighter Command confirms the fact that your effort demonstrated both unusual courage and enviable piloting skills—a lesser pilot would have crashed in such an attempt. Therefore, I am pleased to be able to present you with a first for Wraith Squadron: the Kalidor Crescent.”

The assembled pilots oohed and broke rank to applaud. The Crescent, always granted for bravery and piloting skill used in unison, was a mark of prestige throughout the armed forces.

Kell gulped a couple of times, did not lower his eyes to meet Wedge’s gaze, and grew even paler.

“Kell, lean down.”

Kell did so, and Wedge looped the ceremonial silk ribbon over his head, letting the award settle around his neck. The medal itself, showing the Kalidor bird of prey in inverted flight, its forward-curving wings bracketing a gleaming amber-hued gemstone, settled against his sternum as Kell straightened.

“Congratulations, Kell.” Wedge saluted.

Kell managed to throw his return salute. He still did not meet Wedge’s eyes, and his voice was hoarse. “Thank you, sir.”

Wedge stepped back and addressed them all. “Ladies, gentlemen, we return to space in an hour. I know that doesn’t leave much time for celebration, but pack in as much as you care to. Not too much for you, Captain Tabanne. We’ll see what sorts of decorative hardware the rest of you can earn when we’re standing on top of the ruined hulk of Admiral Trigit and Implacable.” He turned away and let their cheers follow him out of the lounge.

Janson fell in step beside him.

“Wes, what in the name of the Sith is wrong with Tainer?”

“I wish I knew.”

“It’s a citation for bravery. He’s just made up for the mistake his father made. The day I picked up the Crescent, I could have flown without thrusters and knocked out TIE Interceptors just by spitting at them. But he looked like he was going to throw up.”

“He still confuses me, too. I say we just kill him,” Janson deadpanned.

Wedge snorted.

·  ·  ·

Kell endured their well wishes and backslaps as long as he could, until a member of Night Caller’s replacement bridge crew rolled out a keg of lomin-ale and glass tankards. While the others were distracted by the prospect of alcohol, he drifted to the back of the gathering and then escaped to his quarters.

He sat shaking on his bed. When the knock came at his door, he ignored it.

The door chirped acceptance of Kell’s pass code and slid open. Tyria entered and closed it behind her.

“How’d you do that?” he asked.

“I got on the comlink and asked Grinder.”

“Damn him.”

She sat on the edge of the bed, her expression worried. “Kell, what’s wrong?”

He took a deep breath. “Look, you’ll be better off if you just forget about me—”

She leaned in close, almost menacingly, cutting off his words. “Do not continue that thought. Do not give me some line about how I’m better off without you. You do that, I’ll make you wish you’d never been born, and I still won’t leave, so you’ll have soaked up a lot of hurt for nothing.” She pinned him with her stare. “Do you think we stopped being friends when we became involved with each other?”

“No, but—”

“No, nothing. Kell, do you really want me to stop being your friend? Don’t give me an answer based on what you think is good for me. Give me the truth. Set Honesty to On.”

Kell rocked as though in the grip of a wrestler as big as he was. Finally he slumped, defeated. “Honesty to On. No, I don’t.”

Her expression softened. “Then tell me what just happened in there. You look as though Commander Antilles had called you the scum of the galaxy.”

“I am the scum of the galaxy. Because I accepted this, this—” He gestured at the medal, then pulled it off him and threw it across the room. “This lie.”

She looked at the medal where it lay, then turned back to him. “It’s for superior flying skills and bravery. What part is the lie?”

“Both.”

“You’re not a good pilot?”

“If I were that good, Jesmin would still be alive.”

“Oh, I wish I could just beat some brains into your head. If Commander Antilles was impressed with your flying that day, who are you to tell him he’s wrong?”

He looked away and didn’t answer.

“And you don’t think your action was a brave one? I mean, no false modesty here, Kell. You don’t see anything courageous in risking your life to save Jesmin’s? Going through what amounted to a series of midair collisions, risking a crash with every one, getting half your fighter’s systems shorted out, in trying to keep her alive?”

“Maybe. Maybe just that one day. But every other time …” He rubbed his eyes. “Tyria, I’m my father’s son. I’m scared to death all the time. And it’s getting worse, not better. One of these days we’ll be in an engagement, and I’ll lose all pretense at self-control and run off for the stars, and Janson or Commander Antilles will shoot me down, and that’ll be it. Or I’ll be dragged back for court-martial and I’ll have ruined our family name. The second name in two generations.”

She was silent. He hazarded a look. She was without expression, taking what he was saying as input, offering nothing back.

“When I was a kid,” he said, “I thought it was a lie. I thought maybe Dad was a spy or something. He received orders at the last minute and had to rush off and carry them out. No one understood, and they shot him down. Or he was drugged, hallucinating. Or it was someone else in that cockpit and my real father was out there somewhere, alive. Then, when I went through pilot training, I found a couple of survivors of the original Tierfon Yellow Aces who’d talk about it, not knowing I was his son.

“Some of them were scornful. Some of them were regretful. But they’d heard his comm traffic. It was him, he’d lost control, he’d left his honor behind in his thruster wash, and he died. And I’ve inherited whatever he had.” He shrugged. “I don’t want to get you or any of the Wraiths killed. I’m going to resign my commission.”

Tyria was a long time in answering. Finally she spoke, her voice low, serious. “Do you trust me, Kell?”

“Sure.”

“With your life?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“Will you trust me with something bigger than your life?”

“What?”

“I want you to trust me that you are wrong and I am right.”

“No.”

“Then you don’t rank my opinion as equal to your own. My insights. My intelligence.”

“Sure I do. But I know myself better than you do.”

She shook her head. “No, you don’t, and that’s the problem. You’ve told me twice now that for years you’ve based your life on ideas that were just plain wrong. That your father didn’t do what he did. That Lieutenant Janson was a cold-blooded killer. You were wrong about them. You’ve had the courage to admit it. You also had the courage to admit that you weren’t really in love with me before, that you were wrong about that, too.”

He didn’t answer.

“I want you to have the courage to trust my opinion more than your own. Kell, maybe it’s because part of you wants to get out of every fight, but you’re always thinking your way around the current situation, and that’s a good thing. Everyone who was on the Borleias will agree with me on that. And that’s why I know I’m safer with you flying with us.”

He didn’t answer.

“Kell, please.”

He sighed and closed his eyes, cutting off her loving, merciless stare. “All right.”

·  ·  ·

They dropped out of hyperspace in the system that was Admiral Trigit’s original rendezvous point. As they expected, Implacable was not there. From that system, they broadcast to Zsinj Captain Darillian’s report of the New Republic ambush, of Trigit’s “treachery” in abandoning them, of the set of brilliant maneuvers that brought them out of the ambush zone battered but alive.

Their next jump was to the Obinipor system, deeper in the Outer Rim but still in the path of the New Republic’s gradual expansion. Obinipor, the next stop on Night Caller’s circuit, was a free colony with an admirable mix of natural resources: metals suited to the fabrication of power generators, and active vulcanism providing the colonists with ready power of their own. Their orders were to take two TIE fighters and buzz the largest set of corporate headquarters, much as they had on the world of Viamarr.

As soon as they made their initial drop to normal space they queried Obinipor with a coded transmission on New Republic frequencies and soon received the compressed, encrypted data package from the Intelligence team already in place.

Before they had a chance to decompress and study it, Night Caller received a transmission on the HoloNet.

Face took his seat in the comm center and punched up onto the main monitor the new view of himself. With the modifications Grinder had made, it now showed him seated at a much less ostentatious command chair in the ship’s auxiliary bridge. He glanced at Wedge waiting in the doorway. “I’m betting Zsinj.”

Wedge shook his head. “It’s Trigit. Zsinj will have contacted the admiral for his side of the story before getting back in touch with us.”

“Ten credits?”

“You’re on.”

Face shrugged, then activated the link.

Admiral Trigit’s hologram swam into coherence.

Face half rose from his chair. “You! I cannot believe you have the sheer, poisonous gall to contact me after that, that betrayal—”

Trigit held up a hand. “Please, Captain. As soon as we realized it was a trap, we had to choose from among several tactics, none of which could please everyone.”

“Please everyone? Admiral, you salted us and hung us out to dry! If I hadn’t been in the comm center, receiving your rather redundant message telling us it was a trap, I’d be as dead as my bridge crew. My bridge is a burned hole. I’m thinking of turning it into a garden.” Face let his voice turn from sarcasm to bitterness. “I have to rely on relief officers, untrained officers, prematurely promoted officers—”

Trigit nodded throughout his tirade. “I know. I don’t contest your right to complaint. Tell me, though, what would you have done if you were in command of Implacable?”

“Follow my fleet in and try to lead them back out again as fast as possible.”

“You’re certain? You’re sure you’d have no other agendas from the warlord that might limit your choices?”

Face glared at him. “No, of course I’m not privy to any special instructions you received from him.”

“You may not trust me that I have such orders, but I can perhaps do something to convince you. Stand by for a new transmission.”

Face glanced down at the comm board, waiting for the telltale indicators that Trigit was sending data … but, instead, a second hologram materialized before him.

Warlord Zsinj.

Kell froze. If this was a separate transmission—and the fact that it resolved itself separately from Trigit’s, rather than the warlord’s image stepping out of blank space next to Trigit’s, suggested this was the case—then Night Caller’s computer was suddenly having to do almost double the work it was before. Two HoloNet links with different points of view meant two sets of Captain Darillian images being generated and transmitted. Neither the ship computer’s graphical processors nor Grinder’s hastily compiled code was set up for such a drain.

If the Captain Darillian image suddenly broke down, lost resolution …

Face gulped and leaned back very slowly. “My lord.”

Zsinj gave him a close look. “Zurel. It seems you’re upset with the admiral.”

Face kept his body absolutely rigid. Perhaps, if the system only had to update his face, it might keep pace with the demands being put on it. “I think any commander would be, if he’d just gone through what I did.”

The warlord smiled. “I think you’re correct. But you have much to be pleased about. I read your report. You did a fine job of getting your ship out of danger.”

“The Rebels probably did not appreciate my use of their own Ackbar Slash against them.” The desperation maneuver, developed first in modern times by Admiral Ackbar, involved sending one’s fleet between lines of opposing ships, causing them to fire upon one another if they missed their primary target. It made up a large part of the fiction of Night Caller’s escape from Talasea.

“Yes, but I appreciated it. Further—think about this. With Captain Joshi dead and Provocateur destroyed, whom do you suppose is next in line for command of Implacable?”

One of the comm boards went completely dark. System failure, or a shutdown by the comm officer in the auxiliary bridge? Face sweated and tried not to think about it.

Especially in light of the question Zsinj had just asked. Why was Trigit smiling instead of protesting the loss of his ship?

Zsinj must have promised him something better. Command of the Iron Fist, perhaps, as Zsinj’s personal captain? Face said, thoughtfully, “I actually hadn’t considered that before.”

“You’ve been busy. And you’re too busy now. Because I want you to join the admiral for one last mission. Then finish up your circuit and I’ll send you rendezvous instructions to rejoin me. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We have analyzed the data from the spy satellites you left behind,” Trigit said. “Do you know who’s been following you?”

“No.”

“Rogue Squadron.”

“Really.” Face smiled. “I take it this mission the warlord mentioned involves them?”

Trigit nodded. “We’re going to destroy them, Darillian. Annihilate them even more thoroughly than I destroyed Talon Squadron.”

Face heard a noise, a muffled grunt, from the hallway outside the comm center. Sithspit, was Donos out there? He didn’t dare look to find out. “I will gladly join you for such an operation.”

Trigit didn’t appear to have heard the noise from the hallway. “Good. I’ll rush to a position a few light-years from Obinipor. You just conclude your duties there … whatever they may be.”

Zsinj smiled.

“Then,” the admiral continued, “you’ll jump to join me, and we’ll reenter the system and position ourselves behind the planet’s largest moon. When Rogue Squadron comes in to perform their usual escapade, we’ll finish them.”

Face took a deep breath. “A good plan, sir … but it lacks a little, I think, in ambition.”

Trigit smiled. “What do you mean?”

“Between Implacable and Night Caller, between your TIE fighters and mine, we can destroy more than just one twelve-fighter squadron. If we had a bigger, better target, one for which the Rebels would bring in additional fighters, we could destroy several squadrons.”

Trigit shook his head. “Let’s keep things simple. The destruction of Rogue Squadron will have a much bigger effect than just the loss of twelve fighters and pilots. Their reputation, their legend, will also be destroyed.”

But Warlord Zsinj looked thoughtful. “What sort of target do you mean, Zurel?”

“The Rebels are fairly consistent in the matériel they allocate to various types of missions. If we wish to destroy three squadrons instead of one, we choose the type of site they’d use three squadrons to destroy.” Face resisted the urge to shrug, though he felt his shoulder muscles growing tight from his rigid posture. “A rich target. One they figure is worth some risk in assaulting because of what it would cost you.”

Trigit’s voice rose in protest. “Warlord, we don’t even know exactly how the Rogues are tracking Night Caller. We can’t be sure they will follow Darillian if we vary the corvette’s routine. We have no indication that they followed Night Caller to Morobe.” His holographic image was looking up and to the side, beyond Face rather than at Zsinj’s hologram, but Face guessed that on his bridge he was staring straight at the warlord’s image.

Zsinj waved his objection away. “We’ll make sure Night Caller doesn’t go through the effort to shake pursuit that she did when she joined you at Morobe. We’ll give the corvette enough time to be spotted by Rebel spies. And if even that fails, we’ll just try again until we succeed. No, Apwar, I like this plan.” He returned his attention to Face. “Zurel, stay in Obinipor system but forget about terrorizing Bonion. We’ll worry about inducing his cooperation later. I’ll let you know soon where our ambush is to take place.”

“Yes—”

Zsinj’s image winked out.

“—my lord.”

Trigit gave him a rueful look. “You’ll make a good Star Destroyer captain, Darillian. If your ambitions don’t get you killed first.”

Face smiled. “Yes—”

Trigit disappeared.

“—sir.”

Face turned.

Wedge stood in the doorway, giving him a piercing look. Behind him were a stone-faced Donos and a jubilant-looking Janson.

Face shrugged. “So I improvised.”

Wedge said, “That’s all right.” His voice became a deadon mockery of Trigit’s precise tones. “You’ll make a good lieutenant, Face. If your ambitions don’t get you killed first.”

“Yes—”

Wedge walked out.

“—sir.”

28

Zsinj said, “It will be Ession.”

Face nodded sagely as though he had any idea of what the warlord was talking about. Then his main monitor lit up and words appeared on it—one at a time, as fast as Night Caller’s new communications officer could speak them.

Ession, Lucaya system, fourth planet (Corporate Sector). Settled four thousand years ago. Major center for industrial manufacture. Nonaligned. Night Caller’s last visit was eighteen months ago. No record of Zsinj-related contacts at that time.

“The Rebels will see that site as a rich prize,” Face said. He carefully pitched his voice so that his words could be interpreted as sarcastic if, in fact, that world was not Zsinj’s intended ambush target.

“Which is why you must make sure the site does not suffer too much damage. It would be a costly loss.”

“Whom will I coordinate with on the ground?”

“Raffin, of course, for general details. But he’s too nervous for the real planning. Work with Paskalian, his security director. She’ll set up the site’s own defenses, throw another couple of dozen TIE fighters into the mix, and all without Raffin’s shrill complaints. I really think Raffin is due to retire and Paskalian is due to replace him.”

“Shall I see to that while I’m there?”

Zsinj laughed. “I meant an actual retirement, Zurel. He goes away to live in a cottage somewhere and writes his memoirs.”

“Sorry.”

“You’re just being your usual efficient self, I know.” Zsinj sobered. His hands moved outside the range of the sensor on him. “I’m transmitting your instructions. Do try to get along with Apwar.”

“I’m over my initial anger, my lord. And anxious to strike back at those who actually deserve it.”

“Good. Until later.” The warlord faded from view.

By the time Face made his way back to the auxiliary bridge, the comm officer had accessed New Republic records via the HoloNet and had the data they needed. Members of the bridge crew and Wraith pilots were clustered around him as the man spoke. “Pakkerd Light Transport,” he said. “Before the death of the Emperor, it was a division of Sienar Fleet Systems that built TIE fighters and Interceptors. After the Emperor died, Sienar sold it off and now it builds a ‘complete line of repulsorlift utility vehicles.’ ”

Face snorted. “Who wants to bet there are still assembly lines for fighters?”

He had no takers. Wedge said, “If Zsinj thinks the plant can throw a couple of squadrons of fighters at us, we ought to have a little help on the ground to keep it from happening. Like Lieutenant Page’s commandos.”

“I’ll second that,” Face said.

The comm officer continued. “Owner, Oan Pakkerd. Probably another false Zsinj identity. Chief officer, Vanter Raffin. Head of security, Hola Paskalian. I’d say that makes it a match.”

Wedge stepped away from the gathered officers. “Our orders from Zsinj are to break off our mission here on Obinipor and head with all due speed—but by an extremely simple and easy-to-follow route—to Ession. Can you handle that, Captain Tabanne?”

She gave him a look made up of amusement and scorn. “I hope that was a rhetorical question, Commander.”

“We have broadcast codes that will get us past Ession system’s security forces. Implacable will join us on Ession’s primary moon for the ambush.” Wedge smiled grimly. “Then we drop the heavy end of the hammer on them.”

Donos, who had been studying the screenful of data on Pakkerd Light Transport, straightened and turned toward Wedge. Face was startled by the deadly intensity in the pilot’s eyes. “This time he doesn’t get away,” Donos said. “Even if I have to fly my snubfighter up and down his corridors looking for him.”

Two days later Donos merely needed to look out a viewport to see the ship of the man he wanted to kill.

Night Caller rested on the surface of Ession’s largest satellite, a silvery rock covered in impact craters and dust.

Floating a few hundred meters directly above them, sustained by tireless repulsorlift engines, was the Imperial-class Star Destroyer Implacable.

Not far away, a communications relay dish was set up atop a mountain. This was a permanent array, a commercial dish designed to relay transmissions and sensors from the planet’s surface to ships behind the moon. But Kell had come up with an idea and Face, playing Captain Darillian, had convinced Admiral Trigit of its virtue—the idea that the dish was the key to their ability to hide from Rogue Squadron and yet remain instantly responsive.

“What we do,” Face had said, “is rig the dish to throw off emissions like a failing transponder. Emissions strong enough to conceal the standard engine emissions from our two ships. The planetary communications can issue routine apologies for the problem along with a promise that it will be repaired soon. We can be right here, ready to launch, and Rogue Squadron will be unaware of us—unless they come in close for a visual sensor look at us.”

“At which point we have them anyway,” Trigit had agreed. “A good plan.”

So they had implemented it by the simple expedient of telling the Pakkerd Light Transport head Vanter Raffin to make it so. A short negotiation and a bribe of a planetary government official later, the two ships had their electronic concealment in place.

Face slouched, bored, in his chair in the comm center. Every so often, Admiral Trigit wanted to chat and Face had to be here for it.

The comm officer’s voice came over the ship intercom. “The shuttle Yellow Rover has just announced its arrival to system ship control.”

Face straightened. Yellow Rover’s innocuous arrival was the signal that the New Republic attack was half an hour away.

Minutes later the comm officer announced a transmission from Implacable. Face brought up Trigit’s image.

The admiral looked irritable. “Darillian, are you sure you blazed a clear enough trail for Rogue Squadron to follow?”

Face nodded. “I couldn’t make it too obvious, Admiral. If I operated outside our normal procedures, their Intelligence people might note it and realize we were allowing them to follow. I simply made sure that Night Caller was within range of Obinipor’s planetary sensors, spent the maximum appropriate time on course before jumping, and made sure to jump through a couple of inhabited systems where our presence would be noted by Rebel spies. They know where we are.”

“A simple game of follow best.”

The phrase didn’t ring a bell with Face. He simply nodded. No hint showed up on his main monitor to help him.

The admiral frowned. “Follow best,” he repeated.

Face smiled. “I’m sorry, sir. I’m still being distracted by our battle plan. In fact, I was wondering, since my few TIE fighters don’t constitute a significant improvement to the strength of your squadrons, if they might have the honor of escorting Implacable once the battle starts.”

“Don’t change the subject, Darillian. You follow best.”

Finally words sprang up on the main monitor. Face glanced over them, tried to look relaxed. “You follow best by following from in front. Thus your prey never knows that he’s not actually the predator. Standard Imperial Intelligence doctrine.”

“You’re rather slow with a catchphrase that is practically a reflex among former Intel officers from Coruscant.”

Face began to sweat. He hoped Grinder’s visual translation program would not pass that particular imagery along. He made his tone a sad one. “Do you know how long it has been since I saw my home, sir?”

“Two years, seven months.” Trigit glanced off to the side. “And six days. Thank you, Lieutenant.” He returned his attention to Face. “Why is it that you don’t know something that should be second nature to Captain Zurel Darillian?”

“Because I’m not Captain Darillian,” Face said. At Trigit’s expression of surprise, he continued, “Not the Darillian who left home two years, seven months, and six days ago. Everything changed after I left the last time.” Data began spilling across his monitor, pertinent facts about the real Captain Darillian, as Night Caller’s bridge crew tried to keep Face ahead of Trigit’s prying questions. “I’m not the Darillian I was before the Lusankya fled Coruscant and my wife died in the disaster that followed. I’m certainly not the compressed set of data in your memory that you think is Captain Darillian.”

“You’re evading the question—”

Face continued as if he hadn’t heard the interruption. He glanced away from Trigit’s face, tried to inject even more gloom into his tone. “An irony to that, of course. That one woman I adored killed the other woman I adored. I’m sure someone finds it funny.”

“You’re—what did you say?”

Face returned his attention to Trigit. “When Ysanne Isard launched the Super Star Destroyer Lusankya from its berth on Coruscant, the building in which my wife and I made our home was among those destroyed.”

“I know that. It’s a matter of Imperial record. What was that you were saying about one woman you adored?”

Face could have cheered. He’d finally pulled Trigit off the tracks of his interrogation. “Oh, there’s no use hiding the truth anymore. It can no longer hurt anyone. I loved my wife, Admiral, but Ysanne Isard was a goddess to me.”

“You’re joking.”

“Did you ever meet her?”

“Of course. Several times.”

“I, too. And I was dumbstruck each time. By her intelligence, by her power, by the sense that she had destiny wrapped around her like a cloak. I would have given up everything for her—my family, my honor, my command, my name.” He shook his head ruefully. “It could never have been, of course. I was an insect under her eyes. I think everyone but the Emperor was. But I could dream.” He took a deep breath, straining the seams of his uniform, and let his eyes drift as his memory ranged back through time. “Just the smell of her. As clean as if she were as meticulous and uncompromising in hygiene as she was in every other area of her life. And a touch of perfume, something with spice but lacking any sweetness whatsoever—”

The admiral nodded, his expression fascinated. “Leather-wood. A scent few women can carry off.”

“That was it.” Face managed a sad smile. “And now both my loves are dead. One more reason to wipe the stain of the Rebellion from the galaxy. My reason, anyway.”

“I understand.” Trigit’s tone was solemn, soothing. “Yes, of course your TIE fighters may escort Implacable. I’ll leave you to your preparations, Captain.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Trigit’s hologram vanished. A moment later the comm system popped. The noise that came across it was not a voice, but the applause and cheering of many crewmen.

The smile that sprang to Face’s lips was not Darillian’s but his own. “Thank you, thank you. Performances every hour, on the hour. Imperial madmen a speciality.”

The communications officer announced, “Cargo carrier Red Feathers is passing through Ession’s outer security belt.”

Captain Atril Tabanne nodded. “That’s our contact. Patch it through to all stations and all fighters. And put it up on the monitor. I want to see what she is.”

A moment later the auxiliary bridge’s main monitor glowed with the image of a decrepit, ancient container ship approaching one of Ession’s warehousing space stations.

Atril hissed. “I know that ship.”

“That’s not Red Feathers,” Janson said. His tone was one of amazement. “That’s Blood Nest.”

Indeed, the container ship approaching Ession was the pathetic Super Transport Mark VI that had served the pirates of M2398-3 as a base.

“I can’t believe they got it flying,” Wedge said.

“You’d better get to your fighters,” Atril said. “But first, I’ve had a bad thought.”

“You shouldn’t do that,” Janson said.

“My current orders are to get clear as soon as the Wraiths are away. The sensor jamming from that relay dish should make it hard for Implacable to target me.”

Wedge nodded. “Correct.”

“What if they’re smart enough to blast the dish a few seconds into the engagement? We’ll be an easy target.”

“I hadn’t considered that.” Now Wedge did. “Well, there’s a maneuver you can perform that will also foul up both their sensors and visual targeting systems.” He described it to her.

Atril glanced at her chief pilot, who shook his head. “Sir,” she said, “I’m not confident we can do something that sophisticated. We haven’t had enough time with this class of ship.”

“Atril, you’re the most experienced pilot of Corellian craft aboard.”

“Excuse me, sir, but I’m not. There is one who’s a lot more experienced.”

Falynn, dressed in her TIE fighter piloting gear, waited beside the escape pod access hatch to her starfighter.

She heard booted feet coming at a run, expected to see Commander Antilles race past her to his own starfighter access —was surprised when the black-clad pilot turned out to be Atril Tabanne.

“Captain? What happened to the commander?”

Atril skidded to a halt beside her hatch and pulled her helmet on. “We traded. I’m Gray One now.”

“Another last-minute foul-up?”

“No, I think we averted one.” Atril disappeared into her hatch. Falynn followed suit.

Kell flipped switches, announced, “Five here. Four engines lit and showing green. Weapon systems at full power. All systems nominal.”

He heard similar reports from the pilots around him, nestled in the metal brackets in Night Caller’s bow hold. Grinder, Runt, Phanan, Donos, and Tyria reported go conditions. Face would join them for initial launch if feasible, or launch subsequently if not. Wedge, Falynn, Janson, and Piggy were supposed to be readying themselves in the four TIE fighters for their own surprise assault on the Star Destroyer.

His breathing was already accelerating, and they were still minutes from launch. He tried to calm himself.

He looked rightward and down. In the next row over, in the bottom rack, Tyria was going through her own start-up and checklist. She glanced his way, saw he was looking, blew him a kiss.

He forced a smile for her, turned away as he felt it turn shaky.

Lieutenant Gara Petothel looked up from her station in the crew pit and caught Admiral Trigit’s eye. “I think the old container ship is their delivery mechanism, sir.”

“Why is that?”

“It’s reporting structural damage from planetary gravity. Possible breakup. I say it loses structural integrity, breaks up … and when it blows, it rains X-wings.”

Trigit chuckled. “Not a bad tactic. Whether or not you’re right about this assault, I’ll have to remember that.”

She smiled and turned away.

“Communications, put up on our speaker any transmissions you receive to or from the container ship Red Feathers. Sensors, give us a visual lock on that cargo hauler.”

“Switching to speaker, sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

Almost immediately a voice came over the bridge’s main speaker: “Negative, Ession Control. We’re showing failure all along the keel. Fissures widening. Hold atmosphere venting. That’s making it worse. We can’t hold together until you get rescue craft up here.” The voice sounded pained.

“Red Feathers, do you anticipate debris entering our atmosphere?”

“I’m afraid that’s an affirmative, Ession. We’ll do what we can to limit it. We’re going to set our self-destruct for five minutes and eject in an escape pod.”

“What about the mass of your hull and containers—”

“Hull won’t be a problem. Our self-destruct will reduce it so everything will burn up on reentry. Containers, too. I’ve transmitted our manifest. We’re not exactly hauling hundred-ton durasteel ingots up here. You’re mostly going to get a rain of manure.”

“Planetary communications protocols don’t allow me to answer that statement properly, Red Feathers.”

Admiral Trigit looked down at his navigator. “Plot their course. Report where they will be at the end of their five-minute countdown.”

“Yes, sir.” The navigator worked at his control panel for a minute. “Grid seventeen thirteen.”

“I mean, in relation to the Pakkerd Light Transport plant.”

“Oh.” The navigator sounded abashed. “Laterally, within fifty kilometers, plus or minus another fifty. At an altitude of a few hundred klicks.”

The admiral settled back, satisfied. “Lieutenant Petothel, award yourself a three-day pass.”

“At once, sir.”

“All pilots to their fighters.”

·  ·  ·

On Night Caller’s main monitor, and piped to secondary monitors in all the fighters and common areas, the ancient container ship called Red Feathers tumbled helplessly, its hull already deforming, as it reached the outer edges of Ession’s atmosphere.

An escape pod ejected and drifted away from the planet.

A minute later the first explosion rocked the cargo ship’s surface. Portions of the hull gave way. As the ship continued to rotate, tiny rectangles, standardized cargo containers each capable of holding a hundred tons of raw goods, tumbled free. With them were smaller, more irregular shapes.

Wedge activated the ship’s intercom. “Rogue, Green, and Blue Squadrons are emerging.” Green Squadron was a unit of Y-wing bombers from General Salm on the world of Borleias; Blue Squadron was a unit of A-wings commanded by General Crespin. Between them and the X-wings of Rogue Squadron, this mission was being handled by a versatile set of attack craft. “Gray Flight, stand by for the command from Implacable. Wraith Squadron, are you ready?”

Kell’s voice: “R-ready, sir.”

“You all right, Lieutenant Tainer?”

“Fine, sir. Something caught in my throat.”

The containers that had been ejected first began to glow from friction with the atmosphere.

Wedge’s comm officer turned toward him. “Transmission from Implacable. ‘Launch all TIE fighters.’ ”

“Acknowledge.”

“Yes, sir.”

Wedge hit the intercom. “Launch Gray Flight.”

Atril, Falynn, and Janson launched smoothly. Piggy was a little slower, more tentative. He brought up the rear, acting as Janson’s wing, but seemed to handle his TIE fighter competently.

Above, Implacable’s belly hangar was disgorging flight after flight of TIE fighters, Interceptors, bombers. Atril led her group in a climb that carried them far to the side of the emerging streams of fighters, past the starboard leading edge of the Star Destroyer, and over the bow until they came to a halt fifty meters ahead of and above the point of Implacable’s prow. “Gray Flight on station,” she transmitted, and was very pleased to note that there was no quake in her voice.

She sat in a laser-armed foil can and waited for her chance to destroy one of the most powerful vessels ever created.

Wedge watched the sensors as seventy-two TIE fighters sped along the half-million klicks that separated Ession from her largest moon.

Meanwhile, more explosions, blasts that looked to Wedge’s eyes like carefully placed munitions rather than a self-destruct array, broke Red Feathers’s hull into huge sheets that began to tumble, burning, into the atmosphere. The entire cargo of containment units and smaller pieces of wreckage also descended.

All those pieces ignited as they fell, but only someone looking as closely as Wedge was, with equipment as sophisticated, would see that thirty-six of those pieces ignited only at one end—their sterns—and descended in a controlled fashion that matched the fall rate of the debris.

The TIE fighters were nearly to the original site of Red Feathers’s destruction. Wedge activated the comm system. “Face, mount up. Wraiths, prepare to execute the Loran Spit-ball.” He stood and moved to the chief pilot’s seat; the officer yielded it to him and moved to the secondary weapons console. Wedge asked him, “Ready for tractor duty?”

The young man cracked his knuckles and grinned. “It’ll be the biggest thing I’ve ever tried to tractor in.”

Face galloped down the narrow metal stairs into the bow hold and down to floor level. The other pilots, already sealed in, stared at him from their X-wing cockpits.

His fighter’s canopy was already open, but mounted as it was in the holding brackets, it couldn’t open all the way. He bounded up the ladder someone had left for him, squeezed into the cockpit like a snake seeking safety, and twisted until he was in position to close the canopy and start the engines. “Wraith Eight lighting up. We have four good starts.” Outside, Cubber emerged from the shadow of Runt’s wing, grabbed up the ladder, saluted, and ran to the hold exit.

Wedge’s voice came back immediately. “Preparing bow hold for departure.” The lights went out; only a glow from the open doorway out of the hold lit the edges of the X-wings. As soon as it shut behind Cubber, the hold went dark.

Face’s canopy suddenly creaked as air pressure changed outside it.

“Wraiths, this is Five. Remember, do not activate targeting computers until ordered. Use my targeting data for torp launch.”

Face silently ran through his checklist as fast as each item came up in the green.

“Wraiths, this is Leader. Wishing you good luck. Be strong in the Force. Even you, Wraith Ten. Thirty seconds to Loran Spitball … Twenty-five … Twenty … Fifteen …”

A thin vertical line of light appeared before the Wraiths and widened into a narrow view of the lunar vista. Face felt a slight sense of motion as that view swung upward. Within moments, he could see the world of Ession a half-million klicks away, then the stern of the Implacable above them. The view broadened as the bow hold continued to open. “Ten … Five …”

“Admiral, Night Caller is maneuvering. Bow elevating. It looks like she’s preparing to head toward Ession.”

“Damned glory hound. Instruct them to stay on station. Transmit a routine query about their intentions.”

“Yes, sir.”

·  ·  ·

“Transmit ‘Talon Strike,’ ” Wedge told the comm officer. He hit the intercom again precisely on cue. “Zero.”

Then he held his breath.

Atril heard “Talon Strike” and responded.

She inverted her TIE fighter, rolling over backward as though she were in a dogfighting loop, but moving not one meter. A moment later the Implacable was before her, above her, upside down.

She brought up her targeting sensor, zoomed it in on the Implacable’s bridge a klick and a half away, and fired.

Kell activated his targeting computer, bracketed Implacable’s hull halfway between her solar ionization reactor and her stern. He shouted, “Fire fire fire!” and triggered his proton torpedoes.

The sensors officer in the crew pit waved to get the admiral’s attention. “Sir, we have multiple weapons locks below—”

Another shouted, “Admiral, we have laser painting on our bridge—”

Admiral Trigit shouted down to them, “All shields on full!”

The weapons officer reached for his shielding controls.

The main bow viewport made a noise as though a rancor’s fist had hit it. It darkened to near-complete opacity as its phototropic shielding held the first laser blast at bay. A split second later a second blast hit it.

The viewport blew in, raining shards of transparisteel among them, shards that reversed direction and immediately fled into space as the bridge atmosphere vented over Ession’s moon.

29

The air screamed from the bridge, flooding into the vacuum. An alarm klaxon sounded, muted by the roar of the wind.

Admiral Trigit turned and tried to force himself against the wind toward the security foyer due aft of the bridge. He saw one of the foyer’s stormtroopers, buffeted by the flow of air, stagger forward and fall headlong into the crew pit.

Ahead, the blast doors separating bridge from security foyer began to close. Trigit gave up all pretense at dignity and dropped flat, elbow crawling with the speed of a much younger man. He scrambled into the foyer moments ahead of the door closing and was helped up by a stormtrooper.

He looked around. The foyer’s communications crew was mostly intact, though wild-eyed and windblown. The turbolift doors opened and Gara Petothel and a few other officers who had been stationed in the crew pit emerged, similarly rattled.

Trigit pointed at the chief communications officer. “Get the auxiliary bridge to transfer bridge functions to the consoles here.” The deck shuddered faintly under his feet. “Are our shields up?”

“Checking.” The officer brought up a diagnostics readout. He winced. “Sir, they took out the shield generator domes when they hit the bridge.”

Trigit hissed in vexation. “Take your positions. We’re going to spend some time trading body blows.”

“Five away!”

“Four’s away!”

“Six are on your tail!”

Wedge listened to the Wraiths’ launch announcements, silently begging them to get clear faster. He continued to raise the bow of Night Caller until the ship was pointed straight upward. He felt a shudder in the keel as the ship’s repulsors were called upon to hold a position they were not designed to assume; only the moon’s four-tenths of a standard gravity permitted the maneuver at all.

“Wraith Nine away.”

“Ten is clear.”

He triggered a switch on the console’s underside. Up swung a piloting yoke, a lightweight version of the sort of control found in fighters. Night Caller was not supposed to go through the sorts of precise, intricate maneuvers that would normally call for such a control, but Corellian engineers knew it happened sometimes. He powered up the yoke. “Ready on tractors?”

“Ready.”

“On zero. Three, two, one, zero!” He hit Night Caller’s thrusters.

The corvette jerked and her engines moaned. She rose a few meters more above the moon’s surface—then hovered, thrusters blasting away, tethered to the moon by her own tractor beam.

The thrust emission kicked lunar dust and stones up in a billowing cloud all around the corvette. In moments, Wedge lost sight of the Star Destroyer above them. But it was still on sensors, distorted but not completely screened by the distant dish emissions. “Bow guns, fire at will,” he said.

“Narra is launching.” Cubber, in the shuttle, was under orders to hang well away from the conflict but offer help to pilots if they went extravehicular.

“Wraith Seven gone, and I’m coughing up dust!”

“Wraith Eight launching. Eight clear. Bridge, the hangar is empty.”

Gray One and Gray Two fired continuously as they raced back toward the command pylon by the Star Destroyer’s stern. Atril saw the communications tower disintegrate under their sustained fire.

She shifted her aim to the innocuous hull plating that protected the auxiliary power for the ship’s computers. She doubted the TIE fighter’s lasers could penetrate the armor, but perhaps, if she and Falynn were just accurate enough, perhaps …

Face rose toward the huge hole in Implacable’s underside. Blue energy emissions crackled across the ruined metal surfaces within and made Face’s comm unit pop. “Looks like a good landing zone for some more torps, Seven.”

“Take it, Eight. I’m your wing.”

Face fired. His torpedoes and Phanan’s flashed instantly into the gradually growing abscess in Implacable’s belly. Their detonation forced its way back out as a glowing ball of energy and debris.

Ever more debris, raining down on the lunar surface. Wraith Seven and Wraith Eight vectored away from the cloud of destructiveness, sideslipping to avoid return fire from the capital ship’s guns.

“Recall all TIE squadrons,” Trigit said.

His starfighter coordinator was dead, locked in with the vacuum in the bridge. Gara moved to an unoccupied console and issued the order.

Trigit’s officers were too well trained to protest that the command left the TIE fighter manufacturing facility on the planet’s surface open to the Rebel assault. Some knew that the plant would have a few TIE fighters on hand to reduce the assault’s effectiveness.

But the plant only mattered to Trigit in the long term. For now, he had to keep Implacable in one piece. And that meant throwing as many resources at the treacherous Captain Darillian as he could.

If it was Darillian. Trigit cursed silently. He’d allowed himself to be convinced by that man’s persuasive knowledge of Ysanne Isard. He should have followed his original instincts.

“Sir, maneuvers?” That was from the man who’d replaced the slain chief pilot.

Trigit gave him a frosty little smile. “Do you see a need for it? When our shields are equally down on all facings and every other craft on the battlefield is faster and more maneuverable than we are?”

“Uh, no, sir.”

The admiral turned to the main weapons board. “Weapons, is Night Caller destroyed?”

“No, sir. We’re suffering sensor malfunction.”

“Target her visually, you idiot! We’re close enough.”

“There’s a problem. We can’t see her.”

“All right, Lieutenant, we’re going to try some lateral drift.” Wedge saw the lieutenant gulp and nod.

He eased the yoke sideways, just a touch. Night Caller jerked as she strained in a new direction against the tractor, then jumped as the officer released it and immediately reestablished it farther to port. Wedge boosted the repulsors to compensate for the maneuver’s clumsiness, but the corvette slid to port, kicking up an entirely new cloud of dust and debris as she did so.

“Think we can do that a little more smoothly next time?”

“Yes, sir. This time, I’ll lay down a second beam, minimum power, and then transfer power at a smooth rate from one to the other.”

“Good.” He turned to the weapons officer. “Transfer control of one of the bow guns to my station, Lieutenant. I’m not here just to drive.”

The weapons officer grinned. A moment later the thumb trigger on Wedge’s yoke lit up.

Kell and Runt cleared the Implacable’s bow, spiraling and juking to throw off the aim of the vessel’s gunners, and raced back toward the stern, a duplicate of the attack run of Gray One and Gray Two. In fact, those two TIE fighters were just vectoring off from a second strafing run; the damage they’d done to the ship’s hull below the bridge was evident.

“That’s our target, Six. Stay evasive until we reach half a klick, then fire and vector away.”

“We’re ready, Five.”

They stayed close to the Implacable’s hull, making it all but impossible for any gunnery emplacement to have them in sight for more than a split second.

It was tricky flying. Implacable’s hull rose in steep angles like the sides of a ziggurat. The instant they cleared the final rise before the command pylon, Kell aimed and fired. His proton torpedoes hit just as Runt fired; the two X-wings vectored away before they could assess the damage they’d done.

“Wraith Five, Six, this is Gray Two. We’re going in for another run. Looks like you two penetrated.”

“Finish the job up for us, would you?”

“Oh, sure. Afterward, can we do your laundry, too?”

Wedge waited until Donos and Tyria finished their pass before firing.

That first proton torpedo barrage from Night Caller’s bow hold, the maneuver they’d nicknamed the Loran Spit-ball, had targeted the heavy durasteel hull protecting the Star Destroyer’s huge array of power cells. Fourteen proton torpedoes had slammed into the unshielded hull, chewing it to pieces but not destroying it completely. Subsequent runs had widened individual holes.

Wedge fired, pouring a linked turbolaser cannon’s destructiveness against the Implacable’s hull.

He couldn’t see what sort of damage he’d done; he was nearly as blind, visually and by sensor, as the Star Destroyer. But his sensors could pick out the larger craft’s silhouette and give him accurate aiming against specific points on the underside.

The dust cloud immediately to starboard of Night Caller lit up, became a brilliant column of whiteness as return fire from the Star Destroyer superheated and atomized Wedge’s protective cloud. He resisted the urge to flinch. “Cease firing,” he said. The larger ship’s gunners were doubtless aiming at the source of the turbolaser barrages. “Lieutenant, we’re going backward, relative ascent. We’ll keep movement constant but unpredictable—and keep up our random firing. No constant fire. Understood?”

He got confirmations from the bridge officers and set Night Caller in motion again. The corvette’s nose tipped backward, threatening a fall, until he brought the repulsorlifts up to compensate; then they were drifting backward.

Much smoother. The officer on the tractor beam was starting to get it.

“Leader, Four. That last shot hit just ahead of the largest hole in the hull. If you can drop back a few meters astern and to starboard, you’ll pop right into the hole.”

“Four, you can’t just hover out there and do my spotting for me.”

“I’m not hovering, sir. I’m dancing. Besides, these guys can’t hit the side of a bantha. Whoa! Close one.”

Wedge sighed. Grinder was trying to get himself killed. On the other hand, accurate damage to the Star Destroyer’s fuel cells meant more than any damage Grinder’s X-wing was likely to inflict now. “Sensors, plot my shots against a holo of the Implacable’s silhouette. We need that to adjust for Grinder’s directions.” He positioned his thumb over the firing button. “Resuming fire.”

·  ·  ·

“We’re getting reports from the manufacturing plant,” Gara said.

“Wait,” Trigit said. “Estimated time of arrival on our TIE fighters?”

“One minute.”

“All right. Go ahead.”

“The Pakkerd TIE fighters never made it off the ground.”

“What?”

“The Rebels apparently had commando forces on the ground. The launch tubes were destroyed. They have two squads of TIE fighters sitting around uselessly in the hangars … and a squadron of Rebel Y-wing bombers blowing the whole facility to pieces. The other two squadrons are pursuing our TIEs back here.”

Trigit hissed in vexation. “This is not good. Zsinj will be furious. Lieutenant, this time tomorrow, Implacable may be running as an independent instead of as part of the warlord’s fleet.”

“That’s actually a fine alternative, compared to some.”

“True.”

“Five, Six. We have incoming fighters.”

Kell glanced at his sensors … and froze.

Red dots were approaching from the direction of Ession. Countless dots.

“Right, Six. Let’s, uh …”

His back locked up in a painful knot. He tried to maneuver, to aim toward the incoming TIE fighters, but his flight stick resisted him, jerking uncontrollably.

“Five, what?”

“Let’s get them …” Kell strained against the flight stick, but it would not cooperate, would not bring his X-wing’s nose around toward the attackers.

He glanced at his sensor screen again. There had to be a thousand of them coming.

“Waiting for your turn, Five.”

“I’m experiencing a control malfunction, Six. Give me a visual check, would you?”

“You’ve got some new debris scarring. We don’t see anything wrong. What do your diagnostics say?”

“I don’t know.”

“Five?”

“Let’s get them, Six.” Kell’s X-wing continued on its course out of the line of fire.

Atril felt the blow, saw the lunar landscape and the starfield above begin spinning, saw her diagnostics board light up in the red. “Gray Two, this is One. I’m hit.” Sparks shot up from her control board, defying her to do anything but hold on to her control yoke and pray.

“One, your starboard wing is gone, repeat, completely gone. Punch out!”

“No ejection seat, Two.” Atril felt a deep sense of regret—compounded by sudden nausea. Her inertial compensator must have failed, leaving her at the mercy of her ruined fighter’s spinning motion. “Get clear.”

“Leader, Four. Traverse due astern five meters.”

Grinder snap-rolled and dove, anticipating the fire from a turbolaser battery that seemed to be tracking him, then rose and rolled up on his starboard wing to watch as a new column of deadly light shot up from the billowing dust cloud beneath Implacable. This beam fired straight into the hole in the capital ship’s keel, filling it with light. Glowing debris, tons of it, began pouring from the hole. “Right there! Fix on that spot and keep hitting it.”

Kell ignored Runt’s persistent, annoying inquiries and continued to wrestle with his stick.

Finally it cooperated. He regained control, saw open starfield in front of him, and relaxed.

His sensor monitor showed those millions of red dots closing on the position of Implacable and Night Caller. Behind him. Increasingly behind him as he headed toward open space.

His breathing began to slow. That was better. Always bad to be in a starfighter when the controls failed. He was lucky he’d survived it so many times.

“Leader, Narra has tractored Gray One,” Janson reported.

“Good to hear, Gray Three. Gray Two, your usual wingman is underneath Implacable’s keel. He could use some help.”

“I’m already there, sir. Sir, I see an opportunity to do some real harm to Implacable. Request permission to enter through the hole we’ve made in her keel.”

“Gray Two, negative, repeat, negative. Too much loose material in there, and we have Implacable’s TIE fighters returning. Set up for them.”

“There’s not that much material. You’ve slagged so much of it. I think you’re hitting internal bulkheads now, though. If I can get in there, I can direct fire laterally, hit machinery at an angle you can’t match.”

“That’s still a negative, Gray Two.”

“Leader, I’m not reading you. My comm unit—” Crackling and buzzing followed.

Wedge made a noise of exasperation. She was rubbing her gloves together over the mike, just as he’d done a dozen times during his career. “Wraith Four, can you prevent her?”

Wraith Four responded with crackling and buzzing.

Kell’s R2 unit shrieked as his sensor display lit up with a new threat: a torpedo lock on his stern.

Kell read the information, puzzled. “Wraith Six, is that you?”

“We are.”

“Are you going to shoot me?”

“No, Five. We’re just trying to get your attention. To get the attention of Kell. Not of the bad mind.” Runt’s voice was slow and sad, even across comm distortion.

“What do you want?”

“We just wanted you to know we’re leaving you. We’re returning to the fight.”

“Don’t do that. It’s nasty back there.”

“Good-bye, Kell.” Wraith Six vectored away, looping around to head back toward the Implacable.

Kell felt a keen sense of loss at his friend’s departure.

Well, at least Runt hadn’t vaped him.

Of course, somebody would be along soon to do that.

Probably Janson.

Janson was in a TIE fighter. He could catch up to Kell’s X-wing. Kell checked his sensor board and saw no sign that any craft was pursuing him. With his lead, he could be in hyperspace before anyone caught up to him. He breathed a sigh of relief.

He was safe for now. Pursuit would come some other day.

Maybe it would be Face. Or Phanan. Or Tyria—

The shock of that idea hit him like a snap-kick to the chest. What if Tyria had to come shoot him down?

What would it do to her, knowing she had sent her own lover to oblivion? She had lost everyone she loved on Toprawa and would now lose him, too. It would be Kell’s own fault, Kell’s signature on the scars she would carry—

As though he were rising to the surface after a deep dive, his mind came free of the thoughts in which it had been submerged. Tyria. He was klicks away from her and the distance was growing every second. TIE fighters were now reaching the fight.

He looped around and put all his vehicle’s discretionary energy toward acceleration.

Falynn rose smoothly toward the largest hole the Wraiths’ series of attacks had made in Implacable’s keel. It was broad enough to accommodate her TIE fighter, even broad enough to allow the passage of Grinder’s X-wing behind her.

Falling debris bounced off her bow viewport. Some of it came at her from an angle, clattering off her solar wing arrays.

She eased through the gap into the darkness beyond. Above would be the giant array of power cells that enabled Implacable to move. Without them, the mighty Star Destroyer would be a gigantic mass of worthless junk.

No one, so far as she knew, had ever done this. Flown into an enemy Star Destroyer and reamed it out from the inside. She would be the first. Number one, for all time.

Carefully, she rotated so that she was pointing to the side and upward.

She fired.

Seventy-two TIEs—four squadrons of fighters, one of Interceptors, and one of bombers—swept into the engagement zone, firing as they came.

Face looped and dove, trying to keep clear of the incoming fire from both the cloud of TIEs and the still-mighty Star Destroyer. He rolled out a few hundred meters below and arced up again, got an immediate green flash on his targeting brackets, and fired. His target, a fast-moving Interceptor, took the blast as a graze across its top viewport and kept coming, still in control. He saw Phanan’s lasers pass above him, hitting the next Interceptor at the juncture of its fuselage and its wing pylon, separating them. The squint rolled, out of control, and began its dive toward the moon’s surface. “Nice shooting, Seven.”

Janson and Piggy roared down on the nearest TIE squadron, looping in from behind and opening fire before the squad had a chance to break and engage individual targets.

Janson’s first shot entered his target’s port ion engine, vaping the eyeball in a spectacular explosion. Piggy’s first blast missed his target below, but he continued to fire, tracking up and left, until a burst hit the vehicle’s port wing. The TIE spun out of control and Piggy’s next shot hulled its cockpit.

Janson heard confused chatter on the Imperial comm channel. “Let’s go right down the middle, Twelve,” he said, and accelerated until he was in the midst of the breaking squadron formation. The Ackbar Slash, starfighter style. Let them fire now, he thought.

They did.

Donos gritted his teeth and abandoned his attack run on Implacable. On the murderer of Talon Squadron. He veered toward the oncoming TIEs. A full squadron of eyeballs was coming in at him and Tyria. “Ten, we are in trouble.”

Tyria was firing already. She didn’t answer.

Suddenly there were new blue dots among the red on the sensor board, friendlies overtaking the TIE fighters from the rear. Wedge said, “Blue Squadron, is that you?”

“Good to hear you’re among the living, Wraith Leader.” These were clipped, precise tones, the voice of General Crespin. “We thought we’d show you the virtues of A-wing speed.”

“For once I don’t mind. But I’m transmitting you our sensor profiles. Four, correction, three TIE fighters are our people. Fire only when you confirm they’re red.”

“Acknowledged.”

Wedge saw the communications officer jump to the task of transmitting the proper blue and red designations to the incoming force. Wedge concentrated on sending a different kind of message, a series of turbolaser blasts against Implacable’s weapon batteries.

The hair stood up on his head and arms and all monitors flickered as an ion beam struck within forty meters of Night Caller’s position.

Another near miss. Another charge against the credcard where he banked his luck.

·  ·  ·

The A-wings flashed through the screen of TIE fighters, shooting continuously as they came, snap-shots not a detriment in the target-rich field of battle. Kell saw them both on screen and through his canopy as he approached.

He got laser lock at maximum range on an Interceptor, fired his quad-linked lasers, saw his shot carve away the upper half of a solar wing. The Interceptor, damaged but still in control, arced away from him.

“Who’s that? Five? Is that you?”

“That’s right, Eight. How’re you doing?”

“It’s unpleasant as a Hutt’s butt in here! Where were you?”

“It’s my sister’s birthday. I had to take her a present. Hold tight.” Kell aimed at the thickest concentration of TIEs and dove in, firing as fast as his lasers would cycle.

30

“Admiral, we’re going to lose Implacable.”

Trigit fixed Gara with a cold stare. “With the TIE fighters now chewing the attackers to pieces? I don’t believe it.”

“Something is in the power cell section. Methodically destroying every cell. We’ve already lost computer backup power. In ten minutes, maybe less, we’re going to lose all main power, and that’s the end of Implacable, even if every one of those Rebel pilots dies.”

He brushed past her and looked at the damage report.

She was right.

He felt faint for a moment. All these years of loyal service, the skill he’d shown Ysanne Isard and then the warlord, were suddenly worth precisely nothing. Destiny was balancing accounts and he was coming up short. He was about to lose his ship. His true love.

“Do we surrender, sir?”

Still dizzied by his sense of loss, he shook his head. “Don’t be ridiculous. We’ve lost … but we’re not going to give those Rebel scum another operational Star Destroyer they can repair and use for their own purposes. Implacable will take as many of them with her as she can.”

“Sir … that will be more than thirty-five thousand people dead.”

“And how many dead can we count on if the Rebels repair this ship and turn her guns on the Empire? Really, Lieutenant. Yes, we preserve the lives of those who depend on us … but only until their continued existence threatens even more lives.”

Her response was a stony silence.

He leaned in close. His voice dropped. “But for those who are most necessary to me, there are ways to survive. Tell me, can you fly an Interceptor?”

Wary, she shook her head. “I always wanted to go through pilot training. I never had an opportunity. They put me in intrusions instead.”

“Pity. I have my personal Interceptor standing by. It is equipped with a hyperdrive, as are its two escort Interceptors. I was going to offer one of them to you. Instead, I must recommend you make your way to the launch bay and take out a shuttle. At least you will survive that way.”

“Thank you for thinking of me. But, sir … the Rebels don’t recognize Warlord Zsinj or you as a legitimate government. They won’t treat me as an Intelligence operative and trade me back … they’ll try me as a traitor and execute me.” She looked regretful. “I won’t let them have that satisfaction. I’ll stay here, sir.”

“You’re a brave woman, Lieutenant.” Unwilling to show her the sense of loss he felt, Trigit turned from her. “Attention! I’m moving to the auxiliary bridge to complete our victory there. Don’t inform the officers there: I want to see how they’re doing as I walk in.” His officers nodded.

He gave Gara Petothel one last solemn look, a nod of respect from one officer to another, and then he entered the turbolift.

Kell twisted, dove, sideslipped, all to avoid the mass of TIE fighters and Interceptors in his path. He fired as he came on, paying no attention to sensor readings of his hits or misses—there was no time for anything but firing and dodging.

Suddenly the next vehicle in his sights was an A-wing. Kell rolled into a loop so hard that it exceeded the power of his inertial compensator and pressed him down in his seat. He had to grunt out his next words: “Is that Blue Squadron?”

“Blue Nine here to save your tail, Wraith Five.” The A-wing shot through the space Kell had just occupied and fired, vaporizing the TIE Interceptor that had been dogging him.

“You know some of these TIEs are friendlies—”

“We know.”

Kell finished his loop lined up once again with the heaviest concentration of TIEs. He dove in again, this time on Blue Nine’s tail, using rudder to slew to starboard and port, scattering fire in a cone around the A-wing now breaking trail for him.

Admiral Trigit walked at a fast clip toward the cluster of Interceptors remaining in the now cavernously empty TIE hangar. He spoke into his comlink. “Main computer. Verify identity by voiceprint. Code omega-one, prepare self-destruct.”

“Verify self-destruct.”

“Apwar Trigit commands self-destruct.”

“Confirmed. Verify timing.”

The mechanic on duty opened the access port to Trigit’s Interceptor. The admiral climbed in, still talking. “Five minutes from mark. Mark.”

“Confirmed. Timer running. Verify resources.”

“All remaining power. All weapon systems capacitances. All fuel reserves.”

“Confirmed. Self-destruct operational.”

The sky brightened behind Face.

He twisted to look. Phanan’s X-wing was still tucked in behind and to the starboard of his, but its entire stern was ablaze and burn marks peppered his cockpit. The starfighter that had hulled him, an Interceptor with a set of distinctive horizontal red stripes on the upper and lower portions of its wing arrays, was roaring by at an angle. Now well past Face and Phanan, it began looping around for another pass. “Seven, punch out—”

Phanan did so, firing up and away from his crippled fighter. An instant later, it blew. Face felt debris hammer into his stern. “Wraiths, Seven is EV, repeat, EV. Narra, can you pick him up?”

“If he doesn’t land in Night Caller’s dust cloud, will do.”

A TIE fighter dropped into position behind Face. Face saw his sensor board try to light up with a laser lock. He rolled left and dove toward the gigantic cloud of smoke concealing the corvette’s position.

His sensors showed a clear laser lock. Then the red dot of his pursuer lost resolution and disappeared. “Who did that?”

“You owe a drink to Rogue Two, son.”

“Drink, hell, I’ll buy you a distillery!”

The dozen blue dots of Rogue Squadron lit up the sensors, and suddenly the odds against the Wraiths didn’t seem quite as deadly.

Lieutenant Gara Petothel, her shoulders set with anger, recorded two quick messages on her comm console, then took the next turbolift up.

She exited at the deck of officers’ quarters, picked up a sealed package from her small room, and took another lift to the level where the admiral kept his chambers.

Those doors were unguarded. No surprise; Trigit would have taken his favorite bodyguards to be his escort pilots. Gara told the doors, “Emergency override zero seven nine seven Petothel.”

The doors slid open.

She entered, shut them behind her, and quickly peeled out of her uniform and undergarments. Let Trigit remember me as a willing sacrifice, she thought. Let him regret an affair he wanted but never had time for. Let him think whatever he wants. He’ll be dead in ten minutes.

How dare he? Thirty-seven thousand men and women.

Angry, she pulled off her black wig. It was the color her hair used to be, at the length she wore it when she entered service with the New Republic fleet and then joined the Implacable’s crew, but now her real hair was much shorter, a downy blond. She threw the wig atop her clothes.

She tugged at the mole on her cheek. It came free. There had once been a mole there, a real one, but she’d had it removed by a Rebel ship’s doctor and replaced it with an item of makeup. She tossed it onto the pile.

Now, the container. She opened it to reveal clothes—if you could call them that. Lingerie, sheer stuff made from Loveti moth fiber, the garment would have cost her six months pay had she not stolen it.

She put it on. Beneath it in the case were datacards, her choices for a new identity. Beneath them, a makeup case; she’d use it once she was in the pod.

Beside the makeup case was an injector unit already filled with an illicit substance. She picked it up, hesitated. It was a necessary part of the deception. She just had to make sure she was clearheaded enough, in spite of the drugs, to finish what she was doing here. She jabbed herself with the unit, felt the flow of alien fluids into her vein.

Before the drugs took hold, she spoke aloud, a variation on the code that had given her access to this chamber.

A portion of one wall slid aside. Beyond was the access to Trigit’s personal escape pod. The one neither she nor anyone else but Trigit was supposed to know about.

She ignored the feeling that swept through her, the sensation of drifting, long enough to grab up her identicards and makeup case and stagger into the pod.

Had Wedge’s vision not been obscured by the dust cloud he was maintaining, he would have seen the tiny flight of three Interceptors leave Implacable’s launch bay and angle away from the crippled Star Destroyer.

The Wraiths, Blues, and Rogues battling for their lives against a numerically superior force also paid the flight no attention. Those Interceptors weren’t entering the fight. They’d be dealt with later.

Gara Petothel’s voice came across Implacable’s intercom. “Attention, crew. Implacable is losing power and will crash in five minutes or less. Abandon ship.”

All over the Star Destroyer, officers and crewmen looked at one another.

Only the ship’s commander was authorized to issue such an order. But the chain of command could be breaking down just as the ship’s systems were.

Crew members began racing toward the escape pod accesses. Only the most loyal, the most foolhardy, remained behind at gunnery positions.

Kell completed his third pass through the TIEs, alone this time—Blue Nine was off again with her wingman, Blue Ten. There were fewer of the TIEs this time around. Much of that was Rogue Squadron’s fault; he’d never seen such coordinated skill, such squadron-wide competence in dogfighting, as the Rogues had demonstrated while eating away at the TIE fighters’ numbers. But the odds were still bad and he knew his luck could not continue to hold.

It didn’t. He heard Runt’s voice, “Five, roll out—”

He snapped up on his starboard wing, but the crossfire from an oncoming TIE Interceptor, a gray craft sporting rakish red stripes on the outer surfaces of its wings, struck him with casual accuracy. The first laser blast battered at his stern shields; the second penetrated, burning its way into his fuselage behind his R2 unit.

His flight stick locked up and his control board went dead. All electronics gone … he swore to himself as he began a slow, graceful plunge toward the moon below. The interceptor pilot waggled his wings, then rose toward a distant cluster of A-wings.

Kell opened the panel to his left and hit the button for a cold start. Nothing happened.

By his best guess, he had about thirty seconds until impact. Thirty seconds to get an inoperable X-wing started … assuming it could be.

And he couldn’t participate in the start-up. Only Thirteen, his R2 unit, could reach the damage.

He switched on his helmet comlink, heard the hiss indicating that the interference from the relay dish was still in effect, heard fuzzy voices of the pilots involved in the fight. With his left heel, he yanked at a small, innocuous tab extending from the cockpit hull by his foot. “Thirteen, can you hear me?”

The astromech responded with a whistle.

“Can you get at the damage? Can you bring us on-line?”

Thirteen’s next whistle was a low, mournful one.

Kell’s tub popped out a short metallic bar. With his foot, he began pumping it, manually generating the current necessary for an emergency deployment of his landing gear. “Are you sure? Not even one engine?”

Thirteen’s answer was the same, a sad trill.

Kell heard the landing gear pop open and into place. But there was no power-up of the repulsorlift landing engine, not even its emergency backup power. “Repulsorlifts?”

Again, the low tones of a negative answer.

“Wraith Five to Narra. Can you get me? Repeat, Five going down. Can you grab me?”

No answer. Kell’s helmet comlink didn’t have the range of his fighter’s comm unit, didn’t have enough power to pierce the interference from the dish.

Kell counted the seconds as the ground came closer and felt a heaviness settle on his chest. He turned to look through his aft viewport at his astromech; the R2 unit regarded him steadily. “I’m going to go now, Thirteen. Thanks for everything.”

A trill of good-bye. Then Kell faced forward and yanked the handle for his ejection seat.

The explosive bolts in his canopy blew, sending it up ahead of him, and the thruster under his seat fired off. He felt a blow to his rear as he was launched up and away, momentarily defying the moon’s weak gravity. The pressure sensor in his suit registered the sudden drop in atmosphere and activated the small personal magcon field that would protect his body from vacuum exposure.

He watched his fighter speed away ahead, locked in its fatal descent.

He felt almost as though he were losing a fellow pilot. He’d never known, no one seemed to know, just how alive droids were, just how much of their behavior was programming and how much was true personality.

His X-wing hit the far lip of an impact crater and instantly became flattened garbage and flying shrapnel. It did not explode.

Coldness gripped at Kell as his body heat fled his inadequately insulated pilot’s suit and the magnetic containment field around it. But for the long moments while he still rose on that rocket thrust, he had an incredible vista of the flaring lasers and bright explosions of the fighter battle before him, of the battle-scarred Star Destroyer beyond.

Wedge’s sensors officer said, “Implacable’s silhouette is expanding.”

Wedge gave the officer a puzzled look. “How again?”

“She’s falling, sir.”

“Sithspit! Tell Wraiths Three and Four to get out of there.” Wedge pulled back on the control yoke, leaning Night Caller over at a steep backward angle that, if it continued, would result in the corvette’s crash. “Cut the tractor, now.”

A moment later Night Caller lurched upward, accelerating smoothly but slowly at an angle that would carry it out from under the Star Destroyer. “Drop all shields. Put everything into thruster power.”

“Yes, sir!”

The corvette’s rate of speed increased.

So did Implacable’s rate of descent.

Grinder’s last proton torpedo vaporized more mass of the Star Destroyer’s increasingly widening power center.

The illumination from that blast also showed Falynn something else.

“She’s dropping!” Falynn inverted her TIE fighter, goosed the thrusters—but before she could dive something hit her from the rear. Her ion engines fired, but the thrust merely made her swing to starboard, then back again, and to starboard once more.

She swore. Her starboard solar wing array was hung up on something flexible. “Grinder, get out of here.”

“Not without you.”

“You moron, if you don’t get clear of the way out, I can’t get out. Go!”

She watched as, dozens of meters below, the silhouette of Grinder’s X-wing rotated, then its thrusters lit off, pushing the snubfighter down toward the way out.

She waited until she was lined up again with the hole in the keel, then she brought her engine thrust up to full power.

She swung to starboard, hit a bulkhead hard, and swung back again.

This time, her front viewport was starred with cracks.

As Grinder shot through the hole, his starboard laser cannon clipped a piece of wreckage. His X-wing tumbled, uncontrolled, as it exited.

The Bothan struggled with his stick and brought his fighter back in line.

The instant he was back in control, one of Implacable’s turbolaser blasts washed across him, engulfing him cleanly.

When the beam faded, Grinder was gone.

Janson saw Implacable’s blast hit Wraith Four.

Janson climbed, firing. His first shot pinged the turbolaser turret. It rotated to target him—

And Piggy’s shot punctured it, the Gamorrean’s linked blast hulling the turret. The emplacement went still, its lights dead.

Janson sent his X-wing into a tight, irregular circle around the hole in Implacable’s keel. “Gray Two, this is Gray Three. Do you read?”

“I’m here.”

“Get out of there. Implacable is falling.”

“I’m hung up. Get clear.”

“I’m coming in.”

“You can’t do anything. If I see your profile, I’ll fire on you, sir. I promise.”

“Dammit, Falynn—”

A bracket of laser fire suddenly erupted from the hole in the keel, burning four neat holes in the lunar surface.

Janson bit back a curse and rolled away from Implacable’s underside. Piggy followed, mercifully silent.

As Implacable descended, throwing off escape pods by the score, she broadcast one last message. The voice was female, but as distorted as if it had come through a New Republic fighter comm system. “Attention, New Republic forces. The pilots of the three Interceptors who launched one minute ago included Admiral Trigit. If you want him, that’s where you’ll find him.”

The Star Destroyer fell at what looked like a leisurely pace—an illusion fostered by its great size and by the moon’s four-tenths gravity. The Wraiths not actively engaged in combat kept their desperate attention on the gap in the hull, waiting for one last TIE fighter to emerge.

It didn’t.

Night Caller shot from beneath the descending capital ship like a bar of soap squirting from under a foot, its stern engine array missing the Imperial vessel by a few tens of meters.

Implacable hit stern first, its great mass causing the stern to shatter and deform as it settled. Whole bulkheads and sections of keel blew out the sides and top surface of the Star Destroyer as the ship’s atmosphere suddenly compressed.

Even before the bow came down, the vessel’s stern detonated, her fuel cells all igniting in an instant. Implacable’s command pylon leaped up as if it were a separate ship, suddenly separating for a desperate flight to safety. But it, too, disintegrated as it rose and was consumed by the growing fireball beneath it.

The ship broke at its midsection, its bow spinning almost gracefully before it set down on the crater-pocked surface of the moon.

The Wraiths heard a cry over their comm systems. Wedge and Janson had heard it once before, on the tape of Donos’s one and only Talon Squadron mission, the sound of Donos’s pain as he realized his squadron was gone.

Wedge rolled Night Caller upright. “Divert—” His throat shut down over his voice. Grinder, Falynn dead within seconds of one another. “Divert all guns to fire on the TIE fighters. Weapons, resume control of my turbolaser. Communications, give me the enemy’s starfighter channel and our channel both.”

“You’re ready to go, sir.”

“Attention, forces of the Implacable. This is Commander Wedge Antilles of New Republic Starfighter Command. Recommend you break off hostilities now.”

He got an answer instantly. “Antilles, are you demanding surrender?”

“Negative. Here’s the deal. You break off hostilities, we do, too. Go wherever you care to. We’ve won this round. Neither one of us gains from continuing this battle.”

“Not correct. You die, we gain. Prepare to eat vacuum.”

Then a new voice, words spoken with biting precision. “Captain, accept the commander’s offer.”

Wedge went cold. He knew that voice.

The captain’s voice returned. “You’re only an observer here. You don’t issue orders to—” Then a scream.

Face’s voice: “Sithspit, he’s vaped his own man.”

The precise voice returned. “I apologize. A slight question of chain of command. Commander, you have a deal. All Implacable forces, break off now. Come to heading two-seventy.”

Wedge said, “All New Republic forces, break off combat. Form up on Night Caller. If you consider yourself in good shape and have sufficient fuel, fly by on downed fighters and escape pods to report their condition.” He drew his finger over his throat and the comm officer cut the wide-channel transmission.

Wedge’s weapons officer stared wide-eyed. “You looked like you knew him.”

“You might say that. That was Baron Soontir Fel.”

The officer paled and returned his attention to his weapons board. Baron Fel, since the death of Darth Vader, was accounted the best Imperial pilot living, and his elite 181st Imperial Fighter Group was the most accomplished fighter unit the Empire could field.

What was he doing as an observer on Admiral Trigit’s ship?

On the sensor board, most of the dots obeyed the orders of their respective commanders.

Five dots did not. Three reds headed away from Ession’s moon on a straight, out-system course. Two blues pursued. The sensors identified the faster one as Blue Leader, the slower as Wraith Nine.

Squeaky drew Kell in through Narra’s emergency airlock. “So glad you are among the living, Tainer. Now that I have you trained to proper manners, I would hate to lose you.”

Kell shivered uncontrollably and ignored the 3PO unit. Atril, herself swathed in a blanket, threw another one across his shoulders. Phanan was lying on one of the passenger couches, a blanket over him, his face pallid, but he managed a faint smile for Kell. Squeaky returned to Phanan’s side.

“We lost Grinder and Falynn,” Atril said.

Kell sat beside her. “Tyria?”

“She’s not hurt.”

Kell relaxed. He tried to sort out his thoughts, his feelings. Relief about Tyria. Sadness for the loss of Falynn, Grinder, and Thirteen. And an odd sort of jubilation at the loss of a part of himself. He knew that something in him had died and he did not miss it.

“Kell.”

“Yeah, Cubber.”

“Night Caller sends you congratulations. They say this combat was like your first simulator run with the Wraiths.”

Kell blinked at him, confused. “Runt gets all my points?”

“No, stupid. One mission, five kills, instant ace. Congratulations.”

“Oh.”

Cubber snorted. “Much more behavior like that and I’m going to doubt your dedication to the mechanic’s profession, boy.” He turned back toward his controls. “Narra lifting. More packages to pick up.”

“Leader to Wraith Nine.”

Donos sat stiffly, his whole body cold, his hand holding the control stick in a death grip.

“Leader to Wraith Nine.”

“Nine here.”

“Report your condition.”

Falynn is dead. I don’t have a condition. “I’m functional.” Automatically, Donos checked his fuel reading, his weapons and shield status. All in the green. He had several more minutes worth of dogfighting power available to him.

Three enemies and one ally ahead.

Commander Antilles probably meant his mental condition.

He’d almost gone away again when he heard Falynn die. But he hadn’t. He knew the Wraiths wouldn’t let him stay gone.

Best just to keep moving and kill the man who’d killed her. The man who’d killed Talon Squad. “I’m in pursuit of three enemies who are not part of the pacified force.”

“If they surrender, you’re obliged to accept it.”

“If.” Donos was silent a long moment. “Please instruct that A-wing ahead of me not to vape Trigit. That’s my job.”

A new voice came over the comm. “Commander Antilles doesn’t instruct a general to do a damned thing, Wraith Nine.”

“Recommend you not get between Trigit and my lasers, General.”

“On any other day I’d consider that a threat, sonny. For now, I recommend you just shut up. Blue Leader out.”

Donos shut up. Nothing the general could do to him worried him. He just didn’t feel like spending energy on an argument.

Donos watched the sensors as General Crespin gained on the interceptor flight. They weren’t flying as fast as true Interceptors; the personal vehicles of an Imperial admiral and his favorite bodyguards, they were probably loaded down with hyperdrives and even shielding systems, and that weight would count against them. Even Donos’s X-wing, slower than a standard Interceptor, was gaining steadily on these three.

A few more minutes and they’d be far enough from Ession’s gravity well to enter hyperspace. But maybe the general was canny enough to stop them.

When the sensor screen showed three klicks distance between the A-wing and the interceptors, Donos’s comm board lit up with a cross-frequency transmission. “Blue Leader to outbound interceptors. This is General Edor Crespin. I’m giving you this opportunity to surrender.”

The reply came in a dry voice: “Thank you, Blue Leader. I notice a certain disparity in our numbers, though. Perhaps you’d better go home.”

Donos heard no reply from Crespin. That exchange had been enough for both leaders.

Moments later, when the range meter showed two kilometers between the Interceptors and General Crespin, Donos saw the Interceptor group change formation. The starboard TIE dropped back and fell into position immediately behind the center one. The port TIE rolled out and turned back toward the A-wing.

Why? Then Donos knew what had happened. General Crespin had gotten a laser lock on Trigit’s craft. One Interceptor had moved in the way of the general’s lasers. The other was going back to destroy the A-wing … or die trying.

For once, Donos prayed for the success of an A-wing pilot. “Gadget, can we put anything else on acceleration?”

NO.

Donos began rocking in his seat, forward and back, as though the action would coax just a little more acceleration out of the X-wing.

On screen, the rearmost red dot and the blue closed on a head-to-head course.

Donos frowned over the maneuver. What was General Crespin doing, playing head-to-head with a pilot who was doubtless willing to give up his life to buy the admiral a little extra time?

They were far from the mass shadows of Ession or her biggest moon. In moments, the Interceptors would be able to jump to hyperspace.

Donos calmed himself. The general isn’t an idiot. He has a plan. If I can figure out what it is, maybe I can figure out what he’s going to do to Admiral Trigit—what direction he’ll make the admiral jump.

If he, Donos, were in an A-wing closing with an Interceptor while two other, more important Interceptors were headed away at a slight angle, what would he do?

The A-wings had laser cannons that traversed up and down, giving them a generous arc of fire—something else the drivers of those tiny speed machines were always bragging about. In Crespin’s place, Donos could keep his current course but rotate ninety degrees rightward and elevate his guns, bringing Trigit and the other escort back into his sights.

Donos brought up his visual sensor and saw that the general had indeed rotated—in fact, his rotation was continuous, a spin designed to make the A-wing’s narrow profile an even more difficult target, and laser blasts from the Interceptor were streaking harmlessly past him. But Donos saw the general had indeed elevated his guns. He wouldn’t be able to use them to fire on the Interceptor. He had to be planning for an angle of attack on the other Interceptors.

Donos almost slapped himself. He had it. In Crespin’s place, he’d close until he had barely enough time to maneuver out of the head-to-head death trap, then fire the A-wing’s concussion missiles. The other pilot, more likely to be locked into a suicide ramming course, would not be likely to maneuver out of their way. That would eliminate the suicide pilot and immediately give Crespin a clear laser shot at the other two Interceptors.

Which way would they jump? Currently, Trigit was in front, his bodyguard trailing immediately behind, Crespin vectoring away from them at a slight angle to port. As soon as they sensed a laser lock, Trigit would have to go to starboard—because that would keep his bodyguard right behind him and in the path of Crespin’s lasers.

Donos almost smiled. He switched to proton torpedoes and aimed visually toward empty space to the Interceptors’ starboard. He wasn’t in range for a torpedo lock yet … but was well within the torpedoes’ strike range. If he fired at the correct angle, with the torpedoes set to follow any heat source, and the Interceptors broke across the torpedoes’ path …

He waited, and rocked in his seat for more speed. Falynn, are you watching?

When the Interceptor and A-wing were a quarter klick apart, Crespin angled away, but twin streaks of light continued down his original course. The Interceptor he was jousting with reached the point they’d both been aiming for and exploded, victim of twin concussion missiles and bad tactics. Crespin stopped his A-wing’s rotation and had his guns directed at the other two vehicles in a bare second.

Immediately, as Crespin’s laser lock found them, Trigit’s Interceptor and its pursuit vehicle broke away. To starboard. Donos fired. “One for Falynn. Two for Talon.”

Crespin’s lasers found the engines of the pursuit Interceptor, stitched them with bright red fire. The Interceptor vanished in a bright ball.

Donos’s comm unit popped. Trigit’s voice. “Crespin, I’d like to reconsid—”

Donos’s first torpedo shot between the slit in the Interceptor’s starboard wing and hit the Interceptor where the round forward viewport met the hull. The Interceptor detonated in a brilliant flash. Donos’s second torpedo entered the cloud but did not emerge from it.

Then there was nothing but the hiss of static over his comm unit, a single blue dot on his sensors.

The A-wing began a long, lazy arc back toward Ession. “Nice shooting, son.”

“Nice flying, sir.” Donos brought his own snubfighter around.

In his chest was a coldness to match the vacuum around him. It was the emptiness of his future. But Talon Squad had had its revenge. Now, perhaps, eleven good pilots, one ever-helpful R2 unit, and a Tatooine woman who’d never recognized her own worth would be able to rest easy.

31

Her beaches and seas are almost as beautiful as those on Storinal, Kell reflected. Maybe more so. They aren’t as … deliberate. As sculpted.

The world was called Borleias. Once the site of the biomedical research facility of an Imperial general, later captured by the New Republic as the first stage of the march on the Imperial throne world, Borleias was now home to a fighter training base.

The New Republic had named a troop transport after the battle for this world, and Kell and Runt had saved that transport on Folor. Kell decided, irrationally, this meant the world welcomed his presence.

He certainly felt welcome. He lounged on a puff-cot large enough to accommodate his generous frame—with plenty of room for Tyria beside him. Uniform of the day was bathing suits that might generously be called minimal, and that was a vacation in itself. Beside them on a blanket were half-finished drinks slowly warming in the sun and a small refrigeration unit from which more drinks would emerge as the day grew later.

Up and down the beach, other Wraiths and crewmen of Night Caller splashed in the waves, lounged on puff-cots, rode recreational speeder bikes, sat drinking around tables under broad reflective parasols. Donos was at the end of the line of cots, alone with his thoughts, but remaining within reach of the other Wraiths instead of distancing himself from them.

Phanan was in Borleias’s military hospital, recovering from the loss of his spleen, which had been perforated by shrapnel as he ejected. When Kell had gone to see him, Phanan had explained, “Yes, I got so angry that I had to vent my spleen.”

The Wraiths, Kell’s fellow pilots, his friends. There were no recriminations in their eyes. Most of them knew that he’d had … some sort of attack back on Ession’s moon. They also knew that he’d recovered from it, thrown himself into the worst part of the fight. He’d vaporized more than his share of the enemy and had drawn the fire of even more pilots. Night Caller, her sensors overwhelmed by the deliberately faulty emissions of the nearby retransmission dish and the dust cloud she was kicking up, had no record of his temporary vacation from reality. So, like Donos’s collapse, it wasn’t spoken of. It hadn’t happened.

And it wouldn’t happen again. All he’d ever have to do is imagine what would become of the people he loved if he abandoned them.

He glanced down at Tyria, a teasing remark on his lips; but she was asleep, her head on his shoulder as though it were a pillow.

A shadow fell across them.

Admiral Ackbar stood above him.

Kell saluted out of reflex. “Sir.”

“Don’t get up.” The admiral moved to sit on the next puff-cot over. He turned toward the water, looking at it, as far as Kell could read his posture, with a longing expression. “I am sorry I was not able to speak to you on Talasea.”

“I … was avoiding you, sir.”

Ackbar turned one eye toward him. “Why?”

“I was ashamed.” He wouldn’t have been able to say it a week ago. Now, the words were difficult, but not impossible to utter.

“For not being able to save Jesmin?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I came to thank you. When I read what you tried to do for her … well, it is cruel to learn one you love has died so far away from the heart of her clan, but at least I knew she was in the midst of good friends. Friends close enough to try such a thing.”

“She was, sir.”

Ackbar took a last, long look at the water, then rose. “Enjoy your leave, Lieutenant. Come back strong and invigorated. Warlord Zsinj is still out there.”

“I have a special greeting ready for him, sir.”

Ackbar made a gravelly noise like a chuckle and walked away from the sea.

At the top of the hill, Wedge waited in his skimmer.

The admiral climbed awkwardly in. “You’re still fully dressed, Commander. Shouldn’t you be wearing a scrap and enjoying the weather and the water as they are?”

Wedge set the skimmer in motion, wheeling it around toward the flat field where the X-wings and shuttles waited. “I’m not really as close to the Wraiths as I am to the Rogues, sir. I think I’d make them uncomfortable.”

“So, you are not ‘one of the lads’? More like a real officer? As intimidating as a general?”

“Oh, yes, our bet. Actually, I was rather hoping you’d take this opportunity to acknowledge that the Wraiths had ‘proven their worth,’ as you put it.”

“Your three months aren’t up, General. You are still in danger.”

Wedge smiled. “Admiral, that’s the story of my life.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks go to:

Tom Dupree, Pat LoBrutto, and Michael A. Stackpole, for the opportunity;

Steven S. Long, Bob Quinlan, and Luray Richmond, my “Eagle-Eyes,” who protect me from the worst of my mistakes;

Michael A. Stackpole, Kathy Tyers, Dave Wolverton, and Timothy Zahn, from whose fiction I have been able to draw details and inspiration;

Shane Johnson, Paul Murphy, Peter Schweighofer, Bill Slavicsek, Bill Smith, Curtis Smith, and Dan Wallace, for the invaluable resources they have written;

Sue Rostoni and Lucy Wilson, for making the approval process a pleasure;

Quel Richmond, for being inspirationally big, handsome, and cowardly; and

Denis Loubet, Mark and Luray Richmond, my roommates, for not casting me out into the cold when writer’s mania and deadline pressures made it an appropriate option.

STAR WARS: IRON FIST
A Bantam Spectra Book / July 1998

SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Bantam Books, a divsion of Random House, Inc.

®, TM & © 1998 by Lucasfilm Ltd.
All rights reserved. Used under authorization.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.

eISBN: 978-0-307-79650-9

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

v3.1

Contents

Master - Table of Contents

Iron Fist

Title Page

Copyright

Dramatis Personae

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21

Acknowledgments

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

The Wraiths

Commander Wedge Antilles (Leader, One) (human male from Corellia)

Lieutenant Wes Janson (Three) (human male from Taanab)

Lieutenant Myn Donos (Nine) (human male from Corellia)

Lieutenant Garik “Face” Loran (Eight) (human male from Pantolomin)

Lieutenant Kell Tainer (Five) (human male from Sluis Van)

Hohass “Runt” Ekwesh (Six) (Thakwaash male from Thakwaa)

Ton Phanan (Seven) (human male from Rudrig)

Voort “Piggy” saBinring (Twelve) (Gamorrean male from Gamorr)

Tyria Sarkin (Eleven) (human female from Toprawa)

Castin Donn (Two) (human male from Coruscant)

Shalla Nelprin (Ten) (human female from Ingo)

Dia Passik (Four) (Twi’lek female from Ryloth)

Lara Notsil (Thirteen) (human female from Aldivy)

Rogue Squadron Support Personnel

Cubber Daine (human male from Corellia, squad mechanic)

Chunky (Tyria’s R5 unit)

Gate (Wedge’s R5 unit)

Squeaky (3PO unit, squadron quartermaster)

Tonin (Lara’s R2 unit)

Vape (Face’s R2 unit)

New Republic Military

Colonel Atton Repness (human male from Commenor)

Captain Onoma (Mon Calamari male from Mon Calamari)

Captain Valton (human male from Tatooine)

Zsinj’s Forces

Warlord Zsinj (human male from Fondor)

General Melvar (human male from Kuat)

Captain Todrin Rossik (human male from Coruscant)

Captain Vellar (human male)

Captain Netbers (human male)

Captain Raslan (human male)

Lieutenant Bradan (human female)

The Hawk-bats

General Kargin (human male)

Captain Seku (Twi’lek female from Ryloth)

Lieutenant Dissek (human male from Alderaan)

Lieutenant Kettch (Ewok male from Endor)

Qatya Nassin (human female)

Morrt (human male)

1

He made no pretense at being fully human. He had probably been born human, but now mechanical limbs—obvious prosthetics with no skinlike cover concealing their artificial nature—replaced his right arm and both legs, and the upper-right portion of his bald head was a shiny metal surface with a standard computer interface.

He made no pretense at being friendly, either. He approached the members of Wraith Squadron as they sat, crammed into their booth, and with neither threat nor comment he snatched a wine bottle from the next table over and brought it down on Runt Ekwesh’s head.

The bottle didn’t break. It offered a musical toonk sound and coughed up a little wine from its open neck, and Runt, the furred alien with the long, big-toothed face, slumped in his seat, his eyes rolling up in his head.

Most of the members of Wraith Squadron were pinned in place—with nine pilots crammed into a circular booth built for five, they had little room to move. But Kell Tainer, seated at the opposite end of the ring from Runt, scrambled to his feet.

Instead of diving toward his wingmate’s attacker, instead of charging with a fist cocked back to punch the man, he slid sideways toward his target, then came up in a side kick that caught the cyborg under his chin and lifted him clean off the floor, slamming him to the bar’s floor.

Most of the members of the squadron slid out of the booth in Kell’s wake. Other patrons of the bar, human and otherwise, also rose, their expressions suggesting they were unclear on whether to join in this traditional form of bar entertainment.

Commander Wedge Antilles, the squadron’s leader, stayed put. He turned toward the squadron medic, Ton Phanan—the man with the mocking manner, well-trimmed beard and mustache, and prosthetic plate over the left side of his head. “How is he?”

Phanan shook his head as he delicately moved his fingers across Runt’s skull. “I don’t think anything’s cracked. He’s probably just concussed. You knew he had a hard head.”

The cyborg was up now. He and Kell were an odd contrast. The cyborg looked like a fatal skimmer-and-pedestrian accident whose remaining parts had been cobbled together by an insane mechanic, while Kell, with his classic blue eyes and sculpted features, his formidable height and obvious conditioning, looked like a holoposter for military recruitment. But their smiles were identical: humorless, cold, threatening.

The cyborg reached into the next booth, past bar patrons who shrieked and ducked away, and yanked free the table bolted to the floor. He hauled it backward, then swung it faster than any human could manage, but Kell ducked forward, rolled under the table, came up on his feet a mere hand span in front of the cyborg, and planted one-two-three blows in his attacker’s gut. The cyborg staggered backward and Kell lashed out with a foot, kicking the table from his fingers with an ease that made the move look casual.

The other bar patrons seemed to settle on a consensus: They held back and began putting down bets. Wedge nodded over the wisdom of that choice. Though the Wraiths were in civilian clothes, it was obvious they were in good condition, and for all the patrons knew, Kell might be only typical of their fighting skill rather than one of their best hand-to-hand fighters.

Piggy, the Gamorrean pilot, leaned back against the Wraiths’ table to watch the proceedings—to the extent that the semipermanent smoky haze hovering at chest level and above permitted easy viewing. He glanced over his shoulder at Runt. “Is he hurt?” His voice emerged both as incomprehensible grunts and as electronic words, the latter being emitted by a nearly invisible speaker implanted in his throat.

“Everybody asks that,” Phanan complained. Through with his examination of Runt’s skull, he now shone a small light into Runt’s eyes one by one. “Nobody ever says, ‘What a mess! I hope the doctor is not emotionally harmed by having to deal with it.’ He’s coming around. He’ll probably be dizzy for a few days. I need to look up information on how his species deals with concussions.”

The cyborg’s next punch, the second part of a skillful one-two combination, connected with Kell’s midsection. The big man spun as he was hit, diminishing the punch’s power, and used that spin to add force to his reply, a snap kick. The cyborg took it in the sternum and staggered back, looking outraged. Kell bent over, holding his stomach where hit, and then straightened, obviously in pain.

Then the bar was filled with uniforms—a stream of men and women pouring in the main entrance, dressed in the distinctive outfit of New Republic Military Police.

Wedge sighed. “As deep as we are, they arrived pretty quickly.”

Phanan held a small rose-colored vial full of liquid under Runt’s broad, flat nose. The nonhuman’s nostrils flared and he jerked, reflexively trying to get away from the smell. “Easy, Runt,” he said. “We’re about to go somewhere you can relax for a few hours. In the company of some charming people, too, I’ll bet.”

Wedge grinned.

The military police led them out of the smoke-filled bar into the only slightly less oppressive atmosphere of street-level Coruscant. It was raining, a steady spray of liquid that felt like three-quarters rainwater and one-quarter vehicle lubricant. Wedge looked up, trying to spot some distant speck of color representing Coruscant’s sky, but all he could see were clifflike building sides rising to infinity. Awnings, high roads, bridges between skyscrapers, and other obstacles blocked out any glimpse of clouds far above, yet still the rain came down, much of it probably runoff from rain gutters, vents, and flues far above.

Tyria Sarkin, the slender woman with the blond ponytail, grimaced. “It would be nice to be posted to a clean world next,” she said. Then she saw the military policemen gesturing toward the waiting skimmer, a slab-sided model without viewports, used to transport prisoners, and she obligingly followed the other Wraiths in that direction. Phanan, supporting the still-dizzy Runt, fell in behind her, and Wedge and the cyborg who had caused all the trouble brought up the rear.

Toward the front, Face Loran, the once-handsome actor whose face was now creased by a livid scar from his left cheek to his right forehead, noted the nameplate on the nearest MP. “Thioro,” he said. “That’s a Corellian name, isn’t it?”

The officer nodded. “I’m from Corellia. Born and bred.”

Face turned back toward Wedge and smiled. “Ah. Just like our reception committee back on M2398, eh, Commander?”

Wedge managed not to stiffen. The “reception committee” on the moon of System M2398’s third planet had not been made up of Corellians. It had, in fact, been a trap, an invitation to land that turned out to be a fatal ambush. Wedge nodded. “Just like it, Face. And just like then, I’m your wing.”

Wedge saw casual little glances exchanged between the Wraiths and knew they had all just become alert and ready—except, perhaps, the dazed Runt. Face hadn’t been Wedge’s wingman at the time. Face now knew Wedge was waiting for his move.

Face walked a little faster within the crowd of Wraiths, until he was at the front of the double line of prisoners, immediately behind the first pair of military policemen. He reached the rear of the prisoner skimmer, nodded at their gesture to board—and struck, slamming his fist into the throat of one MP, jumping on the other.

Wedge saw Kell strike out almost instantly, his side kick connecting with the side of his guard’s knee—and saw that joint bend sideways, a direction it was never meant to take. That guard screamed and fell.

No time to watch things unfold—Wedge heard blaster pistols clearing leather behind him. He grabbed the cyborg and swung around, hauling the startled assailant into position between him and the guards.

The guards fired, their blasters converging on the cyborg’s chest, charring it black. Steam and the smell of scorched flesh rose from the wound. Wedge shoved the fatally wounded cyborg into the guards, continued pushing, bowled them over—and saw one guard’s blaster go skidding across the duracrete of the sidewalk. He dove after it.

Noises he knew well: the whuff Piggy the Gamorrean made whenever he struck at someone in practice, followed by the impossibly loud, meaty noise his fist always made when it hit. Two blaster shots in quick succession. A howl from Runt. The man with the broken leg still screaming. Shrieks from passersby and the clatter of their feet as they retreated from the danger zone.

Wedge got his hand on the blaster, swung around, snapped off a quick shot that took his other guardsman, now rising, in the throat and threw him back to the grimy duracrete. That gave Wedge a clear view of the impromptu battlefield, Wraiths struggling with military policemen.

“Nobody move!” That was Ton Phanan, miraculously unharmed, holding the blaster rifle previously owned by one of their captors—that man, Wedge saw, was staggering away, his eyes glassy, his hands clutching his own throat, trying futilely to arrest the tide of blood seeping between and around his fingers.

The MPs paused, saw the gun aimed at them … and, one by one, relaxed to drop their arms or ceased struggling with the Wraiths.

Face Loran, his voice in a reasonable tone Wedge knew to be forced, answered, “He didn’t walk like a Corellian.”

They were now in a debriefing room in Starfighter Command Headquarters, a room as spotlessly white and clean as the bar and street had been filthy. A colonel Wedge didn’t know was conducting the interview, but Admiral Ackbar, commander-in-chief of New Republic military operations, was also seated at the interrogators’ table. Though Ackbar was a Mon Calamari, a species with huge, rubbery features that seemed more fishlike than humanlike, he was a friendly presence in Wedge’s estimation.

“That’s not enough justification to attack someone with proper credentials,” the colonel said.

Face stiffened. “Respectfully, sir, it is when I’m correct.”

“Don’t be preposterous. You can’t classify a man’s homeworld just by looking at him.”

“Yes, I can, sir.”

The colonel, a middle-aged man with a face creased by too many years of waging war against the Empire, looked dubious. But without speaking, he stood, walked backward from the table, and then walked back and forth a half-dozen paces.

“Hard to say,” Face said. “If you had any distinctive walking mannerism from your homeworld, you erased it with military training. At Vogel Seven, if I’m not mistaken. I’d say that you were injured at some time in the past and had to learn to walk again—or maybe it was a disfigurement at birth, corrected by surgery? I can’t really tell.”

The colonel resumed his seat. Surprise was evident on his face. “Correct on both counts. How do you do that?”

“Well, I was an actor. On top of that, I’m trained to recognize, analyze, and assume physical mannerisms—just as I am with vocal mannerisms and a dozen other things. More importantly, I lived several years on Lorrd, where my family is originally from. The Lorrdians practically invented the art of conscious communication through body language.”

Ackbar finally spoke up, his voice a not-quite-human rumble. “You admit, Colonel, that Lieutenant Loran is capable of recognizing when someone’s physical mannerisms do not match his professed planet of origin?”

The colonel considered. “Well, it’s low for a statistical sampling, but I’d say he demonstrates considerable skill in that regard.”

“Between that,” Face said, “and the speed with which the MPs reached the bar—which, I remind you, is close to bedrock level, and not a place sensible New Republic military personnel are usually near—I concluded that it was a deception. The cyborg was trotted out to start the trouble and make an MP arrest look legitimate; many pilots have been run into jail while on leave exactly this way.”

The colonel ignored the statement and turned to Phanan. “You defused the situation by putting down one of the ersatz military policemen and seizing his weapon.”

Wedge saw Phanan struggling with a reply—probably something to the effect of the colonel being able to recognize simple facts when they played out under his nose—but restraining himself. Phanan merely said, “Yes, sir.”

“That man died. Trachea cut, carotid artery cut. Yet the commander here says the MPs disarmed you before leading you out of the bar. What did you use?”

“A holdout, sir. A laser scalpel. Hard to distinguish from a writing tool without close inspection … and up close, I’m pretty effective with it.”

“I’d say so. Did you surrender this weapon to our guards before coming before me?”

“What weapon, sir?”

“The laser scalpel.”

“Not a weapon, sir. It’s a tool of medicine. I wasn’t asked to turn over my bandages, bacta treatments, disinfectant sprays, or tranquilizers either, but I can kill a man with any of them, under the right circumstances.”

The colonel glanced at Wedge, a beleaguered look Wedge knew well from his own mirror—it asked, What sort of unit have you assembled here? Wedge merely shrugged.

The colonel closed down his datapad. “All right. Pending the results of further investigation into this matter, I’m going to release your squadron.”

Wedge said, “Thank you, sir.”

“How are your injured squad members? Ekwesh, wasn’t it, and Janson?”

“Both in sick bay,” Wedge said. “Runt Ekwesh has a mild concussion, and is thoroughly embarrassed that Phanan knocked him down to keep him out of the fight. Lieutenant Janson got a blaster crease across the ribs; he’s got a bacta patch on it and will be fit for duty in a day or two.”

The colonel rose; Wedge and his subordinates followed suit. The colonel said, “I wish them every luck in getting back to duty as soon as possible.” He left unstated the obvious fact that he far preferred them facing Imperial stormtroopers and warlord forces than the civilians of the planet Coruscant. An exchange of salutes later, he departed.

Admiral Ackbar came forward. “Before you go: What are your thoughts on this matter?”

Wedge said, “I’d prefer to see what General Cracken’s people get out of the survivors, but my guess is Zsinj. We hurt him pretty badly when we destroyed the Implacable.” That ship, an Imperial Star Destroyer, belonged to Admiral Apwar Trigit, a subordinate of the warlord Zsinj, who was now the chief enemy and target of the New Republic. “He’s shown a vengeful streak in the past, and has enough intelligence and contacts to mount a plausible-looking trap like that. I’d say that he’s figured out who Wraith Squadron is and has decided to make us pay.”

Ackbar nodded. “My own conclusion as well. I will leave the matter of protection of your subordinates to you, Commander Antilles—I am sure you are fit to decide whether to complete your leave or return to duty and the safer confines of Starfighter Command’s barracks and facilities. But I do have orders for you.” He tapped the bulge of the datapad in his pocket. “I have transmitted them to your datapad. I think you will find them to your liking; they play to the, how should I put it, improvisational strengths of your new squadron.”

Wedge smiled. “Those improvisational strengths are beginning to give me gray hairs, Admiral. But thank you in spite of that.” He let the smile fade. “I hope I’m not being presumptuous, sir, but I was wondering if you’d heard anything about Fel.”

Ackbar pulled out his datapad and tapped at it. Wedge wondered if the admiral really was accessing data, or whether this was a delaying tactic, a moment to give him time to prepare an answer.

Baron Soontir Fel had been the Empire’s greatest starfighter pilot in the years after Vader’s death. Leader of the elite 181st Imperial Fighter Group, he had bedeviled Rogue Squadron on occasion, and had been a lethal weapon used against the New Republic on many missions. Later, he had changed his alliance to the New Republic and had even been a part of Rogue Squadron.

What wasn’t as widely known was that Wedge’s sister Syal was Fel’s wife. Or that both Fel and Syal had disappeared, years ago. The 181st was theoretically now under the command of another Imperial officer, serving the coalition of Moffs and military officers that now acted as the unofficial heir to the rule of what was left of the Empire. And this made Fel’s sudden recent reappearance, commanding portions of the 181st as part of the complement of starfighters aboard Star Destroyer Implacable, particularly unsettling. Fel and many of his pilots had escaped Implacable’s fate and their location was now unknown to the New Republic … but Wedge had a suspicion that Fel would be found serving Warlord Zsinj.

Ackbar met Wedge’s gaze again and shook his head. “We have no news on any official cooperation between the remains of the Empire and Zsinj. No idea why the Empire would loan the One Eighty-first to the warlord. No news of Fel, the details of his return … or his family. I am sorry. I will let you know if his name crosses my desk.”

“Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.”

In the hangar temporarily assigned to the vehicles of Wraith Squadron—seven battered X-wing snubfighters, two battle-scarred captured TIE fighters, and a comparatively pristine-looking Lambda-class shuttle—they explained the colonel’s decision to the Wraiths who had not been called in for the second stage of interrogation. “I hate to say it,” Wedge said, “but leave is effectively canceled. I want volunteers to act as guards for Runt and Wes until they’re discharged. I want someone on duty here with our vehicles until we lift for our next assignment, and I want everyone walking around with eyes behind as well as in front. Understood?”

The Wraiths nodded. “I’ll work out a duty roster,” Face said.

“Why you?” Kell asked.

Face smiled at the big man. “Because Janson’s not here to do it. Because I was promoted two minutes ahead of you, so I outrank you. Check back with me in a few minutes and I’ll have assignments ready to transmit.”

As the Wraiths moved their separate ways, Phanan threw his arm over Kell’s shoulder. He looked at Tyria. “Tyria, if you’d excuse us for a moment, I have a few words to say in private to your toyfriend—”

She gave him an arch look. “My what?”

Kell straightened, causing the shorter man’s arm to slide off, and glared. “Her what?”

“What did I say?” Phanan shrugged. “A few moments.”

She shrugged and moved to her X-wing.

“Did you catch the name of the colonel?” Phanan asked.

Kell’s scowl turned from irritation to confusion. “I don’t think Commander Antilles mentioned it.”

“Repness.”

Kell glanced over at Tyria, but she had one of her snub-fighter’s engine ports open and was intent on the machinery within. “That’s the name of the trainer who tried to get her to steal an X-wing. Before she joined the Wraiths.”

“The same. I checked on him as we were marching back from the interrogation. He’s still training pilots, now here on Coruscant, though he’s about to be assigned to the training frigate Tedevium. He has other duties as well, mostly high-profile volunteer stuff—not unusual for an ambitious officer. He was officer of the day today for the subbase the military police belong to, which is why he debriefed us on the incident.”

Kell took a deep breath. Atton Repness was an instructor for New Republic pilot trainees who were on the verge of washing out of the training program. He had a reputation as being good at salvaging pilots thought unsalvageable. But Kell and Phanan knew that he had secretly altered Tyria’s failing grades to make them passable, then tried to enlist her in an effort to steal an X-wing, and had used the revelation of the grade forgery to blackmail her into silence. “You wouldn’t have mentioned him if you didn’t already have a plan,” Kell said. His voice was hard.

Phanan smiled. “That’s what I like to hear. Acknowledgment of my superior intellect along with a desire to hurt somebody else very badly. It’s a good day for me.

“Yes, I have a plan. We know of one and only one tactic he has used. He approached a struggling pilot candidate, female, attractive—we don’t know whether those characteristics are important to his thinking, but let’s put a skifter in the deck and make sure—and helped her two ways. Extra training, for legitimate gains in her scores, and doctoring of her grades, to ensure she passed … and to ensure that she was in debt to him, or could at least be blackmailed into silence. If we wave some bait around in front of him, maybe he’ll snap at it.”

“Bait.” Kell scowled and leaned against the strike foil of the nearest X-wing. “Phanan, I don’t know about you, but I haven’t had enough time to make enough friends and acquaintances that I can just snap my fingers and find someone with the qualities you’re talking about.”

“Ah, but you don’t have my superior intellect, do you?”

“One more mention of your superior intellect and I’ll make it necessary for you to install a brain that’s all mechanical.”

Phanan leaned close, unfazed by or oblivious to the threat. “When I was in the hospital on Borleias, the patient in the next room was a woman. A beautiful woman. A survivor off the Implacable.”

“So she’s a military prisoner now? Ton, we can’t break her out of jail for your plan—”

“Not a prisoner now. She was a prisoner aboard the Implacable. Admiral Trigit’s mistress—unwilling mistress. She was snatched off a planet colony Trigit bombarded into sand, she was kept drugged … you can guess the rest.”

Kell grimaced.

“She had a whole lot to tell New Republic Intelligence about Trigit and his methods. A very observant, intelligent young woman. Not to mention a beauty.”

“You’ve already mentioned that she was a beauty.”

“Yes, but I’m still not over her. I heard she was being transferred to Coruscant for further debriefing. If we can find her and convince her to help …”

“We could sponsor her to pilot training and catch Colonel Repness in his same pathetic tactic.” Kell glanced again at Tyria. “I’m in.”

“Good. I’ll see if I can track her down—Lara Notsil is her name—and then see if Face will keep us off the duty roster long enough to talk to her.”

“And if he won’t?”

“I’ll bring him in on the plan.” Anticipating Kell’s objections, Phanan hastily continued, “I won’t mention Tyria by name. I can keep her out of the story.”

“Well … all right. Let’s keep her out of this end of it, too.”

“Done.”

A day later, they reassembled in the same hangar, all the Wraiths and more personnel besides.

Face looked over the newcomers with interest. Tallest among them was a human male, on his head an untidy mess of straw-colored hair. Next was a dark-skinned woman with large, alert eyes, a red bead tied to one lock of hair on her forehead, and a broad smile that suggested that every minute of every day she was thrilled to be alive. The last, and shortest, was a Twi’lek woman, her features startlingly beautiful by human standards but her red-eyed stare forbidding, her brain tails hanging loose behind her instead of being draped over her shoulders in the fashion of a Twi’lek among friends and allies. All three wore the standard orange-and-white New Republic pilot’s suit.

“Lots of news today,” Wes Janson said, looking over his datapad. He was, Face saw, back to his usual self, his eternally youthful features merry, no sign on them of discomfort from the injury to his side. “Most of it good, some bad.

“Bad news: I’m back. Bad for me, because I was enjoying my rest, and bad for you, because if some of you had been a little quicker, I wouldn’t have been shot. Keep it in mind as I make up assignments over the next few weeks.”

He smiled at the chorus of groans that resulted. “Runt, also, is fit for duty, which is probably both good and bad, because some of his personalities enjoy working and some don’t.” The greatest mental peculiarity of Runt’s Thakwaash species, now well known to the Wraiths, was that most had multiple personalities—not caused, as they were among humans, by great emotional trauma, but occurring as a natural part of their mental development. Each of Runt’s personalities was adept at a different task, and new personalities tended to emerge as he learned.

“We have new pilots to fill our roster.” One of the Wraiths had died at the battle on the moon of System M2398; two more had perished in the fight that destroyed the Implacable. “I present to you Flight Officer Castin Donn, our new computer specialist.” The blond-haired man nodded cheerfully. Janson continued, “Castin is a native of Coruscant, so the next time we decide to walk into a trap here, we’ll take him along to make sure it’s a better grade of trap.

“Flight Officer Dia Passik is a native of Ryloth.” The Twi’lek woman nodded, looking among the Wraiths as if to guess which one would attack her first. Janson said, “She has experience with a broad variety of New Republic and Imperial vehicles, especially larger space vessels, and knows quite a bit about criminal organization—she’s a new resource for us where things like smuggling, the slave trade, and mercenary operations are concerned.

“Our third pilot is Flight Officer Shalla Nelprin—”

“Oh, no,” Kell said. He banged his head against the fuselage of Face’s X-wing.

Janson looked vaguely amused. “You have something to say, Lieutenant Tainer?”

Kell stopped hammering the snubfighter for a moment. “You’re related to Vula Nelprin?”

The new Wraith’s smile broadened, causing dimples to appear. “She’s my older sister.”

“And your father trained you, too?”

“Yes … though I think I’m a little better than Vula.”

Kell sighed. “I think I’ve told you all about my hand-to-hand instructor in the commandos, the one who could throw me around as though I were a dust rag without even letting me see her sweat—this is her sister.”

Janson said, “This should come as no surprise to you, then: Nelprin is going to be our new trainer in unarmed combat. You make her the best pilot she can be, and she gets to reward you by beating the life out of you. But she’s also well versed in Imperial Intelligence doctrine and tactics, which is helpful to us, since Zsinj seems to be fond of employing Intelligence personnel. Wedge?”

Wedge said, “Make the new pilots welcome, Wraiths. We’re going to put them, and you, immediately to work on our new mission.” He drew his datapad from a pocket and punched in a command on its keys. “I’ve just transmitted to your datapads the details of our assignment … one which, unfortunately, won’t take us off Coruscant yet.” He waved down the chorus of groans that resulted. “Sorry. But our results on this task may determine where we’re assigned next, so pay attention.

“Our efforts in tracking Admiral Trigit and insinuating ourselves into his confidence have gone over very well with High Command. We’ve demonstrated that we have both skill and luck on our side. But now we have to prove it beyond a doubt.

“We’re going to divide ourselves into three groups. Each group is to ask the following questions: What is Zsinj up to? What are his specific plans and strategies? Once you’ve arrived at a set of theories, we’ll put them to the test: We’ll go out into the field and look for evidence to corroborate the best of the theories.

“I’m choosing three of you to head these groups based on your ability with tactical thinking and skill in getting into your enemies’ heads.” Wedge nodded toward three pilots in turn. “Runt, you’re Zsinj-One. Piggy, you’re Zsinj-Two. Face, you’re Zsinj-Three. Choose your teams and confine yourselves, as much as possible, to research resources available here at headquarters. Questions?”

Janson’s hand went up. “Are we going to be working with Rogue Squadron on this?”

Wedge nodded. “Once we’re off-planet, yes, but not in the theoretical phase. The Rogues are being assigned to General Solo on the Mon Remonda to look for Zsinj; once we get out into the field, we’ll work with them as circumstances demand.”

Tyria was next. “Have they found out whether it was Zsinj who arranged the ambush on us?”

Wedge managed a sour smile. “The survivors of that little operation have been free with their information. But none of them knew who they were working for except the organizer, who assembled them as a team, trained them for this operation, and led the mission. He was the one whose throat Phanan cut.”

Phanan didn’t look abashed. “Oops.”

“General Cracken’s field investigators are trying to backtrack their expenditures and movements; maybe that will turn up some leads for them. Not our problem. Anything else? No? Dismissed.”

In the organizational chaos that followed, Runt chose Kell and Tyria as his partners; Face took Phanan and Janson; and Piggy chose Myn, and rounded out his group by adding Squeaky, the unit’s 3PO quartermaster, to his roster. By silent agreement, each of the three virtual Zsinjes took one of the new squadron members: Runt took Shalla, Piggy chose Castin, and Face took the Twi’lek Dia.

“And may the best Zsinj win,” Face said. “Until he runs into Wraith Squadron, that is.”

2

Gara Petothel rechecked the code for the last time, her attention skipping back and forth across screens of data, then sent the command to compile the ungainly-looking mess into what she hoped would be the final version of her program.

A work of art, it was. It would transfer a number of packets of encrypted data from her terminal deep in the low-rent warrens of the city-planet of Coruscant to public computer repositories, disguising the data as ancient archives of accounting data. Then, once the trail back to Gara’s terminal was cold, it would transmit the data out across the New Republic HoloNet, to HoloNet addresses Gara had committed to memory weeks before … addresses that would lead eventually to the communications station of the warlord Zsinj.

If he’s a smart man, she thought, and by all accounts he is, within a few weeks I’ll have gainful employment again. Away from this cesspool and away from the Rebel police and Intelligence agents—

A heavy knock fell on the door. She jumped. Sign of a guilty conscience, she thought, and tried to school her features back into an expression of innocent curiosity. She switched off power to her terminal’s screen.

As she rose to answer the door, she looked into the mirror to make sure she looked the part she was supposed to be playing. Her downy white-blond hair, cut very close, still seemed odd to her, as was the absence of a mole she’d carried on her cheek since childhood—a mole she had secretly had removed when preparing this identity. No, this identity shared only a certain delicacy of features with Gara Petothel, and hair and makeup were sufficiently different that no one should recognize her in the time it would take her to leave.

She opened the door.

Two Rebel pilots stood outside, both in pilot’s jumpsuits topped with transparent slickers more suited to Coruscant’s frequent thunderstorms. One had saturnine features and a prosthetic faceplate over the upper left half of his face, a red glow where his left eye would have been. The other would have been startlingly handsome, with luxuriant dark hair framing intelligent, active eyes and features suited to raising heart rates, but his face was marred by a puckered scar—a blaster graze, she guessed—running from his left cheek to his right forehead.

She knew the one with the faceplate, and it was he who spoke first. “Lara Notsil.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes.” She looked beyond them, to the pedestrian traffic in the tenement hallway. Though her tiny quarters were on the fortieth floor of a building, this hallway was part of a tube access allowing people to walk across kilometers of Coruscant at this altitude, and traffic was always heavy. Her hallway was a place of thefts and assaults, but also a way for her to lose herself quickly in a crowd, which is why she’d chosen it.

She returned her attention to her visitors. “It’s Lieutenant Phanan, isn’t it? From the hospital on Borleias? Please, come in before someone sticks a vibroblade in you.” She backed away and allowed them to enter, then shut the door against the ceaseless stream of humanity outside.

“Actually, it’s just Flight Officer Phanan,” her visitor said. “The smart one here is the lieutenant, Garik Loran.”

She froze in mid-handshake and gave the other pilot a closer look. It was him, and it embarrassed her, the way she suddenly felt light-headed. “The Face? You’re still alive?”

Face gave her a smile. She knew it was an actor’s smile, carefully rehearsed to suggest amusement, comradeship, and attraction, but despite the fact it did not fool her, she was still half washed away by the emotions it caused. She felt as though she’d just been invited into his intimate acquaintance. Her light-headedness worse than ever, she sat heavily at her terminal chair.

“That’s me,” Face said. “I get that a lot. No, the story of my death was a sort of propaganda thing cooked up by the Empire to make people think the Rebel Alliance was full of evil people who’d kill a child actor. I’m a pilot these days.”

“Obviously.” She struggled to bring herself under control. Remember, she thought. You’re Lara Notsil now. Farm girl from Aldivy. Former prisoner of Admiral Trigit. That’s what they’re here for, more debriefing on Trigit. Phanan had been there, one of the Rebels shooting at Implacable—shooting at me. “Please, sit down. I’m sorry about the mess—it’s hard to keep anything clean here. How did you find me?”

Phanan sat on the edge of the bed. Face took the only other chair. Phanan said, “Anyplace you can walk or sit without sticking to everything is very hygienic by low-level Coruscant standards. Believe me, we know. As for finding you—we asked around New Republic Intelligence. They said you’d been discharged and had declined transportation back to your homeworld. We ran a search on the worldnet looking for your name and recent employment application. You’re working as an information processor for a shipping concern?”

“Yes. It pays”—she gestured at the tidy squalor around her—“for all this.”

Face said, “How would you like a better job and the chance to live in better conditions?”

“I’d like that. What would I have to do?”

“Go through New Republic pilot training. The full academy course.”

No, thanks. How would you like to get me a ticket to Warlord Zsinj’s fleet instead? But she had to play her role. “That would be … nice. But it can’t happen.”

Face gave her another smile, this one full of confidence. “Why not?”

Gara injected a note of wistfulness into her voice. “When I was back on the farm on Aldivy, that’s something I thought about every day. Learning to fly. I got to be pretty good on the farm’s skimmers. I studied things like voice and Basic to sound less like a farm girl.”

“It shows,” Face said. “Your Aldivian accent is almost gone.”

If you knew that I was born and reared less than a hundred klicks from here, you’d appreciate how much work it takes to speak with the barest trace of that accent, Gara thought. “But then, when the Implacable came, destroyed New Oldtown, and took me away, I sort of lost interest. All I wanted to do was see the Implacable destroyed. And then when Admiral Trigit chose me for his”—she broke eye contact, put an extra rasp into her voice, let a tear fall—“mistress, all I wanted was for him to die.

“You did that. You killed him. Your squadron and the other ones. Thank you.” She modulated her voice to sound as though she were feigning nonchalance and concealing pain. “But I guess I don’t have anything left. Any ambitions.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Besides, since I’ve been … associated with Admiral Trigit, the New Republic wouldn’t trust me.” She shrugged fatalistically.

“They cleared you. You were never charged with any crime.”

She nodded. And what work it had been, all those weeks ago, to generate the Lara Notsil identity, careful planning ahead just in case her employment with Trigit didn’t work out. Hooking her new identity to a real event, Trigit’s punitive bombardment of a farm community that had refused to provision him. Finding and modifying the pitiful few records concerning a farm girl whose body was now a carbonized mass of powder in a charred Aldivian grainfield, replacing key bits of data with Gara’s picture, Gara’s fingerprints, Gara’s cellular coding. Spinning a tale of secret chambers on the Implacable—so secret other Implacable survivors could plausibly not have known about her—where Trigit imprisoned his “unwilling mistress” and maintained her on a diet of glitterstim and other drugs.

They’d accepted it, the whole package, especially eager for the scandalous details of her captivity and Trigit’s evil … lies she’d been happy to offer out of her anger at the man. Trigit had been willing to sacrifice his crew to death when he didn’t have to, a crew that had been efficient and loyal.

But this whole Lara Notsil identity had only one purpose, to get her out of New Republic hands and back to Imperial service—or service that would someday be acknowledged as Imperial.

She shook her head. “I don’t think I can help you.” Then she frowned. “Wait. You said ‘trade favors.’ What would I do for you?”

Phanan leaned forward. “Ah. That’s the tricky bit. We’d want you to struggle a bit with your pilot training. Skirt along at the bottom of your class, sometimes dipping just under acceptable skill, sometimes skimming along just above. Sort of terrain-following flying, if you get my drift.”

“Why? Why not do the best I can?”

Phanan said, “Because we think someone will come to you and offer to help train you, improve your scores … and then want to use your pilot’s skills in a deal. Some sort of illegal operation.”

“You’re setting this person up. I would be bait.”

Face nodded. “He’s the sort of man who uses people, Lara. Uses them like Admiral Trigit. We thought, maybe, you’d be able to take out on him the vengeance you’d been saving for Trigit.”

She shook her head. “It wouldn’t be the same, and I wouldn’t—”

And then the idea hit her, detonating in her mind like a proton torpedo. A plan, a simple one, one that would increase her worth in the eyes of Warlord Zsinj or any Imperial officer to whom she wanted to sell her services. The idea made her as dizzy as her long-faded teenage longing for an actor named Garik Loran had.

“Lara?” Face asked. “Are you all right?”

She began to cry. A useful talent, that, being able to cry on cue; her teachers at Imperial Intelligence had been delighted by it. “I can’t do it,” she said. “I’ll lose everything.”

Phanan leaned forward and took her hands. “What will you lose? What could you lose?”

“Everyone at home is dead. All I have left are people I’ve met since I was rescued. I was hoping for a career in the military, some civilian post. If I do what you say, if I go through pilot’s training, I won’t be able to help myself—it’ll wake up that old wish and the only thing I’ll want is to be a pilot. And then if I set this man up and ruin him, everyone everywhere will say, ‘That’s Lara Notsil. The traitor.’ No one will want me. Everyone will distrust me.”

“That’s not true,” Phanan said. But Gara saw Face lean back, considering her words, and she knew he recognized the truth of them.

“It is true,” she said. “What commander would take me on as a pilot? Everyone will think I’m spying on them, and friends of this person you want me to burn down will do what it takes to ruin me. I’ll have terrible scores from doing exactly what you wanted me to do, so the civilian piloting services won’t have anything to do with me.” She stared between them, defiant, allowing tears to continue streaming down her face. “You know it’s true. And you can’t speak for any squadron except your own, and you know Wedge Antilles would never take me on after I’d done what you asked.”

Face still looked troubled. “We don’t know that.”

“But you can’t speak for him.”

“No, we can’t.”

“So you two want me to trade my entire future for a little piloting training. Thanks for the offer. There’s the door.”

“Wait.” There was no artifice in Face’s voice or manner now. “What if we could guarantee you a piloting station? Somewhere you’d be accepted for your skills, where the consequences of this operation play in your favor instead of against you?”

“Where?”

“I don’t know yet.”

She shook her head. “I can’t trust that the commander will be as fair as you think. I just don’t believe it.”

“What if it were Wedge Antilles?”

She caught her breath. Then: “You just said you can’t speak for him.”

“Not yet. I haven’t put any details of this in front of him. But I will. And if he says yes?”

She paused. She already knew her answer, but they had to think she was considering it. Finally, she said, “If it were Wedge Antilles’s command, either Rogue Squadron or that new one, Wraith Squadron, yes, I’d do it.”

“I’ll talk to him today.” Face rose and Phanan followed suit. “I’ll let you know as soon as I have an answer from him.”

She gave him a brave little nod.

And when they’d gone, she clamped both hands over her mouth, the better to hold in the whoops of victory that threatened to escape her.

When they were a few steps from Lara Notsil’s door, Phanan said, “Commander Antilles is going to take you to pieces.”

“I know.” Face shouldered his way through the thick stream of pedestrians.

“You’ll be pulling punishment detail until you’re forty.”

“Probably.”

“When you put this idea in front of him, flames are going to come out of his mouth and burn you from head to foot.”

“That’s true. But one thing makes it easier for me to take.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re going to be there burning with me.”

Phanan grimaced. “You’re such a good friend.”

Flight Officer Shalla Nelprin dove toward the ground—as far as the narrowing gaps between Coruscant’s endless sea of buildings would allow her to descend. She could see blurs in the viewports, blurs that had to be startled faces.

The pair of TIE fighters on her tail pursued her with agility, matching her maneuver with little effort, still firing their linked lasers at her tail. She leveled off, juking left and right as much as the narrow confines would let her, and green laser blasts slammed into buildings on either side of her and into her reinforced rear shields.

“I can’t shake them, Control,” she said. “They’re good.”

The voice of Runt Ekwesh came back. “Shalla, why do you think Warlord Zsinj employs so many former Intelligence officers? Implacable, Night Caller, and more ships and officers we’re learning of—”

Shalla’s snubfighter shuddered as another laser blast slammed into her stern shields and penetrated to reach her hull. She glanced at her diagnostics board. Minimal damage to hull, no indication of other problems. Yet. “Control, do you mind? I’m flying for my life here.”

“It is only a simulator run. Your scores are not being recorded.”

“Treat every simulator run like the real thing and stay alive longer. That’s what my daddy says.” She dropped down another ten meters to fly under, rather than through, a walkway connecting two skyscrapers. One TIE fighter mimicked her, the other rose and flew over the obstruction. “All right. First, they were available. Ysanne Isard, head of Intelligence, is killed a few months ago by Rogue Squadron. This gives every one of her subordinates a choice. Work for this council now running what’s left of the Empire, work for one of the warlords, go pirate, or go hide. Wait a second.”

Below and ahead was another enclosed crosswalk; beyond it, immediately below the crosswalk’s level, two buildings widened so that there was scarcely any room between them. Shalla dove again, came up immediately beneath the walkway, and rotated ninety degrees, her wings now pointing skyward and groundward, to fit in the narrowing gap between buildings.

As before, one TIE fighter went high and the other followed her closely. But the TIE-fighter profile was not as variable as that of an X-wing; because of its solar array wings, no matter how it was turned, the TIE fighter needed more than six meters of clearance in any direction.

In this narrow gap, her pursuer didn’t have them. It hit the four-meter opening between buildings and the buildings sheared both wings off, top and bottom. The TIE fighter dropped, its ball-shaped cockpit bouncing between buildings on its way down until it detonated.

A new voice—Shalla thought it was Kell Tainer’s—came across next. “Good flying, Nelprin. One to go.”

“Thank you.” The gap between buildings widened. She rotated until she was horizontal again. “So, all of a sudden there are lots of Intelligence operatives and ships available. That’s the supply.

“Demand is trickier. Zsinj’s records say he’s sort of a compulsive liar. So why hire people who are trained to see through those lies? My guess is that he doesn’t mind. He doesn’t lie to fool people—except his enemies, of course. He does it to entertain. To impress people with his brilliance.”

The remaining TIE fighter resumed firing on her; lasers flashed past her strike foils to blow through building walls below, and her stern shields took more hits.

Ahead and above was a crowd of high-altitude skimmers—aerial traffic following one of the posted routes. But these skimmers were all decorated with the colors of Coruscant police.

“Hey, fair game.” Shalla rose into the cloud of skimmers, flashing just below most of them, using them as a screen.

Her pursuer’s lasers hit skimmers all around her. Several detonated, raining shrapnel upon her.

When a skimmer ahead of her blew up, she decelerated as hard as she could and was vibrated by her snubfighter’s shudder. Half on main engines and half on repulsorlift landing engines, she rose through the cloud of flame and debris—

And as she cleared it she saw the other TIE fighter racing along ahead, not having anticipated her sudden deceleration. It was slowing now, preparing for one of the impossibly tight turns TIE fighters could manage.

She bracketed the TIE fighter with her heads-up display. The brackets went almost instantly from yellow to red and she fired, sending a proton torpedo straight into the Imperial vehicle’s cockpit. It detonated, a brilliant flash of light and debris.

Then Shalla’s view spun as she was hurled out of control. She saw a building side rushing toward her, frightened faces in the viewports—and then everything went black.

The canopy opened over her, admitting light. Runt, Kell, and Tyria stood nearby, all of them wearing headsets. “What happened?” Shalla asked, complaint in her voice.

Kell smiled. “You were hit by a skimmer. It was flying blind through that first explosion and slammed into you from the side.”

Shalla hissed in vexation and climbed out. “They say the city is a dangerous place.”

“Otherwise an excellent run,” Kell continued.

“So,” Runt said, “the Intelligence operatives are available, and Zsinj doesn’t mind that they can see through some of his deceptions. What else?”

Shalla gave the others a look. “Runt is pretty single-minded, isn’t he?”

They laughed. Kell said, “No, more like multiple-minded. But any one of his minds might get very focused.”

“I see.” She didn’t, but she figured she would eventually. She turned back to Runt. “Maybe it’s more than that Zsinj just doesn’t mind. Maybe he likes having an appreciative audience. Someone knowledgeable enough to understand what he’s doing and be impressed by it. He has to have a tremendous ego.”

Runt frowned. It wasn’t a proper human frown, but his very mobile eyebrows came down over his large, expressive eyes to suggest concentration. “He likes to be appreciated.”

“I think so.”

“He would enjoy playing the hero. Hero of the Empire.”

“Certainly. Why else make all these very public assaults on New Republic colonies and outposts? It’s not all for their strategic value. They’re not all valuable, and he could do more damage by being sneaky. It’s to show somebody that he’s a warrior. His audience, whoever that is.” She bent over, pressing her head to her knees, then straightened, arms high in the air, and began repeating the motion.

Tyria sighed. “She’s exercising. We have a compulsive exerciser.”

Shalla didn’t look up. “Just stretching. I get leg cramps when I’m in the cockpit too long.”

Kell said, “Her sister is like that, too. Always in motion. Want to drive her completely insane? Tie her to a chair for an hour.”

Shalla straightened and gave him her most wicked smile. “Try it, Lieutenant.”

“No, thanks.”

Wedge stood so fast that his chair slammed back into his office wall. “You promised her what?”

Phanan and Face were already standing. Face said, “We promised her nothing—except that we’d look into it.”

“Gentlemen, this is a matter for New Republic Intelligence. Hand it off to General Cracken’s people.”

Face looked uneasy. “With all due respect, sir, Cracken’s people haven’t noticed this man yet. That means he might have a friend, a fellow officer, in Intelligence, covering for him. If he’s stolen spacecraft before, and we have no reason to suspect he hasn’t—”

“Or any knowledge that he has.”

“True. But if he’s stolen spacecraft before, having a friend in Cracken’s group would account for the failure of any investigation to turn up evidence against him. If we turn this over to Intelligence, we may just be giving him advance warning so he can cover his tracks, play the good little officer for a couple of years … and then go back to stealing things and luring young, struggling officer candidates into his employ.”

Wedge considered that. “If you carry out this little operation, Cracken’s people may decide they don’t care for us very much. For intruding on their territory.”

Phanan nodded. “That’s a possibility. But another possibility is that we can do this without even alerting anyone it is an ‘operation.’ Let’s say Lara Notsil gets into flight school on the recommendation of a dashing, preposterously attractive pilot she met in the hospital on Borleias—”

“One of Blue Squadron’s pilots, I assume.”

“Thank you for that vote of confidence, sir. Anyway, she goes through training, Repness starts his shenanigans. Lara calls in her old friend from the hospital, they expose Repness immediately. That’s the story, and it’ll hold up to most scrutiny.”

“To casual scrutiny, maybe.” Scowling, Wedge finally resumed his seat. Phanan and Face looked a little more relieved and sat as well.

Wedge continued, “But the likelihood is that we’ll be on assignment elsewhere when her troubles with Repness begin. Are you planning on resigning from Wraith Squadron to stay here near her?”

“No. But Face here is going to deposit some credits in an account for her to use for HoloNet access. Whenever it happens, she can get in touch with us almost immediately—”

“Assuming we’re not undercover.”

“Assuming that, yes. I’ll leave instructions for her for what to do if she can’t reach us. But if she can, we’ll find out who’s on Coruscant, someone we trust that she can depend on. There’s bound to be somebody. There’s always somebody.” Phanan gave his commander a diffident little shrug. “You might even be able to call on Princess Leia Organa—”

“Absolutely not. She’s a busy, busy woman. Besides, she’s gone on some diplomatic mission nobody will talk about.”

“Just a thought. Anyway, if we’re not here to help Lara through the endgame, we’ll put her in the hands of a friend who is. And that will be the end of it.”

“Except for her career.”

Both of the other pilots nodded.

Wedge leaned back, away from them. “All right, you two. I’ll give you this. If she carries out this operation, I’ll consider her for transfer to one of my squadrons. And I’ll base my acceptance or refusal of her completely on my own evaluation of her skills and her character. Not on her academy records, not on her participation in your operation. She has to be fit to fly as a Rogue or a Wraith … but if she is, the next time I have a slot available I’ll take her. That’s the best I can do.”

They took that as a signal and rose. “That’s the best we could hope for,” Phanan said. “Thank you, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

When they’d gone, Wedge said to the empty air, “Wes, they’re doing it to me again.”

3

“I think it’s all wrapped up in the symbolism of the Iron Fist,” Face said.

The Wraiths were in the officers’ lounge of Sivantlie Base, their temporary station on Coruscant. Once a hotel catering to mid-level Imperial bureaucrats from offworld, it now housed units of the armed forces that were in transition: soldiers awaiting transport to their assignments, squadrons in rotation between bases, new units being assembled. Two stories down, where the base’s tower just began to extend above the surrounding buildings, there were hangar accesses large enough for small cargo vessels. The lounge itself had vast viewports that gave the Wraiths and other officers present a clear view of the limitless sea of Coruscant’s building tops, as well as storm clouds concentrating only a few kilometers away. Tiny dots like insects, actually shuttles and other craft, buzzed above the cityscape and beneath the clouds.

Face was at the viewports, staring down into the dark depths of Coruscant’s streets, trying to shift his tastes around, trying to become the sort of man who would look upon this world as a thing of beauty. Trying to become a loyal Imperial officer, if only temporarily, to understand how they thought, reacted.

“You’re saying the Iron Fist is his hammer, symbolically as well as effectively?” That was Janson, stretched out on one of the lounge sofas, a tumbler of brandy on the table at his head.

Face nodded absently. “He uses it for strikes against high-profile targets. Not targets that are easier than the others, nor harder, just more visible. Such as the assault on Noquivzor, designed to destroy Rogue Squadron—what a coup that would have been. He named Iron Fist after his first command, an elderly wreck of a Victory-class Star Destroyer. It’s a symbol to him, of his rise from obscurity to power. It’s the key to him, I think.” He glanced over at Runt, who leaned lazily against a support pillar on the other side of the main viewport. “What do you think?”

The brown-furred nonhuman turned toward him. Face felt his own spine stiffen. This wasn’t Runt’s usual body language, and the long-faced pilot’s eyes drooped almost closed. Runt said, “Did I give you leave to speak?” His voice was rich and deep, without his usual melodious tones and odd inflections.

“Your pardon,” Face said. He felt oddly formal. “Iron Fist? Zsinj’s primary and most important act of symbolism?”

Runt shook his head, sending his long, glossy ponytail swaying. His smile showed his large teeth but did not seem in the least friendly. “You don’t understand Zsinj,” he said. “To Zsinj, symbols are for others. Zsinj uses them as simple controls. Knobs and buttons by which he can cause his lessers to do their duty. Dials and gauges by which he can measure their fear. No, Zsinj’s tool is that fear itself, fear and respect. Zsinj smashes with one hand and feeds with the other. One act impresses the unaligned governors who used to support the Empire. The other hand beckons them. As more and more feed from that hand, still more will be forced to.” Runt finally looked fully at Face. “It is the governors. It must be. Zsinj will do whatever it takes to draw them into his camp, one by one or ten by ten. Smash them, entice them, seduce them, terrify them.”

Face glanced back at Janson. The squadron’s second-in-command grinned at him, obviously amused by Runt’s performance, then cocked his head to one side and froze—near-universal pantomime of a droid whose power has just been shut off, pilot’s shorthand for someone whose brain is receiving no power.

One of the lounge’s simulators hissed as its canopy opened. The new Twi’lek pilot, Dia Passik, bounded out as though she were partially made of springs. She had a smile on her face, nearly a smirk, and she headed straight for the bar. Face watched her closely; there was something odd about the way she moved.…

That was it. Hers was the strut of a Corellian pilot. A male Corellian pilot, to the extent that her build would allow her such motion. She, too, knew something about body language and simulated manners.

The adjoining simulator opened and Phanan climbed out more sedately. He came over to Face. “Well, she dropped the heavy end of the hammer on me,” he said.

“Vaped you?”

“Three times out of three. I don’t think she’s up to Kell’s level, and certainly not up to the commander’s, but she’s deadly.” Phanan added, a hopeful note in his voice, “Perhaps she’d show me some mercy on account of my physical appeal and personal charm.”

“I’m sure she would if you had any.”

They joined Dia at the bar, flanking her, and ordered a nonalcoholic fruit fizz to match hers. Squeaky, the 3PO unit with mismatched gold and silver components, drew their drinks, uttered a sigh, and murmured something about the scarcity of fresh fruit in the Coruscant market.

“Ton says you’re a pretty hot shooter,” Face said.

“It won’t work,” she said.

“Eh?” Face glanced across her at Phanan, who returned his confused expression. “What won’t work?”

“You wouldn’t have said that to a male pilot unless it had been a real run. Which means you only said it to ingratiate yourself with me. You want to provoke an emotional response, gratitude, that a lowly flight officer might find worth under the eyes of the famous Garik Loran. At some point I’m supposed to swoon into your arms, aren’t I?”

Face blinked. “That actually hadn’t occurred to me.”

“I didn’t see your holos, Face. When you were acting your heart out as a child star, I was a slave dancer in training, not permitted choice rewards like seeing entertainment holos. You don’t occupy a place in the adolescent quadrant of my heart the way you do with most females my age. I am immune to your alleged charms.”

Face glanced at Phanan again. The other pilot was turning red with the effort not to laugh. Face modulated his voice to low, resonant, romantic tones. “I am so glad I met you,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you all my life.”

“You have?” Her expression turned to confusion. “Why?”

“The one woman in all the galaxy immune to my charms? Do you know how often I’ve said, ‘Where is she, does she truly exist?’ ”

Phanan got himself under control. “It’s true. I raised Face from the time he was a cub, and since almost the day he could talk, he’s been saying, ‘Find me the one woman who can withstand me. Who can loathe me for who I really am.’ He’s had a long, lonely life until today. Now you can abuse him and give me a rest.”

Face nodded sagely.

Dia’s face twitched into a smile, which she quickly suppressed. “Now you’re making fun of me.”

Face let his expression and voice return to normal. “Oh, we’ve barely gotten started. Anyway, after a casual remark about your skills to open up the conversation, my plan actually was to ask you how you fouled up.”

“Fouled up.” She looked between the two men. “I don’t recall fouling up.”

“Then what brings you to Wraith Squadron?”

“I volunteered. After the story broke on your destruction of the Implacable, I wanted to join a unit as savage as that. Why? Are you supposed to be screwups?”

Phanan whistled. “She doesn’t even know. We didn’t even have time for our true reputation to circulate before another reputation swam up and swallowed it.”

Face gave Dia a stern look. “I’m sorry, you appear to have been transferred here under false pretenses. We’re a hard-luck squadron. If you’re not a real screwup, we’re just going to have to make you an honorary screwup. Keep that in mind.”

“I will,” she said, her voice solemn.

“She’ll do,” Phanan said.

“Even if she doesn’t swoon.”

“How did you get into Starfighter Command?” Face asked.

She looked between them as if evaluating them, then shrugged. “My … owner … was a very rich man of Coruscant, founder of a firm that made communications equipment. Very reliable HoloNet receivers, for example. He and his preferred advisers lived on an enormous yacht called the Violet Hem—a reference to the Emperor’s robes. Anyway, over the years I was able to persuade several of his personal pilots to teach me how to control their vehicles. Few things make a male feel as grand as the opportunity to teach a young, fascinated female.” She opened her eyes wide in an expression of innocence.

Face snorted. “So you stole a vehicle?”

“My owner was visited by a pilot with an armed shuttle. I stole it and turned it over to the New Republic.”

“And the Violet Hem?”

This time her smile was not that of an innocent. “Before I left, I locked her shields down so they could not be brought up. My first combat action of any sort was to blow Violet Hem out of space.”

Face suppressed a shudder and decided to change the subject. “I wonder if the other new pilots are just as unaware of our true nature. Hey, Castin!”

The blond pilot, seated in a stuffed chair nearby, looked up guiltily from the datapad in his lap. “I wasn’t doing anything.”

Face grinned. “I’m not monitoring you. I just wanted to know what you did to end up with the Wraiths.”

“I volunteered.”

“Why?”

Castin looked thoughtful. “I wanted to be where things happened. And things always happen around Commander Antilles. I want to go after enemies like Zsinj and eliminate them. Erase them. Overwrite them to the point that no one in the galaxy even remembers them.”

“Well, that’s admirable … but again, why?”

“People like Zsinj, they have to be squashed as hard and as fast as you can. Because the next thing they do is going to be something awful. They never do anything that isn’t awful, and ordinary people get killed.” Castin’s tone was bitter, and other Wraiths perked up to listen.

“You’re speaking from personal experience.”

“Oh, yes.” Castin looked around blankly, staring not at his fellow Wraiths but at some point in the past. “The day the Emperor died—what were you doing?”

Face didn’t have to think back. Most people recalled exactly what they were doing the moment they heard that Palpatine had been killed at Endor. “I was in civilian flight school on Lorrd. In class studying astronautics. Why?”

“I was in one of Coruscant’s plazas. A little one, couldn’t have held more than a couple of hundred thousand people, way up high where only a half-dozen buildings cast shadows down on it. The word spread like fire through an old building. The New Republic HoloNet broadcast was being rebroadcast on a wide band so that every personal comlink would pick it up. All holoprojectors were showing the second Death Star exploding.

“The crowd went crazy. Loyalists were turning white. Some of them fainting dead away. Rebels and people with Rebel leanings were going berserk. Before very long, they were actually tearing a statue of Palpatine down. A big one. It took cables and skimmers to knock it over.” Castin shrugged. “And then stormtroopers came.”

“To restore order.”

“If you want to call it that. They opened up on the crowd pulling down the statue. And their blasters weren’t set on stun. You could smell the burning-meat odor all over the plaza. I was right next to a young mother who took it right in the head. I grabbed her baby on the way down so he wouldn’t be trampled in the stampede.” He shook his head, his expression bleak, and fell silent.

Face said, “The Imperial HoloNet wouldn’t have transmitted the news of the Emperor’s death over normal channels like that. Not before they’d had time to sweeten up the story and turn it into some sort of Imperial victory.”

Castin shook his head, not meeting Face’s eye.

“So someone else, someone technically proficient, had to have intercepted it and rebroadcast it like that. You?”

Castin nodded. “My group was one of them, yes.”

“So Zsinj is another Imperial killer, and if you don’t stop him personally, it’s the plaza all over again. Is that it?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, that’s as good a reason as any.” But that was an answer for Face. Castin might have volunteered for this duty without a blemish on his record, but there was still a possibility of volatility there. Now he had to wonder if Dia and Shalla were also carrying around emotional demolition charges just waiting to go off.

“Pirates,” Piggy said, interrupting. The Gamorrean settled into a stuffed chair situated between Janson’s sofa and the bar, near Donos and Castin.

“Pirates to you, too,” Phanan said. “Is that a new greeting? Something Gamorrean? ‘Scabrous pirates to you this morning.’ ”

“ ‘And bleeding pirates to you.’ ” Face gave his wingman a formal bow.

“Zsinj was negotiating with the pirates on M2398, trying to enlist their services,” Piggy continued. In spite of the mechanical simplicity of Piggy’s voice translator, Face thought he could detect a contemplative quality in the Gamorrean’s tones. “It’s a tactic we haven’t seen with him before. Is he in such dire need that he must rely on pirates? I don’t think so. He’s assembling a second navy, perhaps a disposable one.”

Runt shook his head again. “Zsinj needs such scum only to hear what their prattling mouths have to say. To obtain news, intelligence, that he cannot derive from some more legitimate source. The pirates are nothing.”

Piggy grunted a laugh. “You’ll need plenty of cleanser for that scum when it assembles and comes at you. At all of us.”

•      •      •

“A minute of your time, sir?” Castin Donn stood at the door to Wedge’s interim office. Rather, he leaned against it, his body language suggesting a man who’d prefer to be elsewhere—definitely anywhere but a military base. He was unshaven, his eyes tired.

Wedge would have accepted this pose and manner from one of the established Wraiths, but not from a newcomer. He merely cleared his throat and looked expectant, as though the pilot hadn’t spoken.

Castin apparently got the hint. He straightened, slowly enough to demonstrate reluctance, and threw a salute. “Flight Officer Castin Donn reporting, sir. I was wondering if I might have a moment of your time.”

Wedge took a moment before responding with his own salute. “Certainly, Donn. Have a seat.”

Donn’s posture, once he was seated, reverted to that of a career code-slicer; he slumped into his chair as though he’d left his spine in his locker. “I was wondering if I could get assigned to different quarters.”

Wedge brought out his datapad and tapped up the information on living assignments. It showed that Donn had been put in the same bunkroom as Runt Ekwesh. Runt’s former roommate had been Kell Tainer, but that pilot had been assigned solo quarters ever since his promotion to lieutenant. “Is something wrong with your current assignment?”

“Yes, sir. I’m not getting any sleep.”

“I don’t understand. Does Runt snore?” Kell had never made any such complaint.

“No, sir. It’s just not working out.”

“Personality conflict.”

“No, sir.”

“Request denied, Donn. Unless you can come up with something a little more substantial than ‘it’s just not working out.’ ”

Castin squirmed in his chair. Wedge thought it an unusually childlike mannerism from a grown man who’d been through pilot training and scored high enough to be fit for Wraith Squadron. “Sir, he, uh … he smells.”

“I take it you mean he smells bad.”

“Yes, sir. It’s keeping me up at night.”

Wedge kept his face impassive and thought about it. Runt Ekwesh was a member of the Thakwaash species, humanoids who averaged over three meters in height and were covered with fur; Runt came by his nickname because he was, in fact, very short for his species, the only reason he could fit in standard New Republic cockpits. And his odor was indeed different from that of humans, though it was very faint, usually undetectable except when he was wet or had been in the cockpit for several hours.

Wedge kept the pilot waiting, still squirming restlessly, while he brought up Castin’s full record. The man, a native of Coruscant, had been a code-slicer since he entered his teens, and had belonged to a rebel group not associated with the Alliance. Shortly after the Emperor’s death, nearly four years ago, he had forged himself a false identity, arranged passage offworld, and had ended up in New Republic-controlled space, where his technical skills had served him and the New Republic well. After two years as a coder for the fleet, he’d transferred to Starfighter Command and entered pilot training.

The synopsis said very little about him as a man. Wedge switched to the record of his citations and reprimands. He’d seen all this data before, while reviewing the new pilot candidates for approval, but he’d been looking only for specific types of information then.

There were citations for courage and ingenuity under fire, but also many punishments for failure to perform routine duties in a reliable fashion. That hadn’t bothered Wedge; he knew Castin would either shape up in that regard or be kicked out of Starfighter Command altogether, a motivation that should keep him in line. But in the record was also a chronicle of personality conflicts with fleet bridge crew members, mostly Mon Calamari. Transfer from the fleet accepted after a fistfight … with a Sullustian navigator. Hmm.

“I could put you in with Piggy. Voort saBinring,” Wedge said.

Castin’s squirming became more acute, and Wedge suspected he had the answer.

“I’m not sure that would work either,” Castin said.

“Same reason?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Donn, this independent revolutionary faction you belonged to—were there any nonhumans in it?”

“No, sir.”

That was interesting. Most such factions on Coruscant had high proportions of nonhuman members. The factions that didn’t include nonhumans tended to be just as anti-Imperial … but had still supported Coruscant culture’s legendary suspicion and dislike of nonhumans.

“So you’ve had very little protracted contact with nonhumans.”

“Well … that would be correct, sir.”

“I’m sorry, Donn, but I’m afraid this is something you’re just going to have to get used to. Whenever it bothers you, you need to ask yourself, ‘I wonder what I smell like to them?’ ”

Castin’s voice dropped and came close to but did not quite cross into the realm of surliness. “I don’t smell at all, sir. I keep myself very clean.”

“But their senses aren’t like yours. If you ever get up the nerve, ask them sometime if they can smell you and what it’s like. You might be surprised by the answer.”

Castin’s expression became one of distress. “But, sir, we have plenty of room here at base—”

“But not everywhere we’re going. I’ll modify room assignments when there’s a genuine reason to do so. Not before.”

“Sir—”

“That’s all, Donn.”

It looked just like the bridge of the Iron Fist. It had its own command walkway facing the forward viewports, the ones that stared out into depthless space. It had its crew pit below, with its numerous crew stations.

But it was actually a portion of Warlord Zsinj’s private quarters, a replica of the true bridge, and it had no crew. The viewports were actually screens receiving holocam views from the real viewports. The viewscreens at the crew stations showed the data or visual feeds the crewmen on duty would be accessing if they were here; commands flickered across the screens and were executed as though the station operators were in place. But sounds from the console speakers—beeps, dialogue, noises indicating errors or computer achievements—were the only ones to be heard. No one spoke.

Warlord Zsinj moved among the ghost stations, peering over the shoulders of imaginary crewmen as if to evaluate their performance. A small man whose waist outperformed his chest in dimension and magnificence, he looked like a holo comedian pretending to be an officer: His spotless white uniform was that of an Imperial grand admiral, while his bald head, luxuriant mustache, florid complexion, and too-cheerful manner suggested a backwater bandit.

He bent over the back of a chair; the screen before him showed a fleeing Y-wing attack craft as if seen through the viewport of a pursuing TIE interceptor. The background was a busy battlefield; Zsinj recognized the chaos of the battle above Endor’s sanctuary moon, just under four years ago.

He leaned closer to see the name of the crewman logged onto the computer. “Ah, Ensign Sprettyn,” he said. “Running attack simulators again while on duty. Shirking your responsibilities again.”

“Perhaps he wants to become a pilot.”

The voice, smooth and reassuring, came from behind Zsinj. The warlord straightened and turned. “General Melvar. What have I told you about creeping up behind me?”

The general, a tall man with features that were elegant when he was paying attention but impossibly bland and unmemorable when he lost concentration, smiled. “Not to.”

“And what did you just do?”

“I stomped up to you with all the silent grace of a gut-shot rancor. You were so intent on your observation of poor Ensign Sprettyn’s activities you failed to notice me.”

“It’s the sign of pure concentration. The ability to shut out all other concerns.”

“Of course.”

“What do you want?”

The general handed him a datapad. Lines of data were already up on its screen. “A private communication for you. Through Admiral Trigit’s old routing system.”

Zsinj gave him a look that was all raised eyebrows and curiosity, then scanned the text. “Hmm. Lieutenant Gara Petothel. Expects to be a member of one of Antilles’s squadrons within a few weeks. ‘Would you be interested …?’ I see she has a fine sense of irony. What do you have on her?”

“I’ve put her file in there with the communiqué. In short, she’s an Imperial Intelligence prodigy who was orphaned—she was in deep cover as a Rebel mission coordinator when Ysanne Isard was killed. Her controller was a member of Isard’s support staff and also died. Petothel managed to get in touch with Apwar Trigit, offered her continued services to him, and fed him information that led Trigit to some important temporary provisioning centers and allowed him to annihilate an entire Rebel X-wing squadron. She joined his crew and was presumed dead when the Implacable was destroyed.”

“Oh, she’s that one. So she eluded capture. Or perhaps not. Perhaps she was captured, then turned, and is being used to flush us.” Zsinj shrugged. “Where’s her holo?”

“We found that holos of her in both Imperial and Rebel records show the wrong woman. She has covered her tracks well. I’m having a simulation assembled from people who were in her Rebel academy class … which will take some time and caution.”

“Very well.” Zsinj handed the datapad back. “Pursue this. Have an agent or a cell on Coruscant try to do independent verification of what she’s saying. Find out what identity she’s currently wearing. Once that’s determined, we must find out where her loyalties lie before we commit any real resources to her.”

“Done. And Ensign Sprettyn?”

“Do you want to handle that? It’s a task for his executive officer.”

“I’d be happy to.”

“Very well. Sprettyn is under direct orders not to waste time with the simulators, but he just wants to fly too much. So spirit him off into the night. Tell the rest of the crew he’s been executed for disobeying orders. But tell him that he’s being taken aside for pilot evaluation. Put him through the simulators.”

“And if he turns out to be a good pilot trainee?”

“Weren’t you listening?” Zsinj looked regretful. “I deplore the waste of good crewmen, I really do. But we can’t have pilots who disobey orders. Evaluate his piloting performance, chastise or compliment him as appropriate, then execute him.”

“The evaluations of the three Zsinj theories have come back from Admiral Ackbar’s office,” Wedge said.

They were in the briefing room temporarily assigned to Wraith Squadron. This was an office far enough down in the building that there were no viewports; viewports would only have shown a depressingly bleak vista of dark, grimy duracrete corridor between the lower reaches of skyscrapers. Instead, the orange walls were decorated with large holoscreens that transited between views shot from planetary orbits, vistas of distant and beautiful worlds, and promotional images of hotel resorts belonging to the same chain that had once owned this facility. The Wraiths were all seated near Wedge’s lectern, except for Shalla Nelprin, who paced at the back of the hall—until Wedge caught her eye. She quickly sat in the seat nearest to her.

“Before I get to the admiral’s conclusions,” Wedge continued, “I think we ought to let the writers of the three reports synopsize their conclusions; not everyone has heard these. Runt?”

The long-faced alien stood up. His body language changed; his posture became that of a human carrying a fair amount of extra weight and he folded his hands over his belly in the fashion of a well-fed senator. “In our considered opinion,” he said, once again taking on the mellow voice of the ersatz Zsinj, “the warlord’s overt and covert tactics suggest that he will continue to add resources, industrial and planetary, with as much cost-effectiveness as possible. This means continuing the expansion of the secret financial empire whose edges we detected … and a more direct appeal to the unaligned governors that previously belonged to the Empire and now belong to the Empire’s successors. I think this means using Iron Fist in actions of direct interdiction that benefit these governors more than Zsinj himself, an effort to bind the governors to him in debts of gratitude.”

“And your recommendations for ways to counter this?”

“Examine the resources of unaligned governors, find out which one it would best serve Zsinj to court, and cause that governor problems only Zsinj can solve … luring him to that system and confronting him directly.”

“You’re very erudite in this mind, Runt.”

Runt’s body language changed back to normal; he once again seemed lanky, overtall, a little awkward. “But it makes our ego puff up like a gas giant.” He sat.

“Piggy?”

The Gamorrean stood. He cleared his throat. Once upon a time, that would have blasted the Wraiths with a burst of static, but his throat translator had since been reprogrammed to squelch a wider variety of irrelevant sounds. “In the last few weeks, as we were nibbling at the edges of Zsinj’s organization, we found three anomalies. One was the network of manufacturing corporations owned within unaligned and even Alliance-controlled space by Zsinj under false identities. One was his attempt to hire a pirate nest made up of outlaws somewhat under his usual standards. And the third was the presence, at one of his companies, of prison-cell components identical to the cell where I was raised after Imperial scientists altered my biochemistry.” The scientists’ alterations were what gave Piggy his unusually temperate personality—for a Gamorrean—and his inhuman mathematical acumen, both traits that allowed him to become a proficient New Republic pilot.

Piggy waved, his gesture taking in Myn Donos, the 3PO unit Squeaky, and Castin Donn. “My group feels that the industrial connection is something better suited for New Republic Intelligence to pursue, so we eliminated it from our recommendations. Of the two that remain, the site where I was scientifically modified and reared is of great interest to me personally, but we all feel that we would have a greater chance of discovering Zsinj by disguising ourselves as a pirate band and trying to impress Zsinj enough for him to employ us. This would keep us in close association with starfighters and play to the strengths that I think we demonstrated in the pursuit of Admiral Trigit and the Implacable.”

“Well put, Piggy. Face?”

The onetime actor stood. “Well, first I have to admit to a certain dissension in my own group. Lieutenant Janson and Ton Phanan here think that Runt’s idea is best. Dia Passik and I both favor Piggy’s pirate scheme. But since I was obliged to come up with a tactic, I have.

“Intensive analysis of Zsinj’s history suggests that he draws much of his inspiration from the performances of small theatrical companies. I suggest that we pose as a traveling troupe of players performing the sorts of works he seems to have the most affection for.”

Confused, Wedge scanned his records of the proposals the group leaders had generated. Face’s was on top, but its contents did not match what he was saying.

“I’ve discovered that Kell has a pleasant tenor singing voice, and Runt is actually an accomplished mime, a skill that few know is widespread on his homeworld of Thakwaa. By integrating modern holographic technology with traditional song-and-dance routines, we could capture the warlord’s attention—”

By now the other Wraiths were snickering. Wedge caught Face’s eye and glowered. “Perhaps you could give us the set of conclusions you turned in to me, Loran?”

Face had the gall to look surprised. “Oh, those. Sorry.” He sobered. “I think the Iron Fist is of tremendous importance to Warlord Zsinj, not just as a powerful weapons platform but also as a symbol, both of his career and his power. If Warlord Zsinj were more like us than he were like himself, I think he’d launch an expedition deep into the territory governed by Ysanne Isard’s successors, make a strike on the Kuat Drive Yards building facilities, and steal the next Super Star Destroyer in production.”

Wedge gave him a look of amusement. “That presupposes that Kuat is working on another Super Star Destroyer. They’re horribly expensive. And even though they can do an incredible amount of damage, they can be destroyed by a much less expensive enemy force … though usually at a tremendous cost of life.”

Face nodded. “Correct. But Zsinj doesn’t admit anyone is his equal in military intelligence, so he thinks he can keep it intact. And I keep remembering that he, Zsinj, hinted that he was promoting Admiral Trigit to a better position. We all thought maybe he meant captain of the Iron Fist, but what if he meant another Super Star Destroyer?”

Phanan spoke up. “Don’t forget your goofy ideas that never made it into your final proposal.”

Face waved him away, but Wedge asked, “What goofy ideas?”

Face looked unhappy. “Just an idea. Ysanne Isard is alive.”

“What?” Wedge looked as stunned as if someone had picked up a chair and broken it over his head.

Ysanne Isard had been the head of Imperial Intelligence when Emperor Palpatine died years ago. She survived Palpatine’s successors, a consortium of Palpatine’s advisers, and gradually assumed control of the Empire herself—though not in name. Months ago, she had died, killed fleeing the planet Thyferra in a battle-equipped shuttle, shot down by Rogue Squadron’s Captain Tycho Celchu.

“Follow me on this,” Face said. “Months ago, Ysanne Isard is chased off the world of Coruscant. Actually, she abandons it voluntarily to let the Krytos Plague infect the nonhuman population and lock up all of the New Republic’s resources when we occupy Coruscant. But she actually stays on Coruscant for quite some time after she pretended to flee. Eventually she really does leave, goes to Thyferra, takes over there, and is finally wiped out by the Rogues.

“Except—she was never seen climbing into the shuttle she was supposed to be using for escape. Except—it was not particularly intelligent for her to run off in a vehicle slower than the X-wings she had to have suspected would follow her. Except—she’d already shown a tendency to hide out with her head down when she was supposed to have fled. It raises the question: What if she actually wasn’t on that shuttle, and was communicating with the Rogues ‘chasing’ her through a remote-control link?”

Wedge said, “You’ve got to be wrong. There was no lag time in her transmissions, nothing to suggest she wasn’t there.”

“A shuttle she’d personally fitted as an Emperor’s escape vehicle might have a miniaturized hypercomm system. With instantaneous transmission and reception, there wouldn’t be any lag time.”

“Face, do you believe she’s alive?”

Face shook his head. “Sometimes I hope she is. I’d still like to kill her myself. But I believe Captain Celchu actually killed her. Still …” He shrugged and resumed his seat.

Wedge gave him an exasperated stare. “Well, here’s your punishment for nearly giving me a heart attack. Write this theory up and I’ll route it on to the new Thyferran government and to General Cracken at Intelligence. Between them, they should be able to sniff out any other evidence for Iceheart’s survival … if there is any.”

His expression cleared. “All right. As I said, Admiral Ackbar has evaluated these theories and made a decision. He’s asking Intelligence to step up any operations involving Kuat Drive Yards to find out if, in fact, they are building a new Super Star Destroyer. But that’s low priority and not our concern. For us, he wants to combine both Runt’s and Piggy’s ideas. We’ll be founding our own pirate band, Wraiths, and then assaulting a planetary system that Zsinj is courting—or should be, if he isn’t. Officially, we’ll be assigned to the Mon Remonda with Rogue Squadron; funny, though, the other pilots will never see us in the ship’s corridors.

“We have a little reorganization to do to accommodate our new pilots. Flight Officer Donn, you’re now Wraith Two, and my wingman.”

The pilot with the unruly blond hair smiled. He couldn’t have known that the position of Wraith Two, by Wedge’s policy, usually went to a raw pilot, one in need of additional instruction or protection.

“Wes, you’re now Wraith Three, with Dia Passik, Wraith Four, your wing.” Janson waved at the Twi’lek female, who gave him a grave nod.

“Kell, Runt, you’re still Five and Six. Runt, incidentally, is in training to be our new communications specialist. Phanan, Face, still Seven and Eight. I’d hate to break up the best comedy team this side of the janitor’s closet.”

“I love an understanding commander,” Phanan said. “Know where I can get one?”

“Myn Donos, still Nine. Flight Officer Nelprin—can you still hear me back there?—you’re his wing, Wraith Ten. Piggy, you’re still Wraith Twelve, and Tyria, you’re now on his wing as Wraith Eleven. I lead Group One, Face leads Group Two, and Donos leads Group Three. Questions?”

Wedge waited for the inevitable reaction from Kell. Previously, Kell had led Group Two and had been very twitchy whenever Face received recognition that might affect his own—Kell’s—position, and now Face had replaced him as group leader.

But Kell looked easy with the new arrangement, which surprised Wedge considerably.

It meant—Wedge wasn’t sure. Either Kell was content to let Face have a go at command, or Kell’s goals had changed and command was not so high on the list.

Wedge would wait. The truth would come out eventually. “Intelligence gives us a good candidate for our new piratical occupation. The world is called Halmad. It’s an Outer Rim world not far from the loose border to what we consider Zsinj-controlled space. It’s also a trade center at the hub of several well-traveled trade routes. A century or so back, their mining industry—ground, lunar, and asteroid belt—failed, leaving a number of facilities abandoned there. New Republic Intelligence has a team already in-system to check them out for us; if they haven’t found us a base by the time we arrive, they will at least have found us a place from which to stage.”

Kell asked, “Do we get the Night Caller back? Since we’ll be pirating in TIE fighters, I assume we’ll have to have something to haul us around when we hit sites out of our home system.”

Wedge shook his head. “Not the Night Caller. Think about it. Admiral Trigit is destroyed by a covert fighter squadron supported by a Corellian corvette, and then a pirate squadron pops up supported by a Corellian corvette? That would probably set off at least one alarm bell in Zsinj’s mind.” He gave Kell a grim smile. “No, we’ll receive hyperspace transport from an old Xiytiar-class transport. Unarmed. Slow. Creaky. Leaky. And instead of having a cargo bay full of your sophisticated metal brackets to hold our fighter craft, we’ll be using a few crossbeams and netting—so we can quickly switch out X-wings for TIE fighters without having to reconfigure our brackets every time.”

Kell sat back, his expression suggesting he’d just swallowed a mouthful of hydraulic fluid.

Phanan’s hand shot up. “Do we get new snubfighters?”

Wedge shook his head. “No. No new X-wings for the foreseeable future. We got lucky when we were putting the squadron together; when Rogue Squadron captured Ysanne Isard’s facilities on Thyferra, we also seized a number of X-wings she’d been accumulating for various Intelligence missions. That’s where four of our snubfighters came from. But the New Republic hasn’t had another windfall like that, and Incom is producing new X-wings as slowly and meticulously as ever. So we’re stuck with what we have … and what we can seize. Dia Passik was transferred with her snubfighter, but we’re still four short to make up a full squadron. However, the two TIE fighters we have remaining from the Implacable attack, the ones Wes and Piggy were flying, are assigned to us. And part of our assignment involves acquiring new fighter craft for our pirate identities … and that means stealing whatever we can get our hands on. From the Imps and from the warlords, that is. Do any of you new pilots have TIE-fighter experience? Simulated or real?”

Both the women raised their hands. Castin Donn looked unhappy that he couldn’t follow suit.

“Excellent. Castin, Kell, Phanan, since you three lack X-wings and TIE experience, I recommend you spend time in the TIE-fighter simulators and checking out our small complement of TIE fighters. Once we’re at our new station, that is. For now, you have only a little while to pack and settle your affairs; the transport Borleias takes off for Halmad in three hours.” He ignored the chorus of groans and cheers. “Dismissed. Phanan, Face, can I see you for a minute?”

As the others trickled out, he asked, “What is the news from what’s-her-name, Notsil?”

The two pilots exchanged glances. “Well,” said Face, “Lara seemed reassured by what you offered. We helped her put together her application for fighter-pilot training, and both of us and Kell wrote recommendations for her. Face set up an account for her so she could afford some limited HoloNet access to us; we’ll leave a router so she can reach us through Sivantlie Base. Things are in motion.”

“This had better work … or had better produce absolutely no results,” Wedge said. “Because if there are any foul-ups, General Cracken will personally feed you, and me, into a food reprocessor.”

4

He made no pretense at being fully human. He had probably been born human, but now mechanical limbs—obvious prosthetics, shiny stainless metal arms and legs with crude-looking joints—replaced his original flesh, and his entire upper face was a shiny metal surface with a standard computer interface inset in the center of his forehead.

He made no pretense at being friendly, either. He approached the booth where the big, good-looking businessman drank alone, and with neither threat nor comment he swung the wine bottle he held in his hands and brought it down on the businessman’s head.

The bottle shattered, spraying glass and red liquid all over the businessman. The man blinked, stood—demonstrating both a resilience and a physique others in the bar found admirable—and struck the cyborg, a blow that rocked the mostly mechanical man’s head and staggered him back into the booth filled with carousing Imperial pilots.

The pilots seated at the aisle shoved the cyborg forward, straight into the businessman’s professional-looking right cross. The blow caught the cyborg across the jaw, spinning him around. The cyborg staggered back to fall across the laps of two of the pilots in the booth. His flailing arm caught their glasses and bottles, throwing wine and liquor across everyone.

The pilots shoved him off to the floor and rose.

“Don’t do that,” the bartender said. But his voice was a plea and he wasn’t aiming a weapon. No one paid attention.

Suddenly hard-faced, a formidable group of six, the pilots glowered at the businessman and the cyborg. Their leader, the shortest of them, a dark-haired man with a face craggy enough for tiny snubfighters to fly their famous Trench Run Defense across, said, “You two owe us for a round and two bottles of local press, and we’ll take your booth and a hundred extra credits for our trouble.”

The businessman gave him a frosty smile. “With a hundred credits I could buy a pilot of your qualifications to lick my boots clean.”

“I’m calling the military police,” the bartender said.

The pilots surged toward the businessman. The first of them caught a knuckle punch in the solar plexus and dropped like a sackful of tubers. The second one was tripped up as the cyborg grabbed his knee and squeezed; the pilot’s shriek was shrill enough to resonate on empty glasses throughout the bar. The other four slammed into the businessman and bore him to the floor.

The bartender punched his emergency code into the comlink and began wailing to the distant listener.

Two minutes later, it was all but over. Two tables had been smashed, their entertained patrons now occupying booths on the other side of the bar. Five pilots and one cyborg lay at intervals across the floor, stretched out in various poses of very uncomfortable rest, often lying among broken glasses and platters of unhygienic appetizers. The businessman and the pilot leader were still standing, the latter glassy-eyed, barely responding to outside stimuli, while the former still occasionally swung ineffectual blows against his stomach. Both were drenched with sweat and booze, staggering with every slight move they made.

Then a half-dozen stormtroopers in the uniforms of military police poured into the bar. Some patrons—those who still had bets going on which of the fighters would win—groaned, but the bartender breathed a sigh of relief.

With calm efficiency, the stormtroopers manacled the eight malefactors’ hands behind their backs; the two men still standing put up no fight. Three of the downed pilots could not be brought back to consciousness, but one of the stormtroopers picked up two of them, slinging them with considerable ease over his shoulders, and a second picked up the last stubbornly unconscious pilot. The stormtroopers began to move out.

“Wait,” the bartender said. “Where do I sign?”

Two of the stormtroopers exchanged a glance. “Why would you want to sign?” asked one, the ranking officer.

“So I can put in a claim for damages!”

The cyborg sighed. “Oh, just tally up the bill. I’ll pay for the damages.”

The bartender rocked back, mollified. “Well, all right, then. Come back soon. We appreciate your patronage.”

As they swept out through the door, onto a rainy street of Halmad’s capital city of Hullis, the ranking officer among the pilots, the one who’d taken so much abuse at the businessman’s hands, gave the cyborg a dizzy but appreciative look. “Hey, you’re not all bad.”

“I just like a good scrap now and then.” The cyborg shrugged. Unfortunately for him, the motion put extra pressure on his shackles. They opened and dropped to the muddy ground behind him.

The pilot leader stared. “Hey, what the—”

“Fire,” said the stormtrooper leader.

Three of the stormtroopers obliged him. Stun beams hit the pilots’ torsos. The pilots dropped into the mud.

The stormtrooper leader looked around. There was no one to see, not much skimmer traffic this rainy evening, no one entering or coming out of the bar. He pulled off his helmet, revealing the features of Wedge Antilles, and took an unencumbered view around. No sign of witnesses. “Let’s hustle, people.”

The other troopers grabbed the three fallen pilots. They dragged and carried their prisoners around the corner of the building, then around behind, where their skimmer awaited in the darkness of a fallow field. It was no military skimmer, just a medium cargo carrier with a deep bed.

While the others dumped the pilots into the rear and draped blankets and netting across them, Wedge stripped off his stormtrooper armor and threw it in after them. “Good work, Tainer, Phanan. Either of you hurt?”

Kell shook his head and flexed, popping his unsealed manacles loose. “This suit’s probably a loss.”

Phanan waggled his head. “Kell didn’t do me any harm, but the bottle one of them hit my head with wasn’t fake glass like mine was. It didn’t even break. I hear ringing.”

“Sounds like a mild concussion. See our doctor about it.”

“Oh, I’m too important a doctor to see anyone as lowly as myself.”

Wedge waved at one of the ersatz stormtroopers. “Face, grab these pilots’ wallets, money pouches, whatever they’re carrying. I want every credit they have, hard currency only. How much damage did you two jokers do?”

Kell and Phanan looked at one another.

“Maybe a hundred,” Kell said. “Counting everything.”

“All right,” Wedge said. “If these pilots’ personal fortunes don’t add up to a hundred and fifty, we’ll make up the difference ourselves. Face, run the credits in to the bartender. Tell him the cyborg paid off, instant compensation for the damage, so sorry, he’s a miserable old drunk whose only entertainment is causing trouble at bars.”

“Hey,” said Phanan. “I resent the use of the word miserable.”

“Then get back here fast. We take off in three minutes.”

Wedge and Janson, still in stormtrooper armor but with their helmets off, lay atop a hill overlooking the nearby Imperial base. The optics Wedge held before his face made greenish daylight of the night. “Same as last night and the night before. I make four TIE fighters at the ready scramble-pad, under the watchful eye of half a stormtrooper squadron.”

“Not that we care,” Janson said.

“Not that we want those starfighters,” Wedge corrected him. “But we may have to deal with them on the way out. Anything coming up the road?”

Janson cast a negligent eye the other way. Down at the base of the hill to his left, the other Wraiths, their prisoners, and their cargo skimmer waited. Down to the right was the main road into the base. “A distant set of lights,” he said. “Oncoming. Probably just another staff skimmer carrying an officer home after a night on the town.”

“Castin Donn laid enough money down at enough cantinas, we’re bound to get what we want.”

“You may be right. That thing’s not maneuvering like a staff skimmer. It’s big and sluggish.”

Wedge twisted to look at the oncoming vehicle through his optics. “Imperial Military Police. Signal Runt.”

Janson waved a handheld light down at the other Wraiths, flicking its beam three times across them. This close to an Imperial base, Wedge preferred they not use comlinks, whose transmissions, even if coded or extremely short, might be noticed. At the base of the hill, Runt would now be using a portable scanner on the distant vehicle.…

From the Wraiths’ position came an answering blink of light, a single pulse.

“Runt signals yes. It’s loaded with personnel,” Janson said.

“Move out.”

Wedge and Janson scrambled down the side of the hill, not directly toward the other Wraiths, but angling toward the right, an intercept course. By the time they reached the base of the hill—with Janson’s armor now somewhat battered by a fall he’d taken during his descent—the other Wraiths were almost to the road.

Wedge and Janson caught up to them and put their helmets back on.

“Snap it up,” Wedge said, “march formation. Left foot, right foot.”

And the Wraiths managed something like a proper formation in spite of the loads they carried.

Runt carried one of the unconscious pilots over his shoulder, moving without difficulty. The Gamorrean Piggy could also have carried one of the pilots with fair ease, but could never have worn one of the sets of stormtrooper armor; he remained with the skimmer. Kell, now suited up as a stormtrooper, and Dia dragged an unconscious pilot between them; they held the pilot’s arms over their shoulders so the man remained upright. Phanan, also in a set of stormtrooper armor, and Face also dragged one of the pilots, as did Castin and Shalla, with Donos and Tyria dragging the fifth. The sixth pilot, the ranking officer among them, remained with Piggy.

It was several hundred meters to the gate into the base, but if Wedge calculated correctly, they wouldn’t have to walk the entire distance.

They heard the humming of the heavy skimmer behind them and Wedge turned to look. It was a large model, nearly identical to the one that had been part of the trap on Coruscant: It had an enclosure over the bed, and only the pilot and the guard assigned to his protection were exposed to the elements. On the side was painted the stooping bird-of-prey insignia of Victory Base; over that design were the crossed batons of the base’s military police.

The skimmer pulled alongside Wedge’s troop of ersatz stormtroopers and prisoners. Its pilot called, “What happened to you?”

“Skimmer broke down,” Wedge said. “Repulsorlift failure in the energy transference array.”

“Care for a lift?”

“I’d put you up for a Hero of the Empire medal.”

The pilot tapped a button and a door in the rear enclosure opened; its hinge was at the bottom, allowing it to open down into a ramp. Wedge peered inside. The spacious enclosure held four stormtroopers and another pair of prisoners in the uniforms of Imperial maintenance personnel. Both prisoners were awake, though apparently anesthetized by alcohol.

Wedge’s people hauled their unconscious prisoners up the ramp and settled them down on the padded benches against the enclosure walls. Wedge, at the rear of the line, stayed tense. The stormtrooper armor the Wraiths wore—seized from prisoners during some of the countless clashes the Alliance had had with the Empire and brought as part of the squadron’s gear—was authentic enough, but the military-police insignia the Wraiths had meticulously painted on the armor might not pass close inspection. Also, the officer in charge of these real military police should, if he kept strictly to procedure, demand to see Wedge’s papers, and the forgeries Castin had put together … well, Wedge just didn’t know the new pilot well enough to rely unquestioningly on the man’s work as he’d come to do with Grinder, the squadron’s former computer expert.

But the Wraiths all shuffled into the enclosed bed of the skimmer, Wedge followed, the door closed behind him, and the vehicle lurched into motion, all without an unwelcome demand for papers. Wedge smiled. If security was lax here, it might be just as lax within the base.

“Hey, that’s Lieutenant Cothron,” one of the real stormtroopers said.

Face nodded. “He’s a pretty belligerent drunk.”

“Nice guy the rest of the time, though.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Ever play sabacc with him?”

“Sure, he took me for a week’s pay once.”

“You’re joking. He’s the worst player I ever saw.”

There was the slightest of delays in Face’s response as he adjusted his story in light of new information. “No, I think I’m the worst.”

“Really? You up for a game tonight?”

“No, I’ve learned my lesson.”

The stormtrooper settled back, his posture one of disappointment.

Moments later, the skimmer slowed. Wedge heard a verbal exchange between the pilot and what must have been the gate guards, but he couldn’t make out the words. Then they were in motion again.

It was a long minute before they slowed once more. Then the skimmer’s repulsorlift depowered and the vehicle settled to a hard surface.

The door beside Wedge opened. They appeared to be in a vehicle hangar, and a few steps away was a table where a uniformed officer and another pair of stormtroopers waited. The officer, a man with graying hair and hard lines to his face, looked bored and irritable. “Move them out. It’s time for instant justice.”

Wedge waved the real stormtroopers and their prisoners to proceed while his people got their unconscious prisoners up. Then the Wraiths moved out. Wedge was the last one out of the vehicle.

“Papers,” said the officer in charge. Wedge tensed. But the stormtrooper he addressed handed him standard identity cards bearing the likenesses of the prisoners in his charge. Wedge glanced at Face, who discreetly held up the handful of identity cards taken from their own prisoners. Wedge turned away again.

The officer looked over the identity cards. “Facts?”

The stormtrooper in charge said, “Drunk and disorderly at Ola’s.”

The officer grimaced. “You two idiots ought to find a better class of drinking establishment. Charges?”

The stormtrooper in charge shook his head, the motion exaggerated by his helmet. “None.”

“Well, that’s not too bad.” The officer glanced up at the two prisoners. “You two are confined to base for six days.”

The prisoners looked relieved.

“That’s three days starting now,” the officer continued, “and three days starting next payday.” He ignored their expressions of dismay and gestured for them to be on their way. “Next.”

Wedge stepped up. He reached over without looking. Face put the identity cards in his hand and he presented them to the officer. “Drunk and disorderly at Rojio’s. Brawling with civilians.”

The officer gave him an I-don’t-want-to-believe-you look. “They’re all unconscious. They lost to civilians?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How many?”

“Two.”

The officer looked pained. “Five of them against two civilians, and they’re too drunk to make a good accounting of themselves. They’ll pay for letting the unit down.” He frowned. “Five. Say, these are Captain Wanatte’s drinking buddies. Where’s the captain?”

Face spoke up: “Before he passed out the last time, Lieutenant Cothron said the captain had found some companionship for the evening.”

“Ah. Well, then. Let’s see the damages.”

Wedge said, “One of the civilians paid for the damages before we dropped them off with the city authorities.”

“Commendable. All right. I think these five will be improved by doing a few days of cleanup and breakdown work for the next morale event. Get ’em to their quarters.”

Wedge saluted smartly and headed off in the direction the other stormtroopers had taken to leave the hangar. He heard the Wraiths fall in step behind him and the dragging noise of their prisoners’ boots scraping against the duracrete. Then he heard the skimmer’s engines start up again.

He breathed a sigh of relief. The pilot of the skimmer hadn’t noticed that eleven footsore stormtroopers had boarded the skimmer, but only ten had emerged. Janson had taken Shalla’s place and was working with Castin to carry a pilot. Now, if this base followed standard Imperial procedure, that pilot would take this skimmer back to the military police motor pool.

Then it would be up to Shalla. She was still in the skimmer’s enclosure, and her job was to prevent the pilot and his guard from talking to anybody.

Her first job. She had other things to do as well. Wedge was reluctant to assign so much responsibility in a commando mission to a newcomer to the squadron, but Kell had spoken in such glowing terms of the Nelprin family’s formidable skills that he’d decided to go ahead with this approach.

Outside the hangar, he took a moment to get his bearings, and silently cursed the restricted field of vision afforded by stormtrooper helmets; lacking peripheral vision, he had to turn in a slow, complete circle to acquire a mental picture of his surroundings. He had a fair idea of the base layout from the reconnaissance they’d done on the hilltop, but not an idea of where in the base they now were. When he had his bearings, he headed straight toward the group of dome-topped buildings he’d earlier decided were officers’ quarters.

They’d never make it there, of course. They’d dump the unconscious pilots in the first dark alley or trench they found and go about their mission.

•      •      •

Lara Notsil, originally Gara Petothel, flinched as pair after pair of TIE fighters broke formation and dove, their engines screaming, toward her and her wingmates. A good mannerism, flinching, she decided. If they’re observing me, they’ll log it.

Her wing leader’s voice came over the comm unit: “Gold One to Gold Squadron. Break by pairs and engage.”

Lara keyed her own comm unit. “Gold Seven?”

“I’m your wing, Eight.”

She rolled to starboard, getting clear of the main formation of X-wings, and saw other paired fighters also breaking off.

Then the first blasts of green Imperial laser fire fell among them. Lara’s X-wing was rocked by a stern hit; her aft shields were knocked partway down and she reinforced them with energy from her forward shields. The pair of TIE fighters raining laser fire down on both her and Gold Seven slid neatly into killing position behind them.

“Dive for cover, Seven,” Lara said, and nosed the stick forward. The terrain below, a sprawling city in ruins, grew larger. She and Gold Seven dropped into a debris-littered street, flying lower than the tops of the surrounding buildings, but their pursuers never lost sight of them and stayed tucked behind. Lara’s snubfighter was hit by another pair of laser blasts and its aft section slewed slightly to port; she corrected with a deft application of etheric rudder.

Up ahead, the road forked left and right. She knew from seeing the area from above that the two forks turned toward one another farther on, rejoining after only a couple of kilometers. That should have been her tactic: send Gold Seven to starboard while she went to port, then fire upon Seven’s pursuer while Seven fired upon hers once the roads rejoined.

But that would probably have worked. And that wasn’t what she was here for.

“Seven, at the big blue building, hard to port.”

“I read you.” Seven’s voice sounded a bit worried.

Lara suited action to words. As the X-wings came alongside what had once been a warehouse of tremendous size, painted an eye-hurting cyan, but was now a hollowed, burned wreck of a building with scorch marks surrounding blast holes in the walls, she executed a smart portward turn down a street that ran at right angles to the one over which they’d been flying. She rotated ninety degrees leftward, so the street was to her left and one row of buildings was beneath her keel.

The sharpness of the angle was more than the X-wing’s inertial compensator could bear; she felt weight again, settling into her seat, as the snubfighter turned through the tightest portion of her maneuver.

There was a sharp metal shriek as her keel scraped along one of the building facades; her X-wing lurched. The snub-fighter’s shields were no protection against such a graze. She glanced at her diagnostics board, looking for the telltale red glows of system failures.

Behind her, the sky lit up. The sound and shock wave of an explosion rocked her X-wing. And the blue dot representing Gold Seven disappeared from her sensor board.

Lara grimaced. Gold Seven didn’t have the skill to manage a turn like that. Lara had known this, had counted on it, but it wouldn’t do for her observers to see a smile of satisfaction cross her face. Knowing she would get no answer, she keyed her comm unit. “Seven? Gold Seven, come in.”

Behind her, the two TIE fighters, having no trouble with the sharp turn into this side street, came screaming through the smoke cloud that was what was left of Gold Seven. As soon as they cleared the smoke, they opened fire again.

Lara felt her aft section shudder. It slewed again. Lara deliberately overcorrected and let an expression of shock cross her face as she veered into the side of a building. She had just enough time to read the words WELCOME TO MOFFICE’S GROCERS before impact—

Or lack of impact. There was no sharp blow, no deceleration, just the abrupt dimming of all cockpit lights to nothingness. Then the canopy opened above her.

Captain Sormic—short, bald, human, usually apoplectic, with a face like pink clay molded into a fair approximation of human features—stood outside the simulator, glaring at her. “Candidate Notsil. Would you explain, for the benefit of the class, just what you were trying to accomplish with that last maneuver?”

Lara let a note of uncertainty creep into her voice. “I was trying to regain control—”

“Not that. The suicide turn down the side street.”

“Oh. Uh, I was trying to shake the TIE-fighter pursuit—”

“Right. You presumed that a pair of novice pilots could outmaneuver more experienced pilots in more agile spacecraft in clear air. Correct?”

“Well, uh—”

“Say, ‘Correct, Captain.’ ”

“Correct, Captain.” Lara kept an expression of distress on her face.

“And you got yourself and your wingmate killed.”

“Correct, Captain.”

“Candidate Lussatte, is that the tactic you would have chosen?”

Lara glanced at her wingmate, who was still in the next simulator over. The Sullustian female gave Lara a look of apology. “No, Captain.”

“What would you have done?”

“I would have fired a proton torpedo—”

“The Imperial fliers were already behind you, Lussatte.”

Lara saw Lussatte take a deep breath. “Yes, Captain. Let me explain. I figure I can’t outfly the Imps. I figure that if I make a rapid deceleration, they’ll make an even more rapid one, because they’re better fliers in more maneuverable craft. But if I drop a torp about a city block up, that gives me a smoke cloud to fly through and a few moments where they can’t see me. If I have the impact site visualized well enough, I can risk a turn down a side street, throw them off, maybe get turned around so I can get them under my guns before they’re on me again.”

Captain Sormic paused, then gave her a brief nod. “Pay attention to what she just said, class. It would give her a one-in-four, maybe one-in-two chance of surviving the next ten seconds and perhaps bagging one of the TIE fighters. Which is a much better chance than she had following Deadstick Notsil here. Dismissed.”

Pilot candidates rose from the classroom seats; others climbed from the simulators. Lara didn’t rise; Captain Sormic still stood outside her simulator, blocking her exit.

He turned back to face her, and his expression was suddenly sympathetic. He dropped his voice nearly to a whisper. “Candidate Notsil, you earn great scores in astronautics and communications. Just say the word and I’ll transfer you over to officer training in one of those divisions. You have a tremendous career ahead of you as a technical specialist on a capital ship’s bridge.”

“No, sir. I’m going to be a pilot.”

“It’s not as though you’ll be washing out. It’s just a transfer. And you’ll be a real asset to the Alliance there.”

“No, sir. I’m going to be a pilot.”

His face hardened. “Then I have one piece of advice for you.”

“Yes, sir?”

“You think about Candidate Lussatte and anyone else you might have made friends with. You think about how you’re going to feel if you get them killed for real. Trust me, the kind of pilot you’re shaping into, it’s going to happen. And that’s not the worst thing that could happen to you. The worst thing would be for you to survive a bad decision that kills everybody you care about.” He turned away and followed the last departing pilot candidates from the room.

Lara sagged into the simulator seat. Only part of her dejection was simulated. It felt bad to be considered such a screwup when she was capable of doing so much better.

She shouldn’t even care what these Rebels thought; they were her enemies. But her fellow candidates had such naive enthusiasm, such a light of life within them, that it was growing increasingly hard not to like them.

She felt a little tickle at the back of her neck. She turned to look through the simulator’s rear viewport.

At the back of the classroom, a man in an Alliance uniform was turning away, heading toward the room’s rear exit. From his height and build, she recognized him as Colonel Repness.

When had he come into the classroom? Had he been watching her in the moments after her exchange with Captain Sormic? She watched until he was gone, until she was alone in the room.

She checked her chrono. There were no classes scheduled in this room for an hour. She pulled up the instrument panel before her and did a little bit of deft rewiring, a bit of electronic trickery at which she was becoming quite adept. Then she clicked the panel back into place and manually pulled the canopy back down.

When she hit the button that, on a real X-wing, would initiate an emergency restart, the simulator came back online. But now it would not transmit its results and recordings to the training facility’s central computers. Whatever she accomplished here would remain her secret.

The world with the ruined city came into view again, and once more she was surrounded by a squadron of X-wings.

5

Shalla tried to interpret every sway, every course change taken by the skimmer in whose enclosed bed she rode. Eventually the vehicle had to return to a motor pool or other vehicle hangar. Eventually she’d be able to begin her portion of the mission … a portion she had to accomplish alone.

The vehicle went through a protracted right turn, then slowed and settled to the ground with an unmusical metallic clang. Shalla raised her blaster rifle to cover the door. Some stormtroopers were thorough and efficient enough to police their vehicles; others weren’t.

Hers apparently fell in the latter category. The door remained resolutely closed. Then the lights went out.

She heard, from outside the skimmer, a man’s laughter. She tensed. But the laughter was the type that came in response to a joke, not malicious laughter directed at a trapped enemy. When she heard the heavy footsteps of stormtrooper composite armor falling on duracrete, she relaxed.

She gave it another minute. She wanted the stormtroopers to be well away from the skimmer, but couldn’t afford them too much time to realize that something was wrong. Then she rose, used her glow rod to find the door switch, and pressed the switch.

Nothing, not even a beep. It had been deactivated with the rest of the power to the skimmer’s enclosure. She swore to herself, but it was only a minor inconvenience.

She switched off her helmet comlink. She took off her stormtrooper helmet and spent a couple of minutes carefully extracting the comm gear inside it, then detached the miniature power pack from the gear. It took another couple of minutes to remove the door-switch cover and wire the power pack into it. Then she put the now comm-free helmet on again and took up her rifle.

This time, the door opened smartly. Outside was the slab-like side of an identical skimmer just barely far enough away to let this skimmer’s door descend as a ramp. When Shalla peered out, to the right she saw another row of skimmers of various types, some small and sporty, and the motor-pool wall beyond; to her left was open duracrete and then closed hangar-style doors of the motor-pool building. Voices reached her; she couldn’t make out the words, but they were male, two or three at least, raised in laughter and amused comment. They came from the rear of the motor-pool building. She thought she also heard a man’s voice, in conspicuous speech, from the front.

So far, so good. She stepped out, alert to trouble, and hit the button to close the door again. But the ramp raised only halfway up, then made a whining noise and stopped. It slowly began to sag back toward the duracrete floor.

She got under it and lifted. The power pack from her helmet was obviously not up to powering door machinery. By sheer strength she got the door lifted back into place. Though it did not lock, it fit snugly and would look normal to casual inspection.

Now, three problems to solve: two groups of Imperial workers or stormtroopers, plus whatever security was installed within the motor-pool building. She looked around for the places, often at corners and on the metal beams supporting the curved ceiling, where sensors tended to be set up.

Nothing. She breathed a sigh of relief. Skimmers weren’t valuable enough to this base to require constant surveillance. One problem down. She walked forward, toward the source of the droning speech, and wished she had Tyria’s aptitude for near-silent movement.

•      •      •

The Wraiths kept themselves flat against the exterior wall of the hangar, deep in the darkest shadow cast by the building.

Wedge, one man back from the building’s front corner, suppressed a snort. The glossy white stormtrooper armor they were wearing practically glowed in the dark. Even in deep shadow they would be impossible to miss if a passerby glanced in their direction. Still, old habits of stealth died hard, and Wedge didn’t want them to die at all.

Janson, ahead of him, helmet off, turned back and held up two fingers, then shook his head. Two guards on the front of the building, and they weren’t going to be easy pickings. Wedge traded places with him and took off his own helmet, luxuriated for a moment in the sensation of air moving once again on his face, and hazarded a peek.

The front of the hangar was well lit by two overhead sources of light, both attached to the building’s front wall. The center of the wall was dominated by a large sliding door in two sections; one section would slide right, the other left. The duracrete leading up to the door was decorated with many thin scorch marks, sign of numberless too-hasty departures by TIE fighters shooting out of the hangar and angling immediately for the sky. That suggested the pilots on-base considered themselves hotshots and had a commander who encouraged such behavior, also not a good thing for the Wraiths.

On either side of the door, perhaps twenty meters apart, were guards in stormtrooper armor. Their stances were angled in toward the door, and each had the other plus most of the front of the building in sight. They might have been chatting over a private channel on their helmet comlinks, but otherwise they were very much on duty.

Wedge dismissed the simplest of tactics for such situations, the make-a-noise-and-one-of-them-will-come gambit. Guards like these, professionally on duty even when out of sight of their officers and fellows, would certainly investigate, but first they’d call in the anomaly. If the investigating guard didn’t report back continuously to his fellow, the other one would call that fact in, too. Within moments the place would be swarming with stormtroopers. Wedge and the Wraiths needed some considerable uninterrupted time with the vehicles inside—perhaps as much as half an hour.

There was another door on the building front, immediately left of the leftmost guard, but it was securely shut and looked like an armored door—quite defensible if someone inside wanted to make a stand of it.

Wedge switched places with Janson again and let the man act as guard. In a whisper, he explained the situation to the others and asked, “Ideas?”

Castin said, “I might be able to slice into the base’s main computer and have them relieved of duty; we just march two of us in and dismiss them or blast them.”

Wedge considered it. “That could work, but you’d have to maintain the computer breach or execute another one just a few minutes later when we sort out our escape vector.”

“True.”

Dia said, “I vote we wait until we can be sure there’s no cross traffic nearby and no one observing them—”

“Which means waiting until we also know they’re not in communication with someone else over their headsets,” Kell said.

“—and just step out and shoot them. Two shooters, no waiting. Run out, grab them and haul them back beside the building, substitute a couple of us for them. Then take as long as we need to get their access keys and codes and go in.”

Wedge shook his head. “Sounds too simple.” Then he reconsidered. “On the other hand, that’s probably a virtue. All right, we’ll do it that way. But first, Runt, can you find out whether those two are broadcasting? Search nonstandard frequencies in the Imperial ranges and look for low-powered signals; if they’re just chatting, they’re not going to be on the usual bands.”

Runt nodded and, from a belt pouch, brought out the field dispatcher’s comlink that was among the latest toys the New Republic had given him when he volunteered to be the squadron’s new communications specialist. The item looked like a slightly bulkier datapad. It had nowhere near the range of features of the field communications unit their former comm specialist, Jasmin Ackbar, used to carry, but it was the biggest comm unit they could carry inconspicuously while in stormtrooper armor.

Runt tapped through a series of functions, grew impatient with the device, and traded places with Wes. There, he could set the device on the ground and protrude its nose just beyond the building corner. Finally he nodded. “We have it,” he whispered back at the others. “Their signal sounds like dispatch information, but it is confusing. Set your comlinks to oh-three-oh-seven-four if you want to hear.”

Wedge did so, and immediately picked up the two guards’ traffic.

One of them, his voice a mellow bass, said, “Light assault vehicle twelve to block alpha two.”

The other, whose hoarse voice probably started in the baritone range, replied, “TIE four to block delta sixteen.”

“That’s outside your range.”

“It is not.”

“So you’re crossing through the plasma wall and exploding? Nice of you to concede a piece that way.”

“Uh … make that TIE four to block delta twelve.”

“Heavy emplacement one fires on TIE four. Scratch TIE four.”

“Damn. Target-paint heavy emplacement one.”

Wedge switched off the channel and looked at the others. “Anyone recognize that traffic?”

Dia nodded. Wedge imagined that she had to be quite uncomfortable with her brain tails stuffed up in her stormtrooper helmet, but she hadn’t made a noise of complaint. She said, “It’s called Quadrant. It’s a game out of the Imperial Academy. An old game, but it has recently become all the rage.”

Wedge asked, “Runt, is there a data transmission accompanying that vocal signal?”

Runt shook his head.

Wedge snorted. “They’re playing just by visualization. Wonderful. We get the hangar guarded by intellectuals. All right, here’s how we play our game. Wes, Donos, you’re our shooters. Wes, march around to the far front corner and situate yourself. We’re not going to use a comlink signal—it might be picked up. We’ll time it. You two set your blasters to stun. Sync your chronos and fire at three minutes from sync … unless you hear or see anything anomalous, in which case you duck under cover and try again at six minutes. If no opportunity presents itself by six minutes, scrub the mission and get back here. Tainer, you go with Wes to haul off the other guard; Phanan, you take the place of the other guard. Runt, at this end you’ll haul off the unconscious guard; Face, you’ll take his place.”

It was a long three minutes. Halfway through it, a flatbed skimmer hauling two stormtroopers and some sort of laser artillery piece cruised by the hangar. Wedge and the others flattened themselves against the building wall, but the skimmer’s occupants didn’t even glance in their direction.

Wedge saw Donos keeping a close eye on his chrono. At twenty seconds of three minutes, Donos pulled his helmet off. At fifteen seconds, he checked his blaster rifle to make sure it was switched to stun and ready to fire. At ten seconds, he peeked around the corner, and did so again at five seconds. Then, precisely on cue, he stepped around the corner.

The sound of the stun blast was impossibly loud; Wedge was sure it could be heard off in the city of Hullis. Wedge stayed flat against the wall while Runt and Face ran past him. Only then did he peek around the corner, his own blaster ready in case his squadmates needed cover.

Runt almost tripped as he skidded to a halt over the unconscious form of his target; he picked the man up with inhuman ease, slung him over his shoulder, and came charging back toward Wedge. Beyond him, Kell arrived from the far corner, repeated his action with less speed and less pure strength, but was still swift. He arrived mere seconds behind Runt, his unconscious cargo bouncing painfully across his shoulder.

Now there were just two guards in front of the hangar, angled toward one another, at attention. Wedge checked his chrono. Fifteen seconds had passed, and the world was, cosmetically at least, the same as it had been at the start of those brief seconds.

“Castin,” he said.

“I’m way ahead of you,” his computer and security expert informed him. “Helmets off, no traffic from their control, I’m checking now for their orders and passcards. No passcards. That means a transmitted or spoken password. Let’s hope it’s transmitted. Hmm …”

Shalla stayed in a crouch behind a self-powered tool cart. Not four steps away was the doorway into the motor-pool office. Two stormtroopers—she suspected they were the ones who’d been in charge of the vehicle she’d ridden in—were within, one seated, both with helmets off. One, tall and fair-skinned, stood by the door, holding a glass with blue liquid on the inside and condensation on the outside. The other, apparently of average height and with skin as dark as Shalla’s, was seated at the main terminal, dictating in a bored tone. Shalla could catch most of his words. It sounded like a routine report, which made him the ranking officer. “… without struggle. No charges expended. Net expenditure: skimmer fuel, total of seventy-eight klicks.”

The other said something Shalla didn’t catch. The seated man nodded, then continued, “On return, about half a klick from base, stopped to offer aid to patrol of Sergeant—what was his name?”

The other one shrugged.

“I’ll put a placeholder there for now. Sergeant Placeholder, whose skimmer had broken down; gave him, his squadron, and his prisoners, including Lieutenant Cothron, transportation to base. Additional expenditure: fuel of hauling mass of five extra prisoners and ten additional stormtroopers—”

“Eleven,” said the other man.

“Ten.” The seated man thought about it. “Well, you were paying attention and I wasn’t. Eleven additional stormtroopers, distance of two kilometers.” He frowned, then shook his head. “End of report. Let me go through and edit out redundancies and program that placeholder to fetch the name of that squad leader, and we’re done for the night.” But he didn’t reach for the keyboard yet. “You’re sure about the eleven thing.”

“I’m sure.”

Shalla stood and walked, as confidently as though she were the base commander, to the door. She shouldered aside the man standing there and tapped the door switch. The office door dropped into place with the disconcerting suddenness of Imperial engineering.

Both men looked at her. The man she’d shoved aside said, “You know, it’s been a long time since I taught a nerf-herder like you some manners.”

“It’s going to be a while longer,” she said, and swung the butt of her blaster into his jaw. The man dropped, splashing his glass of blue ale across the floor.

The ranking officer was halfway out of his seat before she shot him. The blaster shot took him in the chest, burning through the armor and dropping him to the floor.

She froze. She thought she had set the weapon to stun.

Then she was hit from the side as her first target slammed into her, barely slowed by the blow she’d dealt him. His rush propelled her and bent her sideways over a desk. If not for her armor, she’d have been impaled on the collection of trays, spikes, and knickknacks littering its surface; instead, the force with which she hit the top of the desk smashed them flat.

Instead of struggling to get free, instead of wrestling with him for control of her blaster, which his big hand now gripped, she braced herself with a free hand on one edge of the desk, extended one leg as far as she could, and then swept with it with all her strength. Her kick caught her assailant behind his knees and knocked his legs out from under him. He crashed to the floor, dragging her on top of him.

With his free hand, he reached for her throat. She abandoned her grip on her blaster, swept aside his hand, and, her striking hand formed into the flattest, tightest fist she could manage, struck at his throat.

Her blow was hard and true. She felt his windpipe give way under it. Her opponent’s eyes grew wide in sudden shock and he, too, released her blaster, clutching at his throat with both hands.

She grabbed her weapon and stood away from him to watch him die. He made strangling noises as he tried to draw breath through a channel no longer capable of conveying it. He cast an imploring look her way, but she shook her head; this injury was beyond anything she could repair.

A sudden wave of trembling swept her. She knew it wasn’t all the aftereffects of adrenaline. Two men dead because she’d fouled up. Killing didn’t bother her unduly; it was the act required of a warrior in wartime. But killing because of a lapse in judgment … well, her father would not be proud of her.

She shook her head, willing away the unwanted vision of the old man’s stern features, and tried to force the trembling to stop. She stepped around the dying stormtrooper and hit the light switch on the wall. Now the other hangar residents, if they looked over, would see a dark and presumably unoccupied office.

She made a quick checklist of things to do, and found that it had lengthened considerably because of her mistake. Move the two bodies into the bed of the skimmer she’d come in on. Clean up this office so the next person in didn’t wonder about the spilled fluid and ravaged desk. File that stormtrooper’s report. Repair her helmet comm system with components from one of these troopers’ helmets. Choose a skimmer, perhaps the one she came in on, mark it out of service if possible, disconnect its comm system so that it couldn’t be used to trace the skimmer or override its controls. And then stand by. All within hearing of the men working, or playing cards, or doing whatever they were doing at the back of the motor-pool building … unless she chose to assault them, too.

She sighed. It was going to be a long several hours’ work … packed neatly into half an hour or less of available time.

It took Castin another agonizing five-minute wait before he cracked the guards’ code. One of the two guards had thirty-two classic Quadrant games recorded on his datapad—every move the games’ master-level players had made, plus commentary by analysts who were far too serious about the game. Thirty-two was also, Castin pointed out, the number of days in the local monthly calendar. He transmitted the name of the match whose number corresponded to the day of the month, and the front personnel door opened right up.

Wraith Squadron marched into the hangar in formation … a formation they lost as soon as they saw the hangar’s contents. “Boss,” Tainer said, “we have hit the jackpot.”

Wedge was, for once, grateful for the stormtrooper helmet. It concealed his openmouthed surprise.

In the hangar was not a complement of TIE fighters, but eight far more formidable, far faster TIE interceptors.

Wedge took a moment to find his voice. “Even better. It’s the pirate’s life for us, and these are better pirate vehicles. Come on, people, Phase Three, snap it up.”

Castin found the hangar’s main computer terminal at the back of the building. He brought up the main menu and began looking at what was available to him. The others, once they were sure that the roof-mounted holocams observing the hangar were positioned to view only the vehicles, clustered around him.

Castin leaned back from his keyboard. “Good news and bad news, Commander.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“I can get into this pretty easily, do everything I’m supposed to do from here.”

“But?”

“But, security seems to be based on flag counting. For every anomaly in routine the computer registers a marker, or flag, that it keeps track of. When flags grow too numerous at any one site, the computer raises an alarm. It might send a routine query, in which case an incorrect response would raise more flags; it might just send investigators out. If this system works like other, similar Imperial systems, flags have greater or lesser ‘weight’ depending on just how anomalous they are. For example, a storage-room door being unlocked at the wrong time will raise a little flag, while the door into a hangar full of valuable interceptors being unlocked at the wrong time will raise a big one.”

Wedge nodded. “Have we dropped any flags yet?”

“Probably not. We did open a door, but the guards outside have to have regular access to the refresher, so I doubt that’s a flag.”

“Very well.” Wedge considered. They had to ready six of the interceptors for departure, disconnect any tracer comm units functioning within them, sabotage the other two vehicles and perhaps the hangar, exit the hangar, and cover the separate escapes of the interceptor hijackers and the Wraiths who would be departing on foot. “I assume, then, that a change in maintenance schedules would raise a smaller flag than the holocams observing a bunch of anomalous pirates moving around their hangar.”

“That’s a fair assumption.”

“Then get into the base scheduler. Forge a request for immediate maintenance of this hangar’s interceptors. Time-stamp it an hour or so ago. Assign it to a fictitious work crew, or, if you can get into the personnel listings, a crew that’s off-duty. Follow this up with an acknowledgment of the arrival of the work crew a few minutes ago. Then do the same thing with a request for servicing of the hangar’s holocam system. Time-stamp that one earlier today, lower priority, also with an acknowledgement of arrival in the last few minutes.”

Castin managed the task within a few minutes, then switched off the hangar holocams. The Wraiths got to work.

Castin stayed at the computer terminal and began working on their escape distraction.

Wedge, Janson, Kell, Runt, and Dia checked out the eight interceptors. All but Runt had some experience flying TIE fighters; Runt, as communications specialist, used what gear he had to find and disable slave circuitry that might enable the base commanders to seize control of the interceptors remotely, then disabled automatic tracer systems built into the comm units.

Tyria and Donos had what the others enviously referred to as “vandalism duty.” With the hangar mechanics’ own industrial cutters, metal-shearing tools utilizing a tight, focused form of the same destructive energy that made blasters formidable weapons, they burned messages across the interior walls of the hangar: HAWK-BATS NEEDED THESE MORE THAN YOU! KNEEL TO THE HAWK-BATS, WORMS. GET OUT OR BE SORRY; THIS PLANET IS NOW OUR PROPERTY. Then there were some choice epithets, and Donos’s fairly artistic rendering of a hawk-bat, one of the tenacious flying predators of the duracrete canyons of Coruscant. Tyria added some creative misspellings to her efforts.

When they were done, they looked over their handiwork. Donos nodded. “Pretty close to the work of ego-ridden, semi-literate pirates,” he decided.

Tyria smiled. “As a former counterinsurgent, are you offended?”

He managed a wry grin. But he was saved from answering by a sound—a warning pop across the comm channel the Wraiths were using.

All the Wraiths stopped what they were doing and either donned their helmets again or held pocket comms up to listen.

Face’s voice came across in a whisper. “Skimmer full of stormtroopers approaching. Not a hostile attitude, but they’re coming right here.”

Wedge replied, “Stay loose. Keep us informed.” He looked among the Wraiths. “Tyria, Donos, get on the door. Be prepared to support Face and Phanan. The rest of you, what’s our status?”

Kell answered, “Five interceptors prepped, Runt and I are on the last, no work yet on the two we were going to sabotage.”

“Don’t worry about the sabotage. If we’re pressed for time, we’ll just blast them on our way—”

Phanan’s voice came in over the comm: “It’s shift change. They’re supposed to drop off two and take us away. Face is talking to them. He’s been listening to those Quadrant recordings and knows the guy’s voice. But—it’s not going well—”

The next sound was the scream of blasters from outside. Blasters, shouts, armored bodies hitting the duracrete.

6

Face had tried to be reasonable. “We’re ready to go, Lieutenant. But our packs are inside. Permission to go inside and retrieve our packs.”

The stormtrooper seated next to the skimmer pilot sounded contemptuous. “What idiot let you bring unauthorized gear out on a normal sentry watch?”

Tactic: When asked for information you don’t have, try to present the asker with a variable he can define himself. Face said, “The new one, sir. What’s-his-name.”

“Balawan?”

“That’s him, sir.”

“Well, he’s an idiot. But sharing some kitchen duty with you two might smarten you all up. All right, you can get your unauthorized gear. First, let’s finish this.” The officer turned to look at the bed of his skimmer; he nodded. Two stormtroopers stepped out. They stood before Face and Phanan in the same stance of attention. Face said, “I relieve you of this post.”

Face swore to himself. That was a nonstandard phrase. Tactic: When obliged to participate in a ritual you know nothing about, provide a reason and grab all the sympathy you can. Face said, “I—” And then he coughed, a deep, racking cough that shook him. The coughs continued and bent him nearly double. Still, he half straightened several times, saluting all the while, the very picture of a man fighting to do his duty in the face of overwhelming opposition.

If anything, the officer’s contempt increased. “What is this man doing on duty? He should be in his deathbed.”

Face heard Phanan say, “Dedicated.”

“Oh, very well. Just give me the damned password.”

Phanan said, “Amelkin versus Tovath.” That was the name of the classic Quadrant game that had given them access to the hangar.

“What? The shift password, you idiot.”

Tactic: When no other options present themselves, shoot everything in sight. Face straightened, grabbed the top edge of the chest armor of the stormtrooper before him to hold him in place, and shot the man in the stomach. Phanan shoved his own stormtrooper back and fired, catching the man in the helmet.

Face dragged his dead or dying target to him, holding him up as a human shield, and, one-handed, swept fire across the occupants of the skimmer. He saw at least two men, including the lieutenant, hit, but there would still be only a split second before the stormtroopers brought their own weapons into line and fired—

To Face’s and Phanan’s blasts were added lethal cross fire from the door into the hangar. Face hazarded a glance. Two Wraiths stood there in stormtrooper armor—he couldn’t tell who—and then advanced, firing as they came.

A bad tactic, Face thought, abandoning the shelter of the doorway, but he understood when their place at the door was taken by more Wraiths.

The pilot of the skimmer banked up and away from the firing Wraiths, a maneuver sharp enough to shake the surviving stormtroopers in back but skillful enough to place the skimmer’s bottom between them and the Wraiths for a few long moments. The skimmer’s maneuver carried it across the wide lane between buildings. It had to level out or smash into the face of one of the buildings, but when it did so it was far enough away, and moving fast enough, that the Wraiths’ concentrated fire was not so lethal. With all the blasts they poured into the moving target, Face saw only one more strike a stormtrooper, and assumed that the anonymous Wraith who fired it was Donos, their sniper. The skimmer made a corner and was gone.

The stormtrooper at the door was Wedge; his shout was distinctive. “Two, get the hangar doors open and lock them that way; we can’t afford for the central computer to lock them closed. Do you have a distraction ready?”

“My number two distraction is ready. My best one will take a couple of minutes more.”

“Go with the number two. Then join Six, Eight, Nine, and Eleven, get out of here on foot—”

Castin’s voice rose in something like a whine. “But I was going to fly one of the interceptors!”

“Pipe down. We only have five. Move out in any direction but the one those stormtroopers took, running in Imperial formation, and get in contact with Ten for whatever transport she can provide. The rest of you, to your interceptors.”

“They have the hangar door open,” reported the skimmer pilot, now standing at the corner of a building not far away. “I can hear ion engines inside firing off. I’ve got my men scattering to firing positions. I—”

His next words were lost in the wail that rose all around him. It was the anguished cry of some long-forgotten god, a moan that rattled his bones despite his armor; he saw transparisteel viewports on the buildings around him vibrate under the fury of that sound.

It was, in fact, the base’s air-raid siren system, an antiquated measure to inform every person on base and anyone within several klicks that enemies were coming by air. In the days when this base was first built, those enemies were the Empire; after the Empire took over, the base operators maintained the system. Just in case.

And now the impossible had happened, someone was attacking the base from the sky. The stormtrooper saw columns of light crisscross the sky in search of targets, then heard and saw the base’s huge automated turbocannons begin firing at targets high up in the air. He couldn’t see the targets … but if the big guns were firing, they were up there.

Distracted by the aerial show, the stormtrooper did not see the first of the interceptors emerge from the hangar.

Face broke formation to draw abreast of Castin as they trotted. He had to shout to be heard over the siren wail. “Two, what did you do?”

Two’s body language momentarily suggested an aw-shucks embarrassment. “I found some of their old wargame projections about Imperial raids. They weren’t under much security; they were just archives. But I was able to patch the data into their sensor net, as though it were data being received now, and it triggered an automated response. Any second now—”

In the distance, two squadrons of TIE fighters lifted, racing toward the sky and the presumed enemies waiting there. Instead of continuing his thought, Castin just pointed.

Face said, “Six, do we have anything from Ten?”

“We have. She is coming. We have given her our vector.”

“Coded, I hope.”

“Coded.” The Wraiths’ code for this mission included a very simple method for transmitting locations, in case their scramblers were decoded: Locations were given in standard Imperial grid format, but with the values reversed, south for north, east for west. It might take only one visual check by stormtroopers to confirm that the locations were incorrect, but the time tolerances for this mission were so tight that this might be all the help the Wraiths needed.

Kell and Phanan, the pilots least experienced with TIE fighters—and experienced not at all with TIE interceptors, even in simulators—were the first to emerge from the hangar. Running close to the ground on repulsorlifts, they crept out tentatively from the hangar’s interior. Even with their caution, Phanan failed to decelerate correctly and slowly glided into the building across the lane, stopping with a bump.

Wedge, Janson, and Dia, more sure of their control over the vehicles, emerged next. On Wedge’s cue, they turned, orienting back toward the open hangar door, and fired, destroying the three interceptors remaining within. Then they turned up the lane and cut in their twin ion engines, accelerating far faster than their X-wings. Phanan and Kell fell into position behind them.

“Stay next to the ground,” Wedge ordered. “Keep repulsorlifts running at full until I give the word.” He glanced over his sensors. They showed his small squad of five interceptors running at just above ground level, plus another thirty-six TIE fighters, three squadrons’ worth, rapidly ascending toward presumed enemies.

One switch gave him access to the sensor data being broadcast by the base. It showed a sky crowded with enemies. Initial telemetry identified them as somewhat antiquated TIE fighters and some other Imperial-style support vehicles. Though they were Imperial vehicles, their sudden appearance, their aggressive pattern of approach, and their lack of response to normal hails had caused the base computer to flag them as probable unfriendlies. The three squadrons of base TIE fighters looked decidedly overmatched in numbers, but as Wedge watched, another two squadrons rose to join them.

As buildings flicked by right and left, Wedge locked down the broadcast sensor signal and transmitted its source to the others. “All right, Wraiths. We’re doing one pass, then we’re going home.” He pulled back on the stick, popped up over the rooftops, and angled toward the source of that signal. The others fell into formation behind him.

They came within firing range almost instantly. Wedge linked his four lasers for quad fire. The interceptor’s weapons screen initially had a little difficulty identifying the base’s command center, a huge, rounded bunker, as the intended target, but once it locked the target in, it managed to define the building, its bristling gun emplacements, and its numerous sensor emplacements as discrete targets. Wedge tagged the nearest set of sensors as his first target and said, “Fire.”

The interceptors roared toward the bunker, their twenty lasers acting as five channels of destruction, laying waste to the surface of the bunker, tearing through the sensor arrays and gun emplacements as though the metal were so much paper. Wraith Squadron screamed across the bunker, mere meters above its now nearly molten surface, and then banked off toward freedom.

There was now traffic on all the base’s lanes—skimmers carrying stormtroopers to ready areas, civilian workers running on foot, some of them only partially dressed, to their duty stations. But no one seemed inclined to question a well-disciplined group of five stormtroopers running with purpose.

Up ahead, two squads of stormtroopers, more than twenty, turned onto the Wraiths’ lane and headed toward them. “Stay alert,” Face said. “If they address us, respond on the run. If they challenge us, open fire and run harder.”

But a skimmer with an enclosed bed turned onto the same lane behind the dual squadron and accelerated into them, flattening some of the stormtroopers, knocking others hard out of the way. The skimmer accelerated toward the Wraiths. Runt said, “We think our ride has arrived.”

The skimmer pulled up and swerved as it settled, placing its port and rear sides between the Wraiths and the nest of angry stormtroopers. The door was already half down when the skimmer touched the ground.

“Good work, Ten,” Face said. “I’ll take gunner position. Everyone else in back.” Face slid into the seat beside Shalla; the rest trotted into the bed.

Face heard one of them, Donos from his voice, trip, fall, and swear. He glanced at Shalla. She shrugged. “I had to leave a couple of casualties back there,” she half explained. A moment later, the first of the blaster shots from the pursuing stormtroopers hit the vehicle’s rear and side armor, and Donos came over the comm: “Go go go!”

They exited via the same gate by which they’d entered. This time, though, they didn’t stop to get authorization or for the guards to open the gates. As they approached at full speed, Face raked the guardhouse with blaster fire, forcing the officer on duty to duck, preventing him from activating the magnetic locks, magnetic containment fields, repulsor-activated land mines, or other traps the Imperials routinely had laid out for vehicles approaching or departing a base in an unfriendly fashion.

They hit the spare metal gates, slamming them open and off their hinges, and roared up the road out of the base.

But a mere half klick away, around the first of the bends in the road and sheltered from sight by the very hill Wedge had earlier used for reconnaissance, Shalla set the skimmer down again. The Wraiths scrambled out. Shalla keyed a code into the keypad on the control panel and the skimmer rose once more, winging off into the night toward the distant lights of the city.

“What course is it taking?” Face asked.

Shalla shook her head. “I wrecked most of its higher processes when I destroyed the comm system. All I was able to do was give it a ballistic course toward the city.”

“That should be enough. Let’s get out of sight.”

The Wraiths were in a ditch, helmets off, only the eyes and the tops of their heads showing, when the three pursuit skimmers flew by, following the skimmer’s course.

A minute later, they were with Piggy at the site of the civilian skimmer that had brought them here. Captain Wanatte, still unconscious, was trussed up in back.

The Wraiths peeled out of their stormtrooper armor, leaving them in sweat-drenched street clothing appropriate to the world of Halmad. They quickly loaded all the armor components into a plastic crate in the back of the skimmer. Then they boarded. “Back to the spaceport,” Face said. “Slowly. Sedately. As befits a bunch of tourists who’ve been off drinking and recreating all evening and are now too tired to twitch.”

Shalla nodded. “Pretty close to an accurate description.”

Hawk-bat Base was situated on a large spherical rock deep in the asteroid belt of the Halmad system.

Years before, it had been the Tonheld Mining Corporation’s Site A3, tasked with bringing high-quality metals up from the depths of a large asteroid formed during the long-ago destruction of one of the Halmad system’s outer planets. The asteroid had a thick outer shell of stone and a center made up mostly of cooled nickel and iron. Tonheld Mining Corporation, all too efficient, had removed the majority of the useful metals, leaving only those that were trapped in veins and pockets within the stone shell. Then the company had dismantled its machinery and housing modules and departed, leaving the site deserted and cold for forty years.

Now, when approached by spacecraft, it still seemed the same. Its thick stone sheath, still intact, was sufficient to block sensors from detecting the life-forms and vehicle emissions now within it.

Halfway down the main shaft, a side tunnel, once a staging area for the mining corporation, turned off at a ninety-degree angle, running parallel to the asteroid’s surface. This was now sealed off by a duracrete plug perforated only by large motor-driven doors at either end.

Beyond, inside, where the side shaft was broadest and tallest, was the hangar area where the Hawk-bats’ vehicles rested. There were two TIE fighters and five TIE interceptors, and the biggest vessel on site, a Xiytiar-class freighter named Sungrass.

Among the least elegant of all cargo vessels serving in the galaxy, the Xiytiar-class freighter consisted of a long blocky bow that was mostly cargo space, an equally long connective spar in the middle, and a short blocky component that was mostly engines at the stern. Sungrass didn’t improve the vehicle line’s reputation for stylishness; scarcely a centimeter of its once-gleaming surface was unmarked by scrapes, sloppy paintwork, ion scoring from too-close passes alongside other vessels, or old blaster burns.

But its hull was solid, its engines were recently rebuilt and in fine tune.

Once it had belonged to an Imperial shipping corporation. It had been in dry dock in a repair hangar when the entire site was destroyed by elements of New Republic Intelligence. Its bow cracked, its superstructure buried under the wreckage of the hangar, it had been reported as destroyed by reconnaissance units of the Empire. Now, after a couple of seasons of repair, it flew again, its name changed, its history fabricated, its mission to support Wraith Squadron.

On its bridge, Wedge Antilles snorted. He supposed that was symbolic of the New Republic as a whole. Making use of the Empire’s castoffs, getting a few extra years of functionality out of them, almost always making do with scraps and crumbs in a way that confounded the remnants of the Empire. Yet it was a far cry from the pretty vision of an Empire-free future that the New Republic still doggedly pursued. He wondered if that image, where everything was new and gleaming and free of any memories of the Empire, would ever come to pass.

He glanced over at the man in the captain’s chair. Captain Valton seemed ideally suited to command of this ship. He, too, looked weathered and battered but still fit for many years of useful service. His long, tanned face was unmemorable, though his eyes were sharp, possessed of intelligence. Wedge thought that if they put him in a janitor’s uniform he’d blend right in with the service personnel of any New Republic or Imperial station, and wondered if the Wraiths might someday make use of that fact.

And, mercifully, he didn’t apparently have a need to hear himself talk. He saw Wedge’s side glance, looked over in case Wedge were trying to get his attention, and when he saw that was not the case, returned to the datapad on which he was calculating fuel-mass ratios, all without saying a word.

Wedge turned his attention to his Wraiths, visible through Sungrass’s forward viewports, hard at work painting the stolen interceptors. The one Tyria and Kell worked on was now decorated with a red spiderweb pattern, a design that was at once rakishly dangerous-looking and a little unsettling. Phanan and Face left the basic paint job of their interceptor unchanged but had added a ludicrous number of kill silhouettes to the hull—including a number of X-wing silhouettes to rival the genuine kills of Baron Fel, the Empire’s greatest ace after Darth Vader. Shalla and Donos were painting theirs with fake blaster scorings and had even painted the engine to look as though it were slightly askew, as if knocked out of alignment by enemy fire. Wedge wondered about the advisability of that; it would probably convince some enemies the interceptor was damaged, perhaps persuading some opportunistic pilots to finish it off when otherwise they might treat it with more caution.

He decided not to interfere. It was an experiment. They’d see how the enemies responded to their “damaged” interceptor.

His personal comlink crackled into life. “Commander.”

“Yes, Runt.”

“Narra returning. ETA fifteen minutes.”

“Thank you. Please set up the conference module. Out.”

He exited Sungrass through its docking tube and passed through the hangar, where the sharp smell of the paints scratched at his sinuses and the chatter of his pilots was so much more immediate. Good men and women in a brief respite from making war. He wished such respites were the norm.

Then, passing their interceptor, he saw Tyria finish another line of red spiderwebs, set her brush down atop her paint can, and wrap her arms around Kell to kiss him.

Wedge stopped short, a rebuke on his lips, a reminder that public displays of affection were not appropriate … and then he turned away and kept walking.

Such a warning might have been appropriate for other units, but not elite squadrons under his command. There were no restrictions against relationships between pilots, even when there was some disparity between their ranks, as was the case with Tyria and Kell. There were no regulations against demonstrations of affection in off-duty and most light-duty situations, such as this little painting exercise. They were doing no wrong.

Then why was he so annoyed? Why had he been ready to drop kitchen duty on either of them, had his warning been protested?

He passed through the third set of motorized doors, leading deeper into the shaft, into what Wraith Squadron called the Trench.

It had been a squarish tunnel bored out of solid stone, a straight shaft notable only for its featurelessness. Now its two walls were lined with medium-sized locking cargo modules stacked three high and stretching for some distance down the shaft. Some had been outfitted as living quarters, some as refreshers, others as conference chambers or communications offices or storage lockers. Roll-away staircases gave pilots easy access to the upper tiers of modules.

Face had been the first to note that if you flew a toy X-wing down between the rows of modules, the shaft would look a little like one of the deadly surface trenches of the original Death Star. Then, a few days later, when returning from a scouting mission to the surface of Halmad, Wedge had discovered that some joker had painted the shaft’s ceiling black, except for the lights, and had strung strings of miniature twinkling lights here and there, creating an illusion of star-filled sky.

Wedge had let the decoration stand. It was a bad idea to interfere with things his pilots did to make a gloomy place like this more inhabitable, or, so long as it didn’t interfere with morale or efficiency, with things they did to make their lives happier.

Yet he’d been ready to do just that a few moments ago, and he grew increasingly annoyed with himself because he couldn’t figure out why.

The main conference module was on the second tier of the left-hand bank of modules. He took the stairs up and found Runt still there, still sweeping bottles and wrappers from someone’s impromptu meal into a bag. The long-faced alien gave him a salute before finishing up.

Wedge settled into a seat beside the main table. “Runt.”

Runt straightened. His ponytail swayed. “Sir.”

“Do your minds ever confuse one another?”

The alien grinned. At least, that was how Wedge and the others had learned to interpret it when Runt pulled his lips back over his enormous teeth in an expression that looked more like a prelude to a biting attack. “Yes, Commander. Often. If they were meant to be the same, and therefore easily comprehensible to one another, none of us would have more than one.”

“Right … What do you do when one acts in a confusing manner and its answers don’t really explain why?”

Runt sobered and thought about it for a moment, taking the opportunity to pick up one last piece of wrapping. “We have to remember that there are many paths to every answer. The thought path. The emotion path. The memory path. The biology path—we cannot rule out hormones and natural cycles. And every problem might be made up of combinations of those four things.”

“Good point.” Wedge gave him a nod, his leave to depart.

And Runt might be right. He couldn’t think of a logical reason to protest Tyria’s show of affection. Nor had witnessing a kiss ever caused him emotional turmoil in the past. He ruled out biology; he was not irritable with fever, had experienced nothing to unsettle him.

That left emotion, and he already knew what emotion he’d felt.

Or did he? He’d recognized irritation. Had it masked something else? He thought back over the incident, Tyria’s unthinking affection.…

Jealousy.

He shook his head, trying to dismiss the thought. Nonsense. There was nothing for him to be jealous of.

He’d never entertained any notions about Tyria. She was, to be sure, physically attractive, but she was a very junior officer under his command, and he preferred to steer clear of the extra complications a relationship like that might bring. Too, she was just not the type of woman he was drawn to; she was a little too unsure, too self-critical.

Nor had he felt any jealousy when it became obvious that Kell and Tyria had fallen in love. If any time were the time to be jealous, that would have been it. So it wasn’t jealousy.

Except that was what he was feeling. A hard little knot of envy.

Maybe it was just the fact that he had no one of his own.

Every so often, he would indulge himself and wonder about the man he would have been had his parents not died in the mishap that had destroyed their refueling station. Who he’d be had he not turned first to smuggling, then to piloting fighter craft for the Alliance and discovered a tremendous aptitude for it. Had he not dedicated himself to a cause that must inevitably kill him. This other Wedge Antilles was probably safe in the Corellian system, owner of a chain of refueling stations, with personal wealth and a waistband measurement that expanded in relationship with one another, with a wife and who knows how many children. A happy man. That was the person Wedge was envious of.

Not that the real Wedge was unhappy. He was content … but alone. Probably best if he kept it that way. He’d beaten the odds for so many years, years in which literally hundreds of pilots he’d known had died in battle around him, as though they were living shields for his X-wing. Someday his luck would run out and the deadly statistics would catch up to him.

Yet marriage and family and some sort of normalcy could be his. All he had to do was accept Admiral Ackbar’s offer of a generalship and a staff position.

Angrily he pushed the idea away. That was a selfish thought. His life meant more as a pilot and squadron commander than it would as a deskbound planner. More citizens of the New Republic were alive and more Imperial enemies were dead because he was the master of a pilot’s yoke instead of a datapad. So long as that remained the case, he didn’t have the right to accommodate himself or pursue his own wishes.

“Wraith Three to Wraith One.”

Wedge jolted out of his reverie and stared up into the face of Wes Janson. Behind Janson, Dia Passik stood at attention. Wes was grinning, and even Dia’s stone face suggested amusement.

There were drinks, still in the bottle, on the table, with condensation collecting on their surfaces. Wedge hadn’t even noticed whether it was Janson or Runt who had brought them in.

Wedge cleared his throat to cover his momentary discomfiture, then asked, “What’s the word from Coruscant?”

“Well, they’re cracking down hard on officers caught napping on the job.” Wes handed over a sealed case. “Orders.”

Wedge popped the seal. From within the case he drew a datapad.

Dia asked, “Should I leave, sir?”

“No. Have a seat. You can be the pilots’ official spy for the moment. If there’s anything sensitive here, I’ll discuss it with Lieutenant Janson later.”

Janson and Dia made themselves comfortable as Wedge scanned the text on the datapad. “Congratulations on the raid on the base at Halmad. They seem to think that five interceptors is a better haul than projections called for. Authorization to fund our continued operations from our pirate activities.”

Janson said, “Whoa. You don’t see that very often.”

Dia’s brow furrowed. “If I may ask, why is that so unusual?”

“It’s the place where a lot of long-term secret operations go off course,” Wedge said. “The mission commander sets up a private means of income and funds his operations with it. Then he begins reporting less income than he’s actually taking in. He stashes the surplus away somewhere or uses it for missions not authorized by his control. Soon enough, he has some of his subordinates working with these unauthorized activities, and they’re coming up with more effective means of generating money—such as spice smuggling—that will never get reported. Left long enough, an operation like this can become a full-fledged criminal syndicate within a few years. That’s why the New Republic, particularly Intelligence, doesn’t like doing that. They’re putting a lot of faith in us.”

Janson glanced at Dia. “In us, he says. He actually deludes himself that anyone’s reputation but Wedge Antilles’s figured into that equation.”

She managed another cool little smile.

Wedge returned his attention to the orders. “Authorization to conceive and execute missions against the Imperial and governmental forces in the Halmad system and other systems. In addition, we have a couple of missions here to perform as Wraith Squadron, strikes in collaboration with Rogue Squadron and the Mon Remonda. And no word on replacement X-wings.” He shut down the datapad. “Pretty much as expected. Passik, questions?”

“No, sir. Thank you for letting me stay, sir.”

“I know all about the relative value of fresh news. Dismissed.”

When she was gone, Janson said, “I’ve got some of the mad painters unloading the Narra. We came back with some entertainment holos, some luxury holos, some more ID sets squeezed out of Intelligence, an interceptor simulator module for the TIE-fighter simulator, and that passive sensor set you wanted to monitor the Imperial base.”

“Good.”

“Is everything all right?”

Wedge nodded. “Just feeling my years. Speaking of which, I think I’ll get in some simulator practice and beat up on the youngsters.”

“That’ll make you feel better. It always does me.”

Wedge punched his personal code into the keypad located on the hatch of the TIE-fighter simulator. Instead of being located atop the ball-shaped cockpit, where the standard hatch was on real interceptors, the simulator hatch was at the cockpit’s stern, where the twin ion engines would normally be mounted.

The hatch swung open. Beyond, a shadowy figure pointed a blaster at Wedge. Wedge dropped out of reflex, rolled to the side, came up on his knees with his own blaster in hand.

But no enemy emerged to fire upon him. He kept his own aim on the hatch and reached for his comlink.

“Is there a problem, Commander?” That was Face, leaning unconcerned against the X-wing simulator only a few meters away.

“Get down, there’s a hostile in there—”

Face half ducked behind the corner of his simulator, then took another look. “I don’t think so, sir.” His mouth twitched, a partially successful effort to hide a smile.

Wedge rose and came forward, leaned out far enough for a quick peek into the simulator cockpit, then leaned in again for a longer look.

His intruder was an Ewok.

Not even a living Ewok. It was a stuffed toy the size and girth of a real Ewok, and designed to look just like one, but just a toy.

It was dressed in a scaled-down version of a New Republic fighter pilot’s uniform, down to the authentic-looking suit system control panel on his chest, helmet on his head, and blaster in his paw.

In his other paw was a datapad. Wedge retrieved it and looked at the message. It read:

Lieutenant Kettch reporting for duty, sir.
Yub, yub, Commander!

Wedge shook his head sorrowfully. “Sometimes I miss my sanity.” He retrieved the toy and handed it to Face. “Deal with that.”

Face, who was working so hard to repress a laugh that he couldn’t speak, simply threw a salute and escaped with the Ewok pilot.

“Transferred to Colonel Repness’s group?” Lara glanced again over her orders and feigned ignorance. “I don’t understand. I haven’t completed my basic training set in X-wings. I’m going to get advanced training now?”

The student leader of her own group, a redheaded man, barely out of boyhood, whom she could outfly on the worst day of her life if she weren’t shackled by the demands of the role she was playing, gave her a superior smile. “You don’t understand. Repness handles the remedials. Including you. Notsil, you’ve washed out. All Repness is, he’s a temporary reprieve for you. This time next week, you’re going to be an empty bunk.”

“Lowan, you’re a stain.”

“I’ll forget you said that. You’ll be tossed out of here fast enough without my putting you on report.”

Lara stared after him as he departed, and pictured a target painted on his back, a blaster in her own hand, and a sudden improvement in the average merit of this class of candidates.

But, no, that wouldn’t be appropriate. Better still to make her way to Zsinj’s company, return as a TIE-interceptor pilot, and flame Lowan in a dogfight.

Then again, what if she came up against Lussatte, who was also not her equal as a pilot but was not the blemish Lowan was? A simple matter to vape her … but Lara had the uneasy feeling that such an action would cause her a lingering regret.

She shook off the feeling. Transfer to another group meant transferring to another dormitory. It was time to pack.

7

If this is a reward. Face thought, I need to stop earning them.

He sat in weightlessness, strapped securely into the control seat of one of the captured interceptors, staring at stars and a tiny, distant sun through the starfighter’s viewport. The image hadn’t changed in an hour, and the music he was playing on the fighter’s internal speakers was, on its eighth repetition, getting on his nerves. He resolved to carry more entertainments on missions, especially those where keeping comm silence was a priority.

In a bar in Hullis, Face had been the one to spot the freighter navigator whose hand trembled with more than eagerness when the man reached for his first drink of the night. He’d been the one to get the man so drunk that discretion wasn’t an option, and to listen to the fellow’s rambling praise of his captain’s intelligence.

The ship the alcoholic navigator served on was the Barderia, and it hauled cargo on three-way runs out of Halmad with an admirable record for avoiding pirates. With enough liquor in him, the navigator told Face their secret for success. “Leave each system from a random point, enter each system at a random point. Your courses can’t be plotted.”

“That makes for pretty complicated courses,” Face had said.

“Not really. On arrival in each system, you first drop out of hyperspace just outside the outer planet’s orbit to sample the comm frequencies and get any pirate reports available, then make a course correction and jump in where you want to arrive.”

“Ah. And this first arrival, before you make your course correction, is to the same spot every time?”

“That’s what keeps things simple.”

Face was nice enough to make sure the man made it back to his ship when all the night’s drinking was done and the navigator was too far gone to recognize surroundings, friends, or his own features. But first Face played a hunch and assumed that a man sloppy enough to reveal a crucial detail to a stranger might be sloppy in other ways. He copied the encrypted contents of the fellow’s datapad to his own, and when back at Hawk-bat Base from this intelligence-gathering run, he handed that data over to Castin Donn. Castin cracked the code and the files yielded up no information about freighter routes … but did have a file of specific locations just outside a large number of planetary systems. It was a simple matter to find out to which planets Barderia’s next cargo run would take her.

The skin around Face’s mouth itched, but he could not scratch it, even if he took his Imperial pilot helmet off. His whole face was crisscrossed with horrible puckering scars—artificial ones, created by painting a makeup chemical across his skin and letting it dry. His own genuine scar was not missing; it was just incorporated into the design of false scar tissue.

That real scar made things a little difficult. Every disguise he wore had to conceal it or incorporate it. A simple, if somewhat pricey, cosmetic skin abrasion and bacta treatment would eliminate it. But it was part of him now, a constant reminder of the debt he would never be able to pay off. As a child star of holodramas, he had unknowingly helped boost Imperial morale, promote Imperial projects, even improve Imperial military recruitment. Crimes he’d never be able to erase. The scar was the living sign of those crimes. Look at me. I know what I did.

Regardless, all the extra scars, the false ones, made a good disguise, but they itched. And itched. While the same music played over and over again.

His sensor board lit up as an eighth blip suddenly joined the seven waiting there in space. Barderia had arrived, within range of his guns, of Wedge’s.

His comm crackled as he reached for his yoke. “This is One, targeting engines. Shields still down. Firing!”

As Face brought his interceptor around, he saw the bulk of Barderia, a boxy Corellian freighter about a hundred meters long, below him and to his starboard. Green laser fire from a point in space nearly two klicks away was dancing across its stern. Face marveled at the speed of Wedge’s response; the commander hadn’t been any closer to or oriented any better toward the freighter’s arrival.

Face got his guns lined up on the freighter, saw a turreted turbolaser swinging around to aim in on Wedge. He gritted his teeth, but that was not the ship’s most dangerous remaining system. He ignored the gun and targeted the ship’s communications array. He fired, his first shot scoring the ship’s hull, the second turning the comm gear into molten metal and escaping gas in a minor explosion. Then, as he accelerated toward the vessel, he belatedly linked his lasers to quad fire and opened up on the turbolaser.

This blast was larger and much more satisfying, eliminating the turret completely. His interceptor and Wedge’s crossed one another in flyovers of the crippled vessel as they visually surveiled the damage.

“This is One. Engines out. No sign of atmosphere venting. Hull integrity seems to be fine.”

“This is Eight. Comm antenna down. Main weapon down. I’d call this definitely a strong negotiating position. I’m opening communications.” He switched his comm frequency to a wide band including the range normally used by personal comlinks and jumped his power setting up so personal systems would be likely to receive him. He cleared his throat in a deep growl that was his mnemonic for this character’s vocal mannerism, then said, his voice a gravelly rumble, “Barderia, this is General Kargin of the Hawk-bat Independent Space Force. We are seizing your vessel. We are businessmen and will do no harm to surrendering crew members, to whom I guarantee safe passage into the hands of this system’s rescue forces. But we are rather short-tempered businessmen and any crewmen offering resistance will be brought back to our base for a debriefing session they will never forget … much less survive. Surrender your vessel and prepare your docking ports for boarding … or prepare to breathe vacuum.”

His response was not long in coming. A man’s voice, raspy and dismayed, replied, “This is Captain Rhanken of the independent cargo vessel Barderia. I surrender my vessel. Port and starboard docking ports standing by.”

It seemed like such a small boarding party. Face, Castin, and Phanan, wearing only gray versions of the standard TIE-fighter pilot’s uniform, arrayed against whatever forces occupied the cargo ship. But five sets of starfighter guns in the hands of the other Wraiths kept Barderia in their sights, and the freighter, lacking engines to power its shields, stardrive, and weapons, would be easy prey to any one of them.

The Wraiths, led by a visibly trembling navigation and communications officer, the very man who had inadvertently given Face the information he’d needed for this act of piracy, entered the freighter’s spotless bridge. Waiting there were other members of the bridge crew: the captain, a middle-aged, graying man with the look of a former Imperial officer about him, and a younger chief pilot whose hard look and demeanor suggested that he was also the ship’s master at arms and would like nothing more than to eradicate the pirates.

Face took off his helmet, revealing his gloriously horrible makeup job, and was rewarded with sudden intakes of breath from the two younger officers. “I am,” he said, “the glorious General Kargin, founder and leader of the Hawk-bats.” He kept his voice low, gravelly. “Captain?”

The freighter’s master did not salute, but he straightened with pained formality. “Captain Rhanken of the Barderia.”

“Captain?” Face injected a note of menace into his voice.

“And I am obliged to surrender this ship to you.”

Face extended a hand. “Cargo manifest?”

The communications officer, jolted into action by the demand, searched his uniform pockets increasingly frantically until he found the object he was searching for—a datapad, which he handed to Face.

Face handed it in turn to Castin. “Two, slice into their master computer and find the cargo manifest there. If it does not agree one hundred percent with this list, we execute them all.” Face turned his gaze back to the captain. “Though I can be forgiving. If you anticipate any errors in your list, you can tell me about them now and avoid unpleasantness.”

Captain Rhanken met his eyes unflinchingly. “I anticipate no problems. If my crew has done its customary good work.” He glanced at the communications officer. “Will there be a problem, Lieutenant?”

The communications officer, no master of concealing his emotions, went pale. “I d-d-don’t recall whether I called up the final inventory-match manifest or used last week’s projected manifest, sir.”

“Get the final manifest and give it to him. Just to be sure.”

“Yessir.” The officer bent to his task.

Interesting. Face had to work to keep both amusement and contempt from his expression. The captain wanted to play the unerring officer and was willing to let his subordinates assume responsibility for a tactic that had to be the captain’s own decision. Depending on the pirates involved, that could have led to the lesser officer’s death.

Long minutes passed while the officer brought up the correct manifest and Castin verified it by cutting through the computer’s defenses and slicing his way down to the original file. They matched and Face and Castin looked through their winnings while Phanan kept the bridge officers under guard.

“Look at this,” Face whispered. “Halmad Prime, shipped by the ton. Halmad’s best and most expensive grain alcohol. You can’t get it on-planet except through the black market; they ship it to other Imperial worlds as one of their major exports. Various medicines. Duracrete sprayers. Prefabricated shelters. We’ll take all the Halmad Prime and a cross section of the medicines; that’s about all we can load on Sungrass. See anything else we need?”

“TIE fighter and interceptor parts.”

“What? Where?”

Castin turned his datapad so Face could see the screen. It showed a different inventory list. “I pulled this off their computer when I was verifying the current manifest. It’s an estimated inventory from the second leg of their voyage. We could really use some spare parts and maintenance gear.”

“True, but our little raid here is bound to change their schedule for the rest of their mission.”

“But if we can figure out what they’ll change it to …”

“Good point.” Face straightened and glared at the captain. “Rhanken, have your cargo handlers assemble lots twenty-eight through one hundred twenty-seven and two hundred at your cargo bay. Two, call Sungrass and have them move in to accept delivery.”

“And then what?” asked Captain Rhanken.

“Then we leave.”

“Leaving us to drift, without communications, without enough power to limp into the system, to die out here?”

Face gave him a tight smile. “You have escape pods sufficient to get a message to your rescuers. But we’ll save you some time and call in an emergency signal. Wouldn’t want you to be inconvenienced. And you can tell your fellow captains, whom I’ll be meeting in the foreseeable future, that the Hawk-bats don’t kill. Unless we’re annoyed. Or become bored. They can take that under advisement.”

Colonel Atton Repness, leader of the Screaming Wookiee training squadron aboard the New Republic frigate Tedevium, pointed the device at Lara as though it were a miniature blaster.

She looked curiously at it. It was shaped like a standard cylindrical comlink, but that’s not what it was. She was sure of this because she’d examined the device inside and out, and done far more than that, when she’d broken into Repness’s quarters two days ago. “I’m sorry, sir. Should I be putting up my hands? Or making a speech?”

He smiled. “Very funny. This isn’t a weapon. It just ensures that we aren’t being recorded.”

“Who would want to record us?”

The colonel looked around, though he and Lara were the lightly furnished conference room’s only inhabitants. “You’d be surprised. I’ll just keep this on.”

“You’re the colonel.” But, inwardly, she smiled. He wasn’t speaking as a colonel; his mannerisms had shifted, probably without him realizing it, to those of a friend. Or conspirator.

“You’re aware that your scores have come up since transferring to the Screaming Wookiees.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, this is in part from improvement in your skills.”

“Only in part?” She affected surprise.

“Only in part.” Repness pulled a datapad from a pocket and slid it over to her.

The file it displayed was her training record. But the scores from after her transfer were shown in two columns, labeled “True” and “Adjusted.”

She gave him a troubled look. “I don’t understand, sir. The ‘True’ column would indicate that I’m still failing. Just barely failing. What are the adjustments from the other column?”

“Oh, I merely wanted your scores to be higher.”

She let her features go slack, as if caught so far by surprise that she didn’t know how to react or what to say.

“You see,” he said, “I think you have the potential to become a good pilot. So I’ve temporarily adjusted things to keep you from being booted. But I don’t think you can do this without help. It will take a team effort … and you haven’t been a team player, have you?”

“Well, I’d … like to be. I just don’t know how. Things are so different here.”

“Excellent! We could use you on my team. Working on my team calls for some extra effort on your part … but it comes with rewards you can’t get from any other unit.”

And then he told her of a mission. It would be a milk-run training mission within the atmosphere of the nearest uninhabited planet in an A-wing. Her control boards would register a critical failure of the engines, which would overheat and threaten detonation. She’d be ordered by Repness to eject, which she would—well after the trouble-free A-wing was safely on the ground. An ion bomb detonated in the atmosphere would give investigators the evidence they needed to corroborate the fighter’s utter destruction, and a rescue crew would pick her up well after Repness’s crew ferried the expensive fighter away for sale in some distant black-market port.

Lara listened, bored, to the whole inevitable deal, feigning puzzlement, shock, indignation, futile resistance, and finally pained acceptance as the hopeless nature of her situation was made clear to her.

And she knew, with a growing glee that was hard to conceal, that every word she and Repness said was being sent, by the very device he thought was a transmission-detecting sweeper, to a file under a forged pilot account on the frigate’s main computer.

Contact Wraith Squadron for help when matters with Repness came to a head? Why bother, when she could engineer his destruction and her own career’s salvation with far more panache than those pilots could ever manage?

It was a different star system—the Halmad system, well outside the orbit of its outermost planet—but the situation was very familiar.

Captain Rhanken could not maintain an expression of imperturbability the second time the Hawk-bats boarded his freighter. His voice was one of pure despair: “How did you know where we’d be?”

“We asked the right people,” Face said. “Your trade guild has a security breach in it I could pilot a Death Star through.”

It was a lie, a big one. Castin Donn had downloaded a number of the cargo ship’s records the last time they were aboard, and covered his tracks. The records didn’t say how Barderia’s master would adjust his schedule to account for the act of piracy committed upon him … but they did show how he’d reacted in the past to such situations. And now the Hawk-bats had taken him a second time, on his return leg home.

If the analysts of the trade guild didn’t believe the lie, that was all right; nothing would change. But if they did, they might institute a sweeping change in the guild’s standards for secure transmissions and information flow. Eventually that would be an impediment to the Hawk-bats’ piracy, but in the short term, possibly as long as the Hawk-bats were to exist as a pirate band, it would cause disruption and confusion in the guild, changes that New Republic Intelligence had a couple of agents ready to examine and take advantage of.

It was a good time to be a pirate.

Face said, “Rhanken, have your cargo handlers deposit lots forty-three through seventy-nine at your cargo door. Then we’ll be on our way. Good doing business with you again.”

When Lara Notsil examined the file containing the recording of Colonel Repness’s offer to her, it seemed much larger than their conversation should have accounted for. Perhaps, she thought, he’s been using his transmission-detecting sweeper in conversations with others.

He had. In the file were her conversation with Repness, plus the colonel’s subsequent discussions with one of his “team” subordinates, an instructor captain named Teprimal; in their talk, they noted details of their plan for the hiding and subsequent sale of the A-wing.

And there was more. Lara discovered, with glee mixed with a measure of professional horror, that Repness tended to turn on his sweeper whenever doing his most private work at his computer terminal. His paranoia about unseen listeners was his undoing, because he tended to mumble to himself, verbalizing his passwords and secret computer account names when working this way.

Within minutes of listening to the recording, Lara could access all of the man’s recordings that concerned his lucrative side business. It was a black-market business, well entrenched on Coruscant but just getting under way on the training frigate Tedevium, in which cargo was diverted from its intended destination—not even making it onto incoming-supplies manifests—and sold, profits making their way into the pockets of Repness and his team.

She found records of her own scores as a pilot trainee, plus those of a dozen other pilots Repness had subverted or tried to subvert this way. Some, like Wraith Squadron’s Tyria Sarkin, had refused to steal for him … but had been blackmailed into keeping silent. Others had joined his team. The records didn’t indicate whether they had been willing or reluctant. Still others, pilot trainees Lara knew, were going through the ensnaring process even now.

There was no sign that Repness had any allies in the Intelligence division of the armed forces, or in the Inspector-General’s office. She wrote a letter to both General Cracken of Intelligence and to the latter military division. It read,

i am the unseen, the unknowable, the unstoppable.

no computer can stand before me. gates open for me. back doors are revealed to me. knowledge willingly spools itself out for my inspection, i am the jedi of the electronic world.

i have found evil aboard tedevium. i have found corruption, like the jedi, i shall cut it down.

examine these files, test them for integrity. you will find they are the truth.

go where these files lead you.

do what you must do, as i do what i must do.

signed, white lancer

She went back in and inserted some random misspellings and some painful grammatical errors. When it was done, it was, she decided, a note typical of code-slicers who performed anonymous sabotage on computer systems. The true extent of her computer skills were not known on Tedevium, and those of many other crewmen and pilot candidates were; many of them would be suspected of this act, and in order to boost their reputations, some would probably allow the investigators to believe that they were, in fact, the secretive White Lancer.

To the letter, she attached Repness’s recordings and all the passwords and account names she had so far uncovered.

Then there were the files demonstrating how Repness had ensnared other pilots. She paused over those.

Best to expose all those pilots, she decided. Their careers would be ruined, at tremendous training cost to the New Republic—that is, the Rebels—and this would help deplete the Empire’s enemy of skilled pilots. Besides, if they became pilots, most of them would eventually die in action against Imperial pilots. They were better off having their careers torpedoed. If they knew she’d done it to them, someday they’d thank her for it.

Still her hands paused over the keyboard. As a child, she’d hoped to be a starfighter pilot. When she’d followed her parents’ career path instead, going into Imperial Intelligence, she’d demonstrated skills necessary to become a pilot and had undergone basic pilot training, which her controllers had decided would be a valuable side skill … and there she’d discovered a genuine love for flying. But her request for permanent transfer to the pilot corps was denied. Her intelligence-related skills were better and rarer than her pilot’s skills, so against her wishes she’d been obliged to stay in Intelligence. Believe us, it’s better this way, her instructors had told her. Someday, you’ll thank us for this.

It came before her, the face of pilot candidate Bickey, in her class under Repness. He’d been transferred to the remedial training unit just days after Lara had. If Repness kept true to form, in just a few days, Bickey would be approached on some similar scheme of theft. He was such a young, eager, boyish pilot, anxious to demonstrate his skill and bravery. He had once said he’d prefer to die young, in battle against his enemies, than old and content on a farm somewhere. No, he’d never thank her for what she was about to do.

Uneasy, Lara attached her own file of scores to the letter she was sending General Cracken, then systematically destroyed the original and backup files implicating other pilots and pilot candidates now serving. Let them die as they choose, she told herself. Let them die as pilots.

She arranged for the package of letter and files to make its way through secret routes to the offices of General Cracken. It would be at his headquarters office and under the eyes of one of his subordinates by day’s end.

Which left her one thing to do today.

•      •      •

She looked at the sweeper in Repness’s hand and let an expression of contempt cross her face. “Careful as always, aren’t we, Atton?”

The colonel looked around, concealing nervousness, though the classroom was empty of other personnel. “You’ll address me as Colonel Repness and show respect.”

“I’ll address you as Colonel Bantha Sweat and show you whatever I want.”

He looked at her, mouth open, but didn’t respond immediately. Lara pressed on: “I’ve decided not to join your team, Repness. I’m not going to steal an A-wing for you. In fact, I’m going to tell your superiors about what you’re up to.”

He managed to laugh. “That won’t do you much good. There’s no proof. And that’s the end of your flying career. You’ll never sit in a cockpit again. Think about what the rest of your life will be like.”

“I don’t care. I can live without flying. I can’t live without honor.” For a moment, she was troubled as the unwelcome possibility flashed through her mind that the words she’d just spoken had come from her true self, not the role she was playing. She suppressed the thought, shoving it aside. “That’s the end of your career.”

“I don’t think so. When they look over your psychological profile—a new one I’ll be working up over the next few days—and see what a compulsive liar you are, they wouldn’t believe you if you told them that hard vacuum is bad for the lungs.”

She gave him a mocking smile. “And you think I’ll give you those few days to falsify my records?”

“Certainly. You’ll be sleeping.” His blow was so fast that she saw it only as a blur. His fist struck her high on the cheek. She felt her skin part under the force of the blow.

Everything went white, her vision gone, sudden shock depriving her of most of her senses. She drifted a moment, aware that she may have overplayed this hand, and dimly felt her back and head hit the floor. It should have hurt, but it didn’t.

Her vision cleared a little, momentarily, and all she saw was Repness standing over her, his leg drawn back.

Then his booted foot swung forward to connect with her temple and that was the last she knew.

The X-wings of Wraith Squadron—the eight snubfighters remaining in the unit—made one pass before the bridge of the Mon Calamari cruiser, waggling S-foils as a show of respect, then curved around smartly and lined up, by pairs, for their approach to the vessel’s portside landing bay.

Wedge and his temporary wingman, Face, were first through the magcon field separating pressurized hangar from depressurized space, first to see the reception party that awaited them in the one clear area tucked in among a sea of X-wings and shuttles. Wedge cut in his repulsors and reduced power to his main engines, settling into a slow glide forward, and was pleased to see Face mimicking his maneuver precisely. They settled onto the first pair of landing zones, facing the crowd that had gathered there, and brought their canopies up in unison.

Rogue Squadron stood before them, arrayed as precisely as a firing squad. In front of the line of pilots was General Han Solo, uncomfortable-looking in his New Republic uniform, his expression a cocked smile that had to be from relief at seeing Wedge.

Wedge climbed down from his cockpit and removed his helmet. He could feel as well as hear the repulsorlift whine of the other Wraiths’ arriving, plus the distant metallic chatter of powered tools being used on repairs. That, and the smell of fuel and lubricants, of ozone coming off the magcon shield, made this hangar more comfortable and homey than any set of quarters Wedge had occupied.

He approached Solo and threw a precise salute. “Commander Wedge Antilles and Wraith Squadron reporting for duty, sir.”

Solo’s return salute was far less military. “Welcome aboard Mon Remonda. Let’s get the rest of your pilots in … so I can get out of this torture suit.”

Wedge affected surprise. “But, sir, I was just going to say how smart you looked in your uniform. I think we ought to stay here, in uniform, a couple of hours so the holographers can capture the image. You know, for the historians.”

Solo’s grin didn’t waver, but his expression was suddenly somehow different. Something like an animal backed into a corner. He kept his tone cheery. “Wedge, I think I’m going to have you killed.”

“Yes, sir. I trust you’ll wear your dress uniform for an event like that.”

Han slumped in mock surrender. “You know, with my history, I’d be the laughingstock of the New Republic if I ever brought one of my officers up on charges of insubordination.”

“Yes, sir, I was sort of counting on that.”

Once the other pilots had landed and their X-wings were shut down, it was handshakes all around. Wedge introduced Rogues to Wraiths, and met Captain Onoma, Mon Calamari master of the Mon Remonda.

On the walk down from the hangar to the officers’ quarters, through hallways that seemed more organic than constructed with their smooth curves and eye-pleasing rather than industrial colors, Solo filled Wedge in on some pertinent facts. “Mon Remonda officially has four fighter squadrons assigned to her. The fighter squadrons are: Rogue; Wraith; Polearm, an A-wing unit; and Nova, a B-wing squadron. Of course, you Wraiths are usually out on long patrols. In practice, of course, Rogue, Nova, and Polearm have been doing all the work while you Wraiths play pirate.”

“Is that irritation or envy in your voice?”

“Envy. Want to trade?”

“No.”

“You could boss this whole anti-Zsinj task force. I could arrange for a generalship for you.”

“No.”

Solo sighed tolerantly. “Anyway, we’ve been cruising at the theoretical borders of so-called Zsinj-controlled space. When our scouting missions or Intelligence auxiliaries report a good target, we go in and blow it up. We also assemble data on probable movements of Iron Fist, hoping to determine her home port or predict her next destination. So far we’re not having much luck on that front, though we’re pursuing data and leads as aggressively as we can.”

“You might actually want to pursue leads a little less aggressively than that, if you get my drift.”

Solo led the parade of pilots into a large personnel turbolift, which carried them downward into the vessel’s interior. “What do you mean?”

“Zsinj uses a lot of intelligence-oriented techniques. If he’s planting any of the leads you’re following, he may be building up a profile of how Mon Remonda responds to leaked information. Once he has a reliable profile in place, he can drop the exact type and quantity of information to lead you into the kind of trap not even a cruiser like this comes out of.”

Solo whistled. “Good point. The data we’ve been getting has been so fragmentary, so difficult to piece together, that we haven’t had any reason to believe any of it was fabricated. But if we assume that Zsinj demands a pretty high level of performance even of enemy analysts—”

“He does. If you’d like, I can have my intelligence specialist—Shalla Nelprin, you met her in the hangar—”

“Yes.”

“I can have her analyze the data you’ve been getting and your responses to it to see if you’re exhibiting any sort of pattern.”

“I’ll have it sent to the terminal in her quarters.” Solo now no longer looked uncomfortable. He looked serious and intent, and finally seemed the officer his uniform said he was.

Face came out of the turbolift behind Dia and one of the Rogues, a Twi’lek who had been introduced as Nawara Ven, and overheard the Rogue try to start up a conversation. Face didn’t understand the words, assumed they were in Twi’leki, the language of Ryloth, homeworld of the Twi’leks.

But Dia’s response was not in the same tongue. Her voice was emotionless. “Speak Basic, please.”

Nawara Ven took a second to compose himself. “I’m sorry. I said, we must get together sometime at your convenience to talk.”

“About what?”

“About home. About our experiences as Twi’leks in the armed forces.”

“Ryloth was where I was born, but then it spat me out, made me property of an Imperial crime-syndicate leader. Ryloth is not my home. I don’t have a home. And I doubt our experiences have been similar. Unless you’ve been a slave.”

“Well, no, but—”

“Then we’ve probably exhausted available topics of conversation.” She picked up the pace and moved up away from the Rogue.

Nawara turned to the other Rogue Twi’lek pilot, a larger man with the upright, aggressive posture of a warrior. Face remembered that he had been introduced as Tal’dira.

Tal’dira shrugged and gave Nawara a little smile. “I think you lost that case, Counselor.”

“I don’t think I was ever even in the courtroom.”

Face was just getting settled into the quarters he’d be sharing with Myn Donos when his comlink blipped. It was Wedge’s voice: “Lieutenant Loran, report to Commander Antilles.”

“Yes, sir.”

When he arrived in Wedge’s quarters, his commander was seated behind a fold-down desk and scowling over a datapad. Face saluted. Wedge returned it absently and gestured for him to sit, all without looking up.

Wedge said, “The Lara Notsil situation seems to be … resolved.”

Face felt a little coldness settle in his stomach. “That sounds pretty ominous, sir.”

Wedge finally met his eyes. “Well, not as ominous as all that. She appears to have dropped the heavy end of the hammer on Colonel Repness … without involving you or Phanan. Or indicating in any way that this was a setup.”

“Sir?”

“I’ve just received her record, because she has put in applications for transfer to Rogue Squadron or Wraith Squadron. According to this document, Repness attempted to recruit her to his unit of black-market thieves, she refused, he assaulted her and had her drugged out of commission, a prisoner in the infirmary … but a mystery code-slicer aboard Tedevium caught Repness’s activities in recordings and forwarded them to Intelligence. They moved in and seized Repness before any further harm could come to her.”

Face thought that over. “But if she otherwise kept to the plan, then her scores would probably not let her graduate.”

“Right. According to this, when she was recuperating from Repness’s attack on her, she told Tedevium’s commanding officer that deciding to oppose Repness had settled some problems she’d had, some issues remaining from the destruction of the colony where she’d grown up. She insisted on a chance to demonstrate those changes, and the training officers decided to give it to her. She went through an accelerated training regimen and vaped it. Even averaging those results with her earlier scores let her graduate—and her efficiency profile puts her within the range suitable for inclusion in my units.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Both Rogue Squadron and Wraith Squadron are at full pilot strength, so neither unit needs her. However, she has been assigned—and this is fitting—Colonel Repness’s personal X-wing.”

Face snorted. “An act of revenge on the part of Tedevium’s commander?”

“Probably. Tedevium’s new commander is General Crespin, from Folor Base, and that sounds just like his sense of humor. It’s also possible that Repness’s snubfighter was considered bad luck—you know how superstitious some pilots are. So, anyway, I’ll be bringing her into Wraith Squadron to help boost our complement of snubfighters.”

“That’s great news, sir.”

Wedge gave him a challenging look. “Your job, and Phanan’s, is to make sure that it stays great news, Face.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re awfully subdued, Face. Your sarcasm generator not getting any power?”

“Something like that, sir.”

“Relieved that this whole Lara Notsil situation hasn’t shot your career into a black hole or made an enemy of General Cracken?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, I’ll inform the smartmouths in the Wraiths that you’re temporarily easy pickings for them. Dismissed.”

8

“She has just been assigned to Wraith Squadron, which is aboard Mon Remonda,” said General Melvar.

He and the warlord were alone in Iron Fist’s officers’ lounge. Yet the lounge was full of the noise of leisure and pleasure—pilots chatting, glasses clinking, drinks pouring—all part of an ambient-noise recording Zsinj usually played at such times.

The warlord froze with his drink halfway to his mouth. Melvar could smell the drink; it was a good Coruscant brandy. But Melvar knew that this had to be a synthesized substitute, alcohol-free; despite appearances, Zsinj never drank while in command of a ship. Yet he would knock down shot after shot of the synthesized stuff and allow his subordinates to believe that he was getting drunk, and his body language and speech would confirm that analysis.

Zsinj said, “But that’s perfect. Arrange for her to give us Mon Remonda’s course and schedule. We’ll destroy it, and General Solo, and those most annoying X-wing units. For a prize like that, I’ll set Gara Petothel up for life and give her whatever position on Iron Fist she wants.”

“Other than mine, I hope.”

“Including yours.” Zsinj smiled. “I’ll find something even better for you.”

“The problem is, we’re not yet in contact with her. It took us some time to put together a visual image of her, and more time to compare it against and disqualify all current female pilots in Antilles’s squadrons, and even more time to trace it to Lara Notsil, a pilot candidate in training. She’d extensively changed her appearance.”

“Wise of her.”

“And then she was on a training frigate at an unknown location, and then in custody there, and then in an advanced training program there under intense scrutiny. We’ve been able to follow her … but never approach her.”

Zsinj merely blinked at him. His expression said, How nice that you have a problem. Now solve it.

“So we’ve found one of her relatives. The relative will make contact for us.”

“A relative of Gara Petothel?”

“No, of Lara Notsil, the woman whose identity she took. The community where she grew up, New Oldtown—”

Zsinj shuddered. “Surely you’re joking about that name.”

“On Aldivy. It was blasted out of existence by Admiral Trigit when it refused to offer him supplies.”

“You’re sure he didn’t destroy it because of that name.”

“Since he’s dead, I’ll have trouble asking him. Anyway, one of the real Lara Notsil’s siblings, from New Oldtown—”

“Don’t ever say that name again. It annoys me.”

“—returned home after spending months at a naval job under an assumed name. He was supposed to be serving time in a jail in his hometown-whose-name-is-nevermore-to-be-said.”

“So you recruited him.”

“I have an agent with him, teaching him to eat with implements, wear shoes, and pretend that Gara Petothel is his sister. He’ll be transmitting a message saying, ‘I’m alive, understand you are the same.’ With enough subtext that she’ll have no problem figuring out what’s going on.”

“Good. Be speedy with this, Melvar. I want Mon Remonda off my trail as soon as possible. Its crew and pilots are too lucky and too efficient by far. Their continued existence threatens to be very expensive to me.”

•      •      •

The world shown on the briefing room’s holoprojector was not a promising one. A medium-sized chunk of reddish-brown rock with a few dark seas thrown in for contrast, it circled around a yellow star notable only for its averageness.

Wedge, on the dais, gestured to a tiny bright spot on the world’s surface. “This is the world Lavisar, and this point is its chief port city, Syward. According to Lavisar’s central library, the planet was once part of a much larger very-high-gravity world, one that was destroyed in a series of asteroid collisions; Lavisar was ejected. It’s a world where heavy metals are abundant, with mining and refining industries to match, plus a strong economic base in shipbuilding.”

“Just the sort of world Zsinj loves,” said Face. At a questioning look from Rogue Squadron pilot Corran Horn, he explained, “We stumbled across the edges of a financial empire belonging to Zsinj, one no one knew about previously. He likes fairly innocuous worlds that have strong economies, and he usually owns at least one business there under an assumed name—a different name with each world. It might be that he wants to have a fallback position in case these worlds decide to side with the New Republic—his business would still be able to help fund his military activities.”

Wedge continued, “And recent data supports the idea that Lavisar is one of these worlds. Although the world is just outside what we think of as Zsinj-occupied space, a recently captured transmission, which our Intelligence people have decrypted, indicates that there is a Raptor unit in Syward, set up in the main construction plant of Skyrung Manufacturing, a licensee builder of Lambda-class shuttles.”

The Raptors were Zsinj’s elite enforcement units. Better trained and better equipped than Imperial stormtroopers, they were the most commonly seen and recognized symbol of Zsinj’s power, much as the ubiquitous TIE fighter was the universal symbol of Imperial domination.

“So what is the plan?” asked Tal’dira, one of Rogue Squadron’s Twi’lek pilots. “Aerial strike, commando strike, or a combination of the two?”

“Maybe neither. Shalla, let’s have your report.”

Shalla stood, apparently a little nervous under the scrutiny of the Rogues. “I did an analysis of the way Mon Remonda and her task force have been responding to various outside stimuli—captured transmissions, confessions of captured Zsinj personnel, that sort of thing—not including official orders from the New Republic. This was against the possibility that Zsinj has been leaking information to gauge our responses. And although there is some variation in response time, this task force shows a pretty consistent set of responses. Each stimulus is graded as high priority, medium, low, and of possible interest—those are my terms, not those of the task force’s officer corps—and a response is assigned according to grade. High priority, for example a response to a distress call from a New Republic ship that is nearby and under attack, will yield, without variation, an assault force of a size calculated to be marginally superior to the enemy force, sent in a straight-line path from Mon Remonda’s current location to the site of the trouble. A stimulus like this one, the Lavisar signal, will inevitably call for a ground team to confirm the signal source is a target, followed by an aerial strike.” She shrugged as if in apology. “These responses have been predictable.” She sat down and began fidgeting.

“And predictability,” said Corran Horn, “gets you killed.”

“Then what should we do?” That was Gavin Darklighter, the Rogues’ pilot from Tatooine, a brown-haired young man whose innocent features and country-boy demeanor belied his combat experience. “Instead of an aerial strike, send flowers and sweets?”

“It’s better than going in as usual,” Shalla said. “It would confuse them.”

Asyr, the Bothan flier, who sat beside Gavin with her arm upon his, shook her head, rippling her fur. “But at the first point we don’t respond predictably, we tip Zsinj off that we’re onto him.”

Wedge smiled at her, and it was a hard-edged smile. “Welcome to the dilemmas of command. You’re right. Now, let’s make the situation even worse. After I received Shalla’s—wait a moment.” He took his comlink from its clip and spoke into it. “Yes?”

The Rogues and Wraiths heard a murmur from the comlink’s speaker but could not make out the words. Wedge said, “Yes, by all means. A good time for it.” He returned the device to its clip. “After Shalla made her preliminary report on this matter to me this morning, General Solo, Captain Celchu, and I went over the data of Mon Remonda’s mission so far. Intelligence reports are very sketchy, but indicate that in at least five of the sites this task force has attacked in recent sorties, Raptor movements have drastically increased and been quite public immediately after the sorties. Anyone want to hazard a guess?”

There was no immediate response. Then the Rogues’ executive officer, Nawara Ven, raised a hand.

“Go ahead.”

“If Zsinj wants to lead us around and gauge our responses, he has to do so by giving up targets for us to attack. Until a moment ago, I was assuming he was giving up targets he owned or occupied, places that weren’t very important to him. But that wouldn’t necessarily result in more public Raptor activity after the raids.” He frowned in concentration. “But if he were planting evidence that sites that didn’t belong to him actually did …”

Tyria said, “Then we’d be assaulting sites he wouldn’t particularly mind being hit.”

Nawara gave her a close look. “Even worse. If they were planets and facilities he’d been trying to add to his empire by diplomacy, but failing, our attacks would have knocked down their defenses drastically. Leaving them open to easier conquest by Zsinj … or at least further negotiation with him, and not from a position of strength.”

Face put his hand on his head to quell a sudden threatening headache. “You’re saying that the task force has been doing his work for him. All in the name of running down every lead.”

Wedge nodded. “Very possibly. Further examination of available data on Lavisar’s central library computer indicates that the population has a strong independent streak, which accounts, more than anything else, for its continued lack of interest in joining the New Republic or Zsinj, or rejoining the Empire, which lost control of the planet after the Emperor’s death.

“So our task is to respond predictably to this ‘stimulus,’ as Shalla puts it, without doing Zsinj’s work for him, and without setting ourselves up for Zsinj’s inevitable trap. Hobbie, this was your idea.”

The mournful-faced second-in-command of the Rogues stood uneasily. “Zsinj has every confidence that we can penetrate standard planetary defenses and get our snubfighters and support crews to the surface. We generally do. So my idea was to send down a ground crew, plant a bomb on the side of their main sensor station, and set it off … and it doesn’t destroy the emplacement. They keep full sensors.”

Gavin Darklighter frowned. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. So we go blasting down toward the planet and they’re completely aware of our approach?”

Hobbie nodded. “And they send up their forces and we turn tail, having been repelled by the mighty defenders of Lavisar.”

That got laughter from most of the pilots.

“Rogue Squadron doesn’t run,” said Corran Horn, deadpan. “Unless we really, really have to.” That got more laughter.

“No,” said Wedge, “this will be Wraith Squadron’s mission.”

“We don’t mind running,” Face said. “Even when we don’t have to.”

“More importantly,” Wedge continued, “we need to establish that Wraith Squadron is indeed on Mon Remonda. Every chance we get, we have to support the deception that we’re here all the time. So—hold on, here’s someone I want you to meet.”

The door at the back of the briefing chamber finished hissing up and open. In walked a woman in standard New Republic pilot’s uniform, still carrying her helmet and bag of possessions. Face recognized Lara, despite the bandage she wore on her left cheek. He waved her over and she headed his way.

Wedge continued, “Rogues, Wraiths, I’d like to introduce you to Lara Notsil, newest pilot in Wraith Squadron. She hasn’t seen any action yet, but she’s already brought down a black-market ring operating on a New Republic training frigate. That’s a pretty good start.”

Over the other pilots’ applause, Lara settled in beside Face. He decided that she looked weary, probably from her long flight in, but alert. “Thank you,” she said. “But before anyone feels that his own sideline business is threatened, let me just say that I am susceptible to bribes.”

That got a chuckle, and Wes Janson drew a hand over his brow as if relieved.

Wedge waved to return everyone’s attention to him. “Back to Lavisar, the subject at hand … we will be sending down an Intelligence team, to plant our dud of a bomb … and to stay there after our task force leaves the area. We’re going to take Shalla’s analyses and present them to the planetary governor. Try to persuade him that Zsinj was setting him up and that we, in our pragmatic mercifulness, let him go. Maybe he’ll be grateful. Maybe he’ll side with the New Republic. Second best would be him remaining with the Empire … but as a confirmed enemy of Zsinj.”

Face said, “That’s pretty dangerous for our agents on the ground, isn’t it?”

Wedge nodded. “Only one member of the team will make contact with the governor. It’ll be a volunteer from our Intelligence pool. If he or she doesn’t return … the rest of the team will transmit the bad news and decide whether to stage a rescue operation or just try to get offworld.”

“He likes sunfruit liqueur,” Lara said.

Wedge stared at her. “Come again?”

“Governor Carmal of Lavisar. He likes sunfruit liqueur. I mean, just having some as a present for him might help a little bit.”

“How do you know this?”

She shifted, a little uncertain under the directness of Wedge’s stare. “When I was making my living on Coruscant, I worked for a shipping company, processing data for them. Lavisar was in their records as ‘lost by separation,’ a term meaning the company had trade relations with them before Coruscant fell to the New Republic but not afterward. There was a lot of data on worlds and companies ‘lost by separation,’ including information that the New Republic doesn’t have because it’s trade-specific, so the company representatives might have a slightly easier time resuming relations once contact was made again.”

“Good to know. Do you have some sort of perfect memory?”

“Well, a trick memory. Miscellaneous facts, trivia, statistical information, they all get pulled into my head and stay there forever. I’m not so good with faces, but I can tell you all the official holidays of more than fifty worlds, and some holidays from another five hundred or so.”

“Interesting.” Wedge turned to Squeaky, the 3PO unit with mismatched gold and silver body parts, who lurked, as was his custom, at the back of the briefing hall. “We—”

“You don’t need to say it,” the droid said, his tone admonishing. “We need sunfruit liqueur. And, doubtless, some of the good stuff from a tropical world that knows how to turn it out, not one of the Coruscant synthetics. I’ll get to work on it with my customary efficiency.”

“Well, in that case, let’s wrap things up with our customary efficiency. The squadrons’ senior staff will be putting together the mission profile, but anyone who wants to earn some extra points can work up his own version of this approach-balk-and-run mission, and we’ll take the best parts of what we get. Questions? No? That’s all.”

“A moment of your time, sir?” Tyria Sarkin stood in the doorway to Wedge’s quarters. She looked distinctly unhappy.

“Of course. Come in.”

She declined to sit, instead standing at ease—though her tense pose suggested that relaxation was impossible for her. “Sir, there are lots of rumors about Flight Officer Notsil and that black-market ring.”

“Yes?”

“And I think you ought to know …” An expression of dismay struggled across her face, but she managed to banish it. “No, you should have known some time ago, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. But you need to know that you might lose me as a pilot.”

“Why?”

“Because Notsil wasn’t the first pilot candidate Major Rep—Colonel Repness came to with this starfighter-stealing scheme.”

Wedge regarded her steadily. A number of puzzle pieces suddenly clicked into place. Face’s and Phanan’s personal involvement in this Repness matter. Phanan had talked of a former trainee who’d spilled the story of Repness’s black-market activities to him … but had hinted that this trainee had washed out and had met Phanan on Coruscant.

He wondered if Tyria had been part of Phanan and Face’s plan all along. No; she was unskilled at deception, an honest spirit who took no satisfaction in lying. A refreshing change from most of the other Wraiths.

“You didn’t—”

“No, sir. I didn’t steal anything for him. But I did something just as bad. I let him blackmail me into keeping quiet. I could have turned him in, opposed him the way Notsil did … but I didn’t.” Her shame was evident in her expression. “Repness was an obsessive record keeper, sir. He has records of my scores. He can prove that he doctored them to let me pass. And when that happens, they’re going to vape my flying career.”

Wedge sighed. “In the face of evidence like that, I doubt I’ll be able to offer you much protection.”

“I’m not here to ask for protection, sir. There is no protection. But I thought you ought to know—so you can prepare for it—that there’s a possibility that I’m going to be yanked from the squadron.”

“I understand. But let’s say Repness doesn’t accuse you. That he gets in touch with you privately and says, ‘I can torp your career, but I won’t. All you have to do is send me a few creds to help pay my legal team for my defense.’ ”

She took that hurdle without hesitation. “If he asks for one credit, sir, he doesn’t get it. Let him turn me in and be damned.”

“You’re sure.”

“I’m positive. I’m not going to let him have even the most tenuous of leashes on me. No more. Not ever.”

He was silent a long moment. A shame she hadn’t come to him right away upon joining Wraith Squadron’s training program. If she had done so, he could have—

Could have? No, perhaps he had done so. Just after joining the Wraith Squadron, Flight Officer Sarkin had come to him, not knowing who, further up along any official channels, might be part of Repness’s organization. Wedge had assigned Face and Phanan to find someone to act as bait, and within weeks they’d done so, in the hospital on Borleias. It was his plan, as well as Face and Phanan’s, that had sent Lara Notsil to Tedevium and Colonel Repness.

The one thing that made him uncomfortable about this altered history was that he would be taking credit for initiating a plan actually brought into being by two of his subordinates … but the results would be worth this little deception.

“Flight Officer Sarkin.”

She heard the change in his voice and snapped to attention. “Sir.”

“You’re too good a pilot for the squadron to lose you this way.”

“I’m at the bottom of the squadron rankings, sir.”

“No longer true. One of the new pilots has taken over that singular honor, at least temporarily. And even if it were true, the so-called worst Wraith is one of the galaxy’s most dangerous opponents by any standard, else he or she wouldn’t be in the squadron.”

“Um—”

“That didn’t call for a response. Now, this is a direct order: If anyone comes to you with questions about your dealings with Repness, you will give no answers. Instead, tell him you are under orders, from me, not to discuss the matter—until he has come to talk to me. Do you understand?”

“I understand the order, sir, but not what it means.”

“What it means is that you’re going to be with the Wraiths until you die or you decide to transfer—not until someone outside the unit decides you’re not one of us. Now, dismissed.”

Startled, she saluted and fled.

Wedge sat back. His story would survive interrogation up until the time anyone involved was called on to testify, but his gut feeling was that it wouldn’t go that far. If it did, neither he nor his subordinates would commit perjury, and so they’d be in for punishment from the investigators.… But they’d all endured such punishment before. And would again, to retain the skills and loyalty and comradeship of a pilot like Tyria Sarkin.

Lara Notsil paused just inside the broad opening to Mon Remonda’s port hangar doors. Just stepping into the hangar was entering a different world.

The high-pitched whine of repulsorlift engines being tested cut into her. It was a welcome noise now, one she’d come to appreciate. Less welcome was the cold that accompanied it. The great doors at the hangar’s far end were open, the chamber’s atmosphere held in only by its magnetic containment field, and magcon was not an insulator—heat fled through the field into the vacuum of space. Outside the atmosphere, fighter hangars tended to be chilly places.

The hangar was occupied by twenty-one X-wings, and they’d been settled in tight to one another. Taking off without grazing an adjacent snubfighter would be a minor challenge. But that appeared to be characteristic of Commander Wedge Antilles—never letting his pilots grow complacent, even with such a simple task as taking off for a mission.

She headed toward her X-wing. As the last squadron pilot to land, she was in the rear of the packed formation, nearest the magcon shield, so she’d be among the first to take off. She waved at various Wraith and Rogue pilots, who acknowledged her with waves of their own, shouts of encouragement, or mock disparagement.

She didn’t know what to make of them or how they were reacting to this mission.

The mission itself made perfect sense. Go in, stage a failed assault, try not to kill anyone—but defend yourself with all necessary force—and then get out safely. Let Zsinj jump to the wrong conclusion, that they’d fouled up and been driven off.

What was different, what was wrong, was the lack of disappointment among the Wraiths. Admiral Trigit’s TIE-fighter pilots would have accepted such a mission with just as much discipline, but they would have been relentlessly unhappy about the restrictions against unnecessary elimination of the enemy. How can you reach the rank of ace, establish a name, gain fame as a fighter pilot, without killing the enemy? And the very prospect of leaving an armed enemy alive would have been repellent.

But these Rebel pilots took the restriction in good grace, and their relaxed attitude about it seemed to be genuine.

That, more than anything, bothered her about this unit. The Rebel pilots were supposed to be barely restrained mad dogs. Sure, she’d met several at the hospital on Borleias who didn’t match that profile, but those were men and women recuperating from injuries, anxious to have some rest and recreation. But these Wraiths and Rogues were gearing up for combat. Their desire to eliminate the enemy should have been strong in them.

Perhaps Imperial evaluations of Rebel pilots were simply wrong. Not even accidentally wrong—just distorted to provide the Imperial pilots with more and better motivation to fight fiercely. Imperial pilots were, in fact, kept at a honed edge of ferocity, held at a barely contained level of fury that sometimes boiled out into violence at inappropriate times—in their quarters, with their families, on leave. By comparison, these X-wing pilots seemed emotionally quite healthy.

She shook her head. That had been a treasonous thought, dangerous to a woman who would be once again working for Imperial forces in the near future. She tried to banish it.

She climbed the ladder to her snubfighter’s cockpit. A Mon Remonda mechanic was up there on the fuselage, making sure the R2 unit tucked in behind the cockpit was securely attached. “You’ve got a beauty here,” the man said.

The R2 unit emitted a chirpy series of musical notes, acknowledgment of the compliment.

She stepped up into the cockpit and settled into her pilot’s couch. “Brand-new from the factory.” It was true; Colonel Repness could requisition new gear whenever a shipment was delivered to his training squadron, and apparently did. Her R2 unit, nicknamed Tonin, “Little Atton” in the Basic dialect of Aldivy, since she’d had its memory purged, was brand-new and unscathed, its base color a pretty silver white, its trim color an arterial red. It was loaded with several bells and whistles of top-of-the-line units. Warlord Zsinj’s quartermaster would doubtless feel a little flicker of gratitude when she handed it over to him.

“Best of luck, pilot.”

“Thanks.”

Moments later, she had her helmet on and canopy down and was going through her power-up checklist. Four engines showing green, full power—Repness had made sure his personal X-wing was in tip-top shape, too. She still needed the mechanics to move the pilot’s couch forward; it was adjusted as far forward as it would go, and she had to extend herself a little uncomfortably when handling rudder pedals. Repness had been a tall man.

Her comlink crackled into life. It was Wedge’s voice: “All right, Rogues, Wraiths. Call ’em out in order.”

“Rogue One, ready.”

“Rogue Two, four lit and in the green.”

“Rogue Three, ready to dance.”

Only the Wraiths would be going as far as Lavisar. The Rogues would accompany them as far as the Lavisar system’s outermost planetary ring, and would wait there. If, though odds were against it, this mission was a Zsinj trap against Mon Remonda, the Rogues would be ready to jump in and give Zsinj’s forces a surprise they might not be ready to withstand.

A sudden chill passed through her, one not even her insulated pilot’s suit and cockpit heater could immediately dispel. The Wraiths were supposed to fire a few shots, even land a few hits if they thought they could do so without unnecessarily taking life, and then flee.

But anything could happen. A laser blast aimed at a solar wing array could miss and hull a starfighter’s cockpit. A sudden maneuver could startle a TIE-fighter pilot into veering straight into the path of one of his fellows.

Lara didn’t want to kill today, and it wasn’t for the apparently altruistic reasons demonstrated by the Wraiths. If she killed an Imperial pilot, how would she be regarded when she returned to Imperial employ?

“Wraith Twelve, ready for lift.” That was Piggy’s mechanical voice. She’d left a note to herself, in the portions of her mind that were so usefully automatic, for his voice to cue her own response. She shook away all the thoughts distracting her and said, “Wraith Thirteen, four green and topped off.”

“Exit by current formation, by proximity to the magcon field, then form up by wings and units.”

That made her first.

She began to run through the checklist in her mind that covered repulsorlift backing, rotating, exiting this type of facility—but no, it was not a good idea to overintellectualize among these pilots. She took the pilot’s yoke, engaged the repulsorlift, and pulled up and backward with a smooth motion, beginning her rotation before she was two meters into the air. She smoothly cruised through the magcon field, which permitted her passage without the slightest discernible resistance. And she was in space.

Not for the first time; she’d flown training missions with the Y-wings of Screaming Wookiee training squadron after Repness’s arrest, had soloed in both Y-wings and Repness’s X-wing, had flown her own choice of course to rendezvous with Mon Remonda. But this was her first action.

She continued with repulsorlifts and rose until her stern pointed into empty space well above the entrance to the hangar, then engaged her thrust engines and pulled smoothly away from the Mon Calamari cruiser. Smooth, and by the numbers—but she was still acutely aware of the eyes that were and would be upon her.

Moments later, Wedge pulled beside and slightly ahead of her, and Face Loran took up position on the other side of the commander, drawn back level with her. As the ninth pilot of a unit that normally flew by paired wingmen, Lara had been assigned as the temporary third member of an existing pair.

They’d timed their arrival so that the face of Lavisar featuring its capital city, Syward, would be dead ahead when they emerged from hyperspace. And so it was: When the dazzling light show that was the end of a hyperspace jump faded, the Wraiths were aimed squarely at the portion of Lavisar’s red-brown face that featured the largest recognizable glowing dot. Off to their starboard and ahead was the planet’s largest moon, black in the eclipse shadow of the planet. The moon’s gravity well, whose influence extended into hyperspace, had, as they’d intended it to, plucked them back into realspace. While this close to the moon, they would not be able to reenter hyperspace, and as they got closer to the planet’s surface, the situation got even trickier; Lavisar had a number of moons, all of them large enough to hinder hyperspace jumps.

“Great placement, Twelve.” Wedge’s voice again. “All right. We should have a five-to-ten-minute window before they can bring online any secondary sensor arrays worth worrying about. Remember, you’ll be aiming for a complex three times as long as wide, featuring sky-blue buildings—”

“Leader, this is Eight.” Face’s voice. “Visual sensors on the Syward military base show TIE fighters scrambling. I see two full squadrons mobilizing. They’re wearing planetary defense colors.”

“They can’t be coming after us, Eight. Their sensors—can you visually scan their main sensor station?”

“Working on it, Leader.”

Lara smiled. Though their transmissions were encrypted, she had to assume the Wraiths would be using a code sequence that had been in use for a while—one whose useful lifetime was nearing an end. If the planetary defenders recorded enough of these transmissions and could crack them, the Wraiths’ pre-scripted dialogue would sound perfectly normal for a botched mission in progress.

“Tonin, scan normal Imperial frequencies,” she said. “Send anything you hear that sounds like pilot traffic to my helmet comlink. When Wraith transmissions and Imperial transmissions conflict, continue recording the Imperial transmissions but let me hear only the Wraiths.”

The display unit set aside for communication with the astromech popped up with a quick reply: UNDERSTOOD.

And almost immediately she began to hear faint, fuzzy transmissions, garbled words: “—ming up. Deploy by fists—”; “—file suggests still in approach vec—”

“Leader, Eight. Visual sensors show the ground sensor complex intact. There seems to be some scoring damage on the northeast wall and civilian crews there. It looks like our ground team fouled up.”

Even distorted by New Republic comm equipment, Wedge’s voice was hard. “They’re going to be sorry they got back to us. They’ll wish they only had Lavisar authorities to deal with. Wraiths, come about in formation. Twelve, confirm and then transmit our escape vector.”

“Twelve, understood.”

The Wraiths began a slow sweep, bringing them around toward deep space again, taking them back out the way they had come.

“—trol indicates enemy force is flee—”; “Stay in formation, we’re chasing them all the way—”; “—like banthas to the hunters. Stay tight.”

Lara frowned. That last transmission had not sounded right. “Tonin, can you plot the origins of the Imperial transmissions you’ve received so far?”

APPROXIMATELY.

“Do so. Put them up on my sensor board.”

Her sensor screen, which previously had shown only the two nearby planetary bodies and a single blue blip representing all the Wraiths, now added two fuzzy red fields—one at the planet’s surface, one near the nearest moon’s surface at a point not too distant from the Wraiths’ escape vector. The fields wavered as the astromech continuously recalculated probable points of origin and projected them onto the screen.

“Tonin, subtract the Lavisar transmissions from the image.”

DONE.

“Transmit the image to Wraith Leader’s R2 and ask him to put it on his sensor screen.”

DONE.

She activated her comm system. “Leader, this is Thirteen. I’m picking up indications that we have company ahead. Probably the garrison of a lunar station.”

“Understood, Thirteen. Good work. Wraiths, break to starboard on my lead. Twelve, give us a new escape course.”

“Twelve, understood.”

Wedge rolled out to starboard, a course that would take the Wraiths past one of Lavisar’s secondary moons—and keep them within troublesome gravity wells, unable to jump to hyperspace, even longer, but now the shortest course away from the planet and new enemies. Lara followed, her maneuver as smooth as that of the commander’s other wingman.

New activity on the sensor board: a single red blip distancing itself from the primary moon, heading toward the Wraiths on an intercept course. As Lara watched, the blip became two, one ahead, one lagging behind. She adjusted the display to zoom in on the image and saw that the forward blip was registering as a full squad of TIE fighters, moving at maximum speed, while the rear blip was four units “unknown type” with a 75 percent probability that they were Lambda-class shuttles.

That made sense. A manufacturer making Lambda-type vehicles probably had a production combat model, one with heavier armor and equipped with heavy guns, to supplement its space forces.

“Wraiths, this is Leader. My astromech calculates that the lunar unit will be on us before we clear the gravity well of that second moon. Once they encounter us—assuming we engage them—we’ll have about three minutes before the planetary units catch up to us. Mission Order One is rescinded. Engage and eliminate the lunar force with all dispatch. Then form up and get back to our escape course. Twelve?”

“I have a flexible escape course plotted, lacking only the crucial variable—the exact point we join up and prepare to exit.”

“Good. Get ready.”

9

When the incoming TIE fighters were only a handful of kilometers away, Wedge announced, “S-foils to attack position. Break by pairs, choose your targets, make it fast.” He suited action to words by rolling out, a smooth maneuver that carried him directly toward the enemy force.

Lara followed suit, with Face Loran a split second late but equally sure-handed. The sound of someone’s breathing, harsh and ragged, filled her ears, then she realized she was listening to herself. She forced her breathing to slow, forced herself to concentrate.

The first part would be a head-on confrontation between TIEs and X-wings, the two forces approaching at maximum speed, firing as they came. Once the lines crossed, the more maneuverable TIE fighters would whip around to try to get on the slower X-wings’ tails—simple strategy. And the X-wing pilots would be doing everything they could, using all their combined experience, to shake this deadly pursuit.

She put all shield power to her bow shields for the head-to-head approach. Wedge and Face had to have done the same by now.

That was an interesting thought. Wedge Antilles, flying mere meters ahead of her with no power to his stern shields. She could put a quad-linked laser blast into his engines and erase his name, so hated by Imperial pilots, from the roster of New Republic warriors.

Rebel warriors, that is. Then—what? Take out Face Loran with an identical shot, transmit a surrender to the Lavisar forces, get an escort down to the planet’s surface … and live the rest of her life in the fame that belonged to the pilot who shot down Wedge Antilles.

Such an odd feeling. Wedge Antilles was under her guns, yet he trusted her with his life.

He had no reason not to, of course. But he did. No one had in—how long? Forever.

She could eliminate him with a twitch of the finger.

It should have been tempting. Yet, somehow, it wasn’t.

Such an attack would be treacherous.

She laughed. Listen to yourself. There’s no such thing as treachery. Only efficiency. That was one of the basic tenets of Imperial Intelligence, and she had lived by those words.

But at a certain point she had decided that Admiral Apwar Trigit was treacherous. He’d chosen to sacrifice a shipload of dedicated servicemen so their vessel would not fall into the hands of the New Republic, and she had engineered his destruction because of that decision. She had taken revenge on him for a concept as simple, and as out of place for an Intelligence officer, as personal honor.

Tonin beeped a warning. The range meter dropped to two kilometers, the distance at which New Republic targeting systems could begin to place shots in an almost accurate fashion. The numbers continued to drop, and Wedge and Face both fired, their red laser blasts, quad-linked beams of pure destruction, lashing out toward Lavisar’s defenders.

Her breath became ragged again as something, a fog that thoughts couldn’t quite penetrate, closed down over her brain. Defend your wingman. Can’t kill Imperial pilots. The price on Wedge Antilles’s head means years of security. Zsinj is the same as Trigit.

She switched her lasers to single fire, fast cycle, which would allow her to fire an almost continuous stream of low-powered blasts, and brought up her targeting computer. Immediately the system’s yellow brackets settled in a jittery fashion around one of the oncoming TIE fighters and turned green, indicating a lock. The cockpit audio system howled in confirmation.

Reflexively, she fired. Her red laser streaked past the oncoming TIE fighter, but she held the stick down and the system cycled, blast after blast emerging. She shook the yoke in her hand, spraying fire around as though using a nozzle to water a patch of grass, and saw one of the beams strike home, charring a hole in the starfighter’s port solar array wing.

It was so close—she tried to keep her spray of fire concentrated on it, and then there was a tremendous bang and her X-wing shook from bow to stern. The module holding the S-foil configuration switch popped out of its housing and dropped before her eyes, swaying there, held to the upper bank of controls by wires.

She swatted it out of the way, tried to look out the viewports, at the diagnostic display, at the sensor display all at the same time. The viewport showed Wedge rolling out up and to port. She gave up on the viewscreens and followed. “Tonin, give me a loud beep if we’re badly hit.”

No beep.

“Good job, Thirteen.” That was Three, she thought. “That’s a confirmed kill.”

“Thanks, Three.” His words hovered outside the shield of stray thoughts that seemed to be insulating her brain.

Behind—the enemy would be coming up behind. She looked back, saw only the top of Tonin’s dome head, and checked the sensors again. Yes, two TIE fighters were coming around fast, trying to take up positions behind her. But they were making a broad loop to do it, perhaps intimidated by the firepower they’d just come through. She could try to cut hard to starboard and might be in position for another head-to-head by the time they got their guns fixed on her—

No. Her job was to follow her wingman. Protect him.

Wedge cut hard to starboard. She followed, her turn not quite as precise. The maneuver was too much for the X-wing’s inertial compensator and the metal box holding the S-foil configuration switch swung on its wires, slamming into the side of her helmet. She ignored it, tried to stay with her leader, and held to his port rear quarter, though space opened up between them. A glance out her own port viewport showed Face there, struggling to maintain formation.

A green laser blast appeared, blindingly bright, between her and Face. Wedge finished his maneuver, firing already at the two oncoming TIE fighters. Lara tried to place her targeting brackets on one of the two, couldn’t manage it—the starfighter was too maneuverable, jittering out of the way. She fired anyway, her spray of single-shot lasers slicing through vacuum near the TIE fighter’s starboard wing.

The TIE pilot jerked away from the bombardment of red fire, drifted to port … straight into Wedge Antilles’s quad-linked blast. The quartet of lasers sliced cleanly through the fighter’s spherical cockpit. The TIE fighter disappeared in a glorious explosion of red, orange, and yellow, and Lara heard clanks and pings as her X-wing sliced through the cloud.

There were also the echoes of a scream. Lara shook her head. She couldn’t have heard the pilot.

Unless he was transmitting. “Tonin, cut my reception of Imperial comm traffic at once.”

DONE.

“Two for Leader, one for Thirteen.” That was Two again. Lara swatted at his intrusive voice as though it were that damned configuration switch. She tried to find the other TIE fighter on her sensors, but the closest enemy was outbound, head toward the cloud of red blips representing the two full squadrons from Lavisar’s surface.

In fact, all the remaining TIE fighters—five of them—were outbound.

“Wraiths, Leader. Form up. Twelve, make your calculations and get us out of here. I make it less than a minute before they overtake us. Give me status reports by number.”

“This is Three. No kills. Minor damage to port topside fuzial engine. I’m shutting it down.”

“Four. Two kills. No damage.”

It was there, battering at her head as insistently as the switch housing swinging into her helmet, a thought that wouldn’t let her go. Zsinj is the same as Trigit. Why had she thought that?

Because it was true. Raptor forces had not risen against the Wraiths. Had this been a Zsinj-controlled planet, Raptors would have been the first forces up—they had to maintain their reputation for brutality and efficiency. So this world was independent and the intercepted Raptor transmission a false lead, as the Wraiths had said.

And since the forces of Lavisar weren’t set up for the Wraiths—else there would have been a lot more of them—this was just what Commander Antilles had said: a plan by Zsinj to have New Republic—

Rebel.

—Rebel forces hurt the planet’s defenses, maybe knock them down. So Zsinj could move in, either as a conqueror or a defending hero. Those two choices were the same: Zsinj in control.

She wanted to admire the plan, especially as it extended to the other worlds Mon Remonda had been assaulting. It was clever, efficient.

But those pilots, who’d just been sacrificed, who’d died to satisfy Zsinj’s sense of efficiency. It was like Admiral Trigit. And it wasn’t—

“Thirteen.”

—honorable. There was no honor in it.

And the last fifteen years of Gara Petothel’s life closed in around Lara Notsil like a coffin. Her parents’ work for Imperial Intelligence. Their arrest and execution for unspecified treason. How Gara had hated them, missed them. How she’d learned, so eagerly, and demonstrated such loyalty, so that nothing like that would ever happen to her.

“Thirteen.”

All her life, she’d known not to believe the Rebels and their simplistically optimistic propaganda. Now she could no longer put her faith in the forces that had taken her, trained her, shaped her. There was nothing for her.

Tonin’s irritable beeping finally caught her attention. LEADER WANTS TO KNOW IF YOU’RE HURT.

“Oh. Uh …” She keyed her comlink. “Sorry, Leader. Thirteen reporting—” She finally scanned her diagnostic board. “Forward shields down to forty-seven percent but climbing. I think I took a hit in that first head-to-head. Some gauges out.” She grabbed the S-foil switch where it hung and switched it. Her S-foils did not close up into cruise configuration. “S-foil actuator seems to be out. And I think I hit my head.”

“Drop your shield, you don’t need it. Don’t worry about your S-foils. Just acknowledge receipt of the new course and prepare to enter it on my mark.”

“Understood, Leader. Um, I’ve received the course and it checks out.”

“Three, I want you to engage hyperdrive five seconds after the rest of the squad launches, in case battle damage has knocked out anyone’s drive.”

“Got it, One.”

“On my mark, three, two, one … Jump.”

They returned to Mon Remonda’s port hangar much as they’d left it, a little more battered, with Piggy’s fuselage scored by a laser graze, with Lara’s S-foils unable to assume cruise position, but otherwise unhurt.

Lara climbed out into a chaotic sea of backslaps and embraces, handshakes and congratulations.

Everyone seemed to move in slow motion. Words were slowed, almost incomprehensible, and sounds were muted. Tyria’s blond ponytail swayed with the sinuous motion of a snake. Piggy’s reserved arm motions, as he described some complicated maneuver or another, seemed to be those of a Gamorrean in low gravity.

Yet the one thing Lara understood was the expressions turned on her. They were the eyes of a group to whom she belonged.

Not since her parents’ loss had she seen that expression.

And the Wraiths and Rogues weren’t saying it, weren’t deliberately expressing the thought, “You are one of us.” No, it was implicit, a backdrop to whatever else they were saying. Good job noticing that backup squad. Nice shot; how’d you manage it with your lasers on single fire? Your first kill silhouette, congratulations and condolences.

One of us.

She worked her way out from the midst of the crowd and walked, still somehow insulated from the words and physical sensations of the world around her, to the pilots’ quarters she now shared with Tyria.

Maybe she could do it. Maybe she could just be Lara Notsil, forever, with Lieutenant Gara Petothel, that poor, unhappy creature, truly among the dead of the Star Destroyer Implacable.

One of us.

She slept, and in her dreams Gara and Lara argued with one another, speaking words she could barely hear and couldn’t understand, exchanging thoughts that would make no sense when she awoke, and she did not know which of the two wore her face.

When the Wraiths returned to Hawk-bat Station, with their new member in tow, they found that the other members of the squadron had not been idle. On his own initiative, Kell Tainer had plotted and led two missions, all because of Runt.

“We determined that they, the people of Halmad, had made a mistake,” the long-faced alien said, pride in his voice. He stood at the head of the cargo module that served as the Wraiths’ conference room; the pilots were packed in around its narrow oval table. “They had installed a new set of sensor stations on the west coast of Hullis’s continent and decommissioned the older sensor stations out in the western islands. But when we examined the specifications of those new sensors, we discovered that their effective range was a couple of hundred kilometers short of the area they were supposed to cover. Meaning that we now possessed a narrow corridor of airspace we could drop into without any real likelihood of detection. After that, with terrain-following flying to make other sensor tracking difficult, we were able to stage raids on ground emplacements.”

“Raid number one,” Kell said, “was on a port warehouse district in the city of Fellon. Not much booty there, I’m afraid. We picked up a large stock of recreational holos being produced by the Imperials, propaganda dramas to make Face blush—”

“That’d take some doing,” Face said. “I’m shameless.”

“True. But also, in taking off, we strafed the marina where the recreational water vessels of the city’s wealthy—and other people, including the wealthy of the city of Hullis and the officers of Victory Base there—were docked. Did a few dozen million credits’ worth of damage to some very pretty vessels.

“In our second mission, we struck at Hullis herself. We put Castin on the ground the day before to do what he could with security systems, and then Phanan and I flew in, blew a hole in the side of a building, and flew out with as much cargo as we could load without sacrificing the flying speed of our TIE fighters.”

“What cargo?” Wedge asked.

“Imperial credit notes, coin, gems. We hit one of the official money-exchange sites used by the Imperial base.”

Wedge gaped. “You robbed a bank.”

“We did. It was fun, too. Getting clear was a little tricky—that close in, it’s impossible to elude their sensors—but we just took off straight for space, suffered their antiaerial-invasion gun barrage, and outflew the TIEs they sent in pursuit. End result, a few dings and pits in Phanan’s starfighter.”

“To match,” Phanan said, “the few dings and pits in its pilot.”

“Tell them what I did,” Castin said.

“Oh, that’s right. In the day or so he had before his extraction, Castin managed to forge us a high-level account on their global information service. We’re now being bounced visual and sensor data from their planetary defense satellite network. It’s not being beamed straight at us, don’t worry—we’ve set up a relay near one of the existing satellite-belt mining colonies. If it’s detected, we can detonate the retransmitter before they’re likely to get it open. Anyway, we’ve picked up signs that they’re constructing a couple of small starfighter bases, possibly as a counter against our ground missions. One of them is near Fellon, the other way out east of Hullis in a region that doesn’t seem to need the extra protection, so now we have to wonder what is out there.” Kell smiled, his expression reflecting a simple pride in the Wraiths’ accomplishments while most of the officers were gone. “Castin has also modified the comm systems in all our TIEs so they distort our voices more effectively—the new computer-controlled distortion actually modifies accents and changes genders, making it even harder for listeners to identify our voices.”

“That’s good work,” Wedge said. “But on this pirate activity, I just wish you all didn’t look as though you’d enjoyed yourselves so much.”

Phanan snorted. “A happy worker is a productive worker.”

Wedge nodded. “But a happy pirate is a career pirate. You do remember that the Hawk-bats are a front, a sham?”

Kell and Phanan exchanged looks suggesting that this was news to them.

“That’s what I thought. Anything else?”

Runt said, “Yes. We have also identified the regular schedule and course of a refueling tanker that leaves Halmad, takes a tour of government mining operations in the asteroid belt, and returns to the city of Hullis. It is now escorted by a couple of TIE fighters, but I think that with the proper surprise we could take them before a distress signal is sent. If we capture the tanker but fly it along its regular course, that gives us one opportunity to drop our entire squadron and perhaps Sungrass as well down on Hullis, should we ever need to mount a larger-scale mission there … or just capture a refueling tanker should we ever need one.”

“Good to know. All right, Wraiths—”

“Hawk-bats,” corrected Kell, absently.

Wedge gave him a stern look. “Wraiths, make sure your pirates’ take is logged to the last credit for your report to Coruscant. Now, with the good work you did while we were gone, you’ve added quite a lot to the sting the government of Halmad has to be feeling.” He began counting items off on his fingers. “We’ve hurt them militarily with the theft of the interceptors and then of the replacement parts. We’ve put civilian pressure on them with that water-vehicle raid. We’ve hurt them economically with the money changers’ strike, and that will also result in more civilian pressure. And we’ve demonstrated that we can enter their airspace and leave at will, no casualties, no apparent effort that they can discern, and that’s the most important thing. They’ve lived at a relative level of peace for too long and don’t know how to cope with a unit like the Wraiths. With any luck, that will put them in the camp of Zsinj and his protection—”

“So Zsinj can come and squash us,” said Face.

Wedge smiled. “If you’re as tough to squash as you are to predict, he’ll be in for an unpleasant surprise.

“All right. Let’s keep the pressure up on them. I want those two starfighter bases eliminated—a clear message to the Imperial forces on Halmad that anything they can construct, the Hawk-bats can knock down. And I think, to demonstrate our superiority and their helplessness, we ought to stage those two eliminations simultaneously. So let’s settle in and do some planning.”

One of the base’s inhabitable cargo modules had been equipped to serve as the squadron’s cafeteria, with an adjoining module serving as the galley. While most of the Wraiths had been away on Mon Remonda, Kell and mechanic Cubber Daine had used laser cutters to open a large portion of the wall facing the Trench, giving it the aspect of a large viewport minus transparisteel, and had improvised additional chairs and tables out there. Now the Wraiths had a dining choice of “inside” or “outside on the patio.” Face had seen Wedge shaking his head over these minute decorative differences, but the squadron commander had never stepped in to regiment the Wraiths on such matters.

Tonight, after the last long planning session before Operation Groundquake—as Tyria had nicknamed the plan to knock down two Imperial bases—Face ate at a table “on the patio.” Usually he shared a table with Phanan, a platform from which the two of them could harangue the other diners, but tonight his wingman was at an inside table with Lara Notsil. Face couldn’t fault Phanan his choice of companions; Lara was attractive, quick-witted, good company. He saw her laugh at one of Phanan’s jokes.

There was a little tension in her body language. She probably still didn’t feel that she fit in with the Wraiths. It was likely that she wouldn’t for a while.

Lara spoke a few words to Phanan, good cheer still evident in her expression, then policed her tray and left. Phanan remained behind.

And Face saw his partner do something uncharacteristic. Phanan slowly settled into an attitude of stillness so profound that it would have been difficult for an observer to tell whether he was alive or dead, had he not been breathing. Other than the slow rise and fall of his chest, nothing moved; his one human eye was closed, and his posture gradually slumped into an attitude of profound resignation, of complete defeat.

Face rose and approached him, stepping over the low lip of the new opening. “Ton?”

Phanan jerked upright, and his expression was suddenly merry. “Face! Just the man. Polish my boots, would you, son? I have a mission tomorrow.”

Face gestured at his own lieutenant’s insignia.

“Oh, that’s right. In spite of my superior intellect, you figured out who to bribe first. My loss.” Phanan rose and quickly cleaned off his tray, stowing it in the rack set aside for that purpose.

“Are you all right?”

Phanan looked at him, evidently confused. “Of course. Oh, the boots thing is a disappointment, of course. Maybe I can get Wedge to clean them.”

Face snorted. “You’re angling to get in some laser targeting practice, aren’t you? As the target.”

“No, I’ve been there. No desire to repeat the experience.” Phanan stretched and yawned. “I’d better hit my bunk. Mission tomorrow.”

“That’s right.”

Phanan breezed past him with a final smile and headed up the Trench toward the flight officers’ quarters. Face let him go, but felt unsettled, as though he’d seen some sort of simulacrum of Phanan walk by, with the real Phanan missing and unaccounted for.

•      •      •

An hour later, after doing a last simulation run against Fellon Base, Face stopped by the quarters Phanan shared with Piggy. His initial rap at the door elicited no answer, so he knocked again.

“Go away. Or, if you’re at lieutenant rank or higher, go away, sir.”

“I need to speak to you, Ton.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Right now.”

“I’m with somebody.”

“I know. Piggy said you’d asked him to bunk out for the evening. This will only take a moment.”

The door into the modified cargo module opened with a hiss. It wasn’t a mechanical hiss; the modules didn’t have hydraulic doors. The noise was a sound of exasperation, and Phanan made it. The cybernetically enhanced pilot wore a loose robe of scarlet silk and an irritated expression. “What?”

Face squeezed past him into the module’s first chamber. These modules were divided into three chambers, the largest for socializing, the next largest containing two bunks, the smallest acting as a refresher. Face saw that the terminal here in the main chamber was alive but with nothing on it. “There’s no one here.”

“Keep your voice down. She’s back in the bunkroom.”

“There’s no one there, either.”

“Are you calling me a liar?” There was no anger in Phanan’s tone, just curiosity.

“You don’t drink when you’re entertaining. And I can smell the booze in the air.”

Phanan shrugged negligently and pulled a bottle from his robe pocket. The label identified it as Halmad Prime, doubtless a diverted part of the shipment the “Hawk-bats” had seized off Barderia. Phanan held it out. “Care for some?”

“No. What’s the matter, Ton?”

Phanan shut the module door and sat—slouched, rather—on the chamber’s inflatable sofa. “I get drunk faster these days.”

“A sign of age?”

“No.” Phanan shook his head. “There’s less of me for the alcohol to pollute. Every year, less meat, more machine. So the alcohol goes to work faster.”

Face pulled the terminal chair around and sat wrongways in it so he could lean forward against its back. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“She wasn’t interested, Face. In me.”

“Lara?”

“Yes, Lara. Well, actually, at various times, Falynn, Tyria, various ladies on Folor, Borleias, and Coruscant, then Shalla, Dia, and most recently Lara.” He tipped the bottle up and took a long pull from it.

Face snorted. “Maybe you need to work on your technique. What sort of invitation did you make her?”

“Ah, that’s just it. I didn’t make any sort of invitation. I just sat with her, and talked with her, and read her eyes. She thought my jokes were funny. She was interested in my stories about the campaign we waged with Admiral Trigit. She liked me, I think she did. But … other than that … nothing. I held no other appeal for her. And that’s the way it’s been for quite some time.”

“Look, Ton, being at war kind of limits all our social lives. I’m sure you’ll find someone—”

“Finish that idiotic gesture of reassurance and I’ll be obliged to put your face through this wall,” Phanan said. His tone was mild, but there was no mistaking the seriousness in his words. He wasn’t even looking at Face, he hadn’t moved or tensed, yet something in his tone made his threat very real. “You don’t understand.”

“Make me understand.”

Phanan looked up at the low ceiling of the cargo module as if seeing through it, as if staring at a starry sky in the hope that it could provide inspiration. “A long time ago, back at the Battle of Endor, the frigate I was working on as a doctor was hit by an Imperial barrage. Blew out whole sections of the hull, sucked crewmen out into hard vacuum. I was hit by a falling beam superheated by laser fire. One minute I’m helping a pilot with a concussion, the next minute that pilot’s been dead for two weeks and I’m just waking up with a mechanical half a face and a mechanical leg.

“Ever since then, no woman has looked at me with any sort of serious interest.”

“It’s not the leg or the face, Ton.”

“I know that, you moronic nerf.” Phanan glared at him, the glowing optic that served him as a left eye making the expression malevolent. “But something died when I was hit in that medical ward, and I think it was my future. I think people, maybe only women, can just look at me and say, ‘There’s no future in him.’ ”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“There’s no mechanical replacement for a future, Face. And every time I take a hit, and they have to cut away another part of me and replace it with machinery because I’m allergic to bacta, every time that happens I seem to be a little further away from the young doctor who had a future. He can’t come back, Face. Not all of him is here anymore.”

“Ton …”

“Don’t give me some line about my not knowing what I’m talking about because I’m drunk and morose. I know I’m drunk and morose. But the truth of what I’m telling you is around me all the time, even when I’m not drunk. Even when I’m enjoying everything about my life. No future, and no one in my future.”

“You have your friends, Ton.”

Phanan nodded. “Yes, I do. And I’m grateful for them. But my friends are my present. And when I try to look from where they are to where my future is, there’s just no one there. No future.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. I wish you didn’t feel this way.”

“Me either.”

“Give me the bottle.”

“I know. Mission tomorrow.” Phanan handed over the bottle, two-thirds of its contents gone.

“If you’re not right for the mission tomorrow morning, I want you to tell me.”

“Yes, Lieutenant.”

Face wanted to say more, but the sudden formality of Phanan’s last reply had somehow propelled him out of the conversation. He just shook his head and left.

10

Tyria entered the bunkroom module she now shared with Lara and waved the datacard she held. “Mail from home.”

Lara gave her an uncertain smile. “Should I leave so you can watch it in private? That’s not a problem.”

“It’s not for me. Most of my family is gone, and what’s left is on Toprawa—and no mail comes off Toprawa.” This was true; the world, where Rebel Alliance forces had staged delivery of information that had been vital to the destruction of the first Death Star, had been punished by the Empire as an act of warning. Its cities had been destroyed, its people reduced to barbarism. “And this is addressed to you. I’d be happy to leave if you want privacy.”

Lara took the card, curious, and slid it into the appropriate slot on her terminal. Her name came up at the top of the screen, and a prompt to enter her password. File information showed that the message was much too large for a mere text transmission, so it was bound to be voice and image. “No, that’s all right. I have no secrets.” She entered her password and brought up the mail message.

A man’s face, good-looking and somewhat roguish, surrounded by black hair cut close and a trim mustache; behind was a plain beige wall, a table with some holos on it, an open viewport showing a landscape of blasted, black ground. “Hello, Lara,” the man said. “I don’t imagine you ever thought you’d hear from me again.”

Lara frowned. Who was this man? Then she recognized his face, a face she’d only seen a couple of times in files she’d hastily memorized some time ago, and she felt her jaw drop. “It’s—it’s—Tavin Notsil. My brother.”

“I thought he was supposed to be—”

“I know you must have thought I was dead,” the recording continued. “Just as I thought you were. It seems that fate has spared us both. I’d made some unusual arrangements with the town constable and was earning an honest living on the Sea of Aldiv under an assumed name when New Oldtown was hit. I came home and everything I knew was gone. But now I find out that you’ve survived. I can’t tell you how happy I am.”

Lara felt Tyria squeeze her and heard her whisper “Congratulations.” But Lara’s mind was racing down pathways far from human contact.

She’d have to reply to this boob. Somehow break off all family contact forever, and without letting him see a holo of her—of Gara Petothel.

Then her attention fell on the holos on the table behind Tavin. They showed family scenes. The real Lara Notsil’s mother and father sharing a swing tied to a tree behind their farmhouse. A much younger Tavin Notsil swimming in the family pond. And, seated atop a repulsor thresher, her expression cheerful, Lara Notsil—

Not the real Lara Notsil. Her, Gara Petothel, in farm clothes, with fine blond hair, wearing a sunburn she’d never suffered in life. She froze the picture, looked at it, willing it and its wrongness away.

The world spun and Lara’s knees went weak. She slumped back in her chair and felt Tyria support her. Heard her murmur, “Whoa, there. Obviously this is a big shock for you. I’ll get Dr. Phanan.”

Lara clung to Tyria’s hand, not letting her leave. “No doctor. I’m all right.” Her words were faint in her own ears, but she knew she didn’t want anyone else seeing her. Not until she had this sorted out.

She’d never been on the world of Aldivy. She’d never been seated on that thresher. Before a few weeks ago, she’d never been Lara Notsil. Or was that a lie? Was she really Lara, and her memories of Gara Petothel some bizarre dream? The walls still seemed to spin as she tried to force her way through the sense of unreality that possessed her. She unfroze the message.

Her brother was now looking at a datapad. “Listen, you’ll probably find this ironic. Do you remember putting in for a transfer to move to Greenton and transmitting an application to Lachany Foods there? I have your original letter here. ‘If I can effect this transfer, would you be interested in employing a technician with my skills and special knowledge? It is my hope that you would.’ ”

Lara shut her eyes and resisted the temptation to cover her ears against the barrage of confusing half memories. She knew those words. She’d written those words. And if those were Lara Notsil’s words, then she was Lara, not Gara.

“Well, Lachany Foods wrote back. They apparently didn’t cross-index the destruction of New Oldtown with the season’s applications before they did that—in other words, they don’t know you’re dead. I mean, that you’re supposed to be dead. Anyway, they’re offering you the job you wanted, at the salary you were hoping for. They’re really interested in what you have to offer them.” Tavin’s expression became earnest. “Listen, Lara, I understand you have some sort of job on Coruscant processing data. And if you’re happy there, that’s fine. But I doubt you are. All those tall buildings—if you want this job, send me the word. I’ll let them know. I can even arrange passage for you back to Aldivy. You just let me know.”

Tavin’s eyes flickered to something offscreen, then back. “It looks like I’m almost out of time, if I’m going to keep this message affordable. Whether you want this job or not, let me hear from you. Good-bye for now.” He half smiled and the picture froze.

Words popped up on the screen, superimposed over his face in white. They were the chronicle of the path the message took to reach her—from Aldivy to her former quarters on Coruscant, then to the main New Republic message authority on Coruscant, then—with the secrecy flag activated—to Tedevium and Mon Remonda. Finally it had come here, though there was no chronicle of that final bounce; the Wraiths’ presence in the Halmad system was still top secret.

Lara just sat and tried to breathe, tried to sort out what was happening to her.

Then it came to her. Those had been her words. But she’d written them on Coruscant in a letter to Warlord Zsinj. She, Gara, had written them, not she, Lara, the false identity.

She felt her breathing relax, as though a belt tied across her rib cage had been suddenly loosened. She knew who she was again.

Why was Tavin Notsil quoting her a letter she’d written to Warlord Zsinj? Obviously, this was an indirect message from Zsinj. Tavin Notsil was in on it. That made sense. He was supposed to be a crook, a confidence man.

She felt wobbly again. That meant Zsinj had penetrated her Lara Notsil identity. It was no longer a haven for her. She felt tears welling up, and for once she could not contain them—her legendary ability to start and stop crying at will abandoned her. She buried her face in her hands and cried.

“It’s all right,” Tyria said. “Even good news can be a big shock. Are you sure you don’t want to see the doctor?”

“No doctor.” What was she going to do? Just days ago, she had abandoned her plan, her desire to serve Zsinj. She had decided to stay here, to belong here. And now Zsinj had denied her the future she’d stumbled upon.

She rose, the motion made difficult by her suddenly shaky legs, and turned an uncertain smile on Tyria. “I think I just need to walk for a while.”

“I understand. Later, if you need to talk—”

“Thank you.”

Outside her habitation module, she turned right on the Trench, heading deeper into the mine shaft that served the Wraiths as home. Deeper tended to mean away from people.

•      •      •

Face, again at his favorite “patio” table, making some final notes on tomorrow’s mission, saw Lara exit her bunk module and walk away. He returned his attention to his work, then looked at her again. There was something odd about her movement …

She was angry, no question of it. But that wasn’t all. All of a sudden, her carriage was appropriate for Coruscant—shorter steps, hunched shoulders, the posture of a woman who lived within the imposing and paranoia-inducing canyons of the Imperial throneworld for many years.

Or, perhaps, Admiral Trigit had taught her to walk this way when she’d been his drugged captive. That made more sense; a man like that might be offended at the long, rangy stride of an Aldivian farm girl and have modifications to her physical mannerisms on the list of things to change when he broke her spirit.

Face sighed. He suspected that the mind of Lara Notsil was a deeper mess than anyone had realized before now. With luck, she’d turn to her fellow Wraiths when she realized she was in trouble. Until that happened, all he could do was watch and be ready.

A little troubled, he returned his attention to his planning.

One “block” from her module—a block being one uninterrupted series of cargo modules—Lara ran into Kell Tainer. The big lieutenant was working out against a combat dummy, a human-shaped object made of materials tough and malleable enough to withstand the fist, foot, elbow, and knee blows Kell was raining upon it. When he saw her watching, he stopped.

“Is that how you get rid of tension?” she asked.

“That’s right.”

“What do you do when you just want to scream?”

He pointed farther down the shaft. “Two blocks down, there’s a powered door to the left. It leads to a cross tunnel. It has lights and gravity until you get to the boundaries marked in yellow, about a hundred meters. Don’t go beyond those boundaries.”

“Thank you.”

He was right. Once the door to that cross tunnel shut behind her, she could feel that she was cut off from the Wraiths, from all contact with people. She was surrounded by the reassuring solidity of stone walls and metal doors.

She screamed, an expulsion of anger and confusion that stripped her throat raw. Her cry echoed down the half-lit corridor and was lost in the distance. She did it again and again, until she had almost no voice left. Almost no bewilderment left. Just tiredness. Then she put her back against the rough stone wall and slid down to sit, her face in her hands.

Her little vacation was over. It was time to think analytically again.

First, Zsinj was about to consume the future that she’d just decided she wanted. What could she do about that?

Second, she’d just had a crisis of identity she should never have suffered. She never should have felt any confusion about who she’d been. Where she’d come from. Much as she wanted to be Lara Notsil, there should never have been any doubt that she’d originally been Gara Petothel. What was that all about?

All right. First problem.

Possible solution: Return to original plan and join Zsinj. She shook her head over that. At Lavisar, she’d decided, once and forever, that Zsinj was unworthy. Not just unworthy of her, unworthy of any aid, of any success. He was dishonorable. She would never join him.

Possible solution: Confess all to her commanding officer. No, that would solve only some of her problems. Wedge Antilles might accept her aid in the continued campaign against Zsinj, but he would never trust her again. No one would. That trust, she’d found, was more addictive than spice was supposed to be. She could not live without experiencing it again and wondered how she’d lived so long without it. And on a more pragmatic note, Lieutenant Myn Donos was a member of Wraith Squadron. Before he’d been a Wraith, he was the commander of Talon Squadron. And during the time when Gara had been a deep-cover operative working for Admiral Trigit, she’d blithely obeyed orders and spliced some false information about the security designation of a specific world into the New Republic database; Talon Squadron, later relying on that information, had been annihilated. All but Donos. If he knew what she’d done, he might kill her.

Possible solution: Put Zsinj off, delay him, perhaps feed him false information, and ride out this campaign against him. Once he was destroyed, he could no longer expose her. That was possible. With delicate handling, that might work. She decided on that approach for the time being.

Now, her emotional crisis of a few minutes ago.

You must become your role.

The voice was male, silky. Its tones caressed. A casual listener might think that the speaker cared about the person he was talking to. Lara knew better; he was simulating affection.

But whose voice was it? She couldn’t remember. She supposed it was one of her teachers when she was training to become an Imperial Intelligence agent. Context made that clear.

Plant your triggers deep in your mind. When they are activated, come back to yourself. Achieve your objectives. And then bury everything beneath your role again.

She couldn’t quite see the face; it was a man silhouetted by lights behind him. Peering into those lights made her eyes water.

Let Gara go. All today, you’ll be Kirney.

That jolted her, brought her eyes open. She’d forgotten about Kirney Slane. Her first role, her practice role. A Coruscant student of economics, daughter of a hotelier who had never existed. Within the mind of Kirney Slane, Lara had walked among the middle society of Coruscant, fluent in the small talk of officers’ spouses. She’d flirted, promoted herself like so many whose goal began and ended with marrying a promising officer.

Lara shook her head to clear the memories. Kirney was distant, Kirney was dead. Once her usefulness as a training tool had ended, she’d been forbidden to assume that name, that manner, that mentality again.

If it has practical application, retain it. If it has only sentimental attraction for you, abandon it. He, her mystery teacher, was not just talking about details of false identities. He meant emotional attachments. Even memories. She was supposed to scrape away everything that did not pertain to her profession, to her current mission.

She missed being Kirney. So carefree.

Before her service with Admiral Trigit under her true name, she’d spent some time as Chyan Mezzine, a communications officer for the New Republic frigate Mother Sea. Lara remembered, almost word for word, the secret communiqués she’d passed on from the frigate to her Imperial controller, then to Admiral Trigit. Yet she couldn’t remember her life as Chyan Mezzine. What had she done? Who had she known? Had she had friends?

There was something very wrong in her head, something her teachers had done to her starting when she was just a child. She wanted that wrongness out. But she had no idea where to begin to look for it.

She belatedly realized she was looking at a pair of booted feet. She looked up into the face of Myn Donos. The lieutenant was in a pilot’s suit and had a rifle case slung over his back.

“Are you all right?” Donos extended a folded handkerchief to her.

She took it and looked at it stupidly.

“For your eyes.”

“Oh. Thank you.” She dabbed away tears she hadn’t remembered crying.

“I heard you had some happy news. But you don’t look happy.” He shrugged. “Not my business. But if you want to talk …”

She did. It was wrong, she knew. Her trainers would never approve. But she had to talk. “I heard from my brother. He was supposed to have been killed when my town was destroyed by Implacable. But he survived.”

Donos set his case down and sat against the wall opposite from Lara. “And that’s not good news?”

“Not really. I … really don’t care for my brother,” she said. “He was a criminal. He should have been in jail when New Oldtown was destroyed, but he’d managed to sneak off under an assumed name. That’s the sort of man he is. So, I suppose I’m glad he’s alive, but if you knew him the way I did, you’d know that his letter to me … well, it dripped with sarcasm and irony that no one but me could have seen. He wants to drag me back into his habits of deceit, into his confidence games. He has no other reason to get in contact with me. He wants something.”

Donos rubbed his chin while he mulled over that. Finally he said, “Could Zsinj have gotten hold of him?”

“What?”

“No, bear with me. We know that Zsinj has a considerable level of interest in Commander Antilles and Wraith Squadron. Let’s say he finds your name on the unit roster and checks into your background, then finds this scofflaw of a brother of yours alive when the man should be dead. Would your brother turn you over to a man like Zsinj for money?”

Lara’s mind whirled. Try as hard as she might to keep her fictitious background separate from her current life, they continued to threaten collision. “In a Coruscant second,” she said.

“So maybe this is just him wanting to graft some credits from you … and maybe he’s angling to lead you into a Zsinj trap. Possible?”

“Possible,” she admitted.

“I think we need to find out. I mean, that’s intruding into your family business … but if Zsinj is taking a run at you through your family, he might do the same with the rest of us. We need to know.”

“You’re right. But I have to do this myself. He wouldn’t trust anyone but me.”

“Not all by yourself, no. What if it’s a trap? As in, the instant you walk into his house, he hits you with a stun rifle and a bunch of Zsinj’s Raptors take you up to Iron Fist for some of his delicate interrogation?”

She answered with a shudder. She was surprised to find that her dread was real. “You’re right.”

“If you like, I’ll put together a mission proposal and run it past Commander Antilles. Just you and a small team going to Aldivy to clear this up.”

“Would you? I’d appreciate that.” The way her head was filling up with whirling emotions and irrelevant remnants of roles and personalities she’d abandoned, she didn’t think she could think clearly enough to plan a shopping trip.

“I’ll do that.” He rose and took up his rifle case.

“What’s that for?”

“Down about two hundred meters, this tunnel takes a turn to the right and opens up into a long, wide gallery, straight as a laser beam, about a kilometer long. I have targets set up at the far end for practice.”

“That’s past the artificial gravity, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “Doing it in zero gravity adds a little to the difficulty, but this is one of the skills Antilles brought me in for. I’m supposed to stay sharp. And it really does focus and clear the mind.”

“Maybe I should take it up. I could stand some focusing and clearing.”

He smiled. “Try getting some rest. We’re going to need you alert and ready.”

“I know. Mission tomorrow.”

He gave her a little wave good-bye and left her alone with her thoughts.

She should never have agreed for him to plan and propose this Aldivy mission. She had to be in charge of it, every part of it, or something would come up to ruin her, expose her.

But she was oddly unworried. It was because she, she …

Trusted Myn Donos.

Trusted him.

Trusted someone.

She shook her head. That was wrong, she couldn’t trust. It went against all mission parameters.

But she did, and once again she found herself crying without entirely understanding why.

Wedge ascended the ladder to the interceptor and peered down into the cockpit to make sure Lieutenant Kettch, Ewok pilot, was not waiting for him once more. But his cockpit was clear. He glanced up and saw Face, lowering himself into the cockpit of his own interceptor, smirking at him, obviously having figured out what he was looking for. Wedge gave him a mock glower and clambered down.

A moment later, he heard Face’s exclamation of “Son of the Sith!” and Lieutenant Kettch came flying up out of the open hatch of Face’s interceptor. Phanan, walking toward his TIE fighter, neatly fielded the stuffed toy and handed him off to Squeaky.

Wedge shook his head. At least morale was high. He began his power up and systems check.

Kell, Runt, Donos, Tyria, Piggy, and Castin were already off in the Narra. Their mission was to conclude at about the same time as that of the other Hawk-bats, but required more time in its initial stages. In some ways it was even more dangerous, and Wedge wondered briefly about the advisability of putting Kell Tainer in charge. But the man had not demonstrated any recurrence of the problem that had plagued him during his first few weeks with Wraith Squadron.

Wedge suspected, though he had never voiced his thought to Janson or any other member of his command, that Kell’s problem had not been cowardice. Kell’s father had died—at Janson’s hands, in fact—when fleeing from a fight in the early days of the Rebel Alliance, but Kell’s own problem with freezing up in the face of adversity had always seemed more like a very strong case of performance anxiety. But he’d gotten past it during the final battle with the Implacable. Wedge and Janson would keep a close, if surreptitious eye on him, but for now all seemed well.

All systems were go, and diagnostics showed the interceptor performing at something like 98 percent overall efficiency. Not bad for a crew of mechanics whose training with Imperial starfighters had begun so recently.

“Hawk-bat Leader to squadron, give me your status.” Face’s voice was now low, growling. Wedge wondered whether Face was performing already, or whether Castin’s modifications to the individual starfighters’ comm systems were already in place.

“Hawk-bat Seven, two in the green, all systems charged, and I’ll have a mint liqueur with a lomin-ale chaser.” Phanan’s voice was a bass rumble, which he couldn’t have managed in person.

“Hawk-bat Ten, all ready.” And Shalla’s voice was distinctly that of a male.

Wedge cleared his throat. “Hawk-bat One, ready to launch.”

Laughter erupted from his comm set, several voices’ worth. Frustratingly, he couldn’t even recognize the voices now. He said, “Is there a problem?”

Face’s growl answered, “No problem, sir. We’re receiving you at full power.” But Wedge could hear poorly restrained laughter in his voice.

As the count continued, Wedge switched his comm unit over to a private frequency, one he shared with his X-wing and his astromech. “Gate, are you receiving?”

His R5 unit responded with a cheerful mechanical tweet.

“On my first mark, record my transmission. On my second mark, cease recording and transmit what you’ve recorded back to me. Mark. ‘We, the Rebel Alliance, do therefore in the name—and by the authority—of the free beings of the galaxy, solemnly publish and declare our intentions.’ Mark.”

His words came back to him a moment later. But they were not in his voice. In fact, they were high-pitched and fuzzy, a type of jabber Wedge well recognized. They were exactly what an Ewok would sound like if trained to speak Basic.

He sighed. “Thank you, Gate. Out.” He switched back to the Hawk-bat Squadron channel and banged his helmeted head on his pilot’s yoke.

At least morale was high.

Escort duty was tedious, but it drew extra pay. That’s how Lieutenant Milzin Veyn, native of the city of Hullis and starfighter pilot, looked at it. And as a husband and father of three, he could always use the extra credits.

Today he and his wingman were guarding the tanker Bastion. Such a warlike name for an inelegant, rusting hulk of a spaceship … Currently, it was in dock at Station 17, one of Halmad’s few remaining asteroid-belt mining colonies, while Veyn’s TIE fighter and his partner’s watched protectively from a distance of about a kilometer.

Veyn’s comm system hummed. “Hey, Lieutenant.”

“Veyn here.”

“Bad news. We have a fuel-pump failure. They’re repairing it, but it’s going to be a couple of hours at least.”

“Maybe you should just disengage and go home.”

“We should … but the captain says we’d just have to come out again tomorrow, and we can repair with parts on hand, so that’s what we’re doing.”

“Wonderful.”

“Listen, we can power sensors back up … and you and your wingmate can come in for some caf. There’s a fresh pot brewing.”

“Ooh. Shouldn’t.” But the thought of spending some of those extra hours in a heated mess with fresh caf instead of drifting in zero gravity was an appealing one.

“Well, what if I said, uhhh, that the captain wanted to consult with you on matters pertaining to the future protection of Bastion.”

“Sounds serious. We’ll be right there.”

Two minutes later, in the colony’s crowded main hangar, Veyn and his wingman clambered out of their cockpits, climbed down the access ladders, and turned to face into the muzzles of blasters.

Two figures wearing TIE-pilot gear—but colored gray instead of traditional Imperial black—held blaster sidearms on them. One appeared to be a tall woman, the other a very corpulent man. A third enemy, a man of slightly better-than-average height, wearing a gray pilot’s suit and a cold-weather mask but lacking the extra equipment of a pilot, covered them with a blaster rifle.

Veyn and his partner raised their hands.

The man with the rifle said, “There’s bad news and good news. The bad news is that we’re the Hawk-bats, and we’re going to take your starfighters and blow up some ground facilities with them. But the good news is that we really do have fresh caf for you in the mess.” He gestured with a flick of the rifle tip toward the main exit. “Let’s go.”

When the rifleman and his captives had gone, Tyria activated her comlink. “Five, the pilots are on their way. We’re going to need Two to get through any security on the TIE fighters.”

“He’s on his way, too.”

“How’s the wiring going?”

“Bastion’s ready to blow. She’s going to make a big mess.”

The Hawk-bats, in tight formation, dropped toward Halmad in the narrow corridor they knew to be unprotected by the planet’s sensor arrays. Their own sensors told them that Bastion was making its own approach to the planet, via a government-approved course, theoretically on the return leg of its regular refueling mission. But they would not be communicating with Bastion, could not get updates on the other team’s progress.

Within minutes, they were cruising at just above sea level and on a course for the port city of Fellon—or, more accurately, for a small, hidden Imperial base just south of the city. It was still before dawn in Fellon and points west, and several of Halmad’s moons shone down upon the Hawk-bats.

At the head of the Hawk-bats’ formation were Face and Phanan. Face, playing the role of Hawk-bat Independent Space Force founder Kargin, had to be in charge of the mission; their broadcasts were certain to be intercepted and recorded, and it would not do for Hawk-bat One to be heard issuing orders to Hawk-bat Leader. Wedge had few worries about Face, but Face’s wingman, Phanan, was not as skillful a flier in either X-wings or TIE fighters.

Behind Face and Phanan were Wedge with his temporary assignment of two wingmen, Lara and Shalla. Lara, low pilot on the rank ladder, had been assigned one of the squadron’s two TIE fighters, a less formidable starfighter than the interceptors, but she seemed to be handling it with uncommon grace and skill. Nor had Wedge any worries about Shalla’s skill with her interceptor. In fact, between her flying skill, her ability to work with the other pilots, and her ease with planning and analysis, he had placed her high on his list of candidates for lieutenant’s rank. She had yet to demonstrate leadership qualities, but Wedge was certain they lay within her.

At the rear of the formation were Janson, the unit’s second-most-experienced pilot, and Dia, who had made two kills during the escape from Lavisar, equaling Wedge’s total. No, Wedge was accompanied by a skilled team. This should be an easy run for the Hawk-bats.

Not that he ever put his trust in the promise of an easy run.

11

“About to enter atmosphere, on final approach for Hullis,” Runt said. He occupied Bastion’s pilot’s seat. He looked uncomfortable in a chair built for a much shorter human. “Five minutes until the break to the east.”

Kell, in the command chair, typed another diagnostics command into the oversized comlink-equipped datapad in his lap. It was the type of unit an infantry squadron used for reliable long-distance communications. “Have you got the new navigational program in place?”

“We do.”

Kell activated the comlink in his glove. “Nine, how’s the shuttle?”

“Ready to lift.”

“Stand by to lift.” Kell patted Runt on the back and rose. “Run the nav program. Then we run.”

“Initiating.”

Tyria and Piggy in the TIE-fighter escorts needed no further orders. Their task was simple: Pace Bastion as the ancient tanker dropped toward Hullis, then diverted east toward the second fighter base the military forces of Halmad were building. Protect the tanker from the starfighters that would inevitably rise against it, at least long enough for Bastion to get within a couple of kilometers of the base. And then be far, far away when Kell activated his comm unit and detonated Bastion and all the fuel remaining within her. At two minutes before detonation, safely away on the shuttle Narra, Kell would communicate with the base, recommending an evacuation. The base’s destruction was their aim, not the needless murder of base personnel.

With the nav program activated, Runt rose and Kell followed suit.

Then the sensor board lit up like a fireworks display. Kell and Runt stared, disbelieving, at the flurry of activity it showed in the west, the enormous signal from the east.

Kell dropped into the communications officer’s chair and activated Bastion’s comm unit. “Five to One, do you read?”

There was no answer, just the ominous hiss of suddenly overloaded airwaves.

“Five to One, we have a problem. Do you read?”

Forest, with occasional rivers and lakes, had replaced waves beneath the Hawk-bats. Wedge was sure, in fact, that he’d felt a treetop scrape the underside of his cockpit a moment ago. All around him, the squadron’s fighters and interceptors bobbed and weaved like fighters in an arena as they adjusted to changes in the terrain below.

The range meter put them at twenty seconds from their target. Ten, five—and then Face and Phanan were firing just as the Imperial base came into Wedge’s view.

It was a landing platform, one long, durable landing deck suitable for shuttles or starfighters, supported by two massive columns containing turbolifts and crew quarters. Beneath the deck was an enclosed crossover walkway providing easy passage from one column to the other, and there should have been nothing other than the support columns to the ground. But with this design, below the crossway, almost out of sight below treetop level, was an enclosed hangar deck as large as the landing deck.

Wedge noted these details without taking out time for analysis. He brought the interceptor’s aiming brackets around his target of preference, the standard landing platform’s tractor beam emitter up on the landing deck, and fired.

Then he was past, following Face’s lead in looping around for another run.

“Good shooting, Hawk-bats.” That was the gravelly voice of Face’s persona.

“Leader, this is Four. We hit shields.”

“Four, what did you say? There were no shields.”

“Not as we were approaching, sir. They came up as we opened fire. The platform has sustained no, repeat no, damage.”

Their arc was nearly complete, and it was obvious that Dia’s report was correct: the landing platform was solidly in place, and the Hawk-bats’ sensors now showed shielding protecting the facility.

Then TIE fighters and interceptors came up out of the trees, easily a score of them, from points all around the Hawk-bats and the landing platform.

More than a score. The second flight of TIEs emerged. Wedge checked the sensor board. Thirty-six unfriendlies, three full squadrons.

Shalla spoke next, her voice subdued even in its distorted form: “We are so dead.”

Bastion shuddered.

Runt looked over the diagnostics board. “Are we hit?”

“No, we’re tractored. By that.” Kell tapped the sensor board and the huge shape on it. “Look at this. We’re gaining altitude.”

Donos’s voice came over the intercom. “What’s happening?”

“They’ve got us. Our mission is scrubbed, and so are we, if we can’t figure out a way to get clear of them. Hold on a second. Runt, fire up the comm system and put all the power you can into our signal.”

“Done.”

“Five to One, do you read? Over.”

His reply was a static hiss.

“Five to Eleven, do you read? Over”

“—leven, read—you. Sig—breaking up.”

“Abort mission. Repeat, abort mission. Over.”

“Neg—ve. Standing—your departure. Over.”

“Do not stand by. This is a direct order. Abort mission. Acknowledge. Over.”

There was no reply.

“We have incoming starfighters from the capital ship,” Runt said.

“Of course we do. Our day wouldn’t be complete without them, would it?”

Tyria’s voice came back, “Ack—ed. Aborting. Over.” On the sensor screen, the blips representing her TIE fighter and Piggy’s veered off on an escape vector.

Kell took a deep breath. He wanted to make one final transmission. I love you. But he couldn’t give the enemy forces any clue, any extra information to help them pry into the Hawk-bats’ identities. He shut down the comm system. As he settled on his next course of action, he felt his body, his spirit, grow heavy.

Donos’s voice came over the intercom again. “What’s the plan, Five?”

“Runt joins you in the shuttle. At a time of my choosing, probably when we’re as close as we’re going to get to that capital ship without being trapped inside, you launch and get a few seconds of acceleration before another tractor beam grabs you. In that time, I set off our explosive charges.”

Runt’s eyes went wide. Kell saw them flicker, a sign that Runt was flipping between personalities, looking for the one with the most pertinent skills to add to the situation.

Donos’s voice came back. “Uh, you need to be aboard the shuttle to do that.”

“Can’t do it, Nine. The transmitter I have and the one in the shuttle won’t be able to cut through their jamming.”

“Then use a timer.”

“Then we can’t count on it being precisely positioned to do the most damage to the capital ship.”

“Use Bastion’s proximity sensors.”

“Bastion’s proximity sensors, at anything under two klicks, are called human eyes, Nine. We’re lucky this crate had refreshers.”

“Wait a second, I think Castin and I can work out something.” Donos paused a moment. “Yes. I can set off the explosives at a distance.”

“Without a comlink?”

“Without a comlink.”

“How?”

“Because I’m special and you’re not. Now, I need you to set Bastion’s comm system to pick up tight-beam transmissions across the electromagnetic spectrum.”

Kell felt the heaviness leave him as he grasped what Donos was planning. “I read you. We’ll be right there.”

“Break by groups.” Face’s voice sounded strained even under distortion. “Fire at will. And may—”

There was the slightest pause. Wedge knew Face had been about to say, May the Force be with you. A bad idea, a giveaway. But Face recovered so quickly Wedge doubted anyone not familiar with him would have recognized the slight lapse. “—we drink from the skulls of our enemies tonight!”

Wedge broke to port, where the ring of enemy TIEs was thinnest. Shalla and Lara smartly followed suit.

Tactics. The enemy was relying on its superior numbers and was confident. Confidence, then, was what the Hawk-bats needed to strafe first.

Of the handful of paired fighters winging in toward them, Wedge picked out the most dangerous-looking duo, two interceptors that moved with more sureness than their fellows. As they came on, visual sensors showed that their solar array wings wore the horizontal red bars of Baron Fel’s 181st Imperial Fighter Group. Wedge resisted the temptation to swear. “Ten, Thirteen, take the target to port.”

He began juking his interceptor around at three kilometers from his target. A small part of a second later, the closing distance crossed below two klicks and the enemy squints opened fire. Green laser beams flickered between Wedge and his wingmen.

His return fire grazed one of the oncoming interceptors, charring a portion of the hull near the upper viewport—and then they were past, with more forest and a more distant set of TIE fighters beyond.

Now the challenge would be to come around, trying to maneuver behind the enemies they’d just gone head-to-head with. But Wedge ignored conventional tactics, rolled to starboard, and dove toward a pair of fighters that were maneuvering to get a shot in on Janson and Dia. His first quad-linked shot was a brilliant one, hulling one fighter, turning it into a glowing cloud of orange and black, and that fighter’s wingmate exploded a second later under cycling paired laser fire from Wedge’s wingman to port. Shalla? He spared a glance. No, it was Lara’s fighter, not Shalla’s interceptor there.

He rolled to starboard again. The interceptors whom they’d traded fire with initially were in pursuit, distant pursuit, but quickly catching up. However, three TIE fighters were ahead and above, beginning a dive toward Wedge’s group.

He brought his interceptor up in a climb so rapid that it slammed him back into his seat. As the oncoming enemies dropped within the field of coverage of his targeting systems, one briefly jittered within his brackets. He fired out of reflex, was rewarded with seeing a TIE’s solar array wing explode under his lasers; that starfighter half rolled and began an uncontrolled descent.

Wedge continued his loop upward, a tight maneuver that kept him crushed to his chair even as he came upside down. In his mind’s eye, that put him and his group at the upper edge of the engagement, with no attacks possible from above for the moment.

Ahead and below, Wedge saw a paired interceptor and fighter the sensors flagged as friendlies; that had to be Face and Phanan. They were turning his way.

“Leader, Seven, this is One. I’m coming at you in a head-to-head. Two on my tail.”

“One, Leader. We have them. You can have our tail as well.” Behind Face and Phanan, two pairs of TIE fighters were jockeying for position, firing shots that strayed for now but must inevitably connect with the Hawk-bats’ sterns.

Wedge, Shalla, and Lara roared toward Face and Phanan. All five Hawk-bats opened fire, a deadly barrage of green lasers, but not at one another—at the fighters and interceptors pursuing each wing. Wedge saw his concentrated fire hit a solar wing pylon and shear it off at its base, sending the fighter spinning down toward the thick forest below. He directed his stream of fire against another TIE as the two lines converged. Then one of that fighter’s mates detonated and Wedge was momentarily blinded as he flew through the cloud of debris and shrapnel. He heard metal pinging from his fighter’s hull and he repressed a wince; a heavy enough piece of shrapnel could take out a shieldless TIE interceptor.

Wes’s voice: “Six up, six down.”

“What?”

“That little head-to-head you pulled. One hundred percent effective. Six up, six down.”

Wedge glanced at his sensor screen. A moment ago, the screen had showed three dozen enemies, seven friendlies. Now it showed twenty-five enemies, seven friendlies. Wedge whistled.

“Leader, Three. I just flipped my sensors over to long-range. I show a capital ship clearing the horizon and heading this way.”

“A cruiser?”

“A Star Destroyer. At least.”

It was a Super Star Destroyer, by name Iron Fist. As Kell and Runt clattered up the boarding ramp and came forward into the cockpit, its image, enhanced by the shuttle’s visual sensors, dominated the forward viewscreen. It was still well above them in orbit, but it seemed terrifyingly close.

“We are so dead,” Kell said.

Castin and Donos sat in the second row of seats, bent over a long weapon—Donos’s laser sniper rifle. “We did not know you had brought that,” Runt said.

Donos snorted. “I take it to parties, dining engagements, and the refresher. It was in the smuggling compartment. Kell, you have the detonation code?”

Kell tapped the datapad in his chest pocket.

“Give it to Castin.”

Runt took the pilot’s seat while Kell transmitted the code.

The image of Iron Fist wavered, its blue and white running lights blurring, as something passed much closer to the shuttle. Runt killed the visual enhancers.

Their shuttle was docked with Bastion, its viewports oriented so its occupants had a view mostly of sky, with only a little of the tanker intruding on the view. And now that sky was full of TIE fighters buzzing back and forth.

Kell forced back his rising surge of panic and counted blips on the sensors. Only six. Moving so fast, they seemed more numerous. This had to be nothing more than a show of dominance, since the enemy vessel had already tractored the tanker and was hauling it up to captivity. “Keep calm,” he said. “They’re not here to shoot.”

“In your opinion,” Donos said.

“It’s all I have to offer.”

Wedge plotted the engagement on the sensors and in his mind’s eye. The engagement zone had spread out through a hemisphere about eight kilometers across. Now his group was at a high altitude in the southern portion. Janson and Dia were about a kilometer below them. None of them was actively engaged with an enemy. The TIE force had contracted a little, the nearest starfighters being about a kilometer to the north and not yet spinning out to engage them. Face and Phanan were in the northern quadrant, dogfighting with a pair of TIE fighters as a pair of interceptors headed toward them.

He checked the position of the sun and then rolled around to begin an approach out of the sun against Face’s and Phanan’s tails. But almost immediately he saw one of the pursuing TIE fighters’ shots strike home, hitting the engines of one of the friendly TIEs. That starfighter rolled in a random fashion, briefly regained controlled flight, then dropped below the line of trees and was lost to sight.

On the sensor board, Hawk-bat Seven, Ton Phanan’s signal, faded to blackness.

•      •      •

“This isn’t going to work,” Castin said. He was watching Iron Fist’s approach. “Our docking port is relative up. We’ll be taking off into their hangar bay.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Kell rose. “Runt, take the pilot’s seat, stand by to power up and launch without checklist.” He charged back down the boarding ramp.

Once he was on the tanker’s small flight deck, he brought up the controls for the ship’s artificial gravity and repulsorlifts. It was a simple matter to scrub the identification of a large mass—Iron Fist—as that of a ship and instead identify it as a planetoid. Then he configured the gravity system to orient the ship so that its bottom descended toward the surface of the planetoid. Now, unless Iron Fist spent an unusual amount of tractor beam power and used a lot of fine control to reorient Bastion, its upper surface would rotate to face the planet below and not the Super Star Destroyer above.

The rotation had already begun by the time he reached Narra again. And Iron Fist was much closer. Kell took the copilot’s seat and strapped himself in. “You ready?” he asked Donos.

The sniper shrugged. “If Castin here is any good, yes. Otherwise, we’re doomed.”

“It’ll work,” Castin said. “My code and patches always work.”

The others turned to give him an arch expression.

Castin gave them the look of someone caught in a lie. “Well, usually.”

Wedge felt ice slash through his gut as the most likely scenario went through his mind. The Hawk-bats would circle around the fallen pilot, trying to determine whether Phanan was dead or alive, and would protect him from the strafing runs of the enemy TIEs until they, too, fell one by one.

He keyed his comlink. “Hawk-bats, this is One. Recommend abort mission. Stormies.” On some worlds, stormies was the panicked cry of bar patrons who’d detected a raid by stormtroopers, and it replaced Omega Signal as the evacuation command when the Wraiths were in their Hawk-bat identities.

He steeled himself against a protest from Face. And Face’s voice came across immediately, but not with the words he expected: “Hawk-bats, Leader. Confirm stormies.”

But Face’s interceptor dropped below the tree line, pursued by two fast-moving TIE fighters.

The half squadron of TIE fighters preceded Bastion into the Super Star Destroyer’s main landing bay. Kell waited until Bastion was brought into line directly below the bay. In a moment, the tanker would begin its ascent into the hands of Zsinj. He brought his comlink up. “Remember,” he said into it, “we’ll have a handful of seconds from the time we launch to the time they get another tractor on us. Nine, that’s all the time you have.”

Donos was now back in the emergency airlock, his pilot’s suit on and sealed against space to give him a bare few moments of protection from the hard vacuum he would be experiencing. A last-minute change put him there instead of in the main compartment, as he’d realized that the phototropic shielding of the shuttle’s viewport, designed to give the vehicle some protection from incoming laser fire, would be even more effective against the lighter beam of Donos’s rifle.

Donos simply said, “Ready.”

“Do it.”

Runt hit the control to release the Narra from its dock with Bastion. He cut in the shuttle’s thrusters at full power, blasting away from the tanker, the shuttle’s thrusters burning and scarring Bastion’s hull in a manner that would invite retaliation from any ship’s master.

Runt immediately put Narra into a climb, toward the surface of Halmad, then continued the loop so that the charred, antiquated black surface of Bastion, and the surrounding gleam of the Super Star Destroyer Iron Fist, came within sight.

There was a little flicker of light between Narra and Bastion.

Nothing happened.

Kell felt his stomach sink. It was too difficult a shot. Donos, as good as he was, was trying to fire a laser beam modified to carry data instead of a lethal intensity of power, and trying to hit Bastion’s communications array from a moving shuttle.

Donos fired again. No effect.

Narra shuddered with the characteristic trembling of a small craft in the grip of a tractor beam. Kell shook his head.

Donos fired again.

A bright orange glow appeared in the viewports and hatch seams of Bastion. Then the tanker vanished, replaced by a globe of yellow and orange destructive force, an expanding cloud that swelled up into the main landing bay, out across the lower surface of Iron Fist, and toward Narra.

Face dropped into the trees, one pursuer back about two hundred meters, the other—the one who’d shot down Phanan—twice that distance away. Here, Face’s superior speed would not help him; it was pure pilot skill and maneuverability that would allow survival in this obstacle-rich environment. The forest’s large trees were well spaced; it was possible to maintain a high rate of speed here, jinking back and forth to arc around obstructions in his path.

His purser fired, a blast that incinerated a tree bole immediately to Face’s starboard. He cursed. He’d hoped that there wouldn’t be any immediate firing opportunities, but his pursuer was already gaining on him.

Suddenly the trees were gone and there was water below him—he’d emerged over a lake. No cover, but it gave him an opportunity. He curved around to starboard, rotating up on his starboard wing, the ferocity of his maneuver crushing him back into his seat. Through his topside viewport, he could see as his first pursuer screamed out of the forest and immediately followed his loop.

Face couldn’t see the second pursuer, but his timing sense said the pilot was mere fractions of a second from emerging from the trees—if he were following his wingman. Face opened up with his lasers.

And the second pursuer emerged right into his stream of laser fire. Face was rewarded with the brief vision of that TIE fighter’s starboard wing evaporating under the blast, its cockpit punctured and detonating.

Ahead was the tree line again. Face rolled level and shot into the trees at a ninety-degree angle to his original course. The other TIE fighter followed.

Face instinctively ducked as a half squad of TIE fighters roared by overhead, a kilometer up, obviously searching for him. They didn’t turn back to pursue him—they must have missed him.

He twitched his pilot’s yoke, resisting the urge to become frantic, as tree after tree appeared in his path. Then there was a brief break as he was over another lake, this one much smaller and covered in huge green leaf-shaded pads that floated atop the water, and beyond he was in trees again.

They were becoming denser. Harder to veer back and forth to find the gaps that would accommodate his starfighter. His pursuer hadn’t been able to fire on him in several seconds—that was good, but sooner or later the increasingly difficult terrain would stop protecting him and would kill him.

Unless—he remembered Shalla’s tactic in her Coruscant simulator runs. And the next time he had to vector to find a safe gap, he chose one so narrow that his stomach tightened up. It was too narrow, too narrow—but he rolled up on his port wing array and shot through, the slightly thinner profile of the TIE interceptor making the maneuver possible. He heard his wings shred through leaves and twigs.

His pursuer tried to stay on his tail, then realized too late that such a tactic was fatal. Face heard the explosion a mere second after he cleared the too-narrow gap.

He slowed and came around. Off in the distance to his right, a section of forest was burning, ignited by his pursuer’s detonation.

All right. Sensors showed that the rest of the Hawk-bats were spacebound, most of the TIE force pursuing them, while the half squad he’d seen mere moments ago were now a couple of kilometers to the west and breaking up to search for him.

He had a window. He could make a break for space.

No, he couldn’t. Not with Phanan still out there. He might not be dead. There had been no explosion when his TIE fighter fell into the forest.

By memory, by luck, Face found the small lake with the leaf pads in it and dropped as swiftly as he dared into the water near shore. Before the lake water was halfway up his forward viewports, his descent was arrested by the lake’s muddy floor.

He goosed the repulsorlifts, driving him forward, and the lake water rose. He continued, shoving his interceptor forward, until the water rose to the height of the top of his front viewport.

He used the emergency power switch to power down, then manually cranked his access hatch open and clambered halfway out.

There was a lot of splashing going on in the lake, and he got half visions of large amphibious things entering the water. Not his problem now.

One of the huge leaf pads was within reach. He leaned over and grabbed its veined surface, then dragged it across the top of his interceptor.

Then he settled back into his cockpit to wait.

Either their sensors would pick him up, or they’d be baffled by the presence of other life-forms, by the shielding effects of the water, by the fact that his interceptor was completely powered down. Either way, he’d know soon.

The expanding cloud of fiery gas enveloped Narra and shook her harder than the tractor beam ever had.

Runt let out an exultant whoop. “We are free.”

“Punch it. Get us out of here,” Kell said. He was jarred as something heavy and metallic slammed into the shuttle’s rear. “Nine, are you all right?”

No answer.

Kell grabbed at the buckle on his harness and started to pull it free, but thought better of it. As much as he wanted to get back and see how Donos was doing, this explosive turbulence would take him off his feet and perhaps pound him to death. He had to wait until they were clear of it. “Nine, acknowledge.”

His comlink crackled. “Nine here. Dogging the hatch closed. I’m a little toasty.”

“Great shot, Nine. Stay where you are until the ride is smooth.”

“Acknowledged.”

They shot out of the explosive cloud like a proton torpedo leaving an X-wing. Behind them, visual sensors showed Iron Fist’s keel enveloped in black-and-orange-glowing debris.

Kell kept his eye on that image even as it got smaller. “Come on, come on, give us a present—break up!”

But the eight-kilometer-long capital ship stayed sturdily in one piece.

“No tractors, no pursuit,” Runt said.

“Let’s hope it stays that way. Castin, plot us an escape vector and hyperspace jump, any direction.”

“Already working on it, Chief.”

12

Face could see the sky brighten through the leaf pad above. As time passed, his cockpit grew warm and humid, and he could hear the distant moan of TIE fighters overhead. He sweated and waited.

Then there was nothing but the sound of wildlife, musical tweets he ascribed to some sort of birdlike creatures, coughing grunts he couldn’t associate with any animal he knew, splashes that seemed consistent with the human-sized amphibians he’d seen earlier.

Blaster in hand, he emerged through his hatch and dogged it closed, all the while keeping the leaf pad in place atop him, and then slid off the dome of his interceptor and into the water. The shore was a few dozen meters away, a challenging swim in his pilot’s suit.

He’d marked the sensor location of Phanan’s crash and compared it with his own landing position. He was certain he could find Phanan’s TIE fighter. He was certain he would cut down anything that tried to keep him from reaching it.

They were a gloomy group, gathered in the conference module at Hawk-bat Base.

No injuries among them, except for something like a sunburn on Donos’s face. Yet they wore the expression of defeated soldiers.

Wedge said, “We’re all concerned about Face and Phanan, and we have to face the possibilities that they didn’t make it. But I want you all to understand this. It’s very important. Today, tactically, was a victory, a tremendous one. We cost them far more than they cost us. We also led them into this situation, and if the Hawk-bat identities remain uncompromised, we can continue with our plan. If we’re going to have any perspective on what this has cost us, we have to remember that.”

Tyria said, “What are we going to do about finding them?”

“We’ll put a team on the ground as soon as it’s feasible. First we have to get as much information as possible. About the movements of our enemies in the region where they went down.” He glanced at Castin Donn. “You were going to get us information from your satellite account.”

Castin nodded. “I couldn’t.”

“Explain.”

“The account had been shut down. When I accessed it, I got nothing but a pointer to two files. One was a brief, anonymous letter saying that the client, that’s me, didn’t have authorization for such a high-level data stream. The other was a big file, full holo, from Warlord Zsinj.”

There were startled noises from the other pilots, but Wedge waved them down. “You’ve viewed the file?”

Castin nodded. “I didn’t know it was Zsinj until I did view it. It’s a letter from him to the Hawk-bats.”

“Put it on.”

Castin leaned forward to tap a command into the controls of the room’s small holoviewer.

Above the table appeared Warlord Zsinj in all his white finery, about a meter high. Castin adjusted the image’s orientation so that it faced directly at Wedge.

“I presume,” said the warlord, “that I’m addressing the so-called General Kargin of the Hawk-bats.” His expression became merry. “As you can see, the rules around Halmad have changed. The planet belongs to my alliance now, and you will not be permitted to stay here and continue causing trouble.

“Now, what you must understand is that a lesser man would be most angry with you. I’m not. To be honest, I’m impressed. The two pincers of your movement annihilated two entire squadrons of my fighters against minimal losses of your own. That’s quite admirable. Oh, certainly, you’ve lost, but my victory was far more costly than it should have been, testimony to your own skill and ferocity.

“So, you now have a choice to make.

“You can stay here and continue to try to prey on Halmad. In between all my other activities, I will eventually hunt you down and kill all of you. My guess is that this will be very costly to me, but it’s what I’ve promised to do. The problem with this choice is that everybody loses, though you lose more.

“You can leave and set up operations in an area of space not yet controlled by Zsinj. This isn’t a costly choice, but nobody gains anything. And I’ll have lost two squadrons with nothing—well, other than alliance with this planet—to show for it.

“Your third option, however, includes potential gain for both of us.

“I’d like to meet you. Attached to this holo is a data stream that includes a hyperspace navigational course. Send a ship with a representative who can speak for you along that course. You will meet a navigational beacon that will direct you further. We will meet, and I will make it worth your while to come to terms with me.

“I will not give you my word that you will not be harmed. Not that I don’t have a word to give; I simply don’t think you would believe it. But this you can trust: Zsinj is a businessman, and it just makes good business sense for us to join forces. Take it under consideration.

“Zsinj out.”

The corpulent warlord’s image faded away.

Wedge leaned back, unaware until then that he’d leaned forward during the warlord’s recitation. “Wraiths,” he said, “it may have cost us dearly … but the Hawk-bat operation has just begun to pay off. We’re going to need a contact team.”

He glanced among the Wraiths present. “I can’t be on the team, nor can Wes. We’re just a little too well known to Imperial forces. Not even a good disguise would necessarily prevent us from being recognized.” He didn’t add that this was especially true with their most proficient artist of disguise, Face, being missing or dead.

“Castin, before the liberation, you were considered a criminal on Coruscant, an insurgent, so information on you is probably in Zsinj’s files.”

The code-slicer nodded. “I tried to wipe out my records wherever I could find them, but they just propagated too fast for me.”

“Kell is a possibility, but you’re pretty distinctive.”

The big man smiled. “I like to think so.”

“Myn, not a chance for you. You’re a casualty of being well known as a decorated member of the Corellian armed forces and then a New Republic squadron commander. Runt, you’re right out, at least until midget Thakwaash number more than one in the ranks of starfighter pilots across the galaxy. Piggy, however—”

The Gamorrean pilot nodded. “I can dress up as a barbarian and simply be appropriate scenery.”

“Correct. Though Zsinj, as a product of the Imperial school of thought, may be unhappy with the presence of a nonhuman in the Hawk-bat party. We’ll have to think that one over. Dia, Shalla, Tyria, Lara, all of you are distinct possibilities. I’ll need a little time to work out the best mix for the greeting party.”

Shalla said, “But it sounds as though it’s a go.”

Wedge nodded. “It is. This is what we’re here for. Such a mission would have to be a volunteer operation, though, so anyone who does not wish to be included, send me a note. Dismissed, everybody.”

Wedge noticed that they filed out with their backs a little straighter, with more energy in their steps, than they’d had when they arrived for the conference. Yes, they’d probably lost friends down on Halmad … but they hadn’t lost their sense of purpose.

Castin Donn was the last in line to leave, but he shut the door before him and turned back to face Wedge. “Sir, I’d like to be part of this operation.”

“Castin, you yourself agreed that you were probably too well known in Imperial records.”

“That’s right, sir. But I want to go in unknown, undetected. I have an idea.”

Wedge gestured for him to sit. “Let’s hear it.”

Castin took a chair again. “I’m familiar with a wide variety of Imperial computer systems.”

“I know.”

“What if I put together a program that induced Iron Fist’s computer to broadcast an occasional signal saying, ‘Here I am, come and get me’?”

“One that Zsinj wouldn’t detect?”

“Correct, sir. This program would piggyback its message to outgoing signals so there would be no extraneous broadcasts for the ship’s crew to detect. Now, given a capital ship’s protocols for scans of its programs, for frequent memory flushes, and so forth, even with maximum stealth characteristics, a program like this couldn’t last too long. Maybe a month, maybe a week or two less or more. But in that time, we could build up a database of the ship’s movements.”

“Like Admiral Trigit tried to do to us with his Morrt Project.”

“Correct. We might even get a break. Find the Iron Fist staying in one place long enough for elements of the fleet to arrive and hit it.”

“What would you need?”

“Well, I already have the programming simulators here. I’d just need a full set of stormtrooper armor for disguise, and a datapad portable terminal with a standard ship’s computer interface. I’d go in Narra’s smuggling compartment—if it can hold Piggy in a pilot’s suit, it can hold me in stormtrooper armor.”

Wedge considered for a long moment. “Castin, I want you to work up this program.”

“Thank you, sir!” Castin saluted and started to rise.

“Wait, now. I’m not going to authorize your mission, not this time.”

“What?” Castin sank back into place, looking as angry as though he’d been slapped.

“Zsinj is no fool. We’re already flying in a crew of pirates he doesn’t know. They are going to be under constant scrutiny. This first encounter is not the time to try such a stunt. Later, when meetings become more routine and security gets lax, that’s when we try your plan.”

“Sir …” Castin’s jaw trembled as he visibly tried to bring himself under control. “Sir, I’m better than any security they can offer. I don’t tell you how to fly—you’re the best at that. Please don’t tell me what sort of security I can and can’t breach.”

“Now you’re being impertinent. Tell me the name of Zsinj’s chief security man.”

“I don’t know that, sir.”

“Then how do you know that you’re better than he is? That he doesn’t have measures in place against the sort of program you’re planning to introduce?”

“Because I’m better than everybody, sir.”

Wedge sighed. “Flight Officer Donn, I’m giving you a direct order. Design your code. But take your time and do a very clean job on it. Because you will not be accompanying this mission to Iron Fist. We will use your program at some later time. Dismissed.”

Castin flushed red and looked as though he wanted to argue the point, but stood, saluted with a military precision that was, for him, obviously an exercise in sarcasm, and retreated.

Phanan’s TIE fighter had apparently hit the ground in a soft glade, bounced like a rock skipping across the surface of a pond, and crashed into a line of young trees. Now it rested, its port solar wing array crumpled, its cockpit canted forward, so its main viewport was half-buried in the dirt, against a trio of trees bent almost to the ground, their roots half up in the air. The twin ion engines at the vehicle’s rear were now encrusted with a foamy substance—probably a fire-extinguishing foam sprayed on by those who had come later.

Now a stormtrooper stood guard on the damaged vehicle, and was engrossed in conversation with two men in the distinctive uniform of Zsinj’s Raptors. Two speeder bikes in Raptor colors hovered beside the starfighter’s intact wing.

Face, a few dozen meters away, in the heavy underbrush characteristic of the light forest of the area, insects crawling across his back and sides, wiped more stinging sweat from his eyes and crawled forward to hear what they were saying.

The stormtrooper’s voice, amplified by the electronic speaker of his helmet, was easiest to make out. “… see here. Spots of blood. He was crawling here, but we didn’t get any units … ground at this site for half an hour, so he wasn’t crawling for stealth; he was hurt. We have men on speeder bikes … now. They say his trail goes a little less than a kilometer and just disappears on stony ground where things get hilly.”

The two Raptors looked at one another. The first, the taller of the two, said, “Is there any sign of repulsorlift dust-up along the trail?”

“Ehh, no. They would have mentioned it. They’re assuming he’s out there hiding in the hills.”

“I don’t think so. They would have found more blood. Even if he’d bandaged himself, he’d be cutting his flesh to pieces on that hard ground—unless he stopped crawling and started walking. Which isn’t likely. Scanning isn’t doing any good?”

“There are a lot of people, humans, in the region. Professional hunters. And some large game they hunt. We’re ushering them out as fast as we come across them, but they’re playing havoc with our scanners.”

The Raptor sighed, testimony to the stormtroopers’ incompetence, and turned back toward the speeder bikes.

The other one said, “We’ll find him. Then we’ll tell your people how it was done.” He followed his partner.

Face crawled forward as fast as he could manage while remaining fairly quiet. The stormtrooper was watching the Raptors, his body language suggesting that perhaps he’d enjoy beating the two men senseless with the stock of his blaster rifle, and did not turn in Face’s direction.

The Raptors mounted their speeder bikes, talking to one another, their low, amused tones and occasional chuckles making it likely that the stormtrooper and his fellows continued to be an object of derision. They fired up the bikes’ thrusters and headed out.

Face stood up from behind a bush in their path. His first blaster shot took the right-hand Raptor in the chest, sending him tumbling from the back of the vehicle. Face traversed left and fired just as the second Raptor came abreast of him. His shot took the man in the side of the head and the dead or injured man passed so close that Face could feel the wash from his repulsors and smell the char from his helmet.

Ahead, the stormtrooper was raising his blaster rifle’s stock to his shoulder. Face threw himself to the ground, once again partially concealed by the bush, and squeezed off three shots. The first two went wide, with the stormtrooper’s return shot charring soil less than a meter in front of Face, but the third blast took his target in the gut, where sections of white armor were connected by flexible black material. The stormtrooper let out a moan and fell forward.

There was an explosion from behind Face. He rolled over and brought his blaster up, but there were no enemies to confront—the second speeder bike had slammed into a broad-based tree and exploded. Fiery fragments rained down upon the tree and surrounding underbrush.

No time to worry about that. Face hurried to Phanan’s TIE fighter, clambered up one broken wing pylon, and peered into the cockpit. No sign of Phanan, as the conversation he’d overheard had suggested, but it would be good to deny Zsinj’s forces any information they might glean from analysis of the craft. He fired several blaster shots into the cockpit, and when the pilot’s seat and control board were fully ablaze, he dropped again to the ground.

The first speeder bike had fetched up against a tree, but had not detonated. Still, the forward outrigger looked bent, even from this distance, and that wasn’t good; it would seriously restrict the vehicle’s speed and maneuvering capabilities.

Face took the stormtrooper’s blaster rifle and hurried toward the bike. En route, he passed the bodies of both Raptors. Both men were dead. He took their blaster pistols, comlinks, and various cards and datacards.

As he’d feared, the outrigger of the surviving speeder bike was twisted out of alignment. A repair job was out of the question with the tools he had on hand. He swore to himself, mounted the vehicle, and set it into motion.

The thing’s thruster engine rattled and coughed, and the bike showed an immediate tendency to pull down and to the right—the new bend to the forward directional vanes made that inevitable. Still, it would be faster than walking. By brute force, he kept in line with the still-distinct trail Phanan had made and set out along that route.

Distantly, he could hear the roar of other speeder bikes. He snapped on his vehicle’s comlink, and that of one of the Raptors. The airwaves were active with communications: “May have some sign of passage here, looks something like crawling. But there’s no blood.” “Ay Dee Seven Four Two, have Ajaf and Matham reported in to you yet?” “Grid Two-Four secure. No large life-forms here except us.” “Too bad we can’t scan for intelligent life-forms, Dofey, that would let you out right away.” “No personal remarks, Private.”

The damaged speeder bike carried Face along Phanan’s trail of crushed underbrush and scored mud. Phanan had managed to crawl a fair distance, Face decided. He traveled a quarter kilometer through this forest, then a half kilometer, and finally reached a narrow, shallow river that must have been the one mentioned by the stormtrooper.

On the other side of the river, Face could see that the forest thinned, and not much farther it graduated to rocky hills that were thick with underbrush but not much for trees. Face shook his head. It didn’t make sense for Phanan to head for terrain like that, where it would be easier to spot him from above—and as he watched, a TIE fighter swooped by over the nearest ridge of hills, flying slowly enough that it had to be on reconnaissance detail. Still, Phanan’s crawling trail emerged on the other side of the bank, more obvious than ever, and headed toward those hills.

Face paused, sensing some of Phanan’s innate perversity at work. The stormtrooper had said the trail disappeared on stony ground, and the searchers hadn’t had any luck finding Phanan. No luck finding an injured pilot who was limited to crawling.

Phanan knew as well as Face did that a downed pilot who found a river would, under most circumstances, be much better off following it downriver. Human settlements tended to be built along rivers. Rivers tended to join other rivers. Rivers usually meant fresh water.

What if—More obvious than ever. What if Phanan had crawled as far as the first batch of terrain that would no longer carry sign of his passage, then had crawled back to the river? It was a sensible strategy. It might throw off his pursuers. It had thrown off his pursuers.

Face turned rightward, the direction the river flowed, and began cruising slowly above its surface.

This was a much better route. Trees along the riverbanks shielded long stretches of the water from view from above. Long grasses beside the water draped the banks, sending leaves into the river itself—did they drink as roots did? Face shook his head; now was not the time to worry about botanical studies of the planet Halmad.

Then there were the river’s larger inhabitants. Far ahead and sometimes far behind, Face saw large splashes and roilings in the water that suggested the human-sized amphibians he had glimpsed before. Perhaps they were keeping their distance because they were easily frightened. That was much more soothing than the possibility that they might be stalking him.

A kilometer downriver, Face felt a blinding flash of pain to the side of his head. He almost fell off the speeder bike. He came upright fast, blaster in hand, aiming at the elegant drapery of grasses to his left.

Grasses—and one pale hand sticking out beyond them, waving.

He brought the speeder bike around, hopped off into the thigh-high water, and shoved his way through.

It was Phanan, sweating, paler than usual, leaning against the bank in the shade of the leaves. His gray TIE-fighter pilot’s suit lacked its breathing gear, helmet, and gloves, and was torn in the front—a tear Face suspected Phanan had inflicted to help cool himself.

“I’m glad to see you,” Phanan said. His voice was weak, very hoarse.

“So glad you decided to brain me with a rock.”

“I can’t shout.”

“Are you hurt?”

Phanan nodded.

“Badly?”

Another nod. “I’m pretty sure I’m bleeding internally. I don’t think I’m going to get much farther.”

“You’re going to get to Hawk-bat Base. Can you ride on the back of the bike?”

Phanan was long in answering. “I think so.”

“Let’s get you up on it. You’ve thrown off pursuit pretty well. I’m going to get us out of their search area before they decide to range out this far.”

Face helped Phanan up on the back of the bike. It wasn’t easy. Halfway up, Phanan let out a bark of pain and curled up into a knot and stayed that way, shuddering, several long moments while Face held him up. Then, finally, Phanan could uncurl enough to take a normal rider’s position on the back of the bike. Face noted that Phanan began sweating heavily as soon as he left the cooling water of the river, and the sweating did not stop.

Face climbed up in the driver’s seat and goosed the thrusters.

The thruster engine let out a more vigorous cough than ever, shuddered once, and died.

“It take it you bought this used,” Phanan said.

Phanan lay on his back on the bike. In his hand he held the bike’s sensor unit, which Face had pulled from its post, leaving it attached only by wires.

The bike’s repulsorlift was fine. So Face, finding a rope in the vehicle’s small cargo compartment, had tied the rope off to the outrigger and was now a couple of meters ahead, dragging the bike by the rope while Phanan rode.

“This is pretty sweet,” Phanan said. “Why don’t you peel me some sunfruit while you’re at it?” There was still a rasp of pain in his voice.

“Sure. You kill it, I’ll peel it. What does pursuit look like?”

“Sensors don’t show any vehicles within our scanning range. I disabled the transmitter on this one’s comlink so they can’t bounce a signal and find us.”

“Good.”

“Face?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks for coming back for me.”

“If you got captured, I’d have to fill out forms.”

“Reasonable. By the way, do you have a plan, or is walking in the river pretty much the extent of it?”

“That’s the biggest part of it, sure,” Face said. “Walking downriver for exercise and to broaden my awareness of the incredible diversity of human culture. But sooner or later we have to reach a community. At that point, I’ll sneak in and kidnap you a doctor.”

“Right,” Phanan said. His eyes were closed. “As though I trusted you to find your own backside without help from a spotter satellite.”

“From there, we can also rig a signal to base. We’ll probably be off this rock by dawn.”

“Right.”

“Maybe I’ll find a congenial female doctor in town and she’ll be taken with you and your little ways.”

“It won’t happen. You know what her first words will be?”

“What?”

“She’ll say, ‘Garik Loran? The Face? Ooh, I’m feeling faint.…’ ”

Face turned around. “Look again.”

Phanan craned his neck to look. “Oh, that’s right, you’re still in your Horrible Burn Victim facial makeup. Maybe I have a chance after all.” He winced and half curled up as another wave of pain hit him.

“Oh, forget this. We’ve got to get you medical help immediately. And that means calling in Zsinj’s forces and surrendering.”

Phanan uncurled again, but rocked back and forth a little, obviously unable to hold still. “Come here.”

Face splashed back to him.

When he was alongside, Phanan grabbed him by the neck of his pilot’s suit. His organic eye blazed almost as much as his mechanical one. “Listen to me, Face. We do not surrender. Your face under the makeup and my prosthetic modifications are going to be too easy to identify. If we surrender, the whole Hawk-bat plan just evaporates, and we have to start all over where Zsinj is concerned. I’m not going to have that.”

“Even at the cost of your own life.”

“That’s right.” Exhausted by his exertions, Phanan lay back on the seat. “Starting over means more time. More time for Zsinj to bombard more colonies, to destroy more ships. Another day may mean some bright young doctor gets it the way I did and ends up what I am.”

“What you are is pretty good.”

Phanan shook his head. “Not as good as some kid with a superior intellect whose only aim is to make people better. I’d rather he be out there than me.” He took a long breath. “If I die—”

“You’re not going to die.”

“Shut up and listen, Face. If I die, you can’t let them find my body. They’d identify me. Do whatever it takes you to get back to the unit, but don’t let them find me.”

“You’re not going to die.”

“Promise me you’ll dispose of me.”

Face shuddered. “I promise. But you’re not going to die.”

“Well, I’ll try to hold you to that promise, too.” His organic eye closed. “There’s no traffic, yet we’re stopped. Why is that?”

Face grinned and splashed back to his towing rope. “Your fault for hiring an incompetent driver.”

The sun went down and Halmad’s myriad moons were brightly illuminated. Behind them was a rich carpet of stars—for all its industry, Halmad had clear skies.

At a bend in the river where the trees were thin, Phanan said, “What’s that?”

Face looked back to see where Phanan was staring, then looked straight up.

Just crossing before one of the moons was a brightly illuminated triangle, tiny in the distance.

“That’ll be Iron Fist, I expect.”

“Ah. Nice to have been able to see her before she was all blown up.”

Two hundred meters farther on, Face heard Phanan gasping for breath. He splashed back to him. He couldn’t go as fast as he wanted. It was getting hard to move; his legs were cold and felt like lead.

Phanan was not knotted in pain, as Face had expected. He was stretched out in the pose he’d found most comfortable, but there was distress in his face. “Sorry,” Phanan said. “A bit of panic.” His voice was fainter than before.

“Panic.”

“I was just imagining what a sad galaxy this would be without my superior intellect and general state of wonderfulness.” Phanan gave a minimal shrug.

“That’s not something you have to worry about.”

“Either way, you’re right.” Phanan held out a hand; there was something in it.

Face took the datapad from him. “What’s this?”

“It’s called a da-ta-pad. New Republic and Imperial children learn about them from the time they’re very young.”

“Funny.”

“Take it back with you. It has some last thoughts on it.”

The coldness in Face’s legs crept up to inhabit the rest of him and he shuddered again. “Not last thoughts, Ton. Don’t be so fatalistic. You’re just punishing yourself.”

Phanan managed a hoarse chuckle. “You would know. That’s your specialty, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I do what I do because I very badly want to hurt the people who hurt me. You do what you do so you can punish a little boy who once made some holodramas for the Empire.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it? Face, just how much do you think you owe the New Republic?”

“Well … some.”

“For your acting. For the fact that it furthered Imperial causes.”

“That’s right.”

“It’s not right. You’re putting a tremendous burden on the little boy you used to be.”

“Well, a debt. It’s as though I incurred this tremendous debt account. Now I’m paying it off bit by bit.”

“The account doesn’t need balancing.” There was scorn in Ton’s voice. “You can’t reduce sapient lives to numbers and exchange them like credits. You can’t measure what a boy did in innocence against what a man has to do for the rest of his life.”

“Now you’re raving.”

“Ah. That’s good to know. Hey, we’re stopped again.”

A bit farther, and Phanan said, in a hoarse whisper Face could barely hear over the whine of the repulsorlift, “It’s up there again.”

“Iron Fist?” Face looked up. The Super Star Destroyer was making another orbit.

It was distant, pristine, like the giant spearhead of some supernatural being from the long-forgotten mythologies of a hundred worlds. It drifted by, not caring about the lives and deaths and victories and tragedies of the humans below. And when it descended, it would bring death. That, Face decided, was Iron Fist. And such a thing had no right to exist.

If it took him forever, he would see it destroyed.

He made sure his sudden revulsion did not make it to his voice. “Not too intimidating from this far away, is it?” he asked.

Phanan didn’t answer.

“I said, not too intimidating from here, is it?”

Phanan still did not respond.

Face stood where he was, unwilling to turn and look, to walk back on his cold-numbed legs to confirm what he feared.

But the speeder bike slowly drifted forward until it was beside him.

Phanan’s chest did not rise or fall. But his organic eye was still open, directed upward, and his expression—for once lacking pain, lacking the shields of sarcasm or manufactured self-appreciation—was that of a child wondering at the glittering beauty of the stars.

Face’s vision blurred as his own eyes filled with the first tears he’d shed since he was a boy.

13

At dawn, Face rose from his makeshift camp. He took one last look at the bundle he was leaving behind—ruined speeder bike, ruined pilot, and the combination of his own datapad and a Raptor comlink he’d laboriously programmed by moonlight, all beneath the thin thermal blanket he’d retrieved from the bike’s cargo—and then headed into the trees.

In spite of the pulsing aches that seemed to have replaced his muscles and bones while he slept, he would be able to travel swiftly. He had good directional sense. He did not have an injured comrade to tow through difficult, slow terrain.

Within an hour, he passed by the gutted hulk of Phanan’s TIE fighter. There were no bodies here. Zsinj’s investigators had come and gone, and had posted no one to guard a valueless, burned-out hull. There were no distant sounds of speeder bikes or TIE fighters. The search had moved or been called off.

When morning was still young, he swam out to where his interceptor lay partially submerged, and took a long and lonely time going through the routine power-up checklist.

But when that was done, he had to act fast. His window of opportunity would be a narrow one.

The murky water behind his interceptor boiled as he cut in his engines; he could see bubbles and foam drift around to his front viewport as his interceptor strained. Then the repulsors overcame the muck that trapped his vehicle. He rose to the water’s surface and then shot into the air.

Up, southwest across a narrow band of forest, a mere few moments until he found the river. Downriver just a few more moments as terrain blurred beneath him.

When he recognized the approximate area of his camp, he sent a signal across his comlink. The distant Raptor comlink responded with the signal he’d programmed into its companion datapad and a moment later he hovered over the glade where he’d spent the night.

There it was, the black thermal blanket atop his friend.

He could not wait. Revulsion for the deed he was about to perform had been his companion last night; he did not have time for it now. He rotated so that his interceptor was pointed straight down, as though it were about to fly into the ground.

Repulsor and thrust emissions kicked leaves and plants into motion, and a moment later whipped the blanket from atop the speeder bike and Ton Phanan.

Phanan’s organic eye was closed—Face had closed it last night. But his mechanical eye was still powered, still staring redly, and Face wondered what it saw.

Then Face fired.

His lasers turned the center of the glade into a burning inferno, charring speeder bike, organic body, and prosthetic parts into a melted crater of ash and bubbling metal. He fired until there was nothing recognizable there, nothing for the investigators of Zsinj or Halmad to identify as Ton Phanan.

Then he turned his bow skyward and fled to space.

At the end of Face’s debriefing, Wedge asked, “You’ve eaten?”

Face nodded. He rubbed his chin where the General Kargin scar makeup had been removed, and seemed surprised to find stubble there. “A little.”

“Good. Listen, Face, I know this isn’t going to help very much, but as far as I can tell from your report and your interceptor’s recordings, you did everything right. You did everything possible to preserve the integrity of this mission and the lives of your fellow pilots. I think highly of what you accomplished down there.”

“But I was unable to bring Phanan back alive.”

Wedge nodded. “I’ve been unable to bring a lot of friends back alive. And I’m not going to pretend that it’s not going to eat at you. It will. It still eats at me. I just want you to understand that it’s not something you alone have gone through. If you need to talk, come to me, or to Wes or to Myn. I don’t think we can make you feel any better … but we can remind you that it’s possible to survive the experience.”

“Yes, sir.” Face looked reflective. “I’d like to try to return that favor, if you’d like me to.”

“How’s that?”

“I knew Ton better than anyone in the unit. I think I should at least help write the letter of notification to his family.”

“Ah. Well, that’s not going to be necessary, Face. We’re both off that particular hook. While you were cleaning up, I went through his records and the datapad you brought back to me. The person we’re supposed to notify in the case of his death is you.”

Face’s eyes went wide. “Me. Why not his family?”

“No living family. He was the only child of a couple who had him comparatively late in life. They both died before he completed his education. No siblings. No family member closer than distant cousins who’ve never met him. You’re also the beneficiary of his will.”

Face didn’t even manage a reply to that statement. He just gaped.

“I have to process some of these documents. Then I’ll get them into your hands. It won’t be for a while. In the meantime, I want you to get some sleep. At least, get some rest.”

“Yes, sir.”

Wedge returned the pilot’s salute and watched him go. He waited a few moments before calling, “Wes.”

Janson stuck his head in the doorway. His normally merry features were now schooled into somber lines. “Yes, Commander.”

“Assign Lara Notsil to Face as his wingman. Also, she’s had the military first-aid course more recently than any of the rest of us, so assign her as squadron medic. Get her whatever instructional holos and equipment she’ll need for the task.

“And ask her to keep an eye on him, to watch out for signs of undue distress or any sort of overreaction to Phanan’s death. But she needs to keep it very surreptitious. We can’t have him feeling that we’re all spying on him.”

“Even though we are.”

“Correct.”

Moments after Janson had gone, there was a rap at the door.

“Come.”

Donos entered and saluted.

Wedge returned the salute and tried to keep from frowning. There was something different about the pilot. The somber expression was the same, the thick mop of black hair over brooding dark eyes was the same—though lacking the air of defeat Donos had worn when he joined Wraith Squadron.

Then Wedge caught it. Donos was in casual dress, mostly black, his jacket still bearing a patch for Talon Squadron, and Corellian Bloodstripes on his pants.

Donos had earned the decorations while serving with distinction as a sniper with the Corellian armed forces. He hadn’t worn them in the first several weeks of his service with Wraith Squadron, demonstrating the lack of self-esteem that followed the destruction of his former squadron.

That injury to his spirit seemed to have healed. A good sign. But Donos still wasn’t the ostentatious sort and wouldn’t have worn a decoration like this, even though it was his right, with his ordinary dress. Wedge gave him a suspicious look and gestured for him to sit. “This obviously isn’t about Face.”

“That’s right, sir. It’s about Lara.”

Donos told him about Lara’s brother, who shouldn’t have survived but did, who shouldn’t have found her again but did. And he described a possible mission to Lara’s homeworld of Aldivy.

Face rose after a long time. Most of it had not been spent sleeping. Nor had he been truly awake; he’d been in a restless state where conscious thought could not take hold, but neither could sleep, for his mind was fully occupied by images of the last two days.

The light on his terminal was blinking, a sign of messages or files received. He brought the terminal up.

A dispatch from the commander. Lara, Wraith Thirteen, was now his wing, and the replacement medic. No surprise there.

A copy of Ton Phanan’s will. Face skipped it.

A message from Phanan. It was dated and timed less than an hour before his death. Face took a deep breath and brought it up.

It was simple text, the only means Phanan had to take notes at the time. It read,

Face:

I’m not going to go into the pathology of this. Suffice to say we’re talking about internal injuries, internal bleeding. Maybe a ruptured kidney; I’m having trouble sorting that one out. Either way, I don’t think I’m going to last too long.

I flatter myself in thinking that you’re going to take it kind of hard. (If I’m wrong, don’t let me know.) While part of me wishes you wouldn’t, another part appreciates it.

I also know that you’re going to punish yourself for this. I wish you wouldn’t. There are two people responsible for me getting injured. I’m one of them, for being not quite the superior flier I needed to be. Some unnamed Zsinj pilot is the other one, and you killed him. (Which I also appreciate, by the way, in case I didn’t tell you.) There’s no room for a third party to blame, so butt out.

I’ve left you some money. A fair amount, actually; I was the only son of wealthy parents, and I didn’t manage to spend it all on good times and prosthetics. By the terms of my will, some of what you receive has to be used for a specific project. If you don’t use it for that, the whole amount goes to an already wealthy actor you’ve mentioned with a certain amount of contempt, and you’ll get to watch him become even richer despite his lack of talent or personal worth. So there.

I really don’t have much time here, and I’m struggling to find some way to sum up what I need to say. I guess it boils down to this:

Thanks for being my friend. I needed one, and you were it.

Ton Phanan

Pilot, Wit, and Superior Intellect

Oh, yes—don’t let my glass prowlers starve. They’re cute little insects. Cuteness should be preserved.

Face waited for some sort of blow to hit him, but he was left only with the dull ache that had been his companion all through the night.

He brought up Phanan’s will and read it as well.

“Some of us will, as you know, be away on missions with varying levels of consequence,” Wedge said. “A couple will remain here at Hawk-bat Base for maintenance and security purposes. The rest—now, contain yourselves—will receive leave.”

He waited through the resulting cheers. They were in the conference-room module, packed in around its table, and the Wraiths’ expressions were a study in contrasts, ranging from glum to suddenly cheerful. Well, partially cheerful. Phanan’s death was still fresh on their minds.

“Mission One is the meeting with Zsinj,” Wedge said. “Face commands, and he has chosen Dia and Kell to accompany him. This is all intelligence gathering, very delicate, which is why the crew is full of deadly killers.” That got a chuckle. Wedge saw Tyria give Kell a little irritable punch in the shoulder—doubtless she was unhappy that he’d be on a very dangerous mission, and doubly unhappy that she wouldn’t be along to get him out of trouble. “This mission will utilize the shuttle Narra.

“Mission Two is Lara’s meeting with her brother. We hope that will turn out to be nothing more than a joyful family reunion, but there’s a chance that this is a probe by Zsinj. Lieutenant Donos will accompany her, and they’ll be in their X-wings.

“Mission Three consists of me traveling by X-wing back to Coruscant to make a routine report and pick up orders. With our complement of X-wings, up to five more of you can accompany me back and get in a little rest and recreation. Lieutenant Janson will remain here in command of the facility—because he got to go back last time and now it’s his turn.”

Janson’s expression turned glum. “Nobody is allowed to have any fun on Coruscant. If I find out that anyone has had any fun, he gets kitchen duty for a month.”

“We all promise to be miserable, Wes.” Wedge noticed one of the pilots’ hand raised. “Yes, Castin.”

“Sir, you remember the special mission I talked to you about? Sneaking a program into Iron Fist’s communications system so that it will broadcast its location occasionally?”

“I remember. I remember saying it was a good plan … but not for the initial contact mission.”

Castin waved as if to brush away the last part of Wedge’s statement. “Sir, I finished the program.”

“You did?” Wedge nodded. “Excellent.”

“I finished it in time for this mission, sir. It still needs an experienced code-slicer to cut it into the system in question—otherwise it’d never get through the system’s defenses—but it operates flawlessly on my Imperial-computer-system simulators.”

“It won’t be for this mission, Castin. But we’ll try to bring back an upgraded simulator from Coruscant to give you that much more of an edge.”

“Dammit, sir, this is the only opportunity we’re certain we’re going to have. We need to take it. You’re being too cautious, and that’s going to cost us.”

The other pilots looked between Castin and Wedge, all cheer draining from their faces.

Wedge took a deep breath, giving himself a brief moment to calm himself. “Flight Officer Donn.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Flight Officer Donn.”

Suddenly uneasy, Castin looked around, then rose and stood at attention. “Sir.”

“Your tactical sense and gut feeling tell you that now is the time to implement your plan. Mine tell me that later will be better. All else being equal, whose do you think I am going to rank higher?”

“Well, yours, sir.” Castin looked very unhappy under this sudden scrutiny.

“Now, think about this. If we do it my way and I’m right, we’ve saved lives. If we do it my way and I’m wrong, we’ll have missed an opportunity—an opportunity we’ll regain if the rest of the mission goes according to plan and the Hawk-bats begin doing work for Zsinj—and I’ll have both learned something and suffered a slight blow to my reputation, both of which I can survive.

“On the other hand, if we do it your way and you’re right, we conceivably speed up the destruction of Zsinj. But if we do it your way and you’re wrong, you get yourself and the whole team captured or killed, which you can’t survive. Do you see the difference?”

“Yes, sir, but—”

“Save that thought. Now, imagine that you’re a New Republic pilot and you feel a need to criticize a superior officer’s performance or thinking. All else being equal, should you do so in private or in a public forum?”

Castin seemed visibly to sag. “In private, sir.”

“I’ll give you some time to think about that. You’ll be remaining on Hawk-bat Station while your fellows return to Coruscant. Now, sit.”

Castin did, flushing red, looking miserable.

Wedge looked among the other pilots. “Anything else? No? Prep for your missions, then. Dismissed.”

Face caught up with Castin out in the Trench. He asked, “What was that all about?”

Castin shook his head, angry, and didn’t slow his pace … though he was just walking up the middle of the stony shaft with no destination evident. “He’s wrong, Face. He’s just wrong.”

“Why?”

“Because, I don’t know, he’s so concerned about preserving our lives that he’ll flinch from a tactic that could end this whole campaign in one stroke.”

“No. Castin, he hasn’t hesitated to risk our lives, or his own, not in the time I’ve been with the Wraiths. But in spite of all the jokes about Corellians not caring about the odds, he does. And he knows more about resources and strategy than we do. So if he says your mission isn’t worth the risk—”

“He’s right and I’m wrong.”

“Probably.”

“All right.”

“I want your promise that you won’t try anything on your own.”

“I promise.” Castin stopped suddenly and looked around. He and Face were now beside the kitchen and mess. “I’m hungry.” He headed in that direction.

“A good, brisk walk will do that to you,” Face said. He did not follow the code-slicer—better not to put him on the defensive.

There were two gray blurs, the X-wings of Lara and Donos, shooting up past the magcon field holding in the atmosphere of the Hawk-bats’ hangar. Face, seated in the cockpit of the shuttle Narra, watched them flash by. They were followed a moment later by a stream of five more snubfighters—Wedge, Runt, Shalla, Tyria, and Piggy, off on their routine mission to Coruscant.

He envied them. It wasn’t just that they’d be getting a little rest and recreation, even just a few hours of it; the prospect of facing Warlord Zsinj was making him more than a little tense. He had no abnormal fear of the man—but ever since this mission had been described to him, he’d harbored the fear that somewhere in the middle of a conversation with the warlord, a vision of Phanan would cross before his eyes and he’d be unable to restrain himself from making an assault on Zsinj. Such an attack might hurt or kill Zsinj, but it was certain to be fatal to Face and his comrades. “Power,” he said.

“Ninety-seven percent, reserves one hundred percent.” That was Dia, seated beside him, in the copilot’s seat. But it wasn’t the Dia he was used to. She was now in the guise of Seku, her Hawk-bats identity, and as dramatically different from her usual appearance as Face was when, as now, he wore his General Kargin scar makeup.

Her normally bare brain tails—or lekku, as they were known to the natives of Ryloth—were now decorated with an intricate pattern of black cuneiform marks, temporary tattoos that, in the Twi’lek language, told stories of the character and misdeeds of her fictitious identity. Instead of the gray TIE-style pilot’s uniforms Face and Kell wore, she was dressed in a vest, trousers, and boots of black hide—lined, she had assured him, for comfort—all decorated with shiny metal replicas of animal teeth and claws, accoutrements she’d persuaded Cubber to lathe out during some of his infrequent off-duty hours. Face found her attractive under normal circumstances; this barbaric persona was even more visually appealing.

“Ninety-seven? Why are we not at full?”

She shrugged. “Cubber said something about the manhandling Narra sustained in Iron Fist’s tractor beams causing some system problems. Nothing he can repair until the commander returns from Coruscant with some replacement parts.”

“Wonderful. What else did he say we can expect to go wrong?”

Kell stuck his head up between the two seats. There was more to his head now; he wore a false mustache, beard, and absurdly long wig of fiery red hair. “Hull seals are a little more questionable. We had to repair some slow leaks when we got back. But she’s in good shape. Assuming we don’t have to take on another Star Destroyer, she’ll do just fine.”

“Good. Remember your signature action.”

Kell’s eyes slitted. With a slow and deliberate motion, he drew the hair hanging down his right shoulder to fall behind his back. As he turned to look at Face, he added an insolent little shake of the head that set his hair to swaying. It was an elaboration Face hadn’t taught him, but it was perfect, making his persona even more obviously a victim of arrogance and self-love.

Dia gave the two of them a hard smile. “He’s loathsome.”

Face said, “That’s the idea. All right, strap in and prep for space. We have an appointment to keep. No, wait a minute: Kell, drag Castin out of the smuggling compartment and send him packing. We can’t have any stowaways.”

Grinning, Kell moved aft, behind the seats, and tapped a complicated rhythm against the starboard bulkhead. A portion of what had looked like seamless wall swung down on hinges and he reached inside. An expression of surprise crossed his face and he ducked down to look. “Hey, no Castin.”

“It’s empty?”

“I didn’t say that.” Kell retrieved something fairly large and furry from the compartment’s interior and waved it at the others. It was the Ewok toy. “Say hello to Lieutenant Kettch.”

Face snorted. “You ever wonder how he gets around? I’m not sure he isn’t alive.”

Kell peered inside the compartment again. “And some generous spirit has loaded this thing up with goodies. A couple of blasters, some preserved food, a couple of bottles of Halmad Prime—”

“Hey, bring that up here.”

Kell replaced Kettch within the compartment and sealed it. “I don’t think so.”

“It’s every general’s right to be uproariously drunk on diplomatic missions.”

Kell dropped into the seat behind Dia and began practicing his signature move. With every repetition it became more obnoxious. “I’m going to keep this up until you shut up about the Prime.”

“Ooh. You win, mutineer. Prepare for space.”

14

Narra emerged from hyperspace at the appointed coordinates.

This was deep space, nothing to see within a half-dozen light-years, but there was something awaiting them—a barrage of comm messages. They flooded the communications waves, repeating variations on the same message, overlapping one another.

“Greetings Hawk-bats this is greetings Hawk-bats Warlord Zsinj not rebroadcast I welcome this is you prepare to receive them simply Warlord Zsinj a new set of I welcome follow them coordinates do not rebroadcast you prepare them simply soon we follow them to receive soon we will be will be a new dining in comfort and set of dining in coming to terms of coordinates do great mutual comfort and profit …” The words continued in that way, a ceaseless stream.

Face shook his head. “That’s a mess. Let’s see if we can lock them down to a single transmission.” His hands moved over the communications console. “All right. We have a small satellite dead ahead. One signal’s stronger than the others. And that gives us …” He punched a button to isolate the signal.

“Greetings, Hawk-bats. This is Warlord Zsinj. I welcome you. Prepare to receive a new set of coordinates. Do not rebroadcast them. Simply follow them. Soon we will be dining in comfort and coming to terms of great mutual profit.” The message began to repeat.

“We’re getting a file on the same band,” Dia said.

“Don’t bring it up,” Kell said. “It might be the kind of program Castin likes to work up. Something that will give them more information about us than we’d like.”

Face nodded. “Good point. It’s not a big file. I’ll transmit it to my datapad and we can reenter the nav data by hand. What do you figure would happen if we did want to retransmit the file?”

Dia said, “One of two things. That satellite will have an extra system. Either it’s a weapons system, designed to destroy us, or it’s a hypercomm system that will warn Zsinj before we get to him.”

Kell dragged his hair back over his shoulder again. “It’ll be whichever system is cheaper.”

“Well, in either case, we won’t be doing that.” Face compared the navigational data on his datapad with that which he’d just typed into Narra’s computer. It matched. He punched the execute button and nodded for Dia to bring the shuttle around to its new course. “All right, stage two.”

The two X-wings dropped out of hyperspace at the outer periphery of the Aldivy system, well beyond the solar-gravity well that would prevent their reentering hyperspace.

Lara immediately brought up her visual sensors and trained them on the planet of Aldivy. The picture that emerged, jittery and blurry, was of a blue-and-white globe with no features she could identify.

She restrained herself from making a sour face. What she knew of Aldivy all came from Imperial surveys and publicly available data. She knew the map of the planet’s surface, but from space, of course, cloud cover kept those easily recognized continental borders from sight.

Her comlink crackled. “I can’t detect any traffic on Imperial channels,” Donos said. “Just some routine stuff on standard planetary and commercial channels. Pretty light, actually.”

“Aldivy isn’t heavily settled,” she said. “A couple of hundred communities. Not enough value there for the Imperials to protect it when they occupied it. At the height of Imperial occupation, we had two TIE fighters and a shuttle protecting us.”

“In addition to your own planetary defense forces, I assume.”

“Um, yes.” She wished he’d quit asking questions. Too much of this and he’d catch her out in a wrong answer. “Our police. Not much defense against assault forces, I’m afraid.”

“Is your home on the day side or night side right now?”

“I’m trying to figure that out.” Shut up. Just shut up. “I can’t tell. I’ll know when we’re closer.”

The main doors to Iron Fist’s false bridge rose with their customary startling speed and General Melvar entered. He stopped short at the sight of the dinner table now occupying the center of the command walkway. Zsinj was seated at the head chair of the bare table, his booted feet up on it. Behind him, at the bow end of the chamber, the holoscreens had been activated and were now a perfect match for the view from the real bridge’s forward viewports; they framed Zsinj, making him the central feature of the galaxy they showed.

Zsinj smiled at him. “What do you think?”

“Perhaps your most ostentatious demonstration yet,” Melvar said as he approached. “Shouldn’t you surround yourself with a nimbus of light to complete the effect?”

“Not a bad idea. Maybe next time. What do you want?”

“Sensors have reported a shuttle’s appearance from the hyperspace course you provided to the Hawk-bats. They’ll be here within minutes.”

Zsinj’s feet hit the walkway surface and he stood. “Assemble the cast. Notify the galley. And get into makeup. This should be entertaining.”

As he watched Iron Fist growing in the forward viewport, Face willed his stomach to quit crawling around. “All right. Here’s your last bit of advice. Remember, we’re just as arrogant as they are but nowhere near as strong. So respond appropriately to bad manners—but not so appropriately that you get us killed.”

Kell mimed entering data on an imaginary datapad. “No get killed,” he said. “I’ll try to remember.”

“I’d like to say leave all the talking to me, but that’s not going to work—we’re here to impress them with our individual skill and readiness. Just keep all your responses in character, and refer any question about our unit strength, tactical readiness, that sort of thing, to me.”

“Understood, General,” Dia said. Her voice was an insinuating purr, far different from the flat, sometimes emotionless tones he was used to from her. He glanced at her, and it was a stranger’s face that looked back at him: Dia’s features with another woman behind them. Her eyes evaluated him with the steady regard of a half-tamed animal watching its owner for some sign of weakness. He looked away quickly, uneasily aware that he didn’t know whether she was simply a natural actress or this was a layer to her that he hadn’t seen before.

To his disappointment, the Iron Fist bridge crew instructed the Hawk-bats to land in a secondary hangar well forward of the main hangar. He would have liked to have seen the damage done to the main hangar by Kell’s tanker bomb, to have seen its state of repair.

Dia brought the shuttle into the designated hangar. Within already were a pair of interceptors, another Lambda-class shuttle, and a larger Raptor transport shuttle—an ugly, boxy troop carrier known to be favored by Zsinj’s forces.

And a reception committee—an officer and a half-dozen stormtroopers. One of the troopers hand-guided Narra to a landing pad marked off by red paint. Dia set the shuttle down expertly.

“Show time,” Face said.

They descended the boarding ramp in proper form, Face first, Dia and Kell to either side of and behind him. Face stopped directly before the officer. Neither that man nor any of the stormtroopers reacted visibly to Face’s scar makeup, the first time he could remember such a lack of response.

The officer before him was not what Face had expected. The man was tall and lean, with features that might have been bland had they not been twisted into such a predatory smile. He seemed to glow with an inner light, and Face suspected that it was a dangerous light. The man liked to win, or to kill, or to inflict pain—Face wasn’t sure which, but he did know that this was a man to watch. The officer also, incongruously, had long and perfectly reflective fingernails; Face suspected they were metal and would not have been surprised to discover that they were very, very sharp.

Face cleared his throat. “I am General Kargin, founder and leader of the Hawk-bat Independent Space Force.” He put on an urbane smile and lowered his voice. “I believe I have an invitation.”

“Indeed you do. General Melvar. I am in charge of the warlord’s assault forces, and I welcome you to Iron Fist.” The general shook Face’s hand. Firm grip, fast shake—he made no effort to conduct a contest of grip strength to demonstrate dominance. “Your associates?”

Face gestured first to Dia, then to Kell. “Captain Seku, my second-in-command. Lieutenant Dissek, my bodyguard.”

“Delighted. Before we continue, though, there is a bit of bureaucratic unpleasantness to accomplish.”

“Oh?”

The general looked regretful. “Zsinj is a man with many enemies. For this reason, many policies surround him, policies that I do not let him overrule, for his own safety. One of them leads me to insist that you turn over all weapons to my men for the duration of your stay.”

Face shrugged. Then he drew his blaster pistol with such speed that the stormtroopers present were caught off guard, their weapons out of line; he could have shot Melvar and one or two others before they would have been able to react. But just as quickly he flipped the blaster in the air and caught it, then handed it, butt first, to the nearest stormtrooper. “I have no fear of treachery here,” Face said. “Alive, I promise additional strength to Zsinj. Killed, I would cost him very dearly.”

Melvar gave him a polite nod and shrug, neither agreeing to nor denying Face’s assertion. Dia and Kell handed over their own blasters in a less dramatic fashion.

“The second part of this unfortunate protocol,” Melvar said, “is that you must be scanned for additional weapons you might have forgotten to hand over, because of your habitual wearing of them almost as clothing rather than weapons. Please.”

Obligingly, Face and the others raised their arms and let a stormtrooper specialist run a handheld scanner around them. Face came up clean, then Dia.

Then it was Kell’s turn. His accoutrements also failed to trigger the weapons scanner, but the stormtrooper behind him obviously thought his arms needed to be a little higher; with the barrel of his blaster rifle, he tapped the underside of one of Kell’s arms to raise it.

Kell stepped back so that the stormtrooper’s barrel protruded beneath his right arm. He clamped his right arm upon it, then twisted, simultaneously yanking the blaster out of the man’s hand and bringing his elbow up under the stormtrooper’s helmet. A slight change to the angle of his attack and the blow would crush the man’s windpipe, but Kell instead brought his elbow up into the man’s chin. Everyone heard the crack of the man’s jaw snapping shut.

The stormtrooper dropped to the floor, his armor clattering.

The other stormtroopers aimed at Kell. With admirable aplomb, Kell slowly reached over to switch off the blaster rifle’s power, then lowered the weapon onto its fallen owner. “Is there a problem?”

General Melvar’s mouth twitched into what looked like an amused smirk. “You appear to be punishing one of my men.”

“Punishing?” Kell looked down at the stormtrooper as if seeing him for the first time. “Oh, I assure you, no punishment was intended. That was simply reflex. If I’d intended to punish him, he’d be begging you to kill him now.”

Face turned back to Melvar. “My apologies.”

The general shook his head. “No need to apologize. The trooper was not instructed to behave this way toward honored guests. I think a little experience with electricity will do him some good.” He gestured for another stormtrooper to attend to the unconscious man, then for Face to fall in step beside him. “How much do you pay for this man Dissek’s services?”

“I’ll never tell,” Face said. “If you want to try to hire him away, you’ll have to offer him a bribe without knowing my own economies.”

Melvar offered a little sigh of vexation.

They landed in a grove of fruit trees less than a kilometer from the charred oval of dirt that now lay where the community of New Oldtown had once stood. It was night, and only the crescent of a single moon afforded Lara and Donos any light.

Together, they approached the area of char from the east, where a rise overlooked the destroyed town. Lara assured Donos that a farmhouse had once stood there; she didn’t tell him that she knew this only from publicly available information taken from the community’s main computer shortly before Admiral Trigit bombarded the town out of existence. At the summit of the rise, they got down on hands and knees to crawl until the ruined area was beneath them.

What had been New Oldtown was as black as cloudy night. What she could see of the terrain suggested that the onetime community and outlying farms were now a series of charred furrows and craters—certainly, the nearest terrain was like that.

In the midst of it all, though, was a house—a prefabricated brick-shaped dwelling of an incongruous blue, cheery lights in the windows. It looked like a cheap dollhouse.

Donos sighted in on it with his sniper rifle, adjusting the range on his sight. He did not speak, but worked with confidence and precision. Lara could tell he’d done this many times in similar circumstances.

“They’ll probably scan for large life-forms when I arrive,” she said. “In case I brought allies. Which I have.”

“We’re nearly a kilometer out,” Donos said. “They might have a scanner that could find me, but probably not. Have you got your comlink to broadcast continuously?”

“No. They’re sure to check for that. I’m going in with it off, and I’m leaving it off.”

He looked at her, one eye visible in the shadow of his face. “That’s not a good idea. If you get in trouble—”

“If I hold up a fist, it means I’m in trouble. Come to the rescue. If I don’t, I have the situation under control.”

He sighed, obviously unhappy. “All right. But call for help the instant you feel the situation spin out of control.”

“If it does.” She hesitated, at a loss for what to say next. His tone suggested that he wasn’t just being professionally methodical—he actually cared about what happened to her. She wasn’t used to that and didn’t know how to respond. No words suggested themselves, so she simply rose and headed down the hill toward the ludicrous blue house.

Castin Donn watched Zsinj’s scanner team go over the interior of Narra. The picture on his handheld screen wasn’t good—a flickery blue and white, limitations imposed by the microminiaturized holocam lens he had set up to observe the shuttle’s cabin—but it did allow him to see which of the cockpit’s control panels they popped open so as to install the machinery they’d brought with them. A tracking device, probably. They brought up the shuttle’s master control program, too, but didn’t spend much time with it—probably just erasing the record of their entry and exit. Not that such a tactic would work; Castin had done considerable work on Narra’s systems, so that now what appeared to be the standard interfaces to all shuttle programs were actually a false layer. Code-slicers could adjust those layers all they wished, but their modifications would be trapped and later presented to the shuttle’s authorized operators for confirmation or deletion.

The scanning team departed and the boarding ramp rose into place. It was time to get moving.

Castin switched off the holocam and gingerly set the screen down beside him. Every move had to be precise and careful. He lay on his back in full stormtrooper armor, the helmet tucked in beside his head, and could still occupy only half of the smuggling compartment. He’d arranged to extend a holocam lead and a breathing tube out through the scanner shielding—turning them off while scanning was actually taking place—but the compartment had no other comfort conditioning, and he’d been sweating in here for hours. He stank like a bantha in mating season.

Tape held the mirror in place beside him. The mirror was a long strip of reflective material set up to adhere to the bottom and top surfaces of the smuggling compartment at a forty-five-degree angle so that anyone looking in would see the compartment’s top surface instead of the back. It was carefully situated so that it covered him but led anyone looking in the compartment to believe that it was empty at the rear.

Now he went through the actions that had gotten him here, but in reverse order. He detached the tape that held the mirrored material to the compartment’s ceiling and lowered it in place beside him. He carefully moved aside the supplies he’d loaded into the compartment, giving him a narrow channel for escape. He flipped the switch that popped the compartment door open, and then wriggled out into Narra’s main compartment—and into comparatively fresh air. He lay there on the floor for a few moments, gulping in air, then retrieved his helmet and other gear from the compartment and sealed it back up.

His plan was under way. He had to get out of the shuttle and hangar without the hangar guards noticing, find his way to a full-function computer coupler, slice his way in through ship security, and upload his program—then get back and wait. It would be tough, but he was a Wraith. He could do it.

And days from now, when Iron Fist was a glowing ball of superheated gas or a prize vessel in the hands of the New Republic, Commander Antilles would be forced to acknowledge that Castin had been right all along.

General Melvar and the Hawk-bats swept into a bridge that was a riot of activity.

A narrow but full-length dinner table, large enough to accommodate twenty people, was set up on the command walkway and more than half-filled with diners. Seated at the head of the table, his back to the viewports now showing the swirl of hyperspace travel, a vast area of brightness in his spotless white grand admiral’s uniform, was Zsinj. His hands were clasped over his expansive belly, his mustachios drooped rakishly, and his expression was one of great contentment.

The officers assembled at his table were engaged in vigorous conversation, but as the Hawk-bats entered the chamber they could hear none of it—it was drowned out by the din from the crew pit below.

There, uniformed bridge officers stood their watches with a startling unconcern for military decorum. Some monitored their screens while leaning back with their feet up on their consoles. Others stood in groups of three or four, eyes on their screens but their attention on their fellows. Several crewmen were huddled close to their screens, absorbed in low-grade TIE-fighter simulators. At one point toward the bow, two stormtroopers were engaged in a vibroblade duel, apparently a friendly one, but their blows still caused deep scores in their white armor.

They were all talking, a jumble of noise that made the chamber sound like a conference hall rather than a ship’s bridge.

General Melvar led the Hawk-bats toward the head of the table and had them sit before offering introduction. “Warlord, allow me to present you General Kargin, Captain Seku, and Lieutenant Dissek, honored representatives of the Hawk-bats. General Kargin, your host, the warlord Zsinj.”

Face offered a seated half bow.

Zsinj finally turned his attention to the new guests and smiled. “Good to meet you at last. Welcome aboard Iron Fist.”

Face said, “A formidable vessel. I trust we did not do her too much damage.”

“Certainly not. Oh, several such explosions would have been most inconvenient, but our capacity for repair is unparalleled.”

Face drew a hand across his brow, an exaggerated demonstration of relief. “Well, that’s cause for us to celebrate. I have no qualms about preying on ground-pounders like the people of Halmad, but—and it costs me no honor to say it—I would avoid earning the prolonged enmity of Zsinj.”

The warlord’s smile became broader. “It was already obvious that you were an intelligent pirate—else you would not have enjoyed the success you did. But before we get to our main subject of conversation for the evening, let us dine.”

“Please.” Face knew he’d kept all tension from his voice and manner, but it was still there, and the meal was one more opportunity for Zsinj to visit some new difficulty upon them—such as poison. If they’d read the man correctly, there would be no such subterfuge here. But they could always have made a mistake in their evaluation.

Lara drew to a stop a dozen steps from the house. She surreptitiously touched the butt of her blaster, reassurance that it was still at hand. “Hail the camp,” she called out, a standard Aldivian greeting from arriving visitors—even when arriving at a vast government building or a rich villa, tradition insisted it be called a camp. “Tavin, are you there?”

The front door slid open and he was there, the human complication from her mail message, dark and good-looking, the sort of man who knew his handsomeness was a tool and used it at every opportunity. He beamed. “Lara.” He approached her, arms up for an embrace.

She put her palm against his chest and kept him at bay. “Nothing like that. I don’t feel that close to you right now.”

His face fell. “I’m sorry. Maybe you will later. Come inside?”

“No. I spend too much time cooped up as it is. I like the breeze out here.”

He shrugged. “Well, let’s have some light.” He returned to his door and switched something just inside it. A floodlight mounted above the door illuminated the charred blackness before his house. “I have someone to introduce you to.”

“I imagine so.”

He beckoned, and a moment later was joined in the doorway by another man. This one was rail lean, dressed in a brown Aldivian farmer’s garments … but the fineness of his blond hair, the fact that there were no calluses on his hands, the autocratic expression on his face, and—not least of all—the blaster on his belt made it clear to Lara that this was no Aldivian farmer.

“Lara, let me introduce you to Captain Rossik. He has been most anxious to speak to you.”

The blond man smiled, an expression that was both beautiful and manifestly insincere, and advanced to shake Lara’s hand. “I have indeed. Lieutenant Petothel, allow me to congratulate you on all you’ve accomplished.”

She took the compliment with a frosty little smile and nod. That was why she had declined to have her comlink broadcast back to Donos; she couldn’t have her fellow Wraith hear her being addressed by a different name. “I’m so happy you were at last able to reach me,” she said.

“Tavin, go fetch us some chairs and drinks.” Rossik returned his attention to Lara. “How long can you stay without eliciting suspicion?”

“A couple of days. I received special leave because of Tavin’s sudden reappearance, but it’s only for a few days.”

“Well, your record demonstrates that you’re a smart one. It shouldn’t take you too long to learn to use the equipment we’re going to give you.”

“Equipment?”

“A special transmitter. It sends very small information packets via the old Imperial HoloNet. Yet it’s only about thirty kilos. Costs more than a TIE interceptor. We can use it to track Mon Remonda and put an end to her.”

“With me aboard.”

“No, certainly not. You’ll plant it, then on your next mission just vanish and come to us. Then, and only then, do we wipe out that ship.”

Lara appeared to think about it, long enough for a surly-looking Tavin to reemerge from the house with chairs for them all. He plopped them down in a semicircle and went back in.

At Rossik’s gesture of invitation, Lara sat. “I’m sorry, that won’t work.”

“Why?”

“Security is very high on Mon Remonda. When we return from any leave, anywhere, we get a thorough search of belongings. And they never let us know where we are. All mission briefings use code names. We are kept completely in the dark.”

Rossik’s eyebrows rose. “I wasn’t aware that the Rebels had adopted such sensible security precautions. All their talk of individual freedoms—”

Lara waved his words away. “A lie. I was never under such close scrutiny on Implacable as I have been on the Rebel ship.”

“Well, is there any way to transmit using Mon Remonda’s communications systems?”

“Yes, that could be done.” I could lead you right to the assembled fleet and watch as Iron Fist is blown out of space. “That’s probably our best approach.”

Rossik’s pocket beeped at him. From it he drew out a datapad. He glanced at its display and his shoulders tightened up. “Nobody react. I’m getting a signal from the life scanner inside the house. There is someone a little less than a kilometer to our east. That would put him on the first hill that way.”

Lara tried to remain nonchalant. “That’s my wingman. He accompanied me here for security’s sake.”

Rossik gave her a cool look. “Funny you didn’t mention it before now.”

“It wasn’t relevant, was it? He stayed behind to service the X-wings while I came to visit my dear brother.”

“Well, the problem is, he’s now close enough that he might have seen me. We can’t have that. The Rebels have holos of me in their records. You two keep talking. I’ll go back into the house, exit the rear way, and circle around to get behind him. I’ll need ten or fifteen minutes if I’m to do it quietly.”

“No,” Lara said.

“What did you say?”

“I said, no. I can’t show up on Aldivy with my wingman and then go back to the Wraiths without him. They’d be curious.” She did little to sacrifice the sarcasm in her voice.

Rossik considered. “Very well. New plan. I go and kill your wingman, and then we take you and your two X-wings back to Iron Fist. Right now.”

15

Face was actually enjoying his main course, some sort of fowl in a sunfruit marinade, and idly hoping it wasn’t poisoned, when Zsinj asked a question he wasn’t prepared for. “Am I mad, General Kargin, or do you have an Ewok pilot in your unit?”

Face froze. He swallowed and hastily cleared his throat. “What leads you to that conclusion, sir?”

“Intercepted transmissions. Analysis of the vocal characteristics of your pilot, Hawk-bat One, suggests that he was probably, though not definitely, an Ewok. But I don’t understand how that could be possible.”

Face shrugged and ran through a mental list of a dozen different possible responses. “Well, he is an Ewok. Mostly an Ewok. Lieutenant Kettch. My most ferocious pilot, actually. He can’t really reach the controls, but a somewhat crooked prosthetics expert on Tatooine built him a set of hand-and-leg extensions he can wear, so his height has not limited him in the least.”

“Obviously. But I thought Ewoks were far too primitive to handle complex machinery or astronautics theory and practice. Too primitive even to learn an adequate vocabulary in Basic.”

“They are. But Kettch was … modified. We don’t know where or why it happened. He was taken from the sanctuary moon of Endor as a cub, reared in a laboratory somewhere, and fed chemicals that apparently increased his ability to learn. He’s a genius, especially with mathematics.” That was, in fact, the true background of Piggy, and Face was suddenly very glad to have it on hand as a resource.

Zsinj and Melvar exchanged a glance and Face suddenly felt his heart race. There was something in their expressions, as brief as that glance was, that told Face this subject was of vital interest to them. What did it mean?

“Anyway,” Face continued, “he has a very nasty disposition. I wouldn’t care to bring him to you even if you’d asked about him in your earlier communication. He bites strangers. I’d hate to have him tear away a mouthful of Zsinj and for the rest of us to be spaced for his bad manners.”

Once again jovial, Zsinj turned his smile on Face. “Very amusing. Still, I hope to see him fly sometime. Perhaps even a practice run against our best pilot.”

Face looked around. “Is he here?”

“Baron Fel? No, he’s on duty.” The warlord shrugged. “Not the most congenial of dinner guests in any case.”

“So he bites, too?”

Zsinj laughed.

Castin waited until the hallway was momentarily clear. He moved up to the closed turbolift and quickly popped open its control panel. Beneath was the usual collection of wiring and computer boards. Deftly, he stripped the insulation from two wires and twisted them together.

The turbolift doors slid open, revealing an echoing shaft beyond. Castin untwisted the wires, slapped the control panel shut, and stepped out to grab the maintenance access rungs inside. He swung his feet clear of the opening just in time; the doors slid shut again just as rapidly.

Now he had to find a level where he could have some privacy—and access to a computer interlock.

Down or up? He could see the terminus of the shaft above him, some considerable distance, but not below him. That meant there was more to explore below. He climbed down.

Moments later, he gripped the rungs as though his life depended on it while a fast-moving turbolift sailed past. The wind of its passage shook him and knocked his feet from the rail they rested on. Swearing to himself, he pulled himself back up and continued downward.

If only these Imperial twits had seen fit to label the interiors of the turbolift doors. Level 15: HANGARS, ARMORY, CAFETERIA—that would have been nice.

Still, there were clues he could interpret. The pattern of wear on the turbolift’s machinery against the walls of the lift shaft, for example. There were telltale marks where the lifts came to rest, marks where the metal of the shaft had been worn away, showing which levels were the most heavily accessed. He’d have to avoid them.

Six levels down, he found a turbolift door where the shaft showed almost no wear. A good sign. He opened the maintenance panel leading to the control box … and nearly dropped off his rung in surprise.

This control box was not standard. In it was a sealed security module, an indication that whatever was beyond the door was very important to somebody.

He leaned away and held tight as another turbolift shot past, this time rising from below, then returned to the problem at hand. This was probably too dangerous a level to enter for his task. On the other hand, he was curious. He broke out his pouchful of tools.

The sealed security module was sophisticated, but he’d grown up slicing Imperial hardware and software, so after a few minutes it yielded to his experience and opened. Within were the standard turbolift door controls, plus a variety of security measures—sensors to register whenever the doors were opened or closed, to note whenever a turbolift was called from this level or directed here, and to send all that data to the ship’s main computer. He disconnected the sensors. He couldn’t disconnect the computer relay; it also handled the permissions for people to enter and leave the level, and if he disconnected it and someone with proper authorization tried to enter or leave, his modifications would be detected immediately.

He could open the door from here without effort, but once the door was closed, he wouldn’t be able to leave again without that authorization. It was time for some improvisation. He patched a small comm-enabled datapad into the circuit, programming it to do two things: monitor his comlink frequency and issue the command to open this door when he broadcast a specific signal. That should do the trick.

He put away his tools and brought out his blaster rifle. Then he tripped the switch to open the door.

It slid open silently, unlike most turbolift doors, revealing a darkened passageway beyond. There was no one in sight. He hopped from his rung perch to the passageway floor and swept it around in a covering arc, but there was still no one to see.

It wasn’t a passageway, precisely. It was a gallery, a long hall in which one wall was made up of large viewports. The chambers beyond the viewports were well lit. He liked that; it would be next to impossible for people within them to see him. He reached back, tripped the switch again, and then yanked his arm out of the way so the door wouldn’t close on it.

There was a computer interlock here, just beside the turbolift door, but that would not be safe. He advanced along the gallery with the precise pace of an Imperial stormtrooper, looking for another.

The chambers beyond the large viewports came into view as he passed them. The first was large. Against the far wall were large cages or small cells, stacked three high, made of glass or transparisteel, each occupied by a single creature. Castin saw a number of Gamorreans, a large dark arthropod whose cell was festooned with some sort of organic webbing, and an Ewok. In one oversized cell mostly filled with water was a dianoga, a tentacular scavenger with a single eye-stalk; it watched him as he passed. There was one human male outside the cages, seated at a desk with a large, elaborate computer terminal on it, his feet up on the desk as he idly tapped away at a personal datapad; he looked as though he were playing a game. He took no note of Castin.

Up ahead, despite the dimness of the passageway, Castin could make out a darkened desk and computer terminal in the left corner. He couldn’t tell whether this passageway ended there or turned to the right. That terminal was what he needed, assuming he could power it up without alerting anyone.

He passed by the next section of viewports. These displayed a smaller chamber, an operating theater. There was an operation in progress, a team of four human males, gloved and masked, working on a large, white-furred creature with two large eyes and two small. Castin recognized it as a Talz, then took a closer look.

The Talz had some sort of drip tubes implanted in its head; fluids moved slowly from the bottles set up beside the operating table. The creature was strapped in place … and it was awake. As Castin watched, it opened its mouth and roared, the noise not penetrating the viewports. Its clawed hands opened and closed as it strained against its bonds and its four eyes glared redly at the doctors.

These were not roars of pain, Castin decided, but of rage. An unsettling image. The Talz were supposed to be peaceful creatures.

A few steps more, and the operating theater was behind him. He seated himself at the darkened terminal and brought out his tool kit again.

“Return to Iron Fist? I don’t think so.” Lara shook her head. “I’ll be far more valuable to Zsinj on Mon Remonda.”

“Not necessarily,” Rossik said. “We’d be getting a couple of X-wings—which you’d be able to fly for us in covert missions—and your analyses of the missions you’ve flown so far and of the thought processes of the Wraiths and Rogues. These could be as valuable as getting an accurate fix on Mon Remonda’s position.”

“I’d still prefer to return to the Wraiths.”

“Well, it’s not going to happen that way. Now, assuming that he’s looking at us, keep your wingman distracted with some animated conversation with the most unanimated Tavin while I get into position.”

Gloom settled over Lara as she realized what she had to do … as she realized that she was about to take prisoners who knew her secret, that she had to reveal that secret to Wedge Antilles. “I don’t think so. Put your hands in the air. You’re now in the custody of the New Republic.”

From underneath his tunic, Tavin brought out a small blaster and aimed it at her. Rossik glanced at Tavin, his expression openly derisive, and merely placed his own hand on the butt of his own blaster. “You don’t appear to be in a position to make such demands, Petothel. Your partner is a kilometer away and may not even be watching. I know you haven’t been broadcasting; my scanner would have told me.”

Lara looked at the blaster in Tavin’s hand and raised her arms, a gesture that was half surrender, half insolent stretch. “I’ll give you two just one chance. Throw down your weapons now.”

Rossik said, “Keep her covered and take her blaster. I’m doing what I told you—leaving through the rear of the house and circling around behind her partner. Just keep her here and quiet until then.”

“Easily done,” Tavin said.

“You should have surrendered,” Lara said. She closed her hands into fists.

A brilliant lance of light from the hill took Tavin right in the stomach. The sudden explosion of superheated tissues threw the man down and back; his blaster dropped to the charred ground.

Rossik turned toward the source of the laser fire and took a step forward. Lara drew her blaster. Rossik was in the air, throwing himself to the ground, when Lara’s blast took him in the side. He hit the ground and lay there unmoving.

Lara rose and kept the two men covered as Donos ran down from his sniper position. She didn’t need to; it was clear to her that both men were dead. She tried to simulate rattled nerves and was surprised to discover that she had them for real. Part of her reaction, she knew, was the sudden relief that her secret was once again safe for the time being.

“Are you all right?” Donos asked.

Lara nodded. “They wanted—” Her voice broke and once again it was a genuine reaction. “They wanted me to go back to Iron Fist with them. They weren’t going to leave me an option where I could feed them false information. I was just going to disappear.” She shuddered. “I couldn’t do that.”

Donos prodded Rossik with a foot. The body rolled halfway over, displaying staring, vacant eyes. He reached down to take the man’s blaster away. “Why did your brother draw on you?”

“I said no. I said I wouldn’t go back with this man, Rossik. Apparently my brother wasn’t going to get paid unless I went back with Rossik. If he wasn’t going to be paid, he was going to kill me.”

“Not exactly a loving brother.” Donos looked over Tavin’s body and took his weapon, too. Then he looked back over his shoulder at Lara. “I’m sorry. That was a callous thing to say.”

“That’s all right. The Tavin I loved just stopped existing when I was a little girl; he turned into this. I miss him … but you didn’t kill him.”

“We can’t be sure there’s not more to Rossik’s team. Let’s grab their papers, give the house a quick look, and then head back for the X-wings. I want to get off this world as soon as possible.”

Castin had to keep a certain amount of attention on the hallway behind him as he continued to hammer away at Iron Fist’s computer security from the terminal. So far, none of the scientists or technicians from the rooms beyond the viewports had stepped out into the hall, but he couldn’t count on his luck lasting forever.

And the computer security here was good. Someone nearly as skilled as he had set up the multilayered defense that so far kept him from sliding his program into place in the communications system. And while Castin was certain that he was superior to this unknown code-slicer, that individual had had weeks, months, or years to perfect his code; Castin was trying to bypass it in a matter of minutes. Even with his superior skills and the tools he’d brought, it wasn’t going well.

So he was upset. Barely able to concentrate on what he was doing.

No, that didn’t make sense. Tough systems were a challenge to him, not an aggravation, and sharpened his concentration rather than diminishing it. So why was he upset? He leaned back, away from the screen with its unhelpful rejections of all his most reasonable requests, to think about it.

Even his stomach was upset, and that, finally, pointed him to the source of his emotion. It was what he’d seen moments ago. The creatures in the cages. The Talz on the operating table, a peaceful being maddened by chemicals until it was full of rage.

It was ridiculous. He didn’t care about such things. They weren’t human, they weren’t particularly important, and if the scientists decided to work on them, that was fine.

But the sick feeling persisted.

That Talz’s life was over. Even if it miraculously escaped its captivity, it would be forever changed by what had happened to it. Could it return home to its world, its family, knowing how it had been violated, knowing what it had been made to feel and do, and still go back to the way of life it had known before? Castin didn’t think so.

He swore to himself. He didn’t have time for this. And he didn’t need to concern himself with the fate of a grab bag of nonhumans Zsinj decided to perform tests on.

But the images persisted, crowding out the techniques and procedures he needed to use for his current mission, filling him with an unwanted emotion.

Sympathy.

Sympathy for those hairy, smelly, and most unhuman beings crowding those cells he’d seen. They were a concentration of tragedy.

Caught up as he was in these thoughts, Castin still heard the hiss of the turbolift door far behind him. He powered down the terminal, grabbed up his datapad and helmet, and scuttled around the corner to the right before peering back the way he’d come.

A half squadron of stormtroopers, dimly visible in the passageway’s gloom, advanced toward him. Their steps were unhurried. Halfway toward him along the passageway, the leader rapped smartly against the nearest transparisteel. Having apparently gained the attention of someone beyond it, he tapped the side of his head, an obvious signal for someone inside to get to a comlink to receive his transmission.

Damn it. They had to be looking for him. What had he done wrong? He was certain he’d covered his tracks when powering up the corner terminal.

No, wait. When he’d first popped the cover on the control box inside the turbolift shaft and discovered the heavy-duty security there—he hadn’t known about that level of security until he’d opened the box in the first place. If there was a sensor on the box itself, a sensible precaution for a set of controls leading into a very secure area, he would have set it off without ever realizing it.

He drew away from the corner. Behind him was another viewport, this one into an office area, currently unoccupied. Beside it was an armored door with a standard set of controls beside it. He tapped the “open” button and the little screen on the control pad read ENTER AUTHORIZATION CODE.

At the stormtroopers’ rate of approach, they’d be on him before he could break through that security and get into the office.

What was it to be—bluff or fight? There was no way a bluff would work; it would only serve to keep him in one place while the rest of the stormtroopers approached. He readied his blaster rifle.

The lead stormtrooper came around the corner and froze momentarily. “What’s your—”

Castin fired. His shot took the stormtrooper in the gut and threw him back against the far wall.

Castin didn’t wait for the next trooper to appear. He fired again, this time into the viewport, shattering it inward, and leaped, following the broken transparisteel into the office beyond.

He landed and spun, aiming back through the broken viewport. Two more stormtroopers rounded the corner, bringing their long arms to bear on the spot where he’d stood a moment before. He fired again twice, his first shot taking the nearer stormtrooper in the chest. The other trooper dove for the deck, out of sight below the rim of the viewport, and Castin’s second shot missed him.

A shrill Klaxon alarm sounded and the lights in the office began flickering in time to it.

There was another door out of the office, leading in the general direction of the turbolift, and its control panel was responsive. It opened into what appeared to be a scrub room, all sinks and lockers and decontam chambers, with no viewport out into the passageway.

The next door opened just as readily—into the operating theater. The medical technicians there had ceased their ministrations to the Talz and were watching the activity on the other side of the picture viewport—the last of the stormtroopers passed by, heading toward the scene of the action Castin had just left.

A blaster bolt went over Castin’s shoulder and hit one of the technicians in the back of the head. Castin saw the man, his head now a black mass of char, topple forward as slowly as if sinking into heavy oil, saw the other technicians as they turned toward him in similar slow motion.

He spun, firing before he could even see his target. A stormtrooper stood in the open doorway between office and scrub room, a perfect target, and Castin’s unaimed blast took him in the knee. The man toppled with a shriek.

Castin slapped the near control panel and the door slid shut. He turned back to the technicians; they already had their hands up. One couldn’t take his eyes from the smoking mass that had once been the head of his colleague.

It would take just one blast to blow out the near viewport. He could leap through and get back to the turbolift before the three stormtroopers still mobile were likely to catch up to him. That was it, then. But as he traversed to aim at the viewport, he saw the Talz looking at him. Its four eyes seemed to be holes leading to a world of pure pain.

He hesitated, then pulled his vibroblade from a belt pouch. He cut through the Talz’s ankle restraints, then went to work on its wrist straps.

“Don’t!” That was one of the technicians, his eyes wide. “That’s not a Talz anymore, it’s a killer—”

“Right.” Castin finished with the last strap, then backed away.

The technician who’d spoken bolted, got to the doorway, slapped the control. The door opened … and the technician caught a blaster bolt just beneath his gut. He folded over, still alive, and began screaming.

The Talz rolled up off the table, tubes still gruesomely inserted into its skull. It glared with malevolence at Castin, then turned toward the remaining technicians and advanced on them. The rolling carrier holding the bottle of drip chemicals tipped over and was dragged along. The Talz spotted something through the door, probably the stormtrooper who’d last fired, and paused, obviously trying to decide what foe to attack first.

Castin fired at the viewport, blowing it out, and leaped through the hole he’d made. There was nothing between him and the turbolift door. He dropped his vibroblade and dragged out his datapad as he ran.

Then there was pain, an agony so intense he couldn’t even tell where it began, and he was falling, slamming down onto the passageway floor.

Pain bent him as though he were a puppet in the hands of a malevolent child. He could see, and even barely understand, the spot on the back of his left thigh where a blaster bolt had cut through the stormtrooper armor and the flesh beneath. He could see the stormtrooper who’d shot him; the man was advancing at a walk, his rifle ready for another shot.

And then there was the turbolift door, too far away for a man reduced to crawling.

They had him. They had him, and they had his datapad, which contained everything Zsinj would need to know about him and his mission here.

Hands twitching from the pain, he held his datapad out before the barrel of his blaster rifle and squeezed the trigger.

“Now,” Zsinj said over the iced pastry that was their dessert course, “to the matter which has led to our meeting.”

Face sat back, assuming a false expression of contentment. “Please.”

“I am about to embark on a mission. It will be a large-scale military engagement.”

“You’re going to attack your Rebel enemies?”

“That’s correct. I anticipate starfighter and capital ship response and need all the starfighter support I can get—especially considering my recent squadron losses.” He made a growl of that last statement. “But if you’re as effective against my enemies as you have been against me, I will have lost effectively no strength.” An aide appeared over his shoulder and whispered to him. His expression did not change, but he rose. “I must attend to business for a few moments. Melvar, please continue this briefing.” He took a few steps away with the aide.

Melvar smiled, an expression that suggested he’d be happiest if pulling the wings off insects. “It’s an orbital refueling and trade station. In its warehouses is a considerable quantity of material we need—critical supplies. We also need some time to load that material into our cargo vessels—not a lot of time, but enough time for the planetary defenses below to begin sending up squads of starfighters from the surface … and to bring in more squadrons from capital ships arrayed around the planet.”

Face whistled. “You’re after valuable cargo. What is it?”

Melvar shook his head. “That’s a secret … until you’re at the mission site.”

“What we need to know,” Zsinj said, returning to his seat, “is how many starfighters you can bring to bear in support of this mission.”

“Six,” Face said. He noted that Zsinj’s merry demeanor now seemed forced.

“Only six?”

“We fight like twenty.”

“You fight like thirty. And we’ll pay you like thirty.”

“Meaning …”

“Your commission is four hundred thousand Imperial credits, deliverable immediately upon completion of the mission.”

Face tried to keep from displaying the surprise he felt. That was a fortune, enough to purchase two X-wings plus replacement supplies. “And if your mission fails, no payment at all?”

“No, you get the entire amount regardless—assuming you don’t let me die in the engagement.”

“I’m still impressed. If I didn’t know my unit’s skills, I would suspect you were overpaying us.”

Zsinj dropped his false smile. “I am overpaying. I predict that some of yours, and some of mine, will die in this engagement. I intend to pay enough that all our pilots go into battle eager to succeed, happy to risk their lives—and comforted that if they die, their widows and children will be amply compensated.”

Face considered it. “I’d be happy to earn still more. I have more Hawk-bats than I do starfighters. Many with technical proficiency. Many with other skills.”

“Intrusion skills?”

Face smiled. “I was right. You’re going to position a team before your fleet arrives.”

Zsinj shrugged. “We obviously think alike. Yes, of course.”

“I have intrusion experts. Some with experience with both Imperial and New Republic systems.”

“And also,” Melvar interrupted, “you have him.” He extended one silvery nail toward Kell.

“And his teacher,” Face said.

Melvar looked surprised. “His … teacher?”

Kell brushed his hair back, his signature gesture, and looked miffed.

“His teacher. Deadliest unarmed combatant I ever met. A woman, deceptively sweet of appearance, which makes it easy to insert her in most environments. Not his equal as a pilot … but I once saw her kill a Wookiee. Unarmed.”

Zsinj and Melvar exchanged glances. Zsinj said, “Surely you’re exaggerating.”

“He’s not,” Kell said, his first words since they sat. “A Wookiee’s incredibly strong by human standards, but no faster … and has just as many vulnerabilities. Pressure points. Joints. You can’t wrestle with one—that’s automatic death. And its longer reach means you constantly have to drop in and out of its range. But it can be done.

“Qatya, that’s my teacher, started with a shot to the spine that compressed its spinal cord and apparently damaged a couple of its vertebrae, all of which partially paralyzed it … especially its legs. The next time it swung at her, she trapped its hand at a position to give her advantageous leverage, then twisted it to break its wrist. She broke two of its fingers then, too, just for fun. You know how women are. Then—”

“Dissek, please.” Face made his voice admonishing, but inwardly was pleased by Kell’s improvisation—it was just the sort of gruesome detail he would not have felt knowledgeable enough to provide. “Do forgive him. Combat is his only love.”

“Quite all right,” Zsinj said. “You will provide me with dossiers on the Hawk-bats who have technical skills so I can evaluate possible roles for them?”

“I will. Just give me a way to send them to you.”

“Melvar will give you a set of HoloNet times and frequencies before you leave.”

“And as much data as you can give us on this mission so we can run our own simulations?”

Melvar produced a datapad from a pocket and slid it over to him.

“Would you be averse to a small commission now?” the warlord asked.

“Not at all.”

Zsinj stared back toward the security foyer, the route by which the Hawk-bats had entered the command center. Two stormtroopers there were advancing, dragging a third stormtrooper backward between them. The third man was limp in their arms and had no helmet on; his hair was golden blond.

“I must be sure of your ruthlessness,” Zsinj said. “I know you are capable of killing in fair combat, but I want men—oh, yes, and women—who can kill under less adverse circumstances. So, if you’d please shoot this man for me?”

The stormtroopers dumped their human cargo by the foot of the table.

The man they had carried was Castin Donn. His eyes were closed. There was a blaster burn mark on his right leg. His chest rose and fell in regular rhythm.

Face swallowed the bile that tried to crawl up his throat and hoped that he had not gone as pale as he felt. Castin, you idiot. You’ve killed us all.

Kell glanced down at Castin and then at Face, admirably keeping his features emotionless. His look was a question—Jump Zsinj now? Or wait? Dia kept her gaze on Castin’s face, her own expression oddly enrapt.

“Not much of a target,” Face said, stalling. There had to be something he could do without revealing their hand, some way to preserve all their lives without managing to jettison their entire mission.

Nothing came to mind.

“True,” Zsinj said. “Would you shoot him, please?”

“Oh, I should imagine,” Face said, but did not move. “It seems rather a costly test for you, though—having us shoot one of your own stormtroopers.”

“Not one of mine,” said Zsinj. “An intruder.”

“You’re not going to question him?”

Zsinj shook his head. “I’m not interested in what he has to say. Would you shoot him, please?”

Face clamped down on the panic rising within him. The ship’s officers at the table were watching him with increasing interest. And no plan was coming to mind. “Of course,” Face said. “How much?”

Zsinj looked surprised. “What?”

“How much to shoot him? How much are you paying?”

“General Kargin, you surprise me. You’re already here, and the cost of a single pistol blast is negligible—especially as we are providing the blaster.” He nodded toward one of the officers, who produced a blaster pistol. “You can’t do this as a demonstration of goodwill?”

“Intelligent life is the most precious commodity in the galaxy,” Face said, making his voice pompous. “Consequently, I never take it without adequate financial reward.”

Dia stood, her sudden motion startling everyone at the table. She smiled at the warlord, a heart-melting expression, and said in her husky Seku voice, “The general is just looking out for the well-being of his officers and troops, Warlord. He can’t abandon his policies; they’re written up in the Articles of the Hawk-bats. But I can do this for you as a private commission. The blaster, please?” She held out her hand.

Face felt a sudden surge of elation. She had a plan. He saw Kell bring his legs up under him. The big man would probably go after Zsinj. That left General Melvar for Face, with Dia to hold the others at bay with the blaster. Assuming they gave her a functional one.

Melvar nodded; his officer handed Dia the blaster pistol. She checked the charge, moved over beside Castin—

And shot him in the throat.

A chatty junior officer, apparently cheered by the murder of the intruder, led the Hawk-bats back to their shuttle.

Once the security foyer doors closed behind them, Zsinj rose. He clapped his hands, and all the talk in the room ceased. “You’ve done very well,” the warlord said. “Thank you for a fine performance.”

The men saluted and began filing out of the ersatz crew pit. Zsinj sat. “How is—what’s his name? Yorlin?”

Melvar’s features relaxed and became bland and non-threatening once more. “That man Dissek hit him hard enough to give him a concussion and damage some teeth.”

“Well, he’s to be commended for following orders even at the cost of considerable pain. Give him a commendation, and when he gets out of the medical ward, give him a three-day leave.” He nodded at the body of the intruder; smoke still rose from what was left of its neck. “Hand that over to our technicians. I want to know who he was, where he came from, where he’s been living, and how he got aboard Iron Fist—since he appears not to have been one of the Hawk-bats after all.”

“Done. What did the intruder cost us?”

“Initial reports indicate that he shot two stormtroopers and two technicians, then our best Talz specimen killed another two technicians and another stormtrooper, and finally the remaining troopers shot the Talz. Costly.” Zsinj fixed Melvar with a serious stare. “Have we lost an Ewok test subject?”

“Not from Iron Fist. But it could be that one of the planet-bound laboratories has lost one—and covered up the loss.”

“I’m going to have to execute someone for that, Melvar. Find out who lost him, then kill that idiot.”

“Yes, sir.”

•      •      •

Face made it clear, by gesture and private code, that he wanted the others to remain silent even as they accelerated away from Iron Fist. Only when they had entered hyperspace on their first leg out did he speak. “Report.”

“He was already dead.” The words burst from her like water finally breaching an old dam. “He was gone, Face.” Pain tugged at her words, made them waver. There was bleakness in what he could see of her face.

“He was breathing.”

“No, he wasn’t. It was some sort of trick. Some sort of mechanical pump, I don’t know.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “He was completely limp when they brought him in. Not unconscious limp. Dead limp. There was blaster charring on his armor’s pelvic plate that should have continued up into his chestplate but didn’t, so they had to have put a new chestplate on him—to replace the one that was burned through when he was killed. And the guards carrying him, their posture said they were hauling cargo, not a prisoner who might wake up someday.” She closed her eyes and bowed her head. “Body language is something I know a lot about, Face. He was dead.”

“Accepted.” Face sighed and leaned back. “Dammit. If only he’d followed orders. Will you be all right?”

“I’ll be—I’ll be—” Her voice choked off. She gulped a couple of times and then just stared.

“Dia?”

She shrieked as if stabbed and was suddenly a whirlwind of motion, lashing out in all directions. Her random blows landed on Kell, on the command console, on the windscreen, on the shuttle wall beside her.

Kell leaned between her and the controls, fending off her blows. “Face, get her off me before she bumps the wrong things and sends us down a blind hyperspace path.”

Face leaned forward, grabbing at Dia, received a blow to his chin from a brain tail for his trouble. “Dia! Power down!”

But her shrieks and blows redoubled, joined now by what looked like painful spasms. Face reached around the copilot’s seat and got both hands on her, then bodily hauled her over the chair and into his lap. He took another pair of random blows before getting his arms around her waist, pinning her to him.

She let out one last, keening moan and collapsed. Tears ran unchecked down her cheeks and Face found himself frozen, staring at them, evidence of emotions he had never believed she possessed. “Dia?”

Her voice was a moan. “She’s dead.”

“She? She who?”

“Dia. Diap’assik. She is dead.”

He put heat and anger into his words. “No, you are not.”

“Yes! She would not have done that. She would not have shot him. She would have died first. She is dead, Face.”

He heard a snap, heard metal slide on leather, and was prepared when her hand came up with her blaster and its barrel came in line with her chin. He released Dia with his left hand and got his thumb under the trigger, preventing her from squeezing it.

She shrieked again, a haunted noise compounded of agony and bottomless guilt. “Face, let me!”

He wrenched the blaster from her hand, held it over Kell’s shoulder until he took it, and pinned her again. “No.”

“Then kill me.”

“No.”

“Yes. I will not live this way.”

“You have to. We need you.”

She surrendered then to silent tears and racking sobs. He held her to him and finally had a moment to think.

Dia, who in simulator combats cut down the enemy with a cold-bloodedness that sometimes shook the other squadron members—where had she gone? Who was this doppelgänger, torn by grief, in his arms? She had to be a Dia who lived under her shield of ruthlessness, some remnant of the Dia who had been stolen as a child slave off Ryloth a dozen years before. A Dia who could know terrible guilt—self-destructive guilt.

As gently as he could, he said, “Dia, thank you.”

She didn’t respond.

He repeated his words, and finally she drew back and looked up at him, incomprehension and pain on her face. “What?”

“Thank you.”

She shook her head. “For shooting—for shooting—”

“No. For my life. If you hadn’t done what you did, I would be dead. I would have failed to convince Zsinj, and he would have killed us. I prefer to be alive, Dia. Thank you.”

He finally could see comprehension flickering around in her eyes.

Kell turned and caught her attention. “Dia. Me, too. Thank you. Without you, I’d be dead. Or in Zsinj’s tender care, worse than dead. Face and I owe our lives to you.”

She stared at him in confusion for a long moment, then collapsed again into Face’s arms. “No,” she said, and repeated it again and again as her tears flowed unchecked.

Finally she slept.

Face let Kell handle the routine tasks of getting them back to the Halmad system. They’d have to rendezvous with Cubber and—and whoever was assigned in Castin’s place—in the asteroid belt, in order to do a complete sweep of the shuttle for tracking equipment, then head on in to Hawk-bat Base.

He had just that much time to compose his report, a report in which he had to explain just why it was that two subordinates had died in his immediate vicinity in just a few days.

16

Wedge listened to Face’s report, asking for clarifications here and there, letting the man—who, despite his skill as an actor, could not quite conceal the fact that he was stricken with guilt over Castin’s death—pour out the entire story of the meeting with Zsinj. It was a report Face had practiced; he’d given it to Janson on the day he’d returned to Hawk-bat Base, and had to repeat it to Wedge now that the rest-and-recreation unit had returned from Coruscant. Yet in spite of the extra practice, Face’s emotions were still raw and on the surface, concealed not at all by his proficiency with acting.

When it was done, Face said, “I take full responsibility for Castin’s death, sir.”

Wedge gave him a look of surprise. “You take full responsibility.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So Castin Donn played no part in his own death. None of the blame falls on him.”

“Well—”

“I knew even better than you of his history of insubordination, of rebellion. And I’m the commanding officer of this unit. Yet I bear no responsibility? It somehow is all yours?”

“Well—”

“Face, what do you think you could have done to prevent his death?”

“I could have ordered the smuggling compartment searched, rather than just looked into.”

“Why would you have, when looking into it showed that he wasn’t there?”

“I could have accounted for his whereabouts before we took off.”

“But you did. You accounted for his whereabouts as they pertained to your mission. He wasn’t with you, so far as you could tell, so the rest of the information about his whereabouts was irrelevant. He was just one step ahead of you, ahead of all of us. Did you know he’d rigged the duty roster so he wouldn’t be on duty until after your return, that he’d set up a dummy and mechanism on his bunk to make it look and sound as though he were there sleeping?”

“Not at the time, sir. Lieutenant Janson told me about that.”

“Castin Donn wasn’t your responsibility. And though his death was very unfortunate, and took place in association with your mission, it’s not your fault. Now, you tell me who is your responsibility.”

“Well, me, sir. And Kell and Dia.”

“What have you done about them?”

“I’ve asked the other Wraiths and support crews, and especially her roommate, Shalla, to keep an eye on Dia. She doesn’t seem suicidal anymore, but she seems … different. Like a shelled animal that’s suddenly had the shell ripped away. Injured and frightened and a lot more vulnerable.”

Wedge nodded. “Your measures seem appropriate. And Kell?”

“I don’t understand. What do I need to watch out for with Kell?”

“He was the one who searched the smuggling compartment. He didn’t detect Castin. How do you suppose he feels?”

Face winced. “About like I do, I suppose.”

“And what are you going to do about it?”

“Talk to him, I suppose. Make him understand that it’s not his fault.”

Wedge waited, not speaking, just watching the young lieutenant, until Face finally looked startled. “Yes, sir,” Face said. “The same way it’s not my fault.”

“Correct. Anything else?”

“Yes, sir. I can’t stress enough that I felt there was something very significant about the look Zsinj and Melvar exchanged when I was discussing Piggy’s background. In the guise of Lieutenant Kettch’s background, I mean. That really spooked them. Either they’re involved with a project like that, or they know of one and are very interested in it.”

“I’ll assume that this is very significant, then, and see what I can make of it.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“That’ll be all for now.” As Face was leaving, Wedge added, “Oh, by the way …”

“Sir?”

“You’re a good officer, Face, but you have to know that means you’ll be doing this again. This was a successful mission. It may be the key to Zsinj’s undoing. If I’d known, if I’d been absolutely sure, that to accomplish it would mean the life of one of my pilots, I’d have to have set it in motion anyway. You would, too.”

Face looked as though he was considering that possibility, then gave Wedge a brief nod. “Yes, sir. I suppose I would.” He closed the door behind him.

Wedge sat, motionless, long enough for Face to get thirty or forty paces away from the cargo module that served as the command office. Then he slammed both hands on his desktop and swept every pointless datapad, document, and knickknack from the desk surface.

Another pilot dead, this one for no good reason. Another letter to write. Another report in which he had to explain just why it was that two subordinates had died under his command in just a few days.

He came out of his office at a fast walk and headed for the hangar area. On the other side of the Trench, Janson, sitting alone on the mess patio, rose and trotted to catch up. “How did it go?”

“As well as it could.”

“So, what’s with this sudden brisk exercise?”

“I’m not ready yet to begin analyzing the data Zsinj gave us.”

“Ah.”

“I don’t want to write Castin’s folks.”

“Ah.”

Both men returned a salute from Runt, who was headed the other way. “Unit morale is bound to take a serious hit from this.”

“Ah.”

“I’m leading children, and I’m getting them killed.”

“That’s true.”

Almost at the door into the hangar, Wedge skidded to a stop. “What did you say?”

“It’s true.” Janson shrugged. “Wedge, you asked for misfits. You had to have known that even with the ones who made the grade, they were going to take losses that were heavier than in a normal unit. So many of them are dragging around these weights of emotional problems. It makes it tougher for them to hop in the right direction at the right time.”

“Well … maybe.”

“Even with that, as a group they’re doing better than they ever had a right to. Some of them are fit to eat with real people. Even to fly with other units. That wasn’t the case when you founded the Wraiths.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Wedge suddenly felt weary, all the manic energy of a minute ago having left him. He turned back toward his office. “What’s the situation with Lara?”

“She’s doing pretty well for someone whose brother just tried to kill her. Donos is keeping an eye on her.”

“Those of us who still have family …” Wedge waited as memories of his surviving relative, his sister Syal, missing for so long—as her husband, Soontir Fel, had also been missing—rose and abated. “We need to notify them. Just in case Zsinj tries to get at another of us through family connections. That would be just like him.”

“It would. I’ll inform the Wraiths, let them know what they need to tell their people.”

“Yes, but not yet. I want you to work with me on the Zsinj data.”

“Ah, thank you. The adventures of Wes Janson, Ace Statistician …”

Wedge and Janson spent most of the rest of the day working on the data Zsinj had provided to Face.

The planet that was their target was of average size and mass, according to the planetary radius and gravity information provided. And it was heavily guarded. Ten Imperial Star Destroyers and seven Mon Calamari cruisers were shown on-station, supported by impressive numbers of planet-based starfighter squadrons—including an unusually high number of A-wing fighters.

Janson gave him a bleak look. “This is Coruscant. He’s going to hit Coruscant.”

Wedge shook his head. “That’s what the data tells us if you dig down from the top layer. But I don’t understand some things. Zsinj’s mission will take place soon—otherwise he wouldn’t give us this much information about it. Yet this complement of ships isn’t an exact representation of Coruscant’s defenses—I was just there, and he’s got the strengths wrong. So is he wrong because his intelligence is incomplete, inadequate?”

“That doesn’t sound like him, does it?”

Wedge sighed. “Then there’s the question of what sort of cargo Zsinj is going after. Our task is to protect Zsinj’s forces while they load a cargo ship—why not wait until the goods are already loaded? What does the government of the New Republic store on Coruscant’s space stations that can’t be acquired on the surface, or in transit?”

Janson thought about it. “The Inner Council?”

“What? No. It would be a real coup to capture or kill them, of course. But they hold all their meetings on-planet.”

“Do you know that for sure?”

“No, but I have no reason to suspect otherwise. And holding meetings on a space station would be more problematic, less secret, and less secure than doing so on the surface. I think you’re speculating wildly.”

“All right, then, your turn. What’s on space stations that isn’t better found on-planet or between worlds?”

“Well, the stations themselves. Maybe they plan to tow one out to space.”

Janson snorted.

“Big cargo carriers.” Wedge frowned. “You know, scuttlebutt has it that Princess Leia’s big, secret mission involves bringing back additional resources for the fight against Zsinj. If he’s aware of that, if he knows what those resources are, if he knows when they’re coming back to Coruscant—”

“Now you’re speculating wildly.”

“True. Then there are cargo ships.” Wedge frowned as a shadow of a new idea crossed his mind. He stared down at the statistics on the datapad before him. “Wait a second. I have an idea of what he’s after.” He found a scrap of flimsi and a writing instrument and scribbled a very brief note, then folded it several times and handed it to Janson. “Tuck that away. Take it out when we have our answer and it will make my reputation as a military wizard.”

Janson pocketed the note. “You already have that reputation.”

“Well, then, I’ll have two. Now tell Castin to come in here.”

“Uhh, Castin’s, uhh …”

Wedge put his face in his hand. “Right. I’m tired, too. With Castin gone, who’s our best code-slicer and computer handler?”

“Probably Lara Notsil.”

“Get her.”

She was slightly out of breath when she arrived, probably having run the distance from her quarters to Wedge’s office. “Flight Officer Lara Notsil reporting, sir.”

Wedge waved her a casual salute. “No need for all the formality now, Notsil. Tell me something. With what you know of our computers on hand, how good is our ability to translate statistical data of large military forces—their strengths, capabilities, that sort of thing—into the equivalent forces of other cultures? Say I had the statistics for a New Republic strike force and wanted to come up with a Corellian force with exactly the same characteristics?”

Janson looked at him, confused.

Lara considered. “I don’t think our translation efforts would be very good, sir. That calls for specialized programs, and we don’t—” Then she looked startled. “Depending on the forces involved, sir, I think we can do a pretty good job.”

“That’s quite a switch of opinion.”

She smiled. “I forgot. We have X-wing and TIE simulators on base, sir, and they’re already linked. And already set up to analyze ship statistical data and translate into precise strength values of enemies. I can adapt that programming to do what you want. It wouldn’t be too hard.”

Wedge copied the Zsinj information to a fresh datapad and handed it over. “I want all this information translated into the nearest equivalent force of vessels and vehicles that are purely Imperial in origin. Then come back here and we’ll compare that with some planetary defense data. How long will that take you?”

“I’m not sure. Half an hour, twelve hours—I’ll know more when I’ve had time to look over the simulators and this data.”

“Let me know as soon as you can.”

Wedge stretched his legs again while waiting for her initial estimate.

Outside, something odd was going on at the mess and patio. The thermal blanket normally used as an awning over the mess picture viewport had been lowered, indicating that it was closed, and all the patio’s chairs and tables had been drawn aside. A hand-painted sign decorated the main door into the module: MESS CLOSED BY ORDER OF THE PIRATE RUNT.

Runt now stood in the middle of the newly open space, goggles over his eyes as he used one of the maintenance crew’s backpack paint sprayers to put a layer of matte-green paint down on the stone floor.

Wedge wandered over and watched for a while as Runt finished transforming a large oval of gray stone into a green surface. Then Runt removed his goggles and switched off the sprayer.

Wedge asked, “Runt, what are you doing?”

Runt looked at him levelly. “Painting, sir.”

“Ah. Why?”

“For the ritual, sir.”

“You’re going to have a ritual.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Something your people do?”

Runt had to consider that one, blinking a few times before he answered. “Something some of our people do, sir.”

“And you thought you had to close the mess to conduct this ritual?”

“Yes, sir. The food is still being prepared. That is a necessary part of the ritual.”

“And who is going to be part of this ritual?”

“Well, we wanted to talk to you about that, sir. It would be a help to us if you would issue an order for all pilots to be here at eight hundred hours in full dress uniform.”

Wedge resisted the urge to laugh. Runt seemed so earnest, so sincere. “It would, would it?”

“Yes. Also, all civilian crewmen not on duty should be here in formal dress.”

“Why should I do this?”

“Because I ask little and will deliver much.”

“Ah. Can you tell me what this is about?”

“Well, no, sir.”

“I see. Carry on.”

It took Lara only two hours to translate the data, and took her and Wedge less than five minutes to get a close match in their comparison of the new data with sites in Imperial space.

“You’re joking,” Janson said. “Kuat?”

Wedge pointed to the other man’s pocket. Janson retrieved the note and unfolded it. There was a single word scrawled on it: Kuat. He whistled.

“It’s Kuat, all right,” Wedge said. “Zsinj is making a raid on a space platform at Kuat.”

“How did you know?”

“Zsinj is so devious it’s sometimes predictable. He gave us information intended for very limited circulation, and yet he still concealed his real purpose a level or two down. I’m sure others he’s working with are very pleased with themselves that they’ve identified the target as Coruscant. They’re going to be very surprised when they come out of hyperspace in the Core Worlds.”

“So his objective isn’t cargo,” said Lara. “He’s after a Star Destroyer.”

Wedge nodded. “A Super Star Destroyer. Just as Face predicted, weeks ago.”

With deliberate slowness, Janson leaned back, put his hands behind his head, and put his feet up on Wedge’s desk. He smiled. “Zsinj has delivered himself into our hands.”

“Not yet, he hasn’t,” Wedge said. “In what sense do we have him? He shows up with his fleet at Kuat and—what? We drop in out of hyperspace and attack him? It would take a large portion of the fleet of the New Republic to menace him and defend itself against Kuat’s defenses … and the defenses they could bring in on short notice. We’d lose far too much.”

“Maybe we just alert the government of Kuat,” Lara said.

“No … Zsinj has spies in place already. Our intelligence says that the shipyards, especially the orbital ones, are rigged to explode in case of invasion. Zsinj has to have provided for that, and his spies will notice any sudden preparations for invasion.” Wedge sighed. “I think we have to let Zsinj get away with his new toy … and then jump them later.”

“How can we be sure where they’ll be?” said Janson.

“Lara, you know about Castin’s plan. About the program he was going to slice into the communications system aboard Iron Fist.”

She nodded.

“Can you adapt that for this new Super Star Destroyer?”

“Unless Castin’s slicing style is so idiosyncratic that no one can make sense of it, yes, sir.”

“See to it, then.” Wedge turned his attention to Wes. “I’m going to draw up a preliminary plan of operation for this mission and see if I can get Admiral Ackbar to sign off on it.”

“For my part,” Janson said, “I’ll get some sleep.”

“You’ll calculate which routes Zsinj is likely to take in his escape from Kuat and suggest some fleet deployments that give us the best likelihood of being able to encounter him.”

“Which is something like sleep, but much less interesting.”

Wedge smiled. “As for you, Lara, good work, and thanks.”

Runt’s preparations of the galley area became more and more elaborate.

He pressed several of the astromechs into service as painters. The little R2s and R5s, with paintbrushes held in their clamps, meticulously added black crisscrosses and hatchwork to the green floor paint, making it look like a child’s impression of grass.

He rigged an overhead spotlight that would bathe his green oval in light but extend not much beyond that.

To the same pole he attached speakers whose cables snaked all the way to the base communications center, farther down the Trench.

He occasionally entered the closed galley, and Wraiths passing by could see him, through the partially opened door, exchanging words with Squeaky. The 3PO unit, who was a more than adequate chef when he could be persuaded to cook, looked more agitated than usual.

Wedge did remember to issue his command, and shortly before eight hundred hours the Wraiths did begin to assemble.

“I can’t believe you got me out here in full dress,” said Janson, his tone a deliberate whine. “Just because Runt asked you to. You’ve known me longer. You should like me better than him.”

Wedge snorted. “Let’s just say I was intrigued by the mystery.”

“Mystery? I’ll give you a mystery. I’ll spend tomorrow with my feet and forehead painted red and never tell anyone why. Is that mysterious enough?”

“Anything to stay out of dress uniform, is that it?”

“Anything.”

By ones and twos the Wraiths assembled. Several obviously felt as Janson did about dressing up, or at least took the summons with less than total seriousness. Piggy scratched unhappily. Shalla asked each person present—separately—what it was all about, then stood off by herself and fidgeted. Face had added to his dress uniform a sand-colored Tatooine scarf, giving him the look of an officer who’d been stationed too long on the desert world and had partially “gone native.” Some of the mechanics were still working on their hands with cleanser-cloths, trying to remove the last stubborn patches of oil stains.

By the time Donos arrived, a handful of seconds after the appointed hour, Runt was still not in evidence. The main lights of the Trench cut out, leaving only the new spotlight and the false stars overhead blazing, and Runt, quite dashing in his dress uniform, emerged from the galley. “My friends,” he said, waving his hands with unusual theatricality, “how glad we are that you have chosen to accept our invitation.”

That elicited some chuckles, and Runt plowed on. “We are obliged to admit that we may have accidentally misled Commander Antilles when describing this event. We think he believes this to be a Thakwaash ritual.”

Wedge crossed his arms and gave Runt a stern look. “ ‘Accidentally misled’?”

“Well, you will have to ask the Runt you were talking to this afternoon. We are not he at this moment.”

“We are now the Runt who ducks and retreats when confronted with the errors of his ways?”

Runt grinned, his huge teeth flashing white in the gloom in front of the galley. “Kell must have given you lessons in knowing who we are at any moment. So. This is a ritual we have seen among the military officers of the New Republic. It is called a formal dance. I have painted a lawn. Come forward and dance under the stars.”

The Wraiths and maintenance personnel looked at one another as though to inquire silently as to which of them would summon the military police in charge of pilot sanity. Piggy huffed and asked, “And if we decline?”

Runt’s expression became serious, even menacing. “We will have hurt feelings. And this is a compulsory dance, so we will shoot you.”

Kell crossed to him, grabbed him by his fur-backed ears, and shook Runt’s head. “Runt! That was a joke. A human-style joke. I’m so proud of you.”

Runt smiled again. “We are pleased you are pleased.”

Kell moved to the center of the absurd dance floor and extended a hand. Tyria came to him, smiling, and took it. Kell glanced significantly at Runt, who in turn nodded to Chunky, Tyria’s R5 unit, who stood watch at the bottom of the pole on which the spotlight rested, and suddenly music blasted out at the squadron—a formal dance of Alderaan, Wedge noted. Runt gestured at Chunky, a lowering of his hand, and the volume decreased to appropriate levels.

And Kell and Tyria danced, smiling at one another, the rest of the universe suddenly lost to them.

Janson sighed. “I’m going to have Runt shot.”

Wedge gave him a tolerant smile. “Wait for results before you assign punishment.”

“Now you’re talking like a general again.”

“Oh, that stung.”

Then Shalla was out on the dance floor, beckoning Donos to join her, and Wedge saw one of the female mechanics hauling Cubber out to dance, her fingers firmly clamped on his septum as the mechanic protested inarticulately.

Janson turned to Dia. “Shall we, wingmate?”

She looked startled. “I don’t know how.”

“I thought you were a dancer.”

“Not that kind. I have never danced with anyone. Only for them.”

“Time to learn.” He led her out onto the floor.

Leaving Wedge alone.

He watched others drift onto the floor, some smiling, some tentative, some resigned. He watched Runt reenter the galley and emerge, carrying one end of a long table, Squeaky carrying the other, and then the two of them began bringing out trays and bowls and glasses and cutlery—the night’s dinner, transformed by some extra work and attention into a wider variety of dishes, a buffet appropriate for a dance.

When they were done and Squeaky had returned to the galley, Wedge approached. Runt was now slicing a ripe ball cheese and setting slivers of the stuff on a plate. “Good job, Runt.”

Runt straightened and almost saluted. “Sorry, sir. You surprised us.” He returned to cutting.

“No need to apologize. Nor is there any need for formality. This is a social event. What gave you the idea?”

“For the dance? You did, sir—uh, Command—uh, W-Wedge.” The name sounded as though it was almost too strange for Runt to utter. “You and the lieutenant walked by talking of the hurt that Wraith morale had suffered. When you have a hurt, you do not wait for it to heal. You set out to heal it.”

“Why, precisely, a dance?”

Runt was slow to answer. “It has been our observation that dance among the people of the New Republic, when it means anything—and it does not always mean anything—is an activity of mates. Making mates. Tending to mates. Reacquainting with mates. The Wraiths have been doing little but staring at death. But mates are life, what one lives for. What better way to turn away from death than to think of mates, present and distant?”

Wedge thought that over. “Runt, I’m afraid you’ve just made yourself morale officer.”

Runt made a noise somewhere between a snort and a deep chest cough. “We have been told that under your command one cannot do a good thing without it becoming a duty.”

“Was that another joke?”

“We hope so.”

Wedge smiled. “Keep it up, Runt. And good work.” He turned away.

“Will you be dancing?”

Wedge paused. Over his shoulder, he said, “I’ll put in one dance for courtesy’s sake and then go. The Wraiths will probably loosen up more once I’m gone.”

“What of your morale?”

“You’ve already lifted it, Runt.”

Face watched the couples gather on the floor and join in the sweep of the Alderaanian waltz. Then he felt hands against his back and was propelled into their midst.

He turned to face his attacker. It was Lara, advancing purposefully. He put up his hands in mock fear; she seized them and pulled him into the pattern of the dance. “That’s mutiny,” he said.

“Put me up on charges. Then I won’t have to be part of this mission against Iron Fist.”

“Good point. Maybe I’ll mutiny, too.”

“Besides, I have a special right to push you around. It was you who brought me into this unit.”

“True,” he said. Then what little cheer he still enjoyed evaporated. “Well, it was me and Ton.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you sad. I know you were very close to him. You almost haven’t smiled or made a joke since he died.”

“I only met him a few weeks ago. But by the end of the second day, we were finishing one another’s sentences and being obnoxious enough to drive everyone around us crazy.”

“Well, you’ll have to be obnoxious enough for both of you now. Phanan would want that.”

“He would.” Face smiled down at her. “You dance very well.”

“So do you.”

“Well, I was trained to. For the holos. Where did you learn?”

“A long time ago, on Coruscant.”

“A long time ago?”

She tensed, then relaxed and smiled. “Well, it seems like such a long time ago. Pilot training seems to last for years.”

“I know what you mean.”

“This dance I learned on Coruscant. But on Aldivy we danced all the time. It was an important part of social life. Dances were where youngsters met and families dickered.” Oddly, in spite of these thoughts about the life she could never return to, she did not seem sad.

“So, why did you launch me out onto the floor? Just looking after your wingman?”

“Partly that. And, partly, I’m maneuvering you.”

“I hate to disappoint you, but you’re far from the first woman to do that to me.”

Her smile broadened. “Ah, but how many women maneuver you to abandon you?”

It was the point in the dance where conservative couples would form a circle, where more proficient ones would raise their hands together and spin in relation to one another, males to their left, females to their right, coming around to face one another on the same beat of the music. Lara signaled the more elaborate move by raising her hands.

But while they were in midspin, he felt too many fingers on his for just one moment, and when he finished the maneuver he came face-to-face with a startled-looking Dia Passik. Lara and Janson, now partners, looking very pleased with themselves, pulled away and waved.

Dia’s posture and the tension in her arms suggested that she was not too comfortable with the dance, but she gave him a game smile. “I think we have been fooled.”

Face adjusted his pace and the flamboyance of his maneuvers to her more tentative motions. “When did they arrange that?”

“Lara was signaling something to Lieutenant Janson before she started dancing with you. I thought she was flirting.”

“Well, we both appear to have been enticed and abandoned.”

“I don’t think so. I think it was because of something I said.”

“Which was what?”

“That I—” She paused, apparently to consider her words. “That I wanted to talk to you, but that I was afraid to.”

“I didn’t think I was that fearsome. Especially to someone who’s never seen my holodramas.”

That elicited a smile, a little one. “No. I mean I didn’t know how to phrase the words. When to speak to you. I didn’t know who to be when I spoke to you.”

“Who to be? Who were your choices?”

“Dia Passik and Diap’assik.”

“The pilot you’ve become and the little Twi’lek girl kidnapped off Ryloth.”

She nodded, her expression somber. “The day after we returned from Iron Fist I woke up and I wasn’t either one of them anymore. Somewhere in between a girl I thought was long dead and a woman who was too bloodthirsty for me to particularly like. But I thought about all that had happened the day before and decided that I liked being alive. So I wanted to thank you for not letting me die.” The words came out all in a rush. She tensed, staring at Face, poised as if she were waiting for him to strike her.

“You’re very welcome.” Why had that been so hard for her? Face tried to put himself in her place—stolen child, then slave of an Imperial master, then pilot fighting for a place for herself among people she did not know, few of whom even belonged to her species. Nor had she ever spoken a favorable word about the Twi’leks; perhaps she blamed her own kind for the way she had been stolen from their midst.

Understanding where she had come from, with his limited knowledge, was too great a task for Face, but an idea emerged from his effort. “Dia, when was the last time you relaxed?”

“I relax many days.”

“When you’re alone.”

“Yes.”

“I meant, when was the last time you were really at ease among others? The last time you felt safe in someone else’s company?”

Her gaze drifted off into the distance of time. “At ease? I don’t know. When I was a child, I suppose. And safe?” She looked startled and came back to herself, to the present time. She tried to remove her hands from his. “Thank you for the dance. It’s time for me to go.”

He did not release her. “I know I’m prying, Dia. But if you won’t open up to me, will you open up to someone?”

“I don’t think I can.”

“You could talk to Squeaky. He could use a friend.”

She looked up at him, unbelieving, then smiled and stopped trying to break away. “You’re joking again. It is sometimes so hard to tell when you are serious.”

“For me, too.”

They danced in silence for a few moments, long enough for the music to give way to a slower, more intimate dance from Chandrila. Then she said, her voice so low that he had to strain to hear her, “The last time I felt safe was not so long ago.”

“When was that?”

“It was when I was at my worst. When I had shot Castin, when I’d desecrated the corpse of a brave man and pretended to do it with glee. When I tried to kill myself and you would not let me. Just before I fell asleep, I knew that you would not let anyone hurt me. You would not even let me hurt myself. And in that moment I knew myself safe, for the first time since I was a child.”

He looked down into her eyes—eyes that were too large and luminous to be Dia’s, eyes that were familiar to him yet opened up into a woman he didn’t know. A woman who had come into being only since the mission to Iron Fist.

“That’s what I wanted to say to you, what I didn’t know how to say before,” she said. “That I know that you feel you failed Ton Phanan. But you did not fail me.”

He took her head in his hands and kissed her, and was swept away by the sweetness of her kiss, by the spicy taste of her, so different from human women. He felt her arms encircle his neck. And they stood motionless beneath the twinkling stars as the dancers swirled around them.

17

“Our target,” Wedge said, “is almost certainly a Kuat Drive Yards facility in the Kuat system.” He nodded at the holographic display, showing a central sun orbited by numerous planets and space stations, which floated above the table in the crowded conference module. Again he wished for a full-sized briefing room.

He took a pointing stick and drew a circle through a ring of space stations, an astonishing number of them, surrounding the system outside the orbit of its most distant planet. “This, collectively, is Kuat’s main shipyard facility, the famous Kuat Drive Yards. It is not, however, the only place the yards build their vessels.”

He gestured at one of the planets. “This is Kuat itself. There are also secondary facilities in orbit above it. Now, the data Zsinj provided the Hawk-bats, including a gravity-well delay for hyperspace jumps more lengthy than we’d experience out in the chain of satellites, and showing speed of response of a fleet arriving at the site being attacked, makes planetary orbit the most likely prospect. However, since New Republic Intelligence hasn’t been able to confirm that there even is a new Super Star Destroyer under construction there, we can’t be sure of this. Another planet in the system, a station not orbiting a planet, any such thing could be our objective.”

The Wraiths were following his presentation with rapt attention. They seemed different this morning—more possessed of themselves, more cocksure, some of them nearly smug. Alive and eager. Once again Wedge offered thanks to whatever turn of fortune had brought Runt Ekwesh into this unit.

“Piggy,” Wedge continued, “has had some thoughts on this mission I thought he should share with you. Piggy?”

The Gamorrean pilot started to rise but thought better of it and stayed seated. The proper manner to make a presentation in a standard military briefing was on one’s feet, but the crowded nature of this conference module didn’t allow for it. “Once again I must turn to the subject of Zsinj and pirates,” he said, his mechanical voice vibrating the tabletop and the caf cups resting on it. “This time I can do so with some evidence instead of relying merely on speculation.

“We assume Zsinj is going after a new Super Star Destroyer. We know that he has requested the Hawk-bats to be part of this mission. My belief is that the Hawk-bats will merely be part of a large unit of mercenaries and pirates that will act as part of the defensive screen around the new Super Star Destroyer once it begins moving.”

Kell waved to get his attention. “You’re getting ahead of me, here. Why part of a mercenary unit, and why once the vessel gets moving?”

“From Zsinj’s perspective, optimum efficiency demands a certain set of steps,” Piggy said. “He can’t, for example, drop out of hyperspace in the midst of the Kuat system and do a boarding action against the new Destroyer. Every minute it takes to accomplish the takeover is a minute the forces of Kuat can be using to approach and attack. So—”

“So,” Face said, interrupting, “the takeover of the new Destroyer has to be accomplished before Iron Fist drops into the Kuat system.”

Piggy nodded. “Correct. And as soon as the new Destroyer begins moving, if not before, Kuat’s forces will be alerted and will move against her, to retake her … or destroy her.”

“So that,” Wedge said, “is when we predict Zsinj will drop in with Iron Fist and as large a fleet as he can manage … and it’s that fleet that will serve as a screen for the new Destroyer. It has to be escorted until it can get far enough from the nearest gravity well to launch into hyperspace.”

“If the pirates,” Piggy said, “including us Hawk-bats, are the first line of engagement the Kuat defenders encounter, Zsinj profits. Fewer of his TIE forces will be destroyed. Of the pirates who survive, some will belong to destroyed bands and will want employment … and they’re most likely to be the best pilots of the bunch.”

Dia frowned. “Your pardon, Piggy … but isn’t this all just guesswork?”

The Gamorrean nodded. “Educated guesswork.”

“What if you’re all wrong?”

Piggy looked between Wedge and Janson. “Between the three of us, we’d have a hard time being that wrong.”

Dia managed a smile. “Piggy, what if you’re wrong?”

“We improvise,” Wedge said. “We’ve come up with this model for Zsinj’s plan because we think it’s most likely. But regardless of what Zsinj’s plan is, our objectives stay the same. And our objectives are pretty simple in explanation even if they turn out not to be simple in execution.

“Before we get to that, we need to remember that this is our best shot so far at taking out Iron Fist and Zsinj. This means that other concerns … such as our personal safety and even survival … come second.” He looked around at the suddenly somber faces of the Wraiths. “I’m not asking anyone to go on a suicide mission. But I am asking you to keep in mind the same measures and balances I’ll be considering. If what I do can take out this enemy, who has caused so much pain and destruction, and who will continue to do so if allowed to, is my survival more important than his defeat?

“So … our goals. Number one, most important, is to get a transmitter on Iron Fist or the new destroyer or both. We have several ways to do this. One is Castin’s program, which any one of us invited to join Zsinj’s advance party might have an opportunity to plant. Another is a standard transmitter, which we might be able to plant on one of the ships’ surfaces. It’s less subtle than Castin’s code, but will only broadcast when the ship’s main communicators are being used, which might conceal its use. A third is to get someone aboard the two ships, as a stowaway or in supposedly permanent employ with Zsinj.

“Goal number two is to stay alive and to take out as many of the enemy as possible. And don’t forget—the people of Kuat, in spite of the fact that they’re Zsinj’s enemy, are also our enemy. They’re loyal to the remnants of the Empire. Any damage we do them is good for the New Republic. Any questions?”

Donos raised his hand. “What are our individual roles for this mission?”

Janson tapped on his datapad and the Wraith unit roster replaced the Kuat system as the holographic projection. “We’ll be broken down into two or, we hope, three units.

“Unit One, Hawk-bats. That’s Commander Antilles, Dia, Kell, Face, Tyria, and Piggy. We fly, we shoot, we kill.

“Unit Two, Infiltrators. Lara has faked up dossiers on alternate identities for herself, Shalla, and Dia and forwarded them to Zsinj—you’ve done that, haven’t you, Lara? Good—in the hope that he’ll select one or two to accompany his advance team, the one we believe will be taking over the new Destroyer.

“Unit Three, Wraith Squadron. The rest of us will be taking our X-wings to join Mon Remonda as part of the ambush phase of the operation. We predict that Zsinj won’t want to do more than a short jump away from Kuat on untested hyperdrive engines. That means we’ll be stationing elements of the New Republic fleet—all of General Solo’s command and anyone else we can drag in—and staging them at points as close as we can manage to Zsinj’s likely escape courses. They’ll be well off the major trade and military routes—an important consideration, since we’ll be in the middle of Imperial-controlled space—and standing by for any signal from any of the transmitters.

“With any luck, if there’s enough time between the accomplishment of the Kuat raid and the come-get-me signal from Iron Fist, the Hawk-bats from the first part of the plan will be able to join the Wraiths for the third.”

“And when we hear that signal,” Donos said, “we jump in and drop the heavy end of the hammer on Iron Fist and his new Destroyer.”

“That’s it,” Wedge said. “Make your preparations. We suspect the word will come from Zsinj pretty soon, but we don’t know when—so get as much done as you can. Face, we’ll need disguises for anyone Zsinj might choose to join the advance unit. Kell, I’d like for the same folk to have some backup weapons, demolitions—we want to give them every opportunity to get back to us if things go sour. Questions, anyone? No? Then get to it.”

The word from Zsinj arrived later that day. It included a rendezvous course the Wraiths suspected led to another redirection satellite, and a request that Qatya Nassin—Shalla’s Hawk-bat identity—join Zsinj’s advance unit in the assault to come.

Hours later, the Wraiths assembled in their hangar.

Shalla was someone new. Under Face’s care her hair had been transformed into a shocking white, and her left eye was surrounded by a circle of white makeup. That, and the pads she held in her cheeks, changed the lines of her face. She was dressed in flowing street clothes; doubtless Zsinj’s infiltration crew would have more appropriate garments for her.

Dia, Kell, Face, Tyria, and Piggy were in the makeup and gray TIE-fighter-pilot uniforms of the Hawk-bats, and Janson, Runt, Donos, and Lara were in the standard orange, white, and black uniform of New Republic pilots.

“The commander’s late,” Face said. “Is anything wrong?”

“Oh, no,” Janson said. “Since he doesn’t have any additional responsibilities, no last-minute details to track, no need to do one last check of the plan, he’s just late so you’ll be that much crankier.”

“That’s what I thought.”

While they waited, the command crew aboard Sungrass completed its check and did a test firing of her repulsorlifts; the aging cargo hauler lifted a few meters into the air and set down again. The ship couldn’t depart until Shalla was released to join them, and then it would wait above this asteroid for the Hawk-bats to fly their TIE interceptors and fighters into her hold.

“Attention,” Janson called.

The Wraiths snapped to attention in a reasonable line as Wedge approached them. Unlike the other Hawk-bat pilots, he was dressed in a traditional black TIE fighter’s uniform, with a difference it took Face a moment to recognize: All the usually glossy black surfaces, such as the helmet and breathing gear, had been painted matte black. Also, there seemed to be additional snap hooks on his chest and arms. He carried a large cylindrical cloth bag in black over his shoulder; this he set down at his feet.

“I’m not going to give you some sort of stirring, halfwitted speech about why we’re here,” Wedge said without preamble. “They’re for crowds, not for fighter pilots. But I did want to say something.

“The Wraiths have had to learn lessons fast, faster than any unit I’ve ever belonged to or commanded. I regret the speed of your education—because, inevitably, it’s intrusive and painful—as much as I’m glad you’ve been able to absorb it.

“Recent events, especially Runt’s dance and the behavior of several of you at that celebration, have convinced me that you’ve learned another lesson, as individuals and as a unit. The lesson involves watching out for one another. You’re now doing it as second nature.

“You need to keep that up today, perhaps more than any other day in our recent history. Do it and more of us will come back.”

He looked among them, catching each stare in turn.

The Wraiths weren’t wearing a collection of steely, confident expressions. Kell, just as before most missions, looked a little jittery, and more of Tyria’s attention was on him than on Wedge. Dia was more wide-eyed than usual, the mask of who she’d been before now gone, a little uncertainty in its place. Face stared back with the eyes of a stranger, already deep under his General Kargin makeup and personality. But with each of them there was a commitment to the mission, to its successful completion, regardless of the cost.

Wedge finished up: “For those of you who believe in the Force, may it be with you, and guide you. For those who don’t, trust in your intent, your weapons, and your wingman.” He clapped his hands. “Let’s go, people.”

The pilots broke rank, exchanged handshakes and embraces, headed off to their individual missions. The gray-clad Hawk-bats would wait until Sungrass was on-station and take their TIEs out to the cargo ship. The orange-clad Wraiths would then begin the process of shuttling all the unit’s X-wings out to the Mon Remonda, now waiting outside the Halmad system’s outermost planetary orbit, with the shuttle Narra bringing them back in for each flight except the last.

Wedge caught the eye of his second-in-command. “Wes, a moment of your time?” He picked up his bag and headed briskly off toward his interceptor; Janson followed at a trot.

Wedge drew to a stop beside the ladder at his interceptor. He pulled at the drawstring holding the lip of his bag closed, and from the bag’s interior withdrew Lieutenant Kettch. The Ewok toy was now dressed in Hawk-bat grays, and long spars of what looked like steel but swung with the mass of plastic hung from his paws.

“You have got to be kidding,” Janson said.

“No. Think about it. What if one of our erstwhile allies swings in close and sees a human inside Lieutenant Kettch’s interceptor?” Wedge snapped a loop sewn to the back of Kettch’s cloth helmet to the corresponding metal hook on his chest. “Help me with the arms.”

Janson did so, snapping the loop on Kettch’s left glove onto a hook on Wedge’s left biceps. “So that’s why you’re in black,” he said, and repeated the process with Kettch’s right arm. “An invisible background.”

“That’s it.”

“So, when you joined Starfighter Command, did you have any presentiment that someday you’d be impersonating an Ewok?”

Wedge glared. “Now the waist.”

“Sure. You know, pretending to be an Ewok is a felony on some worlds.”

“Wes.”

“And I think it’s probably against regulations to fly starfighters while performing a puppet show.”

“Wes.”

Janson straightened up from making the last attachment and threw a salute. “Yub, yub, Commander.”

Wedge returned it. “The things I put up with for this outfit.”

Sungrass dropped out of hyperspace at the leading edge of Zsinj’s armada.

In the midst of the swarm of ships was Iron Fist, the deadly blue arrowhead. Around it were numerous other capital and support ships: one Imperial Star Destroyer, an Interdictor-class cruiser, four Carrack-class light cruisers, and a number of cargo vessels and corvettes. Some of the cargo vessels were decorated with piratical designs; others were innocuous-looking. Few TIE fighters were in evidence, but that was no surprise; the TIEs would not be launched until they were within easy flight range of their objective.

“That’s the Ill Wind,” said Captain Valton, Sungrass’s commander. He was pointing to the smaller Star Destroyer. “And that one’s the Emperor’s Net.” He gestured at the Interdictos “Haven’t seen either of them in a while. Not since before the Emperor’s death.”

Face, in the communications officer’s seat, nodded. “Either of them assigned to Zsinj at that time?”

“Ill Wind. Emperor’s Net must have joined him later.” Valton glanced down at his control board. “Signal from Iron Fist. You might want to pick that up.”

Sungrass was directed to land in Iron Fist’s main bay. As they rose into the bay opening and were directed to a large open area of flooring, Face could see that repairs were well along. The only signs remaining of the explosion the Hawk-bats had caused was one area, toward the bow end of the bay, of crumpled flooring still not replaced, and black charring at places along the wall. But a full complement of TIE fighters, interceptors, and bombers was arrayed for takeoff.

Face and Shalla emerged from their ship’s exit port and shook General Melvar’s hand.

“This is your transport?” Melvar asked, looking the Sungrass over.

“She’s not elegant, I admit,” Face said. “But we get an awful lot of work out of her.”

“You’ll be able to afford better soon, General.”

“General Melvar, allow me to introduce Qatya Nassin, my hand-to-hand combat specialist.”

Melvar shook Shalla’s hand cordially. “Delighted.” He looked her up and down with a somewhat aloof, evaluating expression. “This is Coruscant civilian dress. Middle to low class. Not too far from bedrock level.”

Shalla smiled at him, her dimples showing. “That’s correct.”

“Perfect. Why do you need a datapad?” The general frowned as he looked at the commonplace device in her left hand.

“It’s a weapon, General.” Shalla traced her finger across the hinged edge of the datapad. “A standard scan won’t show that this edge is heavily reinforced. If I decide that someone needs some additional information in his head, I can insert it manually.”

Melvar chuckled.

Face did, too, but wasn’t feeling too merry. They couldn’t afford for Melvar to pay too much attention to the datapad. The technically proficient Wraiths had spent hours refitting smaller, more modern datapad gear into a larger, older case, and had reinforced the hinge end as she’d mentioned, but they’d also fitted in a secret slot and a number of small explosive devices that Kell had put together. A basic scan wouldn’t reveal them—they’d be masked by the technology within the case—but a more thorough one would.

“Well,” Melvar said, “I am delighted to meet you. Less delighted to have to put you to the test this way.” He snapped his fingers.

From the semicircle of stormtroopers and officers who’d met the Sungrass stepped a man in a bridge officer’s uniform. He was larger than Kell and looked as though his face had been used by several graduating classes for hammer practice.

“This is Captain Netbers,” Melvar said. “One of our hand-to-hand instructors. I fear he must evaluate your skills.”

Netbers approached, smiling, his hand extended to shake Shalla’s. She stepped forward as if to take it, then swung her datapad straight into his face, smashing his nose, staggering him back. She followed through by bringing her booted foot up into his crotch, but Face heard a decidedly unfleshlike thump and decided the man must have been armored there.

Shalla turned and handed her datapad back to Face with a nonchalance that belied its contents, then turned back to her foe. Netbers, despite the blood streaming from his face and the pain he had to be feeling in his groin despite the armor, had taken her momentary distraction to assume a fighting posture—left side forward, most of his weight on his back leg, hands up and ready to strike. His expression was serious, his eyes intent, but unlike many fighters he didn’t offer a stream of taunts and invective.

Shalla circled around him, her pose more upright, a mocking smile on her face.

Melvar moved beside Face. “He has reach on her,” he said. “She has to close if she’s to affect him.”

As if on cue, Shalla moved a half pace forward, her advance coming with jolting speed. Netbers reflexively retreated the same distance. But she stopped her advance, keeping that distance between them. Netbers smiled and gestured for her to come on again.

She brought her hands up, a high guard, and circled, then suddenly advanced.

Netbers brought his left foot up in a high kick. But his right foot slipped, and Face saw that it was square in the middle of a puddle of blood, his own blood. Shalla caught his left foot and calf with her hands, wrenched them upward, sending him off balance, so that instead of striking at her he could only flail, and then she lashed out with her own left foot and connected with the inside of his knee.

He let out a grunt as he hit the hangar floor. She stepped forward for a follow-through kick, but Netbers continued rolling and had his hands up to intercept or trap her leg if she followed through. She didn’t; still smiling, she continued circling, forcing him to do the same. Netbers tried to stand, but his right leg wouldn’t sustain his weight and he remained in a kneeling position.

“Enough,” Melvar said. “This exercise wasn’t intended to result in injury—just to give Netbers an opportunity to evaluate the lady’s performance. Netbers, I assume you consider her proficient?”

Netbers grimaced. “I would say so, sir.” He fingered his nose. “My node is brogen again.”

“Do you think she could kill a Wookiee? Or was that mere hyperbole?”

“I don’t think anyobe gould gill a Wookiee habd to habd, sir. But she gomes gloser than anyobe I’be seen.”

Melvar turned a cool expression on Shalla. “You were a bit treacherous, though. You were supposed to shake hands before opening hostilities.”

Shalla lost her smile. “Nonsense. He came at me with the intent of taking my hand and then applying leverage to it. I could see that in his stance as he approached.”

“Netbers?”

“She’s right, sir. Anb if she’s going on this mission, it’s good that she can recognize the difference.”

“Well, then.” Melvar returned his attention to Face. “Will you be deploying your TIEs for launch from our bay?”

“No. Kettch is agitated enough as it is, and being exposed to too many strange humans would unsettle him. I think we’d prefer to launch from Sungrass.”

“Understood. Please switch your comm systems to our frequency and cancel your starfighters’ usual encryption; we do want to be able to talk to one another. Launch and stand by at your convenience, and I will deliver this formidable young woman to the unit she will be working with.”

There were eight of them. Three men and a woman, all large, with movements like natural fighters, were dressed in the nondescript uniforms of maintenance workers, the words KUAT DRIVE YARDS emblazoned above the left breast of the uniforms. Four others were in stormtrooper armor. Melvar introduced them and Shalla filed their names away. He also succinctly explained the difference between the mission as described earlier and the way it was now. Shalla let her eyes open in simulated surprise when she “discovered” that the target was no cargo satellite but a Super Star Destroyer.

“At this hour,” Melvar continued, “on this shift, Razor’s Kiss—that’s the name of the new Super Star Destroyer, unless Zsinj chooses to rename it—is almost deserted. What’s left is mostly security details and workers finalizing critical assemblies.

“We’ve spent two years helping a colonel in charge of the ship’s landing parties build himself up a lucrative little smuggling operation. He doesn’t know ‘we’ means Zsinj, though he’ll find out when they court-martial him, if not before. Anyway, to facilitate his trading and dealing, he had to arrange for ways by which his people could bypass several layers of Kuat Drive Yards defense, and by monitoring him very closely we found out what those means were.

“This crew of specialists will be taking a standard shuttle in to the officers’ landing bay under access codes he uses for his little side operation. That will get you onto Razor’s Kiss … but no farther, I’m afraid.

“The crew will advance from the landing bay to the bridge and seize it, then enter programming that will allow you to operate the ship in limited capacity solely from the bridge. A false leak alert should clear everyone out of the engineering section and auxiliary bridge, at which point you’ll lock them out to prevent sabotage. Finally, a hypercomm signal to us will alert the fleet that it’s time to jump in and Razor’s Kiss can move out on its escape vector. Any questions?”

The faces of the other members of the team showed clearly they were all fully briefed on the situation. Shalla said, “I take it that I’m to be some sort of lure?”

Melvar nodded. “You’ll take point through much of the team’s advance through the ship. It’s inevitable that the team will run across crewmen we haven’t accounted for. Your job is very specific: Distract them, delay them for the others to get in position, but most importantly, don’t let them get off any sort of signal. Any comlink notification of the bridge can ruin the whole plan.”

Shalla nodded. “Except for stormtroopers, with their comlinks built into their helmets, it shouldn’t be too hard. And even with them, just striking fast and hard enough should solve the problem.”

In looking over the other team members, she’d noticed that the only other female member of the team, though rather plain in her current guise, could, with a little makeup and attention to detail, have been quite attractive. Shalla said to her, “You were originally supposed to have my job.”

The woman, whose name, if Shalla remembered correctly, was Bradan, nodded. “The general thought that a smaller woman would be less suspicious, less intimidating to the security forces aboard Razor’s Kiss.”

“He’s probably right.” Shalla shrugged. “I’m sorry.”

Bradan gave her a searching look. “You bring this mission off and we’ll all be covered in glory. Do it and I’ll forgive you.”

“Done.”

18

“The sign of a perfect mission,” said Captain Raslan, “is that it’s boring.”

Shalla nodded. The mission had been boring so far. They’d taken a dirty, creaky wreck of a first-generation Lambda shuttle from Iron Fist, made the hyperspace jump into the Kuat system, made an approach vector on the planet, transmitted passcodes that were apparently accepted, and now the shuttle was finishing its first orbit so that it could continue on to the shipbuilding station from a proper approach vector.

“When it’s not boring,” the captain continued, “you know that you’ve failed.”

“You’re obviously unused to failure,” Shalla said.

“You have that right.” Raslan turned his attention back to the shuttle’s controls. “We’re getting the automated turn-back message. I’m transmitting our passcode.”

Bradan leaned forward to speak in Shalla’s ear. “If this works, we won’t even get a voice acknowledgment. Just several minutes of silence as we approach.”

“Thus,” Shalla said, “more boring, thus even better.”

“That’s right.” Bradan leaned back.

Shalla had to consider that. It was so contrary to Face’s analysis of Iron Fist’s officer corps, with their rough, piratical behavior on the bridge during the dinner with Zsinj. It was, in fact, more logical, more in line with the kind of success Zsinj enjoyed. But, of course, not all the officers would necessarily share Zsinj’s flamboyance.

And despite their words, the approach to Razor’s Kiss, made in near silence, wasn’t boring. As they approached the enormous arrowhead-shaped vessel, now wrapped up in the spars and projections of the shipbuilding satellite, which looked like a monstrous insect stinging the destroyer into submission, she felt her pulse and breathing increase, her temperature rise.

One mistake and she’d die aboard that ship. Even, perhaps, if she didn’t make a mistake. The innocuous-looking datapad in her pocket could mean the difference between life and death for thousands in the New Republic.

Her father would be proud.

And that thought, recollections of the irascible man, already old when he’d falsified records of his death, resettled on the world of Ingo, and begun fathering children, the man who’d taught his daughters to look out for evil and watch out for good, calmed her. If he were here now, he’d be whispering in her ear: Now you’re Qatya. Keep your mercenary face on. Be nice to these people because they might hire you again in the future. Watch out for the backstab in case they decide to save themselves your fee. It won’t happen before you take the bridge; right now they’re anxious for you to succeed. It might not happen at all; Melvar was impressed with you, and they noticed. With the sound of his soothing voice in her ear, she finally relaxed. She gave Raslan a confident smile. “Don’t get too bored,” she said. “You’ll be asleep by the time we land.”

Razor’s Kiss grew before them until it blotted out the entire universe. Raslan guided them toward a tiny white dot that gradually grew into a standard rectangular bay opening. He brought the shuttle into a bay that was half-filled with other shuttles and with a pair of interceptors.

There were no people in the bay. Shalla frowned over that. Was it unguarded, with no mechanics on duty? But if the duplicitous colonel had automated instructions set up, he might require bay personnel to absent themselves when vehicles using specific passcodes arrived.

In silence, they exited the shuttle. Shalla was the first out of the bay, entering a long corridor that was eerily dim and quiet.

As she moved along the deserted corridor toward the bridge—a hike of over three kilometers—she decided that this was a ghost ship. Every other ship she’d been on had pulsed with life, a steady vibration that one could feel in the soles of her shoes and every rigid surface, a sensation so commonplace that spacegoers no longer noticed it after their first few days. This ship had no such vibration, and she imagined that if she saw someone materializing out of the gloom ahead of her, it would be a ghost.

But the first contact she had with the inhabitants of Razor’s Kiss was not so ethereal. Barely a kilometer into her walk, a doorway to a set of private quarters hissed open beside her and a stormtrooper emerged.

He tried to bring his blaster rifle in line. “Say—”

She leaned into him, pinning the rifle to his chest, and brought her hand up, an open-palm blow that caught the trooper’s helmet just at the chin. The force of the blow popped the helmet free of his head, sent it clattering into the quarters from which he’d emerged.

He backed away, trying to free his weapon, and she followed him. She crossed her arms and got both hands on the weapon, then stopped and yanked. The sudden torque ripped the blaster from his grip.

He lunged forward, grabbing, and she swung the butt up into his jaw. He fell like an anesthetized bantha.

Shalla looked around. This was a small office, perhaps a junior officer’s. No one else was present. She took a look in its interior door, but it led only to an empty refresher.

Raslan was in the office when she emerged. “You could hear his helmet bouncing for fifty meters,” he said, complaint in his voice, and held out his hand.

She handed him the rifle and slid past him. “You would have heard a blaster shot from three hundred.”

For the next kilometer, she encountered nothing except some floor-scrubbing droids, machines so primitive that they recorded nothing but locations they had cleaned. Had she been invading Iron Fist, she would have been worried about their presence; a man like Zsinj would probably have adapted them to be an innocuous part of his ship security. Here, she had no such concerns.

She checked the map Bradan had transmitted to her datapad, turned left into a cross corridor … and bumped straight into a lean Imperial naval lieutenant standing there. The man rocked back, reached for his sidearm—and then got a good look at Shalla and relaxed. “Identify yourself,” he said, his voice more curious than angry.

Shalla put her hands on her hips, a pose of naive irritation. “I’m Qatya, of course.”

“Let me see your authorization.”

She put a finger to her lips. “Shhh. No need to be so loud. I’m just looking for Stoghi.”

“Stoghi?” He frowned. “Stoghin Learz? Major Learz?”

“That’s him.”

“Your business with Major Learz?”

She shrugged. “I missed him. It’s been days since he visited.”

“I see.” It was clear the lieutenant didn’t. “I’ll check with the bridge to find out where the major is.”

“I’d really appreciate that. I’ve been walking for kilometers and haven’t found him.”

“Uh-huh.” The lieutenant brought up his comlink.

Shalla grabbed his hand with both of hers, twisting it and forcing his palm forward and down at a painful angle. He dropped the comlink before he understood what was happening, and as he stiffened and tried to draw away, she twisted his arm up and behind him, then shoved him forward into the bulkhead. The metal rang with the impact of his head against it. She hammered the back of his head with her forearm and the metal rang again.

The unfortunate lieutenant went limp.

Moving fast, she took his sidearm and tucked it under the waistband of her pants, beneath the hanging folds of her tunic. She bound him with his belt and stuffed his holster under his tunic. By the time her team arrived, she was merely in charge of an unconscious prisoner and there was no sign that he’d been armed.

She rose. “Was that more quiet?”

Raslan gave her an abashed look. “Yes. You’re doing your job. That’s what you’re here for. You have my apologies.”

They arrayed themselves outside the door to the security foyer leading to the bridge. Bradan took the security panel next to the door, checked it for alarm switches, and began the methodical process of opening it. The four false stormtroopers stood at the ready beside the door, as if waiting for it to open so they could relieve the previous shift on duty, and the others kept to the shadowy sides of the corridor as much as they could.

After long minutes, Bradan spoke in a whisper: “I’ve got it. I’m putting it on a delay. Three seconds after it opens, it closes. Don’t start shooting until it closes, if you can avoid it; we don’t want the sound to carry.”

They formed up, stormtroopers to the fore, Shalla at the rear, and the door shot up with the customary speed of Imperial barriers.

The security foyer was beyond. Unlike the hallway, it was brightly lit, and Shalla had to blink at the sudden brilliance. But their stormtroopers, protected by the lenses of their helmets, advanced without hesitation, and Shalla heard one of them say, “Don’t move and you don’t die.”

Shalla moved in with the others, heard the door whoosh shut behind her, heard the clattering of feet as the stormtroopers spread through the security foyer and into the bridge beyond, and her eyes cleared.

Still in the foyer was a naval officer wearing the insignia of an Imperial captain. His hands were up, his round florid face wearing an expression of extreme displeasure.

Raslan stepped up to give him a shove toward the command walkway. “Get moving.” He glanced back at the sole stormtrooper remaining in the security foyer. “Guard the door. Bradan, secure the turbolift; we don’t want some ambitious fool trying to get at us through the shaft. Then secure the doors out of the crew pit.”

Bradan nodded and summoned the turbolift. The stormtrooper stationed himself before the doors to the main corridor. The other members of the team raced to their specific assignments, two of them heading to the weapons and defense consoles, others dropping into the crew pit to take up station at the control consoles, the other stormtroopers keeping their blaster rifles trained on the crew of four that had been occupying the bridge.

And suddenly Shalla was alone. True, she was mere meters from the stormtrooper and Bradan, but she was forgotten, her task done, her role vanished.

And the ship’s main communications consoles were right here. Available to her.

But the stormtrooper and Bradan had only to turn around to see her.

Delay kills more operations than treachery, bad planning, or bad luck, her father used to say.

Moving quietly and quickly, Shalla drew a cable from her pocket. She plugged one end into her datapad. The other she fitted into the standard terminal interface on the communications console nearest her. Then she brought up Castin’s program and selected the “automatic” mode that would do its best to bypass the Razor’s Kiss security on its own, without input from Shalla, then set the datapad on the console chair and slid the chair in close, making the datapad almost impossible to see.

All the while, she overheard conversation floating up from the crew pit and out of the weapons and defense alcoves: “We have the engineering section and auxiliary bridge. Ready to send the alarm.” “Wait for communications to be locked off.” “That’s locked off, sir.” “Why didn’t you say anything?” “I just finished.” “All right, send the alarm. How are the gun emplacements?” “Up and ready. I’ve fed in the locations for the station attachments; as soon as I issue the command, they’ll be metal vapor.”

As a last detail, she switched off the terminal’s screen so the actions of Castin’s program would not be visible, then quickly moved to the opposite console. She sat in one seat and put up her feet in another.

Bradan emerged from the turbolift and caught sight of her. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.” Shalla put her hands behind her head. “My job is done. I was going to let you professionals do the rest of the work.”

Bradan’s expression turned sour. “True. Well, you stay right there. Don’t move.”

“You can count on me. As long as you’re paying, I’m inert.”

Bradan turned away and headed up to the bridge and the command walkway. Shalla relaxed, but made sure her stolen blaster was close at hand. If anyone noticed the datapad in the chair, she had to make sure that he noticed nothing ever again.

General Melvar’s voice was loud over the Sungrass’s bridge comm unit: “We have signal from the target zone. Prepare to enter hyperspace in two minutes.”

Face keyed the comm. “Sungrass, requesting permission to launch.”

“Permission granted. Have your fighters ready for instant dispersal.”

“We’ll be ready.” He glanced at Captain Valton, but the man was already raising Sungrass’s repulsorlifts, drifting the cargo ship laterally to drop her from Iron Fist’s main hangar bay. “Good luck,” Face said.

Valton nodded, and Face hurried back to Sungrass’s own tight-packed hangar bay.

The bridge of Razor’s Kiss was a riot of noise.

The ship’s batteries had obliterated the connections between Razor’s Kiss and the shipbuilding station, and the Super Star Destroyer was in motion. Communications from the dying station, from Kuat, and from the main offices of the Kuat Drive Yards were demanding a response from the bridge crew. Sensors showed launches of squadrons of starfighters from Kuat and from capital ships not far away in the system, and showed those capital ships maneuvering to intercept Razor’s Kiss on her outbound flight. From the control console, the team’s communications specialist was ordering the skeleton crew on Razor’s Kiss to go to their stations and prepare for an Imperial assault.

Through all of it, Shalla sat comfortably in her chair, watching and listening to the others hurry about their duties.

The datapad at the communications console pinged, the audible cue that its current program had completed successfully.

Successfully. The program was in place.

The stormtrooper at the door turned toward her. “Did you hear that?”

“I did.” She rose, staring intently beyond him, and came a few steps forward.

“What are you looking at?”

“The door, stupid. That’s where the noise came from. The other side of the door.”

“No, it was behind me. Toward you.”

“Idiot, your helmet is fouling you up.” She nodded significantly toward the door. “Something’s on the other side.”

He moved to the nearest security console, just three seats down from the seat where her datapad lay, and brought up its main screen. It was a holocam view of the hall just outside the main door. “There’s nothing going on out there.” He turned back to the door.

Shalla quickly picked up her datapad, yanked the cable free and pocketed it, and joined him beside the door. She took a good look at the main and secondary screens, gauging which portions of the hall outside were under direct holocam observation. “You’re right. It looks clear.”

“I told you.”

She shook her head. “I don’t trust it. They’re trying something. Let me through. I’ll give it a look.”

The stormtrooper thought that over, then apparently activated his comlink. “Captain, we’re hearing some things at the main door, but holocams show nothing. Qatya has volunteered to act as forward reconnaissance in case there actually is some activity out there.”

A moment later he said, “Captain says it’s a good idea.”

“Can I have a sidearm?”

“You won’t need one just to report activity. Do you have a comlink?”

“Yes, but I don’t have your frequency.”

The stormtrooper handed her a comlink. “Good luck.” He keyed the main door open for her. Then she was through, the door shutting behind her. And though the air was the same here, suddenly she could breathe it more easily.

She was still under holocam observation, though. She moved forward with slow, steady confidence, as though she actually were moving in on a possible enemy emplacement, until she was beyond the range of the holocams they were monitoring.

She waited there a couple of minutes, then keyed her comlink and whispered, “Qatya here.”

Bradan’s voice: “Report.”

“There’s a security detail a few meters up the corridor. They have munitions. Looks like they’re rigging a shaped charge to blow the door.”

“Good work. Fall back and we’ll set up to repel.”

“No, wait. Their demolitions team is closest to me, and not guarded. They’re not expecting an assault from this direction. I can eliminate one or two and then set off the charges they’ve brought. The next group they send is going to be a little put off by the mess I leave.”

Moments of silence. Then: “That’s authorized. The captain will put you in for a bonus if you pull this off.”

“Qatya out.” From the datapad she shook the four explosives Kell had rigged for her. She set two of them down on the floor against one wall. She drew the blaster she’d taken, fired three shots into the ceiling, depressed the buttons that would begin the explosives’ ten-second countdowns, and began running.

Now it was time to find an escape pod and safely wait out the conclusion of this battle … and the one to come.

Zsinj’s fleet dropped out of hyperspace well within the Kuat system, where the gravity well of Kuat herself made hyperspace progress impossible, and the sensor displays transmitted from Sungrass’s bridge showed an oncoming Super Star Destroyer and alarming numbers of starfighters from all directions.

“Launch,” Face said, and roared out of the cargo bay as soon as the opening door gave minimal clearance. His temporary wingman, Kell, followed in his own interceptor and the others emerged rapidly.

Emerged into a star system very different from the one they were supposed to have expected, of course. The sun was not quite the shade of Coruscant’s, and the oncoming Imperial Star Destroyers were not complemented by Mon Calamari cruisers. The comm waves suddenly became crowded with shouts and infuriated questions. In character, Face keyed his comlink. “Hawk-bat Leader to Iron Fist. What is this? Where’s Coruscant?”

The chuckle he received in response was a familiar one; he recognized it as Melvar’s. “We never said you were going to Coruscant, Hawk-bats. Welcome to Kuat. Please keep to your assigned roles. Everything will work out very profitably.” There was a moment’s delay, and the pitch of the general’s voice lowered. “Hawk-bat Leader, I regret to inform you that the insertion team reports that they have lost Qatya.”

Face’s gut went cold and hard. “How?”

“She single-handedly eliminated a demolitions team and was lost in the explosion. Her action has apparently prevented any further assaults on the bridge. You have our condolences.”

“Thank you.” The tightening of Face’s stomach eased but did not go away entirely. Melvar’s story sounded like the kind of ploy Shalla might have used to get clear of the insertion team; on the other hand, the story might be entirely true. And he couldn’t ask, Did anyone witness her death? It would create suspicion. He could only pray. He said, “Someone is going to die for this.”

All around them, cargo ships and old cruisers were disgorging squadrons of starfighters. Some, like the Hawk-bats’, were modern fighter craft in good shape. Others were older craft, kept in barely functional form by their owners. Still others were fleets of Uglies, starfighters patched together from different fighter designs when there weren’t enough parts available to reconstruct a normal starfighter design.

In their groups—five here, a dozen there, a score—they turned to their assigned vectors and headed out toward the incoming strike forces.

“Hawk-bats, follow my lead.” Face turned toward a distant Imperial Star Destroyer. He could not see its complement of TIE fighters, but his sensors showed them plainly, three full squadrons of them. That was only half a fully equipped Star Destroyer’s complement; he wondered whether this vessel was underequipped, or whether it was holding squadrons in reserve. “Anyone recognize that?”

“Leader, Five. It’s Mauler. Nothing special.”

Nothing special. Only an average Imperial Star Destroyer. “That’s comforting. Thanks, Five.” He opened a wide transmission band. “This is Hawk-bat Leader. Who else is heading toward Mauler?”

The voice he got in return bore the clipped accents of an upper-class man of Coruscant. “Hawk-bat Leader, this is Vibroaxe Prime. You’re the spearhead; we’re the shaft.”

Face’s sensors did show an irregular force of between thirty and forty friendlies trailing the Hawk-bats. They were much slower and sensors couldn’t lock down a consistent vehicle profile for them—probably Uglies, then. “Want to trade places, Prime?”

“Thank you, no, Hawk-bat. I’m content for you to take first blood.”

“Join us when you get bored, Vibroaxe. Out.”

Wedge heard the exchange between Face and Vibroaxe Prime, but kept it in the background of his conscious mind. He was still struggling with the Ewok stuffed toy that was the most visible part of his disguise.

When he sat down with the Ewok in his lap, it rode up, interfering with his vision. Now he’d managed to release the main lap strap of his pilot’s harness, bring it up over the Ewok’s legs, and tighten it back down again, and that seemed to have done the trick … but if it came loose during maneuvers, he could have more trouble with it.

A dozen seconds after the end of Face’s exchange with Vibroaxe, the Hawk-bats were moments from maximum firing range of the leading edge of the Mauler forces. Wedge heard Face cut in again: “Break by pairs, set up for Kettch’s Drill, and fire at will.” Sensors showed Face swooping to port, Kell staying on his wing. Tyria and Piggy drifted to starboard. Wedge eased his yoke forward; he and Dia kept the center, losing a little altitude relative to the others.

As the range-to-target indicator dropped into numbers where a hit was an outside possibility, Wedge nudged his stick back and forth, up and down, making himself as difficult a target as possible, and opened on one of the pair of TIE fighters nearest him. Sensors showed a graze off the enemy’s hull, no significant damage. The enemy TIE’s green laser fire flashed over Wedge’s top viewport, a near miss.

An explosion ahead and to port—Face or Kell had a kill. Wedge kept up his fire on his target, saw his own green quad-linked beams tattoo the hull again and then penetrate the forward viewport. The TIE’s internal lights faded to blackness and the starfighter, now a ghost ship, began straight-line flight—still powered. Doubtless the pilot’s dying convulsions had jammed the controls into full thrust.

Then they were beyond the first wave of enemies, the first half squad.

Their enemies expected them to break and dogfight with that first wave. But Wedge’s tactic—Kettch’s Drill—took them straight forward, at full speed, toward the second wave, a full squadron of TIEs. He saw on the sensor board the four survivors of the first wave curve around to get into position behind them, but their maneuver was a little slow, a little tentative, as they adjusted to the Hawk-bats doing something unexpected.

The second wave was in range. Wedge continued juking around, opened fire, saw lasers spraying from the solar wing arrays of Dia’s interceptor to his starboard. Return fire streaked the starfield green all around him and he felt a shudder as one laser blast creased his hull. An unfamiliar sensation, and once again he wished devoutly for a return to his X-wing and its shields.

His fire and Dia’s converged on a luckless TIE fighter. The craft exploded into a ball of incandescent gas and superheated shrapnel. Their two flight paths curved around it as they plunged into the second wave and beyond.

Sensors showed the four TIEs of the first wave closing in and several starfighters of the second wave curving around to join them. He smiled. The plan was operating perfectly so far. Yes, they had a squad and a half of fighters on their tails, but the forward momentum of Mauler’s squadrons was slowing.

The Hawk-bats were doing their job. They were serving Zsinj well. Amused, he shook that thought away and returned his concentration to the third wave of enemies.

These they dove straight toward, each picking a target and maneuvering straight into that TIE’s path, juking around enough to be a difficult target yet always homing in on the oncoming starfighter as if meaning to ram it. Wedge’s continued fire hulled his target and he flew through the debris cloud, hearing clattering and banging against his hull as he did. On the sensor board, he saw Dia’s target veer away from her at the last second, arcing away straight into the path of a vengeful TIE from the first wave. The sensors showed the two blips merge into one, then disappear altogether.

Ahead, the fourth wave, a half squadron. Wedge saw Face lead the abandonment of Kettch’s Drill, looping up and back the way the Hawk-bats had come, the other Hawk-bats joining him in formation, three not-quite-full squadrons of TIEs following in vengeful pursuit.

In full TIE-fighter-pilot regalia, which she had found in a pilot’s ready room adjacent to the secondary hangar bay, and carrying extra life-support units, Shalla lurked on the walkway above the bay’s pair of TIE interceptors.

She should have been safely tucked away in an escape pod by now. But with her mission accomplished, another idea had occurred to her … thus the dangerous three-kilometer trek back to the bay by which she’d arrived, thus the trail of unconscious foes along the hallways and passages she’d chosen for her return trip.

Thus this skulking on the walkway. Beyond the Magnetic-containment field she could see signs of distant battle: tiny flashes and slivers of light, their sources too far away to make out.

Stormtroopers, Kuat loyalists probably wondering what to do about the ship’s extraordinary activities, had entered the bay mere seconds after she had and were hard at work rummaging through the intrusion team’s shuttle. Others guarded the door into the bay. No matter; that wasn’t the way she intended to exit. She climbed down into the left-hand interceptor, the one closest to the bulkhead and farthest from the stormtroopers. Without belting in, she began her prelaunch checklist. It was longer than usual—this interceptor, obviously a commanding officer’s personal escape vehicle, had its own hyperdrive and a more elaborate navigation computer than the standard interceptor.

All systems seemed go, though she didn’t power up the engines to make sure; the resulting repulsorlift rumble would be certain to alert the stormtroopers to her presence.

She stood and climbed partway out of the access hatch, hanging in place by one arm. She brought up the last of Kell’s explosives, activated them, and threw them as far across the bay as she could. They clattered against the bulkhead behind the intrusion-team shuttle.

Stormtroopers perked up, swung their weapons in that direction. “What was that?” “You and you, take the far side …”

Shalla dropped back into the cockpit and dogged the hatch shut.

She was almost done strapping herself in when the explosions went off. She saw a ball of yellow-and-orange flame on the far side of the shuttle, saw the shuttle rock, saw stormtroopers thrown through the air like dolls. Her interceptor and the one next to it rocked as well, and a great bubble of atmosphere, shoved through the magcon field by the sudden pressure within the bay, dissipated in the vacuum beyond.

As the stormtroopers raced toward their fallen allies and shook their heads against the sudden deafening explosion, she brought her engines up and goosed them. On repulsorlifts, she squirted out through the magcon field and then took an abrupt vector toward the stern. She immediately brought her speed down to something just higher than a good running pace.

As she’d expected, the hull of the Razor’s Kiss was littered with debris from the shipbuilding station. Long armatures hung swinging from attachment points, and other metal trash clung to or rolled about on the hull, trapped there by the ship’s artificial gravity. The Super Star Destroyer was in motion, heading out-system as fast as its untried engines would take it, and distant Imperial Star Destroyers were drawing ever nearer.

She took a deep breath and tried to quiet her stomach. This improvised plan of hers was more likely to get her killed than anything else. But when she’d recognized the opportunity in front of her, she knew she had to try it.

She skimmed as close to the ship’s hull as her flying skills would allow her, and occasionally rolled the interceptor to simulate the motion of debris.

She wouldn’t look too odd on sensors. A direct observation or holocam view would reveal that she was a live TIE and not just debris. Then a single shot from a laser battery would turn her into debris. So, white-knuckled, she continued her absurdly slow flight and prayed that nothing noticed her.

19

The Hawk-bats roared down toward the pursuing Vibroaxes with the Mauler’s TIE fighters in close pursuit. The Vibroaxes, with their awkward collection of jury-rigged weaponry, opened fire at just beyond their maximum effective weapons range, and the Hawk-bats and enemy TIEs plunged into that hail of destructive energy as if bent on suicide.

Wedge’s stomach felt like a refrigeration unit stuck on high. They’d been in less danger of death when flying into the teeth of their enemies than into the mass fire of these pirates, who theoretically could distinguish the Hawk-bats’ sensor blips from those of the others … but who obviously didn’t have the skills or accurate enough equipment to make the best of that distinction. Laser beams, red and green, the flashes of ion cannons, and the blue trails of proton torpedoes flashed between them, among them.

The Hawk-bats passed the leading edge of the Vibroaxe force and veered, three wing pairs turning to three different vectors. Some pursuing TIEs broke off to avoid the cloud of Uglies, others plunged into the cloud, others skirted along the leading edge of the cloud. Wedge’s TIE was rocked by the detonation of a torpedo nearby; he checked his sensor and found that Dia was still on his wing, still intact.

The comm waves were suddenly full, impossible to track: “Squad Two, continue on to primary target.” “Hawk-bat Five, this is Twelve, recommend you climb now.” “I’m hit I’m hit I’m—” “Can’t shake him.” “I’ve got him, Bantha.” “Archer, this is Vee Prime. Spray a pattern of torps back toward the baby, we have a whole squad cutting out to go after him.” “That—Emperor’s nose, that’s an Ewok! They’ve got an Ewok pilot!”

Wedge thumbed his comlink, still set up with Castin’s Ewok-voice modifications, and said, “Bleed and die, yub, yub,” then rolled to starboard and relative down as he caught sight of the squadron continuing on to the new Super Star Destroyer. It had skirted the engagement zone and its ten survivors were forming up. Even before clearing the screen of friendly and enemy fighters, he opened fire, hitting one TIE fighter in the engine pod with all four beams, a beautiful shot. The fighter went off like a fireworks display, its explosive cloud enveloping its wingman, but that TIE emerged from the cloud intact.

Dia’s complementary shot hit another TIE’s port solar array wing, but merely punched a clean hole through it without significantly damaging the vehicle. Together, he and Dia tore out of the engagement zone and continued after the nine remaining TIEs.

Shalla saw something ahead, movement just above the hull, and brought her interceptor down against a piece of space-station wreckage. She killed power instantly.

That dropped the new blips off her sensor screen, but she could see the source of the blips through the viewscreen. A half squadron of interceptors heading more or less in her direction, and as they came closer she could see that their solar wing arrays were decorated with the horizontal red stripes of the 181st Fighter Group—the deadly unit of Baron Soontir Fel. She stopped breathing.

The interceptors roared past her at a distance of less than a hundred meters. None varied its course to swoop closer to her; none hesitated. She relaxed. Doubtless they were doing a visual reconnaissance of the skin of Razor’s Kiss, making sure there was no substantial damage from the Destroyer’s violent departure from its berth.

She powered up again, ran through an abbreviated checklist, and brought her interceptor back into motion.

From here, she had to climb the hull to the Super Star Destroyer’s command tower. It was a more difficult approach, as the ship’s hull, which seemed comparatively smooth from a distance, was in the area of the command tower, a tricky terrain of graduated terraces.

Yet her terrain-following flying was fast and skilled, and within moments she settled neatly—and very delicately—into place between the deflector-shield domes atop the command tower.

She powered down all systems except her suit’s life support and the starfighter’s communications board. Then she changed the interceptor’s comm unit to broadcast across a range of frequencies, took a deep breath, and said three words: “Parasite Two, go.”

Of course, they’d probably detect that transmission. To account for it, she put as much of a masculine growl as she could manage into her voice and continued transmitting. “Kuat Central Authority, please acknowledge. This is Engineer’s Mate Vula aboard Razor’s Kiss. This vessel has been seized by Rebels or pirates. I think we’re under way. I’m requesting instructions.”

A hiss, then a static-blurred voice: “Vula, this is Mauler Control. We’re aware of the situation. Where are you?”

“I can’t say. This is an open transmission. They’re probably listening.”

“Then get to an escape pod and launch. You’ve done your duty.”

“Acknowledged. Out.” She sighed. Get to an escape pod. Odd to have an enemy repeat to her an order she’d already disobeyed. She hoped that the comm exchange had fooled Raslan’s crew, and tried to relax.

Dia had just vaped one of the fighters, battering the top of its hull with a barrage that popped open the access hatch, filled the interior with light, and cast the remains of its pilot adrift, when Wedge heard the transmission. “Parasite Two, go.”

Startled, he checked over his sensor board. That code meant that one of the Hawk-bats had successfully pretended to crash upon the hull of the second Super Star Destroyer and was in position to destroy its deflector-shield domes. But all the Hawk-bats still appeared on his screen.

The voice had been female. It had to be Shalla. Some of the chill in his stomach began to fade.

Good, that was good, and not just because it meant she’d survived her mission. Now they’d only have to try to stage the Parasite portion of their operation once. Twice, even if they could pull it off, would probably look suspicious.

Ahead, two of the TIE fighters looped around to come back at Wedge and Dia. A delaying tactic—the commander of that squadron knew his fighters couldn’t outfly interceptors, so he was sacrificing two pilots to allow the others to reach their objective, the Super Star Destroyer. The sacrificial TIEs looped out at a considerable distance before coming back in, so that if the Hawk-bats continued on their course, the fighters would be able to settle in neatly behind them.

Wedge said, “Four, stay with me, then break when we’re past them,” and vectored toward the incoming craft. Dia tucked in neatly to his aft and port.

The incoming TIEs sprayed fire as indiscriminately as if they were watering a garden. Wedge concentrated on evasive maneuvers, returning fire when his targeting brackets suggested they were about to manage a lock, but his beams still went wide. Then the two pairs of TIEs passed one another’s position and looped to come around again.

Wedge gritted his teeth and pulled the tightest, hardest loop he could manage. His gravitational compensator couldn’t quite compensate, and the maneuver slammed him back in his pilot’s couch, forcing blood into his head; he felt himself graying out and eased off. But his prey hadn’t tried a maneuver so ambitious, and Wedge found himself, half on instinct, tucked in behind the fighter. His prey wavered and veered off to shake him, but Wedge adhered to the fighter’s tail, sized up his shot, waited for the image of the target to jiggle in the targeting bracket, and fired. The fighter exploded in a rain of glowing gas and debris. Wedge twitched his yoke, a lateral drift, so he did not have to fly through the debris cloud.

He spotted Dia’s sensor signal on his screen and maneuvered around to get a look. She, too, was tucked in behind her foe, firing twin-linked lasers upon it, and her fire chewed away at the enemy’s twin ion engines and wing pylons. Wedge saw one pylon give way, reduced to molten slag, and one engine flame out.

That pilot shut the engine down and continued veering, trying to escape Dia.

She let him. She allowed the crippled TIE to vector off toward safety. She looped around and formed up with Wedge.

He brought them around toward their original objective and thought about that. The old Dia would have vaped that target without a second’s hesitation. The new one seemed satisfied with having the objective accomplished rather than scoring the kill. He hoped the change wouldn’t prove fatal to her. But all he said was, “Good flying, Four.”

“Yub, yub, One.”

Up ahead, toward the new Super Star Destroyer, Wedge caught flashes of light.

His sensor board showed that the six TIEs had become twelve—but the newcomers were blue dots, their transponders indicating they were friendlies from Iron Fist. The six red dots became five, then four, then two, then none. Wedge slowed his approach and Dia followed suit.

The newcomers continued in their direction.

Wedge opened his comlink. “Leader, what to do?”

“It’s still hairy here, One. Come back in.”

A new voice, clipped and martial accents: “Am I speaking to the Ewok pilot?” It was Fel’s voice, and Wedge’s gut chilled down to cryogenic levels again.

The sensor board showed the transmission coming from the oncoming TIE interceptors. Wedge said, “Yub, yub. Kettch here. Who talk?”

“My name Fel. Fel want to fly with Kettch.” The sophisticated voice and the simplified syntax just didn’t go together.

Wedge shook his head over that and brought his interceptor back toward the engagement zone. Dia followed suit, mercifully not intruding on this conversation. “Yes,” Wedge said. “Fly with. You see Kettch best pilot.”

“Well, best Ewok, certainly.”

“Kettch not really Ewok.”

“No?” There was surprise in Fel’s voice.

“Must not be. Ewoks dumb. Not under-stand astro-navigation. Not under-stand power-up check-list. Dumb.”

“Sad.” The six red-striped interceptors moved up alongside Wedge and Dia.

“Sad. Kettch not have mate. Ewok females too dumb.”

“Even sadder.”

“Fel have mate?” There it was, the question Wedge wanted to ask, had to ask. What was the fate of Fel’s wife, Wedge’s sister Syal?

“Oh, Fel have mate.”

“Smart mate?”

“Smart mate. Actress. You understand actress?”

“Like storyteller. She good mate?”

“Good mate.”

“Fly with you on big island ship?”

“No, she has her own projects. You understand projects?”

“Under-stand. Make bombs, fix star-fighters, stab humans.”

“Something like that.”

This brought them to the leading edge of the engagement zone. Wedge could see that the battle had not gone well for the Vibroaxes, who were down to six active combatants; they and the four Hawk-bats there were still facing fifteen TIEs.

Wedge said, “Stick with Kettch. Kettch teach good.” He rolled out and dove toward the thickest patch of the fight, where three pairs of TIEs were battling Face, Kell, and the Vibroaxe command vessel, a heavily reinforced combat shuttle.

“Fel doesn’t need Kettch to teach. Fel is best human pilot.”

“No. Other humans say other name is best.” Provoke him; maybe he’ll get angry and say something in an unguarded moment. Wedge held off from firing. The enemy TIEs hadn’t yet reacted to the new arrivals, and every second of approach improved his shot.

“Luke Skywalker, then. Rebel scum, but a good flier.”

Dia finally broke in, speaking in her silky Seku voice: “Actually, we’ve been telling him about Wedge Antilles and Rogue Squadron.”

An explosion of laughter from Fel. “Antilles? Oh, he’s luck incarnate, to be certain, but he really can’t fly worth a damn.”

Despite himself, Wedge felt a wash of anger. At optimum range, he opened fire on the nearest TIEs, the ones pursuing Kell.

Fel opened fire at the same instant. Their sudden strafe hit both TIEs, detonating them within milliseconds of one another.

Wedge veered off to approach the rear of Face’s opponent. Fel paced him. The two of them swooped in difficult circular patterns, like tiny planets orbiting an invisible sun, and fired upon Face’s enemies, annihilating them with similar merciless efficiency.

Antilles and Fel, brothers-in-law, flying together again for the first time in years, since Fel’s disappearance. But it wasn’t a cause for joy. Fel seemed at ease in his role as Zsinj’s ally, and had obviously lost all respect for Wedge in those intervening years.

They turned toward the Vibroaxe shuttle, but there were gas-and-shrapnel clouds near it, with Dia and Fel’s wingman on a course to rejoin them.

The sensor board showed the remaining enemy TIEs turning back toward another Imperial Star Destroyer. Not Mauler; that vessel had passed the engagement zone at a considerable distance, come within range of Iron Fist, and traded long-range blows with the larger vessel. Mauler was now in a slow, uncorrected spin along her long axis, flame venting from half a dozen spots along her hull. There were no escape pods launching; the ship’s commander doubtless thought he could bring the damage under control.

Mauler’s absence was cause for celebration … but a dozen or more Imperial Star Destroyers were still coming on toward them.

“Hawk-bats, Vibroaxe, One Eighty-first.” It was Melvar’s voice. “Fall back, fall back. We are nearing the launch zone.”

“Good flying with you, Kettch.” Fel abruptly veered away toward the rest of his unit. “We’ll do this again.”

“Yub, yub.” Wedge managed to convey more enthusiasm than he felt.

It sounded as though Fel was happy in Zsinj’s service. Perhaps irredeemable. That meant the next time they flew together Wedge might have to kill him.

Iron Fist, now trailing Razor’s Kiss by a considerable distance and acting as the center of her defensive screen, was under attack as the Hawk-bats approached Sungrass. The mighty Super Star Destroyer had taken some blast damage to its port side. The crippled Mauler and the presence, a few thousand kilometers behind Iron Fist’s escape vector, of the burning remains of the Imperial Star Destroyer Gilded Claw, gave mute testimony about the source of that damage. Iron Fist was still suffering the strafing runs from Gilded Claw’s TIE squadrons.

“Leader, Twelve. I don’t have enough kills.” Piggy, in his fighter, vectored toward Iron Fist.

Face took a deep breath. That was code, and Piggy was doing what the mission called for; this was the first opportunity any of them had had to get in close to Iron Fist without raising suspicion. Still, form dictated that he key his comlink. “Twelve, Leader. That’s a negative. Return to Sungrass.”

“Don’t hear you, Leader.”

“Twelve, blast it … Eleven, go with him.”

“Affirmative, Leader.” Tyria’s fighter zoomed off in Piggy’s wake.

Tense, Face divided his time between docking with Sungrass and monitoring his sensors and comm system. The sensors showed Piggy and Tyria pursuing a lone TIE fighter up the ever-higher decks of Iron Fist’s command tower. Their communications showed them in hot pursuit, then veering in different directions around the tower … and suddenly Piggy was in the lead, the fighter pursuing him, Tyria pursuing him.…

Face’s stomach became a wall of knotted muscle. That was as gutsy and insane a maneuver as he’d ever seen, Piggy deliberately exposing himself to fire to account for what they needed Iron Fist’s sensor crew to conclude. Piggy had to depend on Tyria’s firing skill in those brief seconds.

Shrieks over the comlink, Tyria modulating her voice between victorious cheer and horror in a single syllable, Piggy’s and the pursuing TIE’s signals winking out from the sensor screen.

Finally, Tyria’s voice, subdued and pained. “Leader, I have to report that Twelve is no more. Our friend Morrt is One with the universe.”

Morrt. A Gamorrean parasite. That had to mean that Piggy was alive and on-station, but officially dead, and Tyria was calling him by that name to inform the others without repeating the word “parasite.” Face let out a long sigh and suddenly felt ten years older and more tired. “I’m sorry, Eleven. You did the best you could. But you have less than a minute to dock before we launch. We’ll raise a cup to Morrt at this evening’s meal.”

Piggy lay on his side, restrained from dropping to the starboard side of the cockpit only by the harness on his pilot’s couch.

His crash against Iron Fist’s hull had only been half-simulated. His pursuer’s final laser blast had hit his cockpit somewhere between and above the twin ion engines, doing damage to the fighter’s electronics, and his damage diagnostics display had been lit up like a city’s festival-of-lights display before he’d powered down.

Ahead, just over the artificial hill of Iron Fist’s command tower, he could see the top of one of the ship’s shield projector domes.

But that would have to wait. For now, he began solving intricate astronautic formulae, beautiful numeric structures describing the relationship between real space and hyperspace.

The stars he could see in his disadvantaged position suddenly elongated as Zsinj’s fleet entered hyperspace.

In Iron Fist’s main hangar bay, Face emerged from Sungrass’s airlock.

Quite a reception awaited him and the representatives of the various pirate bands. Melvar was at the center of the largest open area, a phalanx of stormtroopers around him. He was shaking hands with motley-looking pilots and officers, occasionally handing out shiny new datapads to them.

As Face approached, one pirate in particular was haranguing Melvar, shaking a fist in his face, gesturing with an angry theatricality Face decided was not simulated. The man was a Devaronian, and one given much to decoration; the horns on his forehead were gilded, and his sharp teeth gleamed so brightly they had to have been augmented by some surface bonded to them. His clothes were similar to an Imperial admiral’s in cut, but made of red cloth and leather, with an eye-catching red-and-gold overcloak.

As Face drew near, he could hear the Devaronian’s voice; it was that of Vibroaxe Prime. “… malicious lies. This is not the way allies collaborate, Melvar.”

Zsinj’s general shrugged. “The lie was a matter of security. I did not underrepresent the forces we would be facing.”

“Yes, you did! My fleet would have fared better against Y-wings and X-wings. We did simulator training against them that we could have spent against simulated TIEs. That was lost time. I’ve suffered eighty percent vehicle losses, nearly fifty percent pilot losses!”

Melvar’s voice became soothing. “And you’ll receive the bonuses we promised for those losses, in the second round of payments.”

“There will be no second round! I want it all now. And not accounts—materials, precious gems, cargo. None of your datapad treachery.”

Face shouldered his way to the front of the crowd and frowned. “What treachery, Melvar?”

“Ah, General Kargin.” Melvar extended a hand back and one of his aides handed him a datapad. “Twenty-eight percent losses and an impressive kill rate. You’re in for a bonus on that alone with the second round. For now, your initial payment, as promised.” He offered the datapad.

“What’s this? This isn’t Imperial credits.”

“It’s all the information you need to access a numbered account where your payment resides. On Halmad. We thought that would be convenient for you.”

“It would.” He looked dubiously at the datapad. “And if, like Vibroaxe here, I want material goods?”

“You’ll have them. Half the value of the payment we negotiated. If we’re inconvenienced enough to have to carry hard currency and goods, we take a substantial cut. No negotiation.”

Face shrugged and took the datapad. “I trust Zsinj,” he announced. “Simply because it’s not cost-effective for him to betray us. Word would spread to every pirate band in Imperial and Rebel space. He’d never get anything but blasters in the teeth from them afterward.”

Melvar smiled. “As ever, the Hawk-bats make the intelligent choice. You have my sympathies for your losses. The woman Qatya was of special help.”

“Her efforts will, I hope, be long remembered. Until the second payment, Melvar.” Face brought the datapad up to his brow in a mock salute and turned back toward Sungrass.

Behind him, Vibroaxe Prime and others of the pirate leaders, more subdued, began accepting the datapads or negotiating for the reduced fees in material goods.

Sungrass’s first hyperspace jump was straight toward Halmad, but only a light-year in length. Its second carried the cargo hauler straight to the deep-space rendezvous point where Mon Remonda waited.

Not just Mon Remonda. Other elements of General Solo’s fleet were in evidence, including a Nebulon-B-class frigate, a Quasar Fire-class cruiser refitted as a light starfighter carrier, and a somewhat decrepit-looking Marauder-class corvette, a class of fighting ship normally found in the Corporate Sector. Wedge decided that Han Solo had to have cobbled together his force from disparate and overtaxed sources.

When Wedge reached the bridge of the Mon Calamari cruiser, General Solo was waiting with a smile and a handshake.

“Any word from the Super Star Destroyer?” Wedge asked.

“Fine, thank you,” Solo said. “You?”

Wedge grinned. “Sorry. How are you?”

“No, no word.” Han gestured at the holoprojected starfield that dominated the center of the bridge. Around it, ship’s officers, chiefly Mon Calamari, ignored the humans and went about their business. “Don’t be so anxious. Your pilots could use a little time to rest.”

“Piggy’s fighter only carries so much air, even with the extra life-support units he’s carried aboard,” Wedge said. “When it runs down, he has a choice to make. Try to run to freedom—which does him no good if he’s in the middle of unoccupied space, since that TIE fighter won’t carry him very far, assuming he can even elude Iron Fist’s tractors and guns. Turn himself in—which is very bad, for the usual reasons and some other ones, too. Or maybe try to sneak aboard the destroyer, very tricky. And we have no idea what Shalla Nelprin’s status is. So even if our comm control program is planted correctly, the Parasite part of our plan is on a limited schedule.”

“Well … still. Stand down for a while. Iron Fist and the other Destroyer may be jumping around for a while, and it could be some time before they reenter normal space and fire up their hypercomm system. Assuming, of course, that your program is planted and operational—”

The Mon Calamari captain, Onoma, swung around in his command chair and sent it gliding toward Solo and Wedge on its armature. There was excitement in his gravelly voice. “Communications reports a signal from the Donn program,” he said. “We have a location on the target ship, only minutes old.”

“You know, I almost never get to be right,” Solo said quietly. He raised his voice: “Put that location up on the board.”

A blinking yellow glow appeared in the midst of the starfield projection.

Han, Wedge, and Onoma moved next to it. Solo said, “Looks like they took a course perpendicular to a straight run back into the areas of space he controls. And that’s good for us. Mon Remonda is the closest force to him.”

Wedge asked, “Are you planning on a jump straight to the broadcast position?”

Han shook his head. “No, I want a little dispersal. See if we can have ships on all his escape vectors. He’s out in deep space, away from any known gravity wells—he can jump back to hyperspace pretty quickly if we don’t finish him. You have any ideas on how he’ll behave in real space, before his next jump?”

“He’s going to spend some time where he is, having his technicians go over the new Destroyer’s hyperdrive engines.” Wedge considered. “Which means stopping dead or cruising. He kept moving after he made his first jump out of Kuat system, and he was moving in the same direction as the hyperspace jump.… Can you indicate his course from Kuat to his current position?”

A thin white line appeared, tracing from the blinking yellow dot to a star a couple of hand spans away.

“That’s my guess,” Wedge said. “He’ll be at cruising speed along the same course until it’s time to jump again.”

“Magnify it,” Han said, and the holoprojected image expanded until the white line representing Iron Fist’s hyperspace jump dominated most of the image; only a few dozen stars remained within the magnified area.

Han pointed just ahead of the Destroyers’ projected course. “All right. Calculate time to jump to this point. Compare it with Iron Fist’s normal cruising speed. Project its probable location based on that. That will be Mon Remonda’s arrival zone. Now, assuming he wants to run to his own space, we’ll figure out the two most likely courses for him to take and put Tedevium in front of one of them and the rest of this group in front of the other one.”

“Tedevium?” Appalled, Wedge glanced out the forward viewports to catch sight of the frigate. “That’s a training vessel, not a combat-ready frigate.”

Han shrugged—apparently not out of unconcern, but out of helplessness. “My fleet’s in three pieces, with strength balanced as closely as I could make it between them. We use what we have. Tedevium has a graduating class of Y-wing pilots and a commander who’s always good in a scrap.”

“True. Still—trainees.” Wedge suppressed a shudder.

Han put out a hand. “Good luck, Commander. Sorry you didn’t get that rest I was offering.”

Wedge took it. “Either way, I’m going to get it pretty soon.”

20

“Accuracy was nearly ideal, sir,” said Captain Raslan—or, rather, his holographic image now wavering in the security foyer of Iron Fist’s bridge. “Efficiency, however, is another matter. The jump here used nearly three times as much energy as it optimally should.”

Zsinj kept any annoyance out of his face. This was not bad news. He’d gambled almost everything on the assumption that Razor’s Kiss actually was as complete as its builders claimed and had made it to safety with his new prize. All other considerations were minor ones. “What about damage?”

“It appears that, contrary to safety regulations, some of the Kuat workers had jammed an airlock open where the access armature attached from the station to Razor’s Kiss. When the ship blasted free, that section vented its atmosphere rather precipitously. We’ve corrected the problem. The Kuat Drive Yards workers who were on duty at that portion of the ship perished, of course. Instant corrective measures for those who disobeyed the rules.”

Zsinj grinned, then suppressed it. “Very well, Captain. Carry on. Keep me updated.”

“Yes, sir.” The image faded.

Zsinj turned and jumped. General Melvar stood right behind him, his makeup removed and his features returned to their usual cheerful blandness. “You did it again,” Zsinj said, cross.

“Yes, sir.”

“All the pirate captains happy?”

“Not one of them was happy, but none of them shot me, which I took to be a good sign. I think most of them will work with us again. Especially once those who took the credit vouchers take them to their systems of origin and determine that they’re real.” He gave Zsinj a curious look. “I’m surprised you’re not over there now. On Razor’s Kiss, looking at every rivet and dab of paint.”

“Oh, I will be soon. Best to wait until Security has removed the last Kuat forces and possible saboteurs.”

There was a sudden surge of noise from the crew pit, voices raised in fast exchanges. Iron Fist’s captain, Vellar, a stern-faced man just now going to fat, leaned over the command walkway to peer down into the midst of the noise, then looked back at Zsinj, unhappiness in his expression. “Several ships have just dropped from hyperspace in our vicinity. One dead ahead as we bear, the rest situated to our starboard and trailing. The one ahead is tentatively identified as a Mon Calamari cruiser.”

Zsinj felt as though he’d been dropped into a polar breeze. He suppressed a shudder. “Mon Remonda, here?”

“That’s not determined yet, sir, but—”

“Shut up. Signal Razor’s Kiss. Coordinate a five-light-year hyperspace jump on this course and execute it.”

“Sir, the cruiser is maneuvering directly into our path. We’ll be on her before it’s time to jump. Shall we change course to avoid?”

“No, you idiot. One Mon Calamari cruiser in the path of two Super Star Destroyers? Bring all guns of both ships to bear. Before we make the transition to lightspeed, we’re going to rid the galaxy of the Rebels’ most annoying cruiser … and of the legacy of Han Solo.”

•      •      •

Her comlink suddenly crackled with activity on New Republic bandwidths, and Shalla jumped in surprise. Guiltily, she checked her life-support unit. She’d fallen asleep and the thing had run down almost to empty. A really stupid way to die, she told herself. She removed another unit from the storage compartment beneath her seat and put it on.

The comm transmissions were all encoded, but by straining her eyes she could see, in the incredible immensity of the starfield ahead of her, a distant needle of light that could not be a star. Her sensors might tell her what it was … then again, if activated, they might alert the Razor’s Kiss crew to her presence.

But the domes to the right and left of her suddenly pulsed with power, bringing their mighty shields up over the Super Star Destroyer, and she decided the ship’s crew had other things to worry about. She began her power-on sequence.

Wedge roared out of Mon Remonda’s port hangar, came around to a course matching the cruiser’s, and waited as the others formed up on him.

Kell flew Piggy’s X-wing, but that left the unit shy one snubfighter. Dia was in one of the TIE interceptors, hastily painted in Wraith Squadron grays to disguise its recent activities with the Hawk-bats. Wedge tried to force a nagging voice of worry from his mind. He didn’t need to tell Wes to look after his underdefended wingman. He just wanted to.

The last members of his unit to launch, Face and Lara, formed up. Moments later, Rogue Squadron began emerging by twos, Tycho Celchu and Corran Horn first, and forming up by wingmates. On the opposite side of Mon Remonda, the A-wings of Polearm Squadron and B-wings of Nova Squadron would also be assembling.

Han’s voice crackled in his ear. “They’re aware of us. They’re not deploying their fighter screen. That suggests they plan to blow their way through and launch back into hyperspace.”

“The rest of our group?” Wedge asked.

“Coming up fast in their wake.”

“Please inform them that if they’re very nice, maybe we’ll leave them something to shoot at.”

Han Solo watched the universe tilt through the viewports as Mon Remonda turned on its intercept course.

He could feel Captain Onoma’s eyes on him. He turned to the captain and shook his head. “Not yet,” he said. “Save your fire. This is going to be a slugging match.”

“You sound regretful.”

“I hate slugging matches.”

Piggy activated his power-on sequence.

Nothing happened. The fighter’s interior remained dark and silent.

Shalla’s sensors showed four squadrons of starfighters approaching.

When should she act? The later she made her assault on the shield projectors, the better it would be for her unit. But she knew her fellow pilots had to be suffering, approaching without any knowledge of whether she’d be able to accomplish her task.

She calculated their rate of approach based on sensor data. When they were thirty seconds short of firing range, she activated her repulsorlifts, bringing her interceptor up a mere meter above the deck of Razor’s Kiss and well back from the domes. She swung toward the starboard shield projector dome and fired.

The dome blew apart in an impressive display of flaming gas and metal shards; she heard shrapnel bounce off her hull. She rotated and fired again, obliterating the second projector with similar finality.

Then she settled down again atop the rubbish-strewn tower. She’d wait a moment to launch—wait until space was crowded and confused, when she wouldn’t be such an easy target.

•      •      •

“Razor’s Kiss reports catastrophic failure of topside shield generators!”

Zsinj stared at the captain as though the man had suddenly grown a Devaronian’s horns and teeth. “Tell me you’re lying.”

The captain shook his head helplessly.

Zsinj slammed his hands on the nearest bulkhead. “Change course to eight-five. Tell Razor’s Kiss to follow closely and use us for protection from Mon Remonda. Calculate a new jump on that course and initiate it as soon as possible.” He looked at Melvar. “Launch all fighters.”

Wedge’s sensor board showed the second Super Star Destroyer’s topside shields evaporating. It displayed the information without emotion, without understanding of how that fact made the pilots’ hearts jump.

“All squadrons, this is Wraith Leader. Prepare for strafing run on the second Destroyer. Ignore Iron Fist for now. X-wings, B-wings, commence with proton torpedoes. Save some for the engines.” Wedge heeled over, changing course toward the second destroyer, and sent up a silent cheer for Shalla.

Iron Fist surged forward, her bow guns opening up on the oncoming starfighters, and began a slow maneuver to starboard as the second destroyer dropped back behind her. Wedge adjusted course, bringing his squadrons up over Iron Fist’s bow at a considerable altitude.

And then they were in the midst of it, ion cannons sending energy washes between them, laser batteries making space brilliant all around them. Wedge felt hair stand up all over his body as an ion blast came too close; his cockpit lights dimmed, but the computer and his R5 astromech did not suffer power loss. He heard one cry over the comlink—the cry of a survivor who’d just seen a wingman evaporate; Polearm Five disappeared off the sensor board.

Then they were past Iron Fist, the ship’s horrendous field of damage tracking and following them, and the second Destroyer’s guns opened up.

But now they could reply. “Fire at will,” Wedge commanded, and some of the starfighters were launching proton torpedoes before he had the second word out. Faint blue trails leaped out from the starfighters, homing in on the Destroyer’s bow, detonating split seconds later in huge balls of incendiary destruction.

Ahead, a tiny spark—ion-engine emissions—leaped off the command tower, then curved around in front of that projection and opened fire. Minuscule needles of green flashed between it and the destroyer’s bridge … and Wedge watched as the bridge viewports blew in, then vented out just as suddenly in a hail of debris and atmosphere.

“New Republic forces, this is Wraith Ten. Sending transponder data. Please flag me a friendly.”

“Confirm that friendly,” Wedge said. “People, this is the lady who just opened the front door for us.”

Cheers sounded over the comlink. Then the starfighters flashed past the command tower and its ruined summit, past the friendly interceptor that looped around and struggled to catch up. They rained their torpedoes down on the Super Star Destroyer’s stern, then looped around to add the ship’s engines to their list of victims.

A grating voice, Mon Calamari: “Assault force, this is Mon Remonda. Sensors show starfighters launching from Iron Fist in considerable strength.”

“Understood,” Wedge said. “All squadrons, stay in formation. Turn to course nine-oh but keep firing on the target destroyer until you no longer bear. Prepare for individual action.”

“The Razor’s Kiss bridge is no longer responding to communications,” the captain said. His voice was dull with this recitation of what was only one new set of bad news. “Sensors show serious damage to the bridge. I think we’ve lost them.”

Zsinj stared at the holoprojection of a live image of Razor’s Kiss. The Super Star Destroyer, so powerful, so beautiful just minutes ago, was now awash in flame from bow to stern. Hundreds of gouts of fire had erupted from her top deck.

“What about our man on the auxiliary bridge?”

“Also not reporting. Possibly killed during the barrage.”

On a fully staffed destroyer, crews would be putting out those fires. More officers would be occupying the auxiliary bridge and getting back in contact with Iron Fist. But this was not a fully completed Destroyer.

When Zsinj spoke, his voice was quiet, calm. “What’s her course?”

“She came to eight-five as ordered. But she has not come back up to flank speed. Unless we reduce speed, we’re going to leave her behind.”

“Reduce—”

A voice rose from the crew pit: “Communication from Razor’s Kiss!”

Zsinj shouted, “Well, bring it up!”

The dismal image of the crippled Destroyer was replaced by a faded holoprojection of a stormtrooper. His helmet was off, revealing a big face on a big neck, black hair just a little too shaggy to be regulation, a determined expression. “This is Trooper Second Class Gatterweld.”

Zsinj frowned. He knew the names of all his agents aboard Razor’s Kiss. This man wasn’t one of them. “You’re part of the ship’s security detail?”

“Yes, sir.”

The warlord smiled. A social call from an enemy who wasn’t even an officer. The ridiculousness of it pleased him. “And what can I do for you this fine day, Trooper Gatterweld?”

“Sir, I’d just taken the auxiliary bridge to gain control of this ship when the attack came. But I’d prefer to see this fine lady intact in your hands rather than destroyed at the hands of the Rebels.”

Zsinj’s knees went weak. “I’m going to put a communications officer on. He’s going to talk you through the process of slaving Razor’s Edge to our bridge. Then we’ll save her.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Gatterweld, I’m going to make you a very rich man.”

“I don’t care about that, sir. I’m just doing my duty.”

Zsinj tottered away to let Melvar take over. Suddenly exhausted, he sank into a chair at the communications console.

Events like this reminded him, from time to time, that there was good in the universe, that with enough faith and determination he could win. He could win everything.

Piggy was up to his armpits in wiring when he found the problem. His port-side ion engine was completely out of commission, its connections severed, with trailing cables from the power generator having fallen into other wiring, destroying he knew not how much additional equipment.

He’d have to cut the destroyed engine out of the loop, patch everything else back together as best he could, and then see if the thing would start. He devoutly wished Kell, with his mechanic’s skills, were here.

On the other hand, he wouldn’t wish “here” on anyone he actually liked.

He got to work.

They boiled out of Iron Fist’s sides like angry stinging insects emerging from a shaken hive, squadron after squadron of TIEs—fighters, interceptors, even bombers. They curved in their streams back toward the New Alliance squadrons.

Face heard Wedge issue orders, perhaps the last set of group orders they’d receive before this fight was done: “Break by pairs. Take shots at Iron Fist when you can, but your main objective is to protect yourselves and hold the starfighters. Polearm, you’re our spearhead—break up their formation, deny them their united inertia before they get to us. Rogues next. Wraiths, hang back, every pair protect a pair of B-wings. That’s all.”

“Polearm Leader acknowledging.”

“This is Rogue Leader, we’re on it.”

“This is Nova Leader, thanks.”

From the Wraiths there were only a few scattered groans. Face felt like complaining himself. To be relegated to babysitting duty while the Polearms and Rogues were up front—but Face knew, deep down, the reason for it. More than half the Wraiths were just back from an earlier action. They were tired, even if they didn’t realize it yet.

Ahead, the A-wings of Polearm Squadron roared toward the massed TIEs with speed no X-wing could match. Face could see the deadly formation of starfighters stream straight into the squadrons of TIEs, their laser fire reaping heavy casualties in the target-heavy environment. The enemy forces seemed even more to be a swarm of stinging insects as their formation lost coherence, groups of two and four and six TIEs going after each A-wing.

Then the Rogues were among them. Face watched the unit expertly break up into pairs, each pair moving as one, each pilot firing with the skill of years of experience. Face felt something like a shudder of dread, a feeling nearly of sympathy for the TIE fighters facing those formidable pilots, and suddenly he felt inadequate. He knew he wasn’t up to their standard of performance.

“Orders?” That was Lara’s voice in his ear, calling him back to the present situation.

“Right. Follow me.” He dove relative to the formation and brought himself and his wingman up before a pair of B-wings. He dropped transmission power. “This is Wraith Eight and Wraith Thirteen. We’re your escorts for this evening. What’s your pleasure?”

“You have Nova Three and Nova Four. We can play with the TIEs, but we’re much better suited to unloading on that ugly hunk of metal the warlord is driving.”

“Tuck in tight, we’ll get you close.” Face goosed his thrusters and the foursome of starfighters veered off, away from the center of the dogfight, toward Iron Fist.

Ahead, a group of fighters—nine, nearly an entire squadron—broke from the main engagement zone and moved out to intercept them. Face switched to dual fire and opened up with his lasers at maximum range.

The backstop for his fire was Iron Fist. No expended fire would be wasted.

The TIEs came on, twisting, bobbing, weaving, difficult targets. Face wished he hadn’t expended all his proton torpedoes on the other Destroyer. On the other hand, it burned nicely, and he had no time for regrets.

One of the oncoming TIEs exploded under Lara’s sustained fire and he heard a hissed “Yesss” from her. Why? Oh, yes, she entered this fight with four silhouettes on her canopy. She’d just made ace.

Another TIE drifted right through the ion-cannon wash from one of the B-wings and went ballistic, helplessly rolling in uncontrolled straight-line flight. Face saw one of the oncoming TIEs was making unpredictable moves at predictable intervals; he waited for the next interval, guessed at the pilot’s next move, fired in that direction, and was rewarded when the fighter drifted right into his fire. It detonated and its wingman flew right through the debris, emerging intact.

Face felt a blow as his forward shields were hit and some of the laser energy penetrated to score his hull. Then they were past, nothing between them and Iron Fist.

“Thirteen, drop back, shore up your rear shields,” he said. “Let’s give the Novas all the protection we can.” In other words, let’s be targets for a while. The way the raiders on the first Death Star trenches were before they died.

“Understood.”

Wedge, unencumbered by a wingman, switched his encryption code so only the Rogues would hear him. “This is Wraith Leader. Any sign of the One Eighty-first?”

Tycho Celchu’s voice, strained: “We’re in the thick of them. You offering help?”

Wedge sighed. He’d like nothing better than to demonstrate to Baron Fel the error of his evaluation of Wedge’s flying skills. Then he glanced back at the pair of B-wings following in his wake. “I’d love to. But can’t. They’ll be here soon enough.”

“Understood.”

Then they were before him, a half squad of TIEs, four fighters and two bombers. He saw one veer to starboard, picked out that one’s wingman, fired ahead of its course if it turned the same way, and it did, erupting into a glowing shrapnel cloud—one kill, one second into the dogfight.

•      •      •

“Now reaching Iron Fist’s escape vector.”

“All stop.” Han felt fluttering in his stomach as though it were occupied by alien invaders, but he tried to keep his discomfort from his face. “All starboard batteries to begin fire on my command. Prepare for axial roll. Captain, maintain our position directly ahead of Iron Fist. Continue correcting as it’s recalculated. And when any bank of batteries falls below eighty percent, perform enough roll to bring new guns to bear, and increase shield strength on the firing side as you do so.”

“Yes, sir.”

Iron Fist opened up, her laser batteries streaking by in such profusion that they looked like the star elongation that was the first visual manifestation of a hyperspace jump. Han tensed against the blows he knew were to come. “Open fire.”

Piggy flipped the power-up switch and was rewarded with an erratic whine from the engines and the sudden lighting of his weapons and flight boards.

His diagnostics board said that all systems were down.

He grunted. No use listening to people—or systems—who are inclined to tell you that you can’t do something. Not yet daring to commence powered flight, he brought his targeting system up and tried to bracket the distant shield projector dome.

One small piece of the dome fell within his targeting bracket, and jittered there, showing a clean lock, only moments at a time.

Wedge blinked away at the stinging of his eyes. The third TIE fighter had nailed him with a good fuselage shot just before Wedge had vaped him, and his cockpit was now filling with smoke.

Sensors showed that of the flight of nine that had moved against him, four were down—one having fallen prey to one of the B-wings. One of his B-wings remained, battered, char marks on its hull from insistent laser fire; the other was a rapidly dissipating cloud a dozen kilometers back.

He brought his targeting brackets over another TIE. They overshot as the starfighter sideslipped. Then the vehicle exploded, hit by lateral fire.

Incoming vehicles on the sensors, from the direction of the second destroyer—an A-wing leading a flying wedge of unscathed Y-wings. They continued firing and the TIEs bedeviling Wedge evaporated under their massed lasers.

“Wraith Leader to newcomers. Who am I talking to?”

The voice that came back was hard and military, but he heard an amused tone within it. “Why, Commander. You forget old friends so soon.”

“General Crespin!” This was the frigate’s starfighter force, then, finally catching up from the rear.

“And the Screaming Wookiee Training Squadron.”

“Can you escort Nova Three?”

“Hand over all the B-wings, sonny, and I’ll show you some old-fashioned mass-fire tactics.”

“Nova Squadron, this is Wraith Leader. Form up with the Screaming Wookiee.” Wedge coughed against the smoke. “I’m outbound, General, have to visit some old friends.”

“Good luck.”

“Wraiths, see your charges back to the general, then join the Rogues.” Wedge heeled over and headed into the thickest part of the engagement zone.

Far ahead, past Iron Fist’s bow, the tiny needle that was Mon Remonda opened up with laser barrages. They flared and were expended uselessly against Iron Fist’s shields.

“Do you think he plans to sacrifice Mon Remonda to stop us?” Zsinj, chin in hand, steadily regarded the tiny but growing cruiser ahead.

“He continues correcting his position to be more and more precisely in our path,” said Melvar. “We can’t be sure of his intent until we’re past the point of no return. Then, either he moves out of our path and we can get through and go to hyperspace … or we hit Mon Remonda and both vessels probably perish.”

“He actually has more firepower to unload than we do at the moment. He can bring almost half his guns to bear at any time. We’re limited to the forward guns that can depress far enough to target him.” Zsinj shook his head. “All right. Bring all our guns to bear on her engines. Stop her dead in space. The sooner you do it, the greater margin we’ll have to squeak past him.”

Zsinj’s stomach began churning. This was still winnable. But the New Republic assault, the way they’d accurately calculated his position, the way they relied on his protectiveness of Razor’s Kiss to slow him, was upsetting.

It was a TIE interceptor, but it moved more sluggishly than the standard interceptor. A few kilometers from Iron Fist’s bridge, it had one TIE fighter under its guns and was stitching it with dual-linked fire while another fighter maneuvered behind it.

Wedge targeted the second fighter, bracketed it with his targeting computer before it was aware of his proximity, and shredded it with quad-linked lasers even as the interceptor vaped the first fighter. “Ten, is that you?”

“Good to hear from you, Leader. I hate this thing. It’s as fragile as an interceptor and as slow as an X-wing.”

“Well, stop playing by yourself, then. You’re my wing.”

“Yes, sir.”

In spite of the smoke blurring his vision, Wedge saw the tiny green needle on Iron Fist’s hull below him—a long, tentative streak that hit the port-side shield projector dome, hit it twice, hit it a third time—and then the dome exploded.

The source of the laser fire, a TIE fighter, leaped up from Iron Fist’s hull. It shot up through her defensive shields as if the maneuver were an accident, then looped around as if flown by a drunken skimmer pilot, apparently setting up for a descent and run on the second dome projector, but an ion-cannon beam swept across it. The fighter continued off on a straight-line course toward the stars.

•      •      •

The captain’s shout was jubilant: “Mon Remonda no longer maneuvering. We have their engines, Warlord!”

“Excel—”

The bridge rocked, its lights dimming, fragments of ceiling descending into the crew pit. Zsinj tottered and fell. He looked up; Melvar was looking away, not extending a hand. That was correct, that was proper. No one was supposed to see the warlord discommoded.

Zsinj clambered to his feet. “What happened?”

The captain had gone from cheer to despair in just a second. “We’ve lost the port-side shield projector. We’re down to half shield strength above the midline.”

Zsinj felt as though he, too, were suddenly at half strength. He calculated the numbers. “Is that frigate still on our tail?”

“Still catching up. It will be within firing range in two minutes at this rate.”

Zsinj closed his eyes. “Recall the fighters. Bring Iron Fist up to flank speed. Communicate with Razor’s Kiss, issue the command ‘abandon ship.’ ” He didn’t have to add, We’ve lost this battle.

Face caught sight of the interceptors emerging from the flurry of fighters, headed their way. “Thirteen, incoming!” He turned into the path of the incoming TIEs, threw all discretionary power onto forward shields—

Too late. Laser fire from the lead interceptor punched through his unboosted shield and then through his cockpit. He felt a sudden blast of agonizing heat to his left side, then cold just as intense. He watched in idle curiosity as his vision changed—first as the atmosphere of his cockpit was vented, then as the emergency magcon field on his suit came up and tried to cope with the sudden vacuum. He caught a glimpse of the red stripe on his attacker’s solar wing arrays as it sped past.

“Eight, can you hear me?”

There was no response, and Face felt a distant sadness. Eight, whoever he was, must have been vaped.

“Eight, this is Thirteen, can you hear me?”

There was an additional squeal from Vape, Face’s R2 unit, and Face wished the whole universe would just shut up for a while.

“Squad, this is Thirteen. We need help here. I can’t handle these two—”

“Wraith Three here. Four and I are coming in. Hold on.”

“Five here, I’m almost there.”

It took Face another long moment to understand. He was hit, he was done. He couldn’t move for the pain. Iron Fist loomed in the near distance ahead. He was going to crash and his debt would be paid.

He should have felt at peace with that. Peace was what he’d expected all this time. But it eluded him. Was something left undone?

Well, there was that second shield projector dome. If he could make his hand move, he might be able to steer straight into it. If the Destroyer’s guns didn’t get him, if its shields didn’t destroy him, he might, just might be able to angle into that dome and destroy it, too.

The odds one in a million. Less, really. But it seemed like a good way to go out. He brought his cold, cold hand up to the pilot’s yoke and gripped it. He couldn’t feel his fingers close on it, but could see them.

“Got him, got him—dammit, he’s slipped by.”

“This is Five, I’m on the second one.”

“Hold him, hold him—”

“He’s not shaking me, Three. You see after Eight.”

Oh, yes, he was Eight. Why were they worried about him? Didn’t they realize he was already dead?

No, they didn’t. Bless their optimistic little hearts, they actually thought he was going to make it. Now he knew how Phanan had felt with Face fussing over him. The Wraiths didn’t realize it was his time, time to balance the account.

The account doesn’t need balancing. Ton Phanan’s voice from some forgotten conversation. You can’t reduce sapient lives to numbers and exchange them like credits.

The snubfighter shuddered again as more laser fire hit him. It must have hit the X-wing’s rear; at least he wasn’t feeling any more pain. Iron Fist was getting bigger.

And Ton was right. Ton, who had suffered from the Empire’s success as much as anyone he’d ever met, should know. He didn’t have to close out his account now.

An X-wing blasted past him to port, juking and jinking. He thought he recognized it as Wraith Eleven. Tyria.

If she was doing that, she was being pursued. With his numbed fingers, he brought up his targeting system and swung it just to port of his flight path.

An interceptor flashed into his brackets and he fired. With detached interest, he watched the laser blast shear through its starboard wing and pylon, straight through the canopy. The interceptor exploded and bits of it glowed as they bounced off his forward shields.

Donos’s voice: “Nice shot, Eight! Are you back with us?”

“ ’M here.”

“Eight, this is Thirteen. I’m coming up beside you.” Lara slid in place to his starboard, then ahead. “I’m going to lead you back to Tedevium. Will you follow me?”

“Sure.”

“Can you make it?”

“Sure. Wake me up if I fall asleep.”

“Will do.”

Another TIE fighter went to pieces under Wedge’s lasers and he had a clear path to the center of the engagement, where members of the 181st—where Baron Fel—awaited him.

But those fighters veered off toward Iron Fist.

All the TIEs began veering off toward Iron Fist, even if it meant exposing their backs to New Republic guns.

And Iron Fist was picking up speed.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Wedge kicked his thrusters as high as they’d go and added some discretionary power to them. But the faster TIEs leaped out ahead, arcing down beneath the Super Star Destroyer and toward her landing bay. Wraiths, Rogues, Polearms, and Novas took parting shots, achieving more kills in those few seconds than in the entire dogfight, but still the TIEs ran.

Iron Fist cruised past Mon Remonda, lying at a dead stop, her engines flaming, mere kilometers away. The two capital ships exchanged barrage after barrage. Wedge, looping well around the corridor of fire between them, saw laser batteries take out chunks from the hulls of both vessels. Nova Squadron’s B-wings continued pouring heavy fire into Iron Fist’s stern from as close a distance as they could afford, but the Destroyer’s shields held.

Then the Destroyer leaped forward and was gone, lost into hyperspace.

Far behind, the other Destroyer began firing off escape pods like mold spores as more and more flames gouted up from beneath her surface. Then the brightest flame of all rose out of her midsection, a globe-shaped inferno, and began eating away at the vessel in all directions. The few starfighters remaining in its vicinity raced away at full speed.

One last flash, bright as a nova, and the Destroyer hurled asteroid-sized pieces of itself in all directions.

21

Hours later, Wedge—freshly scrubbed and uniformed, a little bacta treatment having rid his lungs of the smoky crud that had coated them but also having left a nasty taste in his mouth—marched into Mon Remonda’s bridge.

It wasn’t quite the same bridge. The armature of the captain’s chair had broken and Onoma was standing over his control board. Portions of the deck were crumpled and an entire control board was still black from burn. A new shift of officers was at work. Han Solo had his back to the bridge; he was lost in thought, staring into the depths of hyperspace.

Wedge approached to stand beside him. “Commander Antilles reporting.”

Solo didn’t answer for long moments. He looked tired, the lines in his craggy face deeper than Wedge had ever seen them. He took a deep breath. “We lost him.”

“We hurt him. We eliminated the other Destroyer. Razor’s Kiss.”

“But Zsinj is still at large.”

“We’ll get him next time.”

“I am so sick of next time.” Finally, Han grinned, looking briefly like his old self. “I’ll bet you’re just as sick of the gloomy Han Solo.”

“We’ll vape Zsinj together and you can go back to a life of irresponsible good cheer.”

“I’ll drink to that. How are your people?”

“Good. Lieutenant Loran will make it. We almost lost Piggy saBinring—he was floating off to oblivion with no thrusters, no lasers, no comlink—but Shalla Nelprin calculated his last known course and Sungrass retrieved him. We even picked up a hyperdrive-equipped interceptor out of the deal.”

“If they ever make you a general, demand to be head of the quartermasters. You’re really learning to turn a profit.”

Wedge watched him return to his distracted, distant staring. “Han, what’s it like? Actually being someone’s personal enemy?”

“I hate it. But I can’t just hand the job off. Not until someone feels about him the way I do.”

“Still up for that drink?”

Han snorted. “What do you think?”

Melvar appeared with his customary stealthiness beside Zsinj’s desk in his private office. He put a datacard before the warlord. “The final tally of losses.”

Zsinj barely stirred. He seemed drained of energy, so drained that even his fat sagged. “I’ll look at it later.”

“How do you think they did it?”

“One of the pirates,” Zsinj said. “He must have planted a transmitter on Iron Fist while collecting his pay, in spite of our sweeps, in spite of our sensors. I don’t know how. We’ll find out.”

“Your orders?”

Zsinj nodded listlessly. “Get all available cargo ships and tugs back to the last engagement zone. I want them to collect every piece they can find, no matter how large or small, of Razor’s Kiss for transportation back to Rancor Base.”

“Yes, sir.” Melvar waited a polite few seconds. “May I ask why?”

“Ask tomorrow. No more talk today.”

Melvar saluted—one of his few genuine salutes—and took his leave.

•      •      •

Face jumped as Kell came barging through the door, potted flowers in his hands. The big man took a look around, ignoring Face, and set the wavy mass of violet-colored vegetation down on a meal table. Then Kell caught sight of Dia, seated next to Face’s bed; she had an arm around his neck, her other hand stroking his brow, in what had been a most comfortable pose until Kell’s sudden arrival. “Oh, I see,” Kell said. “Celebration’s already started.”

Face glared. “What celebration?”

“Ask the commander.”

Behind Kell came Piggy, Janson, all the other Wraiths. Tyria was holding some sort of figurine, a gray human figure half the length of a forearm; it gripped something in its upraised hand. Wedge came in last.

“All present?” Wedge asked.

“And no accounting for,” Janson said.

Wedge turned toward Face, his expression stern. “Lieutenant Loran. You returned your X-wing to the training frigate Tedevium in the worst shape her mechanics had ever seen a flying snubfighter. You arrived in similar shape for an organism. As I understand it, parts of you and your X-wing were intermingled.”

“He had to be cut out of the cockpit,” Lara confirmed. “Kept wanting to talk to the medics about surgery.”

“Well, I’ve been meaning to tell you about that …” Face said.

“For this,” Wedge continued, “we present to you the Award of the Mechanic’s Nightmare.”

Tyria held out the statuette, which was of a New Republic mechanic with wrench upraised as a weapon. The mechanic’s expression was of pure, if silly, rage.

Face took the thing. “Looks like one of Cubber’s children.” He looked around the room. “I want to thank everyone who retrieved pieces of me, everyone who retrieved pieces of my X-wing, and especially those who sorted them out correctly.”

“On a more serious note,” Wedge said. “Attention.”

The Wraiths snapped to attention, all but Face, who tried to sit up, and Dia, who held him in place.

“With all our recent excitement,” Wedge said, “I’ve neglected to finalize a little business I should have seen to days ago. But I’m happier to do it now, since Face can join us for it. Shalla Nelprin, step forward.”

She did so, struggling, Face thought, to keep uncertainty from her expression.

“Since being posted to Wraith Squadron,” Wedge said, “you have demonstrated fine piloting and intrusion skills, in addition to improvisational instincts that have benefited this unit and the New Republic. It is my pleasure to convey to you your promotion to the rank of lieutenant in the New Republic’s Starfighter Command.” He handed her her new officer’s insignia, then shook her hand. “Congratulations, Shalla.”

She opened her mouth to answer, but it was a moment before sound emerged. “Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t thank me; you did all the work. It’s well deserved. Just as significant for your reputation, I think, is the fact that Starfighter Command has calculated your role in the battle with Razor’s Kiss … and has determined that you are authorized to paint half a Super Star Destroyer silhouette on your canopy from now on. Half that kill is yours.”

Shalla put her hands to her mouth as the other Wraiths cheered, patted her back.

Dia, still stroking Face’s forehead, suddenly frowned. “Say, what’s this?” The surprise in her voice caused the others to quiet down. Dia pinched at Face’s skin, and the others could see that a tiny flap of skin at the corner of Face’s scar was loose. She tugged at it.

Face squirmed. “Uhh, well, this is something new, I haven’t had an opportunity to tell you.…”

She continued tugging and the scar began to come up at that edge, as though it were some sort of appliqué, with pink, healthy skin beneath it. “Face?”

Face sighed. “Get involved with a woman and she thinks she can tear your face off.”

Dia pulled and half his scar was in her hand, leaving the right side of his face unmarred. She gave a final tug and the rest of the appliqué came free, dangling in her fingers. Her expression was incredulous as she looked down at him. Where he had once worn a scar, his flesh looked pink and new, but definitely undamaged.

Face looked around at all the Wraiths peering at him. He shrugged. “Ton Phanan’s fault. He left me some money. Enough for some elective surgery. Or it would go to someone I hated. I pretty much had to do what he wanted.”

“Well, it suits you,” Dia said. “You look almost as young as you did in The Black Bantha.”

He stared up at her accusingly. “You said you’d never seen any of my holodramas.”

She smiled. “I lied.”

Runt reached out the door and tugged in a rolling cart. It was laden with bottles in cooler buckets and glasses. “Face cannot drink yet,” he said. “But we can drink to him.” He handed the bottle off to Janson.

Janson began prying at the seal. “And to Ton Phanan and Castin Donn.”

Dia said, “And to scars you can peel off whenever you no longer need them.”

Face said, “And to—”

Dia dropped the rubbery false scar into his mouth. “And,” she said, “to friends who don’t try to fool you all the time.”

Face pulled the false scar out and gave her a rueful look. “Dia, this is Wraith Squadron. You’re never going to have that.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks go to:

Steven S. Long, Beth Loubet, Bob Quinlan, Luray Richmond, and Sean Summers, my “Eagle-Eyes,” who valiantly hurl themselves between me and the incoming artillery of my errors;

All the Star Wars fiction authors from whose work I have been able to draw details, most especially Michael A. Stackpole and Timothy Zahn;

Drew Campbell, Shane Johnson, Paul Murphy, Peter Schweighofer, Bill Slavicsek, Bill Smith, Curtis Smith, and Dan Wallace, for the invaluable resources they have written;

Sue Rostoni and Lucy Wilson of Lucas Licensing, for their help; and

Denis Loubet, Mark and Luray Richmond, my roommates, for keeping me in realspace whenever my brain threatened to make the jump to hyperspace.

STAR WARS: SOLO COMMAND
A Bantam Spectra Book / February 1999

SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks
of Bantam Books, a division of
Random House, Inc.

© 1999 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM
All rights reserved. Used under authorization.
Cover art copyright © 1999 by Lucasfilm Ltd.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.

eISBN: 978-0-307-79651-6

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

v3.1

Contents

Master - Table of Contents

Solo Command

Title Page

Copyright

Dramatis Personae

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18

Acknowledgments

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Commander Wedge Antilles (Rogue Leader, Rogue One, Wraith Leader) (human male from Corellia)

The Wraiths

Lieutenant (Brevet Captain) Garik “Face” Loran (Wraith One) (human male from Pantolomin)

Flight Officer Lara Notsil (Wraith Two) (human female from Aldivy)

Lieutenant Myn Donos (Wraith Three) (human male from Corellia)

Flight Officer Tyria Sarkin (Wraith Four) (human female from Toprawa)

Lieutenant Kell Tainer (Wraith Five) (human male from Sluis Van)

Flight Officer Hohass “Runt” Ekwesh (Wraith Six) (Thakwaash male from Thakwaa)

Flight Officer Dia Passik (Wraith Seven) (Twi’lek female from Ryloth)

Flight Officer Voort “Piggy” saBinring (Wraith Eight) (Gamorrean male from Gamorr)

Lieutenant Shalla Nelprin (Wraith Nine) (human female from Ingo)

Lieutenant Wes Janson (Wraith Ten, XO) (human male from Taanab)

Flight Officer Elassar Targon (Wraith Eleven) (Devaronian male from Devaron)

The Rogues

Captain Tycho Celchu (Rogue Two) (human male from Alderaan)

Lieutenant Pedna Scotian (Rogue Three) (Chev female from Vinsoth)

Lieutenant Derek “Hobbie” Klivian (Rogue Four) (human male from Ralltiir)

Lieutenant Tal’dira (Rogue Five) (Twi’lek male from Ryloth)

Lieutenant Gavin Darklighter (Rogue Six) (human male from Tatooine)

Flight Officer Ran Kether (Rogue Seven) (human male from Chandrila)

Flight Officer Koobis “Target” Nu (Rogue Eight) (Rodian male from Rodia)

Lieutenant Corran Horn (Rogue Nine) (human male from Corellia)

Lieutenant Ooryl Qyrgg (Rogue Ten) (Gand male from Gand)

Lieutenant Asyr Sei’lar (Rogue Eleven) (Bothan female from Bothawui)

Flight Officer Inyri Forge (Rogue Twelve) (human female from Kessel)

Lieutenant Nawara Ven (XO) (Twi’lek male from Ryloth)

Support Personnel

Clink (Donos’s R2 unit)

Cubber Daine (human male from Corellia, Wraith mechanic)

Gate (Wedge’s R5 unit)

Koyi Komad (Twi’lek female from Ryloth, Rogue mechanic)

Squeaky (3PO unit, squadron quartermaster)

Tonin (Lara’s R2 unit)

Vape (Face’s R2 unit)

New Republic Military

General Han Solo (human male from Corellia)

Captain Onoma (Mon Calamari male from Mon Calamari)

Captain Todra Mayn (Polearm One) (human female from Commenor)

Flight Officer Nuro Tualin (Polearm Two) (Twi’lek male from Ryloth)

Flight Officer Dorset Konnair (Polearm Seven) (human female from Coruscant)

Flight Officer Tetengo Noor (Polearm Nine) (human male from Churba)

Zsinj’s Forces

Warlord Zsinj (human male from Fondor)

General Melvar (human male from Kuat)

Dr. Edda Gast (human female from Saffalore)

Captain Radaf Netbers (human male from Broest)

Captain Vellar (human male from Coruscant)

1

Naval Lieutenant Jart Eyan looked rested and cheerful. The fact that he had only twelve minutes to live would have changed his disposition, but he did not possess that knowledge.

He descended the shuttle ramp to stand in the bay of the cruiser Home One and look around for a moment. When last he’d seen this part of the ship, many of the shuttles and utility vehicles within had borne the grime and combat scoring that were inevitable in any lengthy campaign. Now they were largely restored to shipshape state. The time Home One had spent in the repair yards of Coruscant had obviously been valuable.

Eyan was a Twi’lek, member of a humanoid species best known for the two fleshy appendages, called lekku, that hung from their heads where a human would have hair. Many humans forgot that lekku, more commonly referred to as brain tails, were sensory bundles, and often gave Twi’leks an edge in assessing their circumstances and possible threats being posed.

Eyan shivered. Ryloth, the Twi’lek home, was a hot world. On Home One, a ship engineered for a bridge crew of Mon Calamari, an aquatic species, the ambient temperature tended to be low enough to inconvenience him. The New Republic officer’s uniform he wore was never quite sufficient to overcome this discomfort.

Still, he smiled, revealing a broad stretch of carnivore’s teeth. It was good to be back.

An aide, a human female, approached him and saluted. “Welcome back, sir. I hope you enjoyed your leave.”

“Oh, certainly.” Eyan frowned for a moment, trying to remember just what he’d been up to on his leave, but the moment passed. His gesture took in the vehicle bay and indicated the vessel as a whole. “What sort of shape is she in?”

“One hundred percent, sir. All the admiral has to do is point, and we’ll be on our way.”

“Excellent.”

“I wanted to let you know, you had a communication from your wife come in a few minutes ago. It was flagged as urgent.”

“Is the captain on duty?”

“Not now, sir.”

“Good. I can see to this message before I’m officially on duty again.” Eyan nodded thanks to the aide and headed for his quarters.

What could be the trouble? He’d barely left her—as with many New Republic officers, he’d moved his family to Coruscant after being assigned to the former Imperial throneworld.

Barely left her after spending his entire leave with her, too. But he frowned, trying to recall just how they’d spent their time together. The memory wasn’t coming in too clearly. He had the nagging feeling that something important was slipping by him.

At his quarters, he brought up his personal terminal and opened his mail. In addition to numerous messages related to his duties, there was the priority-flagged message from his wife. He brought it up.

There she sat, in the tacky red high-backed chair that sat before their terminal at home, and she looked distinctly unhappy, her greenish skin a little more pallid than it should have been. She glanced over to the side as though consulting with someone outside recording range. “Jart,” she said, “those Wookiees are dancing in the parlor again.”

Eyan switched off the message, not bothering to hear it in its entirety, and erased it. His fingers typed commands into the terminal keyboard. He watched the process, momentarily interested in how he could be so swift, so sure, and yet have no idea what he was doing. Of course, he thought. How unpleasant. Those blasted Wookiees are dancing in the parlor again. He retrieved his personal sidearm, a small but powerful blaster pistol, and checked it to make sure it was fully charged. He tucked it away in his pocket and departed, certain in what he needed to do to get rid of those dancing Wookiees.

“In terms of pure strategy, there was nothing of particular interest between the capital ships in the Mon Remonda/Iron Fist fight.” The speaker was a Gamorrean, one of the pig-snouted humanoids known for their warlike dispositions, but almost nothing but his appearance characterized him as a member of that species.

He was speaking Basic, which was beyond the capabilities of other Gamorreans. And his voice was not a natural one; his words emerged twice, once in a throaty babble that sounded like gibberish to most people, and once in a mechanical tone from an implant in his throat. Too, he was the only Gamorrean known to wear a New Republic Fleet Command uniform.

On the shoulder of his orange pilot’s uniform he wore a unit patch that was much cleaner, much newer than the rest of the uniform. The main element of the design was a white circle, over which, in light gray, appeared the central symbol of the New Republic, a design like a stylized bird with upswept wings. Over that were twelve X-wing silhouettes, as if viewed from above, in black; one, in the lower left portion of the circle, was large, and the eleven arrayed around it were a third its size. All were oriented the same direction, from lower left to upper right, as though flying in tight, precise formation. Around the white circle was a broad blue ring bordered by two narrow gold rings. It was a brand-new unit patch for a nearly brand-new force, Wraith Squadron.

The being the Gamorrean addressed across the holotable was also unusual, though his kind was certainly well represented in the ranks of the New Republic military. Admiral Ackbar was a member of the Mon Calamari species, humanoids with fishlike features and rubbery skin. Though there were many Mon Calamari serving the New Republic, few had naval combat maneuvers named for him or had designed fighter craft as Ackbar had.

“Essentially,” the Gamorrean continued, “we gave Zsinj only one course of action to take if he were to preserve the Razor’s Kiss.” He gestured at the replay of the deep-space naval battle being projected above the holotable. “You see his maneuvers to keep Iron Fist between us and Razor’s Kiss. You see him slow his escape pace to stay with the crippled ship. All by the numbers, numbers our force dictated.”

Admiral Ackbar’s voice was low, gravelly, slightly more imposing than the standard for his species. “So you find nothing of interest in the engagement.”

“If you will forgive me, I did not say that, sir.” The Gamorrean manipulated the table controls to zoom the holoprojection view very close to the second of the two Super Star Destroyers. At this near distance, he and Ackbar could see that the mighty vessel was burning at innumerable points on the hull. They could also see swarms of starfighters, New Republic and Imperial, fighting above its surface.

“Mathematically speaking,” the Gamorrean continued, “there is much of interest in the behavior of the One Eighty-first. In addition to the fact that a demonstrably loyal Imperial elite squadron should not be working hand in hand with a rogue warlord like Zsinj, there is something odd in the way they fight.”

Ackbar’s face suggested curiosity. “We detected no oddity in our analysis of the recordings. But, of course, you were there.”

“If I may correct you, I actually was not. I was trapped on the hull of the Iron Fist for most of that fight, trying to persuade my starfighter to start up. No, it was after you showed me these recordings that I noticed it. Individual fighter pairs tend to respond with an interesting sameness to specific attack patterns. See here—” The Gamorrean pointed to a pair of TIE interceptors characterized by horizontal red stripes on their solar wing arrays. As a pair of X-wings approached from their rear, the TIEs broke off in a tight sweep to port and relative down, moving at an angle the X-wings couldn’t match.

The Gamorrean stopped the holoprojection, scrolled the viewpoint over to the Iron Fist, and settled it on another pair of 181st interceptors. He advanced the recording as the interceptors cruised toward a pocket of combat, then set it to play at a normal rate. “Here, two A-wings from Polearm Squadron approach from the rear on the same vector. You see the interceptors break exactly the same way, the lead interceptor taking the higher position and the slightly shallower angle, the wingman going lower and taking a harder turn.”

“A coincidence.”

“No. The angle of attack dictates the way they break. Only with the One Eighty-first, however. I’m not sure what it means.”

Ackbar leaned forward, his posture suggesting sudden interest. “Show me more.”

Lieutenant Eyan marched into the admiral’s outer office with his broad, meat-eating smile fixed on his face.

The admiral’s aide, seated at a desk outside the door to Ackbar’s office, returned the smile. He was a human male who looked as though he thrived on naval food and could stand to thrive a little less. He stood and saluted. “Welcome back, sir. You look as though your leave suited you.”

Eyan drew the blaster pistol from his pocket, thrust it into the man’s stomach, and pulled the trigger. The blast slammed the man back into his chair but was not as loud as it could have been, muffled by contact with the victim’s flesh. “It did,” he said.

Eyan reached past the still-twitching corpse to press a button on the underside of the desk. The door into Ackbar’s office opened.

The admiral looked up as the naval officer entered. “Ah, Lieutenant Eyan. Allow me to present Flight Officer Voort saBinring, also called Piggy. He is a pilot of Wraith Squadron and a mathematical prodigy. SaBinring, this is Lieutenant Jart Eyan, security detail.”

Piggy rose to salute the naval office. “Pleased to meet you, sir.”

Eyan returned the salute. “Likewise.” Then he pulled his blaster from behind his back, pressed it into Piggy’s stomach, and pressed the trigger.

It is remarkable, Piggy thought, the suddenness of it. One moment, perfect health. The next moment, perfect agony. He could not see, the pain in his gut was so great, like a bonfire lit upon his stomach and eating its way through him, and he could barely hear. He knew he lay upon his back but couldn’t remember getting there.

I think I have only moments to live. Interesting.

But the science that had altered him, giving him control over his emotions, giving him the mathematical acuity that had brought him to Admiral Ackbar’s attention, had not done away with all of the biological imperatives that came with being Gamorrean. Another voice rose within him, growing louder: Live, die, doesn’t matter—kill him! Strike him until his bones are paste, rest your tusks upon the warm flesh of his throat, and tear it free! KILL HIM!

Piggy’s eyes snapped open. The assassin stood a couple of meters away, his weapon aimed at Ackbar, words forming in his mouth, words Piggy could not hear.

They didn’t matter. The Twi’lek hadn’t fired on Ackbar yet. Piggy reached beneath his left sleeve, and with a trembling hand drew forth a vibroblade like the ones most members of his squadron carried there. He thumbed its power on. Then he roared, a noise he knew humans to find intimidating, and threw the blade.

His target jerked at the sudden noise and spun to aim at Piggy. The vibroblade, instead of catching him in the chest, hit the blaster instead, shearing into the metal where barrel met trigger guard. There was a bright flash from the weapon and the assassin flung it away.

Piggy tried to stand but found that his shaky limbs were not making it an easy task. He saw Ackbar slam into the assassin from the side, the webbed hands of the Mon Calamari closing around the Twi’lek’s throat … but Lieutenant Eyan effortlessly wrenched Ackbar’s hands free and threw the admiral against the wall. Then, as deliberately as a diner sitting down to a meal, Eyan straddled Ackbar and closed his own hands over the admiral’s throat.

Piggy forced himself to his feet. Time left … estimated ten or twelve seconds. Kill him kill him kill him. Hard to see. Tunnel vision. A side effect of shock. Tear one arm free and beat him until he shrieks for death. He’s strong, unnaturally strong.

He walked, his feet unsteady, to Ackbar’s desk, and got his shoulder under the center portion. He heaved and it came up off the floor, though it nearly unbalanced him. Good. I still have my strength. Hit him so hard members of his family light-years away cry out in pain and dread.

He lurched into motion toward the assassin, lowering the edge of the desk as he built up speed, and was rewarded with his victim’s sudden perception of him, a look of surprise on the Twi’lek’s face.

Then he hit.

On the other side of the joining wall, the ensign leaning against the wall of the lounge, a human female, was suddenly flung forward. She slammed onto the floor, her cup of caf splashing as far as the boots of the ensign halfway across the lounge, and she lay there unmoving.

The others in the lounge looked at the bowed-in portion of metal plate that had once been smooth wall. One knelt beside the injured woman. The rest scrambled for the door.

Piggy dropped the desk so that it would not fall upon Admiral Ackbar. The motion was more languid than he liked. He didn’t seem to have any energy left.

He regarded his handiwork. The Twi’lek’s head was a quarter the width it should have been, a smashed mess that pleased one of the voices in Piggy’s head even as it appalled the other.

Admiral Ackbar was struggling to rise. He was speaking. But suddenly Piggy couldn’t understand the words.

The Gamorrean fell over backwards as the heat and pain in his gut spread out to overwhelm him.

The two TIE interceptors banked, maneuvering in a wide circle as they scanned for enemies, and the lunar surface sped by beneath them.

To someone seeing them for the first time, these starfighters might have seemed comical. Their cockpits were unaerodynamic-looking spheres taller than a human. Projecting from either side of the cockpits were thick posts, the wing pylons, each about the length of the cockpit’s circumference. At the end of either pylon was a solar wing array, a curved, roughly oval wing with a deep notch cut out of the leading edge. Where normal TIE fighters were nicknamed eyeballs, for their spherical cockpits, in New Republic fighter slang, interceptors, with their narrower sight profiles, were called squints.

But no one seeing them maneuver or fight would continue to think them amusing. Agile and fast, armed with four lasers each capable of punching through starfighter armor, they were among the deadliest tools in the arsenal of the Empire.

Not that Imperial pilots flew these two.

“Rogue Two, this is Leader. Comm check.”

“I read you.”

“Two unknowns now showing on my sensor screen at two-eight-five. Follow me in.”

“I’m your wing.”

The lead interceptor veered toward the distant blip, the second following hard, their maneuvers tight and sure. Within moments, the enemy—two tiny bright spots near the horizon—came into view.

“Two, the computer gives a tentative ID as one interceptor, one X-wing.”

“I read it that way. The X-wing is leading. Shall we get some separation, make them split up to cover us both?”

“Ehhh … not yet. Stay with standard Imperial protocols at first to make this a proper test.”

“Right.”

As the range meter numbers scrolled down to firing range, the oncoming starfighters opened fire. Curiously, the enemy TIE interceptor held in close behind the X-wing, dropping just beneath to fire, rising above to fire again.

The two interceptors bobbed and juked, ducking fire as they returned laser blasts. Their return shots slammed into the X-wing’s forward shields, dissipating meters short of the X-wing fuselage.

“Hey, I get it,” Two said. “You use the—”

Red laser fire from the X-wing hit him low on the circular transparisteel viewport. Two exploded in a bright flash, and Leader’s interceptor rocked, hit by gases swelling from the detonation. The enemy interceptor and X-wing sped by.

Despite his demise, Two kept talking, his voice floating into his leader’s comm unit like transmissions from a land of the dead. “Whoops, sorry, Wedge.”

“No problem, Tycho.” Wedge Antilles heeled hard to port, coming up behind the two attackers.

Instead of splitting up, with the faster interceptor trying to come up behind Wedge, the attackers had remained together, though they’d changed their formation: the X-wing was now in the rear, with the interceptor bobbing around just in front of it. It was tight, economical flying, and Wedge nodded. On their approach, the enemy interceptor had used the X-wing as a barricade, staying behind its shields except for the bare seconds necessary to line up a shot. The X-wing must have had most or all of its shield energy forward on the approach. Now, as they retreated, the interceptor was still enjoying the X-wing’s protection, and that starfighter’s shield energy would all be concentrated to the rear.

Wedge accelerated toward the pair, rising until he was slightly above their plane of flight. They knew he wouldn’t overfly them; he’d tuck in behind and fire at their comparatively unprotected rears until they were destroyed. So their tactic had to be to break at some point. The X-wing wouldn’t be able to outmaneuver him, so it would be the interceptor trying to get in behind him. That meant they’d wait until he was engaged with the X-wing before breaking.

The computer graphic representing the X-wing jittered within his sensor screen, announcing a laser lock. He ignored it and began a shallow dive, dipping down beneath the X-wing’s flight plane as if to try a snap shot at the interceptor. But halfway into the maneuver he drew back on the yoke, sending him into a sudden climb.

And the enemy interceptor, rising past the X-wing’s nose in an effort to keep the X-wing between itself and Wedge, suddenly jittered in the same sensor screen. Wedge fired and saw the green flashes of three of his lasers connect with the interceptor’s engines. The squint blew out of the sky and Wedge jerked hard to port to avoid flying through the thickest part of the debris cloud.

The X-wing took advantage of his sudden dodge by peeling off to starboard, a hard turn—an obvious attempt to set up for another head-to-head pass. But Wedge switched his comm unit over to a general broadcast frequency and said, “Exercise terminated.”

The voice of Garik “Face” Loran, onetime boy actor for the Empire and now New Republic flyer, came back. “But I’m not dead yet.”

“You’re protesting?”

“Not exactly. Just curious.”

The vista of the lunar surface and the maneuvering X-wing faded abruptly to blackness. Wedge reached back to open the access hatch, situated where the twin ion engines were in a real TIE interceptor, and climbed out into overhead light.

The room was a large one, crowded with tables, chairs, and simulator units. Most were narrower units, the better to conform to the cockpit interiors of the X-wing, Y-wing, and A-wing starfighters used by the New Republic, but a few were spherical, such as the one Wedge had just vacated. The room was heavily trafficked by pilots, many of them in the New Republic’s orange pilots’s jumpsuits, and technicians in more somber colors. Most of the pilots were clustered around the various simulator units, monitoring the practicing pilots’ efforts on overhead holo displays.

Across an aisle busy with human traffic, Face Loran dropped nimbly to the floor and looked curiously toward Wedge. Wedge saw a female pilot trainee glance at him, do a double take, then flutter her hand over her heart as she whispered into the ear of a confidant. Face, with his strikingly handsome features, intent green eyes, and somehow artfully mussed black hair, often had that effect on women. Wedge waved him over.

They were joined a moment later by two other pilots. Flight Officer Lara Notsil, a lightly built woman with downy blond hair, was possessed of a delicate beauty that belied her intensity and skill in starfighter combat. Captain Tycho Celchu, a fair-haired man with features that suggested he’d weathered a lot of turmoil in his life, spoke first. “Why’d you kill the sim, Commander?”

“We were here to test the youngsters’s new combined-unit tactic,” Wedge said. “As soon as you and Lara went out, it became just another X-wing versus TIE exercise. There’s plenty of value in those, of course, but that’s not what we came here for.” He fixed his attention on Face. “What was your opinion of the effectiveness of your tactic?”

Face shrugged; he didn’t look happy. “Nowhere near as effective as I’d hoped.”

“You were presuming that experienced enemies would be so thrown off by the novelty of what you were doing that they’d be easy kills?”

“Presuming? No, sir. Just hoping.”

“Lara, your thoughts?”

“Well, one exercise isn’t statistically significant,” she said. “So anything I had to say would be premature. Irrelevant. But I think the tactic worked as it was supposed to. I received a lot of protection from Face’s shields on both the incoming and outbound legs of the run, in spite of the fact that you flushed me out pretty easily. I’d say it was effective.”

Tycho nodded. “I’d agree. But I think it’s a one-shot tactic. Usable only in paired head-to-head runs or when you have an X-wing/TIE pair going after a single target. It would be best used at the start of any engagement, then abandoned.”

“I’d say it’s worth further practice and analysis,” Wedge said. “Face, Lara, work up some automated exercises to give all the Wraiths the opportunity to play around with this.” He checked the chrono strapped to his wrist. “Though not now. We have about ten minutes to get to our briefing. Dismissed.”

The two younger pilots saluted and headed off into the stream of traffic.

Wedge called, “Hey.”

The two turned, Face curious, Lara looking guilty, as if wondering if she’d forgotten to salute before leaving.

Wedge said, “Developing just this kind of tactic is one of the things I put Wraith Squadron together for. Good work. Keep at it.”

They smiled and continued toward the room’s main exit.

Most of the members of Rogue Squadron and Wraith Squadron were in their seats in the semicircular briefing amphitheater when Wedge and Tycho entered.

“Commander Antilles—draw!”

Wedge turned at the sound of Wes Janson’s voice. The eternally youthful pilot, executive officer of Wraith Squadron, was on his feet, aiming a datapad as though it were a blaster pistol, thumbing the transmit button with manic intensity. Wedge sighed and brought out his own datapad to receive the transmitted file. But Janson’s antics were a good sign. They suggested that the news Wedge was waiting for had arrived—and was good. En route to the main dais, he glanced at the Rogue Squadron executive officer, Nawara Ven, a distinguished-looking Twi’lek with brain tails arrayed artfully over his shoulders, and Wedge received a datafile from him as well. He glanced over the two officers’s transmissions as he stepped up behind the lectern, then looked up at the pilots before him.

Two squadrons, nearly at full fighting strength, the best pilots he could assemble and train. He felt a rush of pride at what he’d managed to accomplish with these two units, at the level at which they’d managed to perform, but he kept it from his face. “I have mostly good news to bring to you today. First and foremost, Piggy saBinring is responding well to bacta treatment, he has regained consciousness, and all indications are that he’ll enjoy a full recovery.” That brought applause and exclamations of relief from the assembly. “Unfortunately, we still have no information about the assassin’s motive in attacking Ackbar. When the admiral asked him why he was doing this, the assassin said he, Ackbar, knew why. You know the assassin died in the attempt. His wife and children are missing, and the investigation is continuing.

“Second, the Mon Remonda is within a day of leaving repair dock. By this time tomorrow, we’ll be back in space and taking the fight back to Warlord Zsinj.”

That brought more applause. Mon Remonda, the mighty Mon Calamari cruiser that was the flagship of the fleet commanded by Han Solo, had taken significant damage in its recent duel with the warlord Zsinj’s own flagship, the Super Star Destroyer Iron Fist. But Zsinj’s forces had suffered far more.

“Third, and directly as a result of this, you all have one last leave coming to you. Report to the shuttle bay at fifteen hundred tomorrow, with your bags packed and all your affairs settled; until then, you’re on your own. Enjoy yourselves.

“However, we can’t forget that the last time we had leave here on Coruscant, a covert unit probably belonging to Zsinj came close to assassinating the Wraiths. So we’ll follow these protocols. Civilian dress only. I know you Wraiths have just gotten your unit patches, but you’ll have to stow them during this leave. The more recognizable of you—you know who you are—should make some effort to conceal your features. Stay out of the bars pilots tend to frequent.

“Fourth, I have some changes to announce. The Wraiths have a new pilot for their roster—Targon, please stand.”

At the back of the amphitheater, a pilot stood, and the Rogues and Wraiths twisted to see him.

The new pilot was a Devaronian—grayish-skinned, with diabolic horns protruding from his forehead and fanglike teeth that would only cause appreciation in the heart of a carnivorous predator. His voice, when he spoke, was surprisingly deep and resonant considering his apparent youth. “Flight Officer Elassar Targon reporting for duty, sir.”

“Targon comes to us fresh from Fleet Command Academy; in addition to being a competent pilot, he’s a medical corps-man. Once again we’ll have a unit medic who can do more than put on pressure patches and make squealy noises. And unlike the rest of you, he hasn’t yet had time to ruin his career or his mind.”

“Then he won’t do.” That was Janson. “Send him home. Get us another lunatic.”

“Excuse me!” The Devaronian pilot hopped up to stand in his seat, took a wide stance with one foot in the adjacent chair; he threw his arms back and chest out, posing like some superhuman hero from the most ridiculous of Face Loran’s holodramas. “Elassar Targon, master of the universe, reporting for duty!”

Wedge cocked an eyebrow at him. Interesting that a very junior officer would be willing to perform that sort of display in his first few moments with his new unit. Either the reputation of Wraith Squadron had convinced him that it was appropriate … or he was another complete maniac, and Fleet Command had found another mental case for his command. Despite the laughter erupting from the assembled pilots, Wedge clearly heard Janson speak again, “I withdraw my objection.”

Wedge returned his attention to the pilots. “Targon, sit. Pipe down, everyone. Fifth, and last, there’s going to be a little reorganizing to do within my squadrons.

“Until and unless we persuade Starfighter Command that we need to participate in another prolonged field mission, we’ll be with Mon Remonda on active duty. I’ve been put in command of the ship’s four fighter squadrons. I’m also transferring back to and assuming direct command of Rogue Squadron, effective immediately. I’ll still fly with the Wraiths, as well as Nova and Polearm, when circumstances and opportunities warrant, but I’m relinquishing day-to-day command.” He saw the Rogues’s good cheer continue, but the Wraiths sobered with the realization that their very best pilot was leaving them. Wedge continued, “Lieutenant Loran, attention.”

Face stood. Wedge saw a flicker of suspicion cross his face, but it disappeared quickly as the actor regained control of himself.

Wedge said, “This isn’t a permanent promotion—yet—so we’re not going to do anything to you that will leave permanent marks. However, it is my pleasure to confer upon you the rank of brevet captain, which entitles you to command a unit such as Wraith Squadron. Congratulations, Face.” From a pocket he dug a semitransparent envelope, and this he tossed to the pilot. “Your new rank insignia.”

As the other pilots applauded, Wedge glanced among the other ranking pilots of Wraith Squadron, gauging reactions.

Wes Janson, who was the senior lieutenant in the squadron, was applauding and smiling easily. No surprise, as he had no real interest in command or, ultimately, in remaining with the Wraiths; he preferred to be just one of the gang back in Rogue Squadron, so this promotion of Face over his head was not threatening to him.

Kell Tainer, the biggest human in Wraith Squadron and, after Face, the most hologenic, also looked as though he were comfortable with the choice. Perhaps he had ultimately realized that, though he was a brilliant flyer and very capable technician, he didn’t have the temperament for or real interest in command.

The smile of Shalla Nelprin, the squadron’s newest lieutenant, was broad and genuine.

That left Myn Donos, a lieutenant with more years and more experience than Face. He looked serious and contemplative. But then, serious was merely a step up from his usual expression, that of dour intensity. Still, he had to know that this promotion reflected a lack of trust in his command skills. Mere months ago, while wearing the rank of brevet captain himself, Donos had commanded an X-wing unit that had been slaughtered by a Zsinj ally, Admiral Apwar Trigit, and had suffered serious emotional trauma resulting from that event. He probably thought that Wedge still held no trust in him.

Which wasn’t true. But Wedge Antilles’s units were largely meritocracies. The most meritorious pilots were promoted fastest, and Face had demonstrated more tactical savvy and more command skills than Donos, even though Wedge felt Donos was probably reliable.

As the applause died, Wedge said, “That’s it for now. Any questions?”

Face was first with a hand up. “If we’re launching tomorrow, sir, when do we get Piggy back?”

“We never lose him. He has requested that he be transferred to the bacta treatment facility aboard Mon Remonda. General Solo has approved the request. We’ll haul him around until he’s ready to emerge, then put him back to work. Wes?”

The Wraiths’s executive officer lowered his hand. “The usual.”

“The usual answer, too. We were lucky to get Face’s X-wing fully repaired. Wraith Squadron isn’t getting any replacement X-wings anytime soon. The Wraiths will continue flying mixed X-wings and TIE interceptors. Anything else? No? Dismissed.”

Thirty minutes later, Wedge opened the door to leave his quarters. He took an involuntary step back. There, shoulder to shoulder, blocking the door, were Wes Janson and Rogue Squadron pilot Derek “Hobbie” Klivian. Hobbie was struggling to keep his face straight; Janson’s expression was merry. Janson asked, “Going somewhere, Commander?”

Wedge shouldered his way between them. “We have leave, remember? That’s what you two should do. Leave.”

They fell in beside him, one on either side. This corridor, deep in the residential decks of Coruscant’s Sivantlie Base, led toward the turbolifts.

“Would you look at him?” Janson said. “Hair combed, evening clothes immaculate.”

Hobbie, his face as long and mournful as ever, said, “And he smells like a fresh spring morning.”

“I think our commander is going on a date.”

“I think you’re right.”

“Meaning he really needs our help. How long has it been since you’ve been on a date, Wedge? I don’t think some of the Wraiths were born then.”

“We’re your escort,” Hobbie said. “We’ll protect you from yourself.”

“So, who are you seeing?” Janson asked.

“What I’m seeing is kitchen duty in your immediate future,” Wedge said. They reached the bank of turbolifts and waited for the lift to reach them.

Janson continued, “It’s Iella, isn’t it?”

Wedge scowled. “What makes you think that?”

“Oh, nothing. Just the way you look whenever her name is mentioned. Have you noticed that, Hobbie?”

“Oh, I’ve noticed. What do you think?”

“I haven’t decided yet if she’s right for our commander. And the rest of the squad hasn’t voted yet.”

The turbolift doors opened and they entered the shallow car, turning to face the hall. Wedge held his hand against the side of the entryway, preventing the doors from closing. “Roof,” Wedge said.

Janson looked confused. “Roof? Not the personal vehicles hangar?”

“Roof.” Then Wedge took a deep breath and bellowed, “About face! Forward march!”

By reflex, the two pilots spun. Wedge stepped back out into the hall and heard Janson and Hobbie thud into the wall at the rear of the turbolift. Then the turbolift doors closed and the car carried his pilots up and far away.

He smiled and summoned another turbolift.

Two floors down, a quartet of Wraiths approached a door as anonymous as Wedge’s.

Donos said, “He just received a promotion of sorts. We shouldn’t present him with a mutiny first thing.” He kept from his face the discomfort he was feeling.

Dia Passik, the female Twi’lek, said, “He insisted that he wasn’t feeling well.”

Lara Notsil smiled over her shoulder at them. “He lied. He lies all the time, you know.”

“I know. But he seemed so genuine.”

“He does that all the time, too. This is the right thing to do. Myn, Elassar, back me up.”

The two men exchanged glances. “Absolutely,” Donos said.

The Devaronian looked confused. “You change sides pretty fast, don’t you, Lieutenant? I’ve barely met Captain Loran. I shouldn’t have an opinion.”

Lara scowled at him. “Wait a moment. A fellow Wraith says ‘Back me up,’ and you say ‘I don’t know’?”

The Devaronian straightened. His voice deepened. “My apologies. Absolutely. You’re right. In fact, we shouldn’t knock. We should just blast the door lock and kick the door in.”

“We’ll knock,” Lara said. She rapped on the door.

There was no answer. She knocked again, more insistently.

From within came Face’s voice. “Yes?”

“May we come in?”

“I’m not decent.”

“When are you ever?” Lara opened the door and looked in. Donos could see over her shoulder; Face was lying on his bed, still in uniform, staring at the ceiling.

Lara pushed her way in and heard the others crowd in behind her. “What are you doing?”

“I’m learning to play a variety of musical instruments using only the power of my mind.”

“That’s what I thought. Now it’s time to go out and enjoy yourself.”

“Maybe you didn’t hear the commander’s orders about the more recognizable members of the squads?”

She snorted. “That was for Runt’s sake most of all. When you’re two meters tall, covered in fur, and the only member of your species in Starfighter Command, you have to lie low sometimes. But you can put on a disguise. I’ve often suspected that you sometimes put on disguises just to go to the refresher.”

“Now, that’s an idea.” Face looked at her for the first time, gave her a smile that was meant to communicate cheer. “You go ahead. I’ll be fine.”

“Hey, I’m your wingman now. It’s my job to keep you from making big mistakes. And it would be a big mistake not to enjoy the last leave you’re likely to have for a while.”

“Do I have to pull rank on you?”

“You only get to do that when it’s appropriate. That’s the unwritten law.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“I read it somewhere.”

Face snorted. “All right. Give me five minutes to transform myself into something inconspicuous. Where are we going?”

Lara jerked a thumb back at her companions. “Since Elassar hasn’t run up against Zsinj—or anyone but his instructors—before now, we’re going to take him to the Galactic Museum’s new display on Imperial Intelligence. Give him an idea what he’s up against. Then we get a drink. Then you and Myn and Elassar give in to male biology and insult a bar full of soldiers, and Dia and I haul your battered bodies back to base.”

Face looked helplessly at Donos and Elassar. “You see what happens when we don’t get involved in the mission’s planning stage?”

The museum’s displays on Imperial Intelligence were not, Donos decided, the one-sided history they could have been.

The first displays on the tour gave details of the Old Republic’s Intelligence division, the secret police who were charged with protecting the Republic from subversion and treason. One display, a holoscreen within a container the size and approximate shape of a bacta tank, played a drama about Republic Intelligence commandos thwarting an assassination attempt made against members of the old Republican Senate. Another display was a transparisteel case holding a score of weapons and gadgets used by field agents; Donos recognized the technological ancestors of gear the Wraiths had carried in the field.

Another holoprojection showed a man in dark commando garments. He was dark-skinned, graying at the temples, intense interest in his eyes, his features just a little too diabolical to be beautiful. “I was Vyn Narcassan,” he said. “In my twenty-year career with Republic Intelligence, I successfully completed over a hundred covert missions. I couldn’t prevent Senator Palpatine’s rise to power or his subsequent reign as Emperor. But I could, and did, engineer my disappearance. And despite Imperial Intelligence’s burning need to silence me and extinguish all the secrets I learned—” the projection leaned forward as if to impart a confidence—“they never found me.” He drew back, his smile creating deep dimples beside his mouth, his expression one of a satisfaction so immense that it bordered on arrogance.

Something about the projection jogged Donos’s memory, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. He filed it away for future reference. Someday, when he was trying to remember something else entirely, the answer would bubble up to the surface of his mind and annoy him intensely.

Farther along the series of black, ill-lit museum display halls—the decor an attempt, Donos thought, to edge visitors into the sort of paranoid mind-set appropriate to subjects such as Imperial Intelligence—the displays became more unsettling. As Palpatine took power, the Intelligence Division became a tool of terror and retaliation. Displays chronicled assassinations, kidnappings of Old Republic loyalists, tortures, subversions. An interrogation chamber was shown in great detail, actual holographic footage of a subject being questioned about a rumored insurrection. The replay showed the subject, a man of Chandrila, dying during questioning. The narrator finishing up commentary on the event pointed out that the insurrection was entirely imaginary.

One display showed the longtime Intelligence head, Armand Isard, an aging man with an inhumanity to his eyes and features that were unsettlingly real even in holographic replay. Farther down the exhibition, another showed his daughter, Ysanne Isard, nicknamed Iceheart, a tall and elegant woman of formidable bearing, and told of her swift rise to power through two simple tactics: turning in her own father for treasonous thoughts and attracting the eye of the Emperor. After Palpatine’s death, she had even managed secretly to gain control of the Empire itself for a time.

Face, his features buried under a wooly brown beard, lingered before the projection of Ysanne Isard for a long time, and Donos saw him shudder—a motion too slight for any but those who knew him best to notice. The Wraiths were aware that when Face was a boy star in holodramas, he’d actually met Iceheart, had even been invited to sit in her lap. Now Iceheart was dead, killed by Rogue Squadron’s own Tycho Celchu, and Donos knew the universe was better off without her.

To some extent, Imperial Intelligence had died with her. To be sure, an organization with that name survived under the coalition that had replaced Iceheart, but it was not managed with the same inventive ruthlessness that had characterized Isard and her father. The organization was still a danger … but to fewer and fewer people as the years went by.

Instead of going out the exit at the end of the exhibition, the Wraiths turned about and went back the way they came, the better to give Targon a chance to view the displays again. As they passed the holo of Iceheart, Donos saw the Devaronian pilot pull up something held by a chain around his neck and press it to his forehead.

“A lucky charm?” Donos asked.

Targon nodded. “A coin of the Old Republic. It holds a lot of luck.”

“How do you know?”

“My brother was never shot down while wearing it. It’s better than anything else I have. He sent it to me when I joined the Academy. Better than my lucky carved bantha-bone. Better than my lucky belt buckle. Or my lucky gilding set. Or my—”

Face interrupted. “What’s a gilding set?”

“Well, you know. For my horns.”

“I don’t know. What about your horns?”

Targon shrugged. “For special occasions, important festivals, we sometimes—Devaronians I mean—put gold leaf on our horns. For decoration.”

“And this is just a device to help you do that?”

“That’s right.”

“What makes it lucky?”

“Well, the first time I used it, shortly before I entered the Academy, I attracted the eye of a certain young lady—”

“Never mind.”

Donos and Face exchanged glances. The Wraiths and Rogues were light on pilots who put much stock in good-luck charms, but such pilots were common throughout the New Republic and the Empire. Donos saw Face’s eyes light up, probably because of an idea for a prank.

“I was Vyn Narcassan. In my twenty-year career with Republic Intelligence, I successfully completed over a hundred covert missions.” As they reached the display honoring the last of the Old Republic’s Intelligence heroes, Donos gave the man one last look, took in his dimpling smile, then realized what it was the man reminded him of.

Not what—who. The man’s skin tone, his dimples, his unusual physical beauty—they were all shared by another Wraith. Shalla Nelprin.

That rocked Donos back on his heels. But the physical resemblance was dramatic.

Donos smiled at the long-missing agent. “We’ll just let that be our little secret, Narcassan,” he said under his breath. “But I’m going to send Shalla a message and tell her to come visit this exhibit today. Not why. Just that she needs to. In case it means something to her.”

“Who are you talking to?” That was Lara. Face and Dia were already a few steps ahead, arm in arm, with Targon trailing behind them.

“I’ll tell you sometime.”

“Edallia?” The voice, wavery and uncertain, came from behind them. “Edallia Monotheer, it’s so good to see you!”

Donos glanced back. Approaching them was an old man, his hair a wispy white, his body so sparse of flesh that he seemed skeletal, but there was nothing menacing about the smile he was turning on Lara.

Behind him a dozen meters but coming at a trot was a middle-aged woman, overweight and matronly, her expression anxious. “Father,” she called, and she sounded out of breath. “Not again.”

The old man reached Lara, seized her hand, pumped it vigorously. “Edallia, it’s been so long. Did you ever marry that boy? Did you graduate? What have you been doing?”

Lara tried unsuccessfully to extricate her thoroughly shaken hand. “Sir, I don’t—I’m not—”

“I’m so sorry.” That was the daughter. Reaching her father, she took his hand, forcing him to give up his grip on Lara’s. “He’s … confused. He doesn’t always remember where he is. Or when.”

“It’s all right,” Lara said, but she looked a little shaken.

The old man said, “Child, I must introduce Edallia Monotheer. One of my best pupils.”

His daughter asked, “When?”

He looked confused. “What?”

“When was she one of your best pupils?”

The old man looked back at Lara, his eyes wavery, uncertain. “Why, it’s been thirty, thirty-five years.”

“Look at her, father. She’s not thirty years old.”

The old man leaned in close to Lara’s face and peered. “Edallia?”

Lara shook her head, and though she maintained a cheerful smile, Donos decided that it was forced. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m Lara.”

“Oh.” The old man drew back and looked around. “Where is she, then?”

“Maybe farther up the exhibition, Father. You go look. I’ll be along.”

With a courteous, if distracted, nod to the Wraiths, the old man began to walk back the way he’d come.

“I’m so sorry,” the woman said. “He was once with Old Republic Intelligence, so he likes to come here day after day. He was shot on a mission shortly after the Emperor came to power.” She indicated a place just in front of her temple. “He hasn’t been the same since.”

“It’s not a problem,” Lara said. “He was very nice.”

“Thank you for understanding.” The woman turned and trotted along in her father’s wake.

Lara turned and bumped into Face and Dia, who had returned during the conversation. “Oops.”

Face looked at her intently. “Gerwa Patunkin?”

“No.”

“Totovia Lampray?”

“No.” She smiled. “Stop it.”

“Dipligonai Phreet?”

“Shut up.” She pushed past him, laughing, and headed for the exit. “Let’s get that drink. I need it.”

“Moploogy Starco?”

“Face, I’m going to shoot you.”

2

Starfighters swarmed from the sides of the Mon Calamari cruiser Mon Remonda like insects from a deep-space nest. They formed up in four groups—two X-wing, one A-wing, one B-wing—and descended toward Levian Two, the world Mon Remonda now orbited. From this altitude, it seemed stony and orange and impossibly inhospitable, but the comm chatter the pilots were picking up suggested otherwise.

“Entering Delta Sector. More of the same. I’ll map-flag locations of survivors.” “Ravine Six here. Repulsorlift is out. I’m going to have to attempt a high-speed landing.” “Ravine Six, switch to ten-oh-three. You’ve got your own controller standing by.” “Beta Sector Base, this is Beta Ten. I read unknowns descending, four groups.” “Beta Ten, this is Base. There are some TIEs in the unknowns but they’re mostly friendlies.”

Wedge sighed and activated his comm unit. “Beta Sector Base, this is Rogue Leader. You’ve got Rogue, Wraith, Polearm, and Nova Squadrons in descent to your position. Looks like we’re a little late to the party.”

“ ’Fraid so, Rogue Leader. You’ve missed a Raptor raid. They blasted out of here half an hour ago. We’ve got settlements and facilities hit all over this hemisphere. Could we interest you in some search-and-rescue action?”

“Glad to oblige. Give us vectors for twenty search pairs and we’ll get on it.”

“Ships dropping out of hyperspace!” It was Mon Remonda’s sensor officer, Golorno, a human young enough not to be able to keep his voice level in times of stress. “I count four, five, six capital ships!”

Han Solo abandoned his armature-mounted chair and moved to stand behind Golorno. He turned to his communications officer. “Recall the starfighters now.” Then he leaned over Golorno’s shoulder. “Details, I need details,” he said.

“Uh, uh, two Star Destroyers, one Imperial-class, one Victory-class. One heavy cruiser, a Dreadnaught, I think. Two light cruisers—telemetry says probably Carrack-class. At the back of the formation …” The young officer’s voice dropped. “One Super-class Star Destroyer.”

“Iron Fist.” Solo straightened and slapped his hands together. “He’s finally decided to come in for a scrap.”

He calculated unit strengths. His flagship was Mon Remonda, one of the most powerful of the Mon Calamari cruisers, and its pilot complement, led by Wedge Antilles, couldn’t be better. Also in this portion of his fleet were Mon Karren, a Mon Cal cruiser of more normal strength, Tedevium, a frigate recently converted from a training ship back to a combat vessel, and Etherhawk, a Marauder-class corvette that was just one restoration job ahead of being dilapidated. Not nearly enough strength to handle the fleet Zsinj had assembled against him … but Zsinj didn’t know that Solo’s Group 2 was standing by outside the Levian system. One holocomm call and Solo’s strength would be doubled, making this more of a fair slugging match. “Call in Group Two,” he ordered. “How long before Zsinj’s force reaches us?”

“Three minutes, sir.”

“How long before the starfighters return?”

“They’re grouping. Four or five minutes, sir.”

Solo sighed. “Slugging match” was to be the correct phrase for it.

An impulse caused him to turn back to the door out of the bridge. As he’d suspected, Chewbacca was there, just outside, standing by. The Wookiee, who chose to have no official role in the anti-Zsinj group, but preferred to stay near the bridge and Solo, had come up as soon as the tenor of voices from the bridge sounded different. Solo gave him a confident grin.

“A second group is dropping out of hyperspace, sir!”

Solo whipped around to stare at the sensor screen again. It was broadening, updating—the data stream at the bottom indicated that the sensor screen was being supplemented by information from Tedevium.

It showed another force of capital ships appearing on the far side of Levian Two. Telemetry indicated that the new force included two Star Destroyers, two Dreadnaughts, a light cruiser, and a Lancer-class frigate—a vessel designed especially to assault swarms of starfighters.

“We’re in trouble,” Solo said.

Golorno turned to look up at Solo. He wasn’t able to mask his fear.

Solo gave him a reassuring half grin. “Don’t worry. I know when to dump my cargo and run.” He turned to the navigator. “Set us a course out of here. What’s the closest path to get us out of Levian Two’s gravity well?”

The Mon Calamari navigator consulted his board. “Directly through the Super Star Destroyer’s force, sir.”

“Figures. Make that our primary course. Pass it on to our group.”

“Done, sir.”

“Communications, revise my order to Group Two. Tell them to be on course and ready for a jump at any second, but to standby.”

“Yes, sir.”

He turned to Captain Onoma, a Mon Calamari male with salmon-colored skin. “Captain, take us out.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Third hostile group dropping out of hyperspace!”

Solo turned to look, disbelieving, at Golorno. “You have got to be kidding.”

•    •    •

Wedge Antilles stood his X-wing on its tail and blasted toward the sky.

He’d sent Polearm Squadron, the A-wing unit commanded by Captain Todra Mayn, on ahead. There was little tactical sense in keeping the faster craft back with the X-wings and B-wings. Now Wedge led Rogue Squadron and Wraith Squadron in escorting Nova Squadron, the B-wing unit.

Sensor data arriving from Mon Remonda showed Solo’s group closing slowly on a unit of six capital ships. The Mon Cal cruiser was already swarming with enemy starfighters, and defenders from Mon Karren and Tedevium.

Wedge added up the numbers on that. Those two ships could field five squadrons of starfighters between them. The enemy force ahead could field nearly twenty-two squadrons. And then there were enemies coming up from behind—as Wedge’s squadrons cleared the atmosphere, his sensors picked up two additional groups of capital ships chasing Solo’s force.

This was not going to be good.

Wedge wondered if Baron Fel was among the starfighter pilots assaulting Mon Remonda. Soontir Fel was one of the greatest pilots ever to emerge from the Imperial Academy, one of the greatest to have flown with Rogue Squadron—and a man who shared a secret with Wedge Antilles.

They were brothers-in-law. Only they and a very few others knew that famous Imperial actress Wynssa Starflare was also Wedge’s sister Syal Antilles. Since the disappearance of Fel and Syal several years ago, Wedge had had no news whatsoever of his sister. Now Fel was back, but flying for the wrong side, and there was still no word of Syal. It was a secret Wedge kept very close. One of his own pilots, Face Loran, had even starred in a holodrama with Wynssa Starflare, but Wedge had never confided the secret to him, even to obtain Face’s reminiscences about his sister.

And now, once again, Wedge was rushing into battle with a force that might include Fel, leading to the grim possibility that he might have to shoot down his own brother-in-law … and perhaps lose any clue Fel might offer to Syal’s fate.

Sensors showed that the Iron Fist force had, since the last communication from Mon Remonda, turned about and was now retreating before Han Solo’s force. Wedge nodded. If Zsinj maintained a course toward the planet, his force and Solo’s would blast past one another in a matter of split seconds, exchanging one low-accuracy barrage, and then Zsinj would have to turn his force around to pursue. By retreating before Solo on the shortest course to an area of space where the New Republic fleet could engage their hyperdrives, he prolonged the engagement.

Wedge’s squadrons caught up to Mon Remonda, but circled around several kilometers from the Mon Cal cruiser. At this distance, the swarming dogfight between starfighters near the cruiser looked like twinkling stars. A grim simile—Wedge reminded himself that some of those twinkles were explosions that had once been friends and allies.

“S-foils to attack position,” he ordered, and suited action to words by toggling the appropriate switch above his line of sight. His S-foils split and locked into the familiar profile that gave the X-wing its name. “B-wings, you may arm your weapons.”

His sensors showed Zsinj’s force spread out before the approaching Mon Remonda. Straightforward tactics; it meant Mon Remonda couldn’t expect to make a minor course change to elude a tight group of ships even temporarily. Any minor course change would still send Mon Remonda into the umbrella of enemy ships; any major course change would allow the pursuit ships to catch up.

But this tactic was about to work in Wedge’s favor.

They dove in toward Iron Fist’s stern. Sensors showed no starfighter response from the Super Star Destroyer—either the remaining squadrons were being slow to scramble, or all squadrons were engaged with Mon Remonda.

Then flashes of light emerged from the destroyer’s stern, congregating on Wedge’s force, and the ball-like detonations of concussion missiles began to fill the space around them. Wedge was rocked by a near miss. “Begin evasive maneuvers,” he said. “X-wings, ready torpedoes. Remember, port engines only.”

Pair by pair, his X-wings began a dance, juking and jinking to throw off the aim of the Imperial gunners they so rapidly approached. The B-wings hung back, allowing the X-wings to draw the initial fire.

Wedge’s range meter scrolled down below two kilometers, the maximum effective range for his targeting computer. Enemy turbolaser fire increased in intensity—and proximity.

At fifteen hundred meters, he said, “Launch one, launch two.” He fired, sending paired proton torpedoes toward one of Iron Fist’s stern engines. More blue streaks than he could count emerged from his X-wings, instantly crossing the distance to the destroyer, which was suddenly and brilliantly illuminated by their detonations against the port side of the stern.

He looped to port. “Novas, your turn.”

“Acknowledged, and thanks, Rogue Leader.” That was the voice of Nova One. “Novas, launch one and begin ion fire.”

Blue streaks leaped from the B-wings. Then the ungainly-looking craft continued their dive toward Iron Fist’s engines, their ion cannons sustaining fire against the destroyer’s stern.

Wedge wished them success. They were designed to hurt capital ships; their pilots knew what they were doing. But if Iron Fist called back its starfighters and the Novas didn’t notice in time, the entire squad could be lost.

Now it was time to meet the weak link of this force: Zsinj’s light cruisers.

Mon Remonda rattled under blast after blast from the attacking starfighters. Solo ignored the vibrations. Shield integrity was good, the hull was holding up—they still had a chance.

His communications officer said, “Nova One reports damage to Iron Fist’s engines.”

“How extensive?” Solo asked.

“Unknown.”

Golorno spoke up, his voice now more nearly normal. “A lot of the starfighters on us are in retreat. They just broke off to head for Iron Fist.”

“How many?”

“About half.”

“Ah, good. Now they outnumber ours only two to one.” Solo absently hammered the arm of his captain’s chair. If only he were out there, in the Millennium Falcon, making a direct assault on the enemy … here, all he could do was issue orders and hope they were so good that not many of his people died.

They were never so good that none of his people died. Never.

“Message for General Solo,” the comm officer announced. “From Warlord Zsinj!”

“Ignore it,” Solo said. “I’ll bet you a hundred Corellian credits he hates that. No, wait.” He stood. “Chewie, get in here.”

The Wookiee squeezed in through the bridge door, looking quizzical.

“Here, take my chair.” Han helped his friend into the seat, which was far too small for him. “All right, put that message through.”

The comm unit on the command chair lit up. Even from his angle off to the side, Solo could make out Zsinj’s florid features, bald head, and exaggerated handlebar mustache. “General Solo,” Zsinj said, “I’m calling to offer you an honorable—what is this?”

Chewbacca reached down and tilted the screen up so its built-in holocam would broadcast his face instead of just his chest. He grumbled something at the screen.

“It’s, ah, Chewbacca, isn’t it? Please put your owner on.”

Chewbacca offered him an extended speech, nearly subsonic, bone-rattling. Solo smiled. It was an eloquent discourse on the ingredients that made up Zsinj, and not one of the ingredients was the sort that should be mentioned in polite company or during any meal.

“Wookiee is not among my many languages, you extruded fur thing. Where is Solo?”

Chewbacca returned to his discourse and Solo moved to stand beside Captain Onoma, taking in the officer’s sensor readings, his mind once again fully engaged by the battle.

“This is Leader. Break by squadrons.”

“Wraith One acknowledges,” Face said. “Good luck, Rogues.” He began a long curve relative up and to starboard, taking him and the Wraiths toward one of the two Carrack-class cruisers in Zsinj’s group.

The Carracks were 350 meters long, looking like stubby metal bars with swells at bow and stern. Face knew them to be formidable opponents for capital ships; their batteries of ion cannons made it possible for them to disable much larger vessels. But the comparatively light number of turbolasers they carried gave the starfighters a chance at them.

The Wraiths approached their target from the stern. At Face’s command, they split into two units, Wraiths One through Six going to starboard, Seven through Eleven going to port. Stern turbolasers opened up on them even before they were within range.

“Fire at will,” Face said, “but make ’em count.”

Runt and Donos were the first of his half squad to fire, the blue streaks of proton torpedoes drawing an instantaneous line from the X-wings to the flanks of the cruiser. Face watched their explosions balloon against the cruiser’s side. He ignored the pure tone of his own target lock, twitched his pilot’s yoke over so his targeting brackets fell within the center of one of the torpedo detonation clouds, and fired his own remaining torpedoes. Then he looped away from the cruiser’s side, Lara tucked in behind him and to port. “Report,” he said.

“One, this is Seven.” It was Dia’s voice, barely recognizable through the usual comm distortion. “We have port-side penetration.”

“Ten is hit! Ten is hit!”

Face felt his gut go cold, and a quick check of his sensor screen showed that Janson, Wraith Ten, was no longer present. “Calm down, Eleven. Detail damage to Wraith Ten.”

“He’s not destroyed, One. An ion cannon hit him. He’s got no power, he’s ballistic.”

Face sagged in relief. “Ballistic toward or away from the cruiser?”

“Away, One.”

“Keep clear of him, Eleven. You’re active, you’ll draw fire toward him. Squad, continue report.”

“One, Five.” That was Kell; the sensor board showed him lurking closer to the cruiser than the rest of the squad. Face supposed that Kell, maneuvering in a captured TIE interceptor, considered himself harder to hit than the X-wings … and he was right. Too, the TIEs had no proton torpedoes, so Kell had probably chosen the role of close observer in order to contribute to this battle. “Starboard impacts damaged the hull but did not, repeat, did not penetrate.”

“All Wraith X-wings,” Face said, “form up for a run on the starboard. TIEs, strafe the port side to keep their shields divided. Keep them honest.” He toggled his comm unit to the fleet frequency. “Mon Remonda, Wraith One. Please dispatch a shuttle with a tractor for pickup of disabled snubfighter.”

Face brought his X-wing around slowly, allowing the other pilots with functional X-wings to form up on him. Kell, Shalla, and Elassar, in their interceptors, were already beginning their strafing run against the port side. “Once more into the gauntlet, Wraiths,” he said, and nudged his yoke forward.

They dove toward the cruiser in loose formation, X-wings spread far enough apart that their evasive juking didn’t bring them in danger of collision. Streams of turbolasers and concussion missiles sought them, and Face heard a cry of surprise or pain from someone on his squadron channel.

Their proton torpedoes spent, at a half kilometer they opened fire with quad-linked lasers and continued firing and diving until the cruiser’s flank was almost all of the sky. Face hauled up on his yoke, felt the high-performance turn drag him deeper into his chair despite the best efforts of the acceleration compensator to protect him from the consequences of his maneuver. He saw the cruiser’s hull flash beneath him, saw columns of laser fire on either side—then he was clear and headed out to space again.

He spared a look at his sensor board. Ten Wraiths were still on the board. He breathed a sigh of relief—no additional losses. “Wraith One to squadron. Report damage. Ours and theirs.”

“One, Five. Starboard side also breached. I think we’ve gotten both power generators and I think some of the reserve cells. Parts of the ship are going dark. They’re not maneuvering.”

“Thanks, Five. Now get your rear end away from that hulk before some gunner with a little power left decides to make fireworks out of you.”

“Acknowledged, One.”

“One, this is Four.” Tyria’s voice, level and calm. “I took a turbolaser hit, I think at maximum range. I have some wing damage.”

Face checked her position on the sensor board, then maneuvered to sideslip past her. She was correct; her port S-foils both showed laser scoring on their trailing edges. “Any system failures, Four?”

“Not so far, chief.”

“Keep me updated.” He toggled over to fleet frequency. “Wraith One to Rogue Leader. Target secure.”

Wedge’s voice came back instantly. “Good work, Wraiths. Rogue target destroyed. Iron Fist showing difficulty maneuvering. Stand by.”

“Acknowledged.” He switched back to squadron frequency. “Wraiths, form up on me. We’ll stay near Ten for the time being.”

On the bridge of Iron Fist, the Warlord Zsinj stood on the command walkway above the crew pit. He did not stare out the forward viewports, which showed only starfield along his enemy’s exit vector, but down into the screens of his bridge crew.

He was not a tall man, nor was he physically impressive. He was as round as any merchant gourmand, and his exaggerated bandit-style mustachios suggested that his self-image was quite different from the image he projected. The white grand admiral’s uniform he wore suggested a rank he’d never earned in service to the Empire, and those who knew that fact could not help but attribute to him the sins of pride and self-deception.

Only he knew how many of these attributes were affectations. False clues to persuade his enemies—and superiors, and subordinates—to come to incorrect conclusions about him. To underestimate him. Sometimes to overestimate him—that could, on occasion, be as useful.

Beside him stood the man in charge of his ground troops and starfighter support, General Melvar. Zsinj was lucky to have found a kindred spirit in Melvar, a man who painted on the face of a dedicated sadist when confronting the outer world and then removed it, revealing features extraordinary only in their blandness, in the warlord’s company. Melvar could blend with any crowd on any world with his natural features, and probably had many more alternative identities tucked away than the score or so Zsinj knew about.

“Mon Remonda and the rest of his fleet are still coming on at full speed,” Melvar said. “But even with the two Carrack cruisers out and our maneuverability impaired, we should be able to give her a sustained broadside. If we concentrate on her power and engines, we’ll trap her here. She’ll never get far enough away from Levian Two to make hyperspace.”

Zsinj nodded absently. “Time until Mon Remonda is under our guns?”

A crewman shouted up, “Ships appearing ahead, a drop out of hyperspace. Three vessels, sir—a Mon Calamari cruiser, an Imperial-class Star Destroyer, and a Quasar Fire-class bulk cruiser.”

Zsinj sighed, vexed. He looked forward through the viewports, but couldn’t make out the new enemies. “I didn’t realize Solo had more of his fleet within range. Not that it matters. Enhance the view.”

A hologram appeared before a portion of the main viewport. On it were the three vessels his crewman had described. All three were turning to Zsinj’s port, exposing their sides, ready to fire on the oncoming Super Star Destroyer.

“They’re angling toward the escape vector Mon Remonda will take,” Zsinj said. “Toward our weak flank, where the Carrack-class cruisers have been knocked out. They’re going to line up so that we’ll walk into the worst of their damage if we adjust to continue our prosecution of Mon Remonda. But we’re not going to play their game.”

Melvar smiled. “I somehow doubted we were.”

Zsinj called down to his communications officer, “Send Red Gauntlet, Serpent’s Smile and Reprisal on ahead. Punch a hole in the defensive screen they’re throwing up. Bring the starfighters back to Iron Fist to act as our own screen.” He turned to his weapons specialist. “Ready all guns. Tell them to fire on Mon Remonda as they bear.”

“Yes, sir.”

Zsinj straightened, smiling. “Solo really should have taken my call. He might even have survived for a while.”

Face saw the shuttle towing Janson’s X-wing disappear into one of Mon Remonda’s bays. The Wraiths’s three TIE interceptor pilots followed him in. He knew from comm traffic that the group’s A-wings were already aboard.

Then the leading edge of Mon Remonda came within gunnery range of Iron Fist. Turbolaser flashes by the hundreds lit space between the two capital ships. Far ahead, similar flashes illuminated the void between Solo’s Group 2 and Zsinj’s advance force.

Like a younger sea mammal sidling up beneath its mother, Mon Karren moved up below Mon Remonda, moving into the sea of turbolaser fire with her sister ship, her back to the larger vessel’s belly.

Zsinj felt his shoulders sag as he witnessed Mon Karren’s maneuver. “We’ve lost Mon Remonda,” he said.

Melvar offered one of his rare frowns. “They’ve just barely moved into our range.”

“Correct. But they’re collaborating to absorb our battery assaults, dividing the damage between them. And since I was foolish enough to bring back our starfighters to protect our engines—”

“They can concentrate their shields against us. We have nothing to batter their topsides with to keep them honest.”

“Correct.” Zsinj shook his head. “This isn’t going to go down in the history annals as a loss for me, Melvar, but it is a loss. One little mistake and Solo slips through my fingers.”

“Still, you haven’t lost anything but the ammunition and power you’ve expended.”

“True.” He leaned down to face his weapons officer. “Continue with the barrage until they make the jump to hyperspace. Not your fault, Major. Mine.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Still pensive, Zsinj turned away and headed out of the bridge. The rest of this battle was going to be mop-up; his subordinates could handle that. He needed to rest and prepare for the next engagement.

Solo’s fleet dropped out of hyperspace mere light-years from the Levian system and stayed in realspace just long enough to pick up the hyperspace-equipped starfighters and coordinate their next jump. Then they fled back into the comparative safety of faster-than-light speeds.

3

Tired but all present and accounted for—a rarity in full-scale space-navy engagements—the pilots of Wedge’s command gradually collected in the pilot’s lounge of Mon Remonda.

It was a large chamber with rounded corners, all the walls in antiseptic glossy white, all the furniture in white or blue or green. A fully stocked bar dominated one wall of the chamber, but its cabinets were, while the ship remained on alert status, all locked down, with only nonalcoholic drinks available to the pilots. The air was drier here than in the rest of the ship; none of the pilots of Mon Remonda’s four fighter squadrons was a Mon Calamari or Quarren, so they tended to adjust the environment to be more comfortable to land dwellers.

Donos took a comfortable chair in one of the curves that served the lounge as corners and watched the other pilots with interest. The Wraith Squadron pilots were jubilant, especially with the scare involving Wes Janson, but those of the other squadrons exhibited less cheer.

One of the Rogues—a woman with long brown hair, a trim build, and an intense manner—sat in one of what the pilots called egg-chairs. These seats were shaped like white eggs a meter and a half tall, with one side scooped away so someone could sit within, mounted on a post next to a terminal niche in the wall so the pilot could turn his back to the room and do terminal work. Donos took a moment to recall her name: Inyri Forge.

The woman cupped her chin in her hand. Her brown eyes were glum. “He’s changed the rules on us,” she said. “We should have expected it.”

Tyria said, “I’m not sure what you mean.”

Forge gave her a look of evaluation, as though deciding whether to offer sarcasm or simple information, and settled on the latter course. “While you Wraiths were running around in disguise or doing your ground missions, we’ve been following Zsinj all over space. Into regions he controls, into New Republic regions he’s assaulting, wherever we can find signs of his passage. We find little hints we can’t afford to investigate, because many of them are false clues he’s leaving to lead us into a trap or waste our time and resources. We also find the remains of full-scale assaults, where we always arrive too late—he’s in and out before we can mount a response.

“But today, we get number two, and not only had he figured out our pattern of response times, but he was waiting around to hit us when we arrived.”

“And,” Hobbie said, “his fleet was huge. Something like twenty capital ships. More than we thought he could field. Our intelligence hasn’t kept up with him.”

“So,” Forge concluded, “we have to change our tactics. To suit him. And that’s not good.”

Face Loran, from the little table he shared with Dia, said, “We don’t need to alter our tactics. We need to alter his. It looks like he hasn’t been bringing Iron Fist into gravity wells, probably because of the beating we gave him the last time he did, until today—when he had an overwhelming force. If he can keep doing that, he’s going to beat us.”

Elassar Targon stood at the bar, drumming on the bar top with his knuckles. “We need to follow all the leads we’ve been getting. Even if some of them are traps. What about the rumor of the bacta hijacking being planned?”

Shalla reached an oversized couch and twirled as she fell onto it so she lay faceup. “Too obvious,” she said. “Odds are a hundred to one that was one of Zsinj’s planted leads. We follow that and we get ambushed again.”

Elassar gave her a scornful look. “You’ve been doing all that analysis of leads, even before the Wraiths were back with Mon Remonda. Is that what you told the mission-planning staff?”

“It is.”

“So you’re the one who’s keeping General Solo running scared.”

Conversations subsided all over the pilot’s lounge as fliers turned to follow this exchange.

Shalla pulled herself back and upright so that she leaned back against one of the couch arms. She did not look happy. “You know, you’re wrong in so many ways it may take me a couple of days to straighten you out. First, I’m not the only one providing intelligence analysis to General Solo. I’m one of about thirty, and I’m a very distant link in that chain. Second, he’s not running scared. He just has responsibilities to keep his subordinates alive long enough for them to get the job done, a concept that may be a little lofty for a school-aged thrillseeker like you.”

Elassar’s face set. “Are we still no decor?”

Pilot’s parlance … by custom, only pilots were admitted to this lounge, and once inside, designations of rank, sometimes disparagingly referred to as “decor,” were largely ignored. Even so, it was sometimes a strain to maintain this custom when the most senior officers were present, which is why their visits to this lounge were infrequent and short.

Shalla nodded.

Elassar took a deep breath, apparently considering his words. When they emerged, they were more reasoned than the Wraiths and Rogues were used to hearing from him. “I’m not going to pretend I know more about Zsinj or about intelligence operations than you. I don’t. What I do know is that a pilot’s job is to fly and to vape the enemy. The advice you and the others are giving to our superiors is keeping us from doing that.”

“You’re right,” Shalla said. “But pilots have other jobs. Such as not flying straight into the ground, straight into a star, or straight into a battle situation chosen and lovingly set up by an enemy. I don’t question that you’re brave, Elassar. But are you so brave that you’re happy to die pointlessly?”

“So what do we do?” That was Dorset Konnair, an A-wing pilot of Polearm Squadron. She was a small woman of very pale skin and very dark hair, with a blue star-flare tattoo around her right eye. Her flight suit concealed her other tattoos, all of them in shades of blue. She was also very limber, as evidenced by the ease with which she sat, legs folded tailor-style, in her chair. Donos knew she was from Coruscant, which probably explained why she was quiet so often in pilot gatherings; Donos knew the kind of suspicion with which some New Republic veterans viewed Coruscant natives. “Either we keep running around gathering Zsinj’s crumbs and getting nowhere, or we bite on the bait he’s deliberately leaving and let him draw us in.”

Forge said, “We have to regain the initiative. Bait our own trap. Offer him something he can’t afford to refuse.”

Donos snorted. “Such as what? Mon Remonda? Have her limp through Zsinj-controlled space like a wounded avian and hope he comes swooping in to finish her off?”

“No,” Elassar said. He struck another swashbuckling pose. “Offer him Elassar Targon, master of the uni-”

“Sithspit, you’re obnoxious.” Forge fixed Elassar with an amused glance. “But you’re on the right track. I was thinking we ought to offer him General Han Solo.”

“Don’t do that,” said Hobbie from his stool at the bar. His voice was more mournful than ever. “If Zsinj kills Solo, Wedge might be appointed to fill the vacancy.”

“Good point,” Forge said. “But bear with me a minute. Kell, didn’t you say that General Solo had gone gallivanting around in the Millennium Falcon two, three months ago, delivering some high-security messages for the Inner Council?”

Kell, sharing a couch with Tyria, nodded. “That’s right.”

“There was no secret to the fact that he was moving about. And you used his trip to pull a fast one on Admiral Trigit. To distract him from his primary objective over Commenor’s moon. You made him think Solo was still around, a viable target.”

“Show due respect,” said Runt. A member of a species whose representatives were usually too tall to fit in a starfighter cockpit, Runt was, by their standards, a midget, though he and Kell were the tallest of the Wraiths. His hairy body, his elongated face with flaring nostrils and large, square teeth, and his wide-eyed look all suggested that his kind were closer to being draft animals than intelligent humanoids, but his squadmates had found him to be a wise and capable being.

And somewhat odd. “You speak,” he continued, “of the only flight of Dinner Squadron. The one X-wing squadron with an undefeated record and no losses.”

“Oh, I forgot.” Forge smiled. “But what I’m saying is that we have a track record of General Solo occasionally embarking on special missions even while commanding the Zsinj task force, and if there’s anyone Zsinj might change his plans to nab, it’s Han Solo. A chance for revenge is a powerful motivator.”

“I like it.” The voice came from another of the egg-chairs against the wall. It was turned away from the room, so the other pilots present had presumed it was unoccupied or that anyone there was engrossed in his terminal.

Now the chair turned around to face the room. Its occupant was Han Solo—not decked out in the uncomfortable-looking uniform that was apparently his bane, but wearing the comfortable trousers, shirt, and vest that were his preferred dress. His clothes were spotted with sweat stains; obviously he hadn’t changed since his recent time on the bridge. But his expression was amused. “But there are two problems with this plan.”

Forge cleared her throat, concealing any surprise she might have felt. “And what are they, sir?”

“No ‘sir.’ No decor, remember? Problem number one is that the Millennium Falcon is currently stowed on Princess Leia’s flagship, the Rebel Dream, and there’s no telling when I’ll see her again.”

Donos privately wondered which “her” he was referring to.

“Problem number two,” Solo continued, “is that we still don’t know what Zsinj is up to. And you Wraiths are largely to blame for that.”

The pilots under his command looked around for someone bearing a mark of guilt.

“By which I mean,” Solo said, “since you figured out that he was planning to steal a second Super Star Destroyer, Razor’s Kiss, from Kuat, and since you figured out how to determine where it would be so we could all blow it up, you’ve forced Zsinj to revert to his backup plan. Which is what?”

Forge shook her head. “We don’t know.”

Face said, “Though we have one lead. Saffalore.”

That was an Imperial-held world in the Corporate Sector, home to a large corporation called Binring Biomedical. It was there that Piggy had been altered—had, in a sense, been created. A manufacturing facility owned by Zsinj on another world had fabricated the exact sort of transparisteel cages Piggy had been reared within, suggesting that Binring, too, might have a surreptitious relationship with the warlord.

“I’m as tired as you are of chasing down vague hints and leads and only dropping in after Zsinj is long gone,” Solo said. “So Mon Remonda is leaving the fleet for a while. Saffalore is our next port of call.” He rose and walked toward the lounge’s exit. “Still, I sort of like your idea of luring Zsinj out to come after me. I wouldn’t mind personally leading to Zsinj’s downfall.” He offered a smile, almost sinister, back toward the assembled pilots. “Give that plan some more thought, too.” Then he was gone.

“Never can tell when a Corellian will pop up,” Donos said.

The pilots were diverted by a banging sound—Elassar hammering his head and horns against the top of the bar. His face a mask of tragedy, he suspended hammering to look at his fellow pilots. “Now I am done,” he said. “I have performed the unluckiest deed possible. I’ve suggested that my commanding officer runs away from combat, and I’ve done so within his hearing.”

“True,” Shalla said. “To make it worse, you did it when we’re still on alert status. Meaning you can’t even blot out the memory with drink.”

“Don’t remind me. Shalla? Dear friend, kind lieutenant?”

“Yes?”

“Will you kill me? Please?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Runt. With your great strength, you could tear one of my arms off and say it was a handshaking accident.”

Runt shook his head and offered up a human-style smile.

“Kell! You hate me, don’t you? Well, I have an offer for you …”

“Not now, Elassar. We have more important people to kill.”

Face perked up. “You know, Inyri, we could do what Kell and Runt did back in the raid on Folor Base.”

Forge snorted. “Run a couple of X-wings along together with malfunctioning shields and just pretend we’re the Millennium Falcon?”

“I didn’t mean that specifically. But in a general sense, yes. What they did was to fake up a Millennium Falcon. With more time and more resources, we could do a better job.”

Forge considered and looked among the other pilots. Theirs were a mixed lot of dubious and approving expressions. “Maybe.”

Face continued, “Don’t you Rogues have the universe’s best quartermaster?”

“Emtrey, yes.” Forge nodded. M-3PO, called Emtrey, was a protocol droid attached to Rogue Squadron. He had a reputation for phenomenal skills at scrounging. “But he’s not as good as he used to be. We had to throttle back some of his programming.”

“Still …”

“Still, it’s worth thinking about.” Forge stood. “Let’s find a conference room with a holotable and fire some ideas around.”

The doors rose to admit Corran Horn. The former CorSec agent looked suspiciously at the pilots rising to their feet. “What did I miss?”

Some of the pilots laughed. In the months Rogue Squadron had been on Mon Remonda, Corran Horn and Han Solo had never been seen at the same place and time. It had spawned a running joke among the other pilots—the notion that, despite their disparate ages and personalities, they were the same person in disguise.

“We’ll tell you in the conference room,” Forge said. “You’re late, so you get to take the notes.”

Elassar fixed Horn with an imploring expression. “Lieutenant! With your skills, you could kill me and make it look like an accident. Please …”

•    •    •

Han Solo poked his head into Wedge’s office. “Got a minute?”

Wedge turned from his terminal and the report he was composing on the day’s aborted mission. “Come on in. Distract me. Please.”

The general seated himself with characteristic casualness and grimaced at the work Wedge was doing. “I thought you ought to be aware of some scuttlebutt. I tried to catch you at the pilot’s lounge, but you were hiding.”

Wedge snorted. “I had to have some words in private with the squadrons’s executive officers. About pilot morale. What is it?”

Solo’s face lost its usual cocky expression. Suddenly, alarmingly, he looked older and more tired. “It has nothing to do with Levian. This was relayed to me by some friends on Coruscant. The Intelligence investigation into the assassin who tried to kill Ackbar is looking into the possibility of a widespread Twi’lek conspiracy.”

“Conspiracy to do what?”

“They have no idea. The Twi’lek planet Ryloth has always traded with anyone who had credits. Intelligence says there’s a large warrior caste that resents the way the planet was dominated by humans for so long, and hates the way Ryloth is regarded as a merchant world—”

“That last part is true.”

“Well, Intelligence wonders whether this action is part of some fanatical conspiracy designed to strike against humans. There’s even talk of a conspiracy including several humanoid species, not just Twi’leks. And how such a group might want to eliminate Ackbar, who’s known to be friendly to humans.

“Also”—Solo leaned closer and dropped his voice—“Cracken’s people in Intelligence have tracked some interesting behavior among Twi’leks on Coruscant. Specifically, mid-level New Republic officers and advisors who have access to the powerful and the famous. Like the assassin, Jart Eyan. He was on leave just before his attempt to kill Ackbar. But apparently he and his family weren’t on leave where they were supposed to be. They were out of sight for several days leading up to the murder attempt, though they’d set things up so their friends would believe they were at a resort. Where they were, what they were doing, nobody knows.”

“You’re leading up to something.”

“You have several Twi’leks among your pilots.”

“That’s right. Tal’dira with the Rogues, Dia Passik with the Wraiths, Nuro Tualin with Polearm. My executive officer with the Rogues is Twi’lek, as is one of my mechanics, Koyi Komad, for the squadron.”

“How sure are you of them?”

Wedge thought back. Tal’dira was a pride-filled warrior of the world of Ryloth. His word was his bond, and deception seemed like a talent beyond his capabilities. Dia was another matter; brought, like many Twi’lek females, as a slave off Ryloth, trained to be a dancer, she’d escaped and killed her owner. Or so her story went; it was true that elements of her background could not be confirmed. Nuro was a recent graduate of the New Republic’s Fleet Command Academy and had trained with General Crespin in A-wings on Folor Base, as had several of his squadmates; he was largely an unknown factor. Wedge had known Nawara Ven since he re-formed Rogue Squadron, and Koyi Komad for years.

None of these Twi’leks had ever made him edgy when looking at him. None ever gave him the evaluative look that said, “I wonder what it would take to kill him?” His gut told him that they were dedicated pilots and technicians, not ringers for some power seeker. “I’m sure of them.”

Solo’s smile returned and the tiredness disappeared from his features. “Good.” He rose. “I just wanted you to be aware of what was going on. Keep it to yourself, though, will you?”

“Certainly.” As Solo opened the door to leave, Wedge said, “You know something? In spite of the way you seem to hate it, you’re pretty good at this management stuff.”

Solo lost his smile. “Don’t ever, ever say that. Someone important might hear you. And then I’d be stuck with it.” Then he was gone.

•    •    •

The man with the impossibly bland features appeared before Warlord Zsinj’s desk as though he were a holoprojection turned into flesh. “I have a present for you,” said Melvar.

Zsinj managed to keep himself from jumping. Melvar, he knew, prided himself on his silent comings and goings, and the nervousness this induced in his subordinates—and even superiors—though he claimed that this was not the case. But Zsinj had recently spent considerable effort to train himself not to start. To cover for his momentary lapse, he twirled one of his mustachios in rakish fashion.

“How delightful,” Zsinj said. “Have we instituted a new holiday, for which a gift is appropriate?” He waved his hands around to take in the lavish appointments of his office aboard his flagship, Iron Fist. “And wherever will I display your present?”

“I’m sure you’ll find a place.” Melvar smiled, the innocuous smile of a blameless financial officer, and snapped his fingers. A mere diversion; Zsinj knew that the man must have secretly thumbed the button on his comm unit with his other hand.

The door into Zsinj’s office opened and a pair of guards escorted in two people. One was a man, lean, aging, graying—in fact, the man appeared to be growing older as Zsinj watched him, so great was the fellow’s nervousness. The second was a woman, her companion’s junior by twenty or thirty years; her hair and eyes were dark, her expression poised, perhaps resigned. Both were in civilian dress.

Melvar gave Zsinj a little theatrical bow. “Allow me to present Doctors Novin Bress and Edda Gast, from our special operations division of Binring Biomedical on Saffalore. After due investigation I decided to bring them to speak to you personally.”

Zsinj folded his hands over the imposing swell of his stomach. He noted with satisfaction that his white Imperial grand admiral’s jacket was spotless, nearly gleaming; it would be inappropriate to lead two doomed people before a shabby warlord. “Doctor, Doctor, delighted to meet you.” He was charmed to see the first flicker of hope appear in the older man’s eyes; this one would be fun to play with.

“Ask them,” Melvar said, “about missing test subjects.”

Zsinj gave him a blank look, as if struggling to recall something of little consequence, then said, “Oh, yes. Doctors, tell me where a Gamorrean and an Ewok might obtain the necessary skills—and temperament—to fly starfighters.”

Dr. Bress, the male, tried to catch the eye of his younger colleague. Dr. Gast ignored his attempt; she kept her gaze on Zsinj.

“Well,” Bress said, “they might have escaped from our facility.”

“Ah,” Zsinj said. He picked up a datapad and brought up his day’s schedule. He’d have a massage in an hour, then sit down to a stimulating meal an hour after that. “It says here that I sent out a memorandum asking about possible test-subject escapes some time ago, and that you replied in the negative. Correct?”

Dr. Bress flinched. “Correct.”

Zsinj slammed the datapad down on the edge of his desk, snapping the device in two. Bress jumped. Interestingly, Gast didn’t. Zsinj modulated his voice to a snarl and allowed some color to creep into his face. “May I ask why didn’t you tell me then, when I sent out the memorandum? Why do I learn about it now?”

“Because we weren’t sure,” Bress said. “We’re not sure now.”

Zsinj stared at him a long moment, then turned his attention to Gast. “I’m not sure I understand this man. Perhaps you could explain a little more clearly.”

“I believe I can,” she said. “Might I have a chair? We walked some considerable distance to get to your office.”

Zsinj forced himself to mask the genuine surprise he felt. It took a lot of nerve to make such a request when she should have been wondering how best to preserve her life. He took his first really good look at her. Adult human female in the prime of life, not beautiful but with cheekbones that made her striking and would do so throughout her life … and her eyes, dark, calm, unapologetic, were unsettling.

He forced a smile. “Of course. General Melvar, where are your manners? Give the doctor a chair.”

Bress spoke up, his voice wavering: “I, too, uh, could use—”

“Do be quiet, Doctor Bress.” Zsinj waited until Melvar situated a chair behind Gast. He gave her a moment to compose herself. “Now, you were saying?”

“My uncle, Doctor Tuzin Gast, was also on this project,” she said. “He was the real pioneer on the cognitive-stimulation side of things. But he wasn’t really suited to the project emotionally. He became rather too close to his test subjects. He developed real affection for them. Not a good idea, considering their intended use.”

Zsinj nodded and gestured for her to continue.

“One day, a couple of years ago, there was a tremendous explosion in Epsilon Wing. My uncle and several test subjects were killed. Some were so close that their bodies were incinerated.”

“I remember,” Zsinj said. “It promised to be a tremendous loss until Doctor Bress told me that the dead doctor’s assistant—and niece—was at the very least his intellectual peer and would be able to continue his work, without much loss of time. And he turned out to be right.”

Gast nodded, acknowledging the compliment without smiling. “We reported the losses and continued as scheduled,” she said. “Although we discovered some interesting things about the accident.”

“Such as?”

She began counting items off on her fingers. “First, it was suicide. My uncle mixed some volatile chemicals in a purification tank and set them off. His guilt apparently had eaten away at him until he could not stand to live any longer. Second, most of the test subjects that had died were those who were exhibiting the greatest aggressive reactions under our trigger treatments. In other words, they were the subjects who were most changed by our treatments, the most violent—”

“The most promising,” Zsinj said.

“Yes. The most promising. He deliberately brought them together so they would die with him.”

“You said most of the test subjects …”

“There was one exception. A Gamorrean. It had been through the intelligence series but not the aggression series.”

“Its name?”

She shrugged. “I never met it. It was officially logged as Subject Gamma-Nine-One-Oh-Four.”

“And this subject was supposed to have died in the explosion.”

“Yes,” she said. “But the only cellular material we found of it was blood plasma.”

“Which your uncle could have extracted from the creature and distributed prior to the explosion.”

“Yes.”

“Was there only blood plasma found of your uncle?”

She shook her head. “We found his head and several other parts.”

“How about Ewoks?”

“Two of the test subjects theoretically destroyed in the blast were Ewoks. They’d both been through intelligence and aggression treatments. We found body parts of two different Ewoks, so we had reason to believe both had perished.”

Zsinj took a long breath. “Well. There’s little doubt that Voort saBinring, a Rebel pilot of Wraith Squadron, is your uncle’s pet Gamorrean. There is also reason to believe that Lieutenant Kettch, a pilot with a pirate group called the Hawkbats, is a similarly enhanced Ewok from the program. Tell me, why would both of them become pilots?”

Gast said, “We found fragmentary records indicating that my uncle had tested the Gamorrean on flight simulators as one way to measure his temperament and intelligence. He could have done so with an Ewok, too. I just don’t see how an Ewok could have escaped … unless it was a test subject that he had never entered into the records.”

He fixed her with an angry stare. “You could have told me all this back when I circulated my first query. It would have saved me a lot of difficulty.”

“No, I couldn’t.” She returned his stare calmly, unapologetically. “I never saw your query. I have done my job satisfactorily.”

“That’s for me to decide.”

“With apologies, warlord, but you’re not qualified to evaluate my performance.”

Zsinj stared at her a moment, then barked out a laugh. “Very good last words, Doctor Gast. But, now, it’s time for a reckoning. Your division has failed me and blood must be shed if I’m to feel better.”

He held out both hands and the guards leaned in to place a blaster pistol in each hand. These Zsinj set before the two doctors. “I’d be happy for you two to accomplish the task yourselves. That would save me some mental anguish, I assure you.”

Bress looked with genuine fright at the weapons. “Sir, everything you’ve asked me I’ve done—”

“Yes. And now I’m asking you to do one final thing.”

Gast picked up her pistol and checked its settings to make sure it was charged. Zsinj watched her with real interest. She was very cool and might decide to remove him from the universe to avenge her own death.

Bress, his voice climbing into a wail, said, “Please, sir, so much of the project’s success is my doing, my mistakes have been so few—”

Gast set the barrel of her pistol against Bress’s ribs and pulled the trigger. The sound of the blast filled the room, followed by the smell of seared flesh. Bress staggered sideways and fell against the office wall.

Gast held up her pistol and allowed Melvar to take it from her. “Now,” she said, “will someone be killing me?”

Zsinj looked at her, forcing his expression into one of reasonability. “Shouldn’t we? You’ve been part of a team that has covered up critical errors in judgment. Coming before me as a penitent, you’ve been insubordinate, even arrogant. You couldn’t even carry out a simple request to kill yourself.”

She shook her head. “Nobody asked me to kill myself. Your unstated request could have been that we kill one another.”

“Nor did you show enough courage to try to kill me when you had the chance.”

At last, she smiled—a lopsided smile full of sarcastic cheer. “Please don’t insult me if you’re going to kill me, too. I’ll bet every credit I own, every one I’ve hidden away, that if I’d pointed that blaster at you and pulled the trigger, it would not have gone off.” She leaned forward and her smile evened out, became more genuine. “Well?”

He regarded her steadily. “Well, you’re correct in assuming that I didn’t ask you to kill yourself. Why would I? You’re blameless. Had you killed yourself, or allowed Doctor Bress to kill you, you would have proven yourself to be stupid and blameless, but fortunately that’s not the case. How would you like to do me a favor?”

“I’d like that.”

“Return to Saffalore. Dismantle the operation without letting anyone—and that means anyone at Binring—know you’ve done so. Send everything to Iron Fist; we’ll consolidate the two laboratories. Set up the Binring facilities to detect and then annihilate anyone breaking in. Because at some point Voort saBinring’s squadron mates are going to get permission to return to the land of his birth … and that will be a good time to eliminate them. Setting all this up guarantees your continued employment within my organization; each dead Wraith brings you a sizable bonus. Deal?”

“Deal.” With her characteristic insolence, she extended him her hand to shake.

When she, the guards, and the still-smoking body were gone, Melvar returned to stand before his warlord. He looked curious.

“What?” Zsinj asked.

“You’ve instructed her to kill all the Wraiths. One of the Wraiths is an unknown quantity. Gara Petothel.”

“I know. But since the mission to Aldivy went to pieces, she hasn’t communicated. Our agent dead, her ersatz brother dead, and no word from her since then … I’d be happy to arrange for her protection. She has to give me a reason first.”

“Understood.”

“And how goes Blunted Razor?”

“The operation continues moving. Every day, we retrieve more tonnage of the wreck of Razor’s Kiss.” Melvar didn’t add, “And only you know why we’re wasting all this energy gathering up the wreckage of a destroyed Super Star Destroyer.” He didn’t have to. Both men knew he wanted to say it. Both men knew he wouldn’t.

Zsinj smiled. “Dismissed.”

4

Flight Officer Lara Notsil leaned in close to hear every word of the briefing, to see everything that floated on the holoprojection.

She hadn’t always been Lara Notsil. She’d been born with the name Gara Petothel, and had worn many others since her adolescent years.

She hadn’t always had downy blond hair cut short, or a near-flawless complexion. Nature had provided her with dark hair and a beauty mark on her cheek. Makeup and trivial surgery performed when she’d created the Lara Notsil identity had rid her of them. The delicacy of her features and build remained from her true identity, but little else did.

She hadn’t always been a pilot with the New Republic’s Fleet Command. Since her earliest years, child of two of the Empire’s loyal Intelligence officers, she’d been groomed to be an officer of Imperial Intelligence. In that role, she’d infiltrated the lower ranks of New Republic Fleet Command, had transmitted vital data back to her Imperial controllers and then to Admiral Apwar Trigit. She’d provided Trigit with information he’d later used to destroy Talon Squadron, an X-wing unit led by Myn Donos.

And now she fought beside the Rebel pilots who’d once been her enemies. It had originally been a deception, another infiltration, but was so no longer; it was where she wanted to be, what she wanted to do. But she also fought against the growing certainty that someday her fellows would learn her true identity, learn what she had done before she’d come to accept their outlook on the way the galaxy’s sapient species should determine their destinies. When they learned who she was, they would reject her, and they would probably kill her.

Until then, she’d do whatever she could to keep them alive. To help them win. Soon, she’d confess all to her commander, Wedge Antilles, and he’d use her knowledge to help bring Zsinj to ruin.

Soon.

She shook away these distracting thoughts and forced herself to listen to her commander’s words.

“Wraith Squadron,” Wedge said, “has an admirable history of executing missions on its own, with minimal support … or no support at all. Let’s assume that Zsinj has come to this realization. What we’re going to do is change the rules on him. The Wraiths will be going in with their usual tactics … but they’ll have a little support standing ready. By which I mean Rogue Squadron.”

Several of the Wraiths made appreciative comments, but Gavin Darklighter of the Rogues made a face. “Now we’re baby-sitters,” he said.

Face shot him an amused look. “What if we light up a target for you baby-sitters to hit?”

“A real target,” Gavin said. “Not just some defenseless motor pool or repair facility.”

“A real target,” Face said. “Something that shoots back.”

Gavin schooled his face into an expression resembling dignity. “Then I’ll be content to baby-sit. This time.”

“Are you through?” Wedge asked. There was no censure in his voice, but side conversations quieted. Gavin nodded.

“Good,” Wedge said. “Now, the Wraiths have a general agenda. Acquire information on what Zsinj might be doing at Binring Biomedical. We suspect a connection because his facility on Xartun was constructing the exact sort of cell Piggy essentially grew up in on Saffalore, at Binring. When Face, acting as Kargin of the Hawk-bats, had dinner with Zsinj, the warlord expressed considerable interest in the story of Lieutenant Kettch, a fictitious Ewok pilot with a story identical to Piggy’s. This also suggests that the warlord has ties to facilities that perform modifications on humanoids. The Wraiths are to find out what they can about this modification program and Zsinj’s ties to it.

“Piggy hasn’t bothered to hide his background. Once he joined Starfighter Command, he became the most conspicuous Gamorrean serving the New Republic, and it became futile to hide where he came from. So our enemies may know we’re coming. They probably don’t know when. If there’s anything left to find, it will probably be protected by standing defenses that have been geared for Piggy’s squadmates. Which is one more reason to change tactics when appropriate. I’ll hand this over to Wraith One.”

He sat and Face stood. The younger pilot looked very sure of himself these days, Lara decided. Not arrogant, but at ease with what he was being called on to do. That was a good sign.

“We’re going to take our mission in stages,” Face said. “Mon Remonda support crews are going to make a visit to an asteroid belt around one of the planets in the Saffalore system and divert several waves of small and mid-sized asteroids toward Saffalore. These will simulate a series of natural meteor showers. The Rogues and Wraiths, in our respective starfighters, will be accompanying the third, largest, shower into the planet’s atmosphere, which will hit—if our mathematicians get their numbers right—in their polar ice cap, where their sensors are less substantial. We’ll fly in ground-following mode from our arrival point to a site near Lurark, the center of their planetary government. There the Rogues will set up base camp and the Wraiths will head on in to Lurark.

“Our initial goal is to find out where on Saffalore is the facility where Piggy was altered. The way Piggy has explained it, the circumstances under which he was smuggled out prevented him from knowing where he’d been held, though he suspected that it was within a few hundred kilometers of Lurark, if not in the city itself. A good guess would be the main Binring Biomedical facility in the city. But our first step there will be to try to find out what name Zsinj is using at the business end of Binring Biomedical. A simple check on their planetary net or a visit to whatever they use for a central business registry office ought to do it.”

“No,” Lara said.

Face looked at her expectantly.

“I mean, no, sir,” she said, and was annoyed to feel herself blush. Genuine embarrassment—how long had it been since she’d felt that?

“Don’t worry about it. Why no?”

She said, “You’ve suggested that we need to operate on principles of maximum paranoia. Well, you don’t just march in to their records center—or access it via a terminal—and say, ‘Who owns this company?’ Let’s assume they’re as paranoid as we are. They might have set things up to flag queries like that.”

“Well, I was thinking more about an anonymous check, or something using an intermediary. Are you recommending that we slice the network and try to steal the information?”

Lara shook her head. “No, save that tactic for critical information. What I’m suggesting is that we find out whether the information you’re talking about is flagged; that fact itself would be valuable to know. We just lead with a safe question—from a different questioner—so we have a standard of comparison for behavior. For instance, let’s say you, Face, decide to make the Binring query. Before you do, I go in, find out the name of a corporation we think is completely straight and above board, and ask the same question about it. I note what they do and how long it takes them to answer that question, and report that back to you. Then, when you go in—”

“I have a standard of comparison.” Face nodded. “I get what you’re saying. If they take a lot of extra time or vary their routine in some substantial way, we know they’ve been alerted.”

“We also tail you on your exit, in case they decide to do the same thing. We can slip their tail or take him out, but we don’t let him follow you.”

“Right. You make a lot of sense. Anyone tell you you’re a natural for intelligence work?”

Lara shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.

“All right,” Face continued. “If we get that piece of information, we pursue it to see what else Zsinj might own on Saffalore—”

“No,” Lara said. Then heads turned her way again and she felt herself flush red once more.

Face’s voice remained calm. “Why not?”

“Well … on the Wraiths’s other missions, we often found the name Zsinj was using on-planet, but never found any other major business enterprises owned by those names. Either he’s investing in one business per planet, or he’s using multiple names for multiple businesses. If history is any indication, there’s no use in running down those names—not yet. If we ever want to try to mess with his accounts, his assets, using that name is good. For what we’re doing with this mission, though, it’s just a distraction. Something to cost us time his people may be using to hunt us down. In fact, I don’t recommend that first bit, about finding the name he’s using in his association with Binring, until after we’ve done our major raid, or maybe simultaneously. It may not be an important enough piece of information to risk anything on acquiring it.”

Face considered. “Maybe you’re right. Very well. Lara’s right. We will be staging a raid on their major fabrications facility, in the hope that he’s following true to form and has a special Zsinj facility tucked away in there somewhere—or at the very least in the hope that we can figure out where the secret facility is from data in the public facility. So we’ll follow our standard member assignments and protocols—”

“No,” Lara said. Several Wraiths and Rogues laughed outright.

Face put his head down for a moment, then raised it, his expression one of long suffering, and turned to Wedge. “Is this what it’s like for you?”

Wedge smiled. “You have no idea.”

“From the bottom of my heart, I apologize, most sincerely, for every time I spoke up in a mission briefing. I mean it.”

Wedge nodded. “I appreciate that, but I have to tell you: you’ve only just started to suffer.”

“I believe you.” Face turned back to Lara. “No, what?”

She gave him an apologetic look. “We’ve changed protocol already. We have Rogue Squadron on hand to look out for us. If we don’t integrate this resource—this very, very dangerous and capable resource—”

Impassive, Tycho gestured, waving for her to keep the compliments coming.

“—from the very beginning, then there’s no reason to have them along. We’d have to improvise their participation.”

“She’s right,” Tycho said. “And I’ve had some thoughts about this. We could have the Wraiths, before or during their intrusion, get to certain key spots on the Binring buildings and plant targets there. Infrared markers, comm tracers, anything to give us an edge. Then if they needed to call an air strike, they could give us very precise data on where we needed to put our damage. ‘Thirty-seven meters on heading two-five-five from Marker Number Three’ is very precise, and our astromechs could integrate those instructions onto our heads-up displays on the fly.”

“Good point,” Wedge said. “Face, you haven’t done enough work in figuring out how to exploit all your resources.”

“I’m not used to having resources.”

Wedge nodded. “Welcome to the real Starfighter Command. And having to think like a soldier instead of a pirate. All right, people, let’s hear the rest of Face’s plan. We’re going to dissect it and reassemble it into something more likely to keep us all alive.”

Brightness—illumination piercing the pinkness around him—awakened Piggy.

He could hear nothing, feel almost nothing—only the respirator adhering to his face, supplying him with air to breathe. It took him a split second to recall where he was, why most of his senses seemed to be failing him. Then he opened his eyes.

As with the last couple of times he’d awakened, he floated, suspended, in a bacta tank taller than a Wookiee. The bacta medium colored everything pink. He could see, beyond the confines of the tank, the antiseptic wardroom that was his temporary home. A medical technician, a dark-haired human female, waved at him, offering a smile that humans called “perky.” He knew that human males could not help but be cheered by it. Nor was he entirely immune to it; the fact that she made the effort to reach him still lifted his spirits a notch. He waved in return, his motion slowed by the thick liquid.

Something was different. He ran through his checklist of surroundings, events, and circumstances to see what had been added. Nothing. He reversed it to look for what had been removed.

Pain. Ah, that was it. He didn’t hurt anymore. He looked down at his stomach, which had not so long ago featured an injury that looked like a smoking crater, and saw only new flesh and some scar tissue.

Good. He would be leaving soon. He wasn’t bored, was never bored—he could always work up problems of math, of navigation, of logic to keep himself occupied. But the lack of contact with others, the lack of activity that was useful, was beginning to annoy him.

There was motion outside his tank. He focused on several people walking with purpose into the wardroom, toward him, surrounding his tank—his fellow Wraiths. Their expressions were cheerful, and it was not the forced cheer that several had exhibited during previous visits.

The perky technician was waving at him, and when she had his attention, she gestured upward. He glanced up to see the top hatch opening. He kicked himself upward and moments later emerged into real air for the first time in many days.

When he once again had his feet on the ground, had a robe around him and a towel to mop away the remaining traces of bacta medium, he could begin to take in the words of his comrades.

Face said, “Forgive the intrusion, but we heard that the new vintage of Piggy was being decanted.”

Lara said, “But it looks like it’s turned to vinegar.”

Dia said, “And it’s corked.”

A young Devaronian he did not know said, “I am pleased to meet you. I need you to kill me. Nobody else will.”

The perky technician said, “You’ll need as much as possible to avoid activities that put a strain on your stomach muscles.”

Janson said, “To make sure you remember this little event, we’ve had some special things made up for you. Bacta-flavored candy. Bacta-flavored brandy. Bacta-flavored cheese.”

Shalla said, “Kell and I worked up an instructional manual for you. It’s called, How to Dodge.”

Piggy mopped away at his damp skin and allowed himself a slight smile. It was good to be home.

The third meteor shower in as many days peppered the frozen arctic regions of Saffalore’s northern hemisphere. Few of the meteors survived long enough to hammer the planet’s surface; most burned up from the friction of their descent through the atmosphere, often leaving behind long trails to mark the fiery ends to their travels. A few had enough mass left to strike the ground as meteorites, often leaving deep craters in the hard, uncultivated ground.

And then there were the fabricated objects in their midst. Starfighters, almost two dozen, maneuvered away from the true meteorites and pulled up sharply from their descent, missing collisions with the ground sometimes by only a few dozen meters.

There were no rebukes for too-chancy flying over the comm waves. These pilots were keeping comm silence, staying in visual range of one another.

Three of the vehicles were TIE interceptors, the most lethal starfighters of the Empire. The remainder were X-wings, heavily laden with extra fuel pods under their S-foils.

The danger with an intrusion like this, Donos decided, is that it’s boring enough that you become distracted, and still dangerous enough to leave you dead. Terrain-following flying was a tricky skill. Most of what they would be crossing tonight was tundra, hard-frozen ground and an ice sheet over it, offering little to endanger them. But there were occasional hilly regions and one mountain range to cross before they reached their objective. Under a comm blackout, each pilot had to keep a close eye on the sensors; he couldn’t rely on the sharp sight of his fellows.

Donos kept his focus on the sensors. Focus was no problem for him. As a sniper for the Corellian armed forces, he’d learned to keep his attention unwavering on his target. Lives had depended on his ability to do so. He’d been good at it.

Of course, at a certain point, the suspicion that there was something wrong, something unfair, with what he was doing had begun to eat away at him. Yes, every target he had taken down as a sniper had been on the verge of killing an innocent … or many innocents. But the fact that he could never afford to give them a chance still nagged at him.

Enlistment in Starfighter Command had seemed the answer. He’d proven that he had the reflexes, the technical grounding necessary to become a pilot. There was never any moral quandary—everyone he brought down as a pilot had a chance to shoot back. He’d risen quickly and surely through the ranks, earning his lieutenancy within a year, being granted the temporary rank of brevet captain soon afterward.

His own command, Talon Squadron. Every member except Donos killed in the ambush on an uninhabited world no one wanted. Leaving him with a blot on his career he might never be able to erase. A blot on his mind he might not ever be able to heal.

He raised the visor on his helmet and pressed his hands to his eyes. His inclination was to steer away from these thoughts. He couldn’t afford to do that. The emotions that rose—threatening to overwhelm him—whenever he sent his mind down this course were enemies he had to defeat. He had to hammer away at them until they left him alone forever. And he had to keep control of himself while doing it, so others would not see his weakness.

He’d lost eleven subordinates, fellow pilots, some of them friends. He’d lost his command; Talon Squadron had been decommissioned. He’d even lost his mind, or at least misplaced it, turning into an emotional wreck sometime later, when the loss of his astromech plunged him back into vivid memories of the destruction of Talon Squadron.

His new squadmates had lured him back to reality. Had forced him to look once again at life. To begin thinking again about his present, about his future.

He returned his attention to his sensors. There would be no future if he plowed into a hillside.

All right, then. There were two paths open to him … assuming he didn’t get killed before he could begin to follow them.

First was the one that had dominated his thinking ever since Talon Squadron had died. For months, he’d considered putting in for a transfer to Intelligence, or resigning his commission altogether, so he could devote his life to tracking down the individuals who had destroyed Talon Squadron.

Inyri Forge had been right. Revenge was a powerful motivator. A desire for revenge, for justice, was always with Donos. It welcomed him to each new day when he awoke, lurked at the back of his mind as he did his work, made soothing promises to him every night when he drifted off to sleep. And sometimes it occupied his dreams. He knew, deep down, that if he were able to find the responsible parties under his snubfighter guns or in the sight of his laser rifle, he’d pull the trigger without hesitation, without qualm … regardless of what it cost him.

Of course, two of the most important conspirators behind the destruction of his squadron were already dead. Admiral Apwar Trigit had planned the ambush. Lieutenant Gara Petothel had provided Trigit with the data he needed for that operation. Petothel had died on Trigit’s Star Destroyer, Implacable, and Trigit had died soon after, trying to escape in a TIE interceptor, brought down by Donos himself.

But others had to have been involved. Imperial Intelligence operatives had gotten Lieutenant Petothel her false identity and her posting with Fleet Command. They’d smuggled her from New Republic-controlled space to Implacable. Elements of the 181st Imperial Fighter Group now inexplicably helping Warlord Zsinj had participated in the ambush. There were plenty more conspirators who needed to die.

But part of him no longer wanted to be the instrument of that death. An ever-growing part of him wanted to live a normal life. And that led to his second choice, the one he’d been toying with ever since he had recovered from his collapse: stay in Starfighter Command and try to rebuild his career, regain his respectability … renew his life.

A woman named Falynn Sandskimmer had loved him. He didn’t know whether he’d loved her in return, whether he’d even been able to at the time. But he’d had affection for her, and what she’d felt for him had reminded him of what it was like to be a normal human. She, too, had died aboard Implacable, before he’d ever had the chance to sort out his feelings for her.

And now … he checked his sensor board for Wraith Two. There she was, toward the head of their formation, tucked in neatly behind Wraith One. Lara Notsil.

He’d exchanged so little with Notsil. Some advice. One ground mission in which he’d saved her from kidnapping at the hands of Zsinj agents. Conversation in pilots’ lounges and during leave time.

But for the little amount of time they’d shared, she did occupy a lot of his thinking. Her intelligence and her beauty drew him. And her secrecy: she seemed to have no affection for the life she’d lost, the life of a farm girl from the world of Aldivy, and yet so much of her was private, locked behind doors that obviously led to her childhood.

And one other thing seemed so familiar to him: the way she seemed adrift, cut off from her past, yet having no apparent idea how to navigate toward her future. He understood that part of her, felt tremendous sympathy for her. They were so alike.

Yet that would mean nothing if neither one of them did anything about it. She might not even be aware of how he felt, of what he was thinking.

She isn’t aware, an inner voice told him. And she’s not going to be. Don’t foul up her life the way you’ve fouled up your own. Do something conclusive with your life. Resign your commission. Hunt down your enemies. Settle the accounts of your pilots.

True. He shouldn’t force his way into her life, only to abandon her when he went off on some justified spree of revenge. Better to leave her alone.

But what if he could offer her as much life, as much of a future, as he thought she could offer him?

Now you’re using that misfiring hunk of erratic machinery you refer to as a brain.

That startled him. The words were in the voice of Ton Phanan, a fellow Wraith; they were typical of his ordinary conversation. Ton, who’d died mere weeks ago. Ton, who had also decided that he had no future, and perhaps had died because he couldn’t bring himself to struggle for his life as hard as he should.

And there it was. Donos did have a future, as Ton did not. Donos could choose to abandon it and pursue his life of revenge, and then maybe … maybe … come back from it if he lived. Or he could just choose to live. Which meant doing something harder than he’d ever done before.

He might just have to forgive himself for letting his pilots die.

He might just have to initiate a conversation with a young woman who was suddenly important to him.

It was a spot where the hillside leveled out in a treeless glade some seventy meters in diameter. Without repulsorlifts, they could never have all landed upon it, but Rogue Squadron and Wraith Squadron arrayed themselves precisely, in neat rows and columns.

As the pilots scrambled out of their cockpits under the sliver of a moon, Wedge said, “Get those camouflage covers out. Transfer any fuel remaining from the auxiliary tanks into the interceptors. Snap it up. I want us blanketed down and out of sight in ten minutes. We have dawn in less than an hour. Hobbie, Corran, Asyr, Tal’dira, I want you out on first watch. Everyone else, four hours’ sleep. Face?” He crooked a finger.

He and Face took a few steps aside to be out of the bustle of pilot preparations. The ground underneath was covered by shin-high grasses that were too pale a green to be healthy-looking in Wedge’s eyes. “We had a pretty good look at the northeast approaches to Lurark. Did you see anything to give us new problems?”

Face shook his head. “I don’t think so. The big question is how to acquire transport—the city doesn’t seem to be set up for pedestrian traffic.”

“That’s up to you. Sleep on it.”

Face managed a rueful grin Wedge could barely see in the moonlight. “Oh, sure. As though I could sleep.”

•    •    •

Once he had the camo covers tied down over his X-wing and had made sure that his astromech, Clink, was settled in, Donos sought out Lara. He found her under her own camouflage cover, kneeling on the starboard S-foils of her snubfighter, whispering to her own R2, Tonin. He waited patiently until she emerged and extended a hand to help her down. “Could I have a word with you?” he asked, and was immediately annoyed with himself, at the formality of his voice.

“Of course.”

He led her into the deeper shadow between her X-wing and Kell’s TIE interceptor. “There’s something I wanted you to think about.” There, that was better—a more normal tone to his voice, in spite of the way his chest suddenly felt compressed. He was in full control again.

“What’s that?”

“Me.”

She looked at him, and one eyebrow went up, a mocking look. “Rebel pilots have the biggest egos in all the known universe …”

“Well it’s not like that. I’m asking out of a sense of fairness. Since I’m spending all this time thinking about you.”

Her smile faded. “Myn, I’m not amused.”

“Good. I’m not trying to amuse you. Look, I just spent a long time working up the nerve to bring this up with you at all. It was harder than almost anything I’ve done. So don’t be amused. Take it seriously.”

She took a step back from him, bringing her up against the wing array of Kell’s interceptor. “No, no, no. Just turn around and go find someone else to be interested in. I’m not right for you.”

He couldn’t keep the smile from coming to his face. “Oh, that’s a very good sign.”

“What is?”

“You didn’t say, ‘Go away, I don’t like you.’ You started suggesting reasons that are theoretically in my best interest.”

She wrapped her arms around herself, as though to protect herself from a chill, and glared. “I don’t like you.”

“Now you’re lying. You do that a lot, just like Face. I’m getting better at figuring out when you’re doing it.” He stepped in close. “You can’t get rid of me by lying to me.”

“I’m a mess. I’m barely fit to fly.”

“Me, too. We make a perfect couple.”

“If I don’t get killed, I’m sure my career is going to crater. I’m going to be a tremendous embarrassment to the Wraiths.”

“How about that—me, too! Another thing we have in common.”

“Stop it!” She looked surprised by the volume of her voice and looked around to see if anyone had noticed.

Donos looked, too, but the camp was still bustling with activity. No one stopped to peer at the source of the cry.

When he looked at Lara’s face again, though, something had changed. There was a stillness to her, a watchfulness that was almost reptilian. He suppressed an urge to step away from her.

“I could say twelve words,” Lara said, “and when I was done, the very least you’d do is turn away and leave me alone forever.”

He could tell that she was speaking the truth, and the fact that she had the power to do this, to send him away, dismayed him. “Then don’t say them.”

Donos had really only meant to let her know of his interest, perhaps to rattle her, but she now looked so distant and lost that he couldn’t just let her be. He put his arms around her and drew her to him.

When her lips met his, they were clenched tight and she was shaking. But then she relaxed into the kiss. Her arms snaked up around his neck. She made a noise that was part wail, and only he could hear it.

There she was, suddenly part of him, and he wondered how he’d ever lived so long without her being there.

Then she drew back her head, her remoteness gone, her expression a little curious, a little anxious.

“That’s more like it,” he said. And realized immediately that it was the wrong thing to say.

She gave him a look he could only imagine her normally offering to someone pouring paint into her X-wing’s engines. “Thanks,” she said. “For reminding me what a gasbag of ego you are.” She turned him around, trading places with him, and gave him a hard shove.

His head banged into the interceptor wing. “Ow,” he said.

She spun and walked away from him at a fast stride. “Stay away from me, Lieutenant,” she said. “Just keep away.”

Oh, well. Considering how badly he usually did with people, that hadn’t gone poorly at all. Donos sighed and headed back to his snubfighter, resisting the urge to whistle.

5

The landspeeder Seteem Ervic drove along the old country road was old and slow, but it was still powerful enough to haul a several-ton load of grain cakes from his family business to his customers in Lurark.

He ran a hand through what was left of his hair. He could buy a newer, sportier speeder, of course. But he hadn’t inherited the family’s failing concern and then built it into a flourishing business by throwing money away on nonessentials. He was almost rich. He’d never be rich if he loaded up on luxuries.

True, it had taken him years. Cost him his first wife, who said he was boring, that they never had anything to talk about. Cost him his hair, which had fallen away as the seasons had passed. At least his hair was something to talk about. And, true, nothing ever really happened to him. But he was almost rich, and that was what counted. If his brightest daughter turned out the way he expected her to, she’d take his solid business and make a worldwide concern out of it. And she’d be rich for real.

He rounded a bend in the dusty road and something happened to him.

There, a hundred meters up, something lay in the road. As he got closer, in spite of the glare from the sun, he could see it was a body—a human body. He slowed, and when he was a mere handful of meters away, locked the landspeeder down in hover mode and hopped out to take a look.

Human female, dark-skinned, eyes closed, lying in the dust as though she’d been thrown—from what? A speeder? There was no recent sign of repulsor traffic on this road. A riding animal? No hoof marks. In fact, there were no footprints around her.

She was wearing a black jumpsuit like a TIE fighter pilot’s, and her pose—lying on her back, one arm behind her head—suggested she was sleeping rather than injured. There was no sign of gross injury. She wasn’t even dusty.

He leaned closer. Maybe she wasn’t hurt. Maybe he wouldn’t have to interrupt his trip to the city. “Young lady?”

Her eyes popped open. She smiled, showing deep dimples, becoming insufferably cute. “Yes?”

“Are you hurt?”

“Oh, no. Just resting.”

He straightened. “Ah. Well, good. Can I offer you a ride?”

She brought her hand from behind her head. In it was a snub-nosed blaster pistol. “Sure. In fact, you can offer me your whole landspeeder.”

He turned to look back at his vehicle. A half dozen people were clustered around it, looking at the control board, peering under the reflective sheets tied down over the cargo bay. He hadn’t heard them arrive; they might have materialized out of thin air.

He turned back to the young woman, who was on her feet. He offered her a weak smile and raised his hands. Well, at least this would be something to talk about.

By midafternoon, the human members of the Wraiths had been around Binring Biomedical several times and had spent long hours surveying the facility.

It was huge, easily two kilometers wide by one deep, most of that area taken up by fabrication plants. There were staging and loading areas for landspeeders and other transports. The place had its own light-rail depot.

Face, Lara, Donos, Tyria, Kell, Shalla, and Wes sat around a large circular table at an open-air café separated from the main Binring Biomedical entrance by a broad traffic thoroughfare. Speeder traffic was constant. Everyone on this world seemed to own a personal speeder, and the city was huge and sprawling, though not densely built up or occupied. Face estimated that he hadn’t seen more than a half dozen buildings more than three stories in height. “All right, people,” he said. “We have too much factory over there to search in one night. We need to have a good idea where Zsinj’s special facilities are, or where we can find out that information, before we go in tonight. If the special facilities aren’t at this site, we’ll definitely need to get into their computer center. Any ideas?”

Lara said, “I see six likely places for a special facility, all connected to exterior docking areas. West Sixteen, Northwest Seven, Northwest Two, Northeast One, East Thirty, or East Thirty-One.” Her designations referred to loading and unloading areas—West Sixteen, for instance, meant Western Quadrant, Loading Area Sixteen.

Wes said, “Just Northwest Two or East Thirty-One. We can eliminate the others.”

Shalla said, “Just Northwest Two.”

Tyria looked unhappy, but nodded. “Northwest Two.”

Face sighed. He hadn’t seen anything to suggest likely prospects, and their assessment baffled him. “Let’s take that again, in the same order. Lara?”

“The places I noted lack power meters on the roof. Everywhere else in that complex, you get external power meters under lockdown cases. Backup meters for the city power managers to get their data, probably if the standard meter transmitters fail. I bet they’re analog rather than digital and retain data even if their own power fails. Anyway, they’re at regular intervals … except in those six places. This suggests that those zones have separate generators and don’t depend on the city grid.”

Face gave her a close look. “Lara, are you all right? You don’t look too good.”

He was right; she seemed paler than usual, with dark half circles under her eyes. She gave him a wan smile. “You always know the right thing to say. No, I just didn’t sleep well. I’ll be fit to go tonight.”

“All right … Wes?”

The baby-faced lieutenant took a final sip of his caf and grimaced. “Cold. Um, it has to do with privacy and defensibility. Northwest Two and East Thirty-One have advantages that way. The loading-dock areas are down recessed alley accesses that can be closed, remotely or directly, by gates. Both have roof access for flying vehicles but mesh screens can be dragged across them, as well, to limit access. The alleys don’t have doors or viewports, so the traffic down them can be private.”

“Right. Shalla?”

She waved toward the east facing of the complex, which was around the corner to their right. “East Thirty-One had some vehicle traffic when we were looking at it. Really expensive landspeeders with reflective viewports. One of them was large enough to put a swimming tank in. I think that’s the private entrance for corporate executives, board members, and so on. The really wealthy. Also, East Thirty-One opens onto one of the busy thoroughfares, while Northwest Two opens onto a back street with nothing but warehouse buildings facing it. Like Wes said, privacy issues.”

“That makes sense. Tyria?”

She didn’t meet his gaze. “I just know it.” She seemed huddled in her chair. Kell reached over to take her hand, but she barely acknowledged him.

Face said, “That’s not good enough, Tyria. What do you know? How do you know it?”

She shook her head hard, sending her blond ponytail flipping across the features of Donos beside her, and finally looked at Face directly. “I felt it. When we cruised past. There’s something there. A residue of … pain. Of things so badly hurt that they desperately wanted to die. Not test animals, either. There was awareness there.”

Face suppressed a shudder.

Kell said, “You felt something from the Force.”

Tyria nodded. “I’ve been working so hard, to learn to relax into it, not to push at it … not to force the Force, as it were. Sometimes, now, I can put myself into a flow state where I’m almost not myself. I’m just reacting to what I’m feeling. I’d managed to do that when we cruised past. I almost wish I hadn’t. I almost lost my last meal.”

“Well, that’s a good thing,” Kell said. When Tyria looked at him, confused, he amended, “Not the throwing-up part. The flow-state part. That sounds like an improvement.”

She managed a faint smile for him.

“Northwest Two,” Face said. “That’s our best entry.”

“No,” Lara said.

Face held up a hand. “Wait a second. Next to Northwest Two. Northwest One or Three. Where the security is likely to be less substantial.”

“Yes,” Lara said.

Face sagged in relief. “She said yes,” he said. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to hear her say yes.”

Donos murmured something under his breath and Lara flushed red.

Under cover of darkness, they emerged from beneath the sheeting covering the speeder’s cargo bed. The speeder was parked between refuse containers in the parking area of a warehouse; across the thoroughfare was Binring’s northwestern quadrant. This was the last the Wraiths would see of the speeder; at some point during the day its loss, and the disappearance of its owner, had to have been reported, and there was too much danger in piloting it around avenues of Lurark left almost deserted at nightfall. They’d acquire other transportation for their departure from the city.

Shalla, kneeling in the shadow of one of the refuse containers, scanned the empty street and darkened Binring buildings below through a set of holorecording macrobinoculars. “Downward-facing holocams with overlapping coverage,” she said. “Standard placement. For Imperial forces, that is. Overkill for a pharmaceutical-fabrications plant. Wait a second.”

Face knelt beside her. The second turned into several, then finally she spoke. “There’s a gap in the coverage. The most northern holocam on the western wall is positioned so it can’t really see around the corner. The most western holocam on the northern wall isn’t far enough west to make up the gap … I don’t think.” She lowered the goggles and brought out a glow rod so she could look at the hand-drawn map they’d assembled that afternoon. “That’s right. If we come in from the north, along this narrow approach, the holocams can’t pick us up.”

“It’s a lie,” Tyria said. Her voice was a whisper, a sad whisper.

Shalla shot her a look. “What do you mean?”

Tyria started as if out of some reverie and gave her a nervous smile. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. It’s not your lie, Shalla. It’s theirs.” Her wave indicated the Binring building. “There’s a big … watchfulness over there waiting for us. It’s laughing.”

Shalla said, “You’re getting weird, Tyria.”

“Yes, but let’s take her at her word,” Face said. “Shalla, could they have set up the mistake in coverage deliberately, as a lure?”

“Yes.”

“What would they be doing?”

“They’d have a secondary set of holocams in a less-obvious place.” She brought up the macrobinoculars again. “I’d put them in those overhanging spotlights. There’d be no way to see them without getting right up to them … and turning the lights out, of course.”

There was a whine of machinery behind them and their stolen speeder moved off into the avenue, Donos at the controls. His job was to pilot it some distance away, acquire another one, and return, then set himself up in a position to snipe if the Wraiths experienced pursuit when they departed. Face noted Lara staring after Donos long after the speeder was gone and wondered what was going on between them. Something cheerful, he hoped.

“All right,” Face said. “We’re going in by the high road.”

Minutes later, the entire crew of black-clad Wraiths stood atop the near warehouse, one that was, mercifully, far less thoroughly defended than their target. It was also one story taller than the Binring building, which would work in their favor.

Kell spent a few minutes mounting a device at the edge of the roof. It looked something like a small projectile cannon on a swivel mount, but the repulsorlift-based clamping system at the base of the mount was like nothing seen on a normal cannon. “This had better work,” Kell murmured.

“It’ll work,” Shalla said.

“How do you know?”

“My sister and I had one when we were little girls. They’re very reliable. Proven technology.”

“You and your sister come from an odd family, Shalla.”

She smiled at him, teeth gleaming. “Don’t be jealous.”

Kell made a final adjustment to the weapon and peered through its scope. “Ready, Captain.”

Face said, “Numbers only from now on, people. Five, fire at will.”

Kell slowly squeezed the trigger. The device made a noise like a protracted sneeze and launched a missile across the street; the missile dragged a length of black fibra-rope behind it. There was the faintest sound of a metallic clank atop the Binring building; then a motor started up in the gun and drew the fibra-rope taut.

Shalla clipped two devices to the cable: sleeve housings with handlebars hanging from them. “Crawler ready to go.”

“Go. Ten, cover her.”

Janson drew his blaster pistol and aimed in at the far roof. For most people this would be considered a tricky shot with a pistol—thirty-five or more meters in darkness. But the other Wraiths knew Janson to be an expert pistol shot.

Shalla carefully gripped the handlebars of the lead crawler device and swung herself out over empty space. Nimbly, she brought her legs up so her knees were over the bars of the second device. Then she thumbed a control on the handles she gripped … and the crawler sped out along the fibra-rope, carrying her to the roof of the far building. A moment later, the two devices came back, the hand device pushing the knee device before it.

One after another, they took the crawler across, each Wraith settling in a crouch on the far roof. By the time Face arrived, halfway through the pack of Wraiths, Lara, Shalla, and Kell had already examined their surroundings for accesses and other sensors.

And found some. “Standard roof hatches at intervals,” Kell said. “And infrared beams just over there.” He pointed. “On the roof over Northwest Two.”

“I find myself shocked,” Face said. “No, really.”

“We’ll need to leave L—Two—one of the sets of infra-goggles so she can get through the beams.”

“Give her yours. We’ll rely on Four and her set when we’re in.”

Once they were assembled, Face directed Kell to disable security on the nearest roof access adjacent to Northwest Two. Within moments he had bypassed the basic security system there. Tyria led the descent down an access ladder, Face and Shalla close behind her.

And that was already a problem. Ever since Tyria had indicated that her fleeting control over the Force had given her some insight into what went on at Binring, Face knew he had to put her on the intrusion team. But she’d originally been assigned to planting tracers on the roof. Face had switched her duties with Lara’s. But that cost the intrusion team some of its technical proficiency, Lara being more mechanically adept than Tyria. Kell, their demolitions expert, and Shalla, their intelligence expert, now had to share much of the security work Lara would have been handling.

The change also cost them some faith in their tracer team. Tyria was an old enough hand to have managed her temporary partner, Elassar, but Lara’s abilities to handle an unknown quantity like the new pilot were unproven.

Face shrugged. It was done. It would do him no good to worry.

Lara placed the fourth transmitter-marker against the knee-high barrier that served as inadequate warning to people that they should not go over the edge and fall off the roof. She activated it and watched it run through its self-test. Then she pulled back away from it in a crouch, making it more difficult for people at street level to see her.

Elassar was already four meters back from the edge, seated, popping something that looked suspiciously like candy into his mouth. “All done?” he asked.

“Not quite. I’m going to take a holo of the rooftop and surrounding area, then show on it where the markers are and transmit that to the Rogues. That’ll give them a visual reference to go with their sensor readings. Why don’t you make yourself useful? Or is that unlucky?”

He smiled at her, showing his fangs. “Not unlucky. I’ve done everything I can for this mission in the field of luck. I’ve cast all the charms I could manage, and unlike the rest of you, I’ve refrained from doing anything unlucky. And I’ve made myself useful, too. I found something out.”

Lara readied her holocam, held it steady before her eye, and began a slow, careful 360-degree turn. Once this special surveyor’s holocam caught the panoramic image she wanted, she would be able to mark points on the image and type in numeric values related to their relative altitude and distance from one another. Then the gadget’s internal computer would generate a proportionally correct image that any navigational computer, such as an astromech, could look at from any relative altitude. “What did you find out?”

“Well, that whole network of infrared beams over Northwest Two. I looked at it through your infra-goggles. The posts that the beams are coming out of are years old. They’re well kept-up, but there’s corrosion on them, and I can see where one of the posts has had to be straightened and realigned when it was knocked over or something.”

“So?” Lara finished her turn and knelt with the holocam. On its built-in screen, she brought up the image she’d just taken. She slid a stylus from the side of the device and began marking her reference points.

“So the roof surface over there is brand-new. It’s not brand-new here or on any of the places we’ve been walking, but it’s brand-new there.”

Lara looked up, suddenly disturbed. “Show me.”

There was no marker to indicate the border between Northwest Two and Northwest Three, but they stopped a meter short of the first post that they knew held the infrared devices. Elassar knelt and Lara followed suit.

“See, here,” Elassar said. He stretched a finger up almost to the point protected by the infrared. “A seam.”

Lara couldn’t see, so she risked a moment’s illumination with her glow rod. Elassar was right: there was a score, straight as a laser beam, running along the roof between the two building sections. It was so thin as to be nearly invisible even in good light.

She switched the rod off. “So the roof material was laid down in sections. It looks just the same as the roof here.”

“Yes, it does. It has been walked on and scuffed a lot, just like the roofing here. But it smells different. Much sharper. It’s new.”

Lara sighed. This had to be some new-pilot prank. But, obligingly, she leaned back and sniffed at the roofing they’d been walking on. It smelled faintly of industrial chemicals. Then she leaned forward and sniffed again at the other section.

The smell was stronger, crisper.

From her wrist sheath she pulled her vibroblade. She did not power it on. She dug at the seam between the two roof sections, prying the new section up. It was a gummy mass perhaps two centimeters deep and resisted her efforts, but finally she was able to turn up a flap of the material. Elassar obligingly pulled at the edge until half a square meter or so was revealed.

The underside of the material was thick with tiny circular devices made of shiny metal. They were spaced at about eight-centimeter intervals and connected by thin silvery wires. “Pressure sensors,” she said.

“Not a problem,” said Elassar. “None of us walked on them. And we didn’t apply pressure to pull them up.”

“That’s not the point. They’ve added a layer of security under the substantial security already in place, and it’s a different type. If they’ve done that throughout the complex, the Wraiths might be dismantling one layer but not the new stuff.”

“So give them a call.”

“Which will probably give our presence away.” She sighed and looked over the boulevard at the rooftop where Donos was. She couldn’t see him, but she’d heard his return with a new speeder a few minutes before. It was so hard, working with people; on her missions for Imperial Intelligence, she’d always been alone. No one else to be responsible for.

She brought up her comlink and thumbed on its scrambler mode. “Two to Six. Do not acknowledge. Additional security on roof suggests this site is prepared for your arrival. Check for new modifications to your surroundings. Two out.” She grabbed up her holocam and rose. “Let’s move out.”

“Comm signal,” a technician said. His voice was unnaturally shrill.

Dr. Gast blinked and looked around. She’d actually fallen asleep. Boredom and lack of any decent occupation will do that to you, she thought, her voice cranky even when expressed only in her own mind.

The control room was antiseptically white, except where the floor and walls were marked by black marks and scores resulting from the haste with which some of this equipment had been assembled. The four walls were occupied by banks of terminals, each dedicated to a different area of coverage or function. Six per wall, twenty-four in all, occupied every hour of the day, and never anything to report except the occasional repairman working on an adjacent roof section or an avian landing on the roof of the protected zone.

Until now, maybe.

Gast’s own console was a nearly complete circle of terminals and controls, her chair in the center. She lazily swiveled until she could look at the back of the technician who’d spoken. “Let’s hear it,” she said.

“It’s encrypted, Doctor.”

“Decrypt it. Where’s it coming from?”

“I have that.” Another technician’s voice. He didn’t bother to wait for permission; he patched through his holocam view to one of Gast’s terminals. She liked that. Initiative. Which one was this? It was Drufeys, the lean one with the lazy eye.

The holocam was an infrared unit. It was a static view of the roof, and showed two blurry red figures, one male and one female, creeping along the roof.

Away from the protected zone. Gast frowned. That was disappointing. Had they recognized the first line of security and decided to run away?

She turned to the console where her new intelligence specialist, a man on loan from Warlord Zsinj, sat. “Captain Netbers, what are they doing?”

Netbers rose and approached her. He was a huge man, easily two meters tall, with a musculature that suggested he spent more time improving it than he did sleeping. A pity he was so ugly—obviously a fighter, he looked as though he had fallen asleep in an automatic door and it had slammed shut on his face for an afternoon. But the eyes underneath his shaggy brown hair were dark and intelligent. When he spoke, his voice was deep and raspy. “They’ve seen the security perimeter.”

“And it scared them off?”

He smiled. His teeth were regular. She somehow doubted they were original equipment. “No,” he said. “That comm transmission was them informing the other members of their team. They’re getting clear in case we caught the signal.”

“We haven’t seen any sign of other intruders.”

“We will.”

She turned back to Drufeys. “Monitor their progress. When they’ve settled in, have a squad of stormtroopers stand by within striking distance of them.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

She quelled an excitement rising within her and turned back to Netbers. “I have a feeling this is going to be fun, Captain. Is it usually fun?”

He nodded.

Kell swore and pushed his head deeper into the access hatch. He was hanging from sturdy metal rungs in the turbolift shaft, one floor below street level, illuminated only by the glow rod held by Shalla, who stood on the same rung he did and helped brace him as he worked. The panel Kell investigated opened into a maze of wires and circuitry, and his head was missing in that forest of equipment. “Give me more light.”

Shalla leaned in closer to oblige, poking her hand and glow rod through the curtain of wiring. She could see his neck flex as he looked around.

Finally Kell withdrew—slowly, so as not to knock Shalla free of her perch. He twisted to look over his shoulder at the other Wraiths, clustered in the open turbolift door behind him. “Two was right. There’s new wiring throughout. If we’d gone down and disabled the monitors on the panel between lift shafts, we would have set off another alarm.”

Face asked, “Can you disable that alarm?”

Kell considered. Shalla knew this really wasn’t his speciality. He’d said he was lucky to have done as well as he had on this mission. “Maybe,” he said. “But I can’t be sure I’ve identified all the security at that entry point. I think instead we need to go through a non-entry point.”

“Like where?”

“Like here.” He gestured at the curtain of wires. “Beyond this monkey-lizard nest, we have a riveted panel of metal between us and the Northwest Two lift shaft. But it’s not armor quality. I vote we just cut through and descend.”

“Do it.”

Kell brought out his vibroblade and powered it on.

They were within three meters of the bottom of the shaft when Kell spotted the access hatch they would have used had they not changed plans. “Nine, the gauge again?”

He felt Shalla rummage around in the top pocket of his demolitions pack. Then she handed him the sensor device he’d had to use so many times tonight. It read electrical currents and was of vital use to mechanics and demolitions experts, two categories into which Kell fit.

He aimed the device at the panel and swept it all around the bottom of the shaft. It registered a considerable amount of electrical current flow beyond the panel, no surprise, and along the recessed slot used by turbolift cars of this sort to acquire their power.

There was also a suspicious spike of activity on the wall opposite the panel, just above the door out of the lift shaft. It took him a few moments to identify the hemispherical depression, not larger than the end of his thumb, in the metal just above the door. “Holocam recess,” he said. “But it’s set up to watch the panel. If we get across to the door side and drop beside it, it shouldn’t spot us.”

Face said, “There are no rungs over there, Five.”

“Oh, well. Guess we go home instead.” Kell had Shalla tuck the gauge back in his pack. He checked to make sure that his pack and other gear were secure.

Then he let go of the rung he was holding on to and leaped across the turbolift shaft, slapping into the far wall like a slapstick character from a holocomedy. He dropped the final three meters to the duracrete bottom of the shaft, his large frame easily handling the shock of landing. He gestured up at his comrades as though to say, “Simple.”

He saw Face shake his head ruefully.

One by one they followed his lead. He half caught each of them, fractionally slowing their descents, then got to work on the minimal security on the turbolift door.

The halls were empty, sanitary, still smelling faintly of something antiseptic. The lights were on at half intensity, making even the whiteness of the walls and floor seem dim. All the Wraiths could hear was the distant hum of air-moving machinery and their own faint footsteps.

Face didn’t like it. It felt abandoned, and an empty facility would not yield them any secrets. It also felt somehow wrong. He glanced at Tyria to gauge her response—perhaps her abilities with the Force, however faint or erratic, would tell her something. But he could not read her face; at his own command, all the Wraiths, now that they were moving in what should have been populated areas, were wearing black cloth masks covering everything but their eyes and mouths.

All the Wraiths but Piggy, that is. No mask could conceal his species, and only one member of his species would travel with a commando unit this way.

“I know this floor,” Piggy said. Both his real voice and his mechanical one were modulated so low that Face could barely hear them. “This was the third of four floors. We came down here only when we were injured. The bacta ward was right down—” He pointed his finger at a blank section of wall to his right and stopped.

Face asked, “Right down where, Eight?”

“Down this hall.”

“That’s a wall.”

“I know.” Piggy stepped up to the wall and looked at it very carefully. Then he bent to look at the flooring beneath it. When he turned to Kell, his expression, to the extent that Face could read Gamorrean expressions, was confused.

Kell obligingly aimed his electrical current detector at that section of wall, waving it about slowly. “Nothing to suggest any sort of door mechanism. There’s some faint electrical activity beyond, but not immediately beyond. Several meters, I think, and no heavy electrical currents.”

Tyria said, “The wear on the floor doesn’t show that anything has turned down a hall here, Eight. And the floor looks as though it’s been through several years of wear.”

“Yes,” Piggy said. But he still stared at the wall as if accusing it of lying. “They’ve taken up the floor from somewhere else and moved it here to conceal the deception.”

“All right,” Face said. “But even so, the only thing down this hall of yours was a bacta ward—correct?”

“Correct.”

“We’ll check it out if we don’t find anything elsewhere. Let’s look at what you never got to see before. All right?”

Piggy nodded.

They continued up the main hall, the only hall, to its end. On the left was a large double door leading into a circular chamber filled with equipment—panels, consoles, and terminals arrayed in a circle around some sort of large chair. The chair was obviously intended for medical usage; it featured brackets to fit around wrist and ankle, and was festooned with equipment on armatures—injectors, viewscreens, racks filled with bottles.

“I know that chair,” Piggy said. “You got your shots there. And performed tests. But it was one floor up.”

“Door’s clear,” Kell said. “No undue security. Do I open it up?”

Face said, “You said three of four. This was the third floor of four. You meant two above this one and one below?”

Piggy nodded.

“How did you get to the fourth floor?”

“By the turbolift.” Then Piggy frowned and looked back down the hallway toward the distant turbolift door.

“But the turbolift ended at this floor,” Face said. “There was duracrete below.”

Shalla said, “It was very clean duracrete. No oil stains. I thought that was odd. But everything here has been so clean it seemed in keeping with the rest.”

“Obviously, it was new,” Face said. “They’ve blocked off the fourth floor. I wonder why?”

The others shrugged. Tyria merely gave him her I-have-a-bad-feeling-about-this look.

“We can leave now,” Shalla said.

“There is no data without risk,” Face said, “as one of my instructors used to say. We always wanted to shoot him for it. All right, Five, let’s go in.”

Kell triggered the door control. The double doors slid open and the Wraiths entered, blasters up, fanning to either side.

“Doctor?” said another technician. “They’re in the First Chamber.” He put through the holocam feed to one of her terminals.

Gast looked at the screen and frowned. “They got through our outer perimeter.”

Netbers leaned over her shoulder. “They’re pretty good. But they’re here. So they’re dead.”

“Alert your stormtroopers,” Gast said, then issued commands to the others. “Prepare the Second Chamber. Activate comm jamming as soon as the door to the Second Chamber is opened. No, wait: Alert the other team of stormtroopers to take the intruders on the rooftop, then activate comm jamming as soon as the Second Chamber is opened.” She frowned, angry with herself for her mistake.

“You’re getting the hang of it,” Netbers said.

Kell waved an all-clear signal to the others. The walls and ceiling offered no circuitry suggesting additional security.

Dia and Shalla covered the door with their blasters. The others looked at the equipment in the room.

“I was never in here,” Piggy said. “I don’t know what the chamber was for. The chair wasn’t here. The chair was one floor up, where they did a lot of testing. I solved math problems in that chair while drugged or while being electrocuted.”

“Charming,” Face said.

“There’s something awful about this room,” Tyria said. “Not in the room itself. Nearby.”

“This is a game-table unit,” Kell said. He was on one knee, looking intently at one of the pieces of equipment around the chair. “The table itself has been taken off and the unit repainted.”

“So it broadcasts to the screen on the chair?” Face asked.

“Maybe.” Kell looked over the unit, puzzled. “It doesn’t seem to be fastened down, but it’s powered.”

“This machine washes clothes.” Runt was staring with equal concentration at a silver-gray metal cube two-thirds the height of a human. “They had one like it on the ship Sungrass.”

Kell waved his current detector at Runt’s device, then at the floor around it. “It’s self-powered. Like the game table. It’s battery-powered or something.”

“Why?” Face asked. He looked at Piggy, but the Gamorrean looked blankly back at him.

“Transfer control to my terminal,” Gast said.

Then she caught the hurt look on the face of Drufeys and she relented. “Oh, very well, you do it.”

Drufeys brightened and pressed a button on his console.

Face felt the floor give way beneath him. All around him, Wraiths and equipment dropped. There was blackness and heat beneath him. When his feet hit he tried to roll and absorb some of the shock of impact, but he did a bad job of it and landed on his chest, the wind knocked out of him. He felt something heavy and sharp slam into his back and he grunted from the blow. There were cries and sounds of crashing all around him.

Awkwardly, he rolled to his back. The floor of the room above had split down the middle. Hinges to either side had allowed it to open like a door, dropping them what looked like a fall of six or seven meters.

And now stormtroopers were lining up at the edges of the room above. They aimed their blasters down at the Wraiths. One called out, “Throw up your demolitions gear or we open fire.”

Face looked around. The Wraiths were in no position to resist. Only Kell and Shalla were already on their feet. Beyond Kell, Runt was unmoving, apparently unconscious. Beside him, a piece of machinery on her back, was another fallen Wraith—

“Dia!” Face was suddenly on his feet despite the pain. He knelt beside Dia, saw at once that she was unconscious, that her left arm lay at an angle that was not right. She was still breathing.

“Demolitions bag,” the stormtrooper repeated. “Or you’re all dead.”

Face caught Kell’s attention and nodded.

But Kell turned to Shalla, and said, “Do what they say, Demolitions.”

Shalla didn’t hesitate. She shucked off her own pack, which contained her infra-goggles, spare glow rods, and preserved food. She swung it around at the end of its straps and hurled it up to the stormtroopers above.

The speaker caught the bag. He and the others retreated. The ceiling began to close.

“What are you doing?” Face asked. “In thirty seconds they’ll know we’ve lied. They’ll open it up and start shooting.”

“In thirty seconds we’re supposed to be dead,” Kell said. He pulled off his own pack and rummaged around in its contents. “Take a look around, One. You know what this place is?”

Face forced himself to look away from Dia.

The floor was some sort of grating. It seemed to be continuous, not made up in sections, and was sturdy enough not to flex beneath the weight of the Wraiths and all the equipment from the chamber above. The walls were heavy, dark metal with a tight grid of nozzles protruding from them.

As he looked, the floor grating beside the walls began glowing red. The redness spread toward the center of the room at a quick rate. Heat from the glowing portions of the grate swept across Face and the other Wraiths.

“They burn organic material here,” Piggy said. He struggled to his feet, holding his side. “It’s an incinerator.”

Lara knelt and fretted. Still no communication of any sort from the team. Of course, they were supposed to keep comm transmissions to a minimum. But she wanted to know what was happening down below.

It didn’t help that Elassar was so calm. The Devaronian junior pilot lay on his back, admiring the stars. “A shooting star!” he whispered. “That’s good luck.”

“Is it still lucky if it’s one of the asteroids we shot into the atmosphere as cover?” Lara asked.

He frowned, considering. “I don’t know.”

Sixty meters away, there was a terrific metal crash and two hinged pieces of roof slammed open. An open-sided turbolift rose into view. The dozen stormtroopers within it jumped out, turning toward Lara and Elassar.

“I guess not,” Elassar amended.

Face lifted Dia, as mindful as he could be of her broken arm. “Sorry I said anything, Five. Blow us out of here.”

Kell slipped his bag back over one shoulder. He held two charges, one in each hand. He tucked one charge into a pocket and tapped something into the keypad of the other.

Tyria hopped up on a boxy piece of metal equipment as the redness of the floor neared her feet. She peeled off her face mask. The other Wraiths began following suit. Face could see that they were already sweating heavily. So was he, but burdened as he was, he couldn’t do anything about it. Tyria said, “What if the chamber is magnetically sealed?”

“It’s not,” Face said. “If it were, they wouldn’t have bothered to demand our demolitions.”

Kell said, “One?”

“What?”

“Where do I place this?”

“Your best guess. You’re the demolitions expert. But this deep down, we may have stone and dirt on all sides.”

“Imperial architecture is kind of conservative,” Kell said. “One floor is often like another. Meaning that the main hall above may have a parallel on this floor. Which was—where?” He looked around blankly. In the fall and the Wraiths’s subsequent disorientation, he’d lost track of directions.

Piggy pointed at one wall, then yanked Runt up before the heat in the floor grid reached him. The Thakwaash pilot looked groggy, but mobile.

Flame erupted from every nozzle along the chamber walls. The flames were no more than half a meter in length, but the temperature in the room rose instantly. Several Wraiths swore and all flinched away from the new heat.

“Three seconds,” Kell said. “Find cover.” He threw his package against the wall and moved to crouch behind one of the ruined metal cases of false lab equipment.

Face followed suit. He felt the floor grating begin to burn its way through his shoes the moment they made contact. He crouched and leaned back against the experiment chair, keeping it between him and the explosive charge, trying to keep Dia’s limbs from trailing against the floor.

One floor up, a stormtrooper opened Shalla’s pack and extracted a tube of processed nutrients. He pawed through the other contents of the pack, then held out the nutrient tube to his commander for inspection.

The commander said, “Uh-oh.”

6

“I wasn’t too sure about this crematorium idea,” Netbers said. “But I must admit it seems to have come off rather well. Though the warlord might have preferred a better souvenir than several kilograms of ashes.”

Dr. Gast nodded. “But I think he’ll be pleased that they didn’t just die—that they died very, very painfully.”

“True.”

The building rocked and the sound of a muffled detonation reached them. Technicians jumped up and looked around as though deciding whether to situate themselves in doorways.

Netbers sighed. “Not good,” he said. “I’m going to lead the stormtroopers down to the crematorium level.”

Gast stood. “I’m going with you. You’ll need me for access to all levels.”

“Come along.”

The explosion hit before Face heard it, before he comprehended it. All he knew is that something hard, the frame of the experiment chair, hit his back and propelled him forward—launching Dia toward the burning floor, the burning wall. He rolled with the impact, tumbling, trying to keep Dia from contacting the glowing floor grid.

He succeeded. His shoulder hit the grid and he felt the flooring burn through his light tunic, branding him. He continued the roll and the burning sensation tore down his back, across his buttocks.

There was a burning in his throat, too. It had to have been from his scream. He felt as though his back had been torn completely free, revealing bones and blood for all the world to see. He almost gave up then, as the pain told his body to tighten up into a tight ball and lie there until he died, but he felt his heels hit the floor and he rose, instinct and adrenaline giving him the energy to keep moving.

He turned back toward the source of the explosion. The flames on the walls were now growing, extending toward him, but in the center of them there was a different sort of light—whiteness, not redness. He lurched toward it, gaining speed.

There it was in his mind, an absurd image—his childhood visit to an arena on Coruscant where animals from all the planets of the galaxy did tricks for the entertainment of men. One of those tricks was leaping through fiery hoops and frameworks. Now he was doing it.

The floor grating disappeared two steps ahead, ending in a broken edge of red-glowing metal. He leaped over the edge into the white void beyond—

And hit something. White, cold hardness. He bounced off it and landed on his back.

And there the pain from his burns hit him. His back arched and he shrieked. His body would not obey him, would do nothing but writhe and shout.

He could not even look down to see if Dia was still with him, if he’d managed to carry the woman he loved out of that inferno.

Lara drew her blaster pistol and fired. Her first shot missed the leading wave of stormtroopers but checked their progress—most of them dropped to skid behind antennae, air-conditioning equipment, and other rooftop gear. The first of them returned fire and Lara realized rather belatedly that she had no cover before her.

Elassar had his blaster out in a two-handed grip. He fired, tearing uselessly into the side of the metal housing between him and his target. Lara grabbed his tunic at the shoulder and tugged him toward another metal housing.

They ducked down behind the landskimmer-sized equipment case and heard blaster shots hammer into the far side. “We’re in trouble,” Lara said.

“True. Should I charge them and wipe them out for you?”

“Oh, if you think you could, that’d be really decent of you.” Lara popped up, took a quick shot, was rewarded with the image of a pair of stormtroopers ducking behind cover. “I’ll help too,” she said. “I’ll call the troops.”

“Deal.”

Lara brought out her comlink. “Wraith Two to Rogue Leader. Emergency. Emergency. Do you read?”

The only answer was a hiss of static.

Face forced himself to look around. He was in a hallway.

There, to his right, lay Dia. She was moving, her eyes half-open. Beyond her was a jagged hole in a once-pristine white wall. It was three or four meters in diameter, starting at knee height and continuing up into the ceiling and beyond, and it was lined in flames. Heat rolled out of it, a steady wind from a manmade hell.

Out from the fire shot Wes Janson, crashing into the same wall Face must have hit, but he kept his feet when he landed. His right shoulder and back were on fire. He dropped to the floor and rolled, swatting at the flame.

Then came Tyria. She landed short of the wall, her blaster rifle in hand. Poised as a heroine from an action holodrama, she swept up and down the hall with the rifle. There was no sign of fire, even of burn upon her.

Four out. Four to go. Face heaved himself to his feet, leaving Dia where she lay for the moment. There was blood all over the flooring where he’d fallen. He decided not to think about that for the moment. Or about the pain—he swore and brought out his blaster pistol, then reached down and began dragging Dia out of the path of oncoming Wraiths.

Seconds later, Kell landed where she had just been. His hair was charred and his eyebrows were gone, singed away. There were burn stripes on his chest, stripes identical to the flooring in the crematorium—and not only on his chest. His palms and fingers were also black and red with the marks, and shook uncontrollably.

Piggy came flying out of the inferno and crashed into the wall. He bounced off and slammed to the floor atop Face’s blood slick. A fraction of a second later, Shalla landed atop him. She was on fire and had burn stripes along her right side from armpit to knee, and she shrieked as she rolled to extinguish the flames. Piggy slapped at her, trying to help.

Seven of eight. The Wraiths looked at one another as, in their pained and distracted states, they tried to calculate who was missing.

“Oh, no,” Kell said. “Runt—”

Then Runt was among them, his chest and left side fully engaged in flame, his fur blackening away as it fed the fire. He landed on his knees atop Piggy, howling in pain, swinging arms as though to strike the enemy burning away at him.

Kell leaped at Runt, a body check that took him from atop the Gamorrean. Piggy got up to his feet and fell atop Runt, hammering away at patches of flame his corpulent body didn’t smother.

They just stood there breathing for a moment. Then Face straightened, despite what it cost him in agony to his back. When he spoke, he found that his voice cracked with pain and exertion. “We’re moving out,” he said. “There have to be access panels or stairs near where the turbolift used to be. First, open communications with our other team and the Rogues.”

Janson took the scorched comm pack from Runt’s back. Fortunately the unit within, though blackened along one side, was functional.

Maybe.

Janson looked up from it. “I’m getting nothing but hiss. Some of it may be because we’re too deep, but I think we’re being jammed.”

Face nodded. “That figures. All right, we go. Ten, you take point. Four, rear guard.”

Janson and Tyria nodded to accept their respective tasks.

Shalla got Dia up to her feet and quickly rigged a sling for her arm. Dia still looked groggy, but she managed to catch Face’s eye and gave him a look that said she was there, she was functional. There was no time for them to exchange anything else.

Piggy tried to haul Runt up to his feet, but the Thakwaash pilot shook off his hand and stood. He was a mess, much of his upper body marked by flame-blackened fur, and his eyes were wide, vibrating.

Face knew how he felt. It wasn’t just pain. Anger blossomed within him like the explosive cloud from a proton torpedo. “Wraiths,” he said, “no rules. No mercy. Take out anything that gets between us and home.”

From the looks in their faces he knew they’d have accepted no other order.

Lara hazarded another look over her shoulder. The nearest path to escape was the edge of the roof, some thirty meters back. But she was behind the last cover between this point and the edge. If she and Elassar got up to run, they’d be cut down. “I think we’re done for,” she said.

Elassar shook his head. “No. Today’s a lucky day. I calculated it before we started on this mission.”

“Ah. Did you remember to invite your luck? Or is it in its bunk on Mon Remonda?” Lara popped up to try another shot.

A laser blast, brilliant red, flashed out of the distance. It struck behind the equipment housing Lara had been firing at—and hit one of the stormtroopers there, blasting him sideways, leaving his charred and smoking body lying in plain sight on the rooftop.

Elassar gave her an infuriating grin. “My luck is your boyfriend. Excuse me.” He leaned out to the right of the housing protecting him.

Lara and Elassar had enemies dead ahead, and Donos with his sniper rifle across the street to their left. That meant that stormtroopers close to the Wraiths could be protected from Lara and Elassar, or from Donos, but not both. Lara saw stormtroopers scramble to get their cover between them and Donos’s more potent weapon … and as soon as they got around the side of their cover, Elassar opened fire, taking down one, two, three of them before the remainder realized the full extent of their predicament.

Lara prepared to pop up for another exchange of shots. The stormtroopers, she knew, had only a couple of options. They could retreat until they could get cover between them and both sets of Wraiths, or they could take out one of the directions of enemy fire … which probably meant charging her and Elassar.

They rose and charged, roaring as they came. Lara half rose and opened fire.

The technician Drufeys, now in the command chair of the control room, watched events unfold on the rooftop. Of the eight stormtroopers who’d risen to charge the two visible Wraiths, four were now down, two felled by blaster pistols, two more by the laser sniper. The other four were in fast retreat. “This isn’t going well,” he said. “Call Argenhald Base and ask them to scramble a couple of TIE fighters. Give them the approximate position of the sniper.”

The technician he had addressed, the communications specialist, said, “We’re still jamming.”

“Use a land line, stupid.”

“You don’t have to call me stupid.”

“Yes, I actually do have to. Get to it.” Drufeys settled back into the chair. He liked the feel of it. Too bad this facility was being shut down. But perhaps, if he displayed enough competence, he’d find some task with Warlord Zsinj. He smiled. He liked that idea.

The Wraiths were within sight of the old turbolift doors, were within thirty meters and could see how the doors had been laser-welded shut, when a side door slammed open and stormtroopers began pouring into the hall. Stormtroopers, an unarmored officer, a civilian woman.

“Get back!” Face shouted. “We have to—”

He was going to say “retreat.” They had to get back and away from a numerically superior—and uninjured—enemy force.

But then it happened. Face recognized the big man in the Imperial captain’s outfit. Weeks before, disguised as General Kargin of the Hawk-bats, Face had watched Shalla, in her own disguise of Qatya Nassin, bruise the big man in a test of martial arts skills.

And now he saw recognition in the captain’s eyes.

The captain couldn’t have recognized him; Face had been wearing burn-victim makeup designed to make stomachs turn. He must instead have seen Qatya Nassin in Shalla, recognizing her in spite of the makeup she’d worn at the time.

Shalla charged the big man and the dozen and more stormtroopers now crowding into the hall. Her intention was all too obvious: kill the big captain so he couldn’t report that a member of Wraith Squadron was also with the Hawk-bats.

She’s going to get herself killed, Face thought.

And us too.

He finished his command. “Charge!”

Wes Janson lurched into motion, charging in Shalla’s wake, taking the left side of the hall where she ran along the right.

He had no wisecracks to offer now. He could only offer one of his other skills, one that might make him unfit for a normal life when this war was finally done. The skill that made him proficient at killing people.

In full stride, he raised his blaster pistol and fired, catching the lead stormtrooper in the chest. The man was thrown back into the arms of one of his companions, his armor now blackened and penetrated.

Janson didn’t sight in—he aimed by instinct, by the natural point of his weapon, and fired again. The second stormtrooper took the shot in the dark visor material over his right eye.

Shalla wasn’t firing—why not? Janson traversed right and shot at the lead stormtrooper on that side of the hall, catching him in the gut. Behind him was the big captain, now raising his own blaster. Janson fired again. His shot caught the man in the elbow, spinning him back into the wall, causing him to drop his weapon.

Janson traversed leftward again, targeting a stormtrooper with a blaster rifle, his shot catching the man in the throat.

Five steps. Five shots. Five hits. But the hallway was a natural channel for blaster bolts. Its straight lines would angle stray shots back into play. He’d never reach them—

He didn’t. He felt fire again and suddenly the world was spinning, slamming into his head—

Dark.

Netbers saw the dark-skinned woman charge and for a moment was so surprised by this tactical insanity that he couldn’t react. Then he shouted, “Fire!” and drew his own blaster pistol.

The woman’s gaze was fixed on him. He knew he was her target. He knew why, too. And he couldn’t get his blaster in line before she had hers aimed, before she pulled her trigger—

And the charred blaster in her hand failed to go off. He almost laughed. He aimed.

The stormtrooper in front of him was thrown back into him, jarring his aim. He shoved the man, probably already dead, aside.

A stray blaster beam slammed into his right arm. It spun him back and pain flashed through him.

That was all right. He knew pain. Pain was his friend.

When he looked up again, the dark woman was upon him, lashing out with a side kick meant to shatter his knee, to bring him to the floor. He twisted, took it as a graze against the side of his knee.

She was hurt. Burn marks all along her right side. Netbers swung at her flank, a left-handed slap that hit bare, burned flesh. The blow knocked her to the floor and she lay there, curled up, helpless.

Conditioning is a big part of it, Qatya, he thought. He reached down and took a blaster pistol from the dead stormtrooper beside him. You might beat me once, but never twice—Something loomed up before him and struck him across the face.

He crashed to the floor atop the body of a stormtrooper. The blow was incredible. He saw stars and his hearing failed. His body wouldn’t respond.

His attacker bent over him. It was a nonhuman, a big hairy thing burned all over its upper body, with wide, staring eyes and lips drawn back over square teeth. It grabbed him by the collar and hauled him, all 130 kilograms of him, up into the air as though he weighed nothing.

Netbers lashed out at the alien, striking at one of its burned patches, but the creature grabbed his wrist with its free hand.

Then, as casually as though it were swinging a bag of grain, it slammed him into the wall. He felt his shoulder blade break under the impact, felt something grate in his neck as his head battered into the metal of the wall.

Where are my stormtroopers? But now there were black-clad, burned commandos charging past him, running toward the stairwell by which he and his men had descended. The commandos were firing blasters, shouting—Netbers could hear no noise.

The first wave of them passed and the burned alien swung him toward the opposite wall. Netbers felt himself hit, felt his right shoulder give way, felt something in his neck explode.

Then he felt no more.

“Call it off!” Face shouted. He was at the base of the stairs. Kell and Piggy were above, ahead of him, struggling across the bodies of fallen stormtroopers. Living stormtroopers were ahead of them, running for their lives. “Let’s get out of here!”

“The woman.” That was Piggy’s mechanical voice, inflectionless in spite of the pain he must be feeling. “She is one of my creators. We need her.” He fired up the stairs and continued his awkward run over the bodies of slain enemies. A moment later, he and Kell were out of sight, around a turn in the stairs, and all Face could hear was more blaster fire. He grimaced and moved up the stairs as fast as his tired legs and burned body would let him.

One landing up, the two Wraiths awaited him. Piggy had the human civilian in his grip. Kell waited, his blaster aimed up the stairs, for a counterattack.

In spite of her situation, the woman seemed calm. Face said, “Eight, when the next wave of stormtroopers comes, use her as a human shield. I’m curious to see how long it’ll take blasters to burn through her.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m too valuable for that,” she said.

“I doubt it,” Face said. “But we’ll see. If you want to live, you’ll tell us a way out of here that doesn’t involve more ambushes by your stormtroopers. If they do come at us, you’ll be our first bit of cover. Well?”

“Access tunnels,” she said. Her voice was cool.

“Show me.”

She pointed down the stairs.

They gathered where the big captain had died. Janson was on his feet, supported by Tyria, his right bicep wrapped in a thick bandage already stained through with blood, his arm hanging uselessly. There was blood spilling down his forehead, too, and a matching patch on the wall at head height. His face was already graying with shock. Shalla, too, was up. Runt was swaying and breathing hard where he stood; flecks of white spittle decorated the sides of his mouth. Seven stormtroopers and the big captain lay dead in the hall.

The female civilian, whom Piggy called Dr. Gast, led them back toward the incinerator room. Fire from the chamber had spread out into the hall. The air was becoming smoky and flames licked along the ceiling at the far end. But halfway there, Gast turned toward a blank wall and said, “Gast access override one-one-one.”

The wall section lifted like a high-speed doorway, revealing a small turbolift beyond. Gast gave Face a cool smile. “Down one level is an underground landspeeder channel with a utilities shaft running parallel to it.”

Face boarded and the others followed. “You know what this means to you if this is a trick.”

She shook her head. “No trick. Zsinj will have me killed for failure. So my survival means getting you to safety. Gast, descend to sub-five.”

The turbolift descended for a few seconds. Then the door opened onto a dimly lit duracrete shelf. Beyond it was a dropoff; a few meters beyond that, a wall.

They exited cautiously, blasters raised right and left. This was a boarding platform for a railway of some sort, the dropoff being a low roadway.

“And may I say,” she continued, “that I always enjoyed your holodramas?”

“You couldn’t say anything that would nauseate me more.”

She smiled, her expression still calm. “Though I liked Tetran Cowall more.”

“That makes me feel better. He’s a no-talent bag of bantha droppings.” Face gestured right and left. “Which way?”

As they moved, fast as their ill-treated bodies would let them, they passed hatches allowing access into upper floors, tanks where water was stored and processed, power-cabling terminals, and equipment housings that were less easily identified.

Kell stopped beside a heavy metal beam running from the duracrete ceiling above into the duracrete shelf below. He tapped it with his forearm. His hand was still charred, twitching. “Hey,” he said. “This is a main support beam, isn’t it?”

Gast nodded. “I think so. Why?”

Face said, “Five, no. We can’t bring down this whole building. There may be other innocents, other test subjects up there.”

Kell offered him a smirk. “Boss, I don’t want to blow everything up. Listen. We just passed a power station a few meters back.”

“So?”

“So if we can adapt the power from that station to boost the signal strength of Runt’s comm unit, and patch the unit’s signal through this beam—”

“Then we use the whole building as an antenna.” Face slapped his forehead and regretted it instantly as his palm encountered burned flesh. “Do it. Do it fast.”

At a dead run, Hobbie charged up to where Wedge and Tycho sat under their camouflage covers. “Signal from the Wraiths, Wedge. They need immediate air support.”

Lara and Elassar had circled around, maintaining fire against the now much more distant stormtroopers, reaching the point on the wall where their fibra-rope rig would give them access to Donos’s roof, when they saw and heard the approaching TIE fighters. “Just what we need,” she said.

She gauged the drop to the ground below. Not too far, she might land unhurt, but there was no place within a hundred meters to hide from a TIE. Likewise, the nearest roof hatch, its locks and security restored to keep guards and workers from noticing anything amiss, would take too long to open.

The pair of TIE fighters roared in from the south, decelerating as they came within easy firing range of the rooftop. They came to a complete halt, floating on repulsorlifts, when they were two hundred meters away. One was aimed directly at Lara and Elassar’s position, the other at Donos.

Lara set her blaster pistol down and raised her hands. Elassar did the same. Across the street, they could dimly see Donos following suit.

They could hear the remaining stormtroopers approaching from behind—walking up at a casual pace, joking, their voices relieved.

Then one of the TIE fighters dropped as though it were a puppet with its strings suddenly cut. The other rose a few meters and aimed over Lara’s head, off to the east—

There was a flash of blue light and the TIE fighter exploded.

The blast rained fiery bits of metal and transparisteel over the area. Lara felt a bite as a needle of glowing metal hit her forearm, then heat as the advance wave of the explosion reached her. She saw her Devaronian squadmate tumble to the ground, rolling across his dropped blaster as he did so, and come up on one knee already firing.

Lara dropped and scrambled for her blaster. As she swung it into line, she saw that one stormtrooper was already down, the other three aiming. Her shot took one of them in the knee, bringing him down flat on the roof, and her next shot hit the top of his head. He twitched for a moment.

She looked around. The other two stormtroopers were down. One had a burn mark on his gut. The other had a crater where his chest should be. And over on the roof across the street, Donos had his laser rifle in one hand and was waving with the other.

Lara heard the other TIE fighter zooming around out in the distance, but it had to be keeping nearly at street level. What had chased it off, destroyed the other? She looked to the east, but could see nothing in the darkness of the night sky.

“Good shot, Leader.”

“Thanks, Two,” Wedge said. It had, in fact, been a proficient proton torpedo shot. He’d brought up his targeting computer, gotten a targeting lock on one of the enemy TIEs, and fired, all in less than two seconds. Then he led Rogue Squadron on a dive down almost to rooftop level over Lurark, vectoring so that they weren’t aimed directly at the Binring complex. There was another TIE fighter out there, keeping buildings between it and the Rogues to stay off their sensor screens, and it didn’t pay to be predictable.

In less than a minute, they’d have more than one TIE to deal with. He took another look at his sensor board. There, at its limits, he could see a cloud of red targets tentatively identified as TIEs coming in from the south. The local Imperial air base, seeing the launch of Wedge’s X-wings, had dispatched at least a squadron to deal with them. This was going to be complicated.

“Leader, Seven.” That was Ran Kether, the new pilot from Chandrila, handling comm duties. “Signal from the Wraiths. They want us to blow up a specific location so they can get out from a tunnel they’re in. And to blow up the area bordered by the comm markers they’ve put up. They say it’s a festering pit of evil.”

Wedge laughed. “They shouldn’t let Wraith One on the comm like that. His language is too florid. All right, break by flights. One Flight, Three Flight, vector to the south and prepare to engage the incoming eyeballs. Two Flight, blow some stuff up for the Wraiths and get them safely out of there.”

He heard a groan, doubtless from Gavin Darklighter, who was part of Two Flight—and reduced to “baby-sitting,” as Gavin had feared he would be.

“Shrike Four to Shrike Leader, I read two incoming targets, class X-wing. They’re staying pretty close to building-top level. They’re searching for a lock with sensors.”

Shrike Leader, commander of the squad of TIE fighters defending Lurark, nodded. These were tactics he’d seen before. The incoming snubfighters had sent their squadmates on ahead, flanking right and left. The unseen X-wings would be coming back toward the center now, flying at street level to stay off the sensors, timing things so that just at the point the X-wings came within firing range, his TIEs would come within sight.

Shrike Leader knew better than to give them such an opportunity. “Reduce speed to two-thirds,” he said. That would throw off the enemy’s timing. The unseen X-wings would cross before them, having nothing to shoot at, and provide his TIEs with abundant shooting practice. Either that, or they’d break formation now, popping up out of the trenches of Lurark’s streets, and the Shrikes could engage them immediately in dogfights.

But no X-wings came bouncing up out of the streets, and the two known targets came implacably on. Shrike Leader frowned at that. “Fire at will,” he said.

A second later, one of the X-wings jittered within the brackets of his targeting computer—and dove, even as Shrike Leader fired. His linked laser shot superheated the air just above the enemy starfighter and hit what looked like a residential building.

His target was suddenly gone, down into the maze of streets below, as was the other oncoming X-wing—and just as suddenly, six more X-wings popped up from other streets, also on oncoming headings, and opened fire.

Shrike Leader banked hard, so sharply that his inertial compensator couldn’t quite make up for the maneuver—he was thrown sideways into the netting of his pilot’s couch.

Then he felt something like a hammerblow as his left wing was hit, penetrated—

Abruptly the world outside his viewport was spinning, starry sky, nighttime city lights, over and over, and he could see the laser-heated stump of his left wing falling mere meters away.

He felt a sickness rise in his stomach, but knew that his discomfort would last only for another fifteen hundred meters.

One thousand.

Five hundred.

Wedge checked his sensor board and smiled thinly at what he saw. The maneuver had been more successful than he’d hoped. Scotian of One Wing and Qyrgg of Three Wing had skimmed along at rooftop level, feeding their sensor data to the other Rogues, who had lined up their opening shots based solely on the transmitted data. As soon as Scotian and Qyrgg had detected targeting locks on them, they’d dived to cover among the streets, and the other six Rogues had jumped up and taken their shots. Suddenly the enemy squadron of TIEs had been reduced by five—three destroyed, two badly damaged and winging away—and the odds were now in the Rogues’ favor.

The numerical odds, he told himself. The odds were already in our favor. “Break by pairs,” he said. “Engage and eliminate. Keep your eyes open for additional incoming units.” He arced to port, Tycho tucked in tight behind him.

Lara accepted a hand from Donos and swung from the crawler to his rooftop. Elassar stood on guard, his back to them. “Thanks,” she said.

“Welcome. Any word from the others?”

She shook her head.

A shrill whine rose behind them—and, like a landspeeder, an X-wing nosed around the building corner to their north, turning their way, riding on repulsorlifts. It climbed as it came until it was at rooftop level. The cowling rose and Rogue pilot Tal’dira nodded at them, his face serious as ever.

“That’ll be the lunch I ordered,” Lara said, under her breath. She heard Donos snort, saw him struggle to keep his face straight.

“Prepare to pick up your squadmates,” Tal’dira shouted. “South face of the building complex. Don’t get too near before we blow it.”

“Understood,” Donos said. “Thanks.”

The Twi’lek grimaced, his expression speaking eloquently of how he’d prefer to be halfway across the city where starfighters were engaged in combat, rather than here chatting to ground-pounding commandos. He lowered his X-wing’s cowling and goosed the snubfighter forward.

Dia leaned in close to Face, so that only he could hear, and asked, “Who is Tetran Cowall?”

“What?”

“That Gast creature said she liked Tetran Cowall more than you.”

“Oh.” He laughed. “She can have him. He’s an actor from Coruscant. We’re the same age. We competed for everything. Both wanted to be pilots. Tested for the same roles. Chased the same girls. He had no perceivable acting skills.”

She managed a slight smile. “He was the one Ton Phanan was going to leave his money to. If you didn’t get the operation to clear the scar from your face.”

Face nodded, rueful.

“I haven’t heard of him. Is he still making holodramas?”

“No.” Face smiled. “That was one competition I definitely won. He was a good-looking kid, but as he grew up he got sort of homely and couldn’t find work. He hasn’t made a holo in years.”

The tunnel rocked and a section of it, seventy meters and more away, collapsed, sending dust and large chunks of duracrete rolling down the tunnel toward the Wraiths.

“I think,” Face said, “that our ride has arrived.”

The Wraiths rode out of Lurark in the back of Donos’s new stolen flatbed speeder, lurking beneath blankets that smelled of feathers and avian manure. They lay as comfortably as they could—not comfortably at all for most of them, given the placement and severity of their burns. The city around them was alive with noises—distant explosions, occasional siren wails.

Lara, handling the comm unit while Elassar bandaged Runt, relayed information back. “Rogue Six and Rogue Five are riding guard over us, staying below sensor level. The commander and the rest of the Rogues are strafing the military base now. They’re going to lead off pursuit from the next base out. That means we’ll probably be able to climb out of the atmosphere at a fairly easy pace.”

“Good,” Face said. “Is everybody fit to fly?” He shined a glow rod from face to face to get responses.

Dia nodded. Her broken arm was now in a cast made of fast-hardening paste from Elassar’s backpack.

Piggy said, “Ready to go home.”

Shalla and Kell gave him tired nods.

“Fit to fly,” Tyria affirmed. She wasn’t kidding; when Face had gotten a good look at her, he found that the only damage she’d suffered was burns that hadn’t quite penetrated her boot soles and some charring to the butt of her blaster rifle. When he asked how she’d gotten away unmarked, she’d merely shrugged.

Janson said, “Just try to stop me.” He hadn’t cracked a smile since the incinerator, and Face could finally see, in his grim expression and the anger deep in his eyes, the man Janson had to be when flying against an enemy.

Runt was slow to answer. Then he said, “We can fly. But we are groggy from what Eleven has given us.”

“Just tuck in behind me,” Kell said. “I’ll get you there.”

“We are your wing.”

“All right, then,” Face said. He didn’t really believe they could all fly, but their experience and determination made it possible, and he didn’t have much in the way of options. “We have one other problem. Cargo.” He shined his light into the face of their prisoner, Dr. Edda Gast. She lay on her side, her arms bound behind her, expression perfectly serene.

“Put her in with me,” Shalla said. “Beside me in my TIE. She’s not big, I’m not big. We’ll dump everything out of my cargo area to lighten up.”

“And if she gets feisty?” Face waved his glow rod at Shalla’s right side, which was decorated with bandages.

Shalla’s face set. “Then I’ll kill her.”

“You have nothing to fear from me,” Gast said. “The worst I plan to do to any of you is negotiate with you.”

“Negotiate?” Face said.

“For what I know.”

“I think I’ll let Nine kill you now.”

Gast shook her head, not apparently offended by his suggestion. “No, you won’t. The Rebels—excuse me, the New Republic—doesn’t do things that way. That’s what I’ve always liked about you. And you do want to know where Voort saBinring came from. Why he exists at all. Don’t you, Voort?” She twisted to look at the Gamorrean.

Piggy merely stared back at her, his expression unreadable.

“So start talking,” Face said.

“No. You, personally, can’t give me what I want. Elimination of any charges the New Republic might see fit to press against me. Enough money to start my life over again. Protection from Zsinj. I don’t think I’m asking too much—”

“Gag her,” Face said. He lay back against the side of the speeder’s bed and tried to quell his stomach, which threatened to rise against him.

7

They returned to Mon Remonda’s X-wing bays, twenty-three starfighters. Some of them now showed new battle damage. Others were flown as though their pilots were drunk or worse. Medical crews were on station in the bays to help ease pilots out of cockpits and carry them on repulsorlift stretchers to the medical ward.

Two hours later, against his doctor’s orders, with his back heavily swathed in bacta bandages underneath a white hospital shirt, Face returned to his quarters.

Solo quarters. A captain, even a brevet captain, warranted decent-sized accommodations all to himself. Face felt a tinge of the old guilt, the old feeling that he didn’t deserve any such special consideration, given the good he’d done the Empire back when he was making holodramas … but he suppressed that feeling, burying it under a surge of anger. Ton Phanan had shown him that he needed to leave such thoughts behind. If only knowing what he needed to do were the same as doing it.

A scritch-scritch-scritch noise reminded him of duties he needed to perform. He took a pasteboard box from a drawer and moved to the table where the cages rested.

Two cages, each about knee height, each contained a translucent arthropod that stood and walked on two legs. The creatures were about finger height, with well-defined mandibles and compound eyes. Storini Glass Prowlers, they were called, from the Imperial world of Storinal. Ton Phanan and Grinder Thri’ag had each secretly come away from the Wraiths’s Storinal mission with one of the creatures. Face had found Grinder’s when it had been placed in his cockpit as a prank, and had given it to Phanan. Then Phanan, too, had died, and Face had inherited them. But both creatures were male, more likely to kill one another than coexist peaceably, and Face kept them in side-by-side cages.

He used a spoon to extract some of their food from the box. It was unappetizing-looking stuff, looking like little glass beads with green flecks at their centers. But when he poured a spoonful into each cage’s feeder box, the Glass Prowlers fell upon the food as though it were the most wonderful of treats; the Prowlers’s arms snapped out to scoop up each individual bead and their mandibles chewed away at the transparent coating and green flecks within. Face smiled at their voracity.

There was a knock at his door. “Come,” he said.

It slid open and Wedge stepped in. “Am I intruding?”

“No. Just feeding my roommates. Have a seat.” Face flicked a tunic from one of the room’s chairs. He settled in the other, forgetting for a moment, flinching as his back came in contact with the chair.

Wedge said, “I just came in to see how you were doing. Well, more precisely, to see how you felt about today’s mission.”

“I figured you would. So I’ve been thinking about it.”

“And?”

“And I feel pretty good about it.”

That got him a raised eyebrow from his commander. “Can you explain that?”

“Well, I don’t feel good about the casualty total, obviously. Sithspit. Janson and Runt in bacta tanks, everyone else bandaged and drugged up to the eyebrows … I have only four pilots fit to fly.”

“So what makes you feel good about the mission?”

Face took a deep breath. “We had an objective. Get information. We succeeded, even if that information is going to be difficult to drag out of Doctor Gast. We got out of there with everyone more or less alive.

“Even more, it’s obvious that they’d geared that whole facility to kill us, which is something we hadn’t anticipated. We were channeled to the place they intended to kill us, and they threw everything they had at us—and we took it and got out anyway. That’s a tremendous thing. When my pilots realize that, it’s going to be harder than ever to stop them. To intimidate them.

“And then, again, there’s the fact that the enemy went to such lengths to wipe out the Wraiths. They spent a tremendous amount of money and effort. They may want us dead, but they’re showing us respect—which is something I need to point out to the other Wraiths.” He shrugged, then winced again at the incautious move. “We all feel as though we’ve had the stuffing kicked out of us, then been fried up for someone else’s meal—but we won this one, Commander.”

Wedge nodded and rose. “I guess I don’t have too much to tell you.”

Face stood as well. “You came here to talk me out of a depressive state.” He mimed drawing a blaster and placing it to his temple. “Good-bye, galaxy of cruelty. My pilots are all burned; I must kill myself out of shame.”

“Something like that. But you’re obviously too smart for that.”

Face shook his head. “Too experienced. A year ago, I’d have felt like bantha slobber after something like this. Maybe even a month ago. Now, I just feel pride for my pilots … and a realization that I’m going to be sleeping on my stomach for a while. By the way, I’m putting in a commendation for Kell for his initiative, and one for Lieutenant Janson for bravery.”

“Like he needs another one,”

“Maybe he can build a little fort out of them.”

Wedge smiled and departed.

There was another knock at his door.

“Come.”

Dia almost flew through the door. She wrapped her arms around his neck, high so as to avoid his bandages, and drew his face to hers for a kiss.

A long one. He held her to him, the two of them able, at long last, to be clear of the military traditions that made it inappropriate for them to embrace before the other pilots, to be able simply to appreciate that they were both still alive.

When she finally released him, it took him a moment to remember what he’d been up to recently. “I sure am glad you two arrived in the right order.”

She looked confused. “What do you mean?”

“I’d have hated to have offered you the chair and given the commander the kiss.”

She gave him a smile, the one she’d never displayed before the two of them became a couple, the smile that was only for him. “Let’s see what we can do so you’ll always remember to keep the order straight.”

Donos settled onto the stool next to Lara’s and looked across the bar. “Fruit fizz, double, no ice,” he said.

Lara looked curiously at him. “You know there’s no one tending bar.”

“Sure, but some of the old formalities have to be maintained.” Donos looked around. The two of them were the only people in the pilots’ lounge—not unusual, considering the lateness of the hour, and the way no one much felt like celebrating. “I was wondering if you’d thought about what I asked you to.”

“You, you mean.”

“Well, us, really.”

“Sure, I had plenty of time, when I wasn’t planting comm markers, shooting at stormtroopers, and tending the injured.”

“That’s what I thought.”

She gave him an exasperated look. “Lieutenant, will you give me an absolutely honest answer?”

“Call me Myn. Sure.”

“What do you want from me?”

He took a deep breath, stalling as he composed his answer. “I want to get to know you better. What I do know, what I’ve seen, suggests that we’d be good together. I want you to stop saying it can’t ever be—stop throwing that up as a theory and let us accumulate some evidence. I want to make you smile with something other than a wisecrack. I want to know who you really are.”

Her laugh, sudden and hard, startled him. “Oh, no, you don’t.”

“Try me. Lara, does anyone know who you really are?” That put a stop to her hard-edged amusement. She had to take a moment to consider. “No.”

“Even yourself?”

“Least of all me.”

“So how do you know no one can love you for what you are? Until you know, you can’t have friends, you can’t even really have family—you have to be absolutely alone in the universe.” He took a moment to settle his thoughts. “Lara, I just want you to give me a chance. But even more, even if it’s not with me, I’d really like to see you give yourself a chance.”

She looked away from him, studying the gleaming brown surface of the bar top. Real wood, protected by so many coats of clear sealant that it shone like glass. He could see thoughts maneuvering behind her eyes, could see her examining them as if measuring and weighing trade goods. But her expression wasn’t clinical; it was sad.

Finally, her voice quiet, she said, “All right.”

“All right, meaning exactly what?”

“All right, I’ll stop avoiding you. All right, let’s get to know one another.”

“All right, let’s find out if we have some chance of a future together?”

She looked back up at him. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to break your heart.”

“Well, that’s a step in the right direction. Can I break yours, too?”

She didn’t smile. “Maybe you already have.”

Normally, taking news to the warlord didn’t cause General Melvar’s stomach to host some sort of internal dogfight. But sometimes the news was bad. Such as when he’d had to tell Zsinj how much they’d lost in the Razor’s Kiss battle with General Solo’s fleet.

Such as now.

Approaching the door to the warlord’s office, he nodded at the two guards on duty, two handpicked fighting men of Coruscant, and activated one of the many comlinks he carried on his person. This one signaled a very special set of hydraulics he’d had installed in the doors to most of Zsinj’s private quarters and retreats. They opened the door at a fraction of the speed and with almost none of the noise of most door mechanisms. Silently, he stepped inside, waited for the door to slide shut behind him, then stood before his warlord.

Zsinj looked up. He hardly ever jumped anymore. So disappointing. “What is it?” he asked.

“Word from Saffalore.” He set a datapad before the warlord. “Here’s the full report.”

“From Dr. Gast?”

“Not quite.”

Warned by something in Melvar’s tone, Zsinj sat back and laced his hands together over his prominent stomach. “Give me the short version.”

“There was a raid on Binring Biomedical about thirteen hours ago. As far as we can determine, it was by the Wraiths.”

“Were they killed?”

“No.”

“Were any of them killed?”

“We don’t think so. Survivors on the site think some of them were injured.”

Zsinj’s jaw clenched, then he forced himself to relax. “Go on.”

“They killed Captain Netbers.”

Zsinj sighed. “That’s a blow. Netbers was loyal and proficient. Is that it?”

Melvar shook his head. “They had Rogue Squadron with them, apparently flying support. Early reports indicate that Wedge Antilles was back flying with the Rogues, as our man on Mon Remonda suspected, so he was never in any real danger at the Binring site. They blew up the research center and apparently strafed one of the nearby air bases for fun.”

“And what does Doctor Gast have to say for herself?”

“They took her.”

Zsinj went absolutely still. Melvar waited, watching, but the man did not blink for long moments, and Melvar knew this was going to be a bad one.

Zsinj rose, slamming his chair into the wall behind him. “They took her alive?”

“Apparently. One of three stormtroopers who survived the bombing witnessed the Gamorrean pilot capturing her. Her body hasn’t been found.”

Zsinj made an inarticulate noise of anger. He twisted and seized one of the chamber’s decorations, a flagpole bearing a banner in the Raptors’ colors, red and black and yellow, and slammed its base onto the top of the desk, obliterating the datapad. “They took her? She knows all about Chubar! She knows all too much about Minefield!”

Melvar heard the door behind him hiss open. He heard it hiss shut almost instantly. The guards outside must be peeking in, and, seeing that the warlord was in no danger—only the general was—they’d returned to their posts.

Zsinj swung the flagpole laterally, narrowly missing Melvar, and slammed its base into a trophy case full of memorabilia from his many military campaigns. The case bounced off the wall and toppled forward, crashing onto the floor beside Zsinj’s desk.

Zsinj glared at the fallen case as though it were a new enemy. He threw the flagpole aside and, from a hidden pocket at his waist, drew a small but very powerful blaster pistol. He fired at the back of the trophy case once, twice, three times, blasting a crater into the expensive wood with each shot.

The room filled with smoke from the blaster emissions. The door slid open behind Melvar and then shut again.

Zsinj stood, shaking, glaring at the damage he’d done, then tucked the blaster away and sat heavily back in his chair. Melvar let out the breath he’d been holding.

“Well, we can’t have this,” Zsinj said. His voice was raw and sweat beaded his forehead. Sweat was also beginning to stain his white grand admiral’s uniform at his armpits and chest. “Activate our man on Mon Remonda. Tell him to kill Doctor Gast if he sees her. Whether or not she’s there, tell him to kill his primary targets. We’ll need to sacrifice some units as bait for Solo’s fleet if we’re to mop up the rest of them. And put Project Funeral on full speed ahead.” He held up a hand as if to curtail an argument, though Melvar did not feel like offering one. “I know, it’s a little premature, but all these Ranats biting at my heels are going to ruin my entire plan if we don’t do something about it now.”

“Understood, sir.” Melvar saluted. “Do you want your office restored, or will you be wanting to redecorate?”

Zsinj looked at him, puzzled, then glanced around at the damage he’d wrought. He managed a bark of laughter. “I’ll redecorate. Thank you, General. Dismissed.”

On faraway Coruscant, in one of the tallest of the planet’s towers at the heart of the old Imperial governmental district—a district as large, geographically, as mighty nations on other planets—Mon Mothma rose from the chair before her makeup table.

Not that the Chief Councilor of the New Republic’s Inner Council was overly fond of makeup. She made no effort to hide the gray creeping inexorably through her brown hair. She went to no particular lengths to hide her age—she’d earned every one of those years and would not insult others of her generation by suggesting that there was some shame in the accumulation of time.

Still, she needed a little matte to make sure that her face was not too shiny when the holocams caught her under bright lights, and these days she was a little too pallid to suit herself—a bit of color, even artificial color, suggested that she possessed more vigor and health than she actually felt.

She gave herself one last look in the mirror, adjusted the hem of her white gown, and marched with simulated energy to the door of her quarters.

They opened to admit her into the hall, and there waiting, as she knew they would be, were two members of her retinue.

The smaller was Malan Tugrina, a man of Alderaan—a man who’d lost his world long before Alderaan was destroyed, as he’d attached himself to Mon Mothma’s retinue in the earliest days of her work with the Rebellion. He was of average height, with features that would have been vaguely homely if not covered by a natty black beard and mustache, and the only thing striking about him were his eyes, which suggested intelligence and deep-buried loss. There was little striking about his abilities, too, except for his unwavering loyalty to Mon Mothma and the New Republic, and his skill at memory retention—everything said to him, everything that passed before his eyes, was burned into his memory as though he had a computer between his ears. He handled many of her secretarial duties with both the efficiency and the pedantic manner of a 3PO unit. “Good morning,” he said. “In half an hour, you have—”

“Wait,” she said. “I haven’t had any caf this morning. Can you expect me to face the horrors of my schedule when I’m not fully awake?” She swept toward the nearest turbolift. “Good morning, Tolokai.”

The other individual said, “Good morning, Councilor,” in his usual monotone. He was a Gotal, a humanoid whose roundish face was adorned with a heavy beard, a broad, flattened nose, and, most dramatically, two conelike horns rising from his head. The horns, Mon Mothma well knew, were sensory apparatus that made Gotals some of the most capable hunters and reconnaissance experts in the galaxy—not to mention bodyguards. With Tolokai beside her, she knew she’d always have warning of an impending attack, no matter how well prepared. It gave her an edge she needed in these dangerous times.

Mon Mothma summoned the turbolift as her companions stepped into place behind her.

Tolokai said, “If I may, Councilor, there was something I wished to show you.”

“It’s nothing I have to remember for too long, is it?”

“No, not too long. I do this in the name of all Gotals everywhere.” From beneath his tunic, he brought out a long, curved vibroblade and drew it back.

The world seemed to shift into a sort of slow motion, like a holocomedy slowed so everyone could see each twitch, each gesture. The vibroblade darted forward. There was a roar of noise, a voice, from beside Tolokai. Then Malan, arm outstretched, moving in a bizarre sort of flight, drifted into the path of the weapon. The blade point touched his chest and drove slowly in; then Malan’s momentum carried Tolokai’s arm out of line, bearing the Gotal into the wall.

Malan, the vibroblade buried to its hilt in his chest, his face turning ashen, wrapped his arms around Tolokai’s and turned to Mon Mothma. He spoke slow words she couldn’t grasp. Tolokai yanked in slow-motion frenzy at the weapon he’d driven into his friend’s chest.

Mon Mothma turned and found herself able to move at a normal rate. Her hearing returned to normal. Malan screamed, “Run, run!” Tolokai’s words made less sense: “Stay, and accept the death you know you deserve!”

She reached the door to the nearest stairwell. She heard a thump and a gasp from behind; she hazarded a look and saw Malan sliding across the floor, Tolokai advancing menacingly toward her. She ran down the stairs as fast as she could.

Not fast enough. As she reached the first landing she felt something yank the back of her hair, and suddenly she was flying down the next flight of stairs—

Flying halfway down. She hit the stairs, pain cracking through her rib cage and chest, and rolled to a stop at the bottom of that flight.

Her wind gone, her energy gone, she could only stare up the steps to where Tolokai stood. His expression was as reasonable, as emotionless as ever—as it was with every Gotal. She tried to ask him why, but could only mouth the word; she had no breath with which to expel it.

But he understood. A Gotal would. “For my people,” he said. “To rid the universe of the scourge you call humankind. I’m sorry.” He descended the steps with meticulous care.

When he was halfway down, Malan, his tunic drenched with blood, came toppling over the rail from the first flight of steps and fell full upon Tolokai. Then the two males were falling and rolling, to the accompanying sound of cracking bones.

Mon Mothma tried to get clear, succeeded in rolling partway aside, and the two men landed across her legs, pinning her in place.

The men lay still, their eyes closed. Tolokai’s head was bent at an angle that was not survivable. Malan had frothy blood on his lips. Mon Mothma looked at them, trying to grasp what had gone so wrong in Tolokai’s mind … trying to understand how Malan had managed to surprise him with his attack. It shouldn’t have been possible.

Then Malan’s eyes opened. “Iwo,” he said. “Iwo, Iwo …” His words were mere whispers, barely audible.

Mon Mothma leaned closer to hear him.

“Iwo, I won’t be getting you that caf.” His eyes closed and his head fell back. But his chest still rose and fell, though there was a rattle in his breathing.

And once again, Mon Mothma had work to do. She brought out her personal comlink and thumbed it on. “Emergency,” she said. “Councilors’ Floors, Stairwell One. Emergency.”

Liquid rolled down her face. She wiped at it with her free hand and looked at it, expecting to see more of Malan’s blood, but her own tears glistened in her palm.

Galey was a massive man, all chest and muscle, with legs that were short enough to keep his height in the average range, though no one dared tell him he wasn’t proportioned like a holodrama idol. His hair was red and shaggy and his expression perpetually quizzical, as though he didn’t ever quite understand what was going on around him.

Which wasn’t the case. He understood his job well enough—programming menus for the cafeteria and officers’ dinners on Mon Remonda, making sure there was hot, fresh caf available at all the conferences and meetings and briefings, making special arrangements for dinners for important visitors.

This was an important job. He knew it to be at least as significant as any piloting position. A military force ran on its stomach, after all.

But the job didn’t pay well, and offered little respect, and so he was very attentive on his last leave on Coruscant when the men with intelligent eyes came to him and offered him a lot of money.

And now he was supposed to kill somebody. Somebody important. It would take precise timing and careful arrangement. It would take skill and knowledge.

So it pleased him that he had figured out just what the various requests for refreshments actually meant. They were like a code, and he had cracked it.

A request for one large pot of caf and a tray of sweet pastries for the captain’s conference room, for instance. That meant an unscheduled but routine staff meeting led by Han Solo, not by Captain Onoma. Onoma’s meetings were always smaller and didn’t call for quite so much caf.

The pilot briefings also called for caf, but if a request included both sweet pastries and meat rolls, it meant there would be a mission. So when the request came in this morning, he knew he had his opportunity to earn all that money.

He delivered the cart of refreshments to the pilots’ main briefing amphitheater and then loitered out in the hall with a datapad and a second cart of caf, offering cups to anyone who asked for them. Soon enough, the pilots of Mon Remonda’s four starfighter squadrons began filing in.

He waved at the huge Rogue, the one almost too tall to fit in his cockpit with the canopy down—Tal’dira, the Twi’lek. “Lieutenant, can I have a moment?”

Tal’dira frowned at this odd request. He glanced at the other Rogues, as though to gauge whether they, too, found it out of keeping, but they swept past him into the briefing chamber. “Well,” he said, “only a moment. The briefing is about to start. You’re Kaley, aren’t you?”

“Galey. And I have an important message for you. From someone who’s finally realized she’d like to meet you.” He beckoned Tal’dira and walked around the nearest corner.

The pilot followed, an intent expression on his face. “You don’t mean—”

“Here’s what she has to say. ‘Wedge Antilles hops on one transparisteel leg.’ ”

Tal’dira rocked back on his heels, his expression shocked. He swayed on his feet and reached out to steady himself against the wall. “No.”

“It’s true. He really does.”

The Twi’lek gripped his head as though to restrain some explosive force within it. “I hate that.”

“Me, too. We all do.”

Tal’dira stood upright again, with a new look in his eyes. “But I can put a stop to it.”

“And you should. But wait until after the meeting. Then you can do it in an X-wing.”

“You’re right.” The pilot slapped Galey on his shoulder, propelling him into the wall. “You’re a good friend.”

“As are you.” Galey thought about giving Tal’dira a return blow, then decided against it. “May the Force be with you.”

Tal’dira nodded briskly and turned back toward the briefing amphitheater.

Galey breathed out a sigh of relief and rubbed his shoulder where it still stung. He hoped the other Twi’lek wouldn’t be quite so violent.

“For the last few hours,” Wedge said, “we’ve been in hyperspace en route to the Jussafet system.”

A hologram starfield popped up to the left of the lectern where Wedge stood. It showed a cluster of stars near a fuzzy diamond-shaped nebula. One star blinked yellow in a decidedly mechanical fashion. Donos nodded; he remembered Jussafet from discussions of strategic moves into Warlord Zsinj’s territory.

Wedge continued, “Jussafet is in the nebulous border territory between Imperial and Zsinj-controlled space. Jussafet Four is a habitable planet with some mining businesses, but the system’s real wealth is in asteroid mining; they have an asteroid belt that is the remains of a large iron-core planet that broke up.

“Earlier today, Jussafet Four sent out a distress call to the Empire, talking about a full-scale invasion by Raptors, Zsinj’s elite troops. A Duros ship approaching the system to do some under-the-table trading heard the transmission and relayed it to the New Republic. We’re going in to stomp on the Raptors, and hopefully Iron Fist, as well as to do some good for the people of Jussafet.”

Donos raised a hand. “What are the odds that Imperial forces will also come in to stage a rescue? It’d be nasty to fight a three-way.”

Wedge nodded. “It would. Odds are low—the Empire’s having enough trouble with us and Zsinj that it is likely to mount a more meticulous response, determining enemy strength, assembling a precise task force, that sort of thing. But it’s possible. We’ll be taking some steps to keep them from knowing our full force strength, too. Mon Remonda is going into the system with a couple of the fleet’s frigates, but Mon Karren and the Allegiance will be waiting outside the system, ready to jump in if needed.”

Corran Horn’s hand was up next. “And what are the odds that this is another Zsinj trap?”

“Again, possible but not likely. The Duros monitoring of the battle in the asteroid belt and on Jussafet suggests that we’re looking at a large force of Raptors, fully engaged, not just the whispers and rumors we’re used to.

“We’ll launch as soon as we drop into the system. Polearm’s A-wings will take point and make the initial flyover on Jussafet Four. Rogue Squadron and Nova’s B-wings will head into the asteroid belt to begin purging it of Zsinj forces. We have four flyers of Wraith Squadron active, and they’ll escort shuttles of New Republic ground forces in to Jussafet Four.”

Face Loran, leaning forward so as to keep his injured back from making contact with the chair, spoke up. His voice emerged as an uncanny impersonation of Tal’dira’s. “This time, the Wraiths can do the baby-sitting. Now, and forever.”

The pilots laughed. All, Donos noted, except Tal’dira, who kept his attention on the desktop before him and didn’t react. Corran Horn gave Tal’dira a curious glance.

“That’s it,” Wedge said. “Your astromechs and nav computers have your navigational data. Good luck.”

As they filed out of the amphitheater, Face and Dia caught up with Donos. “I wish I were flying with you,” Face said.

“I’m glad you’re not,” Donos said. At Face’s startled expression, he relented, smiling. “I so seldom get to he in charge of anything, the change is welcome. You just get injured anytime you like.”

“Thanks,” Face said. He stopped in the hall beside the caf cart and picked up a cup. “Thanks, Galey.”

“No problem, sir.”

As they continued down toward the starfighter hangars, Donos heard Galey say, “Excuse me, Flight Officer Tualin! A moment of your time?”

It was hard for Tal’dira to run down his preflight checklist. His thoughts were far away. How could Wedge Antilles, hero of the Rebellion, of the New Republic, fall so far as to hop on one transparisteel leg? Nothing short of the Emperor’s magic could have wrought such a change in him. Rage grew within Tal’dira and he struggled, as only a true warrior could, to keep it in check.

“Rogues, announce readiness by number.”

When his time came, Tal’dira said, “Rogue Five, four lit, three at full capacity, one at ninety-nine percent.” His starboard lower engine was still not optimal. He’d have to insist that it be brought up to a reasonable level of performance.

After he killed Wedge Antilles, of course.

A hangar Klaxon warned the pilots that they were dropping out of hyperspace. The twisting, whirling morass of color outside the magnetic shield between the hangar and vacuum abruptly snapped into a simpler image: a starfield. One small planet hung, bright and round, near the upper right corner of the magcon field.

One by one, the Rogues shot through the field and formed up a kilometer from Mon Remonda. Tal’dira, leader of Two Flight, settled in beside his wingman, Gavin Darklighter. He felt his heart race as the moment crept toward him.

One bit of comm traffic caught his ear, a transmission from a fellow Twi’lek: “Polearm Two to Polearm Leader. I have a critical failure of my sublight engine. I’m down to fifty-four percent. Forty. Twenty-eight …”

“Two, this is Leader. Drop out of formation and head on in. Maybe next time …”

On Tal’dira’s sensor screen, eleven members of Polearm Squadron leaped forward, drawing away from Mon Remonda, approaching distant Jussafet Four.

Tal’dira’s astromech transmitted the unit’s course to his navigation system and he absently reviewed numbers he would never use.

“Rogue Leader to group. On my count, ten, nine, eight …”

“Wraith Four, you are out of position.”

Tyria looked up, startled. She was out of position. She should be maintaining her distance from Mon Remonda and letting her fellow Wraiths—Donos, Lara, and Elassar—plus four shuttles, form up on her.

Then why had she heeled over and goosed her thrusters, heading toward the bow of Mon Remonda? Her hands had acted without her brain being engaged.

Ahead, she could see one lonely A-wing making a torturous, slow turn back toward Mon Remonda, an obvious case of engine failure.

Obvious … but false. Adrenaline jolted through her as she saw through the A-wing’s moves, through the cockpit, through the skin and blood of its pilot to the mind beneath. “Mon Remonda,” she shouted, “bring your shields up. Polearm Two—”

“—is firing on you!”

Han Solo didn’t hesitate. “All shields up full!”

The A-wing fired. The transparisteel viewport giving him and the bridge crew an unparalleled view of space darkened as it tried to cope with the A-wing’s linked laser blasts. Then it shattered.

To Solo’s eye, the shards of viewport floated into the bridge, then immediately reversed direction and fled to space … vanguard for the atmosphere of the bridge.

•    •    •

“Four.”

Tal’dira reached up to flip the switch setting his S-foils to combat formation. They parted and his targeting computer came online.

“Three.”

Tal’dira heeled over so his weapons aimed straight at the rear end of Wedge’s X-wing. He began to swing his targeting brackets over toward the starfighter.

“Two …”

“Leader, break off!” Horn’s voice.

Tal’dira, jolted by the interruption, fired before his shot was completely lined up. Wedge, impossibly, was already reacting to Horn’s warning, breaking to starboard. But Tal’dira was rewarded by the sight of his lasers, cycling two by two, chewing through the port rear of Wedge’s X-wing, blowing one fuzial thrust engine completely off, punching deep into the rear fuselage.

The comm system was suddenly loud with many voices, most of them distressed. Wedge’s snubfighter continued banking to starboard and lost relative altitude, and Tycho was keeping pace with him as only the most experienced of wingmen could.

Tal’dira smiled. This would be a challenge. Good.

A blast of air shoved Solo from behind—shoved him nearly out of his commander’s chair and toward the hole in the forward viewport. He hung on to the chair but moved toward the hole anyway—the armature from which the chair was suspended swung inevitably in that direction. He could see, a few meters over, Captain Onoma in a similar predicament, being guided by his chair as though it were a mechanical throwing device toward the fatal exit from the bridge.

An alarm Klaxon sounded, loud even over the shrill whistle of air escaping the bridge. Solo saw the main door out of the chamber closing, an automatic safety measure.

When it closed, he’d be dead. The last of the bridge atmosphere would be out there in deep space, and he’d experience the joys of explosive decompression. So would every other crewman on the bridge.

He got one foot down to arrest the swing of his chair armature. Fortunately, artificial gravity was still working and he stopped his forward motion.

Then he drew his blaster and aimed for the control panel beside the main door. He fired, was rewarded with seeing the panel buckle inward under the blast—

The door stopped.

Now the bridge crew had a chance to make it to the door. But air was being vented from one of the ship’s main corridors. They had to get through the door past that wind blast …

And the A-wing was still out there.

“And you’re in a position to speak for the New Republic,” Dr. Gast said.

Nawara Ven, Twi’lek executive officer for Rogue Squadron, nodded. “I have been so authorized by the Inner Council. And as soon as we can come to some arrangement, you can be free of all this.” His gesture took in the tiny, plain stateroom that served as Gast’s cell. Ven sat on the room’s only chair, while Gast stretched out on the bed, leaning back against the wall.

“Well, you know what I want. A million credits, free of tax. Amnesty for all crimes, known and unknown, that I am alleged to have committed. And a new identity.”

“No,” Ven said. “We can offer amnesty for all crimes you offer all details on. If you hold something back, it remains live. And we can offer one hundred thousand credits. Enough for you to make a good start for yourself. But you’re not going to be wealthy at the expense of the New Republic. Every credit we give you could mean the life of one of our people.”

“Every detail I give you could mean the life of ten of your people,” she said. “I’ll buy into the full confession thing. But one million credits stands.” Distantly, an alarm Klaxon began to sound. “What’s this? More warfare against Zsinj? I wonder who’s going to die today?”

Ven struggled to keep his voice under control. “We certainly don’t employ torture or murder like the Empire,” he said. “On the other hand, we could keep you in custody in some free-trade port while we assemble charges, and make no secret of the fact that we have you. How long would it take Zsinj to find you, do you suppose?”

Her expression became ugly. “For that, I hold back one detail you’ll never know about, and some of your oh-so-precious people die. How about that, you subhuman nothing? Give me a human negotiator.”

There was a sound beyond the door, an unmistakable one: two blasts in quick succession, two scrapes and thuds as bodies hit the floor.

Ven stood. He grabbed the side of Gast’s bed and yanked, precipitating her to the floor. He shoved the bed over on her, then slid to stand beside the door.

“Hey!” she said. The bed rocked as she struggled to free herself.

The door slid open. A blaster gripped in a large human hand entered first. Ven grabbed the blaster, twisted it up.

He had a brief glimpse of the man he was wrestling with: big but not tall, fleshy, with red hair. Then burning liquid washed into his eye. He yelped, instinctively turned away from the pain.

A meaty fist slammed into his jaw, knocking him to the floor. He shook his head to clear it, belatedly realizing that it was hot caf in his face.

Above him, the attacker looked at the wriggling bed and fired into it—twice, three times, four. There was a female shriek in the middle of that.

Then the assassin turned to aim down at Ven.

Ven kicked out, shoving against the bed frame, and slid out partway into the hall. The assassin’s shot struck the flooring between his legs.

Ven found himself between the two door guards, both slumped, dead. He grabbed at the blaster pistol still in the hand of the one to his left. He brought it around, even as he saw the assassin aiming—

Ven didn’t bother to aim. He fired, heard the distinctive crackle of blaster beam frying flesh as his shot took the assassin in one ankle. The big man yelped, fell, his blaster aiming in straight at the Twi’lek—

Ven fired again. This shot took the assassin right in the nose, snapping his head back, filling the chamber with even more burned-flesh odor. The big man fired, whether intentionally or as a dying spasm Ven didn’t know, and his shot hit the doorjamb.

Ven rose. There was no more wiggling going on behind the bed. Knowing what he was likely to see, he pulled the bed from against the wall and looked at what lay beyond.

“Polearm Two,” Tyria said, “power down and announce your surrender or I’ll blow you out of space.” She toggled her S-foil switch and felt a hum as the foils assumed strike position.

The A-wing heeled over and accelerated, moving behind the protective bulk of Mon Remonda, out of her sight.

Tal’dira smiled as he heard the pure tone of a good targeting lock on Wedge’s X-wing, but the noise garbled as Tycho slid in between target and prey. Tal’dira dropped relative altitude, hoping for a quick shot under Tycho, but the captain mimicked his move, remaining an obstruction.

Now Tycho was an easy target, and so close—a proton torpedo would turn him into a billion fiery specks. But Tal’dira shook his head at the notion. Tycho wasn’t his enemy. Tycho wasn’t the traitor. “Captain Celchu, get out of the way,” he said. “I have a job to do.”

He spared a glance for his sensor board. The other Rogues were staying in position—all but Rogue Nine, Corran Horn, who was moving out to a position some distance from the Rogue formation but not approaching.

Tycho’s voice came back. “Rogue Five, power down all weapons systems and return to Mon Remonda immediately or we will be forced to regard you as an enemy. And destroy you.”

“I’m not the enemy! Wedge Antilles is the enemy, that one-leg-hopping maniac! Celchu, clear my field of fire!”

Wedge, his X-wing moving sluggishly, continued his loop around to starboard. Tycho kept on him, keeping stubbornly between him and Tal’dira. The Twi’lek pilot gritted his teeth, sideslipped port, then starboard, but Tycho was always there, in the way.

Solo pushed off from his chair armature and staggered toward the door. Captain Onoma, approaching from the other side of the bridge, reached him and grabbed him.

They made two steps, three, but then, as they neared the doorway, the wind increased—channeled tightly by the doorway, it was more ferocious the closer they got. Solo felt his forward motion stop; then his left leg slipped out from under him and he went on one knee. His ears popped as the air pressure continued to drop and his head felt as though it would burst.

So close, so close—he and Onoma could reach out almost to the doorframe. But the roaring air stopped them dead.

Dead.

Then light from the corridor was partially blocked off and a long, hairy arm reached from the other side of the door to grip Solo’s. It was like a fur-covered vise clamping over his wrist. It hauled and suddenly Solo and Onoma were both through the doorway, staggering into the corridor, still battered but no longer endangered by the howling wind.

“Chewie.” Solo turned back to his rescuer. He grabbed the doorframe with one arm, Chewbacca’s waist with the other, helping pin the Wookiee in place.

Chewbacca reached in again and hauled, dragging the bridge communications officer out. Then again, and again, yanking each bridge officer into the comparative safety of the corridor. There was an explosion from the bridge or from beyond it, and Chewie lurched backward, bleeding from the chest from what looked like shrapnel. The Wookiee shook off the sudden shock and looked back in. He bellowed, noises that would sound like an animal roar to most people but which Solo knew to mean “All out.”

“No, there’s one left,” Solo said. He looked around. “Golorno, sensors.”

“Dead,” Onoma said. Even with the gravelly tones of Mon Calamari speech, Solo could make out the pain, the regret in his voice. “Out the viewport.”

Solo grimaced. “Chewie, let’s get this door closed.” He heaved against the metal barrier. Chewie flexed one arm and slammed the door closed.

Tyria’s sensors weren’t much use. This close to Mon Remonda, she couldn’t even detect Polearm Two as an individual ship. He had to be hugging the hull pretty closely.

Perhaps if machinery couldn’t help her, the Force could. She concentrated on Polearm Two, on his A-wing—

No, that was wrong. She leaned back, cleared her thoughts.

Closed her eyes.

Mission, he had a mission. He was going to destroy the bridge or someone in it.

She opened her eyes and banked toward the bridge, amidships and topside …

As she cleared the horizon of the ship’s curved hull, she saw the A-wing lining up for another shot at the bridge. Her targeting computer announced a clean lock on him.

“Don’t,” she said. But there was no time for a lengthy plea, for words that might get through to reach this madman. A few more degrees of turn, and he was in line, poised, a beautiful target—

She fired. Her proton torpedo hit and detonated before she registered that it was away. Polearm Two was suddenly nothing more than a bright flash and thousands of needles of superheated metal hitting Mon Remonda’s skin and heading into outer space.

“Captain, please,” Tal’dira said. “It is not in my nature to beseech. I beg you get clear of my shot before I have to kill you, too.”

But the voice that answered was Corran Horn’s, not Tycho’s. “Tal’dira, this isn’t honorable. You shot him in the back.”

Tal’dira checked his sensor board. Wedge’s maneuver was leading him back and around toward Rogue Nine. In just a few moments, he would be forced to run a head-to-head against Horn. Tal’dira shrugged. He could take the Corellian pilot. He could take anyone.

Dishonorable. But that word burned at him. His first shot had been dishonorable. How could he have done that?

Because Wedge, that one-transparisteel-leg-hopping traitor, had to die.

But Tal’dira couldn’t betray his honor to kill him. It was impossible.

Yet he had. And he knew, deep in the portions of his mind still functioning, that he would again. He’d throw away his honor to kill Wedge Antilles. And he’d never turn away from his quest to kill his former commander.

He heard a groan, knew it to be his own. That meant he would die without honor, shaming his family, shaming his world.

No. He shook off the thought, raised his head. Honor above all.

Wedge and Tycho were now heading straight for Corran Horn, Tal’dira tucked in neatly behind them. In another few moments, he’d be within good firing range of the Corellian.

He adjusted his shields, then switched to lasers and opened fire on Tycho.

Far ahead, Rogue Nine fired.

There was a brilliant flash from behind Wedge. He glanced at his flickering sensor board.

Rogue Five was gone.

In other circumstances, he would have had words of praise for such accurate shooting. But no Rogue would accept praise for downing one of their own. Wedge felt sick. When he spoke, he was not surprised to find that his voice was raspy with his effort to keep his emotions in check. “Rogue Nine, are you fit to fly?”

There was a moment’s delay. “Fit, sir.”

“Rogue Two, take the group in. You’re in command. I’m going to swap out X-wings and rejoin you.”

“Yes, sir.” Tycho didn’t sound any less pained than Wedge.

“Thanks, Two.”

“You’re welcome, Leader. Rogues, Novas, form up on me. We’re going in.” Tycho banked away and Corran moved up in formation with him.

8

The mission, which had begun in disaster, ended in disaster, but not for Solo’s forces.

The A-wings of Polearm Squadron identified and strafed numerous sites of Raptor activity on the ground at Jussafet Four. Raptor shuttles were caught on the ground and shot to pieces, their occupants scattered, easier prey for the Jussafet ground forces. Soldiers deposited by shuttles, with air support provided by Wraith Squadron, overran and took the Raptor base camp near the Jussafet capital.

Rogue and Nova Squadrons, led initially by Captain Celchu, then by Wedge Antilles once the commander returned to the combat in Wes Janson’s X-wing, cruised through the asteroid belt, wreaking havoc on the sparse units of TIE fighters and single corvette Zsinj’s forces had deployed.

By monitoring the escape vectors of the smaller vessels chased off by Rogue Squadron, the crew of Mon Remonda, working from the vessel’s auxiliary bridge, was able to determine the position of the assault fleet and give chase. The fleet consisted of two sturdy Carrack-class cruisers and a heavily modified cargo vessel … and as these three vessels detected the approach of the Mon Calamari cruiser, they turned spaceward and entered hyperspace.

No words of thanks came via comm from the Jussafet defenders—small wonder, since this was an Imperial world, its defenders doubtless looking on their liberators with as much suspicion as gratitude—but most of the starfighters picked up anonymous transmissions expressing thanks, sometimes wrapped in profanity directed against the New Republic.

Han Solo directed the soldiers on Jussafet Four to appropriate any Raptor vehicles and prisoners they could, leaving the rest for the planetary defenders.

Wedge, bone-weary—and not from the hours he’d spent in the cockpit—had the Rogues lined up for final approach to Mon Remonda when the word came. “Sensors show an Imperial Star Destroyer leaving hyperspace and entering the Jussafet system. It’s still outside the system’s mass shadow and can turn and run at any time. It’s approaching slowly.”

“Thanks, bridge. Rogues, form up on me. We’ll cruise out that direction.” Cruise was about right—the Rogues didn’t have enough fuel left for another protracted trip and dogfight. The Rogues took up position and headed out at a pace that, for them, was quite leisurely.

A few minutes later, a new voice took the comm, Solo’s. “Rogues, return to Mon Remonda. Star Destroyer Agonizer is communicating. They want to have a face-to-face with you, Rogue Leader.”

Wedge raised an eyebrow. “Is Agonizer a Zsinj unit or Imperial?”

“According to our latest records on this ship, about a year old, she’s Imperial.”

“Interesting. I guess I’d better go over and see what they want.”

“Negative, negative. You’re too likely a prospect for assassination. Me, too. I’ve transmitted a recommendation that Captain Onoma make the visit. Wait a second.” The delay was nearly a minute. “They didn’t like that idea. Probably because he’s Mon Calamari. They’re willing to accept someone out of your squadrons.”

Wedge ran a roster review in his mind. His Rogues were bone-tired, and he really needed to gauge their reaction to Tal’dira’s death … and find out what had led up to it. “Ask Face Loran to volunteer. I think he’ll satisfy their requirements.”

“Done. Come on back in.”

Face had been part of a mission that had landed aboard a Star Destroyer before—in his case, the Super Star Destroyer Iron Fist—but then he’d been in disguise, an apparent ally of the people he was visiting. This time he came as an enemy under temporary truce, and he could feel his heart rate increase as his X-wing rose into the hangar bay in the underside of the gigantic vessel. On repulsorlifts, he drifted laterally toward the Imperial officer waving the glow rods, and set down where the man directed, between two half squadrons of TIE fighters.

As he climbed down the ladder from his cockpit, an Imperial naval lieutenant bowed to him. “Captain Loran? The admiral is waiting.”

“Good.” Face returned the bow. Then he looked up at his R2 unit. “Vape, if anyone comes within three meters, activate self-destruct.”

His astromech gave him a happy beep in the affirmative. With luck, none of these Imperials would actually risk such an approach to determine that, in fact, this X-wing had no self-destruct mechanism.

Two halls and two turbolifts later, the lieutenant led Face into a conference room. The oval table overflowed with food—cooked dishes, platters of fresh fruit, containers of wine, vases stuffed with fresh flowering plants. Struck by the ostentatiousness of it, Face laughed before he could check himself.

The room’s sole occupant, a lean man, clean-shaven, of graying middle age, smiled from his chair behind one of the flower arrangements. “It is a bit pretentious, isn’t it?” He rose, revealing that he wore an admiral’s uniform, and approached, his hand out. “Still, appearances must be maintained. Admiral Teren Rogriss.”

“Garik Loran, Captain, New Republic Starfighter Command.” Face shook his hand.

“And let me say I thought your holodramas and comedies were puerile, badly written things—though you rose above your material.”

“Of course they were puerile. They were Imperial productions. But thank you.”

The admiral barked a laugh. His amusement seemed genuine. He gestured for Face to sit. “Please, help yourself. Protocol demands I put it out, so we should eat it. But I won’t keep you long. Time presses for me as I’m sure it does for you.” Following Face’s lead, he sat, and immediately helped himself to what looked like a plate of small boiled eggs drenched in some sort of syrup. “What I’m going to tell you is entirely unofficial. Make announcements about it, transmit queries to us along official lines, and we’ll denounce it as typical Rebel lies. On the other hand, it does come down from the highest levels.”

“Go ahead.” Face tried one of the eggs. The fluid dressing was tart and not sweet at all; the yolk had been replaced by some sort of meat filling, though he had not seen a seam on the boiled surface of the egg. It had the rich taste of something that took a fair amount of preparation and cost a lot, so only the wealthy forced themselves to think they liked it.

“Our differences, Imperial and Rebel, are not going to go away. We’ll be enemies until we die.”

“Probably.”

“But we both have a mutual enemy. It would profit us both to be rid of him. I am, in a sense, the counterpart of your General Solo.”

“You lead a task force whose goal is to get rid of Zsinj.”

Rogriss nodded. “Once we’re done with him, we can go back to our very personal ideological differences, without having to invite anyone else to play.”

Face snorted. “You’re not like most of the Imperial officers I’ve talked to.”

“True. What do you think?”

“I think it’s a grand idea. But I can’t speak, even unofficially, for the New Republic. Or even for this fleet. All I’m authorized to do is listen, and to report what I hear to my commanders.”

The admiral smiled. From a pocket, he produced a datacard and slid it to Face. “Once we’re out of system, you can reach me via HoloNet on the frequency and at the times this file indicates. If I receive a transmission from General Solo, directed personally to me, conveying any message whatsoever, then I will take it that you agree.”

“And then what?”

“And then I transmit to you every piece of recorded data we have on Zsinj’s campaigns. His strategic and tactical moves against worlds, what we understand of his overall strategy, what we know about his forces. And I’d expect a similar transmission from you. Each of us may know something about our mutual enemy that the other can exploit.”

Face nodded. “An interesting notion. And if it became officially known, you’d be executed for collaboration with the enemy.”

Rogriss nodded. He seemed so cheerful that Face might have been suggesting that his crew visit Coruscant for a bombardment raid. “As might your General Solo. But that’s a worst-case possibility. Best-case is that Zsinj dies.”

“True.” Face pocketed the datacard. “One last question before I leave. Why are Baron Fel and the One Eighty-first working with Zsinj?”

The admiral’s face lost most of its good cheer. “I can’t guess about Fel’s motives. He defected to your side, then was gone for some years. Now he’s defected from the Rebels to someone new. He’s a compulsive traitor, I’d say. But I’ll tell you this: He’s not in charge of the One Eighty-first.”

“How is that?”

“The real One Eighty-first is still serving the Empire with loyalty and skill, under Turr Phennir. Fel has assembled new pilots, called them the One Eighty-first, and slapped some red stripes on their starfighters to duplicate the fighter group’s colors. Perhaps he thinks that he is the One Eighty-first, so wherever he goes, the group follows; that would be in keeping with the sort of colossal ego you see in fighter-group commanders. But it’s not the truth.”

“Interesting. Thank you for your candor.” Face stood.

Rogriss nodded. He gestured at the tabletop. “Would you care to pack a lunch before you go?”

Face laughed.

•    •    •

In the hours of what would have been night on Coruscant—the timing by which Mon Remonda’s activities were scheduled—Solo and Wedge met in the general’s office.

Solo looked as tired and dispirited as Wedge felt. And, Wedge noted, not for the first time, when Solo decided to drop his mask of roguish irresponsibility—as he had now—he could look angrier than any man Wedge had ever met. That’s how it was now; while they’d been reviewing the attacks by the two Twi’leks, the general’s face had set in lines that would strike fear in the heart of a subordinate or an enemy.

“Are you going to accept Rogriss’s offer?” Wedge asked.

Solo’s features softened. He nodded.

“Pending confirmation by Fleet Command?”

“No. I have very broad powers regarding the search for Zsinj. I can do this without anyone’s say-so.” Solo quirked a self-deprecating smile. “Until they decide that I’ve completely failed, I’m still a very important man.

“Which reminds me. Since I still seem to be important to Zsinj, I’m going to go forward with this plan by your pilots to mock up a Millennium Falcon and see if we can lure Zsinj to us with it.”

“I’m glad to hear it. It has a chance.”

Solo’s smile faded. “Whatever this Twi’lek madness is, it’s spreading,” Solo said. “A little before the assassination attempts against the two of us, Councilor Mon Mothma was nearly killed by her bodyguard, a Gotal. She’s badly injured. In the hours after that, there were two incidents of shooting sprees by Gotal soldiers, one in a barracks hall frequented mostly by humans, one in a holotheater. Dozens died. One of the killers was cut down by soldiers; the other turned his blaster on himself.”

“Just as Tal’dira did,” Wedge said.

“Huh? Corran Horn killed Tal’dira.”

Wedge shook his head. “I saw this when I correlated all the sensory data from Tal’dira’s attack. In the instant before Corran Horn fired, Tal’dira shifted all his shield power to rear shields. His bow was unprotected. In a sense, he committed suicide.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. I can see a fanatical assassin killing himself after his objective is achieved—but not before.”

“I don’t understand it either. Do you have anything on the cafeteria worker, Galey?”

Solo grimaced. “No known motivation … which means probably money. No sign of contact with insurgents or enemies. He’s spent a lot of time since we left Coruscant on shuttle simulators. He might have been able to fly one of our Lambda-class shuttles out of here after he finished his job.”

“But he’s the key. The fact that he was sent to kill Gast means that he was working for Zsinj. The fact that he was seen speaking to both Tal’dira and Nuro Tualin means that he was involved with them, and therefore with the whole supposed Twi’lek conspiracy, which makes it a certainty that Zsinj is behind that.”

Solo took a deep breath. “Unfortunately, our knowing that doesn’t mean that everybody understands it. I have one more piece of news. Very, very unfortunate news.”

He told Wedge.

It was a few hours later, a few minutes after most of the pilots and civilian crewmen began their day shifts. In his own office, Wedge looked at the three good people he’d assembled and prepared to give them what might have been the grossest insult he could offer.

Nawara Ven gave him a close, evaluative look. It was obvious to Wedge that he knew something bad was up. It was harder for him to read Dia Passik’s face. His chief mechanic, Koyi Komad, looked unsure.

“I have orders from the Provisional Council,” Wedge said. “The effect on our immediate group is that I’m obliged to take you three temporarily off active duty.”

Koyi registered shock. Dia’s eyes narrowed. Nawara Ven nodded, as though this were what he expected. “It’s because we’re Twi’leks,” he said.

“I’m afraid so.”

Koyi’s voice climbed a register in indignation. “I don’t believe this.”

“Believe it,” Dia said. “It’s fleetwide, isn’t it, Commander?” Wedge nodded.

“So much for the human promises of equality among the species,” Koyi said. Her voice was bitter. “I don’t have to stand by and be treated this way. You know how many jobs, civilian jobs for a lot of money, I’ve turned down? But no, I transferred back to the Rogues. I stayed with you after Zsinj blew down Noquivzor Base on top of us and killed almost everyone I worked with. I did this because the Rogues were the spearhead of this cause I wanted to support. A galaxy where species didn’t matter. Now that’s gone.”

“It’s not gone,” Wedge said. “It’s taken a body blow, but it’s not dead.”

Koyi gave him a smile, but there was neither amusement nor friendliness in it. “So I’m off duty. I have some reading to do. May I be excused, sir?”

Wedge nodded. “For what it’s worth, Koyi, I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure it’s worth something, sir.” On her way out, she said, “Ask me in a year and maybe I’ll know what.”

“I think I should go too, sir.” Dia rose.

“How are you doing, Passik?”

“The Provisional Council has just announced to all the New Republic that I’m not worthy.” Her red eyes flashed for a moment. Then she managed a smile. It wasn’t, like Koyi’s, a bitter smile. Wedge recognized it as mockery. “Fortunately, their opinion is worth nothing next to my squadmates’. I think I’ll go keep company with them. I’d do that any day rather than slum with the Provisional Council.” She saluted and left.

Nawara Ven said, “That was a lot of insolence for you not to dress her down.”

“I feel almost the same way she does. I’m not sure when the last time was I felt this low. I just can’t believe Tal’dira turning against us the way he did.” A memory jogged at him. “Can you tell me something? Does the phrase ‘one-leg-hopping maniac’ have any special meaning in Twi’lek culture?”

Ven smiled. “You’re asking me?” He gestured down to the lower portion of his right leg, the one that had been amputated in Ven’s last mission as a Rogue Squadron pilot.

“I’m sorry. I forgot about that. But, yes, I’m asking. It’s serious. It’s what Tal’dira called me just before he died.”

“Oh.” Ven’s eyes lost focus as he stared back into his memory. “I can’t think of one.”

“Odd. What would cause him—” Wedge’s eyes opened wider. “Cause. Effect. What’s the cause and what’s the effect?”

“I’m not following you—”

“It didn’t matter whether Admiral Ackbar died. Or Mon Mothma. Their assassins were successful.”

“What? No, they weren’t.”

“Yes, they were. Koyi Komad was their first victim.”

Ven’s expression suggested that he was within seconds of calling in the medics to deal with his commander.

“Get the Wraiths together,” Wedge said. “We’re going to conduct one of their insane speculation and planning sessions. Pilots’ lounge. And invite any Rogues who want to attend. As usual, with Zsinj, we have to dig one level farther down.” Wedge was in the corridor before Ven had a chance to rise to his feet.

All the Wraiths were there, except Runt and Janson, whose injuries kept them in bacta-tank treatment for the time being, and so were Tycho, Hobbie, and Corran Horn of the Rogues. Donos decided that Tyria and Horn looked unusually glum, and couldn’t blame them. At least Tyria had someone to offer her support; Kell stayed next to her. The others were keeping a little distance between themselves and Horn; whether it was out of respect for his feelings or because of their own unease at being in the presence of someone who had just killed one of his squadmates, Donos couldn’t tell.

Wedge walked in, his bootheels clattering. “So we know about a sudden rise in terrorist activity by Twi’leks,” he said without preamble. “We’ve determined to our own satisfaction that Zsinj is behind them.”

Ven said, “Though we lack evidence to prove it conclusively.”

“Not important for our discussion. Why is Zsinj doing this?”

“To hurt the New Republic,” Kell said. “Losing Admiral Ackbar and Mon Mothma would be a serious blow.”

Wedge took a seat and nodded. “Sure, it would. And they’d be replaced by people who probably aren’t quite as good as they are at their tasks. If everyone on the Inner Council were murdered, we’d have an Inner Council that was just a little less adept at doing what it does. Not exactly a master stroke on Zsinj’s part.” He leaned forward, still oddly intent. “This morning at six hundred hours I was obliged to relieve every Twi’lek aboard Mon Remonda of active duty. And that, I think, is what Zsinj wanted.”

“To be rid of our Twi’leks?” Kell asked.

Wedge shook his head, but it was Horn who spoke up. “Suddenly the Twi’leks are second-class citizens. Rumor has it that Gotals will be next because of the attempt on Mon Mothma’s life and the follow-up shootings.”

Lara said, “Twi’leks and Gotals don’t make up much of a percentage of the New Republic armed forces. They’re not even signatories to the New Republic; there are just a fair number of them in service. I mean, their loss is important, sure … but it’s not going to cripple the fleet.”

“It’ll cripple the entire New Republic,” Wedge said. “Right now, it’s one species making up a fraction of one percent of the New Republic population. But we suddenly have a precedent that divides them from the New Republic. In their eyes, it casts humans as villains. To human eyes, the Twi’leks and Gotals are already starting to look like villains. What if, tomorrow, it’s a species that has been with the Alliance since the start of the Rebellion? An important contributor to the New Republic cause?”

Donos saw the Wraiths and Rogues looking among themselves as the idea took root. He drew a breath. “Until this three-pronged attack on you, sir, and on General Solo and Dr. Gast, we had no real reason to believe that it was Zsinj’s work.”

“Correct,” Wedge said. “It could have been an Imperial project, a criminal action, or an actual species-based conspiracy. But in trying to kill us under the same umbrella of this false conspiracy story, he’s shown his hand.”

“Which does us no good,” Donos said. “We’re not going to be able to convince the Provisional Council of this theory.”

“Why not?” Wedge looked challenged, rather than angry, at the statement.

“Who’s going to convince them of it? Ackbar? He trusted the Twi’lek who almost killed him. Mon Mothma? She’s injured, not capable of leadership at the moment. Princess Leia? Off on some diplomatic mission. Han Solo? He’d have to leave the fleet, and abandoning his task is not the way to make the Provisional Council confident in him. You?” Donos repressed a wince at the words he’d have to say. “You, sir, also trusted the Twi’lek who almost killed you.”

Wedge nodded. “Correct. But here’s the answer to your question. To convince the Provisional Council, we’re all going to become geniuses.”

“I vote we start with Elassar,” Lara said. “He has the farthest to go.”

The Devaronian pilot winced. “No more. I surrender.”

“What kind of geniuses?” asked Ven.

“Prophetic ones. The kind who can tell the Provisional Council just what’s going to happen next. What’s Zsinj’s next step? If we can predict it, we can convince the powers that be that they’re dealing with a methodical plan of Zsinj’s … not a conspiracy of terror against humankind.” He looked among them. “Otherwise, in six months, a year, the New Republic consists of humans on one side, nonhumans on the other, no possible trust or interdependence between them … and Zsinj can march in and take whatever he wants.”

“I have a thought.” That was Piggy. “A theory. About where I fit into Zsinj’s plan.”

“Go ahead.”

“We know for a certainty that Zsinj has for some time been trying to create very intelligent examples of humanoids not known for their intelligence,” Piggy said. “The question, especially as it relates to your other theory, is why?”

“Obviously,” Tycho said, “to have intelligent agents who could infiltrate those species, and therefore not look out of place in locations where those species are found.”

“Correct.” Piggy nodded in the exaggerated way of Gamorreans. “But that’s only part of the equation. What does a leader require in an agent in addition to intelligence? More important than intelligence?”

“Loyalty,” Lara said. Her voice seemed a little sad. Donos gave her a close look. She saw his sudden interest, shook her head to suggest that her momentary disquiet was nothing.

“Correct,” Piggy said. “Yet I am not loyal to Zsinj. I underwent no indoctrination from youth, nothing like the teaching the stormtroopers receive. Why not? Was I just a laboratory test specimen? Was I to be purged when tests on me were complete?”

Nawara Ven nodded. “Possibly so.”

“Yes. But consider. Zsinj would not have embarked on a process like the creation of me and the other hyperintelligent humanoids without making some provision for loyalty. What if he found a way to instill it by force rather than through training?”

“Like brainwashing.” Tycho’s voice was flat, hard. Donos noticed that the captain now sat absolutely still. Small wonder: Tycho had at one time been suspected of being a brainwashed agent of Ysanne Isard, the former head of Imperial Intelligence. “You think the assassins were brainwashed by this technique.”

“Yes,” Piggy said. “But we know we’re not facing brainwashing as we have experienced it before. The Twi’lek who attacked me and Admiral Ackbar might have been brainwashed, but he was missing only for a week—a possible, but very short—amount of time to do such a thing. From the time he joined Rogue Squadron, what was the longest time Tal’dira was out of sight of the other members? His longest leave?”

Tycho and Wedge conferred, and Tycho said, “About a day at a time. Various leaves on Coruscant.”

“One day.” Piggy nodded. “If we assume that Tal’dira was a victim and not a conspirator, then he was brainwashed in less than a day. Surely such a treatment must leave evidence on the body of the victim. Signs of probes. Blood chemical imbalances from drug treatments. Neurological disorders. Something.”

“Unfortunately,” Wedge said, “we don’t have Tal’dira’s body to examine. Or Flight Officer Tualin’s. We might be able to put in a request to Admiral Ackbar to see if he can perform autopsies on his attacker and Mon Mothma’s. And the two Gotal shooters.”

“If only Doctor Gast had survived,” Piggy said. “I feel no sense of loss at her passing; in fact, I am met with relief. But in retrospect, I wish we had the knowledge she possessed.”

Wedge and Nawara Ven exchanged a glance. “We’ll have to do without,” Wedge said. “All right, let’s get to work on these theories of ours … and see whether we can have successful careers as prophets as well as pilots.”

It drifted off the bow of Mon Remonda, a saucerlike shape with two forward prongs signifying the bow and a small cockpit projecting from the starboard side to give the ship an off-balance look.

To Wedge’s eye, it looked just like the Millennium Falcon, except that its top-hull dish antenna was much smaller. A shuttle occupied by Donos, Corran Horn, and the Wraiths’s chief mechanic Cubber Daine, Corellians all, plus Emtrey, the Rogues’s quartermaster, had escorted the battered-looking freighter from a scrapyard in the Corellian system, where such craft were most common … and cheapest to acquire.

“Ugliest ship I think I’ve ever seen,” said Solo.

Captain Onoma, standing on the other side of Solo at the bridge’s new forward viewport, wrinkled his forehead in a fair approximation of a human frown. “It looks like the Falcon to me.”

“Nothing could look less like the Falcon,” Solo said. “You could slap a paint job on a desert skiff and it’d look more like the Falcon.” He sighed. “Still, with Chewie in charge of dressing her up, she might be able to fool Zsinj for a couple of minutes. What did our crew of Corellians pay for her?”

“They traded that hyperspace-enabled TIE interceptor Shalla Nelprin took off Razor’s Kiss.”

Solo looked at him, eyes wide. “That’s crazy. Trade a valuable combat-ready starfighter for that hunk of junk?”

“No. They traded a valuable combat-ready starfighter for a chance to blow Zsinj up.”

Solo’s features settled into calmer lines, though he still looked tired, stressed. “Oh. Well, that makes sense. She’ll never have the Falcon’s speed. Without a few years’s head start, Chewie won’t be able to make her insides work like the real thing.”

“We don’t want him to,” Wedge said.

“How so?”

“Because if they count on this new ship being the Falcon, our modifications can trip them up. For example, the Falcon isn’t packed with high explosives.”

Solo shuddered. “There’s a very good reason for that.”

“Right. But since the Falcon isn’t packed with explosives, you’d never send her into a crash dive into the side of a Super Star Destroyer. With this hunk of junk, you wouldn’t feel any such compunctions.”

“Except for not wanting to die.”

“Well, that’s what escape pods are for. You know what I mean.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Solo returned his attention to the Corellian YT-1300 transport hanging off the bow. “All right. Secure Bay Gamma One to authorized personnel only and direct this flying trash receptacle there. Let’s get to work.”

It drifted off the bow of Iron Fist, a nightmare vessel. Her bulk was an irregular oval of wreckage more than three kilometers long held together by thousands of kilometers of cabling. Around the wreckage was a superstructure—a cluster of engines at one end, a wedge-shaped bow at the other, a gigantic spar of metal connecting them and acting as a frame for the envelope of wreckage to hang upon. The name, barely visible on the bow, was Second Death.

“Ugliest ship I think I’ve ever seen,” said Zsinj. His face shone with admiration. “Melvar, you have done a magnificent job.”

The general gave him a little bow. “There are a dozen explosive pockets within the body of the wreckage; they will send the components of Razor’s Kiss out in all directions. There are more explosives in the engines and bridge, sufficient to remove most evidence that these extra components ever existed. It should be convincing. Unfortunately, she’s slow. She can’t be expected to keep up with Iron Fist or other elements of our fleet.”

“Pity. Still, we’ll do what we can. How does the crew escape?”

“Both bow and stern are equipped with a Sentinel-class landing craft. The crew has a chance not only to evacuate, but to fight their way out of pursuit.” Melvar offered a little sigh. “The crew doesn’t know that if a capital ship approaches within a kilometer before they’ve engaged the hyperdrive, they, too, will detonate. The crew will not be captured, will not be able to betray your secret to the Rebels.”

“Excellent. Fine work, as usual. Give her a station in the fleet, outside of visual range of any of the other vessels. I am so pleased.” Zsinj smiled. He hoped he’d never be forced to utilize the hideous amalgamation that had earned his approval and praise. Using it meant failure on his part—meant he’d been beaten and needed to hide to lick his wounds. But he liked to keep his options open. “Oh. What about the Nightcloak function?”

“Working … mostly. Would you like a demonstration?”

“Please.”

Melvar held up his comlink. “Second Death, this is General Melvar. Activate and initiate Nightcloak.”

“Yes, sir,” came the tinny voice from the comlink. “Deploying satellites.”

Tiny flares erupted from Second Death, four from the bow and four from the stern, deploying at precise angles so they suggested the corners of a wire-frame box surrounding the junkyard vessel. After a few moments of flight, the satellites ceased their acceleration; their burn trails vanished and they became all but invisible in the starfield.

“Nightcloak engaging,” said the comlink.

And Second Death was suddenly gone.

Where she had been, where the space around her had been, was blackness. Not starfield—not even the stars were visible through it.

Zsinj offered a little exhalation of happiness. “Sensors, give me a reading on Second Death.”

The sensor officer in the crew pit below examined his screen. He took on a stricken look as he raised his head to face the warlord. “Nothing, sir. We don’t even get a return on the active sensors. It’s a sensor anomaly.”

“Fine, fine.”

Out in space, stars briefly flickered through the darkness, then shone brilliantly again, and Second Death once more floated before them.

Melvar frowned. “Second Death, I didn’t order an end to the test.”

“Sorry, sir. System failure. It’s still not entirely reliable.”

“Well, bring in the satellites and get back to work. Until it’s one hundred percent, it’s not adequate. Until it’s one hundred percent, we’re not happy with you. Melvar out.” The general pocketed the comlink and turned to his warlord. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“Don’t be.” Zsinj waved his apology away. “It’s a fine demonstration. A wonderful adaptation of what we’re accomplishing at Rancor Base. They’ll have it done in time. Or else.” He smiled.

In Mon Remonda’s pilots’s lounge, in stuffed chairs dragged against the viewports to suggest thrones, sat Wes Janson and Runt Ekwesh.

Standing before them, Face said, “For intercepting great quantities of damage so the rest of us didn’t have to, your crowns, o mighty ones.” He took circlets made of flimsy material and placed one on each pilot’s head. “For enduring medical treatments without whining, for surviving days of bacta bath without crying, for emerging from your treatment without asking for extra cake and sweetening, your royal scepters.” He placed a wooden dowel, its end decorated with tassels and ribbons, into the hand of each pilot. “And now, receive the accolades of your subjects.”

He stood aside, and the gathered Wraiths and Rogues hurled confetti upon them, a rain of color and rubbish.

Janson blinked against the atmospheric assault and turned to Runt. “This is the last time, positively the last time, that I suggest to Face that the squad doesn’t always show enough appreciation.”

Runt nodded. “We agree. Do all kings have to suffer this?”

“Well, any king with Face Loran as his majordomo.”

“And now,” Face said, “the two kings fight one another to the death, and we space the loser.”

“Whoa, there.” Janson stood and shook confetti from his hair. “Try again.”

“We space the winner?”

“One more.”

“We buy you a drink.”

“That’s more like it.”

As the pilots drifted back to their seats, Shalla dropped gracefully in a chair beside Piggy’s. “Tell me something,” she said.

“Yes?”

“The other day, you said that you were relieved when Doctor Gast died. Why relieved?”

Piggy took a few moments to answer. Shalla wondered whether he was considering his response, or debating whether to tell her to go to hell. Finally he said, “It takes pressure off me. Pressure of decisions.”

“I don’t understand.”

“As far as I know, I am the only one of my kind. I am not fit to be among normal Gamorreans; I make them nervous and I am dismayed by their presence. Their violence, their simplicity. So I will never find a mate, a Gamorrean female, to my liking. I had sometimes wondered if Gast had created one … or if she might do so, if I compelled her. Even so, such a relationship would endure in frustration and sadness. If I understand it correctly, the changes made to me are not genetic; I could not pass them on to offspring. So I could not have children with my mental and emotional characteristics.” He raised his hand, studying the Churban brandy in the glass he held. “In that sense, I am alone … and should be alone. Doctor Gast’s continued existence led me to hopes I should not have entertained. Now that she is dead, I can be more responsible.”

“I’m sorry.” On impulse, she reached out and took his other hand. “But in one sense, you’re wrong.”

He sipped at the brandy before replying. “How so?”

“You’re not just flesh and bone. You don’t just pass along your genes. If you had children, you’d be giving them your ideas, the example of your courage and commitment, all the things that come from the way you relate to the culture you’ve chosen. And those things you can pass along to others who aren’t your children. Intellectually, emotionally, your parents and children aren’t related to you by blood at all. I know that may be small consolation.”

He downed the rest of the brandy, and after a moment his lips curled up in a near-human smile. “Well, it is some consolation.”

“Would you like to dance?”

“Would you like to have your toes smashed flat?”

“I have fast feet.”

“True. Well, the risk is all yours.” He heaved himself up, then helped her to her feet.

Other dancers were already in motion on the portion of the lounge the pilots had cleared of furniture. Face and Dia had center stage, moving to a classical theme of ancient Coruscant, and Donos and Lara were now moving to join them.

“They’re not really together,” Dia said.

Face glanced over at Donos and Lara. “How do you figure?”

“She’s tense. Keeping a little separation between them. Her expression keeps softening, she keeps smiling, as if she’s really enjoying herself. Then she tenses and withdraws. It’s a little cycle she keeps running through.”

“Oh, you’re good at this game. But you missed when she gave him the opportunity for a kiss. A deliberate invitation.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“She did.” He gave her a superior little smile.

“When?”

“A moment ago. Did you see her lower her eyes, then raise them and make that little twirling motion with her finger?”

“Yes. I assumed she was describing something. She was talking.”

“She was describing something. That’s what makes it so subtle, the way she blended the cue in, the way you’re supposed to. It’s—” Then Face stiffened, nearly losing the rhythm of the dance, and looked back at the other couple.

“It’s what?”

“Coruscant charm signing.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s something like the language of flowers. You know how on some worlds the precise flower you give someone, the number, the arrangement, all has specific meaning.”

Dia nodded. “It’s a human custom. A new way to miscommunicate so you can find reason to kill one another.”

“That’s an interesting interpretation … anyway, charm signing is sort of like that. It’s confined to the social class of Imperial officer trainees from wealthy families and their circles. It came out of Coruscant long before the rise of the Empire, but it’s mostly confined to the Empire these days; most of the former Imperial officers serving with the New Republic weren’t of that social order. Anyway, she gave him the correct sign for ‘I’d accept a kiss.’ He just didn’t know what it meant.”

“Is that a reason for you to be so startled?”

“Well, yes. Lara keeps saying ‘Coruscant’ to me, without meaning to. When she’s distracted, when she’s upset … not when she’s in control. Sometimes she’ll walk like a native throneworlder—you know the sort of hunched-in, ‘don’t touch me’ body language?”

She nodded.

Face thought back. “And then, things she knew about Coruscant commerce. Pretty elaborate for someone who’d been employed there only for a few weeks. And that incident at the Galactic Museum. The old man who thought she was—what was the name he called her?”

“Edallia Monotheer.”

Face looked at her with real surprise. “How did you remember that?”

“A trick of the trade. When you’re a slave dancer, you remember the name of everyone you are introduced to by your owner. If you fail, you’re beaten … or worse.”

“I’m sorry.” He pulled her to him, an embrace of apology. “I always seem to do something to remind you of those times.”

“It’s not your fault.” Her voice was a whisper. “I can’t seem to give up on it. Sometimes I think I say things like that to remind other people of what I used to be—when I’m the only one who needs to remember.” She sighed, as if releasing some sorrow into the air. “What are you going to do about Lara? Ask her how she knows this charm signing?”

He shook his head, brushing his cheek against hers. “I’m going to put in a request for information. To New Republic Intelligence.”

“But later,” she said.

“Later.”

A couple of hundred meters away, Wedge trotted up the access ramp to the YT-1300 freighter hidden away in one of Mon Remonda’s hangar bays. Crashing and clanking noises drifted down from the freighter’s upper hull, accompanied by the deep rumbling of Chewbacca’s complaints. But no human words accompanied the rumbling.

He found Han Solo in the vessel’s cockpit. He dropped into the copilot’s seat beside the general.

“I thought you’d be at your pilots’s welcome-back party,” Solo said. He didn’t turn his attention from the forward viewport. Across the floor of the hangar, cluttered with tools and repair carts, was the rectangle of lights outlining the hangar’s magnetic containment field. Beyond that, dim because of the hangar’s light, were stars.

“I stopped in,” Wedge said. “I didn’t stay too long. It tends to make the children nervous.”

Solo managed a faint smile. “I know what you mean. I used to be one of the guys. Now I walk into a room and all conversation stops. I didn’t imagine, when I accepted this job, that I’d become some other thing. An outsider.”

“Sometimes that’s what an officer is. Someone who’s ‘one of the guys’ can’t maintain discipline.”

“I suppose.”

A furious hail of metallic banging made conversation impossible for a moment. It was followed by an unusually lengthy and articulate stretch of grumbling from Chewbacca.

Solo said, “He hates this wreck almost as much as I do.”

“Why do you hate it more?”

“Because, despite everything I said, it’s just enough like the Falcon to make me homesick.”

“For the Falcon? Or for Leia?”

Solo rubbed his face, easing away some of the lines of tiredness. “Yeah.”

“I never really understood why you left the Falcon on Rebel Dream when she went on her mission. You could have stored her on Mon Remonda.”

“It’s just … I’m not sure.” Solo stared off into the distance of space. “The Falcon is the thing I value most. Not the person I value most, but the thing. I think I left her with Leia so Leia would know.”

“That you trusted her with what you valued most.”

“Something like that. And I wanted her to remember me.”

“As if she’d forget.”

“Sometimes I think she should.” Solo was silent a long moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was quieter. “I don’t deserve her. And someday she’ll realize that. When she’s away from me, I think, ‘Maybe today’s the day. Maybe today she’ll figure it out and get on with her life.’ ”

Wedge shook his head. “That’s ridiculous.”

“No, it’s not. She’s the one with the goal, the plan for her life. She’s a driving force in the New Republic. Without her, I don’t have a place. I’m just a drifter with an irresistible dose of roguish charm. And someday she’ll get tired of the charm and there won’t be anything else for me to offer her.”

“You know,” Wedge said, “I can’t do it myself, because you’re my superior officer. But I could call Chewie down here, and tell him what you’ve just said, and then he’d beat you nearly to death with a hydrospanner. Maybe then you’d figure out how wrong you are.”

Solo managed a smile. “I think maybe that’s why I volunteered for this Zsinj assignment. I thought it was because of how I felt when I heard about his bombardments. His assaults on defenseless worlds. I could just see myself as a child on the streets, looking up to see the turbolaser blasts coming down to destroy the little bit of world I could call my own. But, really, it might have been just to show Leia, ‘Here I am, see, I can function in your world.’ But after months of it, I just get tireder and crazier. I find myself wishing I could leave Zsinj be, and Leia could come home right now, with her mission unfinished, so things could go back to the way they were. And if she knew that, she’d be ashamed of me.”

“It’s a natural human emotion. And I have a three-stage plan to let you get back to the way things used to be.”

That caught Solo’s attention; he looked at Wedge for the first time since he’d boarded the freighter. “How?”

“Stage One.” Wedge opened a comm channel on the copilot’s control board. “YT-1300 to bridge. This is Commander Antilles. Please cut all lights in Bay Gamma One.”

A few moments later, the overhead lights darkened. Chewbacca made a noise of complaint.

Wedge said, “Including the magcon shield indicator, please, bridge.”

The rectangle of light around the magcon field faded. Now they sat in near-perfect darkness, illuminated only by the stars outside the field. They hung there, perfect, not blinking because there was insufficient atmosphere to make them twinkle, a perfect space vista.

Solo fell silent, just staring at the view for a long moment. “That’s nice,” he said. “I think you’re right. I could use more of that. What’s Stage Two?”

“Well, you’re not the only member of the crew who could benefit from some blissful irresponsibility right now. So I’m going to stage an insurrection and seize control of Mon Remonda.”

Solo gave a curt laugh. “Wedge Antilles, mutineer. That I have to see.”

“Bring your Wookiee and I’ll show you.”

Donos and Lara walked into the officers’s cafeteria and stopped short. It didn’t look the way it was supposed to.

Tables, normally arrayed in neat rows, had been dragged out of line into zigzags, into four-table rectangles. Though the chamber was sparsely occupied, even that was different; normally the diners would be scattered across the chamber, but now they were concentrated at three or four tables.

Donos and Lara approached the closest table. The one where their commander sat with General Solo and Chewbacca. Sabacc cards were laid out on the table before them.

“Excuse me, sir,” Donos said, “I hate to interrupt—”

Wedge looked up. “What did you call me?”

“Uh, sir.”

“Who do you think I am?”

Donos glanced at Lara, but she seemed as puzzled as he. “Commander Wedge Antilles, New Republic Starfighter—”

Wedge shook his head. “No, no, no. I just look like him. If I were Antilles, wouldn’t I be wearing appropriate rank insignia?”

It was true; he wore none. For that matter, neither did General Solo.

“In fact,” Wedge said, “what’s that you’re wearing? Lieutenant’s insignia?”

“Uh, yes—”

“Off,” Wedge said.

“Off,” Solo repeated.

“Off off off off,” Wedge said.

Donos pulled the rank insignia from his jacket. Lara followed suit with hers.

Wedge visibly calmed. “That’s better,” he said. “Wait. Where’s your astromech?”

Donos’s mouth worked for a moment as he considered responses. “I don’t think I have an answer that will please you. Sir. Or Not-Sir. Whoever you are.”

“You certainly don’t. The astromechs are the backbone of Starfighter Command. Hardest-working beings in the galaxy. They need some rest and recreation, too. Don’t you agree?”

“I, uh, I do.”

“Good. Get out. Don’t come back without your astromechs.” Wedge gathered up the sabacc cards. “New hand. Who’s in?”

When Face wandered in, his R2 unit Vape wheeling along behind him, the cafeteria was more than half-full. It was also loud; card games and conversations dominated most of the tables. Some of the kitchen staff appeared to be on duty, bringing out drinks and various sorts of snacks, but they cheerfully exchanged sharp words with the officers present in a way they’d never do under ordinary circumstances. Officers sat with enlisted men and women, and, though uniforms suggested which was which and the services being represented, there were no rank insignia to be seen.

Chewbacca waved him over. Face and Vape moved up to his table.

Over his hand of cards, Wedge gave him a cool appraisal. “It’s the one who looks like Captain Loran. But he has his astromech and no rank. He’ll pass.”

“Thank you, uh, one who looks like Commander Antilles.”

“He catches on quickly,” Wedge said. “One second. Vape, cold one.”

A trapezoid-shaped plate at the top of Vape’s ball head slid open. There was a chuff of compressed air, and a condensation-dewed bottle leaped up into the air. Wedge caught it with his free hand and set it down on the table before him. “Thanks, Vape. Thanks, one-who-looks-like-Face. That’ll be all.” He turned back to his game.

Face said, “You weren’t supposed to know about that. And it certainly shouldn’t have worked for you.”

“I look just like the group leader. That gives me special privileges.”

“Besides, it was my last one.”

“Well, come back when you’re fully stocked.”

The others at the table—men and women who looked like General Solo, Chewbacca, Captain Todra Mayn of Polearm Squadron, Gavin Darklighter and Asyr Sei’lar of Rogue Squadron, laughed.

Face turned away. “Run along and play,” he told Vape. “This is going to be an interesting evening.”

Wedge’s mutiny of anonymity spread through the ship with a sort of quiet persistence. No officers on duty abandoned their tasks to join it, but crewmen coming off duty gravitated to the officers’s cafeterias and, when the mutiny became too populous, into adjoining noncommissioned crew cafeterias, briefing halls, and auditoriums as well.

And nowhere in the mutineers’s sections of Mon Remonda were name tags or rank designations to be found. Donos, walking the perimeter of the mutineers’s sections with Lara in a state of baffled good humor, saw Rogue mechanic Koyi Komad win a week’s wages from Captain Onoma in a card game as bloodthirsty as any TIE fighter vs. X-wing engagement. He saw Chewbacca simultaneously arm wrestle a naval lieutenant and a civilian hand-to-hand combat trainer so vigorously that both humans were thrown to the floor; they arose laughing and massaging wrenched arms.

Astromechs huddled in corners, exchanging chirps and trills that few organisms could interpret but that apparently kept them highly amused. Donos and Lara had to stop short of a portion of floor bounded by lines of observers; a group of R2 and R5 units sped through a twisting, winding course marked by colored tape on the floor. Corran Horn’s Whistler was in the lead, Wedge’s Gate was in second place, and both units were tweetling in the excitement of the moment.

Whistler and Gate maintained their one-two standings across the finish line and a crowd of bettors erupted in cheers and catcalls. Donos heard Horn’s voice rise above the crowd noise: “I told you, I told you. Next time, make it an obstacle course with security measures. Whistler will still smoke them all.”

“If I weren’t sure I was only half-crazy,” Donos said, “I’d be certain I was hallucinating.”

“Your logic is faulty,” Lara said. “If you were zero percent crazy, you’d be certain you weren’t hallucinating. If you were one hundred percent crazy, you’d be equally certain this was real. Only at your current state of fifty percent insane do you doubt what you see.”

“No fair. If I take you back to the pilots’s lounge and dance with you again, will you stop picking at my flaws in logic?”

“Sure,” she said. “That was my motive in the first place.”

•    •    •

The mutiny endured from early evening to late evening of the next calendar date, with a pair of sabacc games the last to break up, and galley workers grumbling only halfheartedly as they swept up the trash left behind by a day of blissful, if intermittent, irresponsibility.

Solo and Wedge were among those who abandoned the last surviving card game. Solo rubbed tired eyes and said, “Not bad, man-who-looks-like-Wedge. What’s Stage Three?”

Wedge gave him a smile he might have learned from a toothy Bothan. “In Stage Three, we track down Zsinj and blow him up.”

“Good plan. I like it.”

9

The next morning, once hangovers were shaken off and infusions of caf had taken hold, the crew of Mon Remonda moved more briskly, with weeks of frustration and bone weariness at least partially shaken loose.

At a briefing of the Rogues and Wraiths late in the day, Wedge said, “For those of you who were curious, tomorrow’s mission does not seem to have been endangered by the mass amnesia that seems to have struck my pilots—no one seems to be able to recall what he was up to yesterday.” That drew some chuckles. “Assuming our brains are working correctly again, we can probably get through a preliminary operational briefing now.”

He tapped keys on the lectern keyboard and a holoprojection sprang into existence beside him. It showed a solar system—medium-sized yellow sun and a dozen planets around it. Their orbits were indicated by glowing dotted lines. “This is the Kidriff system. It’s along what we think of as the Imperial/Zsinj border, as far coreward as Zsinj’s influence extends. Its occupied world, Kidriff Five, is a very wealthy one, a heavy trade depot that develops and exports metal alloys—several improvements in Sienar TIE fighter hulls in recent years came about because of Kidriff developments.

“Kidriff Five’s government patterned the world’s building and expansion plans very heavily on Coruscant, as a way of becoming more attractive to the Empire and the Imperial court.” Wedge activated another image, and the holoprojector displayed a city vista—a seemingly endless sea of skyscrapers that would not look out of place if dropped whole onto Coruscant. The sky, however, was not as hazy or as thick with storm clouds as Coruscant’s typically was. “It wouldn’t have been a bad site for Ysanne Isard to set up her government seat in exile—except, by the time the Rogues threw Isard off Coruscant, Kidriff had already fallen to Zsinj.

“We’ve recently received a lot of data on Kidriff and other Zsinj-occupied worlds in Imperial sectors. Analysis showed that the data had been scrubbed of certain types of information useful to the New Republic. But the scrubbing seems to have been hasty, and did not entirely eliminate the fact that there had been activity by a pro-New Republic faction in the months before Zsinj took over.” Wedge called up another image, this time of a region seemingly divided equally between stretches of skyscrapers and stretches of heavy rust-colored foliage. “Kidriff Five’s Tobaskin Sector. Seat of their rebel activity, which may or may not still exist. That’s our target.”

Janson spoke up. “And what do we do there, chief?”

“Very little, actually.” Wedge brought up the image of a Corellian YT-1300 freighter. “This is not the Millennium Falcon. It’s our simulacrum, which Chewbacca and a few unlucky mechanics have been transforming into a likeness of the Falcon. They painted false rust on good hull and put good paint on rusty hull so the blotches match up, and have made some other modifications. We’ve dubbed it the Millennium Falsehood. We’re given to understand that it’s approximately spaceworthy.”

From the back of the briefing hall, Chewbacca uttered a sustained grumble that left the pilots no doubt that the Wookiee didn’t think much of the freighter.

Wedge continued, “Chewbacca and I will pilot the Falsehood to Tobaskin Sector and land in one of those forest tracts. We’ll let off a couple of intelligence operatives who are going to try to make contact with any surviving pro–New Republic factions there. But our main job is to wait there until we’re seen, then take off for space.”

“Which accomplishes what?” Janson asked. “Actually, I know the answer. But I thought you ought to have at least one shill in the audience.”

“Good to see you’re developing a skill you can use in civilian life,” Wedge said. “This allows the apparent Millennium Falcon to be seen well within Zsinj’s territory on a world where Zsinj knows there has been pro-Rebel activity. It’s one piece of data that will pique his interest. We’re going to do this again and again. At a certain point, when the Falsehood has developed a predictable pattern of mission activity, Zsinj will, we hope, show up to destroy her.”

Lara raised a hand.

“Notsil.”

“Um, I don’t know whether this has entered your mission planning, sir, but if you go to an Imperial world, they’ll probably want to kill you. And if you do land and let yourself be noticed later, they’ll probably want to kill you then.” She gave him a look as though she were an ingenue full of pride in her sudden tactical realization. Pilots around the amphitheater laughed.

“This had occurred to us. Data on the Kidriff system suggests that their security is very lax in order to promote fast, efficient trade—they’re far more interested in making sure cargo gets taxed than in protecting government and military installations, which tend to be buried very deep and hard to hit. So our belief is that we can just fly the Falsehood in. We’ll kill our transponder stream once we’re low enough, so they won’t know where we landed. They’ll assume it’s a smuggler’s ploy and look for us. We’ll be going in with Captain Celchu’s X-wing coupled to our hull, and he’ll detach to act as our escort on the trip back out. But before we go in, the Wraiths who are assigned TIE interceptors will go in and make a preliminary landfall. If their security queries are more difficult than we suspect, they can signal us and wing out of there. Otherwise, they’ll be on hand to join Tycho for escort duty on the flight out. The rest of the Rogues and Wraiths will be orbiting the planet’s primary moon to offer additional support when they chase us off-world.”

Wedge looked among the seated pilots. “We’ll be taking out targets of opportunity, mostly enemy starfighters, on the way out. Our mission is to disengage with as little loss as possible. Does anyone see any specific flaw in this operation?”

Runt sneezed. He looked around, embarrassed. “Sorry. No flaws. Just bacta tickle in our sinus cavities.”

“Which brings up another point,” Wedge said. “The medical reports of the Wraiths who sustained burns look good. I don’t see a sign that any Wraith has not recovered sufficiently to be part of this operation. But if any of you does still feel that he’s not up to the mission, let me know privately. Believe me, no one will hold it against you.”

There was silence.

“Any more questions? No? Tomorrow morning we’ll get the final flight data, drop out of hyperspace outside the Kidriff system, and execute this thing. Until then, get some rest. Dismissed.”

As they filed out of the briefing chamber, Elassar said, “I don’t know. I have a bad feeling about this one, a bad feeling.”

“Why?” Face asked. “When we were going into the briefing, you were as happy as a bantha on a mountain of blumfruit.”

“Runt sneezed.”

Face looked the younger pilot. “Why, yes he did. I forgot about that. Doomed the whole lot of us, did he?”

“No, this is serious. He sneezed right when the commander got to the point where the commander asked about flaws in the plan. That means there is such a flaw, and we didn’t notice it, and Runt will be in trouble then.”

“No, no, no.” Face shook his head. “That’s what it would have meant had it been an accidental sneeze. But it wasn’t. It was a deliberate sneeze.”

Elassar looked at him, his expression puzzled. “Why would he sneeze deliberately?”

Lara said, “He was clearing his chamber.”

“What chamber?”

Face leaned in, his expression conspiratorial. “We’re working on a secret weapon for desperate situations on our commando raids. Runt is strengthening his lungs, his sinus cavities.”

Lara said, “Before each mission in which we go into the field, we load Runt’s nose with plasteel ball bearings.”

“Then,” Face said, “if we’re captured and end up in the hands of just a couple of guards, Runt can take in a deep, deep breath and sneeze those ball bearings out at them.”

Lara nodded, her own expression earnest. “In secret tests, we’ve clocked the ball bearings erupting from his nose at just over five hundred klicks per hour. Definitely subsonic, but still fast enough to penetrate flesh and light stormtrooper armor.”

Elassar looked back and forth between them. “Hey, wait a minute. That would never work.” The two conspirators dissolved into laughter, and he continued, his voice petulant, “I was being serious. Can’t you be serious? Someone’s going to be in trouble.”

“You just summon us up some luck,” Face said. “We’re relying on you.”

Rostat Manr was good at his job. As a Sullustan, he was supposed to be adept at piloting, at navigating, but he knew that he and his fellow Sullustan ship handlers had gotten their reputation far more through hard work than through natural inclination.

Rostat had been rewarded for his hard work, too. For four years he’d flown Y-wings for the Rebel Alliance—now known as the New Republic. Less than a year ago, sick of war, certain that he’d done his duty for the cause he believed in, he accepted a position flying tugs for a civilian firm: Event Vistas, a cruise-vessel line. Only a few months ago, he’d been promoted to chief pilot aboard Nebula Queen, one of the line’s newest and most beautiful cruise vessels.

But now, he was in danger of losing all he had gained. The thought, as he stared out the viewport at the growing circle of color that was the planet Coruscant, made him sad.

He couldn’t tell anyone. They’d laugh at him. Then they’d demote him … at best.

For no one wanted to employ a pilot with Ewoks in his nose.

He could feel them dancing, hear the faint, tinny sounds of their music and singing as they made merry in his nostrils. All the digging he’d done had failed to dislodge them. He couldn’t think about anything but the Ewoks, and what it would take to rid himself of them.

All he had to do was crash Nebula Queen down upon Coruscant’s surface. Then everything would be all right. He smiled. Soon, soon.

As the cruise ship reached the point it should have maneuvered into high Coruscant orbit, Rostat kept her headed into the atmosphere. A carefully calculated approach, the precise speed and angle needed for her to breach the planetary atmosphere without igniting. He really needed for enough of the ship to be left to hit the planet’s surface, after all.

“Rostat?” That was his captain, a human female originally from Tatooine. Other humans described her as old and leathery, but Rostat didn’t have their perspective on human features. “What are you doing?”

Rostat looked at her, trying to mask his alarm. “You know, don’t you?”

“I know you’re out of your approach plane.”

“No. I mean, about my nose.”

She gave him a look that suggested she didn’t know. But she had to be shamming. She had to be in on it. Perhaps she’d even been the one who put the Ewoks up his nose.

Seized with a sudden fear of what she was, what she might do to him next, he drew his duty blaster and fired on her. It was point-blank range; he would have had to go to some effort to miss. His shot took her in the side and she fell over.

But it wasn’t a blaster shot. He looked curiously at his issue sidearm. It was set on kill, but a stun-level beam had emerged. Curiously, he flipped the switch between blast and stun, but no sound emerged. Perhaps the mechanism was broken.

No matter. She was unconscious, and she would stay that way long enough for the ship to crash. And relief would be his.

But the Nebula Queen’s control board now showed her altitude gaining, not dropping. He stared curiously at the numbers, then took the pilot’s controls again.

They didn’t respond. The cruise liner began climbing back up into her proper orbit. He ran a quick diagnostic. It indicated that the auxiliary bridge currently had control.

He brought up the ship’s intercom and called the auxiliary bridge. When the picture swam into focus, it showed that bridge’s control seat. In the command chair was another Sullustan, a very junior officer Rostat knew. “Nurm,” he said. “What are you doing?”

Nurm looked uncomfortable and glanced off-screen. “I’ve seized control of the ship,” he said.

“Return control to the main bridge,” Rostat said. His nose was really itching. The Ewoks had to be mounting a major celebration in there.

“No,” Nurm said.

“Give me control right now,” Rostat said.

“Make me,” Nurm said.

“However you want it. Your career is at an end.” Rostat switched off.

He waited for a moment, settling his temper, and then made a sudden motion, driving his finger into his nose as fast and deep as he could.

No good. The Ewoks got away, leaping up above his probing finger, as they always did. He sighed, took up his blaster, and headed aft.

Moments later, he charged into the auxiliary bridge with his blaster at the ready.

There was no one in the control chair. But there was motion to his right. He spun—

Too late. Nurm fired first, his stun blast washing across Rostat’s chest. Rostat felt his body go numb and watched with a detached sort of interest as the floor angled up and knocked at his head.

Then he knew only blackness.

Nurm looked anxiously at the fellow officer he’d just shot. “Will he be all right?”

The man to whom he spoke, a human in the uniform of a colonel, rose from behind the communications console. He moved over to Rostat’s body and prodded it with his toe. “He should be. If we can figure out what’s wrong with him.”

“I couldn’t believe it. You showed it to me, and I still can’t believe it. He wanted to crash us.”

“I don’t think he did. There’s something very wrong going on in his head, though. But you’ve saved him from scandal, or death, or both.”

“Why did you want me to shoot him? I’ve barely qualified with blaster pistols! I’m a civilian!”

The officer gave him an enigmatic smile. “It’s important. Believe it or not, the fact that you shot him instead of me may save additional lives. Just remember the story as I’ve given it to you.”

He brought out his comlink to summon members of ship’s security to take Rostat into custody, then transmitted a few words, a mission-accomplished code, to his commander.

In an orbital station in high orbit above the far side of Coruscant, General Airen Cracken, head of New Republic Intelligence, received the officer’s signal. He responded with a few words of congratulation and signed off. He’d get the full report and offer more appropriate words of praise later.

He returned to the ancient, scarred desk that served him as a reminder of his many campaigns and years of service, and felt the first stirrings of relief. Suddenly, a picture once made up of shadows and inexplicable shapes was beginning to assume a form he could understand.

On his personal terminal, he called up a communications file, a full holo, and advanced it to a mark he’d placed earlier.

Wedge Antilles’s face and upper body appeared at one-third scale just above Cracken’s desk. The pilot seemed to be seated behind a desk of his own, and there was nothing but white bulkhead wall behind him.

“Now that the Warlord has persuaded the New Republic to institute measures that can be used as precedents when dealing with future incidents, his next step must inevitably be to make a breach between the New Republic and one of the member species that has contributed significantly to our success.

“Logic suggests that the Mon Calamari would be the best choice, since without their engineering expertise and their heavy cruisers we would have had a much harder time of this war than we’ve had. But we suspect that this brainwashing treatment may be confined for now to mammalian and near-mammalian species—it would be much, much harder to devise a treatment that was equally functional across the wide range of all sapient species types. So our prediction is that it won’t be Mon Calamari or Verpines at this time.

“Our best guess is that the next attack will come from Sullustans or Bothans. And we have some ideas about that.” Wedge typed something into the datapad before him; Cracken supposed that he was consulting notes.

“Gotals are known as expert hunters. And for the last several years, Twi’leks, who have traditionally been thought of by Imperial humans as traders, and not particularly bold beings in general, have been trying to impress on human cultures the importance of their warrior tradition. We think it’s significant that the Twi’lek and Gotal disasters have involved single warriors wreaking havoc. In our opinion, the assaults to come will correspond in some way to popular stereotypes and misconceptions about the species whose members initiate them. If the next attack is Bothan, it will involve computer slicing—such as, perhaps, falsified data transmissions that cause disasters. If the next attack is Sullustan, it’s likely to involve a piloting or navigating mishap costing hundreds or thousands of lives. Either way, if it is remotely possible, it’s important that the agents of these attacks be taken alive. Our hope is that they are under compulsion to do what they’re doing, and that the brainwashing technique leaves some consistent physiological evidence that New Republic medics can detect.”

Antilles shut his datapad. His gaze, unsettlingly enough, seemed to seek out Cracken’s. “That’s the best we have to offer, General. But if our predictions come anywhere close to the reality of the next set of mystery terrorist activities, you can rely on it being an attempt by Zsinj to create more chaos within the New Republic, and you can head off the damage his effort might otherwise cause.

“Thank you for your time, General. Antilles out.” The hologram of Wedge faded.

Cracken sat motionless for long moments. The first time he’d heard this transmission, he’d shaken his head and wished, once again, that flyboys would just keep their attention on their cockpits and out of Intelligence affairs. The second time, after Cracken had reviewed the evidence on the Twi’lek and Gotal assaults, it had made a frightening kind of sense … and Cracken had begun devoting resources to an investigation based on the possibility that the Antilles theory was correct.

Now, Cracken wished that one flyboy, Wedge Antilles, would pay less attention to his cockpit and devote some more of his thinking to Intelligence affairs.

Perhaps he could be lured out of Starfighter Command and over to Intelligence.

Cracken made an exasperated noise and shut down his terminal. No, not in this lifetime.

He turned his attention to the ongoing search for evidence of an upcoming Bothan code-slicing effort that would end in disaster.

Face Loran woke to the sound of passerby conversation out in the corridor. He stretched, enjoying the luxury that was to be his—a few minutes of lazy rest before his alarm went off.

Then he glanced at the chrono beside his bed. The time was half an hour after his alarm should have awakened him. He hadn’t set it.

He swore and threw his sheets off. He had just enough time to clean up and dress before mission briefing, if he hurried.

A portion of his terminal’s screen blinked at him—sign of new mail, not yet reviewed. He typed in a command to transfer it all to Vape, his astromech—he’d read it when nothing else was going on during the Kidriff mission.

•    •    •

The launch bay assigned to the Rogues and Wraiths hummed—not just with activity, but with the bone-cutting whine of X-wing repulsorlift engines being tested as pilots went through their prelaunch checklists. And it was cold, the launch door opened to space, only the magnetic-containment field keeping the atmosphere safely within … and magcon fields did an inadequate job of retaining heat.

Wedge watched the activity, looking for undue stress or worry on the part of his pilots.

Gavin Darklighter. The young Rogue would be flying without a wingmate. He’d been sobered by Tal’dira’s death, and still looked unusually serious, but showed no sign of distraction.

Corran Horn. It had been only days since he’d killed a squadmate, and the speculation that Tal’dira had been brainwashed, not a traitor, and therefore theoretically possible to save, had to be eating at him. He showed no sign of it, his real emotions safely hidden behind the mask of professional civility that CorSec and other police personnel wore when dealing with strangers.

Tyria Sarkin. She’d also been forced to kill a fellow pilot. She made no secret of her distress, and even now, as she donned her helmet and climbed into her X-wing cockpit, there was a sad look to her eyes. But, unlike Horn, she hadn’t had to kill a squadmate, a friend. And she hadn’t been as isolated as Horn; Kell had been there for her. Kell had even persuaded her to talk to Wes Janson, the man who had been obliged, many years before, to kill Kell’s own father under not dissimilar circumstances. Janson had said it had helped her. Though Tyria wore her emotions very close to the surface, Wedge felt he had little to worry about with her.

Dia Passik. She would not be flying today; the decision handed down by the Provisional Council made it impossible for her to come along. But it didn’t prevent her from participating in other ways; she was present, out of uniform, moving from starfighter to starfighter, offering a recommendation here, a wish for good luck there. And, when she thought no one was looking, a kiss for Face.

Elassar Targon. The Devaronian pilot was busily sticking figurines made of hard-baked bread on various portions of Runt’s X-wing’s hull while the Thakwaash pilot ineffectually tried to shoo him away. More charms. Wedge sighed.

“You can’t just stay here and avoid it,” Janson said.

Wedge looked at the Wraiths’s XO. “Come again?”

“You can’t just hang around here, Commander. You have to get to the Falsehood and face your mistake.”

“What mistake is that?”

Janson grinned. “Well, of course, you’re taking Han Solo’s place in piloting the Falsehood because he really can’t keep on relinquishing command of the fleet for joyrides.”

“Correct. No mistake I can see so far. I have more experience with Corellian freighters than anyone on Mon Remonda, excepting Han Solo.”

“And you asked him if Chewbacca would be interested in coming along as copilot and mechanic. He has all that experience keeping disintegrating junk together as it flies.”

“Correct so far.”

“And the general said, sure, Chewie would be happy to come along.”

“You’re three for three.”

“Wedge, you don’t speak Wookiee.”

“I—oh, Sithspit.” Wedge felt some color rising into his face. Janson was right: In all the mission planning they’d done, he’d failed to remember that he wouldn’t be able to understand anything his copilot said, though Chewbacca could certainly understand Basic.

Janson just stood there, his expression merry.

Wedge sighed. “Check with Squeaky and Emtrey. I can’t issue orders for them to go, but if either is willing to volunteer, I’d appreciate it. Preferably Squeaky.” Though 3PO units normally had protocol skills as part of their programming, including diplomacy and instantaneous translation of a staggering number of languages, Emtrey’s programming was optimized for military functions; Squeaky’s was better suited to this mission.

“Will do.”

“You haven’t mentioned this to the pilots?”

“Well, yes, I sort of blurted it out when it occurred to me.”

“And what did they say?”

“They put down bets on what you’d do. So then I had to go to all the other pilots so they could get their own bets down.”

“Who won?”

“Tyria Sarkin. She said you’d say ‘Sithspit.’ ”

“You know, you’ve finally earned my gravest revenge.”

“You don’t ever take revenge. That’s beneath Wedge Antilles, Hero of the New Republic.”

Wedge gave him a smile, one full of teeth, and Janson’s own grin faltered. Wedge said, “Dismissed.”

Kell took point, Elassar tucked in behind and beside him as wingman, and led his TIE interceptor unit in toward Kidriff Five. The other wingpair, Janson and Shalla, stayed off to their starboard at the distance prescribed by Imperial regulations.

The world called Kidriff Five gradually grew in their viewports. The planet, at least the hemisphere they could see, seemed to be dominated by three colors: blue for seas and rusty red for vegetation, and a lesser amount of gray-white where the planet’s greatest cities lay.

Comm traffic also increased as they neared the planet. First was an automated signal directing them into one of the preapproved approach vectors. As soon as that signal arrived, Kell transmitted a tight-beam signal back to the Falsehood indicating where they could expect first comm contact.

As they entered the approach vector, they could see, far ahead of them, tiny lights—at the distances shown on their sensors, these had to be massive cargo vessels approaching the planet.

When they were close enough to the planet that Kell could see nothing but its surface unless he leaned much closer to his viewport, they received the first live transmission. “Incoming flight, four Sienar Fleet Systems interceptors, this is Kidriff Primary Control. Please identify yourself and your mission.”

Kell activated his comm unit. “This is Drake Squadron, One Flight, out of the Night Terror, Captain Maristo commanding. We’re here for rec-re-a-tion.” The emphasis he put on the final word suggested a pilot who’d been away from any sort of entertainment for too long. “Inbound to Tobaskin to see how much rec-re-a-tion a cargo bay full of credits will buy.”

“Acknowledged, Drakes. Transmitting your revised approach vector. Will your ship be arriving later?”

“Negative, we’re here solo.” And that lie conveyed a second lie to the traffic controllers on Kidriff Five: that Drake Squadron consisted of hyperdrive-equipped TIEs. This suggested, in turn, that its pilots were very important people. It wasn’t uncommon for high-ranking officers to take their personal TIEs, with a lower-ranking officer as theoretical commander to act as a shield of anonymity for them, on a junket like this.

“Understood. Leave your transponders on at all times, by planetary ordinance. Enjoy yourselves, and welcome to Kidriff Five.”

Kell compressed the exchange and transmitted it, and the point in space where he’d received the opening words of the greeting, back to the Falsehood.

“I do receive combat pay, don’t I?” The speaker was Squeaky, situated behind Wedge’s seat on the Millennium Falsehood.

“If we’re fired upon, yes,” Wedge said. “Otherwise, you just get hazardous-duty pay.”

Chewbacca grumbled something. Squeaky said, “Shut up, you.”

Wedge grinned. He’d never met a 3PO unit as verbally abusive as Squeaky. Most of them, because of standard programming and because they knew themselves to be defenseless, attempted to ingratiate themselves with everyone they met—usually with so much talk they ended up aggravating those they wished to befriend. But Squeaky was a manumitted droid, owned by no one, and had a few quirks. “What did he say?”

“I don’t have to translate comments like that.”

“Translate everything. I’ll decide what’s important and what’s not.”

“He said he could guarantee I receive combat pay by pulling off my legs and hitting me with them.”

“Well, that was very generous of him. You should have said ‘Thank you, maybe later.’ ”

“Sir, I think you lack an understanding of this Wookiee’s violence-laden humor.”

As soon as they dropped to within twenty kilometers of the planetary surface over Tobaskin Sector, which was already under nightfall, Kell and his fellow Drakes began receiving transmissions from sector businesses—some data, some sight and sound, all extolling the virtues of various entertainment spots in the region. One transmission was the city government’s visitor’s package, including maps of the region with hundreds of clubs, bars, hostels, and other businesses highlighted.

As if unsure as to which of the city’s many offerings to choose, Kell led his group out over one of the sector’s deeper forest tracts. As his pilots exchanged banal comm traffic about which sites would offer the most recreation, Kell scanned the forest floor for life. And when he’d chosen a spot that included a clearing large enough for the Falsehood but was so deep within heavy forest that it seemed humans did not frequent it, he transmitted that data back as well.

They found a personal-vehicle landing zone near a district full of brilliantly lit entertainment businesses. They came to rest there and emerged from the top hatches of their interceptors.

Kell pulled his helmet free, dropped it onto his pilot’s couch, and began removing other pieces of piloting paraphernalia he wouldn’t be needing. “Drake Two, Drake Four, keep all your gear on. You’ll be staying with the interceptors.”

Shalla nodded. She slid down to the ground in full gear and stood at attention before her starfighter, a guard on duty.

“Aw, no.” Elassar sounded heartbroken. He clutched his chest as though someone had shot him. “Why me? I’m the youngest, I’m in the greatest need of fun.”

Dressed only in his black jumpsuit, Kell slid down to his wing pylon, then dropped to the ground. He clambered up Elassar’s interceptor and leaned in close to the younger pilot. “Let me ask you something, Elassar.”

“Fire away, sir.”

“You go into one of these wonderfully diverting bars.”

“Yes.”

“You put down your credits.”

“Sounds good so far, sir.”

“You take off your helmet.”

“Well, I’d certainly want to at some point. Even if I were only getting a drink.”

“What do the other patrons see?”

“Well, they see the galaxy’s best-looking—oh.”

“Devaronian pilot.”

“Right, sir, I get it.”

“How many Devaronian TIE interceptor pilots do you suppose there are in the Empire?”

“I understand, sir, I really do.”

Kell shook his head and dropped to the ground.

Wedge set the Millennium Falsehood down so gently that not even he was fully aware of the transition between repulsorlift support and the settling of the hydraulic landing skids.

Chewbacca rumbled something.

Squeaky said, “Well, of course that was a good landing. He can’t afford to set this flying trash heap down any harder. Pieces would fall off.”

Chewie’s grumbling became louder, more eloquent.

“What do you mean, this is a good ship? Just this morning you were calling her names that would peel new paint off a hull. You’re disagreeing with me just to be disagreeable.”

“Captain’s leaving the bridge,” Wedge announced. “Chewbacca, the controls are yours.”

He trotted back to the top of the loading ramp and found his passengers gearing up, ready to leave. One man and one woman, both with dark hair and unmemorable, average features, dressed in black pants and tunics decorated with dazzling bright zigzag stripes—this season’s very definition of tourist in certain portions of the Empire.

They’d never told Wedge their names. He thought of the man as Bland One, the woman as Bland Two.

Bland One turned to him, extended a hand. “Thanks for a smooth flight. Much better than some insertions we’ve been through.” Bland Two nodded; Wedge couldn’t remember her saying a word.

Wedge shook his hand, then activated the ramp control. The access ramp whined but did not budge.

“I have one pilot,” Wedge said, “who’d be certain that you jinxed it with the compliment.” He stomped down on the nearest portion of ramp. The mechanism’s whine increased in volume, then the ramp lowered. “Good luck.”

Then they were gone, and the ramp closed again with less complaint.

By the time Wedge returned to the bridge, Tycho had decoupled from the top hull and his X-wing was settling to the ground just ahead of the Falsehood’s cockpit. Then the X-wing appeared to vanish as its lights faded. Suddenly they were in darkness, the trees all around them acting as an impenetrable wall between them and the city lights. Their only illumination was the two spots of gold light marking Squeaky’s eyes.

“Well,” said Squeaky, “what shall we do now? I know many mnemonic games. Compare Storerooms is a good one.”

Chewbacca rumbled something.

“No, I don’t know Droid-Crushers.”

Rumble.

“What do you mean, you’d be happy to demonstrate? Oh, ha, ha.”

Wedge sighed. For such a short flight in, this was going to be a long mission.

It was long after the Rogues and Wraiths settled into their parking orbit around Kidriff’s moon that Face remembered his unread mail.

“Vape, put that new storage through to my comm screen. In order of reception, please.”

First was a letter, text only, from his sister, now at school on Pantolomin. It was chatty, full of details of everyday life, much as Face remembered it. A bright bit of home to distract him from the bleak lunar scape that was his sole viewing pleasure right now.

The second, and last, item was from New Republic Intelligence. He had to wade through screen after screen of standard admonishment that he was not to distribute this material, upon pain of trial and incarceration, before he got to the meat of the message and remembered what it was all about: his recent query concerning Lara Notsil and Edallia Monotheer, the name she’d been called by the old man on Coruscant.

The enclosed material was all classified secret; nothing had a higher secrecy rating. He hoped the answers he was looking for weren’t hiding behind a more stringent level of classification, a level he couldn’t access.

The file on Lara Notsil contained little information he didn’t already know. Much of it she’d told him and the other Wraiths at one time or another. Born on a farm in Aldivy. Decent grades in school. No indication of special aptitudes other than agriculture. Then, the data derived from her own accounts and a little independent verification: how her community refused to offer aid to the enemy by turning over stockpiles of grain and meats to a former Imperial admiral by the name of Trigit, how Trigit’s ship Implacable had bombarded the town out of existence. How follow-up troops had found a survivor, Lara Notsil, and taken her up to the ship. How Trigit, taken with the girl, had kept her half-comatose on a steady diet of drugs and made her his unwilling mistress. Until Wraith Squadron and allied troops had destroyed Implacable. Until Lara had escaped in Trigit’s personal evacuation pod.

A rather sparse account. But colonists like the Aldivians, given to raising their crops and children, didn’t devote a lot of time to more extensive personal records. On some colonies, they didn’t even carry identification.

Then the file on Edallia Monotheer. For all that she was born on Coruscant, a planet notable for the extent and quality of its citizen records, her account was scarcely longer than Notsil’s. It had been reconstructed from interviews; all primary sources about her appeared to have been destroyed.

Born about fifty years ago. Trained to be an actress. She’d caught the eye of Armand Isard, father of Ysanne Isard; he was the head of Intelligence throughout most of the reign of Emperor Palpatine. Monotheer had trained as an Intelligence agent and had executed many successful missions for her superiors.

Then, according to this account, she had been arrested and convicted of treason, along with her husband. Both were executed for funneling information about Imperial Intelligence to anti-Imperial factions on Chandrila. An opinion annotated by some anonymous New Republic Intelligence analyst suggested that this was a standard technique to cause the death of a subordinate who had committed some less significant offense, and that Monotheer had had nothing to do with the Rebel Alliance.

Husband. Face found the link to data on Monotheer’s immediate family and brought it up.

There was not much of interest there on her husband. He had a history similar to hers. There were rumors that the two of them had had a child, but there was no data on file about this.

But far more interesting than the husband’s history was his name.

Dalls Petothel.

Face felt his stomach sink.

“Dawn,” said Squeaky.

The one word, emerging out of blackness, jolted Wedge out of his light doze. He looked around but could still see no illumination other than the droid’s eyes. He rubbed his eyes and swung his booted feet down off the command console. “It doesn’t much look like dawn.”

“If you look straight up, you can see the sky brightening. All these trees and the buildings beyond keep the early-morning light from reaching us,” Squeaky said.

Chewbacca stretched, making loud tendon-popping noises, and rumbled something.

“Well, yes, since we don’t have any light in our eyes, I could have let you sleep a few more minutes,” Squeaky said. “But I was under the impression that the commander here wanted to know when dawn was. Because as soon as it’s day, the more likely it is we get seen. Or hadn’t that thought penetrated the mass of fur shielding your brain from outside stimulus?”

Grumble.

“Well, yes, technically, it is light rather than chronological markers for daytime that make it more likely we’ll be seen, but my point still holds—”

“Quiet,” Wedge said. “We may have something.”

On his sensor screen, a small blip had just crossed, in a straight line, a portion of this belt of forest about a kilometer to their south. It had looped around and was now crossing the same forest a hundred meters or so north of its last passage. As they watched, it completed this crossing and looped back again.

“A search grid?” Squeaky suggested.

“Yes. But it’s the only vehicle doing that in the area. So there’s not a concerted search going on.” Wedge read the text register on his sensor board. The vehicle was tentatively identified as a sort of high-altitude floater routinely used by police forces on Imperial worlds. “Probably just a routine flyover of his territory. He should be here in about fifteen minutes.” He dialed down the broadcast power of his comm unit and activated it. “Two?”

“I see it, Leader.”

“Just checking. Begin your preflight preparations. Out.” He brought the comm system up to full power and selected an encryption code, then transmitted one phrase: “In the green.”

A moment later, he received an answer, encrypted the same way. “Two lit.” Kell’s voice.

“Drake Squadron is getting ready,” Wedge said. “Now we wait for the locals to flush us.”

10

In the graying hour of dawn, the police floater heeled over so far that Wedge was certain that its pilot would tumble out of his seat if not for strap restraints and the vehicle’s bubble top. The pilot looked down at the Millennium Falsehood, reached for his control board as if to activate his comm system, then spotted Tycho’s X-wing.

Even with the distance between them, Wedge could read the shock on the pilot’s face. “Let’s go,” he said.

Rogue Two’s nose elevated until the X-wing was pointed almost straight up, and then Tycho kicked in his main thrusters, shooting the snubfighter into the air straight past the police floater. He missed the smaller vehicle by less than two meters. The police pilot unnecessarily slid sideways to get clear of the X-wing’s passage.

Wedge duplicated Tycho’s maneuver, putting the Falsehood into a steep climb. Above, he could see the glow of Tycho’s engines. “Chewie, the comm system is yours,” he said.

Chewbacca activated the comm unit. He grumbled and roared into it across an open channel. By agreement with Wedge, these would be insults and curses in the Wookiee’s language.

The Falsehood reached the altitude of the top of this sector’s highest buildings. Wedge leveled off, still traveling in Tycho’s wake, a sharp maneuver that brought a startled exclamation from Squeaky … followed by a clatter of metal on metal.

“Forget to strap in?” Wedge asked.

“I never forget anything, sir,” the 3PO unit said, his tone a bit miffed. “I merely failed to add ‘strapping in’ to my list of things to do. Could you hold her level for a moment?”

“No.” Wedge sideslipped to go around an aggressively tall skyscraper. There was another clash and scrape of metal from behind. Tycho rejoined Wedge from the other side of the skyscraper, his X-wing dancing around the Corellian freighter with the nimbleness only a starfighter could manage.

Chewbacca grumbled something and indicated the sensor board. Wedge spared it a glance. It showed a lot of air traffic, most of it moving in what appeared to be patterns unrelated to the Falsehood’s flight. One group of signals, their number indeterminate because of their proximity to one another, followed in their wake at a distance of more than two kilometers; they faded in and out of the picture as they dipped down below the level of ground clutter and emerged at intervals. “That’s Kell and the Drakes,” Wedge said. “We still need to be sure we’ve been spotted by the world authority—”

A strong signal, a blur representing six or more starfighters, appeared to the north, closing fast.

“There we go,” Wedge said. “Let’s bounce out.”

Tycho said, “Consider it bounced.” His X-wing vectored straight for space.

“Oh, no,” Squeaky said.

Wedge hauled back on the controls and the Falsehood followed.

Kell saw Tycho and the Falsehood’s sudden flight for space, and the signals from the distant pursuers just as abruptly showed altitude gains. He put his interceptor in an upward course—a near-intercept course aimed at a point not far behind the pursuers of the Falsehood.

As they climbed, he got a clearer look at the group behind the Falsehood. It was a full squadron, identified by the sensors as TIE fighters. They’d be on the top of Wedge and Tycho pretty soon, certainly before the Falsehood left the atmosphere.

“Drake Squadron, this is Kidriff Primary Control. Please disengage pursuit of official government forces. This is an internal matter.”

“Kay Pee See, this is Drake One. We’ve been hoping to evaluate your pilots. Rumor rates them pretty high. Shall I go back and tell the admiral that you wouldn’t let us?”

“That’s affirmative, Drake One. Break off pursuit now or we’ll have to view your action as a hostile one. We’ll apologize very sweetly to the admiral and your survivors.”

Kell cursed. Not every aspect of Kidriff security was sloppy. He put all discretionary power to thrust and gained even faster on the Falsehood’s pursuers.

Just as the air thinned to the point that the stars shone with brilliant, unblinking clarity, the first laser blast sizzled past the Corellian freighter’s port side. “A long-distance shot,” Wedge said.

Tycho’s voice came back, “Easy to hit a flying bathtub like the one you’re driving even with a long-distance shot. Permission to engage?”

“Not yet. Wait until it gets complicated.” Wedge spared a moment to look at his sensors. The squadron of TIEs was only a kilometer back. Kell’s Drakes were only half a klick behind them and closing fast. And a new signal was on the board—a second full squad of TIEs from the ground base. It was going to get complicated soon.

Moments later, a shot hit the rear shields. On the sensors, Wedge saw two wingpairs of TIE fighters peel off and curve around toward Kell’s group. “That’s it,” Wedge said. “Rogue Two, you are free to engage. Chewie, you have the controls.” He unbelted and moved aft.

“Sir?” said Squeaky. “You’re not leaving this disagreeable ball of hair in charge of a whole ship? Sir?”

Wedge clambered into the upper gunport turret and powered up. His targeting grid immediately lit up with glows, most of them red—enemies. Two were out ahead of the others, firing as they came, probably aiming to overtake the freighter, turn, and fire from ahead, forcing Chewbacca to adjust the ship’s shields on a constant basis.

The first of the lead TIE fighters shot past, firing; a laser hit rocked the ship. Wedge let that one go, but timed its passage, then sent his gun turret swinging in its wake even before the second TIE reached him. That TIE flashed through his crosshairs and he fired.

The TIE erupted in a ball of expanding gases. And abruptly Rogue Two was darting out from beneath the freighter, tucking into the lead TIE fighter’s wake, firing quad-linked lasers. The TIE pilot, having lost sight of the X-wing on his sensor board, having assumed he was too far laterally for the Falsehood’s guns to track him, wasn’t maneuvering. Tycho’s lasers chewed through his port solar wing and he tumbled—an uncontrolled roll that, if he were not rescued soon, might never end.

Two down. Twenty-two to go. Wedge reset and waited.

“Keep it slow,” Kell said, “and keep it sluggish until we break. Remember, we’re supposed to be hyperspace-equipped, less maneuverable—they’ll already have been told what they’re facing.” He sent his TIE interceptor into a comparatively gentle westward curve, drawing two of the fighters above into his wake, and was pleased to see Elassar mimicking his move. Janson and Shalla curved off eastward equally lazily.

His sensor system shrilled, indicating an enemy laser lock, and he shouted “Now!” and cut hard to starboard. A green laser blast illuminated space where he’d been just a moment before, and two TIE fighters followed the blast, caught off guard. They began their turn, but Kell continued his ferocious maneuver, feeling his chest compress as the interceptor’s inertial compensator failed to keep up entirely with the g-forces he was generating.

His targets swung into view from the right side of his viewport. They, too, were now curving to starboard, but he’d caught them off guard, and had the advantage of a few seconds of controlled maneuvering. The leftmost of them jittered in his targeting brackets. He let it go—that was the easier target, and that was for his wingman. The second TIE now crossed into his targeting bracket and jittered, sign of a laser lock.

He fired. His green lasers bit into the TIE’s fuselage where it glowed brightest.

Suddenly the TIE’s engines glowed much brighter. Smoke and sparks emerged. The fighter banked to port and down, toward the planet’s surface. As more and more sparks emerged, it looked like nothing so much as an artificial comet heading for its final resting place.

The second TIE was still intact. It continued looping around to starboard, cutting its maneuver more tightly than Kell could, and was now well out of his targeting brackets.

Then a barrage of lasers struck the fighter from Kell’s left. The shots tore through its left solar wing array, turning the wing into a mess of shrapnel, then marching across to the fuselage. The fighter detonated, hurling speeder bike-sized pieces of itself in Kell’s path. He juked around the closest of them and reswallowed his stomach.

Who’d fired that shot? He checked his sensors. “Drake Two? Where were you?”

“Sorry, Drake One.” Elassar’s voice was sheepish. “When you broke to starboard, I made a mistake and broke to port. I had to loop around to rejoin you.”

Kell shuddered. His wingman had been gone for those long seconds, and his rear had been unprotected. He’d talk to Elassar about it later. “Nice shooting, Drake Two. Let’s rejoin General Solo,” he added for the benefit of the planetary listeners who would someday soon crack this set of broadcast encryptions.

“Yes, sir.” Sensors showed Drake Two coming up in his wake, and Drake Three and Drake Four returning to the primary course with their targets now off the screen. But the second group of TIEs was much closer.

That trick, pretending to be heavily laden with hyper-drives, wouldn’t work a second time, Kell knew. But it had helped even the odds. That was good enough for now.

•    •    •

Another TIE had fallen victim to Wedge’s guns by the time the leader of the first TIE squadron got smart. The five remaining TIEs drifted out of the engagement zone and dropped back toward the intact squadron that was rapidly catching up.

Wedge deployed the Drakes behind him in two pairs and kept Tycho between them, giving him a five-pointed shield of fighters to his aft. They were well clear of the atmosphere now, outbound toward the planet’s primary moon, but the remaining squad and a half of TIEs was gaining rapidly. “Chewie? How are we doing?”

He received a long set of rumbling commentary in reply.

“Squeaky?”

“He says, in his almost preverbal fashion, that the shields are holding, but the relays that permit adjustment of the shields are, as he puts it, ‘twitchy.’ He thinks some of them may fail if he continues shunting power between them.”

“Wonderful. All right, Chewbacca, put them in their default settings. We go with fixed shields for now.”

Another long-range shot struck the Falsehood, rocking the freighter. Wedge heard mechanical crashes as something was jarred loose from a corridor housing. “Break and fire at will,” he said, and saw his escort move out and prepare to engage the enemy again.

Then there was a sensor signal from ahead of the Falsehood—a big, complicated signal. And red lasers flashed from ahead, all around the freighter, into the ranks of the pursuing TIE fighters.

Chewbacca rumbled something.

“He knows that, you walking dirt trap. It’s the Rogues and the Wraiths.”

On Lara’s sensor screen, the cloud of TIE fighters suddenly became bigger, more diffuse, then resolved itself into seven wingpairs and one trio of starfighters.

“Group, this is Rogue Nine.” She could almost recognize Corran Horn’s vocal characteristics in the comm-distorted words. “Remember not to fire on the interceptors. They’re Wraiths, and they might cry. S-foils to attack position. Break by pairs and fire at will.”

Face immediately rose relative to the plane of their flight, heading up and away from the centerline of the conflict to come. He also decelerated, dropping behind the rest of the group. Confused, Lara stayed tucked in behind his starboard. “Wraith One? Two. What’s our tactic?”

Face was a moment in replying. “You’ll see,” he said.

The other Rogues and Wraiths fired, a column of red lasers that passed harmlessly around the Falsehood and her escort but with less delicacy through the oncoming TIEs. Lara saw one fighter ignite and blow apart.

But Face held his fire and so did she.

A moment later, she thought she understood. The screens of TIEs and X-wings crossed, with pairs of starfighters maneuvering wildly to get behind one another. A pair of X-wings shot out of the flurry of activity with a pair of TIEs in close pursuit. Face angled toward them and accelerated, diving opportunistically toward them, and opened fire. His shots caused the TIE fighter to spook and pull away from its prey, but Lara’s laser fire was more accurate—her concentrated fire punched through the TIE fighter’s top hatch. There was no explosion, but the thin atmosphere in the fighter vented and the starfighter went into straight-line flight, out and away from the engagement zone.

“Nice shooting, Wraith Two. Thanks.” The comm unit identified the speaker as Ran Kether.

“Happy to oblige, Rogue Seven.”

Surely Face would now dive into the main body of the fight.

But he didn’t. He circled around the periphery of the battle. Frowning, Lara followed. She knew her duty, even when she didn’t understand it.

Tyria was in the flow of the moment. Even when she wasn’t looking at her sensor board, she had a grasp, a comprehension she’d never really enjoyed before, of where the fighters around her were in relation to her and to one another. She knew what they intended. A moment before they maneuvered, she knew which way they would turn.

Three pairs of starfighters—Corran Horn and Ooryl Qyrgg in the lead, two Kidriff TIE fighters behind them, gaining to optimal distance for a shot, and behind them, Donos and Tyria, unable to gain on the lead Rogues.

Ooryl fell a little behind and Horn swung ahead and slightly below him. The maneuver gave Horn a split second of advantage, since his pursuers couldn’t see the first signs of his next action. Suddenly he was behind Ooryl, losing ground to the TIEs so quickly that they overshot him. One TIE fighter, its pilot obviously experienced, banked to port. The other hung there in place for a moment, and Horn took his shot, a quad-linked laser barrage. Tyria couldn’t tell where it hit the TIE; the enemy starfighter blew so suddenly that she wasn’t able to register the impact.

Both Horn and Ooryl banked in the wake of the escaping TIE.

“How’d they do that?” Tyria asked, surprised. She hadn’t felt the trick maneuver coming, hadn’t predicted it. “That was too fast for them to have said anything.”

“Experience,” Donos said. “Less chatter, Wraith Four.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m hit!” The voice was young, a little panicky. “Losing shield power. Smoke in my cockpit. Lasers indicate malfunction.”

Lara checked her board. The transmission was from Rogue Eight, “Target” Nu, the Rodian. He was separated from his wingmate and had a pair of TIEs on his tail.

“I’m coming.” That was his wingmate, Kether. “I’m—I’m hung up here.”

“Rogue Eight, this is Wraith One.” Face’s voice. “Come to one-nine-four. I’ll head in straight toward you and head-to-head your pursuit. You pair up with Wraith Two out here and stay clear of the engagement.”

“Thanks, Wraith One.” The blip that was Rogue Eight vectored toward her and Face. Face headed straight toward it, leaving Lara hanging out in the void.

She didn’t object. She didn’t ask for orders. She knew what was required of her.

But she wondered, and her confusion gradually turned to cold worry in her stomach.

Seven fighters of the combined TIE pursuit force, including the one Face vaped on his head-to-head run into the center of the engagement zone, were destroyed before the pursuing squad leader ordered an evacuation. Donos decided that the man had to have been assuming the TIE fighters’s greater speed and maneuverability would give him all the advantage he needed against a numerically superior mixed force. But against the Rogues and Wraiths, he was wrong.

The surviving TIEs fled planetward, doubtless to form up with yet another flight group and come once again after the Rogues and Wraiths. But this time they wouldn’t catch up.

Donos responded to Wedge’s order that the group form up on the Millennium Falsehood. But on his sensor board, Wraith One and Wraith Two maintained their distance, paralleling the main group’s course a dozen kilometers out.

Lara could still hear a little high-pitched alarm in Rogue Eight’s voice, but that situation seemed to be under control. “I’m getting regular power fluxes but no serious drops. I’ve had to shut down one starboard engine but I can limp in on three.”

“Group, this is Leader. As soon as we have a little bit of moon horizon between us and the planet, the Drakes are going to separate and head on out to Rendezvous Point Beta. The rest of us will vector back into space the planetary sensors can scan, and will then make the jump to Rendezvous Point Alpha. Rogue Two, I want you to delay your jump thirty seconds to make sure all our damaged snubfighters make the transition to hyperspace.”

“Leader, Two. Understood.”

“Wraith One, Wraith Two, rejoin the group and prepare for jump.”

Face’s voice was next. “Leader, this is Wraith One. We need to jump from here and follow you in.”

“Explain that, Wraith One.”

“On a private channel, if you please, Leader.”

The worry in Lara’s stomach turned into fear. There were only so many reasons Face would refuse to let them return to the group. Most of them involved one or the other of them being a danger to the group, such as if one of their X-wings were threatening to blow up.

Face was protecting the group, or someone in the group. And Lara was certain she knew who. He was protecting Wedge.

From her.

Face’s voice was off the comm waves for a couple of minutes. Then he returned. “Wraith Two, have you double-checked your nav course?”

“No,” she said. “You know, don’t you, Face?” Her voice emerged as a choked whisper and she wondered if the comm unit would even pick it up.

“I know that you’re Gara Petothel,” he said. His voice was quieter, more gentle than she expected it to be.

She felt a snapping sensation in her chest, as though her breastbone had broken. And then there was the sensation of loss—of the sudden departure from her life of everything she considered important.

But it didn’t feel quite the way she expected it to. Pain there was, certainly, but she also felt a sudden relief, an absence of the weight she’d been carrying around since first she decided she no longer wanted to serve Zsinj, since she decided that her alliance with the Wraiths was fact, not fiction.

Like an animal in a hunter’s steel-jaw trap, she’d finally lost that part of her the trap held. The pain was indescribable. But there was freedom as well. And she knew that she didn’t need to cry anymore.

“I never betrayed you,” Lara said. She was surprised at how calm her voice sounded.

“I’m glad.”

“I tried so hard just to be Lara. But they wouldn’t let me. The whole universe wouldn’t let me.”

“Lara, I’m sorry,” Face said. “I have to place you under arrest pending investigation of this whole mess. Power your weapons systems down. Set your S-foils to cruise position. Don’t attempt any sudden maneuvers.”

“Understood, sir. I’m complying with your orders.”

•    •    •

Face felt sick to his stomach. He had wished, futilely, that he’d been wrong. But Lara had confirmed it.

A sudden fear struck him. He had been on a private communications channel with Lara, had switched to squadron channel to handle the Target Nu situation and then to respond to Wedge’s order that he move back to the formation, had switched to a private channel for his quick talk with Wedge—and then had gone back to his private channel with Lara. Hadn’t he?

He looked at his comm board. He was now set to squad frequency. He’d spoken last to Lara on an open channel.

His stomach suddenly got worse.

Donos heard the words but didn’t understand them. “I know that you’re Gara Petothel.” He knew that the name Gara Petothel meant something to him but he still couldn’t force his mind around the meaning of those words.

Ah, that was it. Naval officer Chyan Mezzine, a communications and intelligence specialist, had betrayed the New Republic by sending critical information to Admiral Apwar Trigit, a minion of Zsinj. Some of that information was what Trigit used to annihilate Talon Squadron—the X-wing unit commanded by Donos. Only he had survived. Then, later, the New Republic had put out a bulletin on her, indicating that her real name was Gara Petothel, that she was actually a deep-cover agent for Imperial Intelligence. Later, she had been declared dead, another victim of the destruction of Trigit’s Star Destroyer, Implacable.

But Lara Notsil was Gara Petothel.

Lara Notsil had destroyed his command. Had killed eleven pilots he had bound together.

Suddenly he was back there, in the smoky skies above the volcanoes of Gravan Seven, as ally after ally was ripped from the sky by Trigit’s pilots and their ambush. Again he felt the pain of their deaths. It was a selfish pain, part loss, part realization that he had failed them, part understanding that his life had changed in a way he could never set right.

The howl that escaped him was no animal noise. It was the wail of a man who’d just lost everything dear to him … and who suddenly had the destroyer of his happiness in his sights.

In spite of comm distortion, the howl made Face’s skin crawl. He knew who it had to be, and a glance at his sensor board showed Wraith Three turning away from his course to the rendezvous point on an intercept course with Face and Lara.

Wedge’s voice did not sound amused. “Wraith Three, this is Leader. Return to your original heading.”

Donos did not deviate from his new course.

Face said, “Wraith Two, come to three-three-two and accelerate to full speed.” He himself did as he’d ordered, turning away from Donos and running before him. Lara stayed with him.

It’s happening again.

The words were a wail of anguish inside Tyria’s mind.

Once again a fellow pilot was making an assault on a friendly target.

She turned in Donos’s wake and returned her S-foils to attack position.

Once again she had to put a fellow pilot in her weapon sights.

But this time her target was not just an ally but a friend. A squadmate. “Myn,” she said, “please don’t do this.”

Wraith Three came on inexorably but could not gain on Face’s and Lara’s X-wings. But he could fire a proton torpedo, which would cross the distance between them in seconds and could achieve a lock on Lara.

Face neatly sideslipped his X-wing behind Lara’s. “Wraith Three, hold your fire. If you fire, I’m your primary target.”

“Wraith Three, power down or I’ll be forced to fire.” The words were being choked out, the voice identifiable as Tyria’s.

“Wraith Four, this is Wraith One. Do not fire, whatever happens. This is not the same as the Jussafet situation. Acknowledge.”

“Acknowledged, sir.”

Lara, her voice raspy with pain, said, “Maybe you ought to let him shoot me, sir. Get out of the way.”

“Shut up, Two.”

Face’s sensor board howled, a new noise—the distinctive wail signifying a proton-torpedo launch. Donos had fired.

“Wraith Three, detonate your torp now.” Face made no effort to keep alarm out of his voice; that would have required concentration. He maintained his position immediately behind Lara’s X-wing and put all available power to his rear shields. He kept his free hand on his ejection lever. “Three, blow the torp, I’m your target.” From the moment of launch he had only a few seconds before the torpedo hit, and most of that time was already gone. “Detonate, dammit!”

The universe behind Face filled with bright blue fire. His stern shuddered as though he’d been rammed and his cockpit was suddenly filled with smoke, the howl of damage alert sirens, Vape’s mechanical shrieks of dismay, and the rumble and tremble of failing vehicle systems.

But he was still alive. Either the proton torpedo had detonated at the very outer edges of his rear shields, or Donos had detonated it prematurely—barely prematurely.

Bitter anger swelled within him. “Congratulations, Three,” he said. “I may be your newest kill.”

Donos jerked upright in his cockpit, confusion clearing from his mind like smoke sucked into hard vacuum. On his sensor screen, Wraith One was maneuvering erratically as Two continued on the straight-line course she’d been assigned. “Face—One. I’m sorry—” He tried to regain control of his voice, his thoughts. “Hold tight. I’m coming in for a flyover. I’ll check external damage.”

His astromech, Clink, shrieked at him and the shrill tone of an enemy targeting lock assailed his ears. That, and Tycho’s voice, hard and cold as Donos had ever heard it. “Abort that maneuver, Wraith Three.”

“But Captain, I’m closest, I have to see—”

“Deviate from your current course and I will blow you out of space.” There was no questioning the deadly seriousness of Tycho’s tone. “Wraith Four, do a flyby on Wraith One and report signs of damage. Wraith One, do you copy?”

Face’s voice was nearly as cold as Tycho’s, but his words were harder to understand, drowned by the cockpit alarms from his damaged snubfighter. “I read, Rogue Two. My fighter’s holding together for the moment.”

“Good. Wraith Two, swing back around and form up with the group.”

There was a perceptible delay. Then Lara’s voice came back, strained, but not racked with pain as it had been moments ago. “I don’t think so, Rogue Two.”

“That’s an order, Wraith Two, a direct order.”

“I’ve already surrendered once,” she said, “and have subsequently been fired on by an officer of this group. I no longer have any faith that I’ll survive long enough to meet a court-martial.”

“Wraith Two, this is Rogue Leader. You know you’ll make it now. The situation is under control.”

It was true; Donos was maintaining straight-line flight under Tycho’s guns. He wasn’t sure he was capable of doing anything but following orders. It wasn’t fear of death at Tycho’s hands that kept him in line—it was shock at what he was certain he’d just done.

“What I know is that you don’t believe me,” Lara said. “You don’t believe that I’m a loyal Wraith. You don’t believe that I’ve never done anything to compromise this unit.”

Wedge abandoned the formality of call numbers. “Lara, if what you’re saying is the truth, the court will bear you out. I can confidently state that Nawara Ven will take your case. He’s the best.”

“But that’s it for me with the Wraiths. I’ll never be able to fly with you again. I’ll never be able to help you. To get you out of a jam. I can never undo what I’ve done. Never.”

“You’re probably right, Lara. That’s the way it is. Now come around.”

When her voice returned, it was not Wedge she addressed. “Wraith One? Can you hear me?”

Face’s voice was still strong, and this time was not accompanied by alarms—he’d obviously taken steps to quiet the sirens in his cockpit. “I read you, Two.”

“I want you to understand something. I don’t care if you understand it now. I want you to understand it later. I have never betrayed the Wraiths. I will never, ever betray the Wraiths. Do you read me?”

“I … hear what you say.”

A moment later, she said, “Myn?”

Donos jolted. He opened his mouth to answer, but he didn’t know whom he’d be talking to. Lara, the woman he’d wanted to come to love, or Gara, the woman he’d sworn—and now attempted—to kill.

“Myn?”

He sat there, paralyzed by indecision, and did not answer.

Lara’s X-wing leaped out of sight and off the sensors as it made the jump into hyperspace.

In the Rogue and Wraith squadrons’s landing bay, Donos climbed down out of his cockpit. His back was so straight it hurt. He needed that pain. He needed the constant reminder that he had to get himself back under control.

He’d lost control. He’d lost Lara. He’d lost everything.

Wedge waited for him at the foot of the ladder. Donos turned to face him and took a step back without intending to. Wedge’s body was as still as if carved from ice, but there was nothing cold about his eyes. They were full of anger, more intense anger than Donos had ever seen in them.

“One reason,” Wedge said. “I’d like to hear one reason why I shouldn’t ship you off to Coruscant and put you up on charges of gross insubordination.”

Donos stood at attention, every muscle he was aware of locked into place. He kept his gaze fixed above Wedge’s head and took a deep breath as he got his thoughts in order. “Logically speaking, I should not be tried for insubordination, sir, because insubordination is generally a deliberate act. I do not believe I was in my right mind when I fired upon Flight Officer Notsil. I can’t even remember doing that.” He couldn’t bring himself to refer to her as Gara Petothel, even in his own mind. His hard-won control might slip again.

“Temporary insanity?” The tone of Wedge’s voice suggested the frown Donos could see only in his peripheral vision. “That sounds like a dodge to me, Lieutenant.”

“I’m not sure it’s temporary, Commander.” Donos couldn’t keep the dejection out of his own voice. “You and Face, Captain Loran I mean, are aware of my … earlier difficulty.”

“Difficulty” was something of an understatement. Weeks after the destruction of Talon Squadron, when Donos’s R2 unit, Shiner, the only other survivor of the Gravan mission, had been destroyed, Donos had lapsed into a near-catatonic state. Only the intervention of Kell, Tyria, and Falynn Sandskimmer—herself now dead for many weeks—had brought him out of that withdrawal. “I submit,” Donos continued, “that I was not in my right mind when I fired on her, and I no longer have any confidence that I’m in my right mind at other times. With respect, sir, I tender the resignation of my commission and of my place in Wraith Squadron.”

Wedge didn’t answer immediately. Donos could see the top of his head as the commander looked right and left, communicating with the other senior officers by what might have been a combination of shared experience and telepathy.

“I’ll consider your request,” Wedge said, “while you consider a question I may oblige you to answer at some later time. If we encounter Lara Notsil in the future, in a combat situation, which of the Wraiths would you prefer to vape her in your place?”

The question was like a blade of ice thrust straight into Donos’s gut. He opened his mouth to respond, but Wedge said, “Quiet. I don’t require your answer yet. Dismissed.”

Donos turned away, past the eyes of the Rogues and his fellow Wraiths.

He saw anger in some of them, confusion in others. A sort of sick pain in Tyria’s. What he’d almost made her do—kill a second fellow pilot.

She’d never forgive him.

It didn’t matter much. He’d never forgive himself.

Behind him, he heard Wedge directing his anger against another target. “Captain Loran. You and I need to talk. My office. Right now.”

Lara’s first jump had just taken her clear of the Kidriff system. Her second, initiated after she’d had a chance to consult her astromech Tonin’s memory, would take a while to complete. It would bring her back to the Halmad system, where she and the other Wraiths had once pretended to be a band of pirates called the Hawk-bats.

In abandoned Hawk-bat Station, she’d be able to refuel, to initiate a new communication, to make some modifications to Tonin.

But for now, she was left with her thoughts.

Her one thought.

Lara Notsil is dead.

Lara had been a temporary identity. Something to keep her out of the hands of the New Republic while she figured out a way to persuade the warlord Zsinj to employ her. Then it had been a convenience, a means to infiltrate the Wraiths in order to improve her worth in Zsinj’s eyes. Then, when she’d come to realize the depths to which her early teaching had programmed her to accept Imperial ideas of rule as infallible, when she’d realized that she could never serve Zsinj or the Empire again, Lara Notsil had become a gradually eroding shield between her and the day the Wraiths would turn against her.

That day had come. Lara Notsil was no more.

Who was she, then? Not Gara Petothel. That was the name she’d been born under, but Gara had been such an unhappy creature, a servant of Imperial Intelligence, a young woman with no goals of her own. With no future.

No one, no family member or friend, who’d known her under that name still lived. So Gara Petothel was dead, too.

But Kirney Slane—an identity she’d worn for a few weeks when she learned many of the techniques of the intelligence agent. Kirney was nothing but a young woman wandering through the wealthy-officer stratum of Imperial culture on Coruscant. She’d attended dances, flirted with officer candidates, shopped.

She had been worthless. But she had been happy.

Lara wondered if she could take that long-abandoned identity and give her some worth. And even, perhaps, retain some of her naive cheer, her certainty that life was worth living.

Gara Petothel is dead. Lara Notsil is dead. I will answer to those names. But they are no longer mine.

I am Kirney Slane.

I have no life yet.

I will make one, or die in the attempt.

She thought about Donos. He, too, had attempted to kill Gara, with at least as much reason as she had.

He’d been right. They were more alike than she had realized.

“You don’t think,” Wedge said, “it could have waited until we returned to Mon Remonda.”

“No, sir,” Face said.

“She had plenty of opportunities to vape me or any of the rest of us prior to today. That ranks her pretty low as a threat.”

“With all due respect, sir, I thought about that. If we think that way, we have to presume that Lara was not working for Zsinj or the Empire. Because if she was an agent, she could have been following her employers’s plan or schedule. I mean, Galey the cook also had plenty of opportunities to stick a vibroblade in you or the general. So, if we follow your logic, the fact that he didn’t attack someone between the day Mon Remonda returned to space and the day he killed Doctor Gast means he was trustworthy all those days.” He offered Wedge an expression of regret. “Sir, I did what I thought was right for the unit.”

“What does your gut tell you?”

Face looked away for a long moment, then returned his attention to Wedge. “My gut says she was telling the truth. That she was a loyal Wraith.”

“But you didn’t believe your gut instinct.”

“Yes, sir, I did. But I didn’t rely on it. If I had, and I’d been wrong, whatever she did would have been my fault.”

Wedge nodded. “All right. Face, off the record, I think you fouled up, and this situation could have been resolved in a less catastrophic fashion if you hadn’t.”

Face nodded, his expression glum.

“But there’s nothing wrong with your logic. It wasn’t entirely a bad call. Just one made on incomplete data. I need you to understand that an officer who can’t rely on his own gut instinct is an officer who shouldn’t be commanding others.”

Face considered that. “I imagine you’re right, sir.”

“So work on it. Now get back to your unit and see if you can patch them up emotionally.”

Face had been gone only a moment when someone knocked.

Wedge shook his head. This was not going to be a good afternoon. “Come in.”

Donos entered his office and stood at attention.

Wedge let him remain that way. It had been a very few months ago that Donos had entered one of his offices for the very first time, remaining stiffly at attention just like this. Now, as then, the pilot’s features were expressionless; his gaze was carefully fixed on the wall over Wedge’s head.

“Yes?” Wedge said.

“After due reflection, I have concluded that my earlier intention was the correct one. I have come to formally resign my commission. It’s my only possible course of action.”

Wedge waited, but Donos didn’t elaborate. “Why?”

“I have performed acts that are an embarrassment to this unit and that will inevitably result in the end of my flying career. I feel that it is best to end it myself, without further inconvenience to you or to the unit.”

Wedge regarded him steadily. Yes, this was just like the first time, with Donos’s true thoughts hidden behind the mask of his face, kept rigidly at bay by his personal discipline. And his words had been so precise. “I’m sorry,” Wedge said, “I didn’t catch all of your last statement. ‘To end it myself—’ ”

“Without further inconvenience to you or to the unit. Sir.”

Wedge sighed. He rose, unfastened his right boot, drew it off, and stood it upright on his desktop. “You, too, Donos. Your right boot. Put it there.”

Confusion struggled with the imperturbability on Donos’s face. “Sir, I don’t understand.”

“Do it.”

When Donos complied, setting his boot beside Wedge’s, the commander sat, putting his feet up on the desk. “Lieutenant, sit down. Put your feet up. That’s an order.”

They sat, two officers each with one boot off, their feet up on the desk, for long moments of silence. Finally Donos said, “Sir, I don’t think you’re taking my request seriously.”

“You’d be surprised at how seriously I’m taking it. Now, start that little speech again, Lieutenant. Come on, you know it. It goes, ‘I have performed acts that are an embarrassment to this unit …’ ”

“You’re mocking me.”

“No, I’m testing a theory. I think that in this ridiculous pose, you won’t be able to convincingly recite the speech you have so laboriously written for yourself.

“Let me guess,” Wedge continued, and began counting off items on his fingers. “In your resignation speech, you take full responsibility for your actions. You throw yourself into the path of the oncoming investigation so that the unit will not suffer. You apologize eloquently. And with your words, you anaesthetize yourself so you don’t have to feel anything when your fellow pilots look at you or when your superior officers tell you what they think of you.”

Donos’s face flushed. He rose. “I didn’t come here for you to make fun of me—”

“Sit!” Wedge made a bellow of the word, and Donos flinched. “And get your feet back on top of the desk. Right now.”

Donos complied. His face did not fade to a normal color.

“That’s better. Now, let’s have it without the speech. In not just your own words but your real voice. Start.”

Donos looked as though he were silently practicing swear words. Then he said, “I’m here to resign my commission in Starfighter Command.”

“Because you want to, or because you feel you ought to?”

“Because it’s better to punch out before the oncoming missile hits you.”

“Well, that’s an ironic turn of phrase, in light of today’s events. Who is the incoming missile?”

“Whatever board investigates the events at Kidriff Five. And, if I may say so, sir, you.”

“I’m going to drum you out of Starfighter Command?”

“Yes, sir. You’ll have to.”

“I do not invite you to speak for me, Lieutenant. But let’s assume that I don’t have to do this, that the investigating board will do it. Why will they do it?”

“Because I deliberately shot at a fellow pilot, or a surrendering enemy, or whatever she was—” Donos’s voice was suddenly hoarse “—in the face of a superior’s orders not to do so.”

“When we landed, you said that you didn’t remember having fired. You didn’t remember anything about the critical seconds in which you turned toward your target and shot off a proton torpedo. Do you remember those events now?”

“No, sir.”

“So how do you know you fired deliberately?”

Donos frowned. “I—I—Can I put my feet down? I feel silly.”

“You may not. You’re supposed to feel silly. It makes it much harder to baffle me with elegantly designed speeches. What you may do is take your time in answering.”

Donos did. He took several long breaths and his face returned to a normal color. Finally, he said, “My assumption that I fired deliberately comes because such an act is completely in keeping with my mental state whenever I thought about what I’d do if I ever had the betrayer of Talon Squadron under my guns.”

“Very good. That’s a real answer. Now, tell me, based on your memories, not what’s consistent with your feelings prior to this event: Did you deliberately fire on Lara Notsil?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you deliberately disobey the orders of a superior officer?”

“I don’t know.”

“Very well. I’m going to put the incident down as ‘accidental discharge of a weapons system’ for the time being. That’s the way it goes in the record until an investigation determines otherwise.”

“And when the investigation determines otherwise, I go through a court-martial.”

“Possibly. But they might not determine otherwise. We may never know. And if they’re obliged to accept the ‘accidental-discharge’ theory because nothing else can be determined, your career will probably survive it. There will come a time, in the far future, when a peacetime Starfighter Command has too many pilots, and a blemish much less significant than this one will torpedo a career … but that’ll be a long time in coming.” Wedge gave Donos a frank and evaluative stare, one he knew to be intimidating. “Donos, do you know what I think happened?”

“No, sir.”

“I think that when you realized that Notsil had been partially or completely responsible for the deaths of your fellow Talon Squadron pilots, you lost all control and tried to kill her, in spite of danger to your fellow pilots and in spite of orders from a superior officer.”

Donos’s face registered shock. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. That’s what I’ve been trying to accept responsibility for.”

Wedge shook his head. “You haven’t been trying to accept responsibility. You’ve been trying to avoid it. Responsibility involves owning up to what you’ve done wrong and trying to make up for it.”

“I … don’t understand. Once again, I have no idea what you’re saying.”

“Why did you lose control? More specifically, why were no members of your squadron aware that you might lose control?”

“Obviously, there’s something still wrong in my head.”

“And obviously, you’ve discussed this problem with the medics.”

“No, sir.”

“You’ve discussed it with your wingmate.”

“No, sir.”

“Whom have you discussed it with in order to improve the situation?”

Donos looked away, struggling to keep distress off his face. “No one, sir.”

“Donos, that’s the responsibility you’ve dodged. Now, either you’re fit to fly or you’re not. How do we find out?”

“I guess I talk to the medics.”

“Talk to one of your squadmates first. One or more of them. Venting whatever pressure is in you is easier to survive if it’s done in atmosphere rather than in vacuum. And then talk to the medics.”

Donos didn’t meet his gaze, but nodded.

“You’re off the active flying roster until someone can tell me whether you’re fit to fly. And you’re not the person to tell me.”

Finally Donos looked at him and nodded again. “Understood, sir.”

“You did one thing right today, Donos. You probably don’t even know it. Your flight recorder and your astromech both indicate that you detonated your torpedo before it hit Captain Loran.”

“I don’t remember that, either.”

“But it’s the one reason that stands between you and my instant acceptance of your resignation. Dismissed.”

Donos took his feet from the desk. “Before I go, may I ask something?”

“Go ahead.”

“In the bay, you asked me something. You asked if we met Lara again, which Wraith I’d want to kill her instead of me. I still don’t understand why you asked. What the question even means.”

“Well, answer the question. Then I’ll explain why I asked.”

“I’m not sure I can. I don’t want to kill her, not anymore. I don’t want her to be dead. I’m not even sure I want her punished. She was an enemy when she gave Admiral Trigit the data on my squadron, then she became something that wasn’t an enemy.” His shrug suggested helplessness. “I don’t know what I want.”

“That’s what I thought. One reason I asked was to gauge your reaction to the thought of somebody killing Lara. You didn’t like that idea. And I also asked so you’d think about this: If we run up against her in an adversarial situation, and—in the faint likelihood that you’ll be piloting by that time—you lose control again and assault her, you may provoke her into fighting back. Correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If your squadmates see you having trouble with an enemy, they may come in to help you. Correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Which puts them in the position of possibly having to kill her. Which also puts her in the position of possibly having to kill one of them. The other half of that question was, which of your squadmates are you willing to sacrifice?”

“None, sir.”

“Then get your head fixed. Or I will accept your resignation.”

Donos rose and saluted. The expression on his face was a glum one. But, Wedge reflected, at least it was an expression.

When Donos and his boot were gone, Wedge let out a sigh and tried to relax. He’d had too many years of command not to have some experience at taking the attention and thoughts of a pilot and redirecting them, but it was still an effort, one that filled his gut with acid.

Donos was on the edge. Wedge recognized that. One step the wrong way and he’d be lost as a pilot, too erratic and undisciplined to be trustworthy.

But he hadn’t quite taken that step, and if Wedge could keep him from taking it, he’d save the New Republic the staggering number of credits that had been spent on Donos’s pilot training. He might even save a man whose warlike skills and impulses would not translate well to civilian life.

There was another rap at the door.

“Come.”

Wes Janson strolled in, datapad in hand, and stopped short. He stared at Wedge’s bootless foot. He said, “Should I ask?”

“Not unless you’d like me to decide on a new place for my boot to go.”

11

She was drifting, in pain, and knew she did not want to awaken. But something would not let her sleep. Not just the pain in her back. She opened her eyes.

Pink, she was floating in a sea of pink. No, nothing so poetic—she was suspended within a bacta tank, and the pain she felt suggested she was going to be here for some time to come.

But a female technician with a perky smile was outside, gesturing for her to rise to the top, so she gave a few feeble kicks and floated up through the cloying liquid.

When she broke the surface, a hand, a male hand, reached down to help disengage the breather unit from her face. When her vision cleared, she recognized the individual leaning across the top of the bacta tank, reaching in to assist her: it was that Twi’lek lawyer, Nawara Ven.

“Doctor Gast,” he said, “I have an offer for you. One half a million credits. Amnesty for all crimes to which you provide confession and full details. And a new identity—quite easy to manage, as you are already officially dead; only a couple of medics and three officers know you’re still alive. But this offer is only valid if you can tell us, among other things, the biological signs and markers that indicate when someone has been subjected to Zsinj’s brainwashing techniques.”

Gast let a slow smile spread across her features. “My, you have been doing your research.”

“We’ll keep today’s meeting short,” Wedge said. He looked out over his audience of pilots, trying to gauge their mood.

They were quiet. Few wisecracks. Little banter. They were even refraining from badgering Elassar Targon. A bad sign; morale was low.

“A recent attempt by a Sullustan pilot to crash a luxury liner onto Coruscant was thwarted by a fellow Sullustan officer. An attempt, also on Coruscant, by a Bothan civil services employee to cause an explosion at a power center was thwarted by his supervisor. Though, officially, both incidents were prevented by fellow workers, unofficially, they were prevented by New Republic Intelligence—who were following the blueprint we sent them for Zsinj’s operations. General Cracken sends his personal congratulations to the members of Wraith Squadron and Rogue Squadron who participated in our prediction sessions. Yes, Face?”

“Does this mean that the order keeping the Twi’lek crewmen off active duty is rescinded?”

“No. Officially, it’s not.” He nodded toward Dia Passik. “Unofficially, it is, pending an upcoming vote by the Provisional Council. Dia, you’re back on duty.”

“That’s not good enough,” Face said.

“I know,” Wedge said. “Zsinj has still wounded the New Republic. We’re going to have to bear up under it until the wounds close, and be happy that we prevented similar measures from being handed down against Sullustans and Bothans. But, Dia, it’s up to you. Do you want to fly?”

“I’ll fly,” she said. “I want my shot at Zsinj.”

“Good, because we have a heavy schedule ahead of us.” Wedge activated the holoprojector. The image of a broad belt of stars appeared beside him, with numerous points of light blinking within it. “We’re going to be bouncing in and out of Zsinj-controlled space, hitting his territories in some places, showing up in our ersatz Millennium Falcon in others. We’ll also be moving through the borders between New Republic territory and Zsinj’s, performing some routine assaults. Horn?”

The Rogue pilot lowered his hand. “Sir, Lara Notsil isn’t just gone, she has to have defected. She really has nowhere to go but the Empire or Zsinj, and that’s a fifty percent chance that the Falsehood scheme has been compromised.”

“That’s a very good point. It all boils down to the question of whether or not we believe her last transmissions. That she still considers herself a loyal Wraith. That she never betrayed us. Do you believe her?”

“No,” Horn said. “She may have believed what she was saying. But after talking to some of the Wraiths about her behavior, reviewing her conduct before Kidriff Five, I tend to think she’s a situational conformist with a few bolts loose in her skull. If she ends up in Zsinj’s hands, she’ll probably end up being a loyal officer of Zsinj’s.”

“That’s a reasonable interpretation,” Wedge said. “Don’t think I haven’t considered it. But I don’t believe it. I think that the Falsehood plan will remain secure, just as the Hawk-bats plan did. However, since I’ll be staking my life on this conclusion, and those of my pilots, I’ll accept, without prejudice, any request for transfer any of you has to offer me. Make them through routine channels after this briefing.

“More good news. We are now in the possession of information about the blood markers that indicate Zsinj brainwashing in a variety of humanoid species. All members of this task force, from General Solo to the most junior civilian crewmen, will be tested, and anyone returning from a shore leave or unmonitored departure from the fleet will be retested. We will not face the tragedy of Tal’dira and Nuro Tualin a second time.” He saw some expressions brighten.

“All right. Among our new weapons is a lot of data about the way Zsinj moves into a system currently in enemy hands and acquires control of businesses there.” That had been another benefit of the first interview with Dr. Gast; her uncle had helped him acquire his majority share in Binring Biomedical on Saffalore, and had told her of the precise techniques he had used. “On Zsinj-held worlds, we’ll be making strikes against the businesses that have to be providing him with the greatest amounts of money or necessary matériel, and we’ll be escorting more appearances by the Millennium Falsehood—both to lure him into an attack on General Solo and, we hope, to make him paranoid about treason on worlds he holds.”

There was more to it than that, details Wedge couldn’t give his pilots. There were no Imperial-held worlds on the task force’s hit list, because General Solo was forwarding to Admiral Teren Rogriss that same information about Zsinj’s business dealings. New Republic Intelligence would be ferreting out Zsinj-held businesses in New Republic territories, hoping to use some to lure Zsinj into a trap, cutting off Zsinj’s precious pipelines of money and matériel from others … and Imperial Intelligence would be doing exactly the same thing in Imperial-controlled territories.

General Solo and Admiral Rogriss, senior officers of two enemy governments making agreements that would be easy to interpret as treasonous … Wedge had to shake his head over that. It took a menace like Zsinj to make temporary allies of two men who would otherwise be bitter opponents.

“So. Mission One.” He shifted the holoprojector image to a single solar system, that of a red gas giant. “This is the Belsmuth system in Zsinj-controlled space. On the second planet in the system is what used to be one of the Empire’s finest technical universities. Now it’s an academy for Zsinj’s pilots and officers. Two days from now, it’s going to be a series of craters. Rogue Squadron will escort Nova Squadron in from north of the facility …”

“Lieutenant Petothel. Delighted to meet you.”

At the foot of the ladder to her X-wing cockpit, Lara shucked her helmet and turned to face the speaker. The man advancing toward Lara was tall and lean, with the crudest features she’d ever seen on a human being. The nails on the hand he offered gleamed like mirrors. She suspected that they were as sharp as a vibroblade.

She put on a broad smile that masked the sudden churning in her stomach. “I recognize your voice. General Melvar?” She took his hand.

“Correct. Welcome to Iron Fist. And thank you for dressing for the occasion.”

Lara smiled. She’d left her New Republic flight suit at Hawk-bat Base and was now dressed in a TIE fighter’s black jumpsuit, though it was adorned with the standard X-wing flight gear. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to be here at last.”

Melvar’s gesture took in her X-wing and her astromech, which was now being extracted from its berth by a hangar electromagnet. “Are you making a presentation to us of this vehicle?”

“No.” She laughed. “This Rebel starfighter and its astromech are all the property I have in the galaxy. If the warlord doesn’t choose to employ me, I’ll need them to continue on. To find someplace to call home.”

“Oh, I think the least you can count on is a medium-term civilian contract. You’re far more likely to receive an officer’s posting on Iron Fist. But let’s find out.” Melvar led Lara out of the hangar, which otherwise was occupied by Imperial-style vehicles and personnel. From the number of TIE interceptors and Lambda-class shuttles, she suspected that this was the senior officers’ hangar.

She was sure of it a minute later—its proximity to Zsinj’s personal office made it a certainty. She was led into the presence of the warlord like an honored guest. Zsinj actually rose as she entered the office, giving her a little formal bow. “Gara Petothel. So happy to meet you at last.”

“You’re the warlord,” she said, keeping her voice pert. “I won’t try to compete with you in degrees of happiness.”

Zsinj’s smile broadened. “Very good. She gives me my due, yet steals it back by making her presence the one that induces more happiness. Did you see that, General?”

“I saw.” The general hovered, standing a meter behind Lara’s chair, to the left. She forced herself to stay relaxed. She couldn’t let him know how tense his presence made her.

“Lieutenant Petothel—may I call you Gara, at least until we have questions of your employment settled?”

“Please do.”

“Gara, we must know.” The general’s mobile features took on an expression of sympathy, of worry. “We dispatched a team to make arrangements for your employ, and possibly your extraction, to Aldivy. We received word from their contacts several days later that our agents had been found—or, rather, their bodies, badly decomposed. What happened?”

Lara offered a little sigh of vexation. “I traveled to Aldivy in the company of an officer of Wraith Squadron. I’d intended to make an offering of him and his X-wing to the contact team. He was the final member of Talon Squadron, which I helped Admiral Trigit destroy. I thought he was one lingering detail I ought to deal with. But what I didn’t know until later is that the idiot had fallen in love with me. He was supposed to stay with the X-wings; instead, he followed me. Well, in my opening negotiations with your captain, my brother—that is, the real Lara Notsil’s brother—got testy, drew a blaster, just a show of intimidation … and Lieutenant Donos fired upon him, killing him. Then he finished up by killing your captain. I had to cover up my tracks after that, not attempt any further communications with you for a while, as I was under some scrutiny during the review.”

Zsinj nodded. “But, obviously, you came away clean.”

“Oh, yes. For a while. Unfortunately, on Coruscant, one of the Wraiths stumbled across some information on my mother, who’d been with Imperial Intelligence. He noticed a resemblance, did some research … and then confronted me during a mission. With my cover blown, with it now impossible for me to uncover any more information to offer you, I fled.”

“How did you manage to contact us?”

Though Zsinj’s expression was open, innocent, Lara knew he had to be aware of every fact of the story. Still, she was playing his game by his rules. “When my so-called brother contacted me initially, he mentioned a company that might want to employ me—that is, Lara, his real sister. After I was forced to flee Mon Remonda, I decided to look into that firm, in case it was a front for your operations. And it was, one you’d set up only a couple of weeks prior to the first contact I received.”

“Well, excellent.” Zsinj reviewed a screen full of data on his terminal, data Lara could not see. “I am, unfortunately, too pressed for time to give you all the attention I should like, so let’s jump straight into the dogfight, shall we? I can offer you a commission at the rank of naval lieutenant. You’d be an analyst aboard Iron Fist. While you go through your first few weeks of orientation, we’d like to pry from you every bit of knowledge you can give us on Mon Remonda, General Solo, Commander Antilles, and Antilles’s squadrons. Does that suit you?”

Lara made her voice a purr. “It suits me very well. May I keep my X-wing and R2?”

Zsinj’s face registered mild surprise. “Why would you want to? We can give you something far better.”

“Well, they’re souvenirs. Of my victory over a rather vehement idiot named Atton Repness. They used to belong to him.”

Zsinj exchanged a blank look with Melvar, then shrugged. “Of course. We have a deal, then? Excellent. Welcome to Iron Fist, Lieutenant Petothel.”

Lara shot to her feet, schooling her features to absolute blankness, and saluted.

Zsinj looked startled for a moment, then chuckled. “I admire the way you switch gears, Lieutenant. You’re off duty until we come up with an itinerary for you. One of those pasty-faced ensigns out there will take you to your new quarters and act as your guide for your first few days. Wander as you will. And welcome.” At last, he returned her salute.

“Thank you, sir.” With military precision, she spun on her heel and exited the office.

The “pasty-faced ensign” awaiting her outside was anything but. Tall, dark-haired, and solemn, he had the hard look of a front-line soldier who’d received a field promotion. He identified himself as Ensign Gatterweld and led her first back to the hangar where her X-wing waited—so that she might pick up her R2 unit, Tonin—and then to her quarters. He spoke little.

It was a long walk, and the finality of what she’d done finally hit Lara.

She was surrounded by countless tons of machinery whose sole purpose was to rain death down on people she had ultimately chosen to protect.

Except for one R2 unit, she was alone, a secret enemy of those who now employed her, a public enemy of those to whom she desperately wanted to return.

She saw a trapezoidal little utility droid zipping along the hall, steering like a frightened animal out of the path of officers walking along the corridor, and imagined herself the human equivalent of such a machine—so small and inconsequential that she posed no threat, that she could not determine even the smallest detail of her own fate.

Then, five steps later, she realized how she was going to destroy Iron Fist.

“What do you think?” Zsinj asked.

Melvar let his features go slack. All the menace and cruelty in them vanished. “Certainly, some of what she was saying was the truth. I just have difficulty trusting Intelligence types.”

“Such as yourself.”

“I was never with Imperial Intelligence. I just saw them as a likely enemy and schooled myself in their skills and tactics.” Melvar shrugged. “I’ve received early word from the technicians examining her astromech. It’s a new-model R2, very much state-of-the-art, and has received a recent memory scrub. It remembers the jump from Aldivy to our rendezvous point, but nothing else. It had a restraining bolt on it when she arrived.”

Zsinj smiled. “Very appropriate. Innocuously appropriate. Keep a close eye on her. Extract every possible bit of information out of her. If she remains loyal, reward her. If she proves to be disloyal—”

“I can guess the rest.”

“Why me?” Janson asked.

He lay on his bunk, hands behind his head, looking dubiously at his visitor.

“I can’t go to a friend,” said Donos. He sat in Janson’s chair, leaning back on its rear legs so his shoulders rested on the wall. “I don’t have any.”

“Not since you shot at the last one.”

Donos managed a mirthless smile. “I can’t go to a subordinate officer. I’d just feel uncomfortable. Or to a superior.”

“Which leaves the rest of us lucky lieutenants.”

“Pretty much.”

“So talk. I’m game. It’s been years since I ruined the life of a fellow lieutenant. Well, weeks, anyway.”

“I’m not sure where to begin. I don’t know whether I’m crazy or not. I just know that before Talon Squadron was destroyed, I was a different man. Self-control, self-composure were easy. Afterward, I had to work so hard to manage everything. If I didn’t …”

“If you didn’t, what?”

“I don’t know. I never found out. I was so good at managing everything. Except for that collapse. And the other day, with Lara.”

“How many times did Lara slap you?”

“Slap me? Never.”

“Why not?”

“I never gave her reason to.”

“Right. Since you became a pilot, how many times have you been picked up by military police for being drunk and belligerent?”

“Never.”

“But you drink.”

“In moderation.”

Janson sighed. “You see, I was operating under the assumption that you’d actually died with Talon Squadron but had failed to notice. But I was wrong! You’ve been dead since you joined Starfighter Command. Maybe longer, maybe since you were with the Corellian armed forces.”

Donos frowned. “I’d appreciate it if you’d explain that.”

With a single, fluid move, Janson sat upright, spun ninety degrees to his right, and set his heels on the floor. “Sure,” he said. “It’s simple. You’re dead. I’m not. Let me demonstrate.” He stood up on his bed, then began bouncing up and down. “Did you ever do this as a kid?”

“Of course.”

“Did you ever do it as a grown-up?”

“Of course not.”

“You say ‘of course’ a lot, and it’s always wrong. Tell me, Myn. How do I look?”

“Well, stupid.”

“Exactly!” With an exuberant bound, Janson leaped off his cot, smacked his head on the ceiling, and swore as he landed on the floor again. He rubbed his head and glared at the treacherous ceiling. “When was the last time you looked stupid?”

“I don’t know.”

Janson leaned in close to him. “Try to understand this. I’ll say it slowly. I want you to remember it for the rest of your life.

“You can’t look dignified when you’re having fun.”

“Assuming that’s true—so what?”

“If you’re not having fun, you’re not enjoying your life. If you’re not enjoying your life—why even bother being alive?” Janson gave an eloquent shrug. “Myn, I’m living on borrowed time. I’ve nearly been killed more times than, than, well, more times than you’ve been slapped, certainly. If I wait until some imaginary distant point in my life to start enjoying it, I’ll be dead before I get there. But if I get killed tomorrow, at least I can be pretty sure that I enjoyed myself more than whoever’s killing me. You understand?”

“Not really.”

Suddenly deflated, Janson sat on his bed again. “Let’s try it a different way. You want to be in control so you don’t foul up some horrible way. But you’re so in control that you’re basically a walking dead man. Since you’re dead, you had nothing to offer Lara. You have nothing to offer Wedge—he’s got plenty of dead pilots, doesn’t need another one. Most of them are smart enough to stay where we plant them, though.”

“So what do you recommend?”

“Get drunk. Get slapped. Do something you always wanted to do as a child, especially if it’s something that would humiliate you today. If you’re going to get kicked out of Starfighter Command, make it for something you can be proud of.” Something beeped in one of Janson’s pockets. He pulled it out, a comlink, and held it up to his ear to listen. He brightened. “Automatic signal. The Rogues and the Millennium Falsehood are back. No losses. Sorry, I have to run, have to figure out what to razz Wedge about.” He darted for the door and was gone.

Donos shook his head. “I’m asking career advice from a nine-year-old.”

The door to the Falsehood’s hangar slid open before Janson reached it. Out came a repulsorlift cargo sled, pushed by a single Mon Remonda technician. On the sled was a crate, two meters long by one wide and high. The crate rocked on the sled and odd noises, like a faint and garbled voice, emerged from it.

Wedge walked out behind the technician and stopped short when he saw Janson. He made a noise of exasperation and slapped the gloves he carried into his open palm. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”

“See what?” Janson stared after the departing technician and cargo. “What was that?”

“That was Lieutenant Kettch.”

Janson gave Wedge a close look. Wedge certainly didn’t look crazy. “Um, please correct me if I’m wrong, but Lieutenant Kettch is fictitious. An Ewok pilot who doesn’t exist. I should know. I made him up.”

“He’s not fictitious anymore.”

“Now he’s real?”

Wedge stepped out so the hangar door could close behind him. “On planetside, while we were waiting for the Falsehood to be spotted, Tycho found a store where they sold exotic animals to wealthy Zsinj supporters who enjoy that sort of thing. One of the ‘animals’ was a full-grown Ewok male named Chulku. When we were preparing to blast off and do our usual number on the pursuit, Tycho staged a jailbreak and we brought Chulku along. While we were flying back, I had an idea—if Zsinj ever does need to see the Hawk-bats, we could have an actual Lieutenant Kettch for him.” He nodded after the sled. “Chulku is pretty bright, and we think we can teach him which TIE interceptor controls to touch and which not to—I doubt we can teach him to fly without years of education, but we can make him look authentic in a cockpit.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Now we just need to build him those prosthetic hand-and-leg attachments Kettch is supposed to have so he can manipulate a starfighter’s controls.”

“Still crazy.”

Wedge smiled. “And since you had the bad luck to witness his arrival, you get to be part of the crew who takes him food. Welcome to the conspiracy, Wes.”

Janson shook his head. “Now I’m crazy.”

The TIE interceptor hurtling toward Lara in a head-to-head run juked and jinked in what seemed like a random pattern, but the maneuvers did not seem to throw the pilot off. His linked laser fire angled in ever more accurately toward Lara’s interceptor.

She, too, threw her starfighter back and forth, up and down, in an effort to keep the enemy laser fire from hitting her. She was successful—the two fighters passed with no damage to her craft. But she hadn’t gotten off a single accurate shot at her enemy.

The second she flashed past the enemy TIE, she hauled back on the flight stick, gaining relative altitude with such a sharp maneuver that she felt the g-forces pull her down into her pilot’s couch despite the ship’s inertial compensator. A moment later she was upside down and headed back the way she had come—

Straight into the path of her opponent.

The enemy pilot fired a split second before she could bring her lasers in line. Her TIE shuddered under the impact and slewed to port.

But it held together. There was no shriek of hull breach, no warning of imminent detonation. She’d been grazed.

“I’m hit!” she said. “I’m done for.” She jerked her control yoke to send her spinning in the direction she was already headed.

She counted to two, then snapped her interceptor back around to face her opponent. The enemy TIE jittered in her targeting computer—

But he was much closer than she would have guessed, a mere quarter kilometer away, and was already lined up for a shot. Before she could hit her laser trigger, the sensor system shrieked a recognition of her enemy’s targeting lock—

Then her viewport went dead.

The artificial gravity, which simulated zero gravity and high-angle maneuvers, turned off and she dropped at full weight into her pilot’s couch. She sighed.

A voice crackled over her comm unit. It was deep, with a trace of the Corellian accent that occasionally crept into the speech of Han Solo and Wedge Antilles. “That was very good flying. And the last trick, pretending to be out of control, almost fooled me. I commend you.”

“Who am I talking to?”

“My name is Fel. Baron Soontir Fel.”

Lara’s insides went cold. When she was a crewman aboard Implacable, she’d never even been aware of the presence of Fel and the 181st there, so secret had their mission been. Now, at last, she’d be able to meet the most dangerous pilot who served her enemies.

With her fear, there was a rush of elation. With Wraith Squadron, Lara had flown in simulators against Wedge Antilles, the best the New Republic had to offer. Now she had flown against Baron Fel. She’d competed against the very best pilots two governments had to offer.

Too bad she lost most of the time.

“A pleasure to meet you,” she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t offer you more competition.”

“Don’t be,” he said. “You’re very good. More work, and you might train up to the standards of the One Eighty-first. Shall I keep you in my records as a candidate for the group?”

“I’d be honored. Can I buy the victor a drink?”

“Unfortunately, I have more simulations to fly—and it appears that you don’t. Some other time, though.”

The hatch behind Lara opened and Ensign Gatterweld thrust his face in. “Need any help?”

“No, thank you.” She was getting sick of the ubiquitous Gatterweld. Except when she was in her quarters, in the tiny office where she wrote her commentary on her time with Wraith Squadron, and in simulators, Gatterweld was there. Her shadow.

She unclipped the netting that, in a real TIE interceptor, would have kept her bound in place on the pilot’s couch, and threw it to one side, then hauled herself backward and out of the open hatch at the rear of the ball-shaped simulator. Outside, the air was cooler and the omnipresent hum of Iron Fist’s engines was in her ears again.

Gatterweld handed her the pack in which she carried her datapad and other equipment. He looked at the control board where her standings were displayed. “You did pretty well.”

“Do you fly?”

“I can pilot shuttles now. I don’t have the reflexes for starfighters. Hand to hand is my game. Where to now? The cafeteria?”

Lara checked her chrono. “No, it’s late. I think I’ll just turn in.”

As they walked past the banks of control stations set up to monitor the simulators, she saw what she needed—a device she would kill for. A set of monitor goggles and attached microphone. They lay unguarded on one of the control stations, their owner away, perhaps on break.

As she and Gatterweld passed the station, she contrived to get her left foot tangled in his legs. He tripped forward, swearing, while she stumbled and fell sideways—snatching up the set of goggles and tucking them into her pack as she hit the floor.

He scrambled to his feet. “I’m sorry. Are you hurt?”

She took the hand he offered and let him half haul her to her feet. She winced as she put her weight on her left leg. “A bruise, maybe. Not your fault. I think I had a cramp from all the time in the simulator.”

“Can you walk? I can summon a stretcher—”

“No, I’d better walk it off. Thank you.”

She maintained the pretense of her limp all the way to the door to her quarters, and inside as well—though she hadn’t spotted the holocam, she knew there had to be one. Or two, or three. She wasn’t trusted, and with Zsinj in charge, that meant there were holocams on her in her quarters.

She set her pack down inside the closet and took a look around. She’d been given sizable quarters, appropriate to a naval lieutenant on track to promotion. She actually had a decent-sized bedroom with a full terminal and a closet, a small office, and a separate refresher chamber. Much better accommodations than she’d enjoyed on Mon Remonda.

Tonin, her R2, sat in the middle of the bedroom. He came alive when she entered, offering up whistles and clicks that she interpreted as a polite interrogative. He was almost a stranger to her now, had been so since she’d wiped his memory on Aldivy.

But that would change soon.

“I’m fine, Tonin. Just tired.”

Once in bed, she deliberately changed position every two or three minutes, tossing and turning, a show of insomnia for whoever was monitoring her holocams. She did this for an hour. Then she sat up and ran a hand through her catastrophically tousled hair.

Tonin beeped another question.

“Sorry, but I’m going to need the patch of metal where you’re resting. Scoot into the closet, would you?”

With a series of musical tones suggesting that he was hurt by her suggestion, Tonin rolled into the closet. He turned his head around so his main holocam eye could still observe her.

Lara rose and pulled the mattress from her bed onto the floor, then redistributed pillows and sheets on it. She made sure that one of the sheets reached as far as Tonin’s wheels.

She reached into the bag in her closet and hunted around for something within it with her left hand. With her right, she extracted the monitoring goggles and scooted them under the edge of the sheet on the floor, then plugged the goggles’ cord into a jack in Tonin’s side, hoping—nearly certain—that her body shielded the action from the viewpoint of most of the places holocams might be situated in her room.

Finally she grasped the object that she’d pretended not to be able to find. She stood and stared at it, turning so the holocams could get a good look at it. A bottle of tuber liquor from Aldivy, nasty stuff the locals there adored.

She stared at it for long moments, as if contemplating its medicinal qualities, then shook her head and placed it on the top shelf of her closet. A moment later, she slipped under the sheets over her mattress, rolled around a moment to find the most comfortable spot, pulled the sheets up over her head, and lay still.

The very junior intelligence officer watching this display began typing, ever so tentatively, into his terminal. 24:00 hours, he typed. Subject situated herself on mattress on floor. Entered sleep state almost immediately. First considered alcohol as soporific, but decided against. Cause of sleeplessness unknown. Bed too soft? Guilt?

“Don’t forget simple stress.”

The voice sounded right in his ear and he jumped two handspans. He’d thought he was alone in the room. He looked up into the face of General Melvar. “Uhh, thank you, sir. We’d call that occupational anxiety or excitement from lifestyle transition.”

“Do you get paid more for using more words?”

“No, sir, but the medics like them.”

Melvar snorted. “Well, add it any way you want to.”

“Yes, sir.”

Melvar spared one last look at the overhead view of Lara’s still bed, then left as quietly as he’d arrived.

With movements almost imperceptibly slow, Lara drew the monitoring goggles onto her head and turned them on. The goggles, drawing power from the link with Tonin, activated with a faint hum.

She whispered, “Tonin. Aldivian colloquialism. Definition: Little Atton.”

Then she waited.

If she was right, if she’d done her work correctly, the passwords she’d just spoken would be causing events to transpire deep within her R2 unit. The extra hardware she had buried within his power unit would be activating. The memory backup it contained would be pouring out across the droid’s circuitry, appending itself to and overwhelming Tonin’s current programming.

And in a few moments, once again, she would have a—

A single word, READY, appeared before her eyes. It looked as though it were sculpted out of metal and floating in darkness a meter from her, but she knew that it was merely being projected onto the goggles she wore.

“Don’t communicate audibly,” she whispered, though Tonin’s transmission of his first query as text suggested that he understood the need for secrecy. The fact that all data being transmitted between them was going across a direct wire connection made it very unlikely that her observers would be able to detect their communication. “Before we do anything, I want to apologize.”

FOR WHAT?

“For being selfish,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have brought you. I’ve put you in danger. I may get myself killed here, and if I do, the same will probably happen to you.”

I’M GLAD I’M HERE.

“Me, too. You’re my only friend, Tonin.” She closed her eyes for a moment, all too aware of how pathetic that sounded. Then she forced them open. “I also have to apologize for what I’ve done to you. I wiped your main memory on Aldivy. Anytime anyone but me puts a restraining bolt on you or opens you up, your memory will wipe. Anytime I say the right words, your backup memory will reload. So you may experience some memory gaps. I’m sorry. It’s the only way to keep you safe.”

I UNDERSTAND, LARA.

“I had an idea as to how we can destroy Iron Fist. You’ll have to do most of the work. But if we succeed, you may become the most famous R2 unit ever. Well, maybe second, after Artoo-Detoo.”

THAT WOULD BE NICE. WOULD THE WRAITHS LIKE YOU AGAIN?

“No. They’ll never like me again. So I have to do this for myself. I have to do this because it’s right. I have to do this because I have nothing else to do.”

WHAT DO I DO?

“Well, Zsinj, except when he’s paying for really good employees and mercenaries, is notoriously cheap. Which means he probably won’t have my quarters monitored when I’m not in them. If I stay away from my quarters all day long, that gives you plenty of time to work. I’ll tell you what you need to do. But first … when we’re alone like this … could you call me Kirney?”

YES, KIRNEY.

12

Half an hour after Lara’s departure from her quarters the next morning, Tonin became active. He rolled out of the closet to the door, deployed and extended his fine-work grasper arm, and got to work on the door controls. Within minutes, he had rewired the controls and mechanism so he could open the door and close it fractionally as well as fully.

He opened the door a bare three centimeters and extended his video sensor through it nearly at floor level, giving him a 360-degree view of the corridor. A passerby was not likely to notice the slight gap in the doorway or the protrusion from it.

He waited.

It was nearly an hour before his first opportunity arose. Certainly, in that time, many of the trapezoidal MSE-6 utility droids passed his doorway, but always under the eye of a passerby. This time, one little droid, rodentlike in its scurrying motion and nervousness, was alone, unobserved.

Tonin signaled it, a chirp that constituted a come-here order. The droid stopped its forward progress, turned toward the doorway, ran the request through its very simple processor, and determined that accepting this new order was not likely to delay accomplishment of its standing orders significantly. It approached the door.

Tonin snapped his heavy grasper arm out through the gap and snared the little droid. It gave a squeal of alarm and spun its wheels into reverse, but he hauled it up off its wheels. Tonin opened the door wide enough to accommodate his prey, then dragged the little droid through and closed the door.

Then he got to work.

He laid the utility droid on its back. Its wheels spun in helpless panic. With his fine-work arm, he popped open the access hatch on the droid’s underside and extended his scomp-link into the opening.

As new programming flooded its tiny brain, the utility droid quieted.

By day’s end, Tonin was in command of three of the utility droids, and one had managed to bring him some of the components—magnetic track strips to replace wheels—he needed to begin their modifications.

Wedge’s four squadrons—Rogue, Wraith, Polearm, and Nova—executed mission after mission, one after another, sometimes two in a single day. Most missions involved only one squadron. In others, one squadron would escort and protect the B-wings of Nova, or Wraith Squadron would be inserted at ground level and then ground-guide the precise bombing runs of one or two of the other starfighter units. Some missions involved nothing more than carefully inserting the Falsehood, then very publicly escorting the ship, usually with Wedge and Chewbacca at the controls, out into space and safety.

By the end of one week, the fighter pilots of Mon Remonda began to lose track of what day of the calendar it was, and had little time left to them for anything but mission briefings, the missions themselves, and sleep.

By the end of one week, between Wedge’s missions and those an Imperial admiral was executing in another part of the galaxy, the Warlord Zsinj had lost more millions of credits than any New Republic fighter pilot could ever hope to accumulate.

•    •    •

Melvar entered the warlord’s office as silently as ever. Zsinj, turned to stare into his terminal, didn’t react. Melvar took the chair before his desk, no longer bothering to keep his movement quiet, and still there was no reaction. Finally, Melvar coughed.

“They’re killing me.” Zsinj shook his head sorrowfully as he stared at the data on the terminal screen beside his desk. “They want me dead, Melvar.”

“Of course they do,” the general said. “You’re their greatest enemy. It is to your considerable credit that they want you dead.”

“Look at this. My businesses are being seized up and down Imperial space—and Rebel space. The Counterpunch puts in at Vispil and is blown out of space by planetary authorities who refused to stay bribed. A half dozen of my best earners bombed out of existence on worlds within my own borders. Eight percent of my income eliminated in a week. And everywhere, the Millennium Falcon flitting around, fomenting more rebellion.” He sighed. “And my Funeral Project crews around Coruscant? Suddenly, completely ineffectual. A half dozen acts of terrorism or sedition closed down almost before they’re enacted. The rifts between humans and nonhumans in the Rebel government are healing. All my work, years of work, coming undone.”

“Mere setbacks, sir.”

“No. Can’t you feel it? The hordes of my enemies are drawing closer, their claws outstretched, reaching for me.” Zsinj heaved a sigh. “I think, I really think, they are poised to undo me. I think Doctor Gast talked before she died. I think the Rebels and Imperials are cooperating.”

“Impossible.”

“Not impossible. You yourself said I was their greatest enemy. What else could give them the incentive to cooperate?”

Melvar was silent for long moments. In all the years he’d worked with the warlord, this was not the saddest he’d seen him, but it was the most resigned, the most fatalistic. It was a startling change. The warlord had always been an unstoppable force of optimism and will. Now, despite the fact that his girth had not diminished, he seemed somehow reduced.

“Do you think they’ll win?” Melvar asked.

Zsinj took a deep breath, then nodded. “I think, in a sense, they already have. They’ve stopped my processes. They’ve set their own in motion. Theirs are replacing mine, and I can’t seem to do anything about it.”

“So what will it take to pull a victory out of this? Tell me the minimum you need. We’ll achieve that, and more.”

Zsinj switched off his terminal screen and thought. He swung ponderously around to face Melvar and began counting off on his fingers. “One. We retain Iron Fist.”

“Count on it.”

“Two. We retain enough businesses to start again.”

“That will be harder. As much as we’ve done to keep your businesses isolated from one another, some leakage of information has obviously occurred. The more they capture, the more they seem to be able to capture. But, statistically, they can’t find everything. We’ll have a solid core left.”

“Three. We have time to rebuild, repair, recover.”

“For that, we’ll definitely have to use the Second Death for her intended purpose. But we can do that.”

“Four. We come up with our next plan for the elimination of the New Republic.”

“I think that means Rancor Base and the Force-witches. We have to learn what they do and how they do it. Another path we can take, weapons the Rebels and the Empire can’t cope with.”

“And Five. Which actually takes place before Three. We kill General Han Solo and as many of his friends and aides as is humanly possible.”

“That,” Melvar said, “will be the most enjoyable part of the operation.”

Zsinj showed up at Lara’s new work station in the bridge pit, as apparently cheerful as usual. “Lieutenant Petothel. How are you settling in?”

“Very well,” she said. “I can’t describe how good it is to be doing this kind of work again.”

“Good, good. But the first few days you looked, if I may be indelicate, a little tired. Rings under the eyes. A general malaise.”

She nodded. “It took me a while to get used to ship’s routine. I had to make some adjustments to my sleeping patterns.” Not surprising, as it had proved difficult to get any sleep when she was talking and programming with Tonin all night long. “But I’m over it.”

“Have you had a chance to look over the data package I transmitted to you this morning?”

“Yes.”

“Your conclusions?”

Lara became aware that the operatives at the consoles on either side of her, though they were continuing to do their work, were listening intently to this exchange. She smiled. Intelligence operatives were the same everywhere. “Well, first, whoever compiled that data did an inadequate job of making the events anonymous. I recognize the first mission as the Millennium Falcon escort to Kidriff Five. I was there, after all. Which means that Prime Target is the Falcon, and Secondary Target is, roughly, Commander Antilles’s entire command of Rebel starfighters.”

Zsinj nodded, his expression glum. “So much for secrecy. What do you conclude from their behavior?”

“General Solo is trying to separate you from the income that sustains your fleet, and is personally rabble-rousing while he’s at it.”

“Why?”

Lara gave him a smile that suggested contempt for their subject matter. It was easy; she only had to let her contempt for Zsinj rise to the surface. “He thinks he’s an important man. That his presence is the only thing that can inspire Rebel sympathies in the population. Based on what I’ve personally observed of the man, I’d say he’s desperate. He hasn’t had any real success in his mission against you. If he fails, he gets replaced; if he gets replaced, he loses all his status.”

“I never had the impression that he cares about status.”

“He doesn’t.” She almost hesitated on the enormity of the lie she’d concocted, the one that Zsinj, in all his ego, must inevitably accept. “But the woman he loves does.”

“Ahhh.”

“He knows that as a dirt-poor smuggler, he can’t keep a princess’s affection. But as a Rebel general, he can.”

“But only if he’s successful.”

“Correct.”

“Interesting interpretation.”

“There’s more.” Lara pressed on, hoping Zsinj would not detect the queasiness she was feeling.

She had an idea, based on the pattern the Millennium Falsehood was demonstrating, as to which world or worlds the ersatz Han Solo would visit next. But was this a conclusion that Zsinj and his intelligence people were supposed to have drawn, or had she come to a conclusion based on her superior knowledge of the Wraiths, a conclusion that would endanger her former squadmates? She didn’t know, and the uncertainty ate at her. She had to trust her instincts, though, and her instincts said that the Falsehood’s mission profiles came about from meticulous planning that Zsinj was eventually supposed to interpret.

“They’re progressing from world to world in your territories based on a number of factors. The degree to which a world is known outside the borders you control. Estimated planetary production that can be applied to your fleet funding. Proximity to New Republic space so they can make quick escapes. Comparative morale value of hitting specific targets. Suspected presence of pro-Rebel factions.”

“I know that. Unfortunately, considering how many worlds I control, that still doesn’t give us a pattern.”

“Yes, it does. There’s one more factor. Former trade relations, direct or indirect, with the planet Alderaan.”

Zsinj rocked back on his heels. “That would make sense.”

“Yes, sir. On such worlds, there’s a higher likelihood that there will be people who sympathize with Princess Leia and the other Alderaanians who were off-world when the first Death Star destroyed that planet. Also, in my opinion, they’re more likely to be planets that Princess Leia will have heard of, thereby increasing her recognition of Solo’s deeds when he tells her of them.”

“Very good, very good.” Zsinj’s eyes lost focus as he considered Lara’s words. “What does that suggest Solo’s next target will be?”

“I give a very high probability to Comkin Five, and just slightly less high a likelihood to the Vahaba Asteroid Belt.” Comkin was a Zsinj-controlled world known for its candies and medicines—two industries inextricably tied together on that world—and Vahaba was known not only for its asteroid-mining operations but for the skill of its metal fabricators. She knew a little about Vahaba; it was in a well-populated cluster of stars, not far from Halmad, where the Wraiths had acted as pirates not long ago.

“Well. Interesting speculation. Thank you, Lieutenant.” Still distracted, Zsinj turned to depart the bridge, not even seeing Lara’s salute.

General Melvar caught up with Zsinj in the corridor just outside the bridge. “Well?”

“There’s a proper query to give a superior officer. It’s not ‘Well?’ Something more like, ‘Sir, a moment of your time, I wished to inquire about your recent interview with the subject under observation.’ ”

Melvar said, “I can phrase all such requests so as to waste a maximum amount of your time, of course.”

Zsinj smiled. “Never mind.” He told him of Lara’s speculations, then said, “What I don’t know is whether she came to this conclusion honestly, or whether she was privy to some of their mission profile before she left Mon Remonda and is now presenting it as a sudden realization on her part.”

“Either way, the information is valuable … so long as she’s not leading us into a trap.”

“We’ll find out. Dispatch half the ready fleet to lie in wait at Vahaba, and we’ll take the other half personally to Comkin.”

•    •    •

Donos lay waiting on the craft he had fabricated from rubbish.

Portions of the thing had begun their existence as the gravitational unit in a TIE fighter simulator. When coordinated with the simulator’s computer, they would exert artificial gravity around the pilot, drawing him left, right, down, up, all in artful mimicry of the sort of g-forces the pilot would experience in sharp turns and other maneuvers.

But the simulator had grown old, had become too unreliable even for recreational use, and it had been dragged to a corridor outside a refuse chamber. There Donos, doing a tour of the unfrequented portions of Mon Remonda, a habit that had recently become part of his regular routine, had found it.

He’d liberated still-functioning portions of the gravitational unit. He’d installed computer gear to ensure that the unit would exert appropriate force downward even when the unit was tilting, would detect obstacles, would exert repulsorlift power against obstacles. To this he had added a padded layer that was part of the simulator’s pilot’s couch and a battery to supply power.

Now, in one of the ship’s lonely cargo areas, he lay on his stomach atop the junk he had assembled. It hovered a half meter above the floor, humming, motionless.

Of course it was motionless. It had no engine, no motivation.

Except for him. And to set it into motion, to make it do what it was designed to do, would be to look stupid.

His legs extended off the back of his jury-rigged vehicle. He brought them down to gain purchase with the floor and kicked off, setting his craft into motion. He kicked again and again, building up speed as he floated between shelves of stored materials toward a distant bulkhead. Halfway down, he kicked once more, sideways, setting his craft into a spin, and drew himself into a ball atop it.

His floating sled spun haphazardly, coming within half a meter of a shelving unit before the sled’s repulsor unit reacted to the proximity of the thing and bounced him back the other way. Like a ball, he careened from shelf to shelf across the open space in between, coming within handspans of impact but never quite hitting, while he floated toward the bulkhead wall.

Eventually, forward momentum almost spent, he floated to within a half meter of the bulkhead and came to a stop.

“Well, that looked good.”

Donos rolled onto his side to get a look at the speaker. Wes Janson stood a few meters away. He must have approached up the walkway that ran along the bulkhead wall.

“I’m amazed it held together,” Donos said. “I expected to have the whole thing fail halfway through and toss me into a stack of crates.”

“Is it fun?”

Donos nodded. “Pretty much.”

“You don’t look too amused.”

“I imagine I did a moment ago.” Donos rose to his feet, gripped his craft by its one handle, and depressed what had once been a pilot’s yoke trigger. The craft dropped as it depowered; he hauled it upright. “But even fun isn’t much fun. I keep wishing Lara were here.”

Janson nodded, sympathy plain on his features. “Yeah. But you’re about to get more people here than you probably want. We’re doing some inventory here in a few minutes. You probably ought to try the main corridor down in Engineering. It’s long enough, and I’m sure the engineers would be interested in seeing your kludge.”

“Probably.” Donos checked his chrono. “A little later, though. I have somewhere to be.”

The moment Donos was out of sight, Wedge slipped out from a second-level shelf full of foodstuff packages. “Well, that was interesting.”

“Wedge! Why don’t you scare the other half of my life out of me? How long were you waiting there?”

“About fifteen minutes. During most of which, Donos just sat there, waiting to decide whether or not to play his game.”

“Well, he did. A good sign.”

“I hope so.” Wedge reached behind the first row of stacked food crates and dragged another one up front. This one, like the others, was labeled BANTHA STEAK, DEHYDRATED, 250 GRAMS RESTORED, INDIVIDUALLY PACKAGED. But the top was ajar and the smell wafting from the crate, something like fruit and leaf compost, was not reminiscent of bantha meat. Wedge reached into the crate’s top and drew out a bowl full of brownish lumps Janson couldn’t identify. “Now, you’ve fed Kettch before, correct?”

“No. You and whatever crew you’ve been using haven’t brought me in before now.”

“That’s right.” Wedge led Janson toward the forward doors out of the cargo area. “There are still some security concerns, since Kettch was supposed to be a Hawk-bat, not a New Republic pilot. So we’re limiting the personnel who see him. He gets one bowlful like this, three times a day. We have him set up near an officers’ mess that General Solo isn’t using, since he doesn’t entertain. So you’ll get water for Kettch from the mess.”

“Right.”

They passed through a small door into a secondary cargo area, this one much smaller than the one they’d left, its shelves full of crates labeled BULK CLOTH. From the rear, they approached a larger crate, one two meters by two meters by one and a half tall, which had been laid out in the aisle between rows of shelves.

“And now,” Wedge said, as they got to the front of the crate, “you meet—uh-oh.”

A door that had obviously been retrofitted onto the front of the crate lay on the floor, off its hinges. There was nothing within the crate but what looked like a bed of grass and cloth scraps.

“He’s loose?” Janson said.

“He’s loose.” Wedge looked around. “But for how long? We’ve got to find him, keep to a minimum the number of crewmen who see him—”

There was a soft patter-patter of movement from the far end of the chamber, the bow end.

“We’re in luck,” Wedge said. “He’s still in here.” He extended the bowl of food. “Here, take some. Maybe we can lure him back.”

Janson grimaced as he grabbed up a handful of the smelly Ewok food.

They headed forward, only to hear the forward door out of the chamber hiss open, followed by the patter-patter of bare feet and the door hissing closed again. Wedge headed forward at a dead run, Janson at his heels.

The door opened for them, revealing dimness beyond, then Wedge was skidding to a halt and Janson ran into him. They toppled over together, crashing into containers of some sort, and fluid, liters of it, splashed over them.

A sharp, poisonously clean smell forced its way into Janson’s nose. “Sithspit, what’s that?”

“Cleansing fluid of some sort. We must have hit a janitor droid’s stash.” Wedge sat up. Janson could see him wrinkling his nose even in the dim light. Somewhere else in the room, a door hissed open and closed again.

“Oh, this is no good,” Wedge said. “He’s running now because we’re chasing him, and he’s going to be able to smell us from kilometers away.”

“So let’s call in Kell and Tyria. They can hunt him down while we clean up.”

“They’re not part of our Kettch conspiracy.” Wedge rose and moved away from the puddle. “Strip.”

“What?”

“Get those clothes off. We’ll rub some of the Ewok food over the parts of our skin that have the cleansing fluid on them. That should make it possible for us to get close to him.” Wedge suited action to words, unzipping his jumpsuit.

“Oh, sure. Would you stand still if you were being approached by two naked men with Ewok food smeared all over them?”

“No, but I’m not an Ewok. Just do it.” Wedge nodded right and left. “Looks like there are two doors out of here. I don’t know which one he took, but they’ll both go into General Solo’s mess. You take that one, I’ll take this one.”

“Wedge, this is the last time I’m feeding Kettch.”

“Me, too.”

The door opened for Janson and he crept through into the dimly lit room beyond.

Not three meters ahead stood an Ewok, wearing the traditional bonnet-style headgear of the species, his back to Janson.

Janson took a careful, silent step forward. The Ewok didn’t react. One more step and he was in range—Janson lunged, grabbing the Ewok with his left hand, the one uncontaminated by Ewok food. “Got you!”

The Ewok didn’t struggle. Nor did it weigh much. Janson looked at it. It wasn’t a live Ewok; it was the stuffed toy the Wraiths had brought with them from Hawk-bat Base, the one they called Kettch.

Then Janson realized that the room was full of people—all the other members of Wraith Squadron. In the dimness, they stood like statues, in poses suggesting they’d been in the middle of a social gathering, in conversational groups of twos and threes, and then had been flash-frozen.

No, not frozen, exactly. They still breathed. Some swayed a little where they stood.

And none of them looked at Janson.

Janson stood still for a long moment, waiting for some reaction from them, or for some realization to set in and inform him why they’d be standing stock-still in a dimly lit room. None came.

So he held the stuffed Ewok toy before him and backed to the door through which he’d entered.

His bare skin touched metal and he flinched. The door had closed and wasn’t opening for him.

He scraped the Ewok food off his hand against the door-jamb. Slowly, silently, his sense of unreality mounting, he walked sideways toward the other door into this chamber. To get there, he’d have to pass close to Piggy, Shalla, and Elassar, who were grouped close to the wall. As he neared them, he paused and reached out to touch Piggy, the Wraith nearest him.

His fingers encountered real flight suit and solid flesh beneath. He jerked his hand back. Neither Piggy nor any of the others reacted.

It was a dream, it had to be. And by the rules of dreams, doubtless there was to be some bad result if he failed to escape before the Wraiths awoke. In case he could short-circuit the process, he pinched himself, hoping to awaken prematurely, but he had no such luck. The scene remained before him.

Moving with less caution, he made it to the other door and backed into it … and his bare rear once again contacted metal as the door failed to open.

Well, then. There was one more door out of this chamber, which should open up into a corridor—a corridor that he could, with luck, duck down unobserved and perhaps reach the pilots’s ready room, where he had another uniform in his locker. He continued sideways along the wall, around the corner …

He reached the doorway and turned into it. The door whooshed open. And beyond was Wedge, fully uniformed, bellowing, “Attention!”

The room lights blazed into normal brightness and Janson heard the Wraiths behind him snapping to attention. He felt his cheeks burn as he realized they had to be facing his bare backside.

Wedge looked at Janson, then at the Ewok toy he held protectively before him. “Lieutenant, you’re out of uniform. And you know, wearing an Ewok as a swimsuit is a felony on some worlds.”

Janson nodded. He could not keep a rueful grin from forming on his lips. “I have been so set up,” he said.

“Good analysis,” Wedge said. “You’re showing real leadership potential, among other things. Lieutenant Nelprin?”

Shalla approached, standing beside Janson so he could see her without turning. In her hands was a folded mass of orange cloth. She unfolded and displayed it before him. It was a cloak, in New Republic flight-suit orange, with the words “Yub, yub, Lieutenant” stenciled on the back in black. She swept it across his shoulders and fastened it around his neck. Then she leaned in close and whispered, “Nice rear, Lieutenant.”

Janson felt his cheeks burning hotter. “Thank you for noticing, Lieutenant.” He handed her the Ewok doll and draped the cloak in a more concealing fashion about himself. “I take it this is revenge for that bet about your not speaking Wookiee?”

Wedge stepped into the room and the door shut behind him. “Well, for that, and for your antics with Lieutenant Kettch here and at Hawk-bat Base.”

Janson couldn’t keep the surprise from his face. “You knew about that?”

“Well, not at first, of course. Not for sure.” Wedge threw an arm over Janson’s shoulders and turned him, leading him back into the room, into the midst of the grinning Wraiths. “But you didn’t do much of a job of concealing your tracks. The doll showed up immediately after your return from Coruscant, which meant that it was probably you or someone else involved with that trip. Then, after it was obvious that the doll was wandering pretty much at will, I had a transmitter sewn into it.”

Janson winced. “You tracked its movements. And knew it was me. And waited all this time for payback.”

“So, do you still think revenge is beneath Wedge Antilles, Hero of the New Republic?”

“I’m not sure anything is beneath you anymore. Who was playing Kettch? Or Chulku, or whatever his name was supposed to be?”

Wedge grinned. “The first time, we had Squeaky in the box you saw. He speaks Ewok, of course.”

“Of course.” Janson sighed.

Dia said, “I was the footsteps you were following a few minutes ago. And I was the one who splashed you with the bucket full of cleansers. Had to make sure you got plenty on you. We couldn’t rely on you to fall correctly onto the buckets we’d placed.”

Wedge accepted a small glass of amber-colored liquid from Kell, passed it to Janson. “A reward. You’re taking it very well, Wes. Just remember that, when it comes to pranks, you have the necessary enthusiasm, you have the inventiveness, you have the experience … I have the resources.”

“Granted.” Janson sipped at the glass, made an appreciative face. It was Whyren’s Reserve, a Corellian brandy with a rich, smoky flavor. “But it’s over now. No ongoing punishment for me. Right?”

Wedge’s expression became serious. “Well, not after the holorecording of tonight’s events has been circulated.”

“Tell me you’re kidding.”

“What, and deny the universe the chance to see a rear end that the Wraiths have proclaimed so hologenic?”

Janson didn’t even try to keep the dismay off his face. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“I’ll decide tomorrow. Tonight we celebrate.”

Donos leaned in. “And remember what a very wise man once told me. ‘You can’t look dignified when you’re having fun.’ ”

“If I knew who that wise man was,” Janson said, “I’d shoot him.”

The next morning, the last pilot to enter the briefing amphitheater was Donos. He remained standing until Wedge noticed him. “Permission to sit in, sir?”

“Why? You’re still off the active list.”

“I’d like to volunteer for this mission.”

Wedge looked momentarily baffled. “Did I misstate myself? You can’t fly.”

“I’m not volunteering as a pilot, sir. Nothing in my current reevaluation indicates that I’m unfit to handle a ship’s guns. I’d like to volunteer as a crewman on the Millennium Falsehood. I’m a Corellian, I know the equipment, and I’m a good shot.” That was understating it somewhat; though his greatest talent was with a sniper’s rifle, Donos was marksman-rated with most sorts of blaster and laser weapons.

“Good point,” Wedge said. “Yes, you can attend the briefing; I’ll decide on your request later.” He stood behind the lectern and turned to the assembled pilots.

“Today is a standard ‘let them see the Falsehood then run’ exercise. Our target is the Comkin system. Comkin’s security measures are more extensive than some we’ve recently encountered, so we can’t count on smuggling in our TIE interceptor escort. However, Chewbacca has temporarily attached plating to the surface of the Falsehood that gives it a sensor echo much more like that of a YT-2400 freighter, and that plating will contain a bit of a surprise for Comkin’s defenders. We have transponder data corresponding to that of a real YT-2400 mercenary trader, so we should be able to make it to the planet’s surface; however, if we’re identified on entry, we just evacuate and achieve our primary objective, another appearance by the Millennium Falcon.

“Another modification we’ve made to the Falsehood will allow for quicker response time by the support squadron when it’s supposed to come in for rescue: we’ve installed a miniature holocomm unit worth more than the rest of the ship put together. Yes, Face?”

“Sir, is it a bad time to point out that a good shot of brandy is worth more than the rest of the ship put together?”

“Yes. Wraith Squadron will be our primary escort …”

Melvar appeared silently beside Lara’s station. His mild words contrasted with the cruelty of his features. “Baron Fel would like to see you fly.”

“Really.” Lara made a face suggesting that she was surprised and pleased. “You mean, for real, not in a simulator.”

“For real. Broadaxe Squadron will be supplementing the One Eighty-first, and they’re a pilot light. Would you care to suit up and fly with them?”

“I’d be delighted.”

“Report to their ready room at thirteen hundred.” Melvar gave her a mirthless smile. “Don’t do too well. We’d hate to lose you as an analyst.”

“I’ll keep it in mind. Thank you, sir.”

When he was gone, she stared at her screen, seeing none of the data on it, and tried not to shake. She prayed that she’d been wrong in her initial assessment, that the next Mon Remonda strike would be on any system other than Comkin Five.

For if she’d been right, she might end up facing her former squadmates in mortal combat.

Comkin Five was a green-blue world circling a yellow star. As the Falsehood neared the planet’s surface, blotches of color resolved themselves into blue sea, deep green tropics, and bands of cloud cover, with only the smallest patches of arctic ice.

“Pretty,” Donos said. “What do we blow up first?”

Wedge, ahead of him in the pilot’s chair, turned to glance at him. “Write that down,” he said. “That ought to be the Wraith Squadron slogan.”

“Good point. Squeaky, record that.”

“If I must.”

Wedge’s attention was diverted by data on his sensor board. “We’ve just been tapped by planetary sensors. Now we find out if our camouflage fooled them.”

“I don’t see how it can,” Squeaky said, his voice even more petulant than usual. “On close examination, the extension off our starboard side just does not look genuine. And Chewbacca has failed to minimize the Falsehood’s forward mandibles, which are, if I’m not mistaken, characteristic of the YT-1300s but not the YT-2400s. We are, I think, probably dead.”

Donos frowned at the two-tone 3PO unit seated beside him. Squeaky looked absurd in his ill-fitting clothing, a New Republic general’s uniform. “Then why did you volunteer for this mission?”

“Habit?”

“No.”

“Because I thought my absence would doom the mission?”

“Although Emtrey could have substituted for you.”

Chewbacca grumbled something.

“Certainly not,” Squeaky said, his tone turning indignant. “This is not fun, and I wouldn’t miss you.”

Chewbacca grumbled again.

“No, you don’t keep having to remind me to belt in. I am firmly belted in. My belt is fixed with more finesse than that of any belt in this cockpit.”

Donos shook his head. Maybe he ought to set up at one of the gunport turrets now.

Lara sat in her cockpit, drenched in sweat and feeling miserable.

It wasn’t because the cockpit was more uncomfortable than usual, or because of the protracted amount of time she’d been in it.

She’d met the Broadaxe Squadron pilots and had been assigned a TIE interceptor and a wingman, the squadron commander. She’d gone through the routine power-up checklist and transferred, with the rest of the Broadaxes and the 181st, to another ship—a Dreadnaught, older than the Empire, named Reprisal. She remembered it from the Levian mission. Broad-axe Squadron occupied the Dreadnaught’s fighter bay, while the 181st was divided among officers’ bays and cargo bays. Lara shook her head over that; she’d have thought that the more prestigious unit would choose the more convenient bay.

She’d been among the last TIEs to land, and was positioned to be among the first to launch, her viewport a mere meter from the bay’s magcon shield. Her temporary commander had laughed at her zeal, but there was another reason she wanted this position: no one was likely to walk in front of her TIE and see what she was doing inside it. Since she’d settled in, she’d been hard at work.

She had started by coupling her personal comlink to a datapad she’d stolen from another Iron Fist crewman while they were in the officers’ mess. She didn’t steal equipment on the bridge; it might be too easy to track back to her.

She recorded a lengthy message, one that turned her thoughts gloomy. Then she pulled up a panel beneath her feet, one that gave technicians access to the vehicle’s laser power generators. She powered down all vehicle systems except the comm unit and exterior lights, which would allow her to pretend that the system was still fully powered—assuming no one ran a sensor scan on her, or that no one called, in the next few minutes, for immediate takeoff.

Leading from the power generators were power regulators, which could keep a fatal spike of power from frying vehicle systems in case the generators were hit or malfunctioned in combat. She opened one of the regulators, the one protecting the port-side laser cannons, and spliced in a set of cables. These she attached to the datapad’s computer coupler port.

She activated the datapad and packed it into the cavity with the laser power generators, taping it securely into place. She left one wire, terminating in a simple thumb switch, trailing into the cockpit; she closed the access hatch over it, then taped the thumb switch to her pilot’s yoke.

Finally, she recommenced power-up, hoping that her modification wouldn’t cause any of the vehicle systems to fail, that her modification wouldn’t activate any sensor she didn’t know about.

If this worked, she was one step closer to Iron Fist’s destruction. If it failed, but she was otherwise very lucky, maybe her activities wouldn’t be noticed. Maybe.

After a mere ten minutes of frantic activity, she began to get her breathing back under control.

The stars beyond the magcon field suddenly twisted and blurred as Reprisal entered hyperspace.

“This will be a short jump,” her commanding officer said. “Prepare to launch on arrival.”

The Falsehood waited in low planetary orbit, its crew watching the green, lush world slowly turn beneath them.

“It’s been too long,” Donos said. “They’re on to us.”

“Probably,” Wedge said. He didn’t look at all uneasy.

Squeaky said, “I see other vessels awaiting final clearance to descend.”

“Either they’re not on to us,” Wedge said, “in which case our waiting here is standard procedure, or they’re on to us, and they’re having other vessels wait nearby so we won’t get suspicious.”

“Oh,” Squeaky said. “But we’re suspicious anyway.”

“They failed,” Wedge said.

“Will it matter if they destroy us anyway?”

“Not really.” The console beeped at Wedge, and he leaned over to look at the comm unit’s text screen. “We have final approval for descent to our primary target zone.”

Chewbacca shook his head, making a nearly subsonic noise of dissent. He gestured at the sensor board.

There, approaching from planetary east in a similar orbit, was a large, indistinct signal.

“Looks like starfighters,” Wedge said. “At least a full squad. All right, we go.” He unbelted. “Donos, take the belly gunport turret, I’ll take the top. Chewbacca, the controls are yours. Squeaky, you have the comm unit. Call in the Wraiths now, then bring in Mon Remonda on the holocomm unit, then stand by in your new mode.”

“I’ll be so pleased to make my debut.”

“Only if they address you, now.”

“Yes, sir.”

Donos followed Wedge back to the turret access tubes and descended to his turret. He powered it up, swung his weapons back and forth a few times to gauge their speed and responsiveness. Meanwhile, he felt the Falsehood maneuvering as it pointed spaceward and accelerated away from Comkin Five.

Squeaky’s voice came over the ship’s internal comlink. “Chewbacca says estimated two minutes until the TIEs are in range. At least five until we’re far enough away from the planet’s mass shadow to enter hyperspace. Wraiths report that they will intercept us in three and a half minutes.”

Wedge’s voice was next. “So they have a minute and a half to batter us before we have reinforcements. We should be able to handle that.”

Squeaky said, “Chewbacca says … oh, my. Oh, dear, dear dear.”

Wedge said, “Report, Squeaky.”

“Are you sure you want to know? It’s not good.”

“Do you want to walk home? Report.”

“Chewbacca reports a capital ship dropping out of hyperspace along our escape vector. It’s closer than the Wraiths, and it’s deploying TIE fighters. Excuse me, TIE interceptors. Two squadrons. They are deploying in what he calls umbrella formation and approaching.”

Wedge said, “And our pursuit?”

“They’re, ah, they seem to be hanging back. Pacing us, no longer gaining.”

“Driving us to the hunters. Thank you, Squeaky.” There was a long moment of silence. “Chewbacca, make your course straight for the capital ship. When you’re just outside the range of their tractors, deploy Package One and vector away. Then allow Package Two to deploy at its discretion.”

A grumble sounded over the comm unit.

“He doesn’t seem happy with your order, sir, but he’s complying. Ah, ah, the capital ship is identified. A Rendili Star-Drive Dreadnaught-class heavy cruiser. Oh, it’s the Reprisal! How nice to see it still functional. The Reprisal visited Kessel one time.”

“Save your reminiscences for later. And put your mask on.”

“Yes, sir.” The droid’s voice sounded resigned.

13

Lara put everything into acceleration, hurtling toward the Falsehood as fast as she could travel. She shouldn’t have been able to outstrip the other TIE interceptors of the combined units, but most of them dropped slowly back. In a matter of moments, she was at the fore with three other TIEs—her wingman and two interceptors of the 181st.

One of them communicated. “Anxious for battle, Lieutenant?” It was Baron Fel’s voice.

“Anxious to show you what I’m made of,” she said.

“Never let it be said that I’m not gallant,” Fel said. “The first strafing run is yours.”

She managed to project gratitude and excitement into her voice. “Thank you, sir.” But the words were like bile to her.

She knew what was happening. It was a test. If she was seen to offer less than her best effort toward the destruction of the ersatz Millennium Falcon, they’d know she was not trustworthy.

Well, she’d show them something. She’d hit the Falsehood again and again.

•    •    •

“Millennium Falcon,” came the woman’s voice, “this is the former Wraith Two. Prepare to die.” The source of the transmission, the lead TIE interceptor, opened fire.

The voice was Lara’s. Donos stiffened. He’d been tracking the incoming TIEs, aiming at the lead starfighter, but now he let his aim drift off her.

Green laser fire streamed from the interceptor. It was the only one of the four TIEs to fire. The first few linked bursts missed, then Lara began connecting, and the Falsehood rocked under the impact of her hits.

The first pair of TIEs roared past the Falsehood and immediately looped around for a second pass. The second pair came on, and a new voice crackled across the comm waves. “I believe I address General Solo. You can spare the lives of your crew by surrendering now.”

Donos had heard that voice before, at the Implacable fight. Baron Soontir Fel. He twisted to look up the access tube at Wedge. His commander had some sort of personal relationship with Fel, doubtless something that had come about during the brief time Fel served with Rogue Squadron, though Donos didn’t know what it was. And sure enough, Wedge had stiffened in his seat, his aim faltering.

Donos almost smiled. It was good to know that he wasn’t the only one caught off guard by the forces confronting them.

Then came another voice over the comlink. Han Solo’s.

Solo’s voice said, “Baron Fel. They still say you’re the best Imp pilot since Darth Vader. When you were a Rogue, I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, but now I can tell you, I flew against him—and you’re not fit to shine his helmet.”

“We’ll never know,” Fel said. “I’m certainly pilot enough to put an end to you.” He and his wingman came on, firing, with twenty TIE interceptors in their wake.

Donos’s aim was thrown off as the Falsehood suddenly began spinning along its bow-to-stern axis. He recognized the maneuver’s intent, to change the sight profile of the Falsehood so incoming attackers would have an irregular target.

Fel and his wingman blasted by, their laser fire hitting the bow and forward mandibles. The ship’s lights dimmed as its shields strained to hold up under the assaults. Donos’s return fire missed both TIEs, but he was able to swing back in line and tag the second interceptor of the next pair. His shots chewed through a solar wing array and sent the interceptor spinning off into the blackness of space. On his sensor screen, the second interceptor vanished; streaks of debris exploded away from its last position, then faded.

And more TIEs came on as, in the distance, the bow of the Dreadnaught grew larger and larger.

Squeaky watched with fascination as the universe spun crazily before him. He switched back to his normal voice. “I say. If I were human, I imagine I’d be throwing up all over your control panels.”

Chewbacca turned and grumbled something.

Squeaky turned to look in amazement at the Wookiee—what he could see of Chewbacca, anyway, through the holes in the absurd, oversized mask Squeaky was wearing. “Why, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. Did I really sound like him?”

Chewbacca grumbled an assent.

Squeaky sat back, suddenly delighted. All the work he’d done with General Solo, recording his voice, analyzing and parsing appropriate phrases and recurrent remarks, might have paid off. It had not only fooled Baron Fel, it had finally gained him Chewbacca’s admiration.

The Falsehood rocked, accompanied by noises of hardware and systems leaping from their wall brackets and crashing around against the walls, as it sustained more incoming fire. “Chewbacca, can’t we do all this without the participation of enemy forces?”

The Wookiee spared a moment to glare at him.

“What did I say?”

The last of the TIEs finished their first pass. Behind the Falsehood, they began looping around for a second run. The squadron of TIE fighters that had escorted them out of the planet’s atmosphere was on an approach back toward the planet, doubtless ordered away so the Reprisal and the interceptors could have all the glory arising from the Millennium Falcon’s destruction. Donos watched his sensor board with concern. The Falsehood had been lucky to survive one run through that gauntlet.

First to return would be Lara and her wingman. They were only seconds from optimal firing range. “Commander?” Donos said. “Opinions about Lara?”

“When we do the breakaway move,” Wedge said, “when we vector away from the Dreadnaught’s bow, she may overshoot us. Try for one of her wings. Disable instead of kill.”

The next voice was Squeaky’s. “If you’ll pardon me, sirs, I think you should let Flight Officer Notsil continue shooting us.”

Laser fire from Lara’s interceptor and her wingmate’s began pouring down on the Falsehood again. Out of the corner of his eye, Donos saw a hydrospanner rocketing down the access tube toward him. He tried twisting up and out of the way; it slammed into his rib cage instead of his head, and he grunted from the sudden pain.

“What?” Wedge’s voice suggested the frown Donos could easily imagine him wearing. “Squeaky, have you shaken loose your logic circuits?”

“No, sir. It’s rather complicated. It will take too long to explain. Just trust me.” The droid’s voice was surprisingly confident. “This is something I know about. What? Oh. Chewbacca says thirty seconds to release-and-turn.”

Donos twisted and swept his arc of fire across Lara’s TIE, but didn’t begin firing until his crosshairs were just past her wing. His series of blasts flashed between her and her wingman, then one grazed the second TIE. It jumped up, gaining relative altitude, and was suddenly out of sight.

Then it was a bright, expanding ball as Wedge’s shot hulled it.

On the bridge of Iron Fist, Zsinj and Melvar watched with interest the holocomm broadcast from the bow of the Reprisal. It showed the Millennium Falcon’s suicidal charge, the horde of TIE interceptors converging upon the Corellian freighter.

“Come on, come on,” Zsinj breathed. “Bring in Mon Remonda. You’ll die if you don’t.”

“Ten seconds to breakaway,” Squeaky said. “Nine … Eight …”

Chewbacca rumbled at him.

“You want me to do the jettison? Very well.” Squeaky’s metal hands sought out the large switch that had been bonded to the main console earlier today. “Four … Three …”

Chewbacca ceased the freighter’s spinning motion. The Falsehood shuddered as a vicious shot from Fel’s interceptor slammed into its top hull.

“One …” Squeaky threw the switch.

All along the starboard side of the Falsehood, seals holding the new extension, the mock-up that made the ship better resemble a YT-2400 freighter, opened with little flashes of explosive charges. The extension drifted half a meter from the Falsehood’s hull.

Chewbacca yanked the controls hard to port. The freighter’s inertial compensators shrieked as they tried to accommodate the nearly ninety-degree maneuver. TIE interceptors, their pilots caught momentarily off guard by the surprise move, overshot the Falsehood. The jettisoned portion of the ship continued on, laser-straight, toward the bow of the Reprisal.

Squeaky said, “Flight Officer Konnair, you are free to detach when ready.”

Lara and Fel looped back quickly, getting back into position behind the Falsehood. They continued their erratic, side-to-side motion, which made it all but impossible for the ship’s gunners to target them.

Lara heard Fel report, “There’s something attached to the Falcon where that piece of debris just detached. It’s—oh.”

Lara saw the “something” break free of the Falsehood. It was an A-wing fighter. It drifted free of the freighter with the puff of small explosive bolts detonating; then its engines lit off and it vectored away at the kind of speed only an A-wing could manage.

“Don’t be distracted, Petothel,” Fel said. “Stay with the primary target.”

“Don’t worry about me,” she said, and opened up again on the Falsehood.

Fel’s wingman veered away in pursuit of the A-wing.

On the bridge of the Reprisal, the captain and crew watched the Falsehood’s movements.

“He’s vectoring to sweep around us,” the weapons operator reported. “He’ll probably return to his primary course when he’s clear of our guns.”

“Order the TIEs to herd him back in toward our side,” said the captain, a burly man who could not return to his home on Coruscant until Rebels like Han Solo were purged from the galaxy. “We can’t keep Fel from firing on her, but maybe we can steal the kill. What’s the status of that debris?”

“On a collision course with us,” the sensor specialist said. “But its speed and tonnage are insufficient to do us harm. Our shields will repel it.”

“Very well,” the captain said.

Lara and Fel continued to pour laser fire into the Falsehood’s stern, all the while dodging with the mad speed and maneuverability of which only TIE interceptors were capable. The remaining TIEs swept out ahead of the Falsehood, forming up in her path, dictating a run through their gauntlet or a turn—either toward space, along the Dreadnaught’s flank, or back toward the planet.

But Dorset Konnair in her A-wing flashed along behind the line of TIEs, firing her blaster cannons continuously, vaping two of the TIEs before she emerged from the other side. Fel’s wingman pursued her, firing at maximum range, unable to overtake the starfighter.

Donos kept up ineffectual fire at Lara whenever she was under his sights, while trying with all his skill to tag Fel whenever that pilot came within view. He had no more success hitting the pilot he wanted to kill than he did the one he wanted to miss. And shot after shot from the pursuing TIEs rocked the Falsehood, sounding alarms as shields threatened to fail.

Chewbacca veered back toward the escape course short of the gauntlet of TIEs. His maneuver left them too close to the Dreadnaught; the Falsehood would be running under the guns of the Reprisal. Donos shook his head and stayed focused on his more immediate problems. If the Reprisal hit them, he’d be dead before he felt anything.

Zsinj watched the Corellian freighter’s run. He rapped his knuckles against a bulkhead, trying to bleed his nervousness away with activity. “Why isn’t Mon Remonda jumping in?” he said. “Petothel said that these Millennium Falcon missions had cruiser support.”

Melvar said, “Maybe she was wrong. Or they changed tactics.”

“No, it makes sense. He just isn’t calling in his cruiser. Why isn’t the Reprisal dealing with that debris?”

Melvar glanced at the data feed from the Dreadnaught. “It’s not real ship’s construction. Too light. Their shields will handle it.”

Zsinj glanced away from the transmitted view from the Reprisal’s bridge to the data feed. Cold suspicion clawed at him. “Contact the Reprisal! Tell them to blow that debris now!”

The tumbling piece of space junk that had been attached to the Falsehood made contact with the Reprisal’s bow shields.

Inside, a sensor attuned to sudden shocks and gravitational variances registered impact. It triggered the large cache of explosives fastened within the debris’s hull.

The bomb, originally intended for a drop onto one of Zsinj’s production facilities on the surface of Comkin Five, exploded with far more force than the Dreadnaught’s shields could withstand.

A bright glow washed over the Falsehood from the side. Donos glanced away from Lara’s TIE interceptor to look.

The entire bow of the Reprisal seemed to be awash in bright light and flame.

His comm unit crackled. Squeaky said, “We have good news to report. The Wraiths are incoming.”

Squeaky turned off the comm mike and glared at Chewbacca. “You didn’t tell me it was a bomb.”

Chewbacca rumbled a reply.

“No, now is the time to talk about it. You’ve made me a participant in this fight! I’ve actually done damage to other beings! I’m not allowed to do that. I don’t know if I can cope.”

Face brought the seven X-wings of Wraith Squadron, including Kell in Donos’s snubfighter, around the Reprisal’s stern along its starboard side, putting them on the same side of the conflict as the Falsehood and her pursuit. The X-wings were already in attack position, their S-foils spread and locked. “Fire One,” he said.

Fourteen proton torpedoes launched toward the mass of enemy TIEs. As close as the Wraiths were to their targets, the torpedoes crossed the intervening distance almost immediately. As tightly packed as the TIEs were, when those on the leading edge were able to veer out of the way and break a torpedo’s targeting lock, the TIEs behind them were not. Ten kills registered on Face’s sensor screen, then the TIE force was spreading, scattering, breaking by twos and preparing to engage the Wraiths.

“That won’t work twice,” Face said. “Change Target Two to the Dreadnaught’s bow. Fire Two.” Fourteen more proton torpedoes leaped away. Face saw detonations all around the Reprisal’s bow, couldn’t determine if they were penetrating the damaged Dreadnaught’s shields. “Break and engage by pairs.”

On the bridge of Mon Remonda, Han Solo sat in his command chair, his stomach threatening to knot ever tighter, while he watched the holocomm broadcast from the Falsehood. The sensor-display portion of the broadcast showed the Falsehood on her outbound flight and all the vehicles around her.

At the moment, only two TIE starfighters assailed the Falsehood. The Dreadnaught was not firing, its command crew obviously thrown into disarray by the detonation of the bomb.

“They’re going to escape, Zsinj,” he said, his words intended for no one’s ears but his own. “You can’t have that. Jump in. Bring Iron Fist in. Come on, Zsinj.”

“Sir,” Squeaky said, “do we tell the Wraiths about Lara?”

Wedge hesitated. If they broadcast an encrypted message telling the Wraiths that one of the TIEs was Lara and she was conceivably an ally, the message would eventually be broken. A voice signal like that simply offered too much data. “Tag her as a friendly on the sensor board and transmit only that information, and only as data,” he said. That might do it—a tiny data update was much less likely to be intercepted by the enemy or decoded.

“Yes, sir.”

“Me up, you down,” Kell said.

“We’re your wing,” Runt responded.

They aimed straight for the Millennium Falsehood, Kell approaching above the level of the freighter’s top hull, Runt beneath her keel, both firing at the TIEs pursuing the freighter.

Kell kept his fire a little high so no slight deviation in his progress would bring his lasers down onto the Falsehood. But his target’s erratic motion brought it up toward his field of fire …

And then, on his targeting computer, his target changed color from red to blue. Kell swore, took his finger from the trigger, and the Falsehood and its pursuit blasted past underneath him. He began as tight a turn as was possible to come up behind the Falsehood again. Below him, Runt was doing the same.

The Falsehood rocked more violently than before and suddenly air was howling through the freighter. Wedge’s ears popped as the air pressure changed.

Squeaky’s voice, for once, contained alarm. “We are breached! Shields are down on the keel!”

“Chewbacca, roll her!” Wedge shouted.

Outside his viewport, the universe rotated 180 degrees. Fel was abruptly in his gunsights instead of Lara. He opened fire on Fel. “Donos, lock down that hull breach. Chewie, keep our good shields between us and Fel. Maybe Lara won’t vape us.”

What a thing to have to count on. Squeaky’s assurance that they shouldn’t destroy Lara—and now, with the Falsehood’s unprotected keel exposed to her guns, she could vape them with no effort.

Lara saw the Falsehood rotate, exposing its belly, and her sensors showed its shields there were gone.

She could fire, or she could reveal herself to Zsinj to be a traitor to his cause.

Or she could—

She deliberately twitched the pilot’s yoke a little too hard and her maneuver carried her forward, right into the Falsehood’s keel. Suddenly she was spinning out of control, and there was an ominous cracking noise as a jagged line appeared on her viewport.

“Petothel?” It was Fel’s voice. “Petothel, are you hurt?”

She didn’t answer.

Zsinj watched, his mouth slack and expression disbelieving, as the holocomm display from the Reprisal continued.

The bridge view was gone, of course. It had vanished when the bridge was destroyed. But sensor data continued to pour in.

The Reprisal was breaking up. The initial explosion had breached her hull, smashed her bow shields, and temporarily deprived her of effective command. The proton torpedoes that followed had inflicted massive structural damage on the old Dreadnaught.

Now she continuously vented atmosphere into space, her crumpling bulkheads preventing airtight doors from sealing. Her captain had sent her into a turn just before the bomb’s impact, doubtless to track the Millennium Falcon with her guns, and the stress of the maneuver was cracking the mighty old ship open like a nut.

Zsinj sagged against the bulkhead. “I can’t kill him. I can’t kill Han Solo. I don’t know the formula. I don’t have the plan.”

Melvar, in his ear, said, “The One Eighty-first is disconnected. I’ve ordered them to break away from the attacking force. But we can send in another capital ship and get them coordinated again.”

“No. Throw good money after bad? Besides, Solo will be in hyperspace before another ship can get into proper position. This assault is over.”

Melvar saluted and moved over to look down into the crew pit, where his starfighter director was. “Send the starfighters down to a planetary base.” His voice was heavy with regret.

Zsinj knew that regret.

He knew frustration, too. Nothing was working. Nothing was working.

The TIEs were still swarming, but abruptly they were swarming in another direction, back toward the planet.

With no TIE fighters close enough to see in the cockpit viewport, Squeaky dispensed with the human-face mask he wore. It served merely to conceal the gold tone of his face and was only effective against distant or fast-moving observers. At Wedge’s direction he returned to his Han Solo voice and activated the comm unit. “Wraiths, form up, prepare for hyperspace. Polearm Seven, it’s time for you to return to dock with the Falcon.”

“Coming in, General.”

Wedge leaned in over Squeaky’s shoulder. “Now say, ‘Good shooting out there.’ ”

“Doesn’t she know she shot well?”

Wedge glowered. “Just do it.”

“Good shooting out there, Konnair.”

“Thank you, General.”

Dorset Konnair’s A-wing sidled in toward the Falsehood’s starboard. Delicately, she maneuvered it alongside the docking station temporarily installed where one of the freighter’s escape pods should be. A moment later, Squeaky felt the thump of contact. “All ready,” he said, in his own voice.

“Go back and help Donos patch that leak, would you?”

“If I must. One minute a general, the next minute a sheet-metal worker.”

Wedge smiled at him. “That’s life in the armed forces.”

“Petothel, come in.”

Lara stirred, trying to convey with body language that she was dazed. She stared out the forward viewport. Fel’s TIE interceptor cruised there, mere meters from her. It seemed to be spinning, though she knew that it was her own interceptor that was rolling. “What? I, what?”

“Are you injured? We can bring in a shuttle with a tractor to get you out of there.”

“No, I’m good to fly.” That was the pilot’s automatic response, whether Imperial or New Republic, whether truth or self-delusion. She sat upright. “Did—did we get him?”

“Almost,” Fel said. “Come along, you’re my wing.” He vectored away and moved planetward, away from the burning wreckage of the Reprisal, only a few kilometers away.

She’d spent her time “unconscious” productively. The datapad that had transmitted its unusual commands to her laser weaponry was now back in a pocket. She’d hammered her helmeted head against the side of the cockpit until it really was sore, until she was almost as dizzy as she claimed to be—she’d need the telltale physical signs of injury when she got back to Iron Fist.

She’d done it. She couldn’t keep a smile off her face as she followed in Baron Fel’s wake.

Captain Onoma stood before Solo. “We have found the position Iron Fist held throughout the engagement. A wingpair from Mon Delindo detected her a few minutes ago.”

Solo came upright. “Alert Rogue and Nova Squadrons, tell them to stand ready. Communicate with Mon Delindo. We’ll converge on Iron Fist’s position—”

“Sir, Iron Fist has already jumped out of system.”

Solo sagged into his chair. “Abandoning his pilots? Not even bothering to pick up survivors off the Reprisal?”

Onoma nodded in the awkward Mon Calamari fashion. “Doubtless he’s relying on planetary forces for rescue, and will send a freighter back for his TIE squadrons. He’s gone, sir.”

Solo offered him a disbelieving shake of the head. “He just won’t come in close enough to a system for its mass shadow to delay his departure. He’s that spooked.”

“You should be honored, General. You’re what’s ‘spooking’ him.”

“Failures don’t get honored, Captain.” He shook his head, looked away from the captain. “I have to think about this.”

The crew of the Millennium Falsehood—two Corellian men, a Wookiee, and a 3PO droid in a general’s uniform—descended the loading ramp more hastily than usual, as though they expected the battered craft to burst into flame, and turned to look at the freighter.

She had new laser scoring all over her hull. Smoke drifted from beneath the keel and rose to the hangar’s ceiling.

“Not bad,” Wedge said. “I’ve flown worse.”

Squeaky said, “You are joking, I hope, sir.”

Wedge turned his attention to the droid. “And now that we have a moment or two, Squeaky, would you mind telling me why you said we should allow Lara Notsil to blow holes in our hull?”

“Well, I thought she was trying to tell us something.”

Wedge blinked. Then he turned to the Wookiee. “Chewbacca, go ahead. Pull his legs off and hit him with them.”

“Wait!” Squeaky threw up his arms as if to ward off the blows to come. “Let me explain.”

And he did.

General Solo, Captain Onoma, and Wedge were already in the briefing room when Donos arrived. Within a minute, they were joined by Shalla and Face.

“This meeting concerns Lara Notsil,” Wedge said. “Each of you is here for a different purpose. General Solo and Captain Onoma are here because this pertains to mission planning. Shalla, because of your knowledge of Imperial Intelligence techniques … and mentalities. Donos, because of your familiarity with Lara. Face, because of your training as an actor; we assume that you can recognize your own kind.”

Face managed a smile. “From time to time,” he said.

Wedge said, “Earlier today, the Falsehood was fired upon by Lara Notsil, who was acting as a TIE interceptor pilot for Zsinj’s forces. Squeaky, acting as communications officer, noticed that every time she hit us with laser fire, our comm unit stored fragments of a transmission.”

Donos frowned. “Her attacks were also transmissions?”

“That’s right. She had apparently rigged one of her laser cannons to pulse in the fashion of a line-of-sight laser communicator. She had also, according to what we can determine, reduced the strength of her lasers somewhat—else we would have suffered more damage than we did.”

Shalla said, “This is sort of what Donos did with his laser rifle at Halmad.” Above that world, needing to trigger an explosive device but prevented from doing so by comm jamming, Donos had modified the output of his laser sniper rifle to transmit the detonation signal.

Wedge nodded. “That may have been what gave her the idea. Here’s the message. It’s voice only.” He reached over to the terminal keyboard beside the conference table and pressed a button.

First, a hiss suggesting a low-quality recording, then Lara’s voice emerged from the air around them. “This is Lara Notsil, transmitting to Wraith Squadron and Mon Remonda.”

Donos tensed. Knowing that the message was from her hadn’t prepared him for actually hearing her voice; he felt almost as though he’d been physically struck. Then he became aware of Shalla’s gaze on him. Face’s, too. They were evaluating him, his reaction.

Once, he would have washed all expression away from his face, giving them nothing to read. But he didn’t care about that anymore. It hurt to hear Lara. It didn’t matter if they could see the bleakness of his expression. He closed his eyes to listen more carefully.

“I was the one who suggested to the warlord that he’d encounter you at Comkin Five. If you did show up there, I hope it’s because it’s part of your mission plan—that you were hoping to engage him. I told him you might also appear at Vahaba. You might want to keep that on your schedule. You should be able to engage him there as well.”

Donos opened his eyes to glance at Solo and Wedge. They were exchanging a look, and Solo shook his head, a trace of confusion to his expression.

“I’m working on a plan now whereby I might be able to transmit you Iron Fist’s location, just as we did with the Parasite plan.” That mission, in which Wraith Squadron had planted a program in the computer of a new Super Star Destroyer, Razor’s Kiss, had led to the new ship automatically sending its location to Solo’s fleet. Ultimately, it had resulted in the ship’s destruction. “If I die, the plan might be able to continue in my absence, so don’t just give up on it if someone manages to shoot me down. Attached to this message is a data package showing what I’ve done, what conclusions I’ve reached. I hope you can use them.

“Please tell the Wraiths that I’m holding faith with them.” There was a long pause, the distinct sound of Lara swallowing with difficulty. “The rest of this message is for Myn Donos.”

Wedge tapped a key on the terminal and her voice cut off. He looked apologetically at Donos. “I’m sorry. I’ve heard it already, and it does pertain to her state of mind. We’re all going to have to hear it.”

Donos nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

Wedge tapped the key again.

A little background hiss returned to the air, but Lara didn’t speak for several seconds. Then, “Myn, it’s not likely that we’ll ever see one another again. So I wanted to take this opportunity to say good-bye. Well, more than that. I wanted to explain. About what I did.

“I was fighting a war, the way I’d been trained, and that involved infiltrating the enemy and getting their secrets back to my superiors, or sabotaging the data the enemy possessed. There was never a time I saw a file labeled ‘How to Destroy Talon Squadron’ and thought to myself, ‘Oh, that’s what I want to do.’ To me, it was just data about occupied territories and interplanetary borders.

“Then I infiltrated Wraith Squadron, just a ploy to make myself more valuable to prospective employers, and things started happening. All the furniture that made up the way I’d thought and felt about things all my life started coming loose in my head. Nowadays it slides around and breaks into pieces and I have no idea what parts of it are real and what aren’t.” There was a waver to her voice now, a suggestion she was having trouble keeping it under control. “It hurts, and a lot of the time I don’t know who I am anymore.

“But I know what I have to do. Whoever I am, I’m staying here, like a vibroblade right next to Zsinj’s vitals, and when the right time comes I’m going to stab him deep. That’ll probably be the last thing I do.

“I don’t have any friends here, except one droid, and I don’t have any where you are, or anywhere else in the galaxy, so when I’m gone there isn’t going to be anyone to remember me kindly. So I was just sort of hoping you wouldn’t hate me anymore. I really can’t stand thinking that’s the only way I’ll be remembered.”

There was a long silence, the sound of a sniffle. Her voice finally returned, quieter than it had been. “I wish I’d been someone else. To give you that chance you wanted.

“Lara Notsil out.”

Donos felt his eyes burning. He put his hand over them. He felt tears under his fingers.

They were silent a long moment. Then Wedge, regret in his voice, said, “All right. Opinions. Shalla?”

Shalla cleared her throat. “Tough call. At a certain level, I think Corran Horn was right. Mentally and emotionally, Lara’s not all together. But she seems to be sticking to her plan, to her perception that Zsinj is the enemy. And if I read her words right, she’s resigned herself to death in this effort. That makes it more likely that her words can be trusted.

“Add to that the very interesting way she transmitted data. It was complicated, it was unreliable. It was a desperation measure. If she really was an agent of Zsinj’s, she could have just shot us a tight-beam transmission from her interceptor’s comm system. We would have known that there was very little chance of such a message being detected. The approach she actually used suggests to me that she’s afraid that her interceptor’s comm system is tapped, recording, something, and she wanted to get around whatever measures had been taken that way.”

“All right. Face?”

“She’s a pretty good actress,” Face said. “In her line of work, she’d have to be. But there was a lot of what seemed like very genuine strain in her voice. I’d lean toward the side of her telling the truth.”

“Donos?”

Decorum demanded that he look at them when he answered. To do that, he’d have to put his hand down. If he did that, they’d see his tears. They’d know he wasn’t in control of himself. They’d know—

Well, to hell with what they knew, with what they thought. He slammed his hand down on the tabletop. Shalla and Solo jumped. He looked around the table, defying all to say anything about the tears on his cheeks. “She was telling the truth,” he said.

“I need a little more than that,” Wedge said. “Your reasons?”

“That final bit … if she’s luring us into a trap for Zsinj, what was that last bit for? To make me feel bad? What good would that do?” He took a deep, shuddery breath. “If she had wanted to manipulate me, to make me come in on her side, she’d have said, ‘If I get out of this alive, I’ll come back to stand trial.’ That gives me everything, puts everything on me. If I just want justice, I win—she stands trial. If I want her, I win—I stand beside her at her trial, and I can dream that she’ll get off light. That’s the way to swing me over, but she didn’t do that. She just said good-bye.”

Wedge nodded. “All right. There you go, General. Three opinions, all in the same direction, for different reasons.”

Solo asked, “Why did she think Vahaba would be on our list?”

“I looked at the data file she’d appended to the audio,” Wedge said. “She had done a good job of calculating the criteria we were using, except that she thought that the planets our false Han Solo would be visiting would all be former trading partners with, or recipients of regular trade goods from, Alderaan.”

Solo leaned back. “That makes sense. It does. One of the factors we used was choosing worlds that produced certain types of matériel that are valuable in times of war and times of peace. That would correspond to a certain degree to the types of goods Alderaan was importing after it banned all its weapons. Can you run the numbers on our projections again, substituting trade with Alderaan for what we had?”

Wedge gave him a smile. “Already did. And guess which system, discounting the ones we’ve already visited, jumps to the top of the list? Vahaba.”

“Vahaba.” Solo smiled. “If we can get the Falsehood repaired fast enough, we can dangle it like bait for Zsinj again. All right, Nelprin, Donos, thanks for coming. Loran, I need you for a moment more.”

Donos rose, offered a salute, and was the first one out the door.

When the three pilots were gone, Solo turned to Wedge. “If Zsinj wouldn’t come in at Kidriff to get me, he won’t come in anywhere. He’s just too conservative. Protecting Iron Fist all the way. So if we can’t get Iron Fist close enough to a gravity well to trap it for a while, we need to bring a gravity well to Iron Fist.”

Wedge frowned. “Meaning what? An Interdictor cruiser?” Those vessels, uncommon even in the Imperial fleet where they were most prevalent, possessed gravity-well generators that, when activated, could keep all vessels within range from entering hyperspace.

“That’s right.”

“Does Fleet Command have one available for you?”

“No,” Solo said. He turned to Face. “That’s where you come in.”

“Uh-oh,” Face said.

“I’m going to set up an appointment between you and your Imperial admiral buddy. I want you to go ask him for an Interdictor.”

Face said, “Begging your pardon, sir, but you’re crazy enough to be a Wraith.”

Solo grinned. “Until you’ve crewed with me for a few years, kid, you have no idea what ‘crazy’ means.”

14

Tonin decided that it might be a good thing to be the King of the Droids.

He was now a mighty leader, in command of hundreds of utility droids aboard Iron Fist.

He had modified many of them, with magnetic treads replacing their wheels, so that they might maneuver on the outer hull of the vessel. They clustered at the engines and the hyper-comm antennae, using their internal tools to chew and splice their way into external system ports and accesses.

More moved within Iron Fist at Tonin’s commands. Some were in the engine compartments. Others had spliced into the computer data cables. One was now in the security system that monitored Lara’s quarters; it fed modified recordings of her to the observers, so she could do whatever she pleased in her quarters while they saw only footage of her sleeping. Others dragged cables and dataports through the walls, giving Lara access to more and more secure portions of the ship and the computer archives.

Even so, half of the utility droids Tonin commanded confined themselves to ordinary ship’s functions … for Tonin had to make sure the ship’s central computer didn’t notice a sudden drop in the utility droid population. If droid MSE-6-P303K spent its day doing Tonin’s bidding, droid MSE-6-E629L would spend half its day doing the duties assigned by the ship’s computer, then would visit one of the special interfaces Tonin had had installed at points in the ship, assume the identity of MSE-6-P303K, and spend the other half of its day doing that droid’s duties.

So far, the ship’s main computer hadn’t noticed. This was, Tonin reflected, because Tonin was so much better at this task than the ship’s computer was. Perhaps the ship’s computer considered maintenance of a fleet of MSE-6 droids beneath its dignity.

The droid-guard in the corridor transmitted a warning to Tonin; it indicated someone was approaching Lara’s door. Tonin decoupled himself from Lara’s terminal and rolled hastily into her closet. But when the door opened, it was Lara herself who entered, looking tired and even dazed—but not hurt or unhappy, so far as Tonin could read human emotions. “Good morning, Tonin.”

He beeped a greeting at her, then returned to his post at the terminal and extended his scomp-link once more into its data port. To the terminal’s screen, he transmitted, YOU WERE GONE FOR A LONG TIME.

“I’m sorry. I had to go on a mission. I think I got a communication through to Mon Remonda, though.” She sat on her bed, pulled her boots off, and lay down. “I also gave myself a mild concussion and got personally congratulated by General Melvar for ‘tenacity and courage in pursuit of the enemy.’ ”

THE CONCUSSION WAS PROBABLY A BAD IDEA.

“Don’t be so sure.” She gave him a little smile. “What have you been up to?”

WE HAVE HOLOCOMM ACCESS WHENEVER YOU NEED IT, BUT IF YOU USE IT, THEY WILL DETECT IT VERY QUICKLY. AND MY DROIDS FOUND AN UNMAPPED SECTION OF THE SHIP.

“Show me.”

Tonin accessed this morning’s most interesting recording and transmitted it to the terminal’s screen.

It was a very low view, as was to be expected due to the MSE-6’s tiny size, of a bank of rectangular viewports seen from an adjoining corridor. Beyond the viewports were chambers that were obviously medical wards. One was an operating theater. Another held cages filled with sapient and near-sapient life-forms: Ewoks, rodentlike Ranats, Bilars with their stuffed-doll features but lacking the carefree expressions of most of their kind, a pink Ortolan with its trunklike nose pressed against the front bars of its cage, meter-long Chadra-Fan with their furry faces and gigantic ears, and more.

She sat up, her tiredness apparently forgotten for the moment. “Is this everything you have on this chamber?”

YES, FOR NOW.

“We need more. Get a holocam droid into that chamber, assign it there permanently. And get a droid with a computer link in behind the walls, see what sort of data we can intercept. This is really important.”

IT WILL BE DONE.

“Now, I’ve got to sleep.” She flopped back onto the bed. “Concussions are no fun.”

DON’T DO THAT ANYMORE.

Admiral Rogriss froze with his wineglass halfway to his lips. “You want what?”

Face smiled. “Surely you have one available.”

Rogriss set his glass down with a thump. “Available to me, yes. I can’t make it available to you.”

“Even to destroy Zsinj?”

“Even then. Factor in the likelihood that Iron Fist will destroy her. Factor in the likelihood that you Rebels will destroy her—accidents do happen. Then append the certainty that you’ll take the credit for Zsinj’s destruction regardless. I become a failure who, at worst, collaborated with the enemy and, at best, lost an Interdictor cruiser. No, no, no.”

“Well, we can do a lot of things to keep this from happening,” Face said. “First, we’ll assign two of our own Imperial Star Destroyers to protect your Interdictor. Second, if you inform only the most trusted members of the Interdictor’s bridge crew that they’re temporarily working with the New Republic, the majority of the crewmen will never figure it out—they’ll see our Star Destroyers out of their ports and presume that they’re Imperial. Later, you can say that the Interdictor blundered into a fight between the New Republic and Zsinj and was able to get in the killing blow while everyone else was figuring out whom to shoot.”

“What will you give me?”

Face frowned. “How’s that again?”

“If I do this, I’ll be giving you an Interdictory even temporarily. Will you give me, say, a Mon Calamari cruiser for one of my missions?”

“I’ll give you a framed and autographed holo of Face Loran, Boy Actor.”

Rogriss brightened. “Excellent! I can trade it for a framed and autographed holo of Tetran Cowall. I always preferred his holodramas anyway.”

Face seized his chest over his heart. “A good shot, Admiral. I concede the duel.” Then he gave the admiral his most frank and evaluative stare. “Realistically, you’re not giving us anything. You’re joining us on a mission of mutual interest. If we succeed, we both win. If you lose your Interdictor, you can be assured we’ll have lost both Imperial Star Destroyers assigned to protect it … and many more ships besides. I guess it boils down to the question of what’s more important—accomplishing your Zsinj mission because it’s good for the Empire or because it’s good for Admiral Rogriss.”

The admiral touched his own chest, an echo of Face’s gesture. “You shoot well yourself.” He looked away, at the white bulkhead wall, and was silent for several long seconds. “I’ll do it,” he said.

“I’m glad.”

“We must have a rendezvous point.” The admiral held up his wineglass.

Face touched it with his own. “Good to be collaborating with you, Admiral.”

Lara could almost feel the stare of Tonin’s holocam eye on her. The R2 had been very solicitous since her return from the Comkin mission. Worse, it seemed to sense the way her spirits lowered as she reviewed the data they continued to receive from the secret chamber on Iron Fist.

It was awful stuff. She didn’t get into the worst of it in the summary she recorded for Mon Remonda. The attached data file would give the New Republic the most gruesome details.

“Project Chubar is what they call the techniques used to raise the intelligence of sapient and near-sapient beings. The name derives from a character in a series of children’s holos about a bilar, a cute mammalian creature, who is a clever pet of a young girl. The holos used animated graphics instead of actors. It’s a twisted sort of touch that Face Loran supplied the voice for Chubar. Maybe you ought not tell him that one of his roles was the inspiration for the name of the project. Anyway, Chubar involves chemical treatments and a teaching regimen to bring a humanoid’s mental functions up to those of human average—sometimes higher. In the case of creatures that are already intelligent—for instance, Ewoks—the process enhances mental traits that bring its type of intelligence more in line with a human’s. Less reliance on sensory data and more on analysis, for instance.

“Project Minefield derived from Chubar. It involves a second, and much faster-acting, set of chemical treatments that affect the victim’s mind on a much shorter-term basis. While the chemicals are at their maximum effect, Zsinj’s agents can implant a delusion and a mission in the victim’s mind. The delusion is usually that some awful situation is in effect and can’t be stopped until the mission is accomplished.

“Both the delusion and the mission are associated with a trigger, usually a code phrase. Until the phrase is used, the victim is unaware of what has been done to him … in theory. Some of the doctors’s annotations indicate that the victims sometimes suspect that something is wrong. But when the phrase is used, the mission pops to the top and becomes the victim’s number one priority. Um, this conditioning wears off after a while. The length of time it remains viable varies from species to species, but seldom exceeds one standard year.”

She scrolled through screens of data on her terminal. “The code phrase can have a variable in it. Let’s say the mission is ‘Kidnap someone’ and the trigger phrase is ‘I need a new speeder, someone broke mine.’ You’d tell the brainwashed agent, ‘I need a new speeder, Elassar Targon broke mine,’ and the victim would interpret that as ‘Kidnap Elassar Targon.’ It’s a fairly versatile setup.” She skimmed through more screens of data. “So far, the treatment only works on mammalian species.

“Project Funeral is Zsinj’s major operation using the Minefield technique. Our brainstorming session pretty much nailed its purpose and intent—fomenting suspicion between the humans and nonhumans of the New Republic. Addenda to the files suggest that the project has recently been suspended, pending a new direction or a shutdown. In other words, it’s been stopped dead, at least temporarily.

“I’m going to do what I can for the test subjects on Iron Fist. I’ll end their suffering, one way or another.

“End Session Three.” She switched off the recording and leaned back in her chair.

She felt strange. Growing up on Coruscant, raised in the planet’s long-standing traditions concerning other species, she’d always believed in the basic superiority of humans. Oh, it wasn’t necessarily wrong to have affection for a member of another species—a household servant, or a reliable merchant who knew his role in life—but Coruscant was a world for and made by humans. Imperial doctrine solidified these traditions into something like duracrete.

Then, as an infiltrator in the Rebel navy and, later, Wraith Squadron, she’d run again and again into evidence suggesting that these traditions simply made no sense. With Wraith Squadron, her long-standing assumption of superiority over even the nonhumans she’d liked simply wilted away.

And now, with only a droid—held by the Empire in even lower esteem than nonhumans—for a friend, longing to return to a society full of what she’d once considered aliens, she once again knew that the Gara Petothel that had been her childhood identity was dead. Dead and unmourned.

And the nonhumans in their cages deep in Iron Fist’s belly were beginning to haunt her dreams.

Words popped up on her screen, ARE YOU SAD?

“No,” she lied. “Just tired. But it’s time to get back to work.” She leaned forward again. “What’s our situation with the hyperdrive?”

WE HAVE UNITS IN PLACE ALL OVER THE ENGINES. THEY CAN BEGIN THEIR SABOTAGE AT ANY TIME. BUT THERE ARE NOT YET ENOUGH IN CRITICAL POSITIONS FOR US TO BE CERTAIN THAT THEY CAN DISABLE THE HYPERDRIVE.

“Keep pouring on resources,” she said. “We have to be able to bring those engines down when we want to.

“Let’s see here … even though we have some access to the ship’s computers, we can’t afford to play around with them too much. We’ll be detected. Zsinj’s slicers aren’t bad. So I’ve been thinking about the most efficient way to give Solo’s force an advantage in any direct confrontation with Zsinj’s fleet. To me, that suggests messing with Iron Fist’s strategic coordination of Zsinj’s fleet. We might be able to flag friendly ships as enemies, temporarily, and enemies as friendly. Can we proceed that way?”

YES.

“Chance of being detected?”

VERY LOW, IN OUR INITIAL PHASE OF MANIPULATING THE PROGRAMMING. ONCE THE PROGRAM IS ACTIVATED, DETECTION CHANCE IS 99% IN THE FIRST SECOND OF OPERATION, WITH ODDS INCREASING EACH ADDITIONAL SECOND. PROBABLE DURATION OF PROGRAM ONCE IT IS RUNNING IS ABOUT TWELVE SECONDS.

“Not good enough. How about something to lower the ship’s shields?”

PROBABILITY OF SUCH A THING SURVIVING EVEN IN LATENT FORM FOR MORE THAN A FEW MOMENTS IS VERY LOW. THE MAIN COMPUTER’S SECURITY MEASURES LOOK FOR PROBLEMS THAT CATASTROPHIC.

“So most forms of self-destruct are not even worth looking into.”

THAT IS CORRECT.

“Well, then what—” She stopped as a new idea occurred to her. “Ooh.”

•    •    •

The document on Wedge’s screen was labeled “Routine Examination,” but Wedge knew it to be anything but. It was a fitness report, the accumulated conclusions of Mon Remonda’s most experienced medics and analysts.

About Myn Donos.

The review board had been unable to confirm or deny that the torpedo launch was an accidental discharge. That was a break in his favor.

However, the medics collectively pronounced him borderline. One medic said it was a certainty that he’d lose control again; the trauma from the loss of his squadron and his conflicting feelings concerning Lara Notsil made it inevitable. The others disagreed, but indicated that his stress levels made him a less than ideal candidate for missions.

It was the sort of data-based torpedo that could sink a career. All Wedge had to do was accept their conclusions, scrub Donos permanently from the active flight list, and the problem he represented would go away forever.

But one party hadn’t voted yet, and that was Wedge’s gut instinct.

A knock sounded on his door. “Come,” he said.

Donos entered, saluted. “Reporting as ordered, sir.” His expression was somber, but was not the rigid mask Wedge remembered from most of their earlier interviews.

“Have a seat.”

Donos complied, then quirked a smile. “Shall I take off my boot, sir?”

“Not this time. Lieutenant, I’ve asked you in here to find out what role you’d like to play in the Vahaba mission.”

“If I could do anything I wanted?”

“That’s right.”

“I’d be back in my X-wing. That’s where I feel I belong.”

“And if that were denied you?”

“I’d like to be put in command of the Millennium Falsehood.”

Wedge leaned back. Donos’s comment had taken him momentarily off guard, though he believed he’d kept his surprise from his face. “That has been my role.”

“I expect you’d rather be back in your X-wing, sir.”

“I don’t recall inviting you to attempt mind reading, Donos.”

Donos’s expression became more serious. “No, sir. But we’ve flown in the same squadron. Learning to anticipate the reactions of your squadmates—emotional ones as well as physical reflexes—is a survival trait. Maybe you find it a gross insult for me to make predictions this way, sir, but I’d say you wanted to get back in your X-wing cockpit and were doing these Falsehood runs because of duty. Because you’re most qualified—second, perhaps, to General Solo. If I can’t fly my own snubfighter, I’d be happy to free you up to fly yours.”

“Very generous of you. What if you couldn’t pilot at all?”

“Then I’d volunteer for a gunnery position on the Falsehood.”

“And in any of these three roles, what would you do about Lara Notsil?”

Donos hesitated, and his expression went from somber to melancholy. “I’d follow orders, sir.”

“What orders would you prefer?”

“Let her go.”

“And if you were ordered to fire on her?”

“I’d do it. I’ve sworn an oath to the New Republic. To hold its needs above my own.”

“And if you killed her? What would you do then?”

“I don’t know, sir.” Donos’s eyes lost focus as they stared off into the distance—perhaps to some future. His expression suggested that this future was not appealing to him. “I don’t know who I’d be then, sir.”

“Fair enough.” Wedge regarded the lieutenant for a moment.

This wasn’t the Donos he’d met several months before. Not a man whose every worry, every crisis was kept bottled up inside.

Wedge typed a few words into his terminal and sent the file on to the ship’s central computer. “Donos, for your information, you were right. I’d rather be in an X-wing, and for the upcoming and future engagements I plan to be. And so will you. I’m certifying you fit to fly. You’ll be back with the Wraiths at Vahaba.”

Donos’s eyes opened wide. “Thank you, sir.”

“Thank me after you’ve performed your duties to my satisfaction. That’s when I’ll know I haven’t made a mistake. Dismissed.”

Vahaba was a red giant circled by numerous planets. At some time in the past, a celestial catastrophe had destroyed the largest of those worlds and scattered its remains in a thin ring around the sun. The asteroids were spread across such an enormous distance that the Vahaba Asteroid Belt was not a hazard to navigation; any capital ship could blast through it at full acceleration with minimal worry about collision with one of the belt’s misshapen stony satellites.

Not that Mon Remonda was close enough for her handlers to feel even that minimal worry. To Han Solo’s eye, Vahaba was a distant red dot, and none of the system’s planets was visible to the naked eye. Solo’s fleet hung in space so far out that no set of Imperial sensors within the planetary system would pick them up. Meanwhile, pairs of X-wings off Mon Remonda and his fleet’s other cruisers scoured the system.

And found nothing.

He resisted the urge to gripe, to drum on his chair arm, to ask once more if there were any updates. Or to tell the new sensor officer to quit looking at him. He’d felt the woman’s curious gaze on him ever since Stellar Web joined his fleet.

To the bridge crew, Stellar Web was an unknown, tagged Contact M-317. It hovered some considerable distance from the rest of the fleet, far out of the range of the most capable visual enhancer. Messages from Contact M-317 were supposed to be sent directly to Solo, and the communications officer was under direct orders not to monitor, not to record them.

Solo and a few others knew the distant ship to be an Imperial Interdictor-class cruiser, the new flagship of Admiral Rogriss. But it would be best for that information not to spread.

“New contact, sir.” The sensor officer’s quiet words nearly jolted Solo out of his seat.

“Let me see,” Solo said, and brought up his own chair’s terminal screen.

It lit up with a wobbly visual image. Distant ships, forming up slowly into an attack group. Solo nodded. Two Star Destroyers, one Imperial-class, one Victory-class. Two Dreadnaughts. One smaller ship, a featureless needle at this distance; Solo couldn’t recognize it.

“Standard for a Zsinj group,” Solo said. “The question is, is this all he’s deploying to Vahaba, or is it just part of his fleet?” He raised his voice. “What’s the source of this recording?”

“A wingpair from Corsair Squadron, off Mon Karren” said the comm officer. “They recorded this, using only visual sensors so they’d be harder to spot. Then one of the pair returned with the data while the other stayed out there to monitor.”

“Where is this?”

“At the approximate orbit of the outermost planet, on the approach from Halmad.”

“Reinforce the X-wings monitoring this group with another pair. As our reconnaissance units come in for refueling, assign half of them to concentrate on the orbit of the outermost planet, on the direct-line approaches from other surrounding stars.”

“Yes, sir.”

Solo settled back. His heart was pounding just a little faster.

“Sick of it yet?” Face asked his temporary wingman.

“We are growing absolutely sick of it, Face,” said Runt. The need for hyperdrive-equipped reconnaissance pairs had placed him with Face for this mission.

The starfield outside their cockpits was brilliant, unchanging. They cruised at sublight speeds at what would be considered the boundary of the Vahaba system.

“Good.” Face changed the timbre of his voice, dropping it a register, making it smooth, insidious. “ ‘Please don’t insult my intelligence. Please don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about.’ ” He forced a falsetto. “ ‘I don’t, I really don’t. Please put down the blaster. You’re frightening me.’ ” He dropped into the lower register again. “ ‘Fright is the least of what you will suffer.’ ”

“Are we wrong?” Runt asked. “Or is this as terrible as we think? The writing is awful. You are not improving on it.”

“Sometimes you rise above your material, sometimes you don’t. I had to learn this when I was seven. It has never left me.” He dropped his voice again. “ ‘Now, tell me where the map is, or I—’ ”

“New contact, course thirteen degrees, down eighty-two.” Runt’s voice was suddenly crisp, professional.

“Roll for visual inspection, kill forward thrust, kill cockpit lights, passive sensors only.”

“Acknowledged, One.”

Face rolled his X-wing upside down. It would have been an unsettling experience in a vessel not equipped with an inertial compensator, but to his perspective it appeared only that the universe rotated around him. He shut down most of his vehicle systems and visually scanned the area of space Runt had indicated.

Nothing; the target was too far away. He brought up the visual enhancer on his sensor board and directed it toward the target area.

A minute’s worth of careful panning and searching yielded the target: a group of four ships in close formation. The smallest of them was too tiny to identify by class, but the other three were not. Three Star Destroyers, one of them an ancient Victory-class, one an Imperial-class, and the other—

“We have her,” Face said. “Iron Fist. Give me a minute while I calculate range, Six.”

“Yes, sir.”

Face ran numbers through his navigational computer and compared them with what he knew about the likely sensor ranges of Imperial capital ships. “All right,” he said. “Six, I want you to run ahead at one-third acceleration for ten minutes, then set your course to Mon Remonda’s station and transit back there. You were recording, weren’t you?”

“Yes, sir! Wait, let us check. Yes, we have it.”

“Good. Go.”

The news hit Mon Remonda’s bridge like a concussion missile. Solo came up out of his chair, began issuing orders. Captain Onoma did the same. Often their words overlapped one another.

“Recall all starfighters in close range,” Solo said. “Launch our hyperdrive-equipped shuttles to the regions we sent recon units to and have them transmit the new coordinates.”

“Battle stations,” Onoma said. “All spacetight doors to be closed in three minutes.”

“Transmit our course to Contact M-317,” Solo said. “Dispatch Skyhook and Crynyd to form up with M-317. They’re to shadow her at all times, protect her at all costs, not to interfere with her operations.”

“Bring our course to one-oh-six-point-two-two-four, elevation thirty-six-point-oh-nine-nine. Transmit same to fleet.”

“Tell the Falsehood crew to stand down and go to their secondary mission parameters; we won’t need them as bait.”

A low, unsettling rumble filled the bridge. Solo felt the hair on his arms and the back of his neck rise. He swung around to see Chewbacca standing in the doorway, his expression happy, uttering the jubilant hunting call. “That’s right, Chewie,” he said. “It’s our best shot yet.”

15

Lara was nearly jolted out of her seat by the high pitch and panic in the voice of the sensor officer, three seats down from her in the crew pit. “Contact, contact, a drop out of hyperspace, I read four, five, seven vessels cruiser size or better, total fleet size thirteen vessels. They’re already deploying starfighters.”

Boots clattered on the command walkway overhead and Lara saw Zsinj, General Melvar, and Captain Vellar, the stern-faced man who would have been master of Iron Fist had not Zsinj chosen the vessel as his flagship, running forward, toward the main bow viewports. Zsinj skidded to a sudden stop halfway there and Melvar nearly crashed into him. It was obvious that Zsinj could see the enemy with the naked eye—they were close.

Lara rolled her chair back to get a look at the sensor officer’s terminal screen. It was filled with red blips, outnumbering Zsinj’s group more than three to one.

“Return to original course,” Zsinj shouted. His face was red. “Prepare for hyperspace. Signal the group. Inform Groups Two and Three. Tell them our situation and instruct them to stand by to jump to the abort rendezvous locations.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lara rolled back into place and nudged the technician next to her, an Intelligence operative dedicated to analyzing patterns in comm traffic. “Why is he running?” she asked. “They outnumber us, but they couldn’t possibly destroy us before the rest of our fleet jumps in.”

The analyst gave her a look of scorn. “Zsinj’s doctrine,” he said. “No matter what the odds look like, if the enemy has chosen the battleground, he has more resources than we’re aware of. It becomes imperative to choose a new battlefield, one the enemy can’t have prepared. Don’t mistake that for cowardice.”

“I never would have, sir.” She returned her attention to her terminal, then typed a command, sixteen characters of gibberish, into her keyboard, and sent the command.

Somewhere under the floor beneath her, a utility droid that was spliced into the data cables should be intercepting the command, interpreting it, then switching the terminal over from its analysis duties to a direct connection with her quarters—a connection the ship’s computer was not set up to monitor.

HELLO, KIRNEY.

She donned a set of goggles and plugged it into the terminal. “Hello, Tonin,” she whispered. “Are we set to disable the hyperdrive?”

His next transmission showed up on her goggles, YES. BUT FROM THE MOMENT YOU ISSUE THE COMMAND, IT WILL TAKE A FEW MINUTES TO TAKE EFFECT.

“Understood. On my command, we pin him in place and make our run for it. Three, two, one—”

“Sir, we’re in a gravity well,” the sensor operator shouted.

“Hold it, Tonin.”

Zsinj leaned down to look into the crew pit. “We’re not even near—damn. Sensors, identify the Interdictor. Captain Vellar, that’s our primary target. Dispatch Red Gauntlet and Serpent’s Smile to annihilate that nuisance. Keep Blood Gutter in tight to us. Communications, new message for Groups Two and Three. Send them our current position—update it constantly. Tell them to hold in readiness to jump to our position on my order. If we’re not able to jump out of here before we’re likely to be disabled, we’ll just have to bring the fleet in here and fight on Solo’s preferred playground.”

“I’m disconnecting, Tonin. We may not have to reveal ourselves yet.” She typed and sent the countercommand, restoring the terminal to its proper function, and got back to work.

Wedge led his group in a wide loop around Skyhook, Crynyd, and Stellar Web, the lead ships of Solo’s fleet; around Red Gauntlet and Serpent’s Smile, the Star Destroyers coming in to eliminate the Interdictor; and then straight in toward the retreating Iron Fist.

Wedge was lead fighter in the lead squadron of twenty-four squadrons of fighters—every fighter in Solo’s fleet except those from the Skyhook and Crynyd, which were charged with the defense of Stellar Web. Several of the X-wing squadrons were light, with pilots still scattered across the solar system, awaiting word that the battle had materialized, but the group was still imposing, the largest force he’d led in quite a while.

“Rogue Leader, this is Mon Remonda. Still no sign of starfighter deployment from your target.”

“Thanks, Mon Remonda. X-wings, set your S-foils to attack position. All fighters, arm your weapons.” Wedge looped around so he was lined up more perfectly with Iron Fist’s long axis. The lack of starfighters didn’t surprise him; Zsinj was hoping to make a jump to hyperspace and didn’t want to lose time and pilots by deploying his TIEs and then summoning them back in. But that decision was about to cost him.

Ahead, the Super Star Destroyer’s turbolasers and other weapons flared into life. Space around the group was suddenly bright with laser flares and the ball-shaped detonation of concussion missiles.

“Leader to group: make a trench.” Wedge threw more power to acceleration and Rogue Squadron leaped out ahead. The X-wing squad to his starboard, the Gauntlets off the Allegiance, dropped back and sideslipped in directly behind. The Y-wing squad to his port, Lightning Squadron off Battle Dog, slid in just as neatly behind them.

In a matter of seconds, the broad wing of starfighters became a single concentrated line.

Wedge brought them down low over Iron Fist’s stern and fired down at the Star Destroyer’s top hull, his lasers striking into but being dissipated by the great ship’s shields, his proton torpedoes detonating on impact with those defensive screens rather than against the hull itself. Still, every shot he took battered away at shield integrity and drained badly needed energy resources … and more than two hundred fighters strung behind him were doing exactly the same thing. He veered from side to side, varying his altitude as he came, and turbocannon fire was so dense his cockpit interior was constantly illuminated by its brightness.

Then Iron Fist dropped away beneath him. He’d run the gauntlet. Tycho was still tucked in beside him, and his sensor board read all Rogues still accounted for. “At the end of your run,” he said, “break by squadrons and make further passes at your discretion.”

Zsinj knew from the way Iron Fist rattled that some of those detonations were taking place at the hull, not above it. The beeps and wails of damage reports began to sound. A near-constant line of starfighters flashed forward past the bridge viewports.

“What was that?” he asked of no one, then leaned over the edge of the command walkway. “Petothel! What is he doing?”

His new analyst looked up. “He’s concentrating fire on your centerline, since you don’t have a starfighter screen out to prevent such a move. But he won’t do it on his second run. He knows you’ll concentrate your gunnery crews’s attention on the centerline now, so he’ll break his group up for more standard strafing runs. Don’t be fooled.”

“I asked for your analysis, not your advice,” Zsinj said, and was surprised by the snap in his voice. He turned to Melvar. “Prepare for them to come back by way of the bow the same way. Alert the gunners on top and below for a repeat of the same tactic.”

Melvar looked uncertain. “Yes, sir.”

On the sensor screens, the deadly line of starfighters emerged from its strafing run off Iron Fist’s bow, then broke up into individual squadrons and looped back toward the ship, a broad cloud of enemies.

Lara allowed herself a small smirk of triumph. She’d thought that if she phrased her reply a certain way, suggesting that Wedge Antilles could outthink the warlord, Zsinj would respond with pride instead of with his tactical ability. And she’d been right. It didn’t make much of a difference in this situation; the gunnery crews were now receiving corrections, being told to abandon the previous orders. But Zsinj’s response meant she might be able to manipulate him again. If only she could persuade him to abandon his group, leave them behind. Then, wherever he emerged, she could shut down his hyperdrive and summon Solo’s fleet for the kill.

She sat upright. Wait a second. Maybe she could get Zsinj to abandon his fleet. It wouldn’t take persuasion, either. Just a minor course correction.

She switched her terminal over to direct communication with Tonin and plugged her goggles back in. “Has Iron Fist already transmitted its jump course to the rest of the fleet?” she asked.

YES.

“Can you enter a course correction? I don’t mean enter it as a new course—they’d notice that. I mean, like an automated minor correction, as the nav computer continues to process new data?”

YES.

“Is there a star within range of the kind of variation you can enter?”

YES. SELAGGIS. JUST WITHIN ZSINJ-CONTROLLED SPACE. A FEW LIGHT-YEARS AWAY. A YELLOW STAR, SEVEN WORLDS.

“Never mind the almanac data. Correct Iron Fist’s jump-course so that the distance is unchanged but the destination is on the far side of a direct line through Selaggis’s sun.”

COLLISION DETECTION IN THE NAVIGATIONAL SOFTWARE WILL PREVENT IT.

“Oh.” She sagged.

UNLESS I DELETE SELAGGIS FROM THE STARMAP.

“Do it!”

DONE. WE ARE NOW BOUND FOR SELAGGIS.

“Tonin, you are wonderful. Kirney out.”

Perfect. Either Iron Fist would remain here, trapped by the Interdictor, until Solo destroyed it, or it would jump to Selaggis, where Solo’s fleet could finish it off.

She didn’t switch back to normal terminal functions. Instead, she lifted her goggles and glanced right and left, making sure that the analysts on either side of her were fully occupied with their tasks. Then she began recording.

Zsinj watched in pained fascination as the battle unfolded.

Red Gauntlet, the Imperial-class Star Destroyer, and Serpent’s Smile, the Victory-class, had now dropped behind far enough to engage the Interdictor cruiser and her two escorts. His forces were somewhat overmatched; the Interdictor’s screen consisted of two Imperial-class Star Destroyers, and they had their starfighters deployed to offer additional damage to Zsinj’s ships.

But Red Gauntlet and Serpent’s Smile didn’t have to destroy the enemy. They merely had to make one ship driver flinch.

They had to do it quickly, too. Zsinj took in the broader range of the sensor data available to him. Mon Remonda, two more Mon Cal cruisers, another Imperial Star Destroyer, two frigates, and a swarm of smaller ships were converging on Iron Fist.

Already swarming with Rebel starfighters—Zsinj could see the tiny flashes of their lasers and torpedoes in the longdistance visual feed—his vessels dropped within range of the enemy capital ships’s guns. Brilliant streams of light lit up between them.

Red Gauntlet began a stately turn to starboard, bringing her main batteries to bear on the enemy ships. Her flank offered more firepower than the bows of all three Rebel vessels—and more target area, too. Zsinj bit his lip. “Bring up damage and diagnostics holos for Gauntlet and Smile,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” A starboard viewport was replaced by the giant-sized holoprojection of a data screen. It showed both his ships with shields intact, minor damage accumulating throughout their systems, especially on the older Serpent’s Smile.

But that ship had a canny captain who was a fine pilot. As Red Gauntlet rained destructive—and distracting—fire down on the enemies, Serpent’s Smile rotated ninety degrees on her long axis to narrow her approach profile and sideslipped between the Rebel Star Destroyers.

As they advanced, the Rebel ships unloaded only a portion of the full might of their flank batteries against Serpent’s Smile—any miss might continue on to hit the other Rebel ship. And, though Smile had only a few stern guns to bring to bear against the Interdictor, she had one other weapon—her considerable mass, which was decelerating right in the Interdictor’s path.

“Flinch,” Zsinj said. All the Interdictor had to do was veer away from the collision. Then Iron Fist and, ultimately, all the ships in Zsinj’s group could get enough distance from the Interdictor to jump into hyperspace.

The Interdictor came on, her own guns now firing on Serpent’s Smile.

“Flinch, damn you,” Zsinj said.

Melvar said, “We’ve identified the Interdictor. She’s Stellar Web.”

“Stellar Web? Nonsense.” Zsinj shook his head. “That’s an Imperial craft. Captained by Barr Moutil. He doesn’t have the nerve to do what that captain’s doing.”

“You were the one who said the Rebels and the Imperials were cooperating against you,” Melvar reminded him. “And Stellar Web has been observed to be part of Admiral Rogriss’s task force.”

“Rogriss.” Zsinj took a look at the sensor board. Stellar Web still came on, straight at the Victory-class destroyer decelerating into its path. “If he’s transferred his flag to the Interdictor … he has more nerve, better timing than my man. My captain will flinch first. We may have to summon the other groups and fight this one out. On their chosen battlefield.”

The communications officer called up, “Communications lost with Serpent’s Smile.”

Zsinj scowled down at him. “Nonsense. We still have data feeds.”

“Sorry, sir. I meant bridge communications.”

Zsinj looked at the enhanced view of the battle zone. The top hull of Serpent’s Smile was afire, with much of the flame concentrated around the command tower. Increasingly, the old destroyer looked like something a giant beast had chewed upon.

“We’re getting communications from their auxiliary bridge. They’re requesting orders.”

Zsinj felt a sense of loss as he realized what needed to be done. “Tell them to lock down their current course, launch all starfighters, and abandon ship.”

“They say they can save her, sir.”

“Do as I ordered.” Zsinj turned to Melvar. “It’s a heavy loss. But now they can’t flinch.”

Melvar nodded.

Solo watched as the stern of Serpent’s Smile slid ever closer to the bow of the oncoming Stellar Web. He was unconscious of the fact that he was rocking forward and back in his seat. Games of head-to-head between capital ships tended to result in disaster for both participants, and disaster was almost upon the two ships he watched.

“They’re going to hit,” Onoma said. “They cannot avoid it now.”

Stellar Web finally vectored, her bow turning slowly away from the oncoming destroyer wreckage. Solo waited for the inevitable collision between ships, but Serpent’s Smile seemed to slow as it approached the Interdictor. Stellar Web shot away from the destroyer, her course taking her dangerously close to Crynyd, then vectored away from that vessel as well. Suddenly she was headed out to space, away from the surviving Imperial Star Destroyers.

“How did she do that?” Onoma said.

“I’m not sure,” Solo said. “But if I were driving a dragship in that situation, I’d reverse the gravity-well generators so they pushed instead of pulled. That would give me extra propulsion to bounce away from any mass in the area. Must have wreaked havoc with the ship’s artificial gravity, though. She can’t be set up to do such a thing normally.” He couldn’t keep dull disappointment out of his voice. Stellar Web’s course was now at an angle to Iron Fist’s. Distance increased between the two ships. “Weapons, how soon before we overtake Iron Fist?”

“They’ll be within firing range in thirty-eight seconds,” the weapons officer said. “Within effective damage range in a minute ten.”

“Sensors, how soon, assuming optimal piloting by Stellar Web, before Iron Fist is out of her projected mass shadow?”

“Two minutes fifteen, sir.”

“Weapons, ready your guns.”

Wedge brought the Rogues around for another pass. Casualties had been high in his group owing to the sustained effort against Iron Fist; of the Rogues, Hobbie had been hit by an ion cannon and his snubfighter was out of combat, though he was undamaged, and Asyr Sei’lar had been forced to punch out when turbolaser damage sent her X-wing into a fatal spin toward Iron Fist’s hull. A shuttle off Mon Karren was now endeavoring to pick her up. Losses had been even more severe among many other squadrons, especially the slower-moving Y-wings and the Cloakshape fighter squadron off Battle Dog.

But Iron Fist was starting to look bad, portions of her deck gouting flame. Mon Remonda reported Serpent’s Smile destroyed, and Red Gauntlet sustaining heavy damage from the two Imperial-class Star Destroyers she faced.

“Rogues, stay on her bow,” Wedge ordered. “Solo’s group is coming up off her stern and we don’t want to get caught in the crossfire.” He rolled toward the Super Star Destroyer, evened out his shields, and opened fire once more.

His lasers plowed into Iron Fist’s shields and through—he saw hull plates explode out under the pressure of the atmosphere they’d once contained. As he looped around from this side-to-side strafing run, he saw the guns of Mon Remonda, Mon Karren, and Mon Delindo chewing away at Iron Fist’s stern, the destroyer’s batteries returning fire against the Mon Cal cruisers.

Then Iron Fist became a single streak of light leaping out into space. A moment later, the destroyer was gone. Only the battered-looking cruiser that had been hugging her belly remained, and a second later it disappeared as well.

Wedge set his jaw. This wasn’t the sort of victory they needed. “Rogues, form up. Let’s assess remaining threats.”

But the flaming wreckage that was Serpent’s Smile was no threat, and neither Red Gauntlet nor the three ships around her—Crynyd, Skyhook, or Stellar Web—was firing. Zsinj’s other destroyer had surrendered.

“I can’t beat him,” Solo said. His voice was duller than before, even to his own ears. He couldn’t seem to muster the energy even to pretend to be enthusiastic. “We’ve lost.”

Captain Onoma regarded him steadily; the Mon Calamari’s eyes were wide, evaluative. “We have reduced him.”

“He’ll swell up again. And there we’ll be, locked in this struggle forever.” He heaved a sigh. “All right. Recall the starfighters. Assemble the group. Secure Red Gauntlet and put a crew aboard her. Maybe we can draft her against Zsinj until Fleet Command decides to reallocate her.”

“Yes, General.”

The communications officer said, “Message from Contact M-317.”

“Put it through.”

Admiral Rogriss’s face came up on Solo’s private screen. He looked unshaken, undismayed by the events of the last few minutes. “General Solo.”

“Admiral. Let me compliment you on your flying.”

“Thank you. I think we’re done here, however. A shame.” The admiral shrugged. “It was a trap that could have succeeded.”

Solo nodded. “Let me ask you. Would you do it again?”

Rogriss froze. After a moment, he gave a slight nod. “I imagine I would. You have my frequency.”

“I do. Good luck … against the warlord, anyway.”

Rogriss laughed. Then his image vanished from the screen. A moment later, Stellar Web made the jump into hyperspace and was gone.

Solo sat, alone with his thoughts, his crew choosing not to disturb him.

In the murmur of their voices, he could pick up details of their status. How many pilots lost. How many starfighters temporarily out of combat, how many permanently. Damage tallies. Reports on reconnaissance pilots finally rejoining the group.

Then his communications officer said, “Sir, we’re receiving holocomm traffic.”

“That will be Zsinj,” Solo said. “Calling to brag.”

“No, sir.”

Long before she was supposed to, Iron Fist dropped out of hyperspace. Directly ahead, though at a sufficient distance that they were in no danger, was a yellow sun.

Zsinj leaned over to bellow down at his navigator. “What is this?”

“A star, sir,” the navigator said, then wilted as he realized how unnecessary the statement was. “Name unknown. It’s not on my charts.”

“Not on your charts?” The words escaped Zsinj in a bellow. “Just how incompetent are you? How far did we travel?”

“Less than eight light-years, sir.”

Zsinj felt himself gaping like a fish. “There are no unknown systems eight light-years from Vahaba!” He turned to Melvar, dropped the volume of his voice to a whisper. “Are there?”

“Well, if we knew,” the general said, “they wouldn’t be unknown. But to answer the question more appropriately, no yellow sun like this could exist eight light-years from Vahaba without the people of Vahaba knowing—and so it would be on our star charts.”

Zsinj returned his attention to the navigator. “Well, turn us around, get us out of this gravity well and into hyperspace, and get us to our rendezvous point.” He didn’t bother to keep anger out of his voice.

“Sir?” Another voice, the officer in charge of engineering. “New damage reports. We’re experiencing a progressive failure in our hyperdrive system.”

Zsinj felt his gut turn cold. “Define ‘progressive failure.’ ”

“Primary subsystems are shut down and secondary systems and optional reroutes are failing. But it’s not instantaneous. It’s spreading, like a disease.”

“How long before the system is inoperable?”

“One minute, maybe two.”

“Navigation, how long before we can make our next jump?”

The navigator looked up and slowly shook his head.

“Fix it,” Zsinj said. “Now. Now. Now.”

“We have a holocomm message,” called the communications officer.

“Directed to whom?” Zsinj asked.

“I don’t know, sir. It’s not to us. It’s from us.”

“I didn’t authorize—Oh, Melvar, we’re in trouble. Communications, put that message up where I can see it.”

The holoprojected status board was replaced by a face—that of Gara Petothel. She had goggles pushed up on her forehead and was leaning in close to the holocam. Her expression was somber. The view behind her was of the back wall of the crew pit. Zsinj looked down at her seat in the pit; it was empty.

“General Solo,” the woman said. “If everything has gone correctly, Iron Fist is now in the Selaggis system with her hyperdrive inoperable. Other portions of Zsinj’s fleet are continuing on to their rendezvous points and won’t be able to get to him for a little while—minutes in some cases, hours in others. I recommend you come by and take a look. Oh, bring your fleet, too. Lara Notsil out.” The image faded.

Zsinj stood there a moment, his mind a blank. For the first time in years, he couldn’t think of anything to say. He did notice the deadly quiet that had fallen on the bridge.

Finally, he turned to Melvar. “Dispatch Security. Have her found and brought to the interrogation chamber.” He took a deep breath. “I intend for her death to be so horrible that it will give me nightmares.”

Melvar nodded and brought out his comlink.

Zsinj addressed the navigator. “We’re at Selaggis. Selaggis is normally on our charts. What does that suggest to you?”

“Our charts have been tampered with, sir. I’m already restoring them from our archives.”

“Very good. You just saved your own life.”

Zsinj turned his attention to Captain Vellar. “How soon can we reassemble the fleet here?”

“If they’ve already launched for the rendezvous points,” the man said, “about six hours for the other units of Group One, four for Group Two, two and a half for Group Three. But, sir, Groups Two and Three had no urgent reason to leave Vahaba. If they’ve lingered, they’re only minutes away.”

“Communications! Direct a holocomm signal to any remaining units at Vahaba. Bring them here.” Zsinj returned his attention to Vellar. “Bring in Second Death. We may actually have to use her in her primary role. Bring in any stray vessels under my command in this region. Bring in any pirate or mercenary forces we’ve used in the past. Hire any vessel of any sort operating in or near this system. Find a good spot in this system for us to hide until our reinforcements arrive or our hyperdrive is fixed.” He took a deep breath to calm himself. “And prepare all our starfighters to launch. We’re in for a fight.”

At a half trot, Lara followed the tiny utility droid down the busy corridor, and Ensign Gatterweld followed her. “Should you be doing this?” Gatterweld asked. “Aren’t you supposed to be on station?”

“No, I’m not,” she said. “I’m tending to an emergency.”

“What’s with the droid?”

“It knows where to go.”

The droid pulled over to stop beneath a utility access hatch. Lara typed numbers into the keyboard beside it. “If this weren’t authorized, would I be able to open this?” The hatch offered up a clank of confirmation and swung open. Beyond, in the narrow access shaft, waited another utility droid. A broad box was strapped to its top.

“I suppose not. Where are we going?”

Lara reached in, opened the box partway, and fumbled within it. Her hand rested first upon a trigger housing. She grabbed the weapon’s grip and switched the weapon over from blast to stun settings. “I’m going to go get killed. If you’re not smart, you will, too.” She reached back with her free hand to give him a shove, rocking him back on his heels, then she turned and shot him.

The stun beam caught him in his midsection. He fell backwards, hitting the corridor’s metal flooring with a clang. Passersby—officers, crewmen, pilots rushing toward their launch bays—stared in momentary surprise, and some lunged toward her.

She stepped into the access shaft and yanked the hatch closed. The hammering of fists sounded against the hatch.

Lara pulled the empty package from the utility droid’s back and discarded it. Then she tapped the droid three times.

It turned obligingly and headed off into the shaft, Lara close behind it.

“But can we believe her?” Solo asked.

Captain Onoma gave him a shrug. “Your analysis team believed her before, and our engagement here at Vahaba confirmed the data she gave us.”

“True. But it could still be a plan to draw us into some trap Zsinj has set up at Selaggis. Trusting her could mean the end of the fleet.” Solo sat back, frustrated, struggling with conflicting impulses.

“Sir,” the comm officer said, “we have more holocomm traffic. A recorded message, not a live transmission.”

Solo sat up. “From Notsil again?”

“No, sir. From some sort of automated router in the Halmad system. It didn’t come straight from there, though. The route data says it went to a holocomm relay satellite in New Republic space first, then Coruscant, then to a high-security fleet satellite, then to us. It’s eyes-only for Commander Antilles or Captain Loran.”

Solo frowned. “That’s odd. And Halmad is so close the timing can’t be coincidence. Captain, is either Wedge or Loran back on board?”

Onoma nodded. “Both are.”

“Get them up to the closest conference room, right now.”

•    •    •

Solo met the two pilots in the conference room. As soon as the door was shut, he said, “Bring up the message.”

The room’s comm terminal responded in what sounded like a recorded female voice. “State your name and rank for verification purposes.”

Wedge looked at the general, who nodded, and said, “Wedge Antilles, Commander, New Republic Starfighter Command.”

“Thank you.”

The room’s holoprojector activated and a hologram swam into focus in the center of the conference table. It showed Warlord Zsinj against a neutral gray background. “General Kargin and the Hawk-bats, greetings,” the warlord said.

“It’s a recording,” Solo said. “You’re not compromised.”

“I have a proposition for you,” the warlord continued. “It’s my hope that you’re still stationed out of the Halmad system, because if you are, I can offer you a considerable sum to join me on a sort of impromptu exercise. If you’re available, please transit immediately to the Selaggis system—practically your next-door neighbor. However, our window of opportunity is very narrow—in a very few hours from this message’s time stamp, it will close. I hope to see you soon.” With a confident smile, the warlord closed down the transmission and his holo image faded.

“Notsil was telling the truth,” Solo said. “Zsinj is trapped at Selaggis.” His expression transformed from tiredness and premature age to his familiar cocky appearance.

“And he’s desperate for troops,” Face said. “He’s calling in the Hawk-bats and probably every pirate he’s dealt with within a few light-years. We’ve got him.”

“Do you want to go in as the Hawk-bats?” Solo asked.

Face shook his head. “We’d have to put on the makeup, repaint some of the interceptors. Call it half an hour to an hour’s delay. And all it would get us is proximity to Iron Fist in a half dozen TIEs.”

“Where do I know the name Selaggis from?” Wedge asked.

“Another Zsinj strike zone,” Solo said. “One of the first I looked at after I assumed command of this task force. One of the moons of Selaggis Six was colonized. I guess Zsinj decided to make a lesson of someone colonizing on his border without his permission. Iron Fist wiped out the whole colony. I think it would be very appropriate if he were wiped out in the same system.”

“Right.”

“Get back to your squadrons,” Solo said. “We’ll jump immediately.” He raced from the room, showing haste inappropriate for a general.

Wedge and Face headed back for their hangar at a trot. “Shalla is going to be so relieved,” Face said.

“How so?”

“Her assault on Netbers back in the Saffalore complex. She’s been beating herself up for a while, wondering whether she should have risked all our lives to keep the Wraith Squadron/Hawk-bats link a secret. Now she gets to know she was right.”

16

“Second Death is on station,” announced Iron Fist’s communications officer.

“Very well,” Zsinj said.

“Sir.”

Zsinj turned at the sound of Vellar’s voice. “Captain. What is it? You’re almost smiling.”

Vellar did in fact smile. “I got through to the Chains of Justice. Group Three had not yet entered hyperspace at Vahaba. The entire Group Three is en route to us now.”

Zsinj beamed at him. “We might not only survive—we may have just won this engagement, Captain. Thank you.”

Mon Remonda and the New Republic fleet dropped out of hyperspace well within the Selaggis system.

“Contact,” announced the sensor operator. “Multiple contacts moving well ahead of us. Their course takes them toward Selaggis Six.”

“Show me,” Solo said.

The holoimage brought up to hang before Solo’s chair jerked and flickered, the result of the extreme visual enhancement needed to offer any detail at this range. It showed a gradually lengthening line of ships headed toward a distinct yellow-orange world. The closest ships, those at the rear of the formation, were two Star Destroyers—one Imperial, one Victory—and a smaller vessel. Like Carrack-class cruisers, the small ship looked like a thick bar with thickened areas fore and aft, but Solo recognized it as a Lancer-class frigate. Smaller than Carracks, the Lancers were configured to repel starfighter squadrons. Stretching out ahead of these vessels were two Dreadnaughts and, in front, a smaller craft that would have been difficult to identify if seen from an above angle, where it would look like a simple triangle. But Mon Remonda’s position was slightly below the flight path of the outbound ships, and from this perspective Solo could see the teardrop-shaped command pod hanging from the bow, the boxy starfighter bay depending from the stern. It was a Quasar Fire-class starfighter transport. Solo had one in his own fleet.

Solo ran the numbers through his head. It was a habit he’d gotten into as a general; the Corellian habit of ignoring odds until one crashed right into them was inappropriate for an officer who had lives depending on his decisions.

“If they join up with Iron Fist, they will outgun us,” Captain Onoma said, confirming Solo’s calculations.

“But not by an impossible amount,” Solo said. “We’ll just have to be better than they are.”

The world the enemy forces approached, Solo knew, was a gas giant, a beautiful yellow-orange thing whose atmosphere was characterized by constant storm activity. The storms unceasingly changed the planet’s patterns of swirls and lines of color, so that each new day offered variations in the worldscape. It must have been an ever-changing work of art for the colonists on one of the world’s moons. Selaggis Six also had a heavy debris ring thought to have been another moon at one time.

Solo nodded. “Selaggis Six is the perfect place for Zsinj to make a stand. He can use the terrain to his advantage. An asteroid ring to hide in, a planetary atmosphere he might even be able to bring Iron Fist into for cover. That’s our destination, Captain. Follow that group.”

•    •    •

Leaving Tonin behind, Lara stepped out of the turbolift onto a deck of Iron Fist that wasn’t supposed to exist.

She’d only seen it through holocam recordings taken by utility droids. It didn’t seem quite as cavernous from a human perspective.

Ahead was a long, dimly lit corridor. To the right was a bank of viewports showing more brightly lit chambers.

The first chamber she passed was the one she thought of as the zoo. In it were a couple of monitoring consoles and an entire wall of metal and transparisteel cages, stacked three high, the upper ones accessed by a sort of portable turbolift—a metal floor in an open-air upright frame. Most of the cages still seemed to be full. Two human men were seated at a desk, one typing away on a large terminal. Neither noticed Lara. She wasn’t surprised; inside the more brightly lit room, the transparisteel of the viewport would be very reflective. If they did see her, all they’d see was a naval officer walking at a slow, measured rate.

It was making her crazy, having to pace herself now that she was within sight of humans and holocams again—though Tonin’s measures should have rendered those holocams ineffective. She wanted to dash down to the end and do her business. But she couldn’t afford to attract attention, not now.

The next chamber was a surgical theater. The operating table featured an inordinate number of straps and fasteners of varying sizes. There were also injectors on robot arms, monitor screens, tools she couldn’t recognize. She suppressed a shudder.

Then, the office. Within it, another two men, medical technicians. One looked up as she passed, squinted, and shaded his eyes to see her through the partial reflection.

She rounded the turn to the right and punched the combination Tonin had given her into the door keypad there. The door slid open.

The two technicians, dark-haired men of ordinary appearance, their features so similar they were probably brothers, glanced at one another and their expressions brightened. “A new liaison officer?” asked one.

“That’s right.” Lara entered and shut the door.

“Would you please—” said the first.

“Please please please,” said the second.

“Tell us what’s going on with the ship?”

“We were in a battle, weren’t we?” said the second. “I could feel the vibrations even down here.”

“I felt them first.”

Lara looked between them. “You two, and the men in the containment chamber, are the most vomitously despicable creatures I think I’ve ever met.”

The two men looked at one another. “You haven’t even gotten to know us yet,” said the first.

From where she’d tucked it into her belt at her back, she drew her blaster. Both men flinched. “Take me to the containment chamber,” she said. “Or I’ll kill you.”

In moments she was in the largest chamber, four prisoners standing splayed against one blank wall, while she examined the cages at ground level.

Inside the nearest was an Ewok. “Do you understand Basic?” she asked.

It nodded, its motion quick and very human. Its eyes looked like those of an Ewok but possessed an understanding that was unsettling.

“I’m going to free you and get you off this ship. So you can go home or live where you please. Would you like that?”

It nodded.

One of the medics said, “Zsinj will kill you for this.”

“No, he’s going to kill me for several other things.” The lock on the cage was simple, mechanical; she lifted it and the Ewok emerged. The creature looked at the medics and uttered a low, rolling growl.

Then, to Lara’s discomfiture, it spoke, its voice rising and falling in a singsong that did not belong to any Basic dialect she’d ever heard. “I will kill them.”

“No,” she said. “You will go to each cage. Ask each prisoner if it will refrain from attacking me if it is freed. Tell it that I will get them all off this ship. Then free the ones who agree.”

The Ewok looked up at her, so obviously considering her command and his other options that Lara could almost see a strategic program running behind his eyes. Then he shrugged like a human and moved to the next cage.

Out the forward viewport, Zsinj could see little but tumbling asteroids and brilliant flashes of light as Iron Fist’s forward guns blasted the largest of them.

The communications officer said, “The shuttles report our explosives packages being planted on schedule.”

“Good.”

“And Chains of Justice reports sensor contact with Solo’s fleet, sir.”

“Very well.”

“And we have a report from the chief engineer.”

“Hold on.” Zsinj stepped back to his hologram pod in the security foyer directly behind the bridge. “Send it to me here.”

The face and torso of the chief engineer, whose light build and scrupulous cleanliness belied his profession, swam into focus in the air. “Sir, we’ve identified the trouble. The engineering compartments are swarming with, well, saboteur droids.”

Zsinj gave him a look to suggest the man shouldn’t make jokes. “Would you like to try again?”

“Standard MSE-6 utility droids, sir. They’ve gone mad or been reprogrammed. With their internal tools, they’re opening access hatches, chewing their way into wire clusters, sending false data, dragging chips out of their housings. All in the hyperdrive systems.”

The absurdity of what the man was saying hit Zsinj and he almost snorted. “And what are you doing about this?”

“We’re, uh, kicking the things to pieces with our boots, Warlord. Between the primary and redundant systems, we’re restoring the system to functionality. But when we jump, we’ll need to make it a careful one; there won’t be any backup systems in case of component failure.”

“Understood. How long?”

“Pessimistically, an hour. Optimistically, somewhat less. I don’t know how much less.”

“As much less as possible, if you please. Out.” The image faded.

Zsinj turned to Melvar. “Very clever. I wish our analysts had anticipated such an approach to sabotage. We need thinkers like her in my organization, General.”

“Are we not going to kill her, then?”

“I said thinkers like her. But loyal ones. Her fate will serve to reinforce that loyalty.”

The starfighters of Solo’s fleet finished forming up, then broke off by task.

Wedge’s task force included four X-wing squadrons, one A-wing, and the Wraiths. They turned toward Selaggis Six and leaped forward, drifting a little out from the path taken by Zsinj’s group, their intent to pass it by and reach the planet first. Other groups of starfighters would head straight for the Star Destroyers at the rear of the formation, hoping to get some early licks in, while still others remained on station with Solo’s fleet as a defensive screen.

“Group, this is Leader. When we reach the ring, we’ll break by squads to our assigned task. Rogue and Wraith Squadrons will head counter-spinward and spread out the width of the ring for reconnaissance. Corsair and High Flight Squadrons will do the same spin ward. Polearm and Shadow Squadrons will break by wingpairs and do recon runs on the moons. First pilot to spot Iron Fist gets an extra three-day leave.”

Iron Fist’s communications officer announced, “Chains of Justice reports starfighter launch and deployment from Mon Remonda. X-wings incoming. Y-wings remaining behind as a screen.”

Zsinj smiled. “Launch all our squadrons, except the One Eighty-first and the experimentals.” He turned to Melvar. “While they send their fastest fighters looking for us, we can concentrate ours on them. Mon Remonda is in for the beating she deserves.”

•    •    •

“Incoming starfighter squadrons from Selaggis Six,” the sensor operator said.

Solo nodded. “Bring the Y-wings up front. Let them think that’s all we have. Array the rest behind Mon Remonda.” He had four squadrons of Y-wings, two each from Mon Karren and Mon Delindo, plus two more Y-wing squadrons and a Cloakshape squad off the Battle Dog.

The Y-wings were good at hammering large targets, and rugged enough to sustain a lot of damage from enemy starfighters. But they weren’t fast or nimble enough to keep TIE fighters from bypassing them and hitting a target like Mon Remonda.

However, the last ship in Solo’s formation, the Imperial Star Destroyer Skyhook, after its capture from the Empire, never had its complement of Imperial fighters replaced by the New Republic’s ubiquitous Y-wings. Instead, it retained its original complement of six TIE fighter squadrons, crewed mostly by former Imperial pilots who’d joined the Alliance over the years.

The approaching force, nine squadrons of TIE fighters and interceptors, came on in a spread pattern toward Mon Remonda, ignoring the other ships in Solo’s group. Several kilometers out from Mon Remonda, as they reached maximum firing range from the Y-wing squadrons, they opened up with a salvo of lasers, then broke around the Y-wing force in four groups, leaving the slower New Republic starfighters to turn awkwardly in their wake.

“Open mass fire,” Solo said. “Forward guns only. Prepare to drop them at my command. Bring up the TIEs.”

The cruiser’s forward turbolaser batteries and ion cannons flashed into life, and Solo could feel vibrations in the heels of his boots as wave after wave of destructive energy poured out toward the enemy. On his sensor board, the cluster of TIEs waiting to Mon Remonda’s stern, colored blue to indicate their friendly status, suddenly leaped into motion, half moving up over the cruiser, half under her hull.

Off the cruiser’s bow, the incoming TIEs began reaching effective fire range. The cruiser throbbed and vibrated as her shields absorbed concentrated laser fire from a hundred starfighters.

The friendly TIEs reached Mon Remonda’s midway point. Solo said, “Cease mass fire. Begin individual defensive fire by sensor only—with friendly TIEs out there, they can’t rely on visuals. Good luck to the pilots.” Then, all he could do was wait and watch.

He saw a collective waver along the line of enemy TIEs as their pilots, momentarily freed from the distraction of the turbolaser barrage, recognized that the incoming TIEs were not friendly. Some looped back the way they’d come. Two red dots vanished instantly, destroyed by incoming fire from the pursuing Y-wings. Then the clouds of red and blue targets became hopelessly intermixed.

The turbolasers opened up again, their fire more intermittent, their gunners firing more discriminately now that friendly and enemy forces were in such close proximity.

Far ahead, Solo’s X-wing reconnaissance squadrons should be reaching the ring of Selaggis Six about now. “Come on, guys,” he breathed. “Get me what I need, fast.”

“Group Leader, this is Polearm One. I have the Iron Fist.” Captain Todra Mayn, once of Commenor, now a Starfleet Command lifer, had only to glance out her port viewport to see the mighty vessel. “I’m flying parallel to the center of the interior rim of the debris ring. Iron Fist is about forty kilometers deep in the ring. She seems to be blasting herself a channel parallel to the edge. It’s the turbolaser flashes that let me spot her.”

“Polearm One, Group Leader. Good work. Stay in position and we’ll form up on you.”

Iron Fist didn’t alter course in the minutes it took Wedge to form up his group of six squadrons. “Group, Leader. Any guesses as to her intent?”

“Leader, this is Shadow One. This sort of ring includes particles much finer and closer than we see in normal asteroid fields. Most of them won’t worry a shielded Star Destroyer. But even finger-sized bits can wreck an X-wing at high speeds. I think he’s giving himself a second set of shields here.”

“Good point,” Wedge said. “But space around the larger asteroids should be a little clearer—their gravity will have drawn in some of the proximate particles. We’ll take it slow going in and move from asteroid to asteroid until we’re close, an island-hopping approach. Break by squads, each squad choosing its own approach.” He suited action to words by heeling over to starboard, descending relative to Iron Fist’s orientation, along the inner rim of the debris field. Rogue Squadron formed up behind him.

Entering the debris field was like flying into an odd sandstorm. The asteroid debris was mostly small, and was sufficiently well spaced so that only the larger asteroids interfered with vision. But every few seconds, forward shields would light up with the impact from a tiny asteroid, or Wedge would hear a metallic clank as something hit his hull. His diagnostics continued to register full atmospheric pressure, though.

He set his course from large asteroid to large asteroid. Some of them were the size of small moons, the others merely as large as good-sized houses.

His comm unit crackled. “Group Leader, this is Wraith One. Wraith Squadron in position to begin assault run.”

“Wraith One, Leader. Good flying. Stand by until all squadrons are in position.”

“Acknowledged.”

Rogue Squadron finished a half orbit around one of the larger asteroids and suddenly Iron Fist was in full view again—less than a kilometer below. Other than the bow guns being used to clear a path for her, the ship’s weapons were not active. A few large asteroids floated between the Rogues and their target, partially obscuring Wedge’s view.

“Maintain this orbit,” Wedge said. “Rogue Squadron in position.”

“Shadow Squadron in position.”

“Corsair Squadron in position.”

A minute later, the remaining units had reported in.

At the end of another quick orbit, Wedge said, “Leader to group. Set S-foils to attack position. Begin your assault runs.” He looped away from his orbital path and dove toward the Super Star Destroyer.

•    •    •

As Wraith Squadron formed up to begin its assault run, Donos suddenly felt uncertain. More than that, he felt awash in unreality.

He’d been here before. He knew he had.

The last time he’d felt this way—above a moon circling the third planet of solar system M2398—he’d witnessed the destruction of his astromech, Shiner. Then the sense of unreality had claimed him and he’d found himself back in the ambush at Gravan Seven, the one that had cost him his squad … and his sanity.

It was happening again—

He clamped down on his feeling of desperation. But neither Gravan Seven nor M2398 had had an asteroid field. Neither resembled the space around him. What was here that threatened to send him back into a state of collapse?

“Break off, break off! It’s an ambush!”

Wedge grimaced. The voice was that of Donos. Wedge had been wrong. The pilot’s mind had snapped back to the Gravan system ambush yet again.

“Group Leader, this is Wraith Three.” Donos’s voice was in control again. “Please order an abort on the assault run. This is an ambush.”

“Group, abort. Pull back and regroup.” Wedge hauled back on his yoke, veering away from Iron Fist. “Wraith Three, this better be good.”

Abruptly the Star Destroyer’s gun batteries went active, pouring laser blasts into the asteroid field all around it. Wedge could see bright flashes as dozens of asteroids detonated. Comm traffic told the story of the other pilots’s conditions. “This is High Flight Three. I’m hit by debris. Experiencing engine shutdown.”

“Shadow Twelve is gone, repeat, is gone! He ran right into a chunk of asteroid.”

“Wraith Three, that’s two casualties and all we did was break off,” Wedge said. “You’d better have a good reason.” Well out of range of Iron Fist’s guns, he put Rogue Squadron into orbit around another planetoid.

“Yes, sir. I thought I was going crazy for a minute. I distinctly remembered going through this exact raid once before. I hadn’t, really—it was a simulator run back when I was first getting pilot training with the Alliance.”

“Go ahead.”

“The sim was based on a story, a lesson from one of my instructors. He’d been a Y-wing pilot. His unit encountered an old Victory-class Star Destroyer in a debris field like this one. Took the same kind of approach in, island-hopping from big asteroid to big asteroid to minimize damage from debris. When they got close enough, the destroyer opened up—shooting the asteroids they were nearest. The rock debris superheated and exploded like bombs. It was a disaster for the Y-wing unit. I ran through the simulation of it several times. It was a nightmare.”

Wedge thought about it. Their target’s barrage had seemed to hit a lot of the asteroids near his starfighters. “Which Victory-class Star Destroyer was it?”

“Iron Fist, sir. The original one. Zsinj’s first command.”

“Good work, Wraith Three. Group, we have a new plan. Squads who feel up to it can still approach laterally, but stay away from any asteroid large enough for them to target and blow up—say, anything half the size of your vehicle or larger. The rest, drop down into Iron Fist’s wake, into the path they’ve already cleared out for us, and strafe her stern. Resume your assault runs.” He heeled his X-wing over, choosing a path between asteroids, and began another run, Rogue Squadron following close behind.

Deep in the automated processes of Iron Fist’s main computer, a watchdog program, recently activated, detected the fact that the ship’s laser batteries had recently fired on targets in a non-drill fashion. A timer associated with the program started up, counting down from three minutes.

Zsinj offered up a heavy sigh. “The starfighter trap appears to have failed,” he told Melvar. “Bring back our own starfighters from Mon Remonda. We’ll need them.”

“They suffered substantial losses before they understood what they were facing there,” the general said. “It’ll be even worse when they have to disengage and run home.”

“I know.” Dispirited, the warlord looked down at his feet, a neutral image that could bring him no bad news. “I’m getting tired, Melvar. Making mistakes. Not anticipating my opponents’ moves the way I should. And I’m going to have to sacrifice more if I’m to win this engagement. I’m pouring credits on this problem instead of solving it with ingenuity.” He looked up at his general. “Bring them back.”

The four medics lay with their limbs tied, their mouths gagged, as Lara assembled the humanoids she’d freed. There were two pachydermal Ortolans, three Ewoks, male and female Gamorreans, three bilars looking like large children’s toys, two knee-high Ranats with suspicious eyes and frequently bared incisors, one huge, white-furred Talz with four pain-racked eyes, and five waist-high Chadra-Fan whose ears flicked back and forth between listening to Lara’s words and to the struggles of the medics.

“We can get you out on escape pods,” Lara said. “Unless—can any of you pilot a shuttle?”

One of the humanoids raised a paw.

The Ewok.

Lara stared at him. “You’re kidding.”

“No,” he said. “Doctors put me in sim-u-la-tors. See if Kolot can learn to fly.”

“And you can.”

“Yes.”

“Kolot, you can’t even reach all the controls.”

“Warlord had mechanics make me pros-the-tics. For hands and feet—”

“Stop it!” The words emerged from Lara as a shout and she buried her face in her hands. “I know this joke already.”

“Joke?”

After a moment, she uncovered her face and knelt before the Ewok to look at him from his own altitude. “Kolot, we’re the same thing, you and I. We’re both lies that eventually became the truth.”

The Ewok shook his head, not comprehending.

“Don’t worry. You’ll understand someday. Let’s go.”

Tonin was still in the turbolift, his scomp-link inserted into the lift controls. He uttered a relieved whistle when he saw Lara returning safely.

She counted heads as her rescuees entered the turbolift and came up two short. “Where are the Gamorreans?”

She saw them now, down at the end of the corridor, coming toward her at a trot. As they got closer she could see something different about them.

Blood. It was splashed across their chests and dripped from their tusks.

She looked at the viewport into the zoo. She couldn’t see much of the containment chamber, certainly couldn’t see where she had left the bound medics, but she could see the splash of blood across the inside of the near corner of the viewport.

She looked at the Gamorreans and could think of nothing to say. How could she protest their actions, not knowing what was happening behind their eyes, not knowing what the medics had subjected them to? As they entered the turbolift, they regarded her steadily, with no hint of regret or apology in their eyes.

Her voice emerged in a whisper. “Let’s go.”

Zsinj’s fleet moved out over the broad portion of Selaggis’s debris ring, then turned back toward Solo’s. Two of the ships, the antistarfighter frigate and the bulk cruiser acting as a TIE carrier, continued on toward the inner edge of the ring. The stream of TIE fighters fleeing Mon Remonda and the starfighters pursuing them caught up with the two smaller ships, passed them by, then dove into the debris ring.

“That’s where they’re making their stand,” Solo said. “All right. Bring up Allegiance, Crynyd, Tedevium, Etherhawk, and Ession Strike to engage and hold Zsinj’s fleet. The rest of our fleet will bounce around them and head on straight for Iron Fist. Except Warder—keep the medical frigate out of the engagement zone.”

Solo’s two Imperial-class Star Destroyers, one of the frigates, his Marauder-class corvette, and his Corellian blockade runner surged ahead, a spearpoint aimed at Zsinj’s fleet. Solo waited until they were well ahead, then directed the navigator to enter the angled course that would take the three Mon Cal cruisers, remaining Star Destroyer, and Quasar Fire carrier toward Zsinj himself.

Within Iron Fist’s computer system, the three-minute countdown ended.

The program looked for and found the fleet diagnostic data being piped to the ship’s bridge—damage analysis from each ship in Zsinj’s fleet. It was already assembled in a convenient package to be displayed as a holoimage for Zsinj’s use.

The program took the package and encrypted it under a Wraith Squadron communications scheme. Then it checked Iron Fist’s threat board, identified the distant target Mon Remonda as the chief designated threat, and broadcast the package to that cruiser as an ordinary data stream.

“Comm transmission from Iron Fist, sir.”

“Chewie, your favorite correspondent is calling you again.”

“No, sir,” the comm officer said. “It’s a data stream.” His voice indicated confusion. “It’s diagnostic data, sir. For all the ships in Zsinj’s fleet. It’s being broadcast under a recent Wraith Squadron encryption on New Republic frequencies.”

Solo looked up at his comm officer, then glanced at Captain Onoma, who regarded him with one eye turned back toward him. “That would be Notsil again,” Solo said. “Probably. Are all our ships getting this data?”

“No, sir.”

“Send it to all our ships. They’re to use the data until I say otherwise.”

“Yes, sir.”

Solo allowed himself a smile.

Zsinj’s comlink beeped. He brought it up. “Yes?”

“Sir, Engineering. We have the hyperdrive functional again.”

Zsinj checked his chrono. “Thirty-eight minutes. Excellent. Continue with repairs. Perhaps you can get some of the redundant systems functional and improve the odds that we’ll survive a hyperspace leap.”

“Already on it, sir.”

Zsinj pocketed the device. “Put him down for extra leave time and a raise in pay. I approve of efficiency.”

Melvar nodded, but did not look at the warlord. His attention was fixed on the holo showing the damage Iron Fist had sustained and was continuing to suffer. The primary projection showed a series of wire-frame renderings of the destroyer as shown from above; blinking red zones indicated damaged areas. A secondary list indicated system failures. “We have a radiation leak on Deck Four.”

Zsinj grimaced. “I see six radiation leaks.” There was a tremendous bang from overhead and the bridge lights momentarily dimmed as a nearby torpedo strike momentarily overloaded some ship’s systems. “Ah. Seven, now. Deck Four is the least of our troubles.”

“Yes, sir. Still, I want to check it out personally. On a hunch.” The general bowed and headed back toward the bridge exit.

Zsinj followed him but stopped at one of the secondary communications consoles in the security foyer. He leaned over the shoulder of the man there.

The officer didn’t turn, but said, “Our TIEs have returned to Iron Fist. Now making an attack on the squadrons assaulting us.”

“Good. Is any of the units assaulting us now confirmed as Rogue Squadron?”

The man nodded. “Yes, sir. Eighty-three percent probability. We haven’t cracked their current transmission scramble code, but based on performance we still get a better than fifty percent probability that Antilles is leading them.”

“Excellent.” Zsinj pulled out his comlink again. “Zsinj to Baron Fel.”

“Fel here.”

“Prepare to launch. Don’t worry about defending Iron Fist. We’ll give you a course that will take you within visual range of Rogue Squadron, then you can head out to an engagement zone of your own choosing. Do whatever it takes to draw them away—far away.”

“And then?”

“I’ll send a support squadron a couple of minutes later. Between your pilots, your special systems, and this support, you should be able to kill Antilles. Please do so.”

“Warlord, it will be a pleasure.”

Zsinj pocketed the device and moved slowly back up to his preferred station on the command walkway. It was time, almost time to decide. The next few minutes would show him whether Solo’s fleet or his own would prevail in this battle. In the latter case, he would send Solo yelping back to Rebel space … or, best of all, kill him. In the former, he would have to destroy Iron Fist.

Temporarily, at least.

Solo’s Star Destroyer group closed with Zsinj’s force. Even at this range, Solo could see the needles of laser light flash between ships engaged in that action.

His sensor operator kept data on the status of all his ships projected as holos up on one of the bridge viewports. But now those images were smaller than usual, joined by similar data being broadcast from Iron Fist.

Solo saw red areas creeping through the engine compartments of the data screen labeled Flash Fire. The captains of his own ships Tedevium and Etherhawk began concentrating their fire on the stern of the Dreadnaught and the redness spread even faster.

That engagement was visible through his starboard viewport. Ahead was the glorious color pattern that was Selaggis Six. Below was the debris field that, from a distance, was just a ring, an attractive ornament for the planet.

“We’re above Iron Fist now,” the navigator said.

“Very well,” Solo said. “Make your course straight for Iron Fist. Bow shields to maximum. Sensors, relay data to gunners on all asteroids in our path that could conceivably harm us. All other ships in the group are to line up behind Mon Remonda. We’re going to drill a hole straight to Iron Fist, and we’re going in fast.”

Wedge and Tycho whipped across a massive stone ridge on a city-sized asteroid; the instant they knew the pursuing TIEs had lost sight of them, they decelerated.

Their pursuers came around at full speed, hugging the asteroid’s surface more closely than they had, and overshot the two X-wings. Wedge fired, saw his twin-linked lasers hammer the side of his target. The TIE, not penetrated, struggled to return to its original course, but the blast had sent it tumbling too close to the asteroid surface. It veered straight into a hill-sized projection and detonated.

Wedge glanced at Tycho, then at his sensor board. His wingman was intact; the other TIE was a ball of orange-and-yellow gases half a kilometer back. The other starfighters of his group were holding up well in spite of the sudden arrival of several TIE fighter squads—and not all the new arrivals were enemies. Some were friendlies off Skyhook.

Wedge looped back around toward Iron Fist for another strafing run—or another head-to-head with TIEs.

A new cloud of TIEs, two squads of interceptors, rose from the destroyer’s belly and veered off into the asteroid field. All wore red horizontal stripes on their solar wing arrays.

Wedge checked their course. It took the interceptors away from Iron Fist, away from Solo’s engagement, toward Selaggis Six’s once-occupied moon.

“Leader, Two. I don’t like the sight of that.”

“Me either, Two.” He switched his comm unit to the group frequency. “Group, this is Leader. Polearm One, take command of the group. Rogues, Wraiths, form up on me. We have something to check out.”

Lara pushed open the access hatch just a few centimeters and peered out into the corridor beyond. It was empty, echoing with a radiation alarm, flashing with the red lights appropriate to such a dangerous condition. Opposite the hatch was the door into the hangar bay she wanted.

She stepped out and helped haul Tonin over the hatch lip. “Give us a minute to get the door open,” she told the nonhumans crowded into the access shaft. “Then look both ways to make sure no one is coming, and join us.”

They nodded, a little excited but confident, like a roomful of businessfolk just before an important meeting. She was left with the unsettling impression that she was leading a horde of humans dressed up for no particular reason in humanoid suits.

The hangar door opened to their approach. She breathed a sigh of relief; she and Tonin wouldn’t have to run a lengthy bypass on the door controls. She toggled the control so the door would remain open for the humanoids following; despite their human-level, or genius-level, intelligence, they might still be startled by the suddenness with which ship’s doors tended to shoot up into their housings.

Within the hangar, only three vehicles remained: Lara’s X-wing, a Lambda-class shuttle, and a larger shuttle of similar design, an Imperial landing craft. “We’ll give them the landing craft,” she told Tonin. “I’ll get it prepped for launch. You still have the file on my X-wing?”

Tonin tweetled an affirmative.

“Open it up, disable all transponder systems, and disengage whatever else the file says they’ve done to it. I don’t want them to be able to detonate it remotely.”

“They won’t need to.” The voice, cultured and self-assured, came from behind her, from the hangar corner nearest the door.

She whirled. General Melvar stood there, a blaster pistol in his hand, and Ensign Gatterweld, looking surly and betrayed, held a blaster rifle at the ready beside him. Both men moved toward her.

“You had to come back here for your souvenir X-wing,” Melvar said. “Perhaps your only mistake in a skillful escape attempt. I knew your arrival was pending when you or your droid falsified the radiation leak for this deck.”

Lara saw shadows congregating behind the two men, at the door into the bay. She raised her hands. “That’s why the hangar doors were not secured. You were waiting for me.”

“Correct.”

“Will you be killing me now?”

“No. That’s the warlord’s prerogative.” Melvar looked sad, and Lara had the unsettling feeling that the emotion was genuine. “I do wish you’d been faithful. You could have helped the warlord lock down this quadrant of the galaxy. He’s generous with those he respects. You could have owned a world.”

“I wish I had something witty to say to you,” she told him. “But the thought of helping Zsinj is turning my stomach.”

The humanoids moved forward, a nonhuman mob, the sounds of their passage masked by the alarm sounding in the corridor.

“I think—” Melvar stopped, his eyes darting right, where one of the Gamorreans had just moved up within his peripheral vision.

He turned, brought the blaster around. The other Gamorrean, the female, grabbed his forearm and slammed him to the hangar’s metal floor. Gatterweld spun, panic on his face—

And then the nonhumans were all over the two men, pounding them, raking claws across their faces, biting at limbs and heads and torsos.

“Stop it!” Lara yelled.

The humanoids looked up at her.

“Just bind them. Leave them. They’ll die when Iron Fist is destroyed.”

They looked at each other, then rose from the downed men.

In minutes, she and Tonin had the two vehicles ready for departure. She fitted a ladder to the side of her X-wing. “You’re sure you can fly this thing.”

The Ewok, standing at the base of the shuttle’s boarding ramp, nodded. He carried the objects he’d brought with him from the hidden medical facility—four prosthetic extensions, two with articulated hands at the ends, two with long-toed feet.

Tonin rolled up to her and whistled a question.

She didn’t have to know the musical speech of droids to understand. “No, Tonin. You’re going with them. You have to broadcast all that data I recorded about Zsinj’s projects. The medical data.”

He whistled again, more urgently, shrilly, a complicated message.

She drew her goggles from her pack, put them on, plugged the trailing wire into Tonin’s side.

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

“I’m going to rejoin my unit.”

YOU SAID THEY HATED YOU. THEY WILL BE YOUR ENEMIES. THE WARLORD’S FORCES ARE YOUR ENEMIES. YOU’LL DIE IF YOU DO THIS.

“Maybe,” she said. “Probably.”

DON’T.

She stared down into his holocam eye, and suddenly found it, and Tonin’s stance, to be as expressive as any human mannerism. “Oh, Tonin. I have to. I have to do this to be who I decided I want to be. Do you understand?”

NO. YOU’VE ALREADY REPROGRAMMED YOURSELF. THAT’S ENOUGH.

“I wish it were. But an intention isn’t anything unless you carry it out.” She knelt, wrapped her arms around the droid, gave him a squeeze she knew he could not feel.

YOU WILL TELL US IF YOU NEED HELP. WE WILL HELP.

“I have my comlink,” she said. “I’ll tell you.” Tears blurred her vision for the first time in days. She rose, pulled her goggles free of Tonin’s jack, and hurriedly climbed up into her cockpit, unable to face the droid again.

Tonin wheetled one last, sad sound and rolled toward the landing craft.

17

On Wedge’s sensor board, the interceptors of the 181st had a commanding lead; they were already entering the atmosphere of the moon, once home to Selaggis’s colony.

Four friendly starfighters trailed the 181st, not losing ground to them—Kell, Elassar, Shalla, and Janson, flying four of Wraith Squadron’s own TIE interceptors. The X-wings of Rogue and Wraith Squadrons trailed by a distance that increased with every minute.

“Wraith Five to Leader. They’re descending toward the west coast of the primary continent. I think that’s where the colony used to be. Atmospheric conditions not helpful. Heavy rain, heavy winds.”

“Acknowledged, Five. Do not engage. Continue to update us on their progress. Transmit us your sensor data.” Wedge suppressed a curse. He preferred the X-wing to every other starfighter ever made, for its nearly ideal balance of ruggedness, speed, and firepower, but sometimes—such as now—he devoutly wished for more speed.

“They’re banking toward a set of ruins—the colony, I guess. No sign of life in the ruins—they’re strafing! There has to be a living target down there, Leader. Permission to engage.”

Wedge closed his eyes. He’d already confirmed that there was no native comm traffic from Selcaron. Mon Remonda’s records had reported no survivors from Zsinj’s barrage of five months ago. And yet Zsinj was dedicating his best pilot, his best-trained starfighter unit, to pound those ruins flatter.

It had to be a trap. Had to be. But if it wasn’t …

The New Republic wasn’t here to protect itself, but to protect innocents. There might be colony survivors down there. It was that simple.

He opened his eyes again. One second had clicked by on his console chrono. “Permission granted.”

Kell banked and dove toward one of two rearmost pairs of interceptors. It was difficult to see them; the sky was overcast, and fierce winds blew sheeting rain almost horizontally across his path. His heart hammered—in his throat, it felt like—and he knew that he might at any moment introduce his lunch to the inside of his helmet.

The old fear. It had paralyzed him at the Implacable fight. In the months since, it had never entirely left him. It might never leave him.

It made him feel like hell. He decided to take it out on the enemy.

The rearmost interceptor of the wingpair he’d targeted chittered for a split second in his targeting brackets, then broke to starboard. Its wingmate made a sudden deceleration, seeming to blast backwards past Kell’s port side, preparatory to setting up for an attack on him—

It exploded, vanishing from his sensor screen. “Good shot, Nine.” He banked tighter, trying to stay inside his target’s turn radius, but the enemy interceptor’s maneuver was sharper than any Kell had ever made. A moment later the interceptor came up behind him, a quarter klick back. Kell heard his sensor system howl with the confirmation of his enemy’s targeting lock on him.

He dove toward the ground—a two-tone surface, gray seas to his port, brown soil to starboard, the wreckage of prefabricated dome buildings where the two colors met. Lasers flashed above him, visible through his top viewport. He angled over toward the sea, dropping almost straight toward the shoreline.

As the range meter dropped, he felt wind kicking him to port. He struggled with the piloting yoke, heard the howl of his sensors again, and juked to throw off his pursuer’s aim. He was kicked to port again, and from the sensor’s unmusical complaints, this time it had to have been from a laser graze rather than atmospheric conditions.

At a mere couple of hundred meters from the ocean’s surface he fired his lasers and hauled back on the yoke. The lasers hit the water’s surface, boiling it, sending up a column of steam. He flashed through it, actually felt the drag of the mist as his interceptor hit the column, and banked to port, a maneuver so fast and tight his vision began to gray out.

His pursuer emerged from the column of steam, not banking instantly—its pilot had to be taking a moment to find Kell.

That was the moment he needed. He held his turn, struggled against the centrifugal forces trying to slam him into the starboard side of his cockpit, and came around behind his enemy. The TIE vibrated in his targeting brackets and he fired.

The TIE exploded spectacularly, transformed into the biggest fireball Kell had ever seen yielded by an interceptor’s detonation, a hundred-meter-diameter ball of destruction. Kell climbed to stay above the rising cloud of smoke and flame, then shook his head to try to clear his vision. “Two down,” he said. “Twenty-two to go.”

“Twenty.” That was Janson’s voice. “But they’re changing tactics.”

Kell looped around, back toward the ruined town, and Elassar fell in beside him.

Ahead, the interceptors of the 181st continued with their low-level strafing runs against the ruins. They seemed to have no particular target; their aim seemed to be the transformation of the entire set of ruins into smaller rubble and dust.

Kell saw Janson and Elassar come in from the east, aiming for a pair of interceptors near the ruins’s border. Their targets shied away toward the colony center; two more turned in the direction of Janson and Elassar for a head-to-head. Janson and Elassar banked toward the newcomers, but those targets, too, looped away as a third pair maneuvered to engage the Wraiths.

It was a deadly game of keep-away, fliers of the 181st turning to engage the Wraiths just long enough to get their attention, then breaking away to return to their strafing. As Kell and Elassar neared shore, two interceptors turned toward them.

“If they come at us,” Kell said, “standard head-to-head. If they bank away, don’t follow.”

“Acknowledged,” Elassar said.

Their enemies banked away well before they were in targeting range. A new pair angled in from the north, timing their approach so they’d hit Kell and Elassar from the side if the Wraiths continued their straight-line approach.

“Up,” Kell said, and drew back on his yoke. His interceptor rose at a dizzying pace. “I don’t get it. They’re playing defensively.”

“They’re waiting,” Janson said. “For the rest of the Rogues and Wraiths.”

Zsinj watched in mounting disbelief as his fleet’s damage displays grew ever redder. “Melvar,” he said.

Captain Vellar looked over from his position on the command walkway. “He’s not back from his errand. Did his errand involve a shuttle launch? We have a landing craft taking off from the personal-vehicles bay. It seems to be in pursuit of an X-wing.”

Zsinj shook his head, unconcerned. “Never mind that. Vellar, are they that good? Oh, Sithspit, we just lost Venom.” Red flashes crossed and crisscrossed the display of the Victory-class Star Destroyer like a flash fire.

“They seem to be, sir,” the captain said. There was tension in his voice, but his expression was unwavering. “Mon Remonda is almost in position to engage us.”

“Your opinion?”

The captain gave the sensor holoprojections a long look. “Our group isn’t going to defeat their secondary group. They’re being pounded to pieces. Solo’s main group, which is almost unhurt, is going to hit us in just a minute. We’re damaged, and we don’t know the extent to which we may have been further sabotaged. Eventually Solo’s secondary group will reinforce the main group.” He turned a regretful face to Zsinj. “Sir, we’re not going to win this fight.”

“All ahead full,” Zsinj said. “Get us out of the debris field. Set your course for Second Death’s position. Bring in all starfighters from all ships—except the 181st and their support—to harass Solo’s group.”

“Sir, that will accelerate the damage the rest of our group is taking.”

“You don’t think I know that?” Zsinj couldn’t keep the venom out of his tone. “As soon as we’re free of the debris ring, issue orders for the ships that survive to flee at their discretion.” He felt something sharp in his chest, a pain that had everything to do with the sudden loss of his reputation for infallibility on the battlefield.

Rogue Squadron and Wraith Squadron broke through the high cloud over into a dark world lashed by rains. They dove toward the colony ruins, breaking by wingpairs, each pair of pilots seeking out prey—starfighters that were frailer but far faster than theirs. They saw the enemy interceptors scatter by pairs, each trying to find an advantageous angle to repel the X-wings’s assaults.

Wedge tried to pick out by eye which of the enemies was Baron Fel. He needn’t have bothered. A pair of interceptors rose straight toward him and Tycho.

“Fel, is that you?”

“Antilles,” came the familiar voice. “So good to see you at last. Again at last.”

“Iron Fist isn’t doing so well. You can save yourself some trouble by surrendering.”

The interceptors came on straight at them. The range meter dropped below two kilometers and the interceptors fired. Wedge sideslipped, sending his X-wing into a defensive dance, and pressed his own laser’s trigger.

Then the TIEs were past, roaring back the way Wedge and Tycho had come. Oddly, they didn’t immediately loop around to gain an advantageous position on the X-wings’s tails. They continued their run eastward, then looped around south, headed once again toward the coastline.

Wedge and Tycho turned to pursue. The maneuver was made a little more difficult by a ferocious crosswind that threatened to drive them eastward. “Fel, let’s not do this. You’ve been a Rogue. I really don’t want to kill you.”

“Why ever not, Wedge? I don’t share any such sentiment about you.”

Wedge gritted his teeth. Because you haven’t yet told me where my sister is. Tell me that, and I may lose all compunction about vaping you where you fly.

Kell and Elassar veered in opposite directions, the Devaronian to rejoin Face, his regular wingman. Kell swung around and came up behind Runt’s X-wing.

“Welcome back,” Runt said.

“Good to be home. Let’s get ’em.”

They turned toward a new pair of interceptors. The 181st seemed to have abandoned their defensive, scurrying tactics; now they seemed eager for runs against the Rogues and Wraiths. A pair veered toward Kell and Runt, accelerating.

Kell dropped behind Runt, constantly adjusting his position to keep the X-wing between him and the oncoming interceptors. As the range closed to nearly two kilometers, he popped up above Runt for a snap shot against the rear interceptor, then dropped below his wingman for sustained fire against the lead TIE. Incoming laser fire hammered against Runt’s forward shields, diffusing to a pastel green as it failed to penetrate.

Kell’s sustained fire finally tracked on the ball of the interceptor. He saw the green of his own lasers stitch the fuselage. There was no visible change to the interceptor’s exterior, but the lead enemy dropped on a ballistic course toward the ground below. His wingman veered off at an angle seemingly impossible even for a TIE and headed back toward the colony center.

•    •    •

“He’s running away,” Onoma said.

Beyond the forward viewport, they could see wave after wave of TIE fighters making suicidal runs against Mon Remonda. Three had already come within tens of meters of crashing into the cruiser’s side; only brilliant gunnery by the turbolaser handlers had prevented collisions. Solo’s TIEs were helping, but they were outnumbered by the enemy force, which had been bolstered by squadrons diverted from the other engagement zone.

And Zsinj’s choice of a battlefield was proving to be a good one for the warlord. Solo’s Y-wings, tough as they were, weren’t nimble enough to handle the debris field at dogfighting speeds—report after report came in of pilot loss because of an injudicious turn into the path of an asteroid. Between the speed Mon Remonda had to make to catch up to the destroyer and the necessity of diverting most of the gun batteries to anti-starfighter use, the cruiser didn’t have enough laser power to clear the path ahead entirely of asteroids; every few moments, stones, some the size of R2 units and some the size of X-wings, would hammer into the cruiser’s shields or penetrate and crash into her hull.

Though Mon Karren and Mon Delindo followed in Mon Remonda’s wake, Solo knew they had to be suffering worse. Their shields and hull were not up to Mon Remonda’s specs.

“We’re in range,” said the sensor officer.

“Bow batteries, open fire on Iron Fist.” Solo breathed a sigh of relief. At last they were in contact.

The topside stern of the destroyer lit up under Mon Remonda’s barrage. But Iron Fist’s own batteries opened fire and suddenly space before the forward viewport was bright with laser flashes.

Mon Remonda shuddered under impacts against her shields.

Ahead, Fel and his wingman lost speed. Wedge and Tycho rapidly overtook them. In a moment, Wedge could see them again, two dots that grew into interceptors blurred by rain and distance. There was only ocean beneath them, shore a mere kilometer or two off to starboard.

One of the interceptors dropped behind the other, losing ground rapidly, but maintaining the high-speed side-to-side maneuvering that was so effective at throwing off a pursuer’s aim. Wedge and Tycho squeezed off ranging shots.

Then the interceptor decelerated further, right into Wedge’s path. Reflex took over, twitching his yoke to port so that he veered out of its path.

Tycho veered in skillful mimicry of Wedge’s move—right into the interceptor’s path.

It should not have been a problem. At their relative speeds and courses, no collision was possible; he should have been well clear of the interceptor. But the decelerating vehicle exploded into a brilliant ball of fire and debris—and Tycho’s X-wing flew straight through the heart of the detonation.

Tycho emerged from the explosion, his X-wing trailing smoke, its S-foils shuddering. He rapidly lost ground on Wedge.

“One to Two, come in.”

There was no answer. Tycho banked to starboard, back toward land.

“Tycho, come in. Are you all right?”

His comm unit hissed, then words, partial words, emerged. “… failure … hold her … repulsorlifts out …”

As Wedge watched, Tycho’s starboard lower S-foil began to shake more ferociously, then to crumple under air friction. Ahead, the other TIE interceptor began to loop around for a head-to-head.

“Tycho, don’t try to hold her together. She’s a wreck. Get over land and punch out. Do you understand?”

“… land … understood.”

The other interceptor roared toward them.

Toward Tycho.

Wedge accelerated forward past his wingman, laser-straight at the interceptor. “Is that Fel again, or did we get lucky?”

“No luck for you, Wedge. This is your last engagement zone.”

The interceptor drifted up, firing. Wedge hit his trigger, saw his lasers pass harmlessly beneath the TIE.

Fel’s lasers didn’t miss. They chewed into the nose of Tycho’s X-wing. Fel shot past and began to bank again.

Wedge saw Tycho’s snubfighter shudder and begin to disintegrate at the nose. The cockpit’s cowling popped up and a moment later Tycho ejected, still half a kilometer short of the shore.

“Group, this is Leader. I need extravehicular pilot rescue at this position. Mark it and get someone here.” Wedge wrestled his X-wing around to confront Fel once more.

But the nimbler interceptor settled into position behind him, its lasers opening up, bracketing Wedge.

Wedge set his teeth and flew southward, clearing his head of distractions, letting the sensor board and targeting brackets become extra eyes.

Fel settled in on his tail and would not be shaken free. But the onetime Rogue had no more luck firing than Wedge did shaking him; burst after burst of laser fire flashed to the left, the right, beneath the X-wing as Wedge used every trick he knew to make the man miss.

Another violent crosswind hit Wedge. He didn’t struggle against it; he let it propel him toward shore, a sudden movement that caught Fel off guard. Then Fel, too, crossed into the wind and was pushed eastward, farther even than Wedge had been.

Wedge felt his spine stiffen. That was it. The interceptors were lighter than X-wings, with much broader cross sections—

He resumed his original course and waited until another crosswind hit him. As it propelled him shoreward, he wrenched his yoke that way, turning in the direction he was being shoved, and saw out his starboard viewport as Fel was victimized by the same wind. The interceptor rolled eastward, momentarily out of control.

Wedge maintained his loop, was pressed hard into his pilot’s couch as he came around …

And then, for a brief moment, his targeting brackets went green around Fel’s interceptor. Wedge fired and saw the red flashes of his lasers score the squint’s engines.

Fel’s interceptor dropped, half out of control, and he banked toward shore. Wedge followed, alert for a trick. But Fel continued to lose altitude at a dangerous rate and hit the ground in a skidding, rolling, half-controlled crash that constituted the worst landing Wedge had seen in years.

He circled the downed interceptor and angled in to land.

Corran Horn dove toward his target interceptor, trying to bring his targeting brackets to bear over it, hoping for a maximum-distance shot—these enemies were more maneuverable than even he was used to. His target continued sideslipping, dancing around, avoiding the target lock—

He blinked. There was something fundamentally wrong with his target. Something that turned his gut cold.

It wasn’t his pilot’s skills telling him this. It was the other, his slowly improving ability with the Force …

“Group, this is Rogue Nine. Be advised. My current target is not a living being. Repeat, not living. I think it’s a droid ship.” He finally got a green flicker on his brackets and fired.

His lasers hit the interceptor’s fuselage. The squint detonated with far more force than was appropriate for a vehicle with twin ion engines. The blast was powerful enough to engulf his target’s wingman fifty meters behind the explosion. That interceptor emerged from the fireball spinning, flaming, out of control, and smashed through the already-ruined dome of one of the colony buildings. It exploded, too, but in a fashion that was subdued by comparison.

“Group, Wraith Eight.” Piggy’s voice, jarring and mechanical. “I am an idiot. This is why the wingman of each pair at the Razor’s Kiss fight behaved in such a similar fashion. They have droid pilots. And they are packed with explosives. A moment while I calculate.”

Corran looped back toward the fight and Ooryl, his wingman, stayed tight with him.

Piggy’s voice came back a moment later. “Observation suggests that each wingpair is one human pilot, one droid. In free flight, the droid falls back to wingman position. The droid units’ maneuverability increases as your range to them decreases. Their performance suggests they are enjoying computerized coordination. They must be transmitting sensor data to the ship handling coordination. Who is the Rogues’ communications specialist?”

“That’s me. Rogue Seven.”

“With the permission of the Wraith and Rogue leaders, I offer a plan.”

Corran Horn’s voice came back instantly. “Go ahead, Wraith Eight.”

Face’s followed a moment later. “Let’s hear it.”

“Rogue Seven and Wraith Six use their comm gear to jam transmissions in the area for thirty seconds. In that time, we’ll either enjoy dramatic improvement in our ability to handle the enemy … or we’re no worse off than before.”

“Wraith One authorizes,” Face said.

“Rogue Nine says go,” Horn said.

Mon Remonda dropped into the channel Iron Fist had already blasted through the debris field and began gaining on the Super Star Destroyer. Still close enough for long-range fire, the Mon Cal cruiser continued blasting away at Iron Fist’s stern, despite the distraction of TIE fighters making constant assaults against Mon Remonda’s bow and bridge.

“Gaining,” Solo said. “Gaining.”

“Detonation ahead!” said the sensor officer.

“Iron Fist?”

“No,” she said. “To starboard of her course. Something on the far side of that planetoid she’s passing.”

Solo brought up his visual enhancers to focus on the area she described. She was correct: asteroids opposite a two-kilometer-long hunk of rock were illuminated by some sort of sustained explosion taking place just on the far surface of the larger asteroid.

Whatever its cause, the explosion was propulsion as well as detonation. The two-kilometer rock began moving slowly toward the channel left in Iron Fist’s wake.

“Navigator?” Solo asked.

The Mon Calamari navigation officer turned an eye toward him. “It will partially block the channel. We must destroy it or pass it by.”

“Weapons?”

His weapons officer shook his head. “Too big for our guns to dismantle before we get there.”

Solo offered up a rich curse he’d learned on the back streets of Corellia. “Navigator, divert our course around it. Through the debris. Alert the rest of our group what’s happening. Zsinj has set up at least one asteroid, maybe more, with explosives or thrusters to move it in our path. Stay alert.”

Mon Remonda began a slow maneuver, veering to starboard inside the path of the asteroid. As the bow of the cruiser entered the uncleared portion of the debris field, Solo heard ominous clankings and felt trembling under his heels.

Red lights flashed across more portions of Mon Remonda’s diagnostics display.

The numbers on the gauge showing the distance between Mon Remonda and Iron Fist slowed their rapid descent. The numbers stopped and then began climbing.

Mon Remonda was falling behind.

Lara’s sensor board had shown the Rogues and Wraiths descending into Selcaron’s atmosphere, and the ten strange TIEs she pursued did likewise. She entered the moon’s atmosphere at the angle necessary to keep air friction from burning her alive, then set her S-foils to attack position.

When she broke through the cloud cover she could see, ahead and below, the unusual fighters split up by pairs, most heading to the main engagement, four vectoring to the south.

Her sensor board said Rogue One, Rogue Two, and one unfriendly lay in that direction. Then it updated and only Rogue One and the unfriendly were left.

She looped around to the south and dropped nearly to the surface of the water.

Janson hit his trigger and the distant TIE interceptor detonated in a brilliant flash, leaving behind one of the hundred-meter-diameter fireballs the Rogues and Wraiths were coming to expect. The jamming technique had been a spectacular success—this unit of droids and humans had been trained to function under coordination and fell to pieces without that benefit. In the first thirty seconds, the Rogues and Wraiths had reduced the number of interceptors by half. Then they sustained a one-minute jamming period … and the last of the interceptors had now fallen to Janson.

The communications jamming fell away. “Group, Wraith Eight. We have incoming traffic descending from high altitude from the east-northeast.”

Janson veered in that direction and climbed. Yes, there were more starfighters coming in.

He gave them a second look. “What in the world are those?”

Wedge swung his legs over the lip of his cockpit and slid with reckless haste to the ground. He drew his blaster and moved at a full run across the sand toward Baron Fel.

Fel, evidently injured, was crawling at a good pace away from his smoking interceptor. Fel was not in a traditional TIE fighter pilot’s gear; the black jumpsuit was standard, but the red featureless mask, gloves, and boots, and the poisonous yellow piping on those accouterments were pure Raptor uniform.

Wedge reached him and prodded his boot with his toe. Fel rolled over on his back. His right leg did not turn the way it should have; Wedge could see it was badly broken beneath the knee.

Wedge aimed his blaster. “Mind answering a few questions?”

“Not at all.” Fel’s voice was muffled. He reached up to pull his helmet free.

Wedge blinked. The man under his gun had Fel’s height and build, but his blond hair and homely features were not Fel’s. “Who are you?”

The man offered him a pained smile. “My name is Tetran Cowall.”

“I know that name.” Wedge frowned. “Some sort of actor. Face Loran doesn’t think much of you.”

“That’s because he is my inferior in every way,” the man said. His voice did not resemble Fel’s. It was higher in pitch, though melodious.

“You used computer voice enhancement to sound like Fel.”

“Very good.”

“Where is Fel?”

The man shrugged. “You should know. You had him last. Where was he when you last saw him?” He gave Wedge a smirk. “Really, we have no idea.”

“So this was all a ploy.” Wedge felt sudden exhaustion begin to eat at him. All these months, hoping that this man would have some word of his sister … and this man turned out to be the wrong one. “Why?”

Cowall slowly put his hands behind his head, a posture of relaxation and contentment that was belied by the sweat on his face and the odd angle at which his right leg lay. “Well, you, actually. Scuttlebutt had it that Fel had deserted you and that you’d taken it rather personally. Had arranged for him to be looked for since then. The warlord decided that his reappearance would be a mystery you just had to solve. He put together a new One Eighty-first. Half with human pilots, half with flying bombs that could sidle up next to you and detonate—making hash of the famous Wedge Antilles despite your overly vaunted skills.”

“So your only job was to lure me out and kill me.”

Cowall smiled. “And it worked.”

“Not exactly.”

Cowall pointed eastward. Wedge sidestepped to be sure he could keep the actor under his gun while he looked.

In the distance, two or three kilometers off, TIE fighters, their outlines unusual, were looping around from east to south, obviously intending to turn northward near or at the shoreline.

“TIE Raptors,” Cowall said. “New design, nice to fly. They’ll be on us in a few seconds. And you can’t get into the air by then. You’re dead, Wedge Antilles.”

For a quarter second, Wedge debated shooting the man, then sheathed the blaster and made a sprint for his X-wing. He heard the actor laugh behind him.

Cowall was right, of course. He could hear the distant shriek of the TIEs. They’d be in firing position about the time he was sliding into his cockpit.

He reached his X-wing, leaped up to swing himself in, dropped into his chair.

There were three incoming TIEs, and they were of a type he’d never seen before. They had the standard TIE ball cockpit, but lacked wing pylons. Instead, four trapezoidal wings, smaller than half the size of a regular TIE fighter’s wings, protruded from the cockpit at even intervals. They rolled to port to line up along the straight section of beach and came on, their engines shrill, a second from firing.

Then Wedge saw something blue flash over his head from behind and the center TIE exploded. The other two broke left and right, momentarily abandoning their run.

Wedge finished shutting his canopy and got his X-wing up on repulsorlifts. He had his S-foils locked into attack position before he’d drifted ten meters forward.

Another X-wing flashed by mere meters overhead. It was painted in the darker gray of Wraith Squadron and had no astromech. Wedge put power to acceleration and checked his sensor board. The X-wing wasn’t returning a transponder signal.

The X-wing looped in pursuit of one of the alien-looking TIEs, climbing in its wake. Wedge turned in the direction of the other, coaxing his X-wing up to speed. “Lara, is that you?”

“Sorry I was late.” She was banking hard, trying to get her X-wing around at an angle that could fire on her target. “Had to hit one of these weird TIEs that was trying to strafe a downed Rogue.”

“Tycho—is he—”

“He’s under cover now. Hopping mad, I think.”

“When you come around north, you may get crosswinds. He’ll get them worse. They may blow him back across your path. Hold tight.” Wedge turned after his target TIE Raptor, saw that the unusual vehicle was now looping around to get behind Lara. “I owe you, one,” he said.

“I owe you” she said. “I—there!”

The Raptor pilot hit a bad patch of crosswind and was tumbled eastward. Lara fired, her lasers creasing the rear of the TIE.

A plume of smoke emerged from her target. The starfighter dropped tumbling into the sea, hitting with enough force to turn anything within it into something resembling jelly.

But the last Raptor dropped in behind Lara and began stitching her rear with laser fire. Wedge put all discretionary energy into acceleration, hurtling toward the engagement.

The TIE Raptor fired again. This was no laser—a concussion missile detonated just below Lara’s X-wing. Wedge saw her stern leap up, and then the X-wing was tumbling, unaerodynamic, slinging components in all directions as it dropped.

“Punch out, punch out,” Wedge said, but had no time to watch. He turned after the TIE Raptor.

That pilot tried an immediate roll to port, diving toward the water, a frantic effort to shake Wedge from his tail. Wedge flicked his targeting brackets back and forth but was unable to get a lock.

So he fired directly over the TIE Raptor’s hull, immediately above its top viewport.

The pilot dodged out of reflex.

Straight down.

The leading edges of its odd wings dipped into the surf. The TIE rolled forward, its wings breaking free and being flung into the air with more speed and violence than anything coming off Lara’s X-wing.

Wedge looped around, looking for Lara.

He found her X-wing fifty meters offshore. It was a twisted, broken thing, slowly rolling over from its belly onto its side.

He cruised over it at a slow rate of speed, running on repulsorlifts, and looked into the cockpit. Then he shook his head and banked back toward Tycho and the colony.

“On my command,” Piggy said, “Wraith Nine and Ten, begin straight-line flight but maintain evasive maneuvering. Rogue Three and Four, climb at a thirty-degree angle, target their pursuit, and fire. Ready … now.”

Two kilometers below him, Shalla and Janson discontinued their efforts to get around behind the unusual TIEs pursuing them. They accelerated into straightforward flight toward the west. Their pursuit accelerated, swinging into firing position behind them.

A kilometer below that, Pedna Scotian and Hobbie Klivian rose toward the engagement now passing above them. Piggy could tell the exact moment they acquired targeting locks: both pursuing TIEs suddenly wobbled in flight as their pilots were alerted to the danger they were in.

But it was too late. Both Rogues fired. Hobbie’s lasers sheared through the lower portion of one TIE’s forward viewport and continued cycling against that target. A moment later, Piggy saw his lasers emerge from above the TIE’s engines. The TIE hurtled forward ballistically for half a kilometer, then detonated.

Scotian’s lasers missed the second TIE. It veered abruptly upward. Shalla and Janson looped around in tight maneuvers and gave pursuit.

Piggy turned away from that engagement, looked again at the swirling colored dots on his sensor board. Flight vectors, acceleration rates, probabilities ran through his mind like unregulated data streams. He saw the blip designated Rogue One returning. That would begin to figure into his calculations in two minutes. He saw another blip, yellow for unknown, descend from low lunar orbit toward Wedge’s earlier engagement zone. He dismissed it. It wouldn’t factor into his equations until it came closer to his current engagement zone.

His comm system lit up, indicating reception of a recorded message. He glanced at the data portion of the screen. It was a lengthy message, flagged as low priority, going to all vehicles on New Republic frequencies. He dismissed it from his mind.

Numbers and formulae clicked into place in his mind. “Wraith Seven, two targets will be crossing over your space from the east in six-point-four seconds.” Dia, her fuzial thrust engines malfunctioning, was now running on repulsorlifts only; Face had directed her to stay under cover, and she now hovered within a half-ruined colony dome, able to swivel her guns toward any one of three large holes in the dome. “Wraith Five, please make your course due east and come up to full speed. You should pull two of the new intruders … yes, you have.” Kell veered as Piggy had requested, momentarily abandoning his slower-moving wingman, and both new TIEs that had been lining up for a run on Wraiths Five and Six opted to pursue him. Kell blasted across Dia’s position and the lead TIE pursuing him was suddenly illuminated from the dome, painted and then penetrated by Dia’s lasers. It rolled, a deceptively pretty corkscrew, and then hit rubble that had once been a duracrete street.

Piggy started to speak again, then saw Kell’s TIE interceptor vector back at a sharp angle toward Runt’s position. Kell and Runt closed on one another as though they planned a head-to-head, but when Runt fired, it was Kell’s pursuit he hit. The unusual TIE fired, too, its concussion missile flashing past Kell and hitting a ruined wall, before Runt’s lasers punched through the TIE’s hull. It became, to Piggy’s eye, a tiny, pretty ball of red, yellow, and orange.

Piggy sat back and nodded to himself, satisfied. He loved math.

“We’re in open space, Warlord,” the captain announced.

Zsinj offered him a tight, unhappy smile. “Make your course directly toward Second Death. Instruct Second Death to deploy the Nightcloak in a channel long enough for us to make a hyperspace jump from. And to finish this masquerade, I’m going to have to stand by in a shuttle. The fleet is in your capable hands.”

“Yes, sir.”

In his shuttle bay, Zsinj and his pilot found his personal shuttle unharmed, but Melvar and Gatterweld were there in much less intact condition. Both men were tied, bleeding, unconscious.

He clucked over them but didn’t delay. Time was pressing. He called in a medical team as he and his pilot prepared the shuttle for flight.

“Iron Fist is outbound,” Onoma said. “And as much as the debris field is delaying us, we’re not going to be able to catch her.”

Solo looked at the damage diagnostics projections, which showed an ever-mounting damage total for Iron Fist. “Keep the starfighters on her. There’s a chance they can crack her open before she can jump. See, concentrate there on the forward top shield projector and the starboard engines. Both systems are faltering like mad. Her hyperdrive is damaged, too. There’s got to be a chance it will fail when activated.”

Mon Remonda’s own damage totals were mounting, too. Numerous asteroid impacts had reduced her shields, battered her bow hull in several places, even vented atmosphere from portions of the bow near the keel. And Iron Fist’s starfighter screen had been insane in its prosecution of Mon Remonda.

But suddenly the enemy starfighters were running, fleeing in the wake of Iron Fist.

Solo sat, his muscles knotting, uncertainty burning at his gut. It didn’t matter that he and his force had just destroyed or captured the rest of Zsinj’s group. It didn’t matter that they’d survived each trap Zsinj had set, each ploy he had initiated. Nor did it matter that they’d sent Iron Fist fleeing for the second time in the mighty destroyer’s career.

The only thing that mattered, the only acceptable outcome, was Iron Fist’s capture or destruction.

More data crawled across his personal screen. Rogue Squadron and Wraith Squadron were returning from Selcaron. They were requesting shuttles for pilot rescue and enemy pilot capture. Rogue One was among the pilots returning. Solo breathed a sigh of relief. He had few enough friends. Win or lose, he didn’t want to lose any more in this engagement.

Tetengo Noor, Polearm Nine, finished another pass across Iron Fist. He’d dumped more laser fire across the great ship’s bow. Turbolasers and ion cannons had failed to touch his A-wing. Now he banked around for another run. His wingman was dead; most of the friendly starfighters within sight were Y-wings and even TIE fighters.

Selaggis Six was growing small behind him and his target. But Mon Remonda was coming on strong. His home was chasing him. He got lined up for another run and dove toward the destroyer, his lasers stitching destruction across her hull.

Halfway across, he sensed something wrong to his port, toward the ship’s bow. He glanced that way, saw nothing beyond the bow.

Nothing. No stars. No starfighters. Blackness, an immense sea of blackness. It so jarred him that he ceased fire, ceased maneuvering until a near miss from an Iron Fist turbolaser jolted him out of his surprise.

Iron Fist’s bow entered the darkness and disappeared. The blackness rolled across the ship’s hull and swallowed Tetengo Noor.

All the stars disappeared, but he could still see Iron Fist’s lights, still see the glows of fire from friendly and enemy starfighters. He shook off his apprehension and banked for another run at his colossal enemy. “Polearm Nine to Mon Remonda. Something odd is going on here.”

He heard nothing but the alarmed comm chatter of other pilots near him.

Sensor data was strange. It showed new blips where none had been a moment ago. There were now two capital ships in his near vicinity. Iron Fist, immediately to his stern, and something about a third of Iron Fist’s size—still larger than any Imperial Star Destroyer—well below Zsinj’s flagship. In addition, there were four stationary objects arrayed in a square back the way he’d come, and four more, similarly arrayed, kilometers ahead along Iron Fist’s outbound course.

He looped around to get a look at the new capital ship. “Polearm Nine to Mon Remonda, come in. I think Iron Fist has additional support up here.”

Only static answered him.

Zsinj stayed on his comlink while his pilot did the work. His shuttle lifted off, moved smoothly out into the eerie darkness now surrounding Iron Fist, and headed off at a course perpendicular to the Super Star Destroyer’s.

“Captain Vellar, report.”

“Thirty seconds to hyperspace entry. I’ve transmitted the countdown to Second Death.”

“Second Death, report.”

“Yes, warlord. Our detonation is linked to the countdown. Countdown plus two seconds. We’ve already abandoned ship. Our crew is on the landing craft and we’ve launched.”

“Well, get clear of here or you’ll be nothing but a dim memory and a pension bonus.” Zsinj turned to his pilot. “That stands for us, too.”

The taciturn pilot nodded and brought the shuttle up to speed. A few moments later, the stars returned as though they’d been switched back on by some cosmic being.

Zsinj checked his sensors. There was nothing behind him, no trace of Iron Fist, Second Death, or the starfighters battling around them.

“No, no, no,” Solo said. “She can’t have jumped. We’d have seen the sensor signs of hyperspace entry.”

The sensor officer offered him a face full of confusion. “No, sir. But she’s gone. It’s strange. Several minutes ago, we thought we detected a ship out there at that position; her sensor echo wasn’t anything we could identify, and she vanished almost immediately. Now Iron Fist goes out there and vanishes, too—and all the starfighters on her, ours and theirs. We’re not even getting comm traffic from them. We do have an odd visual.”

“Bring it up.”

The visual enhancer brought up a hologram of—nothingness. A black square blotting out the stars directly ahead of Mon Remonda, on the exact path Iron Fist took, many kilometers ahead. Three shuttles were outbound from the anomaly. Several Y-wings from Mon Remonda approached it at cautious speeds.

“What is that?”

The sensor operator shook her head. “It’s not on any sensors but visual. It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen.”

•    •    •

Captain Vellar stared out the forward viewport and tried to keep all emotion out of his face.

It was hard. He had to focus all that energy on his task.

He was a soldier. He always did his duty.

This time, his duty, as defined by the warlord, demanded that he be party to the murder of dozens of his own pilots.

“Captain,” called the comm officer, “the starfighter group leader is asking if it’s time to bring the TIEs in.”

“Tell him one minute,” Vellar said. “Then we’ll open up the bay and transmit approach channels where they won’t be chopped to pieces by our own batteries.”

“Yes, sir.”

A moment later, another officer called, “Ten seconds to hyperspace.”

“Very well.” Vellar closed his eyes. He would not bear the sight of the eyes of the bridge crew. They knew why all the pilots were being sacrificed—so Iron Fist would not be delayed in her jump to safety. So the intermixed wreckage of friendly and enemy starfighters would convince Han Solo that Iron Fist and her starfighter screen were destroyed.

Tetengo Noor brought in his A-wing close to the misshapen capital ship.

It was not illuminated and was firing no weapons. He switched on forward lights as he cruised over it.

He saw an engine pod, a bridge pod, a long spar connecting them, and three kilometers of vehicle wreckage between bow and stern.

One piece of wreckage was instantly recognizable. The triangular point of a Star Destroyer’s bow. On it were painted the words IRON FIST.

Apprehension seized him—not fear for himself, but fear for his mission, his fleet’s mission. He turned back toward Mon Remonda and accelerated.

Behind him, the utter blackness became pure, burning brightness. For a moment, as it swept forward across him, he thought he felt heat.

•    •    •

As Solo and his bridge crew watched, flame gouted out from the center of the blackness, then spread to engulf it entirely. The approaching Y-wings veered away. Metal debris, brilliantly glowing, hurtled from the center of the explosion. In moments, the bright ball of explosive gas faded—and the blackness, too, was gone, the stars beyond it restored.

The sensor operator blinked. “We had signs of a hyperspace entry just before the explosion, sir.”

“Find out,” Solo said. “Find out if it was Iron Fist or that phantom ship.”

“Yes, sir.”

A moment later, the communications officer rocked back in his chair as if slapped. He turned to Solo. “Sir, I have a transmission from one of our Y-wings. The pilot thinks you ought to see this right away.”

“Put it up.”

The enhanced starfield wavered. The stars changed, and much of the view was replaced by a tumbling piece of debris, an enormous triangle of metal trailing cables and metal spars. Portions of the debris still glowed from the heat of the explosion.

Painted on the side of the triangle, rotating into and out of sight as the debris spun, were the words IRON FIST.

Captain Onoma joined him. “That is her bow.”

“Yes.” Solo let out a breath and felt five months of pressure and frustration begin to leave him. If he could breathe like that for a while, expelling the nightmare of this command one lungful at a time, he could someday become a real human again.

He moved back to his control chair and sat heavily. All across the bridge, officers began applauding, offering handshakes, exchanging embraces.

“Comm, let me address the fleet.”

“Ready, sir.”

“This is General Solo. Iron Fist is destroyed. We’ll tell you more as we know more.” He gestured for the comm officer to cease the transmission. “Sensors, Communications, what about our pilots who were close to her?”

The sensor officer shook her head. “They were awfully near to the explosion. Unless they move under their own power, we won’t be able to distinguish them from debris.”

“I have a transmission from a Y-wing pilot,” the comm officer said. “He’s injured, coming in on one engine. He was just emerging from the darkness field when Iron Fist blew. He was pretty disoriented while he was in the darkness field. He saw a second capital ship on sensors; it must have been the one that made hyperspace. He thinks most of our starfighters are gone, sir.”

Solo closed his eyes.

Maybe, just maybe, those were the last beings he would ever have to order to their deaths.

“Incoming message, sir. From one of those outbound shuttles. He says it’s Warlord Zsinj.”

“Of course,” Solo murmured. “He wouldn’t stay aboard Iron Fist and let himself be blown up. Not even if I asked him nicely.” He raised his head. “Chewie, you took the last one. Come join me for this one.”

Chewbacca moved in to stand behind Solo. “Put it on,” Solo said.

Zsinj’s image, against the background of a Lambda shuttle cockpit, appeared both on Solo’s private screen and as a holoprojection over the bridge’s main viewport.

There was no humor remaining to Zsinj’s expression. Sweat darkened parts of his white uniform. His mustachios drooped in what might have been, under other circumstances, a comical fashion. “I’ve signaled you to offer congratulations,” the warlord said. His voice was low, pained. “You realize you have cost me very dearly.”

Han summoned up the energy to give him a mocking smile. “I don’t have much to offer you in compensation. Maybe I could let you kiss my Wookiee.”

Chewbacca grumbled, a noise of dissent.

The color rose in Zsinj’s face and he spoke again—words Solo did not know, each few syllables sounding different in character and pitch than the ones before. The rant went on for nearly a minute, and Solo was glad they routinely recorded bridge communications—he wanted one of the 3PO units to translate this multilingual composition of profanity for him. One blast in the Rodian language he understood quite well; it described Han Solo’s chemical composition in a fashion that would make any Rodian’s blood boil.

Then Zsinj sagged, all energy seemingly having fled him. “General,” he said, “we will meet again.”

“I’m sure we will.” Solo lost his smile. “Zsinj, I’m not a rich man. Not really an ambitious man. Maybe you should take that into account. It means that you can never cost me as much as I’ve cost you. Never.”

Zsinj regarded him soberly for a moment. Then his holoimage faded.

“Shuttle’s made the launch to hyperspace,” reported the sensor operator.

Solo nodded. Then he looked up at Chewbacca. “We got him. He’s not dead, but his fleet is a shambles and his financial empire is coming to pieces. He may never recover.”

Chewie rumbled a reply.

“No, I never really would have asked you to kiss him.”

With the colors of hyperspace flowing past the forward viewport, sign of safety that was finally his, Zsinj turned to his pilot. “What did you think of my performance?”

The man looked at him blankly. “I suppose it was pretty good, sir.”

“You obviously have no appreciation of the theater, dear boy. Oh, well. In a few minutes, we’ll rendezvous with Iron Fist and head on to Rancor Base, where you won’t be called upon to provide artistic criticism you’re not qualified to offer.” He heaved a sigh.

18

Dr. Gast lay on her bed in the tiny chamber that was her cell, bored, and watched the same holodrama for the third time in as many days. It was called High Winds, and told the story of performing wire-walkers, madmen who stretched fibra-ropes between the skyscrapers of Coruscant and then tried to walk across for the entertainment of others. It was a tragedy, of course; any such account, made by Imperial holomakers, of such nontraditional and independent behavior always ended in sadness and death.

There was a murmur of voices from outside, her guard talking to someone, and then there was a knock at her door.

She paused the holo. Actor Tetran Cowall froze in mid-slip, his plunge to death delayed for a few moments, his expression wide-eyed and hopeless. “Come in,” she said.

Nawara Ven entered, stared at her impassively. “You’ll launch tomorrow in the shuttle Narra for Coruscant. Nobody wants you to arrive with Solo’s fleet.” He tossed a packet tied together with cord at her feet. “Your new identity,” he said. “Maharg Tulis, home decorator from Alderaan. It will stand up to any scrutiny, New Republic or Imperial.”

She didn’t reach for the packet. “That’s an ugly name.”

“To accompany an ugly spirit.”

“And my money?”

“I’ll give you one more chance on the money. Tell me you don’t want it, that you’re donating it back to the New Republic cause to save lives. That could be your very first step in returning from what you’ve become.”

“I’ll take the money, thanks.”

“As you wish. I won’t ever again try to protect you from yourself.” He offered her a toothy smile. “We have to send out a holocomm request for your money. How would you prefer your credits—New Republic or Imperial?”

“Imperial, of course. What did you think?”

“Imperial it is. As soon as they arrive, you’ll be off to Coruscant.”

“I need a bodyguard! I’ll be carrying half a million credits. It wouldn’t do to let me be robbed. That would reflect badly on your New Republic.”

The Twi’lek nodded. “You’re absolutely right. I’ll be your bodyguard until we get to Coruscant. Once we’re there, you can hire one to your liking and book your own passage to whatever world you like.”

“Well … I suppose you’ll do.”

Ven took a step back and shut the door.

Gast grabbed the identity packet, plucked the string free, and examined the documents, shoving the datacards in her terminal one by one. An identity card. A falsified personal history—born on Alderaan, a traveler among Outer Rim worlds since her home planet’s destruction eight years before. A permit permitting her to carry a large sum of money, up to a half million New Republic credits or the equivalent. Memberships in various decorators’ guilds—Imperial, New Republic, various unaligned planets.

She sat back, satisfied. One or two more days, and she’d be rid of Zsinj, rid of the Rebels, rid of this whole business forever.

Wedge looked over the fighter pilots of Mon Remonda. The Rogues and Wraiths were present in nearly full strength; he had lost only one pilot from those squadrons yesterday, and had lost her only temporarily. A few survivors from Polearm and Nova Squadrons, pilots who had been knocked out of battle minutes before Iron Fist detonated, were also present.

This was the last time the four squadrons were ever likely to be assembled this way. The pilots stared at him, their expressions tired, solemn, battered, triumphant.

In spite of the high casualty toll, it had been a successful engagement. Iron Fist was gone.

“We’ll start with pilot updates,” he said. “Sadly, all the Nova and Polearm pilots missing at the site of Iron Fist’s last stand remain listed as missing in action and presumed dead. But our injured Rogue, Asyr Sei’lar, is out of danger, and the medics say she will suffer no permanent effects of her exposure.

“Most of the Rogues and Wraiths received a communication from an unknown craft as we were departing Selcaron. It turned out to be a lengthy message and data package from Lara Notsil, recorded before her death. It included many details about Zsinj’s brainwashing project that should allow Intelligence to dismantle Zsinj’s operation on Coruscant. We probably won’t have to worry again about the kind of circumstances that led to the deaths of Tal’dira and Nuro Tualin.” He spared a glance at Horn and Tyria. Both had been sobered by the mention of the pilots they’d been forced to kill, but Wedge could see no uncertainty in their expressions. Horn had always known whom to blame for his squadmate’s death. Tyria had apparently begun to understand the same thing.

“Many commendations will be resulting from our recent actions,” Wedge continued. “We’ll get to them later. I think I first ought to let you know that Fleet Command and Starfighter Command seem to be in agreement—that you all have seen enough carrier duty for a while. Squadron transfers are in order and will be coming through in the next day or two. Rogue Squadron can expect to see some planet-based duty, at least for a while. Polearm and Nova Squadrons will be returning to Coruscant so they can be rebuilt.”

Face’s hand shot up. “And the Wraiths? We’re still on Mon Remonda?”

“Not exactly. For you, I have good news, bad news, and news you’ll have to interpret for yourselves. Face, I’m obliged to inform you that your captaincy has stuck. It’s Captain Loran from now on.”

The pilots closest to Face treated him to backslaps. Dia tickled him, causing him to shy away from her until he could pin her hands. He turned back to Wedge, his expression serious. “And the good news?”

“The bad news is that as of today, Wraith Squadron has been decommissioned as an X-wing unit.”

Face released Dia’s hands and dropped back in his seat, looking as stunned as if Kell had just side-kicked him in the head. “What? Sir?”

Wedge heard intakes of breath from several pilots, not just from Wraiths. “It’s not quite what it sounds like. It seems you’ve done too good a job, accomplishing a broad set of objectives, few of which have anything to do with the perceived strengths of an X-wing unit. You’ve made quite an impression on General Cracken, the head of Intelligence. As of now, Wraith Squadron has been recommissioned as an Intelligence unit. Commandos, insurgents, pilots—it will do whatever the situation warrants. With, unfortunately, less celebrity than even the little an X-wing unit typically receives.” He offered them an expression of apology. “Obviously, the government won’t just yank you out of Starfighter Command and give you like presents to another branch of the service. But all you have to do is say yes and your transfer to the new Wraith Squadron will be accepted instantly—and with thanks. General Cracken offers his personal wishes that you do accept transfer, and that you stay together as a team.”

“I’m coming back to Rogue Squadron,” said Janson. “That was the deal.”

Wedge smiled at him. “Wes, the Wraiths don’t want you anyway.”

“That’s right,” Elassar said. “You’re unlucky.”

Dia said, “I hate how serious he is all the time.”

Runt said, “We don’t like the way he chews his food.”

Shalla said, “But we’ll miss his rear end.”

Janson grinned as he took it, and accepted handshakes from the Wraiths and Rogues around him.

“Those Wraiths who do not intend to accept General Cracken’s offer can tell me more privately than Wes here,” Wedge said. “And regardless of where you choose to go, drop by the pilots’s lounge this evening for one last drink together. You can celebrate where you’ve been and where you’re going.

“Now, for those commendations. Flight Officer Dorset Konnair, step forward …”

Face leaned against the pilot lounge bar and felt the brandy ease its way down his throat, warming him from within.

There was also warmth from without. The lounge was filled with pilots and friends—and tonight, with the mechanics, other technical staffers, and astromechs that had supported the starfighter squadrons. The heat of so many bodies raised the temperature in the lounge to a level no Mon Calamari would want to bear for long.

It was the end. Tomorrow, his profession would be different, and his surroundings would be changed, and so much of what he’d known for so long would be left behind.

“How is the voting running?” Wedge asked him.

“We’ll be staying together,” Face said. “Not everybody has talked to me yet, but most of the Wraiths will be Intelligence Wraiths tomorrow.”

Wedge nodded. “I think that’s the right choice. I thought the New Republic needed a unit like the Wraiths. Now others have bought in as well.”

“Does that mean Admiral Ackbar has let you off the hook? You don’t have to accept the generalship?”

Wedge smiled. “I had a congratulatory message from him this morning. ‘Even I wanted you to win,’ he said. ‘How could I vote against a starfighter unit proving its worth?’ ”

“Good point.”

Donos moved through the crowd to stand before them. He extended his hand to Face.

Face took it. “You’ve already congratulated me.”

“And now I’m leaving you.”

“Staying with Starfighter Command?”

“Yes. Flying is what I want to do.” Donos gave a helpless shrug.

Face grinned. “And staying with X-wings, too?”

“I hope so. I put in my request for transfer to any X-wing unit with openings.”

“Ah,” Wedge said. “I forgot to mention. Your approval for transfer came in earlier today. You have a new unit.”

“Really? Which one?”

“Rogue Squadron.”

Donos took a half-step back. “You’re kidding.”

“No, no, no.” Wedge shook his head. “Kidding sounds like this. The next candidate’s name is Kettch, and he’s an Ewok.’ See the difference?”

Donos’s mouth worked for a moment. Finally he said, “Thank you, sir.”

“You’re welcome. Go talk to your new squadmates. Maybe you could manage to be a little less distant with them than you were with the old ones.”

Donos managed a smile. “Yes, I guess I could use the practice.”

The descent to Coruscant’s surface was uneventful, but Dr. Gast, seeing the former Imperial throneworld for the first time in years, was thrilled by every moment, by every glimpse the shuttle’s viewports afforded her of the world’s soaring buildings and rain-filled skies.

Nawara Ven, beside her—far too close for her peace of mind, but that, too, would soon change—obviously did not share her enthusiasm for the world’s attractions. He sat ignoring her, stonily facing forward throughout the landing. And that, too, gave her a little thrill of victory: to discommode the subhuman who had offered her so much grief was simply lovely.

An hour later, she and the Twi’lek neared the head of the customs entry line. It was one of many such lines in a cavernous hall that was broken, mazelike, by transparisteel barriers designed to keep arrivals from entering Coruscant unexamined and untaxed.

“Where do you go from here?” Ven asked her.

“I’m not fool enough to tell you,” she said. “You can be sure it’s somewhere well away from Rebel space. Somewhere far from bad-smelling, bad-tempered Twi’leks. Somewhere orderly, where the cutting edge of medical research is admired and respected.”

Ven nodded sagely. “Well, then, I know exactly where you’re going.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I’ll bet you half a million credits I can name the planet.”

She offered him a scowl. Then the man ahead of her in line moved past the customs station. She swung her two bags atop the examination table.

The customs worker, an aging human man, quickly ran a scanner across her bags, then opened the first and probed through the few garments and personal possessions that made up most of what she retained of her former life.

Then he opened her other bag and froze. He looked up at her, astonishment in his eyes. “What’s this?”

“Money.” She handed him a datacard. “Here’s my financial record. It constitutes authorization to travel with a large sum such as this.”

“It’s not the sum.” His look suggested that she was a victim of sun-madness. “These are Imperial credits.”

“Yes, of course.”

“And bringing them into Coruscant is an act of smuggling.” His hands shoved the currency around in her bag.

Nawara Ven leaned in close. “Actually, by Coruscant law, bringing in that many Imperial credits can only be for purposes of sedition. That’s a far more serious charge than merely smuggling. You’ll be spending at least a lifetime in prison on Coruscant.”

The customs official snapped his fingers and waved. Security officers approached.

Gast turned on Ven. “You set me up.”

He looked down at her impassively. “No, I let you do exactly as you wanted. I also saved your life. I’d say I’ve treated you rather well.”

She spat at him. A gooey mass hit his cheek and clung there.

He brought out a handkerchief of fine cloth, wiped the sputum away, and discarded it, as though the substance were poison, ruining the cloth forevermore.

Then strong hands gripped Dr. Gast’s arms and she was yanked away.

Han Solo and Wedge Antilles sat in the cockpit of the Millennium Falsehood, their feet up on the control boards. All lights in the ship and in the bay were off, including the strip around the magcon field, so they had an unimpeded view of the colorful swirl of hyperspace beyond.

“What are you going to do with her?” Wedge asked.

“Hmmm?” Solo stirred, his train of thought broken. “Do with who?”

“With the Falsehood.”

“Well, technically, I can’t do anything with her,” Solo said. “She belongs to the New Republic. But if they listen to me—which they will—I’ll recommend they put her up in a museum. As a near replica of the Falcon. That way nobody is ever likely to bother me anymore about donating the old girl.”

“Which old girl?”

“You know what I mean.”

The comm unit crackled into life, startling both men. “Bridge to General Solo.”

Solo thumbed the system to two-way transmission. “Solo here.”

“Communications here, sir. We have a situation.”

“Go ahead.”

“A while back you ordered my station to run all incoming messages through a voice-analysis program. So you could be notified immediately if Lara Notsil contacted you again.”

“That’s right.”

“No one thought to end the program after her death. Well, just before we made our last jump, we received a recorded message. Let me patch it through to you, sir.”

“Hold on.” Solo activated the bridge lights and powered up the Falsehood’s cockpit terminal screen. “Ready to receive.”

The terminal glowed into life. A data screen popped up, announcing the details of the message’s origin and route before arriving on Mon Remonda. Its origin was Corellia; it was originally transmitted one day before; its intended recipient was Myn Donos, New Republic Starfighter Command. The data shrank and moved over into the left margin, to be replaced by a full-holo message.

The woman it showed had long red hair artfully draped in a braid over her shoulder. She was rather delicate of features, with an uncertain smile on her lips. “Hello, Myn,” she said. “It’s been a while since we’ve seen one another.”

Solo and Wedge looked at one another. “That’s Lara Notsil,” Solo said.

Wedge glanced over at the data stream. “No, it’s someone named Kirney Slane.”

“You’re not even surprised.” Solo glared at him, suspicion on his face.

“I’m back on Corellia now,” the redhead said, “after a few years of knocking around the galaxy.”

“Years?” Solo asked. “More like a few days.”

“Pretty good Corellian accent,” Wedge said.

“I don’t believe this,” Solo said.

“And I know, after the way we parted company, you may not want to see me again. But I had to find out if there was any sort of chance for us. I think I’m finally ready and able to give it a try again.” There was hope in the woman’s expression, and acceptance. “I’ll be here, at the address given in the message header, for the next few weeks. I’m trying to drum up traffic for my new shuttle business. I have a ship, a Sentinel-class landing craft I obtained used. I have a copilot you really need to meet and an astromech you already know. Contact me, visit me—do whatever you feel you have to. I’ll accept whatever you decide.”

The screen faded.

“Stand by, Communications.” Solo shut off the cockpit microphone and gave Wedge an accusing look. “You said, when you overflew her X-wing, that you saw no sign she’d ejected.”

“That’s right.” Wedge stretched lazily. “There was no automated comm signal indicating an ejection.”

“Of course, that could have been damaged in combat, or she could have disabled it.”

“Sure, sure. Anyway, as the X-wing was rolling over and sinking as I flew over her, I couldn’t see whether the pilot’s chair was still in there.”

“Commander Square Corners himself, showing a streak of duplicity. Lying by omission. I can’t believe it.”

“Maybe, ultimately, I believe in happy endings,” Wedge said. “I can hope for them, anyway. Besides, with Wraith Squadron on one side of me and Han Solo on the other, how can I keep from being infected with duplicity?”

“Good point.” Solo considered. “She could come back. What she did as an Imperial agent is nothing compared to what she did for us.”

Wedge shook his head. “I think the way you do, but the law doesn’t. In her false identity, she swore an oath to the New Republic, then transmitted classified data to the Empire during a time of war. That’s treason. The only legal outcome for her would be the death sentence. Regardless of what she did for us. Regardless of the fact that she’s not remotely the same person who served the Empire and Admiral Trigit.”

“You’re right.” Solo reactivated the comm unit. “Communications, you have a false reading. The sender’s vocal similarity to Lara Notsil is a coincidence. She’s dead. Understood?”

“Uh, sir, our correlation is something like ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-seven—”

“Tell you what. I’ll send Chewbacca up there and have him explain to you what I just said.”

“No, sir, not necessary. I understand.”

“Forward the message to Lieutenant Donos and then erase all other ship’s copies of the message. Nothing goes into archives. Understood?”

“Fully, sir.”

“Solo out.” He rose. “Come on, we’ve got an hour before arrival at Coruscant. I’ll buy you a drink.”

“I’ll let you.”

As they walked down the Falsehood’s loading ramp, Solo threw an arm over Wedge’s shoulders. “Corellian to Corellian, you know what the great thing about being a general is?”

“No, what?”

“In lots of circumstances, you can pretty much do whatever you want.” With his free hand, Solo reached over and gave Wedge’s hair a thorough mussing.

Wedge batted his hand away. “Hey, stop it.”

“No. I don’t have to. Hey, you should try this general thing. You’d like it.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’m going to send a message to Ackbar and tell him just what a natural you are for that rank.”

“General, I’m warning you …”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks go to:

Bruce Harlick, Kevin Jennings, Beth Loubet, Matt Pinsonneault, Susan Pinsonneault, Bob Quinlan, Roxanne Quinlan, Luray Richmond, and Sean Summers, my “Eagle-Eyes,” whose efforts to intercept my errors of thought and deed keep me from looking quite as foolish as I otherwise might;

All the Star Wars fiction authors from whose work I have been able to draw details, most especially Michael A. Stackpole and Timothy Zahn;

Drew Campbell, Troy Denning, Shane Johnson, Paul Murphy, Stephen J. Sansweet, Peter Schweighofer, Jen Seiden, Bill Slavicsek, Bill Smith, Curtis Smith, Eric S. Trautmann, and Dan Wallace, for the invaluable resources they have written;

David Pipgras, for the Wraith Squadron unit patch;

The netizens of alt.fan.wedge, for their support and commentary;

Sue Rostoni and Lucy Autrey Wilson of Lucas Licensing, for their help; and

Denis Loubet, Mark and Luray Richmond, my roommates, for occasionally reminding me to eat, sleep, and breathe.

STAR WARS: ISARD’S REVENGE
A Bantam Spectra Book / April 1999

SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

© 1999 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM
All rights reserved. Used under authorization.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.

eISBN: 978-0-307-79652-3

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada.

v3.1

Contents

Master - Table of Contents

Isard’s Revenge

Title Page

Copyright

Dramatis Personae

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38

Dedication

Acknowledgments

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

The Rogues

Commander Wedge Antilles (human male from Corellia)

Captain Tycho Celchu (human male from Alderaan)

Flight Officer Lyyr Zatoq (Quarren female from Mon Calamari)

Lieutenant Derek “Hobbie” Klivian (human male from Ralltiir)

Lieutenant Wes Janson (human male from Taanab)

Lieutenant Gavin Darklighter (human male from Tatooine)

Lieutenant Myn Donos (human male from Corellia)

Lieutenant Khe-Jeen Slee (Issori male from Issor)

Lieutenant Corran Horn (human male from Corellia)

Lieutenant Ooryl Qyrgg (Gand male from Gand)

Lieutenant Asyr Sei’lar (Bothan female from Bothawui)

Flight Officer Inyri Forge (human female from Kessel)

Lieutenant Nawara Ven (Twi’lek male from Ryloth)

Support Personnel

Gate (Wedge’s R5 unit)

Whistler (Corran’s R2 unit)

New Republic Military

Admiral Ackbar (Mon Calamari male from Mon Calamari)

Colonel Kapp Dendo (Devaronian male from Devaron)

Captain Page (human male from Corulag)

New Republic Intelligence

General Airen Cracken (human male from Contruum)

Iella Wessiri (human female from Corellia)

Ciutric Hegemony Forces

Prince-Admiral Delak Krennel (human male from Corulag)

Ysanne Isard (human female from Coruscant)

Crew of the Errant Venture

Booster Terrik (human male from Corellia)

Crew of the Pulsar Skate

Mirax Terrik (human female from Corellia)

1

Sithspawn! When his X-wing reverted to realspace before the countdown timer had reached zero, Corran Horn knew Thrawn had somehow managed to outguess the New Republic yet one more time. The Rogues had helped create the deception that the New Republic would be going after the Tangrene Ubiqtorate Base, but Thrawn clearly hadn’t taken the bait.

The man’s incredible. I’d like to meet him, shake his hand. Corran smiled. And then kill him, of course.

Two seconds into realspace and the depth of Thrawn’s brilliance became undeniable. The New Republic’s forces had been brought out of hyperspace by two Interdictor cruisers, which even now started to fade back toward the Imperial lines. This left the New Republic’s ships well shy of the Bilbringi shipyards and facing an Imperial fleet arrayed for battle. The two Interdictors that had dragged them from hyperspace were a small part of a larger force scattered around to make sure the New Republic’s ships were not going to be able to retreat.

“Battle alert!” Captain Tycho Celchu’s voice crackled over the comm unit. “TIE Interceptors coming in—bearing two-nine-three, mark twenty.”

Corran keyed his comm unit. “Three Flight, on me. Hold it together and nail some squints.”

The cant-winged Interceptors rolled in and down on the Rogues. Corran kicked his X-wing up on its port S-foil and flicked his lasers over to quad-fire mode. While that would slow his rate of fire, each burst had a better chance of killing a squint outright. And there are plenty that need killing here.

Corran nudged his stick right and dropped the crosshairs onto an Interceptor making a run at Admiral Ackbar’s flagship. He hit the firing switch, sending four red laser bolts burning out at the target. They hit on the starboard side, with two of them piercing the cockpit and the other two vaporizing the strut supporting the right wing. The bent hexagonal wing sheered off in a shower of sparks, while the rest of the craft started a long, lazy spiral toward the outer edges of the system.

“Break port, Nine.”

As the Gand’s high-pitched voice poured through the comm unit, Corran snaprolled his X-wing to the left, then chopped his throttle back and hauled hard on the stick to take him into a loop. An Interceptor flashed through where he had been, and Ooryl Qyrgg’s X-wing came fast on its tail. Ooryl’s lasers blazed in sequence, stippling the Interceptor with red energy darts. One hit each wing, melting great furrows through them, while the other two lanced through the cockpit right above the twin ion engines. The engines themselves tore free of their support structure and blew out through the front of the squint, then exploded in a silver fireball that consumed the rest of the Imperial fighter.

“Thanks, Ten.”

“My pleasure, Nine.”

Whistler, the green and white R2 unit slotted in behind Corran, hooted, and data started pouring up over the fighter’s main monitor. It told him in exact detail what he was seeing unfold in space around him. The New Republic’s forces had come into the system in the standard conical formation that allowed them to maximize firepower. Thrawn had arrayed his forces in more of a bowl shape, with Interdictor cruisers ringing the outer edge, preventing retreat and promoting containment. The Imperial forces also appeared to have very specific fire missions and were working over the smaller support ships in Ackbar’s fleet.

Corran shivered. And even if we were to punch through the Imp formation, we’d still have to deal with the Golan Space Defense Stations protecting the Imperial shipyards. Thrawn, genius that he had proved himself to be, had set a perfect ambush for the New Republic. The Bilbringi shipyards were crucial to the Imperial war effort since they were a major supplier of ships, and their loss would strike a major blow against Thrawn’s effort to destroy the New Republic.

Of course, Thrawn figured that out himself and knew we’d be here. Until Thrawn slithered in from the Unknown Regions and began his drive to reestablish the Empire, Corran had allowed himself to believe the tough battles had already been won, and all the New Republic had left to do was to mop up the last of the Imperials. Now it seems the hard battles are here and waiting to be lost.

With a flick of his thumb, Corran evened his shields out fore and aft, then throttled back up and slashed in at a pair of Interceptors making a run on a New Republic Assault Frigate. He slid his crosshairs over on the trailing Interceptor as it began its shallow glide along the Frigate’s hull. His quad burst caught most of the port wing, liquefying it in an instant. The molten metal froze in a long black tangle of ribbonlike shards trailing after the damaged fighter. The pilot juked his ship to the right to escape Corran, but that flew him straight into a burst from one of the Frigate’s turbolasers, vaporizing the squint in an eyeblink.

The lead Interceptor rolled to port and cut down past the curve of the Frigate’s hull. Corran caught a flash of red on one of the Interceptor’s wings and nodded. “Looks like he was once part of the One Eighty-first Imperial Fighter Group. They used to be feared. Maybe I ought to see why.”

Whistler sounded a mournful tone.

“Yes, I know what I’m doing.”

The droid blatted harshly at him.

“Yes, I’ll be careful. Neither one of us wants to know what Mirax will do to the survivor if we die.” Corran winked at the holograph of his wife fixed to a side panel in his cockpit, then rolled his X-wing and cruised down after the squint. He threaded a path through the turbolaser blasts the Frigate was pumping out, then swept past the ship out near its engines

Even before Whistler could hoot a warning, the hiss of lasers splashing themselves over his aft shields caught Corran’s full attention. His secondary monitor showed the Interceptor dropping in on his tail. Must have throttled back and hovered near the engines, waiting. This guy is good.

Pumping more energy into his shields, Corran rolled the X-wing right, up onto the S-foil. He pulled back on the stick to start a loop and held it for three seconds, then cut his throttle back and inverted. Pulling back harder on the stick, he completed a fast loop, then throttled up through the end of it and rolled out right.

As his fighter’s nose came to point at the Interceptor, the Imp pilot rolled his craft and dove away from Corran. The Corellian pilot started down after him, but cut back to 75 percent of his speed. As he anticipated, the Imp cut his speed as well, hoping Corran would race past him. Instead Corran triggered one quick burst of fire that hit high on the Imp’s port wing, burning a black hole through the red stripe. He then stood on his right rudder pedal, keeping his guns on the squint, and poured another quad burst of laserfire into the Interceptor.

All four ruby darts drilled through the port wing, then stabbed deep into the cockpit. A bright light flashed through the hole the lasers had opened, and Corran expected the ship to explode, but it didn’t. Instead it began to come apart, with bits and pieces of it whirling away as if the bright flash had disintegrated all the rivets and welds used in its manufacture.

Corran looped his X-wing away from the dying squint, but before he could vector in on another Interceptor, he heard Commander Wedge Antilles coming through on the squadron’s tactical channel. “All Rogues, come about on a heading of one-two-five, mark one-seven. That Golan Space Defense Station is designated Green One. It’s ours.”

“Ours, Commander?” The same surprise Corran felt in his chest came flooding through Gavin Darklighter’s voice. “That’s a pretty tough target.”

“We’ll just have to be tougher than it is, won’t we, Six?” Wedge’s reply came loaded with grim irony. “If we can get into the shipyard, the Imps will have to think about more than just pounding our fleet. Besides, we have friends coming out. One Flight is on me. Five, you have Two Flight. Nine, you have Three.”

“As ordered, Lead.” Corran brought his fighter around on the appropriate heading and locked the target into his computer. “Estimated time of arrival at missile range is forty seconds. Let’s move, Three Flight.”

Ooryl pulled his X-wing up on Corran’s starboard wing. Inyri Forge brought Rogue Twelve up on Corran’s port wing and Asyr Sei’lar, in Rogue Eleven, hung back off Inyri’s port wing. Corran goosed his ship a bit forward and shifted his attention toward their target, trusting the others to keep him informed if Imps were vectoring in on them from behind.

Not likely, though, since they’ve got plenty to keep them busy. Throughout the bowl into which the New Republic’s fleet moved, massive salvos of energy shot up and down and side to side, filling the area with a dazzling light show. Corran would have been more than content to watch the turbolaser bursts flow back and forth, but the fact that they were lethal was more than enough to keep him from finding much beauty in them. Behind the squadron, Y-wings, A-wings, and B-wings mixed it up with Interceptors, TIE fighters, and Bombers, punctuating the light show with brilliant explosions.

The larger ships, when hit hard, didn’t explode as quickly. Instead their fire-blackened bulks drifted through the battlefield, atmosphere burning off as it leaked out of broken hulls. Some turbolaser blasts were enough to peel back armor plates and reduce them to floating metal globules that hardened in the vacuum of space. In other places the shots holed the ships through and through or vaporized things that should have been there, like superstructures or a bow.

The Golan Space Defense Station loomed larger. Lights blinked placidly at the various corners, almost inviting inspection. Over two kilometers long, about half as wide and tall, it bristled with turbolaser batteries, proton torpedo launchers, and tractor beam stations. It massed more than an Imperial Star Destroyer and, while it wasn’t as heavily armed, the proton torpedo launchers gave it the ability to inflict serious damage in a hurry. It could easily put down any of the New Republic ships that made it through the Imperial formation.

Corran flicked his weapons-control over to proton torpedoes and linked fire so two would go with a single pull of his trigger. Whistler brought up the heads-up targeting display and the HUD fixed a green box around the space platform. The droid began to beep insistently as it tried to get a target lock; then the HUD went red and Whistler’s tone became constant.

“Nine has a firing solution, transmitting now. On my mark, Three Flight. Three, two, one, mark!”

All four of the X-wings fired their proton torpedoes at one time, using Whistler’s targeting solution to guide them. A battle station like the Golan sported very powerful shields and individually fired proton torpedoes would have been unable to pierce it. Eight torpedoes coming in at the same time, aiming for the same point, would overstress the shields, draining them of energy. This would create a critical time window in which the shields would be weakened, or would totally fail, and have to be regenerated.

Whistler sounded another long, strong tone. “Three Flight, second salvo. On my mark. Three, two, one, mark.”

Eight more proton torpedoes streaked out from the incoming fighters before the first set had hit. The first eight torpedoes detonated against the station’s top-port shield. The shield itself went opaque, taking on a milky-white hue as it attempted to dissipate the torpedoes’ energy. But sparks shot from the shield projectors rimming the station’s middle and a roiling ball of plasma bounced across the hull, scorching gray paint as it went.

The next eight missiles hit in a ragged sequence and exploded brilliantly along the station’s middle. Flames vomited into space as a blast opened a hole three decks deep and vented atmosphere. Armor plates whirled into space, half melted and twisted. Turbolaser batteries split apart, leaving blackened holes and warped metal where they had once been grafted to the station.

Corran juked his fighter up and away from the station, then inverted and watched turbolaser fire shoot beneath his canopy. For a half second he thought the Golan’s gunners were terribly shaken by the squadron’s attack, hence their misses, then he glanced at his rear sensor display. He smiled and keyed his comm unit. “We softened them up for you …”

“Appreciated, Rogues, now let us do our jobs.”

Two New Republic Assault Frigates, the Tyrant’s Bane and Liberty Star, cruised in toward the Golan station. Though each ship was less than a third as long as the station, they bristled with fifty laser cannons and poured terajoules of coherent light into the Golan. Scarlet bolts lanced through the station’s collapsed shields and bubbled up chunks of the metal hull. Stanchions wavered and wilted beneath the blistering assault. As they collapsed, turbolaser batteries sagged and dipped, then melted into slag.

The troops aboard the Golan fought back valiantly, but found themselves at a gross disadvantage. Proton torpedoes exploded, shaking the station. The troops fired in vain at the fighters, then concentrated their fire on the Frigates. While the larger ships made for better targets, their intact shields provided them with protection the station lacked. With each salvo fewer and fewer of the Golan’s weapons fired back. A brilliant flare flashed on the station’s port side, then it went black.

Power couplings must be down. That half of the station is dead. Corran keyed his comlink. “Three Flight, with me, we’re past the station and in on the shipyard. Now the Imps have to move to catch us.”

Corran tried to force confidence into his voice. Racing a starfighter through a shipyard, shooting up targets of opportunity, would be fairly easy, but he didn’t want to kid himself about the chances that such an assault would force the Empire to break off its attack on the Rebel fleet. Thrawn might not like what the Rogues are doing, but he can deal with us later, when he’s killed all the other ships.

Tycho’s voice poured through the comm unit. “Lead, Two here. I show the Imperial formation breaking up.”

“What?” Corran stabbed a button and shifted the display on his primary monitor over to a system-wide scan. The Imperial bowl, which had been contracting around the Rebel cone, was beginning to come apart. The Stormhawk and the Nemesis were moving to secure an outbound vector for the fleet, while Thrawn’s flagship, the Chimaera, swung about to discourage pursuit of the fleet’s smaller ships.

Disbelief threaded through Wedge’s voice. “Be careful, Rogues. Thrawn’s got something up his sleeve.”

Janson laughed lightly. “Looks like a full-fledged retreat, Lead. They’re recovering their fighters.”

Corran studied his readout. The Rebel cone began to blossom from the widest end, coming forward to the tip. The New Republic’s ships kept a respectful distance from the Imperial ships and moved to begin recovery operations. The Imp pull-back left a couple of their own stricken ships still hanging in space. And it leaves the Bilbringi shipyards to us, which Thrawn never would have wanted.

A shiver ran up Corran’s spine. “What happened here, Lead?”

“I don’t know, Nine.” Wedge’s voice came through solemn and with a hint of hesitation. “Just got a recall order from Admiral Ackbar. We’re to rendezvous with Home One.”

“And then he’ll tell us what happened?”

“Could be, Corran, but I doubt it.” Wedge’s X-wing looped out in front of the other Rogues and began the trip back toward the fleet. “For now, let’s just be glad that, for whatever reason, Thrawn discovered he had better things to do, and let’s be ready for when he decides to come back at us again.”

2

As tired as he was, Wedge Antilles found it a major effort to open his eyes when Admiral Ackbar cleared his voice. The pilot had been seated in the waiting area outside the Admiral’s office and hadn’t heard the hatch open. He started to spring to his feet, but tight muscles slowed him, only allowing him to unfurl his body like a heavy flag in a weak breeze.

“Forgive me, Admiral.” Wedge sheepishly looked back at where he’d been sitting. “I didn’t mean to …”

Ackbar’s barabels quivered as his mouth opened in an approximation of a human grin. “No need for forgiveness. I kept you waiting too long. Reviewing Thrawn’s tactics is fascinating, and other information also demanded attention. The tide of data washed away the time.”

“Understandable, Admiral.” Wedge followed the Mon Calamari into his office. As with any cabin on a starship, space was limited but the large viewports helped alleviate any sense of closeness. A globe of water hung suspended in the corner in a gravity-nullifying field and flashed with a rainbow of fish swimming through it. The water also contributed to the elevated humidity in the room, but Wedge didn’t mind it too much. After all these years of dealing with the Admiral, it doesn’t feel that oppressive.

Ackbar waved a flipper-fingered hand at a chair before his desk, then sat with his back to the black expanse of space. “I want to commend you and your people on the run at the Golan station. While the Assault Frigates finished it off, your people put the first cracks in its shell and otherwise hurt it. You should have your techs get ready to paint a Golan on your fighters.”

Wedge smiled and ran his fingers back through his brown hair. “I’m sure that’ll make the Rogues happy. I’m just pleased you gave us the release to make that run.”

“It was a gamble we needed to make at the time.”

“And it seemed to work.” Wedge’s brown eyes narrowed. “I can’t believe, though, that our assault was what frightened Thrawn off.”

The Mon Calamari sat back and swiveled his chair around to face toward the fish-globe. “It wasn’t—which is not meant to diminish what you and your people did. Part of the delay here was dealing with coded messages from Wayland.”

“Wayland?”

“Apparently it is a world where the Emperor had hidden a cloning facility. Thrawn was using it to produce troops. He was also using a clone of a Jedi Master to help coordinate his military efforts, and this clone was based on Wayland. Luke and Leia were there to deal with him. Leia also has managed to establish a rapport with the Noghri. They are an alien species the Empire had tricked into serving as agents and assassins. The Noghri worked for Thrawn, but when they discovered the Imperial deception, they used one of the Noghri close to Thrawn to kill him.”

Wedge sat forward, the last vestiges of fatigue burned away. “Thrawn, dead? Are you sure?”

Ackbar shrugged uneasily. “There is no way of knowing for certain, since the Noghri assassin has not reported back to his superiors. In fact, they assume he was killed trying to escape from the Chimaera. While it is possible that Thrawn was just injured and a subordinate officer issued orders in his stead, causing the retreat, the fact is that the Noghri have been spectacularly successful assassins. This Ruhk had the same sort of access to Thrawn that Chewbacca has to Han Solo, and if the Wookiee were of a mind to kill Han, I do not doubt he would succeed.”

The Corellian pilot exhaled slowly as he sank back into the chair. “Thrawn, dead. That pretty much breaks the back of the Empire’s remnants, doesn’t it?”

“It certainly hurts them, yes. There are still warlords out there—Teradoc, Harssk, Krennel—and some ex-Imperials who have gone feral and are leading pirate bands. There are also clusters of loyal Imperial systems that are fairly self-sufficient, but they don’t seem to be much of a threat to the New Republic. We will have to continue battling the warlords, and I have no doubt there are more Imperial weapons of mass destruction lurking out there to catch us like a riptide, but we have gotten past a stretch of rough water.”

Wedge blinked, then shook his head. “It’s been eight or nine years now that I’ve been fighting against the Empire. There were times I didn’t think I was going to live another moment. I don’t think I ever let myself dream I might survive this long, to see this sort of victory. This was always a goal, but now that it’s here …”

He fell silent as a host of emotions exploded in his chest. An incredible sensation of relief washed over him. I’m alive, actually alive. Pleasure at the number of his comrades who had also survived followed quickly on its heels, chased by the melancholy of remembering those who had died. Biggs, Dack, Ibtisam, Riv, the Admiral’s niece Jesmin, Grinder, Castin Donn, Peshk, Jek Porkins—too many, far too many.

Yet even as memories of the dead tried to weigh him down, his spirits soared. The Rebellion had actually done it, had actually defeated the Empire and liberated trillions of subjugated people. Oppression had been exchanged for hope, misery for freedom. It had been an act of sheer will by so many that allowed for the Rebellion’s success, and Wedge took great joy in his contribution to that effort.

He looked up at Ackbar. “I never really dared let myself look beyond the next battle, and now, it seems, there might truly be an end to the warfare. I don’t know what I’ll do with myself.”

Ackbar’s lip-fringes twitched. “Said like a man contemplating retirement.”

“Retirement? I’m not even thirty.”

“Warfare is an occupation from which one can never retire too young, Commander.”

“Good point, Admiral.” Wedge smiled. “Maybe I could retire—not immediately, mind you. I literally don’t know what I would do with myself if I did. Maybe write my memoirs or get some education. I always wanted to be an architect, and peace could mean a lot of building.”

Ackbar nodded. “Find yourself a mate, raise a small school of children?”

Wedge wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know about a school of children, but a couple, sure. However, that’s further down the line, I think.”

“True.” Ackbar turned to face him and rested his forearms on his desk. “There is a more immediate problem I need you to deal with.”

“Yes?”

“I want you to accept immediate promotion to the rank of General.”

Wedge shook his head. “Hey, I won that Wraith Squadron bet.”

“Yes, you did, and very adroitly.” Ackbar pressed his hands together. “Commander, we have played this shell game, you and I, for years. You don’t want a promotion because you don’t want to move out of an X-wing cockpit. I certainly can appreciate your desires. I can sympathize with them, but I also know you are capable of handling greater responsibilities than you have been. This promotion would address those responsibilities.”

“Address how? I’m at my best planning small-unit tactical operations.”

“Ah, so the conquest of Thyferra was a small-unit tactical operation?”

Wedge hesitated. “Well, yes, sort of.”

Ackbar shook his head. “I allowed you to deflect me with the whole Wraith Squadron concept, and I value you enough to seriously consider letting you remain in command of a fighter unit.”

“Rogue Squadron? Or am I going to have to command a full wing the way General Salm does?”

“Rogue Squadron will be sufficient for now.”

The Corellian arched an eyebrow at his superior. “If you’re willing to leave me in charge of Rogue Squadron, I guess I don’t need a promotion, then.”

The Mon Calamari leaned forward, his eyes half shut. “But you do, Commander, you need a promotion and you need one very quickly.”

“Why?”

Ackbar sighed. “Because your people in the squadron are refusing their own promotions. They’re following in your wake, which is a grand testament to your leadership and their feelings for you, but not really fair to them at all. Captain Celchu should be at least a Colonel—that was the job he was performing in leading the Rogues while you were with the Wraiths. Hobbie and Janson should be Majors, Horn should be a Captain at the very least, Darklighter as well, and the rest of your Rogues should be something other than Flight Officers.”

Wedge sat there, his mouth open ever so slightly. “I never really gave it that much thought, I guess.”

“There wasn’t that much time for thinking, given all you and the Rogues have been through.” Ackbar spread his hands. “The liberation of Thyferra made it difficult for us to insist on promotions lest it look as though we were rewarding you for toppling a government. That sort of thing could have encouraged other units to try similar actions on other worlds. Your involvement with the Wraiths further insulated you because of the bet we had. Then Thrawn arrived and promotions became less important than otherwise. Now, with his threat ended, we have old injustices to take care of.”

“Right. I’m sure the Bothans would like to see Asyr made at least a Captain.”

“And they would like her back flying for them.”

“Not hard to believe.” Wedge shook his head. How could I have been so blind? My people have all been great, and certainly more deserving of rank and honors than a lot of folks who’ve been promoted beyond them. I’ve been so worried about not letting the Rebellion down that I’ve let them down. “I guess I need to prepare reports so they can be considered for promotion, yes?”

Ackbar punched a button on the holoprojector pad built into his desk. Above it little holographic images of each of the squadron’s pilots burned to life. The Admiral reached up and touched Tycho’s image and it blossomed into a full datafile. “Emtrey managed to take care of filing routine reports for you, including performance evaluations and the like. Appending your comments to each file would not hurt, especially if the reporting officer is General Antilles.”

Wedge nodded slowly, then smiled. “How long ago did you figure out that using my people against me would work? I mean, none of them complained, did they?”

“No, none of them did.” Ackbar’s mouth opened in a smile. “In fact, I think they took perverse delight in their situation. As for when I knew how to get you to accept this change, it occurred to me during your time at Thyferra. You’re as loyal to your people as they are to you.”

“Fair enough.” Wedge’s eyes narrowed. “Now that you’ve gotten me to agree to the promotion, it’s time you let me in on what else is happening.”

Ackbar hesitated for a moment, then bowed his head. “Very good, General. How did you know the tide was still rising?”

“I know you well enough, Admiral, to know you wouldn’t have pushed me to accept a rank unless it was important for me to do so. If getting my people to accept rank was the problem, you’d just have me talk to them. You want me to be a General, and I guess I figure that if I have rank, it’s because I’m going to need to pull it.”

“Excellent reasoning, which confirms your suitability to what I need you for.” The Mon Calamari pressed his hands flat against the desk. “Thrawn’s assault really was the last effort by a united Empire to destroy the Rebellion. There are, however, many warlords who hold sway over collections of star systems. We’re going to need to liberate those systems and worlds. Right now, Rogue Squadron is pretty much the only unit in the New Republic with any sort of experience with that kind of operation.”

“Because of what we learned at Thyferra.”

“Exactly.”

Wedge nodded. “System liberation will be a delicate operation. If we go in with too much matériel we’ll appear to be as nasty a force as the Empire. If we make a half-hearted effort and are defeated, it will cost us lives and undermine our credibility with the New Republic’s member states. If we do it just right, we give other warlords something to think about, which might make them more open to peaceful negotiations.”

“You’ve distilled four hours of Provisional Council discussions down to the key points. We’re going to have to go after the warlords, and the first one has to fall in relatively short order.”

“Haste never makes for good warfare.” Wedge frowned. “Just picking a target will be tough. The criteria for that choice alone will take hours of debate.”

“Already done.” Ackbar hit another button on the holoprojector and a new image replaced Tycho’s. The man had close-cropped white hair and piercing blue eyes that seemed to project a cold cruelty. Below the image of the man’s head and shoulders hung a smaller computer window display showing a prosthetic right hand. A list of specifications for the hand scrolled out below. “You’ve dealt with this man before.”

“Admiral Delak Krennel.” Wedge felt the flesh on his arms pucker. “He ordered TIE fighter attacks on the civilians on Axxila and opposed our rescue of Sate Pestage from Ciutric.”

“Yes. He murdered Sate Pestage and took over his holdings—the Ciutric Hegemony. It made him the leader of a dozen worlds and gave him a fair amount of material resources. He didn’t join Thrawn per se, but seems to have given him monetary support. He rules from Ciutric and has a fleet of a dozen or so capital ships, including his Reckoning.”

Wedge smiled. “Got it all repaired, did he?”

“So it seems.”

“He’s been rather quiet—not at all like Teradoc. How can you justify going after him …?” Wedge frowned for a moment, then barked a little laugh. “We’re going to bring him to justice for Pestage’s murder?”

“That, and the murder of Pestage’s family. When Krennel took over, he killed every one of them he could find. Over a hundred people perished in that purge alone, and there have been other purges to keep him in power. His murder sprees give us all the excuse we need to target him.”

“And the fact that he took the holdings of an Imperial officer and converted them to himself means that by going after him, we’re suggesting to anyone else who might be adventurous out there that what once belonged to the Empire is ours. Interfere with us and you’ll lose everything.”

Ackbar turned his head and stared at Wedge with one big amber eye. “Political analysis, Wedge? Had I known you’d take to being a General so easily, I’d have demanded the promotion sooner.”

“Being aware of politics, Admiral, is light-years away from liking it or being good at it. Still, the lessons concerning Thyferra and how ticklish that all was haven’t been lost upon me. Do things right, and we might avoid prolonged battles in the future.” Wedge stood and saluted the Admiral. “I guess a General has to keep the big picture in mind. I get that right and I keep my people alive. No matter what my rank, that’s the duty I hold most dear.”

3

Corran Horn hit the canopy release on his X-wing and freed himself of the restraining harness even before Whistler completed the fighter’s shutdown procedure. The pilot pulled off his helmet and set it on the spacefighter’s nose, then clambered out of the cockpit and jumped down to the hangar deck. He came up from his crouch quickly and turned toward Whistler. The droid was piping shrilly.

“I know you want down. I’ll find a tech to do that.”

He turned toward the flight operations center and raised a hand to signal for a tech, but a woman slipped her fingers through his, then bumped him bodily back a step beneath the X-wing. She covered his mouth with hers and Corran enfolded her in a fierce hug. He clung tightly to her, drinking in the spicy scent of her hair and perfume as they kissed.

Eventually, reluctantly, he freed his mouth from hers and looked up into her smoldering brown eyes. “Damn, I have missed you so much, Mirax. I …”

She kissed him again. “You’re here, I’m here. The missing part is over, my love.”

Corran reached a hand up and stroked her cheek, brushing away a single tear. “Of happiness, I hope.”

“Very much so.” She pulled her face back a couple of centimeters and arched a black eyebrow at him. “No tears of joy from you?”

He shrugged. “You’d have a flood, but it’s bad for the pilot image thing, you know?”

Whistler’s harsh blatting from above them stole any need for Mirax to reply.

She jerked a thumb in the droid’s direction. “He’s right; you pilots take this image thing much too seriously.” Mirax flicked a finger up under his chin. “Then again, guys who weep never have done much for me.”

“You love me for my stoic attitude then?”

“No, dear, it’s the lightsaber.” She swung around on his left, slipping her right arm around his waist. “Do you need to report for debriefing, or can I steal you away?”

Corran frowned. “I think we covered everything on the trip back from Bilbringi.”

“So you want to just go home and fall into bed?”

He shook his head as they threaded their way through the chaos the squadron’s return had created. “I got plenty of rack time on Home One during the trip.”

“Not the question I asked, husband.”

Corran blinked. “I guess I have been away too long.”

“I’m sure Mirax will think of ways for you to make up for lost time, Lieutenant.” Wedge Antilles smiled broadly. “I hear she’s very inventive.”

“Wedge!” Mirax launched herself into his arms and gave him a big hug. “I knew Thrawn wouldn’t get you.”

Wedge smiled and brushed Mirax’s black hair back off her shoulders. “Well, someone had to keep Corran alive. I didn’t want to have to come back to Coruscant here and tell you he’d died.”

“Not a worry, not once.” Mirax brushed a hand across the rank insignia on the chest of Wedge’s orange flight suit. The round-cornered rectangle contained five dots in a cross pattern. “A General? Oh, Wedge, your folks would have been so proud.” Leaning forward, she kissed him on the cheek.

“Thanks.” Wedge slipped from her embrace and glanced down. His face reddened slightly, then he looked up with a smile. “Not really what I planned for a life, but I’ve heard it said that life is what happens while you wait for plans to work.”

“I’ve heard that, too.” Mirax stepped back to Corran’s side and slid the fingers of her right hand through those of his left. “New rank and new responsibilities for you, I guess.”

“True.” Wedge frowned and looked around the hangar. “And I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask how you knew when to meet us and how you got in here. This is supposed to be a secure area.”

Mirax shot Corran a hard glance. “Been giving him suspicion lessons?”

Corran shook his head. “Not me. And I know the Terriks better than to ask such a question.”

“Good point, Corran.” Wedge nodded sheepishly. “I guess I should be thankful Booster hasn’t parked his Errant Venture here.”

Mirax laughed. “He would have, but he’s not fully trusting the story that Thrawn is gone. He thinks it’s a rumor meant to get him to bring his Star Destroyer out of hiding so Thrawn can add it to his fleet.”

Corran tapped a finger against his chin. “Booster versus Thrawn. Now there’s a match I’d pay money to see.”

“Just wait. Eventually Booster will decide that his jumping the EV around produced enough stories of an Impstar Deuce running around behind Thrawn’s lines that he was the reason Thrawn was distracted enough to die at Bilbringi.” Wedge smiled broadly. “Five years from now we’ll find we were flying with the Venture when we took out that Golan station.”

Mirax pressed fingers to Corran’s lips and gave him a glare that forestalled any comment about her father. “To answer your earlier question, General Antilles, your arrival was anticipated because Admiral Ackbar requested a party to welcome the squadron back. Emtrey, being efficient and interested in good value, communicated to me the needs for this celebration.”

Corran gently pulled Mirax’s fingers from his lips. “We’re having a welcome-home party catered by a droid?”

His wife smiled. “I gave him a choice: his budget or his selections. Things will kick off in your base recreation center about eight.”

Wedge nodded. “You making a ryshcate?”

“That’s my intention. I pretty much have everything I need at home.” Mirax glanced at Corran. “Save, perhaps, an assistant.”

Corran pointed back to where a tech was using a crane to pull Whistler out of his green and white X-wing. “Whistler will be available in just a second.”

Her grip on his hand tightened. “Not quite the assistant I had in mind.”

Corran felt a burst of heat rush up his body, then his face reddened. He looked over at Wedge. “If you don’t mind, General, I guess I have some cooking to do.”

Whistler’s diligent timing of the baking ryshcate and his promise of a shrill alarm when it was done enabled Corran and Mirax to spend time outside the kitchen of their small apartment. The kitchen itself, while boasting some of the best appliances available, felt as cramped as an X-wing cockpit when all three of them tried to crowd in there. They retreated to a small living room, which was built side-by-side with the smaller of the apartment’s two bedrooms. Mirax used that room as an office for her import-export business, which meant it remained crammed with all manner of odd things. Corran didn’t mind that, though, since the clutter made it difficult to offer the room to Mirax’s father as a place to stay on his visits to Coruscant.

Mirax had redecorated the master bedroom while Corran was off with Rogue Squadron chasing Grand Admiral Thrawn. Redecorating while a war raged may have seemed frivolous, but Corran could understand it. He knew Mirax had not been idle during the Thrawn crisis. She had spent a great deal of time rescuing refugees from worlds Thrawn had threatened and running supplies to those who needed them. When she returned to their apartment in Coruscant, the empty bedroom she had shared with him emphasized the fact that he wasn’t there. By changing it around, by rearranging it into something she would show me when I returned, she worked toward making a future as opposed to worrying about an uncertain present.

Once the baking process had been turned over to Whistler, Mirax gladly and anxiously showed him all the changes she had made. He found the new bed very comfortable, the carpet woven of Ottegan silk very soft, and the nerf-wool towels decidedly greedy in drinking up the water left behind after a hot, steamy stint in the refresher station. Mirax had even made changes in his wardrobe, having added a couple of suits that were stylishly cut—though the bright colors did seem a tad harsh on his eyes.

Mirax snorted at his protests about the color of the outfit she wanted him to wear. “That vibrant green in slacks and tunic, with an ivory banded-collar shirt beneath, that’s the style now, Corran. The Empire made its last attempt to destroy the New Republic. Wearing dour Imperial colors, or the drab sort of things folks wore when fighting them, is out. Those clothes served to hide one away, but no longer.”

“It’s one thing to not be hiding away, but another to make yourself a target.” He smiled as he watched Mirax settle little dangling earrings in her lobes. The jewelry had a silvery sheen to it, much like the highlight and accent color of her gown. Corran couldn’t quite figure out how the long black dress, which had been cut low in the front and lower in the back, managed to get silver highlights—perhaps, it uses some weirdly shaped thread in the weave that reflects from certain angles—but it clearly made Mirax into a target. “Very impressive gown.”

“Why, thank you. You got it for me for our anniversary.”

Corran started to speak, then hesitated and frowned. He saw Mirax watching him in the mirror, so he just winced. “I didn’t forget the day, you know.”

“I know. I got the message you sent. I knew this was the sort of thing you’d get if you were here, so I just helped you out.” She turned and kissed him on the lips. “You know, even though we’ve had to spend a fair amount of time apart, I am very happy to be married to you.”

“As I am to you.” Corran stroked the bare flesh over her spine as he kissed her. “The next Imp or warlord or pirate that decides to keep us apart is dead, just clean dead.”

“My thoughts exactly, my dear.” She kissed his nose, then turned him and steered him toward the door. “Perhaps the Rogues should issue a communiqué to that effect and peace will reign from now on.”

Despite a personal preference for remaining at home with Mirax and getting caught up with her life, Corran did enjoy the party his wife had arranged. In the almost three years he had spent in the squadron, he had gotten to know his fellow pilots well. He’d spent an incredible amount of time with them, usually under conditions that would most generously be described as adverse. They’d all become very close, and seeing them without the pressure of combat let Corran realize just how much he cared for them.

He smiled as he watched Gavin Darklighter dancing with Asyr Sei’lar. Corran remembered Gavin when he came into the squadron as a tall kid, just past that gawky phase but not by much. His light brown hair and brown eyes combined with a soft-spoken, easygoing personality that instantly inspired trust and friendship. Through the years Gavin had matured—with the goatee and mustache he now sported an external sign of the growing-up he had done. The war transformed him from a desert-world farmboy to an ace pilot and a man who thinks before he acts.

Asyr Sei’lar, the Bothan female with whom Gavin had built a relationship, had a playful light burning in her violet eyes. While she might have been described as petite, and her black and white fur did give her a kittenish appearance, she moved with a fluid grace that hinted at a lot of power in her frame. Corran respected her as a pilot and because of choices she had made. She stuck with the squadron in defiance of the wishes of her Bothan superiors, and she’s continued to see Gavin despite disapproval as well. Bucking authority, especially for a Bothan, took serious steel in the spine, but Asyr had plenty.

Ooryl Qyrgg, Corran’s long-time Gand wingman, came walking over to him, bearing a small plate covered with a rainbow of long, glistening, protoplasmic strips. He plucked one from the plate in a three-fingered hand, then delicately sucked it into his mouth, letting his mandibles click shut as it disappeared. A clear membrane nictitated over Ooryl’s compound eyes and the Gand hissed in what Corran had long ago learned to recognize as Ooryl’s approximation of a self-satisfied sigh.

“Tasty, are they?”

“Yes, Corran, very much so.” His mandibles spread apart in the best grin Ooryl could muster. “But an acquired taste. On Gand there are some races that cannot eat these uumlourti—they will actually die if they do. I do not think you would like them.”

Corran patted his friend on the gray-green exoskeleton over his left shoulder. “Truth be told, I’ve never been much for food that rates high on the slimy scale. And risking death to find out just isn’t something I want to do right now. But, don’t let me stop you.”

“I have no intention of that, Corran.”

The Corellian pilot shook his head. “There was a time, though, when you would have.”

“Ooryl does not quite understand that comment.”

“Looking at Gavin, I was thinking back to when I joined the squadron. Back then you had not been made janwuine, so you always referred to yourself as Ooryl or Qyrgg. You were not so forthright, but more cautious. Then you grew in your confidence and your skill, and it was—is—great.”

Ooryl gave him a sidelong glance. “The Ooryl you describe would have probably pointed out that he learned much from you during his time with the squadron.”

“Probably.”

“I, on the other hand, would not inflate your ego that way.” His mouthparts snapped open and closed sharply. “I am kidding you, yes?”

“I got it, Ooryl. You really have learned.”

“Yes. I have learned to appreciate my friends.” Ooryl gestured at another couple on the dance floor. “Captain Celchu remained focused on fighting the Empire despite being under suspicion of being a spy. Winter remained supportive of him despite the charges the New Republic laid against him. We were all happy when he was proved innocent, but Tycho never showed signs of being bitter.”

“True, he took his vindication in stride.” Corran looked around the room at the other squadron members. Hobbie and Janson were off in a corner chatting up a couple of Bothans. Inyri Forge, Nawara Ven and his wife, Rhysati Ynr—who Corran had seen only occasionally since she resigned from the squadron to start a family with Nawara—sat at a table listening to an old man tell tales of his days in a cockpit. Myn Donos had joined Wedge in speaking with General Salm, while the Quarren female, Lyyr Zatoq, and the male Issori, Khe-Jeen Slee, both appeared to be deep in conversation with Koyi Komad, a Twi’lek who had once served with Rogue Squadron as the chief mechanic.

“We’re all so different, but united because of our experiences in the squadron. That we were able to come together gives me some hope for the New Republic.”

“Yes, I have hope in that, too.” Ooryl slurped another uumlourti. “It is good to see all of our friends here.”

“True. I’d forgotten we had so many.” Corran smiled and nodded at a tall, bearded man who worked his way through the crowd toward him. Corran knew he had met the man in the past, but he couldn’t place him. Then the man raised his right hand in an abortive wave and Corran saw he was missing the last two fingers of his right hand. “Sithspawn!”

Ooryl looked over at Corran. “What?”

“That man, coming toward us, he was a prisoner on the Lusankya with me. He’s one of the men who was missing.” Corran started forward, opening his arms. Complete disbelief slacked his jaw. “Emperor’s Black Bones, what are you doing here?”

The man stopped and hesitated, the recognition and confidence gone from his eyes and expression. “I have a message for you, Corran Horn.” He raised his hands to his temples and winced. “I’m sorry. I know I know you, but …” Anguish entered his voice. “I don’t know who I am.”

Corran pulled up short of the man and let his hands drop by his sides. “You were on the Lusankya with me, you served as General Jan Dodonna’s aide. Your name is Urlor Sette.”

“Yes, Urlor Sette.” For the barest of seconds Corran saw relief in the man’s brown eyes and felt it roll off him in one strong pulse. Then those brown eyes rolled up into his head, and blood began to stream from his eyes and nose. The man screamed once, sharply, spraying a bloody mist from his mouth. His back bowed and his bones cracked, then he pitched over backward and lay in a slowly expanding pool of blood as the crowd retreated from him.

Corran knelt by his side and reached out to feel his throat for a pulse, but stopped because he could see he wouldn’t find one. Though he had never spent much time working with the latent Jedi abilities to which he was heir, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt the man was dead.

Wedge crouched across the body from him. “What happened?”

Corran shivered. “Urlor Sette was on the Lusankya. He said he had a message for me.” Corran reached up and closed the man’s eyes. “I got it, and given the method of its delivery, there’s only one person who could have sent it.”

4

Prince-Admiral Delak Krennel strode silently through the darkened hallways of his palace on Ciutric. Though tall and possessed of a solid build with broad shoulders and narrow waist and hips, Krennel had always prided himself on his ability to move quickly and quietly. In his days at the Imperial Academy at Prefsbelt IV he had been an intramural unarmed-combat champion and was pleased that over the years he’d kept himself in fighting trim. I am yet every gram the fighter I was in those days.

He glanced down at the naked metal construct that replaced his right hand and forearm. The fingers flexed and collapsed into a fist noiselessly, with only a hint of a reddish glow from deep inside to define the metal plates and pins that made up the artificial limb. Actually, I am even more a fighter than I was, but this is good. Today I must be.

He stalked toward his office, his close-cropped hair having been raked into a rough semblance of order with his fingers. His white tunic with red trim still gaped open and he would have been concerned about his appearance save for the hour and the fact that he’d been awakened from a sound sleep for momentous news. The abbreviated message, delivered by a protocol droid, had brought him instantly awake and sent him out to his office to confirm what he had heard.

His blue eyes narrowed. He had a hard time believing Grand Admiral Thrawn was dead—in fact he’d not wanted to believe the news because he had hoped to kill Thrawn himself one day. Krennel had been dispatched by the Imperial Navy to the Unknown Regions and found himself serving under Thrawn. He had bristled at being ordered about by an alien, and while he did acknowledge that Thrawn was a genius, Krennel had also found him fatally flawed.

He recalled how Thrawn would study the artwork of a culture, seeking clues to how the species thought and functioned. Thrawn claimed such study provided him with keys that unlocked the doorway to victory against many alien species. Krennel thought it also inspired in Thrawn a certain respect for these species—all of which were subhuman—and weakened his ability to be effective. Krennel had shown Thrawn how ruthless conduct could be even more effective than artistic study, but Thrawn’s reaction to the lesson Krennel taught came all out of proportion to the lesson itself.

Krennel’s cheeks still burned when he thought of Thrawn sending him and his ship, Reckoning, back in the Core worlds. Krennel returned in disgrace and was certain the Emperor himself—with whom Thrawn seemed to have an inordinate amount of influence—would have destroyed Krennel’s career. Luckily for Krennel, the Emperor died at Endor, allowing Krennel to escape punishment.

“And forever barring me from vindication.” Krennel’s deep voice carried through the dark corridor even though he barely hissed the words. His metal hand tightened into a fist again. “Forever leaving my reputation tainted.”

He had rejoined the Imperial Navy, resisting his initial urge to become a warlord, but within six months of the Emperor’s death, circumstances conspired to offer him an opportunity to fashion his own destiny. Sate Pestage, the Emperor’s Grand Vizier, had assumed control of Imperial Center upon the Emperor’s death. As the man’s position eroded he tried to strike a deal with the New Republic. Pestage had offered Imperial Center and other key worlds in return for the promise of his own well-being and retention of his own holdings. The military tribunal that replaced Pestage after he fled to Ciutric charged Krennel with bringing Pestage to justice. Krennel came to Ciutric, found Pestage, and usurped his holdings and authority. He created for himself the post of Prince-Admiral and succeeded in holding the dozen worlds of the Ciutric Hegemony together through the turbulent times that followed as the New Republic took Imperial Center and even crushed Warlord Zsinj.

Then Thrawn came back. Thrawn claimed authority over Imperial assets upon his return. Krennel had found it expedient to offer Thrawn some support—munitions, personnel, some basic resources—but he never acknowledged Thrawn as any sort of superior. Krennel had dreaded the idea that Thrawn might come after him and his little realm, but he had allowed himself to believe that he could have held his own against Thrawn.

Krennel reached the door to his office and passed his metal hand over the lockplate. He took a step forward, banging his right shoulder into the door, but it failed to budge. He ran his hand over the lockplate again, more slowly this time, allowing the sensor in the door to pick up the signature from the circuitry imbedded in the hand.

Again, it did not open.

Krennel snarled and punched a combination into the keypad below the lockplate. The lock clicked and Krennel shouldered the door open. He took two steps into the darkened room, then felt something cold and slender brush against his throat. He was a half step further on when it began to constrict. Krennel swept his metal hand up and around, grasping the slender metal filament. He yanked, and the wire parted, leaving a garland of garrote wire hanging around his neck.

The lonely, sharp sound of a single pair of hands applauding echoed loudly through his office. Ignoring its source, Krennel stiffly legged his way to his desk and reached for the glowplate switch on the wall. He hesitated, his left hand hovering just above it, then slowly turned his head in the direction of the applause.

“If you wanted me dead, the garrote would have gotten me. Will providing us some illumination kill me?”

Silence answered him.

Krennel looked over at his left hand and hit the switch. The tall room’s lighting came from a bank of glow panels built in nearly three meters off the floor. They cast their light up at the domed ceiling, which then reflected it back down. The whole room, which had been decorated in grays, tans, and browns, glowed warmly. Krennel let the light build, then pulled himself up to his full height and slowly turned toward his visitor. He knew he would make an impression, and given the situation, that impression would be important.

And yet, as it turned out, it would be trivial compared to the one made by his visitor.

He’d not seen her in years—save for disturbing dreams from time to time. Barely shorter than he was, she wore her long black hair unbound. Two white sidelocks framed a face that would have made the woman the toast of any number of planets. Her high forehead, strong jaw, sharp cheekbones, and straight nose all combined to make her a rare beauty, but two other elements spoiled the effect.

One element was her eyes. The left one smoldered a molten red, as if the iris were radioactively bloodshot. The pale blue of the other eye seemed colder than frozen methane, and her stare sent a shiver down Krennel’s spine. She exuded power, and Krennel found it very seductive, but he also knew she would consume him if she found a way to destroy him.

The other thing that spoiled her beauty was a network of raised scars radiating out from a small puckered crater below her right temple. Krennel studied her closely for a second and thought he saw enough asymmetry in her face to suppose those scars were a sign of massive trauma that had been surgically repaired. He recalled that Rogue Squadron had claimed to have killed her when they ousted her from Thyferra, but her presence in his office put the lie to that story.

Krennel slowly removed the twisted garrote wire and tossed it on the floor between them. “You had a point you wished to make with this, Ysanne Isard?”

The woman smiled coldly. “I could have killed you here, in your office. Your people would have awakened tomorrow morning with me in your place. It is important that you know I could have taken over for you in the blink of an eye, so you will believe me when I tell you that doing so is not my intention.”

Her words came evenly and calmly, and Krennel allowed himself to mull them over before replying. He searched them for her true agenda, not wanting to accept that she was being truthful with him. The second I allow myself to even imagine she does not have another plan working here, I am dead. Still, knowing how perilous a judgment it was, he couldn’t find her deception. Yet.

“You do have a purpose here, then?”

“The same purpose as always: the preservation of my master’s Empire.”

Krennel allowed himself to laugh, then seated himself on the edge of his broad desk. “Your injuries might have cost you a painful memory or two: such as the loss of Imperial Center and the Emperor’s death.”

Isard’s expression sharpened. “I remember those things very well. I carry the pain of those memories in my heart.”

You have a heart? Krennel kept his expression bland. “Then you must also know the best hope of reestablishing the Empire is now dead.”

“Really? You think Thrawn was that hope?”

He arched an eyebrow at her. “You don’t?”

She pressed her hands together, fingertip to fingertip. “Thrawn was brilliant, there was no taking that away from him. But he lacked the vision he needed. He was stunning when fulfilling the missions he’d been given. You and he clashed over conduct in the Unknown Region, out there in the wilds of the galaxy, but I doubt anyone else could have been as effective as Thrawn at pacifying those areas. And against the New Republic he proved very adept. But he never quite grasped the idea that there are times when the use of overwhelming firepower can produce a wave of terror which is a weapon with far-reaching and devastating effects.”

Krennel’s metal hand tightened on the edge of his desk. “I had noticed that flaw in his character before.”

“A flaw commonly found in nonhumans.” The corner of Isard’s mouth lazily curled into a grin. “They seek to be treated as our equals, whereas we act as their superiors. They hold themselves back from accessing the tools power gives them, and therefore can never wrest from us the respect we would give equals. They seek to cloak themselves in nobility, aping all we are and have, yet do not see that if they are not resolved to do what it takes to maintain power, they are never fit to wield it.”

Krennel could hear his pulse beginning to pound in his ears. What Isard said, coming in husky, low tones barely above a whisper, quickened his heart. She’d spoken a credo he’d accepted in his heart when, as a child, he’d helped his father burn alien homes so an agro-combine could turn their land into productive fields. The way she spoke, the conviction in her voice, the disdain in her words, resonated inside him. She knew his mind and knew she could bare her heart without fear of rebuke.

He forced himself to exhale slowly through his nose. “So you agree, then, that Mon Mothma’s mongrel Republic is an affront to humanity?”

“An ‘affront’? You are far too kind to her, Prince-Admiral.” Isard began to slowly pace along a curved path that never brought her closer to him than three meters. “It is an abomination that cannot survive. During the Thrawn crisis Bothans were set against the Mon Calamari—and these are two of the more reasonable species in the New Republic. There are others who, even now, are beginning to arm themselves in the hopes that someday—next week, next year, in the next decade—they will be able to create their own empires, or redress ancient wrongs and renew ancient rivalries.”

She laughed aloud. “Can you imagine, Prince-Admiral, the discord sown if the identity of those who destroyed the Caamasi is ever uncovered? Planetary genocide is a crime that will have everyone howling for blood and lots of it, especially since the Caamasi have become even more pacifistic, more beatific in the wake of their near-extermination a generation ago. There are pressures lurking, building, in the New Republic. Much energy is being deflected into creating a government, but once the structures are in place to allow for the exercise and abuse of power, these pressures will flood through it and tear it apart.”

Krennel brushed his left hand over the stubble on his jaw. “Astute if not terribly surprising observations, Isard.” He made a snap decision to keep her off-balance. “With such understanding, you could easily see a way to create your own Empire. Wait, you tried that, didn’t you? And the Rebels killed you for it?”

Her eyes flashed for a second, and her right hand brushed itself over her scars. “They tried to kill me. They did not succeed.”

Krennel noticed her words came without confidence. She doesn’t remember how they almost got her—amnesia’s no surprise with such massive head trauma. Perhaps she thinks she’s lost some of her edge, which is why she’s come to me. “Are you giving me all this political analysis so I can sit back and watch the galaxy fall into legions of civil wars?”

“No, I tell you this so you can recognize the opportunity you have to rebuild the Empire and become Emperor.” She pointed an unwavering finger at him. “You will recall I offered you this opportunity before, but you decided to take Pestage’s realm instead of bringing him to me. I would have made you Emperor, and now I shall again.”

The Prince-Admiral plucked a comlink from the desk. “Shall we call Mon Mothma now and tell her to hand over the reins of power?”

“Not directly, no. She’ll hand them to us all on her own.”

“What do you mean?”

A brief smile flashed over Isard’s face. “It will not surprise you to learn that sources on Coruscant have reported to me that you have been the subject of discussions in the Provisional Council. The Rebels feel they need to make an example of an Imperial warlord, but they want to pick one and deal with him in such a way that they do not so frighten the others that there is no chance of peaceful settlements later. You are going to be their target.”

“Me? That makes no sense.” Krennel frowned. “I’ve spent the last five years building up defenses, making sure no one can prey upon my worlds. I’m hardly the easiest target they could pick on.”

“True, but you are the one who murdered the Imperial Grand Vizier and so blatantly profited by your act. They think if they wage war on you beneath the pretext of bringing you to trial, the other warlords won’t be threatened by what they do to you.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Transparent political motivations won’t turn lasers or shield ships.”

Isard nodded slowly. “True, but politics can play a leading role in how power shifts in the universe. Think, for a moment. As the New Republic strives to redress some of the ills of the Empire, who will be discomfitted?”

“Humans. They benefited the most under the Empire, so any moves to create equality will result in greater stress on their resources. Humans will have to make do with less so aliens can have more.”

“Very good. And who, now, possesses and controls these resources that will have to be shared.”

Krennel smiled. “Humans do. And even the most liberal of them, the most alien-loving among them, the ones who want to do the most, will feel their nerf is being gored when they are forced to give up more than they want to in order to help others.”

“Exactly. Those who want to preserve their own wealth and power will slow the pace of change, while those who seek power and wealth will want to accelerate it.” Isard opened her hands. “This provides you with an opportunity, Prince-Admiral. You declare your Ciutric Hegemony to be human-friendly. You will provide a haven for anyone who feels he or she is being abused by the New Republic. And you will stress that the Hegemony is open to enterprising individuals of any species—that success here is based on individual effort and the merit of one’s contribution, not based on genetic makeup. The only ‘entitlement’ you recognize is the one of all creatures to be free to make the best life possible for themselves and their families.”

Krennel slowly nodded. “When the New Republic moves against me, it will look as though the aliens have enough influence in the Council to use armed force against someone merely protecting the rights of his own species. That should spike fear among humans and even make some of the other warlords willing to band together so they won’t be made targets.”

“Splendid. And as for the murder charge, you will point out that you merely did to Pestage what the New Republic intended to do all along. In fact, as I recall, Pestage fled from the Rebel forces here on Ciutric and sought sanctuary with you. Could it be he feared they meant to spirit him away and try him for Imperial crimes?”

The Prince-Admiral tapped a metal finger against his chin. “It could be I recall him saying something to that effect before he died.”

“Good, more dissent to be sown.”

Krennel watched Isard closely. “So, you come here, you tell me what the New Republic has in store for me, and you provide me with a political program that will thwart them. Why?”

“To preserve what little is left of the Empire.”

“You said that before. I believe it, but there must be more. There must be something you want, that you want for yourself.”

“There is, and you will give it to me.” Isard reached up with her right hand and touched the scars on the side of her face. “Rogue Squadron managed to defy me in the past and I cannot let that transgression go unpunished. In the course of what will happen, I will lay a trap for Rogue Squadron and you will give me the resources I need to destroy them.”

Krennel snorted lightly. “I have no love for Rogue Squadron, either. You do not ask for much, but your goal may be unattainable. Rogue Squadron has led a charmed life when it comes to traps.”

“That’s all in the past, Prince-Admiral.” Isard’s arctic eye sparkled. “I’ve sent them a message, one that will confuse and distract them. It is bait and, as they follow it, they will move into my trap. You’ll see, you’ll see I’m right. And, when the time comes, your score with them will be settled as well.”

5

Wedge Antilles shivered, and he knew it wasn’t just because the morgue was kept cool. Beyond the big transparisteel viewport that separated him from the stainless steel and tile room where droids performed autopsies, Wedge saw row upon row of little doors behind which the dead waited for someone to have the sad duty of claiming them. Two droids, a Two-Onebee and an Emdee-One, slid Urlor Sette’s shrouded form into one of the refrigerated drawers and shut the door with a faintly audible click.

Wedge turned away from the viewport and looked at the other two of the room’s occupants. Corran Horn sat hunched over on a chair with his hands covering his face. Blood droplets stained his jacket front and a small crescent of blood decorated each cuff, as well as the knee on which he had knelt next to the body. Corran’s reaction to Sette’s death didn’t strike Wedge as at all wrong—the death had been shocking and the loss of a friend was never pleasant.

He also knew Corran well enough to know there was more to it than just shock. Sette’s death is a defeat for him. Before Thrawn, before we freed Thyferra, Corran gave his word that he would free the people who had been imprisoned on the Lusankya with him. Sette’s death is a failure, and opens up for him the possibility that he might continue to fail in this quest.

The woman sitting next to Corran rubbed her right hand along his curved back. She wore her light brown hair up and had on a cerulean dress with a short black jacket over it. She’d been at the party, too, and had immediately taken charge of the situation. Wedge marveled at her calm strength in the midst of such an incident, but that sort of strength was something he had come to expect and admire in Iella Wessiri.

“Corran,” she said softly, “there is no way you can accept responsibility for this man’s death. You didn’t kill him.”

Corran looked up with red-rimmed eyes. “That’s not what the droids said.” He pointed at the small box-and-wire device that the Emdee-One that had performed the autopsy had deposited on the room’s stainless steel table. “The second I said his name, I doomed him. I might as well have put a blaster to his head and pulled the trigger.”

“Listen to me, Corran Horn, you know that’s nonsense.” Iella’s voice developed an edge and anger sparked in her brown eyes. “The person who put that device together, the person who implanted it into your friend, that person killed him.”

Corran’s green eyes narrowed. “I know that in my head, Iella, but my heart …” He tapped his chest with a fist. “My heart still feels the guilt. If we’d moved faster to find them and free them, maybe—”

Wedge shook his head. “Listen to yourself, Corran. You know as well as I do that we’ve devoted a lot of time and energy to locating the Lusankya prisoners. While I was off with Wraith Squadron, you Rogues worked hard on that problem. You had Iella and a lot of New Republic Intelligence resources working with you. You did all you could, the best you could.”

“But we didn’t find them.”

“No, you didn’t find what, two hundred, maybe three hundred individuals in a galaxy with thousands and thousands of planets to each one of them? The New Republic barely communicates with three-quarters of the Empire’s old worlds, and you know as well as I do that much of those communications are hollow formalities. When Isard scattered the prisoners, she did so because she knew we wanted them, and she was sharp enough to take steps to make sure we never found them.”

Wedge frowned. “The secret of where she placed them died when you and Tycho blew up her shuttle at Thyferra. You didn’t know that she’d hidden the prisoners, so you couldn’t have anticipated the result.”

Iella nodded in agreement. “And, Corran, there was no way you could have let her live, let her run. That kind of evil had to be stopped, and you know everyone who was on the Lusankya would have agreed with you.”

Wedge felt a lump rise in his throat as she spoke. Iella’s husband, Diric, had once been a prisoner on the Lusankya, though no one had known it until after his death. Ysanne Isard had broken Diric and turned him into one of her agents. She sent him after an Imperial official who was defecting to the New Republic, a prisoner Iella was guarding. Iella had been forced to kill her own husband. Forced much in the same way as Corran was forced to trigger the death of his friend.

Corran took Iella’s left hand in his own and gave it a squeeze. “You’re right, of course. Both of you. I know that. Still, this knot in my gut isn’t going away until we find the other prisoners.” His voice sank slightly. “Or find out what happened to them.”

Iella got up and walked over to the table. She picked up the small box-and-wire device and turned it over in her hands. “Well, we have a good place to start with this. It’s a nasty little piece of work, and a fairly specialized one. Most of it is made up of off-the-shelf components, but there are some custom pieces in here, too. Whoever put it together knew what he was doing.”

Wedge frowned. “I know that’s what killed Sette, but how did it work?”

Iella flipped open the box—which was no bigger than a deck of sabacc cards. Inside, Wedge saw a couple of computer chips, two energy cells, some electronic components, a small motor, a metal cylinder with holes drilled into it every centimeter or so, and a rainbow of wires. Iella hit a small button, and the twenty-centimeter-long cylinder flipped upright.

“Preliminary analysis indicates this cylinder housed a thin-walled glass capsule that contained two powerful drugs—well, one was a drug, the other was a naturally occurring venom, but one seldom found in the quantities used here. The venom is hemotoxic—it acts like acid, eating away at capillary walls, which caused the hemorrhaging from the eyes, nose, and mouth you saw. The drug spiked Sette’s blood pressure, pumping the toxin through him in seconds. He died of a massive stroke as the toxin ruptured every blood vessel in his brain.”

Wedge shifted his shoulders uneasily. “The box was attached to his circulatory system somehow?”

Iella showed him the bottom of the box, right below the bottom of the cylinder. “They used a venous graft to connect it to his aorta. The second the mix hit his bloodstream, the poison was all through him.”

Corran rose from his chair and came over to lean heavily on the table. “The wires came from a nerve graft—the kind they use in cybernetic replacements. The machine hooked into Urlor’s aural nerves, picking up what he heard. When the chip matched the voiceprint of my saying Urlor’s name to the voiceprint it had stored, the motor turned a gear that spun another one that depressed a plunger down through the cylinder and pumped the kill-juice into him.”

Wedge nodded slowly. “You think the voiceprint came from your time in the Lusankya?”

“Maybe. Probably not.” Corran shrugged sluggishly. “We didn’t use names much there. If we used names we could have provided the Imps with clues to what might be happening. I suspect they got it from any of a variety of reports I gave about my time in the Lusankya.”

General Antilles felt ice trickle through his guts. “Those reports are still classified, aren’t they?”

“As nearly as I know.”

Iella nodded. “They are, which means whoever did this has access to some of our classified material. That’s not really a surprise, though, is it?”

Wedge raised an eyebrow. “It isn’t?”

“Think about it, General. Urlor Sette arrives at a party being thrown in the honor of Rogue Squadron—a party you didn’t know about until this afternoon. Word was not that widespread about it, but whoever it was managed to get him in.”

Iella set the poison injector down. “We have to figure that whoever Isard entrusted with hiding the prisoners was fairly high up in her intelligence operation. While Kirtan Loor’s information did turn over to us a good portion of the intel ops Isard had running on Coruscant, recent events during the Thrawn crisis showed we didn’t get everything, so it’s safe to assume we still have secrets leaking to the enemy.”

Wedge sighed, then nodded to her. “Good analysis. I hadn’t thought that hard.”

“You’re not trained to do analysis, Wedge. You provide intel, or act on plans formulated because of it. You don’t have to do interp and analysis.” Iella gave him a warm smile. “At least you didn’t have to before you won your decade of dots, General.”

“Save the General stuff, Iella. I’m still Wedge to you.” He glanced down. “At least, I assume such familiarity is okay.”

“Sure.” She winked at him. “I didn’t think you’d let your rank go to your head.”

“No, but it looks as if I’ll be having to apply my brains more than before.”

“Just in different ways, Wedge.” Iella turned and rested her right hand on Corran’s left shoulder. “Corran, you should get out of here. Wedge can take you back home. There’s nothing more you can do here. It will be hours before the droids come back with their final analysis of the toxin and the device components.”

Wedge nodded. “Be glad to do it, Corran. You look more exhausted than a Hutt-wrestler.”

“Yeah, and I feel like one who’s lost a bunch of matches, too.” Corran heaved himself up from the edge of the table. “I don’t need transport, though. I want to walk for a bit.”

Wedge inclined his head toward the door. “I could stretch my legs, too.”

“No, if it’s the same to you, I’d like to be alone.” Corran smiled sheepishly. “Look, you’re both very good friends and I appreciate your concern, but right now I need to think some things through.”

Wedge started to say something, but a slight shake of Iella’s head stopped him. He folded his arms across his chest. “Look, you know how to reach me by comlink if you need to talk, find you’re lost, want to tear up a swoop-jockey haunt, you name it.”

“And I don’t want to be left out, either, if you’re going to be picking on swoopies.” Iella drew Corran into a hug. “Go home, get some rest. We’ll have what you need to know to find out who did this by noon tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Iella.” Corran gave her a kiss on the cheek, then turned and threw a hasty salute at Wedge. “I’ll report in tomorrow, General.”

“Just let Emtrey know where you are and that will be fine.” Wedge returned the salute and gave him a smile. “I don’t imagine Mirax would be all that pleased with me requiring you to actually come to the base. Good night.”

Wedge watched in silence as Corran left the examining room, then he turned and looked at Iella. “You really think you’ll have enough data to let us start tracking the person behind this by tomorrow?”

“We’ll have some leads.” She tapped the box with a finger. “The common components here are fairly low tech, which means they were probably manufactured on the world where the device was put together. Given what it costs to haul manufactured items between planets, low-ticket trinkets like this aren’t worth shipping. The custom components—the chips and the graft wire—might have come from elsewhere, but they were modified during manufacture. The mods aren’t that difficult to do, but they require technical expertise and suitable facilities. Once we have a world, we can begin a survey of people and places that could work.”

Wedge ran a hand along the edge of his jaw. “What about the toxin?”

“Could have been shipped in from elsewhere, milked from creatures that were shipped in, or manufactured. We’ll rule out synthetics first—they’re never quite the same as the naturally produced stuff. The easiest thing for us to track would be if it was milked from exotics on a planet where the creatures are not native. Most worlds require the registering of exotic xenobiologicals, so we can vector in that way.”

“Sounds like a lot of work.” Wedge shook his head. “Where do we begin?”

“We?”

“Hey, you said these ten little pips I sport now mean I’ve got to start using my head in different ways. Might as well start now.”

Iella watched him through half-closed eyes, then slowly smiled. “Well, the droids are going to take time for the analysis, and the computers will start chunking out lists, cross-indexing them, and probably come up with a couple thousand likely candidates. When they get that list pared down, then we go through it. We refine the parameters of our search, pull up auxiliary data, and narrow the field further.”

“So, nothing to do until the list is finished?”

“Oh my, you clearly haven’t done anything in the way of detective work, have you?”

Wedge reddened slightly. “Ah, you and Corran were the ones trained by CorSec, not me.”

“And Corran has clearly neglected your training.” Iella came around the table and slipped her arm through Wedge’s. “The start of any good investigation involves hunting up a reliable source of caf—the kind that can keep you awake through an Ithorian production of a Gamorrean opera.”

“Isn’t that kind of caf considered a controlled substance within the New Republic?”

She laughed. “I think someone tried to pass a regulation like that, but the Senate staffers live on that kind of caf, so the proposal vanished.”

“Data-card probably just fell into a pot of the stuff.” Wedge smiled. “Probably improved the taste, too.”

“Well, we’ll have to see if we can find a place that makes its caf hot, strong, and to your liking, then. And, once we do that, we buy several liters, come back here, and go to work.”

Wedge nodded and took one last look at the device that killed Urlor Sette. “You want to know what scares me the most about that device and this whole murder?”

“What?”

“The way it was done, so boldly and obviously, it means whoever did it wants us to come after them.”

Iella’s eyes narrowed. “Calling Rogue Squadron down upon yourself would be ruled ‘suicide’ by most coroners.”

“Right, which means whoever did this thinks they can handle us, is crazy enough to think they can handle us, or just has one colossal hate on for us.”

“Not a pretty holograph.” Iella tugged Wedge toward the door. “Let’s get that caf. We’ll save a little and when we learn who it is we’re after, we’ll use it to melt them clean away.”

6

Corran slipped into his darkened apartment and let the door close quietly behind him. A couple of lights blinked, then a softly rising tone greeted him.

“It’s me, Whistler. Keep it down.” Corran peeled off his jacket and dropped it beside the door. “Is Mirax asleep?”

The R2 unit tootled affirmatively, but a glow panel clicked on in the bedroom. “Corran, is that you?”

He kept back from the slender bar of light streaming through the narrow crack between doorjamb and door. “Yes, it’s me. Don’t get up, I’ll be with you in a moment.”

“Are you okay? Corran?”

And I’m supposed to be the one with latent Jedi skills. “I’ll be fine.” He pushed open the door to the bedroom with his right foot, then leaned against the jamb with his left shoulder. Looking at his wife as she lay there on her side, her black hair up, wearing a light blue nightgown, he smiled.

Smiled as much as his split lip would let him.

Mirax sat bolt upright in bed. “What happened to you?”

“It was nothing.”

“Nothing? Your lip is split, your right eye is almost swollen shut.” She threw back the covers and padded over to the refresher station. Corran heard water running, then Mirax returned bearing a wet washcloth. She raised it to dab at the blood on his chin, but he caught her hand.

“Mirax, I’ll be fine.” He took the washcloth from her and scrubbed away at the blood. “I decided I needed to get my head clear, so I walked from the morgue. I ran into a little trouble.”

Mirax planted balled fists on her hips. “A little trouble? You came out of the Lusankya looking better.”

He snorted a laugh and followed it with a smile that tugged at the split in his lip. “Well, these are more Lusankya-based injuries. I can’t get the image of Urlor dying like that out of my head. Wedge and Iella have already told me it’s not my fault that he died, but the fact that he wasn’t free yet is the reason he died. I promised to free him, and I’ve failed.”

She canted her head slightly. “So you went looking for trouble and let someone beat you up?”

Corran brought his chin up. “Trouble found me all by itself, I didn’t have to go looking. It was a little gang of kids. A Rodian was leading them. I wasn’t paying attention, so they decided to take me.”

Mirax took his right hand in hers and led him over to the edge of the bed. She made him sit there, then she knelt at his feet and started to unbutton his tunic. “I think I can get the blood out of the shirt. Where’s the jacket?”

“By the door. Most of it, anyway. One of the little glit-biters made off with a sleeve.” Corran pressed the wet cloth to his swollen right eye. “The Rodian swung a pretty good left. He came up on my right side from behind and clouted me. Spun me around, then he split my lip. Another of them grabbed my sleeve and for a second, I thought it was all over.”

He shook his head. “I started to feel sorry for myself, then I saw Urlor lying there in the morgue and I realized that as bad as I felt, at least I could feel. I thought of you, and of Jan Dodonna, and the other Lusankya prisoners, and whoever it was that sent Urlor here to Coruscant. I realized I had more important things to be doing than worrying about myself and that’s when things began to get a bit weird.”

Mirax tugged Corran’s shirt off his left arm, then unbuttoned the right cuff and quickly slipped it past the wet cloth in his right hand. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I’d felt it before, a couple of times, flying with the squadron or when I was with CorSec. Everything slowed down, I knew what the Rodian was going to do, what the others were going to do. I could just feel them there. I knew which way to move to avoid their punches. It felt as if they were puppets going through a series of highly choreographed moves, and I just slipped in and out between them. I didn’t have to hit anyone or anything. I just got away.”

Mirax tossed his shirt to the floor and pulled off his right boot. “Sounds very Jedi to me.”

“Yeah, maybe it was a Force thing. I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, though. What does is this: I need to focus on finding Jan Dodonna. Somehow, with Thrawn running loose and everything, it was easy to get distracted. No longer.”

Corran’s left hand curled down into a fist and Mirax quickly took it in her hands. “Corran, I know you’re disappointed in yourself for not having kept your word to General Dodonna about coming back to the Lusankya to free him, but you have to remember that you did do that. Your resignation from Rogue Squadron is what led everyone to go after Ysanne Isard and bring her down. You did get to the Lusankya, just as you said you would.”

“Sure, but they weren’t there.”

“No, they weren’t, but I think you need to stop seeing them as complete victims.” She reached up and tapped a finger against his temple. “I remember what you told me about Jan Dodonna, how he followed you and stopped Derricote from killing you. He was a smart man, and you have to know that he was fully capable of interpreting the move from the Lusankya. Isard’s moving him and everyone else out of there told them that you were succeeding. If you weren’t, if you weren’t going to make good on your promise, Iceheart never would have moved them. They know that.”

She let her hand come down to stroke the left side of his face. “If I were ever to go missing, I’d have no fear. I know you’d turn this galaxy inside out to find me. You’d do whatever you had to do to find me.”

Corran’s left eye narrowed. “No question, whatever it took.”

“Jan Dodonna knows you’re a man of your word. He also knows the move will have complicated things, but he’s not going to doubt that you’ll keep your promise.”

He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. The conviction in Mirax’s voice pierced the veil of self-doubt that had sprung from his feeling that he’d failed Urlor. He knew Wedge and Iella had been right in pointing out that the death was not his fault, even though his voiceprint had been used as the trigger. Even so, he knew he couldn’t duck full responsibility for it, because Urlor had been chosen as a weapon to get at him. Had he never escaped from the Lusankya, Urlor never would have been sent to him. By doing what he had done, Corran had made an enemy, and that enemy clearly felt no compunction about using whatever tools were at hand to make a point.

But making a point and attaining a goal are two different things. Using Urlor’s death to taunt him and point out that he’d failed to keep his promise was one thing. That couldn’t be the only desired result of that move, however, because it was far too modest an outcome for the expenditure. Clearly the person wanted to hurt me. To distract me, keep me from focusing, but focusing on what?

“Mirax, see if this scans for you. Killing Urlor at that party, in that way, pretty much guarantees Rogue Squadron has its honor bounded up in freeing the prisoners, right?”

He felt her lie down on the bed beside him. “The first jump of your course seems well plotted.”

“Okay, so then it would seem that our enemy expects us to be thinking a bit more with our emotions than our brains. The enemy has made a move, now we will react to it.” He opened his left eye and turned his head to look at her. “Urlor is bait for a trap meant to destroy Rogue Squadron.”

“That also seems to follow.” She pursed her lips for a moment. “You’ll have to assume a trap is waiting for you no matter what you decide to do. You’ll have to plan in some safeguards.”

“So, tell me, am I just being egotistical by assuming this enemy wants a piece of me and Rogue Squadron?”

“Corran, you’re a pilot who used to be a member of CorSec. Ego gets issued with the uniforms.” Mirax gave him a quick smile. “In this case, though, I don’t think you’re wrong. Whoever is behind this is cruel and evil—and there’s a list of ex-Imperial leaders we could run down and find plenty of candidates who fit that description.”

“This person isn’t going to be on that list.” Corran frowned. “We’re dealing with someone who was close to Isard, who sees Rogue Squadron as the folks who destroyed Isard. They’re focused on retribution. I don’t think they’ll win, in the long run, but I am afraid lots more people will die, as did Urlor, before they’re stopped.”

Gavin Darklighter swirled the golden Corellian brandy in the small tumbler, then tossed it off. He felt a small bead of brandy leak from the corner of his mouth and work its way down through his goatee. The rest of the fiery liquid burned its way down his throat, but none of its warmth radiated out to dispel the chill that had settled over him.

He idly swiped at the droplet with his left hand, then sighed and shook his head. “The way that man died tonight, it took me back to when we were helping the victims of the Krytos virus here on Coruscant. They bled, too, bled and died.”

Asyr Sei’lar nodded mutely from the chair opposite him. After coming back to their apartment from the party, she’d changed into a purple silk dressing gown. Sitting in the blocky chair, she had drawn her feet up so they disappeared into the robe. Of her body he could only see her white-furred hands and her head, with the diagonal blaze of white fur that ran from her forehead down over her left eye and across her cheek. Her markings made her somewhat unique among Bothans—as did her attitude.

Gavin set his glass down on the arm of his chair. “I guess I was hoping, with Thrawn gone, that things would begin to settle down. I mean, I know I’m not even twenty years old, but there are times I feel positively ancient.”

Asyr gave him a half smile. “Battles and death act as force-multipliers when it comes to time. Always having to be alert and ready to deal with violence wears you down. It’s wearing me down, too.”

Gavin’s head came up. “Really?”

“That surprises you?”

“Well, yes, I guess it does.” He hesitated a moment, letting his thoughts order themselves. “You graduated from the Bothan Martial Academy, so I would have thought you would have training in how to handle this sort of thing.”

Asyr barked a little laugh. “Gavin, military schools and training are long on teaching you how to destroy things, but they don’t much deal with the aftermath of that destruction. Everyone assumes that if you win you’ll feel good and if you lose you’ll be dead, so how you feel doesn’t matter. By the time war begins to grind you down, it’s pretty much had that same effect on everyone, so the war slows down and stops.”

“Or you get rolled over and killed and your feelings don’t matter.”

“Right.” She turned her head and looked at him with her violet eyes. “Are you saying you want to resign from the squadron, start a family, do something else?”

Gavin frowned. “The squadron is my family, you’re my family. I don’t want to walk away from that. We both know that someone is going to have to do something about the guy who died, and Wedge and Corran will push for it to be Rogue Squadron. I don’t want to sound silly, but that death was a shot taken at us, and showing the person who took it that they were wrong seems to be the right thing to do.”

“Agreed.”

He sat forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees. “As for the other stuff, like starting a family, I think I’d like that. I’d like to start a family with you. We could get married, make this permanent, and bring children into our lives.”

Asyr froze for a second and Gavin feared he’d somehow insulted her. Bothans were a proud species and very much tied into complex relationships involving kin and clans. Despite having been Asyr’s companion for the past two years and joining her at a number of social functions, he’d yet to meet another human-Bothan couple. And I know there are plenty of Bothans who don’t like the fact that we’ve managed to stay together as long as we have.

She glanced down at the hem of her gown and picked a piece of lint from it. “I like the idea of being married to you, Gavin, but there’s a lot to consider. You do know that it is impossible for us to have children together.”

Gavin nodded. “Yeah, both friends and enemies have clued me into that situation. Strikes me, though, that there are plenty of children who need adopting. I mean, we have those two little brothers who live in the alley near the squadron’s hangar. They’re just one example. Adopting would give us a chance to help heal some of the damage the Empire has done, you know?”

She looked up and nodded solemnly. “I agree. There is something else you have to know: If we adopt, I want us to adopt at least one Bothan child.”

“Sure, no problem.”

Asyr held up a furred hand to stop him. “Listen to me, Gavin, because it won’t be that easy. You know we Bothans set great store by our families. Political power flows from the networks we build up with alliances and everything. My family sees me as a disappointment because, while I have garnered acclaim in service with Rogue Squadron, I have not presented them with children. Those children would be well loved, but they would also be fodder for future alliances. I’ve managed to amass what Bothans recognize as a certain amount of power. I’m a political battery in that sense, and my family is disappointed that I’ve not provided them with a means to bleed some of that power off.”

“So you’re saying that if we adopt a Bothan child, your family will want to exert some control.”

Asyr laughed aloud. “How can you have lived with a Bothan for so long and yet be so polite when referring to our possessiveness?”

Gavin smiled. “Your possessiveness isn’t that bad from my perspective. Look, this would be our child. I wouldn’t be looking to interfere with the child’s assumption of his heritage. I wouldn’t want to try to substitute a human culture for Bothan culture, but I would want to provide some balance. I’d want to show him that different doesn’t mean bad. And I’d hope any other children we adopted—be they human or Rodian or Ithorian, whatever—would get that same message.”

Asyr blinked and Gavin saw a single glistening tear roll from her left eye. “How could I have taken you for an anti-alien bigot when we first met?”

“You didn’t know me.” He got up out of his chair and crossed over to where she sat, then knelt beside her. He reached out and held her left hand, stroking the fur. “Look, I know this won’t be easy, but I want to try to do something positive for the galaxy. Sure, flying off, stopping some Grand Admiral from reestablishing the Empire is noble and positive, but the way we rebuild the galaxy is by making lives better one at a time. We can do this, you and I. I want to do it with you.”

She leaned down and kissed him on the forehead, then rested her chin on the crown of his head. “You realize, if the adoption goes through, one of us will have to leave the squadron. It wouldn’t be fair for both of us to risk our lives and leave some child orphaned again.”

“I know.” Gavin let his head rest against her breastbone. “That’s a decision we can make down the line. Neither one of us wants to leave, I know, but if that’s what it takes to make the galaxy better, it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”

7

Corran Horn hated waiting for the go/no go signal for the mission. On the long journey from Coruscant to Commenor he and the other Rogues had studied the intelligence gathered about their target. He knew it was less comprehensive than he normally would have preferred, but everyone involved in the operation agreed that Urlor Sette’s arrival at the Rogues’ party meant their enemy had access to intelligence sources within the New Republic, so the operation was running outside normal channels. The intel they got was enough to plan the mission, but not enough to guarantee success.

Not that success can ever be guaranteed in a military op, and especially one counting on surprise to be effective.

Iella and Wedge had managed to trace the material components of the device that killed Urlor to Commenor. Wedge had been to the planet before, and many of the other Rogues had trained on a covert base on Folor, the largest of Commenor’s moons. An Imperial raid later hammered the base, but Corran felt little nostalgia for it. Training there was a long time ago. Lifetimes ago.

Tracing the components to Commenor had involved good solid detective work, but locating the site on Commenor where the implantation had happened involved some good fortune. Commenor’s medical system contained a fair number of facilities that could have done the implantation, but an analysis of records failed to turn up anything that suggested the operation had taken place there. Wedge located a couple of places where some exotic xenobiological creatures had been kept, and as he concentrated on them as a possible source of the venom that killed Urlor, he noticed that one facility boasted a full veterinary surgical suite, complete with droids. That facility had gone out of business roughly two years earlier, about the same time Isard had fled to Thyferra. The place had been built in a remote rural district in anticipation of further growth, but the collapse of the Empire had cooled Commenor’s economy enough that such expansion didn’t take place.

The target facility, called “the old Xenovet place” by locals, consisted of a fairly modern central building that served as the main animal hospital. Outlying buildings provided housing for commercial animals recovering from illness or being kept there for breeding and birthing purposes. One of the Xenovet’s final programs was an attempt to start a captive breeding program of exotic animals that were endangered on other worlds, but the rebuilding of worlds in the wake of the Empire’s collapse took precedence over the rebuilding of creature populations, dooming that effort as well.

On the face of it, the place looked like an easy target. Weather satellite data and other more covert methods of surveillance indicated no weapons systems in place to defend the site. Utility records indicated fairly low power and water use for a place that size, suggesting that no more than thirty individuals lived on the site—anywhere between a third and a sixth of the total prisoners estimated to have been on the Lusankya. Shipments of supplies came in through local stores and likewise were not that extensive. As nearly as the local residents knew, the folks at the XV facility were caretakers waiting for some bankruptcy trustee to find a buyer for the place.

Two problems cropped up to make the target harder than anyone expected. The first was simply logistical. The Rogues could sweep in, pound the place, and reduce it to rubble, but that wouldn’t do anything for the prisoners being held there. From his CorSec experience, Corran also knew that destroying the building would destroy any clues as to who owned it, who was running it, and where other prisoners might be. The site itself was a valuable link in the chain that would take them to all the prisoners.

To get the prisoners out would require a commando strike. The New Republic assigned their two top units to the raid: Team One, led by Colonel Kapp Dendo, a Devaronian who’d worked with the Rogues in the past, and the Katarn Commandos, led by Captain Page. Page and his people had worked with the Rogues on their mission to Borleias to liberate that planet from Imperial hands. Both teams had been covertly inserted onto Commenor and had worked their way to the district around the XV site.

The second problem concerning the mission proved more frustrating than any possible defense the Imperials could have raised. Commenor had declared itself independent of the Empire and the New Republic, much as Corellia had done. Since Commenor was a key world on trading routes, it was able to maintain its independence by courting each and every political faction in the galaxy. An attack on an Imperial facility by a New Republic strike team could create an incident that would cause Commenor’s officials to bar New Republic trade, impose stiff tariffs, or even cause the planet to align itself with a warlord like Krennel.

Leia Organa Solo managed to convince Commenorian officials that they should sanction the coming operation. She pointed out that when General Jan Dodonna retired, he did so to the Commenorian moon, Brelor—a small moon the Emperor had given him as a reward for his service to the Empire. She suggested that the Empire’s subsequent attempted assassination of Dodonna on Brelor was a violation of Commenorian law. Allowing the New Republic to rescue him, or comrades of his, from the XV facility would be a step toward making things right again. Having the New Republic stage the raid would also insulate Commenor from any Imperial reprisals, which was an aspect of the deal the Commenorians liked a lot.

Rogue Squadron’s X-wings—painted black for the operation—and astromech droids had been shipped to Commenor under cover as training vehicles for the local militia. The members of Rogue Squadron arrived on a variety of commercial transports and all rendezvoused in Munto, the largest city near the XV site. At the warehouse that served as a hangar for the X-wings, Wedge ran over a briefing with the latest intelligence. Then the pilots mounted up and waited.

Wedge’s voice crackled through the headset built into Corran’s helmet. “Rogues, we are good to go. Light your engines, but keep the S-foils in transit position until we are out of Munto.”

“Finally!” Corran turned to glance back at Whistler. “Now we make good on the promise.”

Whistler warbled encouragingly as Corran brought the engines up. He shunted power to the repulsorlift coils and let the X-wing hover there. He retracted the landing gear, then smiled when the ship didn’t dip at all. He nudged the throttle forward, then applied a little etheric rudder via his foot pedals and swung the X-wing’s nose around to starboard. Corran trailed out after Slee’s X-wing, then slid his X-wing more to starboard, swinging wide onto the open ferrocrete slab where another warehouse had once stood.

All around the Rogues most of Munto lay sleeping. Houses had been built up on terraces all around the valley in which the town lay, but most of them were dark save for a safety glow panel here and there. Some airspeeder traffic moved down in the more central part of the valley, and beyond it a roadway carried landspeeder traffic heading up to the town of Kliffen, but otherwise the city seemed all but dead.

One Flight took off first, heading out slowly in a very loose formation. It started off toward the northeast and then would course correct for the target well beyond prying eyes. Two Flight followed with Wes Janson in command. Corran smiled as he remembered Wes proudly sporting the trio of pips that marked his elevation to the rank of Major. Corran had asked Wes if he’d ever thought he’d live long enough to wear three pips, but before Wes could answer, Hobbie quipped, “He never thought he’d live long enough to count to three pips.”

Two Flight headed out to the northwest and Corran brought his flight along to the launching point. “Heading two-seven-five degrees, ten percent power. Let’s fly.”

The X-wings took off easily and headed down into the Munto valley, then hooked north along the roadway. They followed it for a couple of kilometers, and then, when it cut west again for the run to Kliffen, the X-wings pulled up and flew over the ridgeline and out of the valley. They continued on, flying fairly close to the roll of the terrain and over another line of hills before they locked their S-foils into attack positions.

Corran glanced at the chronometer built into his command console. “Time to target is fifteen minutes.”

“Nine, this is Twelve. I’ve got trace readings on my tail.”

“Whistler, give me a fine-grade sensor scan of our backtrail.”

The droid complied and Corran caught a flash of something moving back there. Whatever it was, it managed to use terrain features to mask itself fairly well. A shiver ran down Corran’s spine. Even though this mission is off all screens back in the New Republic, is it possible we’ve been betrayed?

Corran keyed his comm unit. “Okay, Rogues, throttle up. We’re going to half power and going to bounce over that ridge. Ten and Eleven, keep going to the target. Twelve, we reverse throttle on the other side, drop to ground, and watch to see what’s coming after us. We’ll burn it if we need to.”

“As ordered, Nine.”

The quartet of fighters picked up speed and climbed up the far ridgeline and then over. Corran chopped his thrust back, then reversed it and killed his forward momentum. The X-wing began to drop from the sky, so he cut in his repulsor-lift coils and bounced to a stop a meter and a half above the ground. He nudged the fighter over into a small gully and saw Inyri’s fighter go to ground about twenty meters to his port side. In the distance he saw Ooryl and Asyr cruising along and down into a pass that would take them north.

Then, from back over the ridgeline, came four TIE Interceptors. They screamed past nearly fifteen meters overhead, correcting to follow the two X-wings into the pass. Corran saw no markings on them, and the scanner data didn’t identify them as hostile. For all I know those are a bunch of kids out flying around in surplus Interceptors.

Then one of the Interceptors burned a green laser bolt through the air at Ooryl’s vanishing X-wing.

I guess that settles that.

Corran immediately dropped his crosshairs on one of the Interceptors and thumbed his weapons-control over to proton torpedoes. On the heads-up display a green box surrounded the Interceptor, then it went yellow. Whistler’s piping picked up speed as the droid sought a targeting solution for the torpedo. When he finally got it his tone became constant and the box went red.

Corran goosed the throttle forward, brought up the fighter’s nose, and launched a proton torpedo. The missile leaped up, riding a brilliant blue flame that scorched a Fijisi tree as it went past. The torpedo spiraled up into the air, then curled down as the Interceptor tried to evade it. The pilot’s efforts proved partially successful: The torpedo did not hit it, but overshot and exploded when proximity sensors reported it had missed.

The force of the missile blast crumpled the Interceptor’s port wing and tore most of it away from the stubby stanchion that connected the wing to the ship’s ball cockpit. Shrapnel from the missile itself blew through the transpari-steel viewport. Lethal shards of the transparent metal whirled through the cockpit, stabbing deep into equipment and slicing clean through the pilot. Spinning wildly, the Interceptor slammed into the ground and exploded in a golden fireball.

Inyri likewise shot a proton torpedo at one of the Interceptors. Her missile hit dead on target, lancing up through the bottom of the ball cockpit and out through the starboard side before exploding. The torpedo’s impact did enough structural damage to the ship that the twin ion engines ripped free and blasted out through the front of the ship, then arced down to smash into the ground. The missile’s detonation shredded the rest of the Interceptor, sparking a hot metal rain that started a constellation of small fires burning across the landscape.

Corran keyed his comm unit. “Rogue Nine to Lead, we have engaged four squints, two down. We may be compromised.”

“I copy, Nine.”

Corran punched his throttle forward and pulled the X-wing’s nose up as the remaining two Interceptors turned back around to engage them. He allowed his fighter to go vertical, then he brought it over the top and rolled out to port. That gave the squints a clean line at his back, so he snapped the X-wing up on the port S-foil and pulled back on the stick, taking him out on a turn to the left.

The Interceptors started to adjust their course to come after him and Corran smiled. Behind them, Inyri’s X-wing took to the air at full throttle. In seconds she cruised up behind the trailing Interceptor and laced it full of coherent light. Red bolts burned through the ion engine shielding, exploding the engines. Trailing gold fire, the Interceptor somersaulted through the air and finally bounced its way across the ground, sowing patches of fire in its wake.

The pilot coming in on Corran’s tail kept a light hand on the yoke and juked his fighter around to spoil Inyri’s aim. Corran likewise bounced his X-wing around, making his ship hard to hit. He shunted all shield power to the aft shields, so whenever one of the Interceptor’s bolts did finally hit, it just struck sparks.

He’s good, he’s very good. The Interceptor should have been at a maneuvering disadvantage in atmosphere, but even with the low altitude of the fight and the constraints of battling in a valley, the Interceptor proved very agile. I can’t exploit my advantage and he’s not about to fly straight enough for Inyri to nail him. Unless.

“Twelve, stay with him, but give him space. Aim high.”

“As ordered, Nine.”

Corran rolled his X-wing out to port, then took it down to the deck. He came up on the starboard S-foil ever so slightly and began a long, gentle turn toward the pass heading north. As the X-wing lined up with it, he cut his throttle back but kept the fighter slipping left and right. Glancing at his rear sensor screen, Corran watched as the range between him and the Interceptor began to scroll down. Looking forward he saw the pass’s narrow opening looming closer.

Whistler tootled a warning.

“Yes, I know how close we are. Trust me.”

At the two-hundred-meter mark, Corran cut thrust to zero, rolled onto the starboard S-foil, and shunted full engine power to the repulsorlift coils. He stomped on the starboard rudder pedal, swinging the fighter’s aft to the right. In a heartbeat the fighter went from being level and headed north to having its nose pointed at the sky, its right S-foil pointed north, and momentum still carrying it in toward the pass.

Corran slammed the throttle up to full and snaprolled the fighter to the left. The X-wing leaped toward the sky, with the repulsorlift coils creating a gravity cushion that bounced the fighter back from the rocks at the mouth of the pass. The fighter rode a rocket of thrust toward the stars above.

The Interceptor pilot following him, as Inyri’s gun holocam data would show later, had a split-second decision to make. At the speed he was traveling he could move into the pass, but that would bracket him and Inyri would blast him from the sky. His other choice was to try to execute the same maneuver Corran had, which he elected to do.

He only had two problems.

He started a second later than Corran had, which, at his speed, brought him closer still to the pass’s narrow mouth.

And the Interceptor’s design gave it serious yaw problems.

The pilot succeeded in rolling up onto the starboard wing, but as he tried to rudder around to vertical, air caught on the inside of the port wing. This kicked the Interceptor into a flat spin that brought it all the way around so the front end was pointing back along the path it had been traveling.

The aft end slammed into the rocks beside the pass’s mouth. The Interceptor vanished in a scintillating ball of sparks, debris, and smoke as the engines exploded. A crumpled bit of the cockpit rolled back toward the south, trailing smoke, while fire flashed up the pass wall and ignited small plants.

Inyri’s X-wing pulled parallel with Corran’s as he rolled out to port and pointed his ship north. “Nice kill, Nine.”

“Not mine, Twelve, you were the one shooting him.”

“He got himself.”

“Works for me.” Corran brought the X-wing back down to the deck. “Let’s move, and hope we’re not too late to help out if they need it.”

8

“I copy, Nine. Four squints blinded.” Wedge Antilles glanced at his rear sensors. “Gate, do we have anything else back there?”

Gate, Wedge’s R5 astromech droid, swiveled its flowerpot head around, then tootled negatively. The scopes showed nothing but the rest of the squadron following him. Wedge glanced at the chronometer on the command console. “Heads up, Rogues. Estimated time of arrival is thirty seconds. First pass, shoot at what shoots at us. One Flight will draw fire. Two, you lace them.”

“As ordered, Lead,” came Janson’s terse reply.

Pulling back on his X-wing’s stick, Wedge brought the nose up to crest the last line of hills between him and the target. The XV facility had been built on a small rise in the heart of a wide valley. In the distance Wedge could see a number of small communities, and scattered even further around were dimly lit homesteads in the middle of farmland. The Xenovet compound had been situated equidistant between client communities, which made the Rogues’ mission much easier by cutting down the chances of collateral damage.

Wedge cruised his fighter down into the valley and began a low run at the site. He beefed up his forward shields and directed his fighter to overfly the large barn in the middle of the property. He saw nothing as he made his pass. Once beyond the barn, he rolled up on his starboard S-foil, cut his throttle, and pulled into a tight turn.

“Three is taking fire from the barn.”

Janson confirmed the report. “E-web in the loft. Don’t have a clean shot.”

Wedge leveled the X-wing and hit some rudder. “Lead is on it.”

As his X-wing came about, he killed the thrust and cut in his repulsorlift coils. The X-wing glided down to twenty meters of altitude and sideslipped left to give Wedge a good look at the pair of soldiers operating the heavy blaster. Standing in the barn’s loft, firing out of a feed-loading door, they were spraying green blaster bolts into the air, occasionally hitting shields on a passing fighter.

“Infantry weapons never work well on spacefighter targets.” Wedge shook his head and swung his crosshairs on their outline. “The reverse is not true.”

The X-wing’s lasers fired in sequence, peppering the barn’s upper story with coherent light. Bolts burned through the thin metal walls and lanced out the far side. Two red energy darts drilled through the heavy blaster itself, even as the gunner tried to shift his aim and shoot back at Wedge. The weapon exploded, killing the gunner instantly and pitching the other man out of the barn to the ground below.

The man got up and started to limp toward the main building, but he never got very far. From the shadow of a smaller building a blue ion bolt flashed out and caught him in the chest. He pitched down, then two figures in black converged to check him. Others, looking more like shadows than people, moved further in. One group closed in on the main building while a smaller knot moved toward the barn.

A small explosion flashed at the door to the barn, then the doors cartwheeled aside. Two shadows moved forward, threw something, then two more sharp explosions lit the barn’s interior, casting light out through windows and the loft. Shadows sprinted into the interior and more blue strobes of ion blast light filled the darkness.

A similar series of explosions lit up the main building. Wedge saw a figure climb out of a second-story window and run along the terrace. The figure looked over and saw the X-wing, then raised a blaster and triggered off two shots. Both of them hissed and sparked against the fighter’s forward shield, prompting a smile from Wedge. “Nice shooting.”

The figure ducked down behind the low wall that edged the terrace. Wedge dropped his crosshairs onto the wall and popped off a quick burst of laserfire. The quartet of shots blasted into the brick and mortar, chewing great holes in it. He saw his quarry get up and start running, but bricks blown from the wall cut the figure’s legs out from under him, and the running man went down hard.

Wedge switched his comm unit over to the ground tactical frequency. “Katarn leader, Rogue leader here. I have one man down on the main building’s second floor.”

“Anything left of him, Wedge?”

“Seems all in one piece, Page. I was gentle.”

“I copy. I’ll send someone up. Kapp reports the barn is clear, so the ground situation is stable. I’m calling in our pick-up crews. You might want to get down here, too.”

“Got it. Incoming.” Wedge flicked his comm unit back to the squadron’s frequency. “Two, I’m going down there. Assign us some air cover and send Two Flight back to guide the transport in.”

“As ordered, Lead.”

Wedge guided his X-wing down to the midway point between barn and main building. He set it down gently and let the X-wing’s landing gear sink a bit into the soft soil before popping the hatch and shutting the fighter down. He doffed his helmet, then crawled out onto the edge of the cockpit and leaped down. He headed toward the main building, but a man dressed in black intercepted him.

“I can show you that stuff later, General.” Captain Page gave Wedge a grim smile and took his elbow to steer him around in the other direction. “Kapp suggested you’d want to look in the barn first.”

“I’ve seen what an X-wing can do to an E-web, thanks.”

“I know, but that’s not what you’ll be looking at.”

The two men jogged across the compound to the barn and between the Ithorian and the Sullustan standing guard at the doorway. A little smoke from smoldering straw filled the air with a sour scent. Beyond that, Wedge caught a whiff of burned flesh. Someone had tossed a ragged blanket over a human outline that Wedge assumed was the E-web gunner.

Once deeper into the room, he realized why Kapp Dendo had wanted him to visit the barn first. The Devaronian, wearing blackened stormtrooper scout armor and a helmet cut to allow his horns to stick up through it, crouched beside the skeletal figure of a man. Wedge saw the rest of the commando team working in stalls meant for housing nerfs, freeing the people who had been shackled in the small enclosures. As gently as possible, the commandos were carrying the people to the barn’s main floor.

The stench that came from the stalls nearly overwhelmed Wedge. These people have been forced to live in their own filth. The wrists of the man near Kapp were raw from where his manacles had cut into his flesh. The man’s long nails were caked with dirt, as were the lines on his face. Bending down, Wedge thought he saw something moving in the man’s gray beard and hair, but he didn’t pull back.

A Twi’lek commando standing by a water spigot held up a small vial and swirled it around. The clear liquid turned blue. “Seems potable.”

Kapp nodded. “Good. Fill me a flask and bring it over here. Get water to the rest of them.” He glanced down at the man before him. “You’ll be okay now.”

The man reached out and clutched weakly at Wedge’s flight-suit leg. “Am I dreaming? I know you.”

Wedge crouched beside the man and patted his hand. “Could be. You were with the Rebellion?”

“Ground support. They got me at Hoth. I am Lag Mettier.”

Wedge frowned. The name sounded familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. It was possible he knew the man from Hoth, but the picture that was coming up in his mind was of a much younger man, blond, with a booming laugh. “You knew Dack Ralter, right?”

“Dack, I knew Dack.” Lag let Kapp ease him into a sitting position and accepted the flask of water the commando offered.

Kapp looked past him and addressed Wedge. “You know him?”

“Possibly. If so, he didn’t look like this at the time.”

The Devaronian nodded as he looked around at the people moaning and staggering in the barn. “They’ve all been sorely used here. I’m guessing they’ve not been cared for at all in the past couple of days. Maybe a week. We had minimal resistance.”

Page dropped to his haunches and nodded in agreement. “The main house looks pretty well cleaned out. We have a forensics team coming in to get whatever there is to be gotten.”

Lag lowered the flask, water dripping silver from his beard. “It won’t do any good. She’ll have seen to that.”

Wedge frowned. “What are you talking about?”

Lag let the flask slowly settle to his lap, as if he was too weak to hold it up to his mouth. “She said you’d eventually find this place, and she wanted to make sure it would be a dead end.” A gray tongue played over cracked lips. “They took the others out of here and left us. She wanted you to find us dead. She told us that.”

Wedge helped Lag raise the flask to his lips again. “This woman you speak of, who is she?”

Lag swallowed, then shivered. “Iceheart.”

Wedge’s blood ran cold. “Ysanne Isard was here?”

“A week ago, maybe two.”

“Are you sure?” Wedge dropped a hand to the man’s shoulder. “We killed her on Thyferra almost two years ago.”

“If you did, you didn’t do a very good job.” Lag cracked a smile. “She looked more alive than I do, and a whole bunch more deadly.”

Prince-Admiral Krennel stalked into the darkened cavern of a room where Isard laired. Krennel knew that word was not really exact enough, but he couldn’t think of Isard as living within the warrens described by the various computers and arcane equipment. Glow panels hanging down from the roof barely lit the canyons of fiberplast crates, making negotiation of the labyrinth all but impossible.

He rounded a corner and found Isard seated in a huge chair at the heart of a small arena. Around her, monitors and holoprojectors danced with countless images. Her fingers flashed over keypads built into the chair’s arms. With each keystroke another image changed, or the volume on one vignette rose to drown out all the others. She spun in the chair and the images were altered by the wave of her gaze sweeping past.

She came around to Krennel and stopped. His appearance seemed to surprise her, but then a casual grin curled her lips and she drew her legs up, shifting into a more comfortable position in her chair. Her gaze flicked to the datacard Krennel clutched in his artificial right hand. “I see you got my report.”

Anger surged in Krennel, but he kept it in check. He casually tossed the datacard into the space between them, then clasped his hands behind his back. “I got the report. I have read it. I do not approve of it. You cannot put your plan into effect.”

Isard snorted a little laugh, then punched a button on one of the keypads. The holoprojector to Krennel’s right showed the image of a compound with several buildings, an X-wing parked amid them, and a number of individuals walking back and forth between the main buildings. The figures and the X-wing were rendered in reds and yellows, and Krennel assumed he was looking at an infrared cam feed.

“You’ve allowed them to hit your facility on Commenor.”

Isard nodded. “This feed is six hours old. I had expected them to arrive in a week or so, not quite this soon. Chances are some of the prisoners I left there are still alive. Pity, but they were useless to me anyway. They know nothing of value—nothing beyond what I want them to know.”

Krennel nodded his head once, curtly. “What they know could lead the New Republic to suspect that one of my worlds is the location of more of your Lusankya prisoners. That will be enough to bring the New Republic down on my neck.”

“Oh, I expect so.” Isard’s smile broadened.

“This is unacceptable. I will not tolerate the loss of even one world of mine!” Krennel narrowed his eyes. “You have been here for two weeks, have requisitioned a fortune in equipment, have authorized payment to agents all over, and so far have only succeeded in losing personnel and turning prisoners over to the New Republic. This is no way to deal with our enemies.”

Isard slowly shook her head. “I would have thought the lesson Grand Admiral Thrawn learned so recently would not have been lost upon you, Prince-Admiral.”

The low, slow delivery of her comment sliced through his anger. “Meaning?”

“Thrawn died because it was inconceivable to him that anyone could defeat him. While his string of victories made this attitude warranted, this belief also hampered him.” She pressed her hands together. “Look at the New Republic. They killed the Emperor. They took Imperial Center. They destroyed Thrawn. Now they believe they are invincible. The fact is, we will defeat them because they have this weakness.”

Krennel snarled. “I have never believed in lulling an enemy into a false sense of security.”

“Then believe this, Prince-Admiral: You will lose a world to the New Republic.” Isard’s voice took on an icy tone. “I know your strengths and I know their strengths. You cannot stop them, you can only force them to expend more resources than they want to take the world. Now the world I have chosen is a small one, a simple one, one of no value aside from being one bauble in the diadem you wear as Prince-Admiral. In choosing the battlefield, I can choose how the battle will go, and how we will make the New Republic pay for their victory.”

“You are wrong, Isard.” Krennel turned away from the scene on Commenor and met her stare evenly. “Only by standing up to them in an even fight will I be able to convince them I am too much trouble to take. I can and shall do that.”

Isard shrugged. “I suspected that might be your reaction, and I have planned accordingly. You will still indulge me, however, in our political pursuits, yes?”

Krennel hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Yes. Have your envoy meet with the leaders of the Alderaanian expatriates. I can see giving them a new home.”

“And you would issue a statement of conciliation and apology for the destruction of Alderaan?”

He shifted his shoulders uneasily. “If it were necessary, yes.”

“Good. What we shall do, then, is this: We will have our negotiations going on, but we will not specify a world. We say we want to learn what the Alderaanians want in a world, and we will pick one to match. We will hint that our generosity is an overture for peace between your realm and the New Republic—perhaps even suggesting that you might like to join the New Republic. Then, when the New Republic attacks, we will note that the world they take from you would have been the one you were going to give to the Alderaanians. This should anger them and weaken their support for the New Republic. After all, the people who have suffered so much now have to suffer even more.”

“That ought to work.” Krennel nodded slowly, then gave Isard a wry grin. “You are very good at the political manipulation of people—almost as good as I am at killing them. If you confine yourself to what you are good at, I will as well, and our partnership will have a long future.”

“I will be happy to limit what I do, Prince-Admiral, if you will agree to a request.”

“And that is?”

“If Rogue Squadron survives its next encounter with you,” she smiled frostily, “you will leave their destruction entirely in my hands.”

Krennel smiled carefully back. “And if they do not?”

“Why then, Prince-Admiral, I will just find you bigger and better targets.” Isard bowed her head in his direction. “If you do manage to kill them, clearly nothing else will be able to stop you.”

9

Wedge Antilles started to seat himself halfway down the left side of the lozenge-shaped briefing table when a red-fleshed Mon Calamari directed him to a chair several places closer to the head of the table. “This will be fine, Captain Jhemiti. I’ll sit here.”

The Mon Cal kept his voice low. “Ah, General, these seats are for junior officers. Staff officers sit over there.”

Wedge hesitated for a second, feeling his cheeks burn with a blush. “Thank you for correcting me.”

“Not correcting, General, informing.”

Wedge suppressed a shiver as he moved to the chair Captain Jhemiti had pointed to. The Mon Cal nodded as Wedge slid it out from the table. Wedge seated himself and scooted the chair forward, then stared down at the keypad and monitor, water bottle and glass, comlink holder and personal datapad recharge jack built into his place at the table. He glanced down at the place where he’d meant to sit and saw none of that stuff.

Hmmmm, rank isn’t all bad. He smiled, then killed the smile as the other senior officers began to filter into the room. General Horton Salm took a seat across from Wedge. The balding, mustached pilot gave him a quick nod, then turned to speak with the tall, blue-skinned Duros Admiral coming to the table beside him. Wedge himself offered a hand to the redheaded woman seating herself on his left.

“I’m Wedge Antilles.”

“I’ve heard of you, General Antilles, but what Corellian hasn’t.” She smiled easily at him. “I’m Admiral Areta Bell, also of Corellia.”

Wedge smiled. “We actually met on Hoth, didn’t we? You were the navigator on the transport Tarrin flew, the one that Luke and I took out through the Imp fleet.”

“That’s right, the Dutyfree.” Her blue eyes sparkled. “I’m surprised you remembered.”

“How could I forget. You plotted a great course that got us through in a spot the Imps thought no one could go.” He swiveled his chair toward her. “What do they have you flying now?”

“I command the Swift Liberty. It’s an old Victory Deuce, but it’s functional. We’re often paired on ops with Admiral Kir Vantai’s Moonshadow.”

Wedge glanced at the Duros Admiral for a moment, then back to Areta. “That’s an Impstar Deuce, right?”

The answer came from behind him as a hand fell on his shoulder. “Yes, an Impstar Deuce, the same as my Freedom.”

Wedge spun around and offered his hand to a tall, slender, black-haired man whose goatee had been grown into a full beard and was now shot with white in stripes leading down from the corners of his mouth. “Commander Sair Yonka, good to see you again.”

“And good to see you as well. When last we met, I think my ship was still being refitted at Sluis Van.”

“Right, but Thrawn’s mole-miners didn’t get to it, so you actually managed to do some fighting against Thrawn. You were at Bilbringi, as I recall.”

“We were.” Yonka’s blue eyes focused a bit distantly for a moment. “The Freedom didn’t get hit, but I lost a freighter that served as a supply ship for me. Had Thrawn not died, I suspect we all would have been hit much harder.”

Admiral Ackbar passed behind Salm and Vantai to take his place at the head of the table. “The fact is, Commander Yonka, Thrawn did die. This puts us in a very interesting Position. Please, be seated, all of you, and I will begin the briefing.”

While Ackbar waited for everyone to be seated, Captain Jhemiti closed the doors to the briefing room, activated the antisensor fields, then dimmed the lights. The Mon Calamari Admiral hit a couple of buttons on the keypad at the head of the table and Krennel’s image burned to life above the holoprojector plate set in the middle of the briefing table.

“As you have all been informed, Prince-Admiral Delak Krennel will be the target of a series of operations. The method by which we go after him is going to have to be very skillful. It is not common knowledge, but the war against Thrawn taxed our military resources rather heavily. We are still more than capable of maintaining a defensive posture that would make any attack against us punishing, but our ability to launch offensive operations is limited. General Garm Bel Iblis’s return to the New Republic has supplemented our forces and has many of our enemies guessing what we will be doing next. It is our hope that while his presence keeps our enemies guessing, this operation against Krennel will convince them that they do not want to become our next target.”

Ackbar opened his hands. “Krennel is not an idiot, but he is in a difficult position. He has roughly a dozen capital ships: a mix of Imperial Star Destroyers and Victory-class Destroyers. He has a dozen worlds to protect. With the Freedom, Swift Liberty, and Moonshadow, we have a task-force that can destroy any one of his ships in a running battle, and can fight any patrol taskforce he’s likely to put together. If he concentrates his ships enough to hammer us, we attack the worlds he leaves open.”

The Duros Admiral raised a finger. “The force we have is significant, but I wonder if the Lusankya will be refit in time to use it against Krennel?”

Wedge’s jaw dropped open. “You’ve rebuilt the Lusankya?”

Ackbar nodded. “We have, and it’s gone to Bilbringi for final refits. It won’t be ready for the start of this operation, but if Krennel does not fall early, we could employ it against him.”

Wedge closed his mouth and shook his head. He well remembered the toll taken when Rogue Squadron assembled a fleet of ships to destroy the Lusankya. Because it was a Super Star Destroyer it took a lot of killing and yet an ample amount of ship had been left over. Enough to salvage. This time it can be put to good use.

Admiral Ackbar hit more keys and a spherical representation of Krennel’s realm replaced his image. A dozen worlds were linked by glowing gold lines that marked transit routes. Navigational hazards like stars, black holes, and planets tended to make certain pathways much easier to fly and Ciutric, Krennel’s capital world, served as a hub for trade routes with all the other worlds he claimed as his own.

“Ciutric is Krennel’s capital and, for that reason, is well defended. It’s the most industrialized of his worlds and has a shipyard capable of keeping his fleet in repair. It cannot build new Star Destroyers, though an expansion project now under way might give it that capability in a year or so.”

Another world on the display grew up to displace the image of the realm. “This is Liinade Three. Its development was begun in the last days of the Old Republic and continued during the Empire. Much of it is given over to agricultural combines and light industry producing consumer products like comlinks and caf synthesizers. There is nothing about it that is vital, but taking it away from Krennel would result in noticeable, though minor, shortages of goods in the rest of his realm.”

Salm nodded. “It would get his people thinking that the stability he’s offering is not likely to last very long.”

Admiral Bell leaned forward in her chair. “Are you saying that higher prices on comlinks will provoke a revolt?”

Salm shook his head. “Not exactly. You’ve seen reports coming out of Ciutric. Krennel is offering his realm as a safe, peaceful, and stable place where anyone is welcome to make a home and prosper. Taking Liinade Three will make the Hegemony a little less prosperous and will take away one of his more attractive worlds.”

Wedge reached out and tapped the golden trio of trade routes connected to Liinade’s blue-green ball. The name of each of the worlds to which the routes were connected flashed up in a little box. “Sure, Ciutric might seem like a nice place to go, but Vrosynri Eight or Corvis Minor? Before reading the briefing files on Krennel’s realm, I never even heard of them, and what I’ve read doesn’t make them seem like the sorts of places I’d want to retire to.”

“I agree, General Antilles, but once we’ve cut those worlds off from the main part of the Hegemony, they will be vulnerable. The fear of our coming and taking them might provoke revolts that preclude the need for invasion.”

Ackbar held his hands up. “Your points are well taken, everyone. The shortages will be difficult for Krennel to conceal if he is determined to use mass media to make his people believe Liinade Three has not fallen. Washing away one of his worlds will provide the biggest shock for his people, while shortages will become a constant reminder of it.”

Salm brushed a hand over his mustache. “And while Wedge is a bit disdainful of Corvis Minor and Vrosynri Eight, those two worlds have tight trading ties to Liinade Three. By taking it, we make the two of them more likely to fall.”

The Duros Admiral nodded slowly. “Neither of those worlds is very stable and could be taken with a small force, if Krennel decides not to defend them.”

Wedge sat back in his chair. “How much do we know about Krennel’s intelligence operations in the New Republic? I may be overly concerned because of breaches concerning Rogue Squadron …”

Salm nodded. “If it is true that Ysanne Isard still lives, she could be activating hidden intelligence agents. Nothing we do is safe.”

Ackbar pressed his hands to the tabletop and leaned forward. “Concern for security is important. As of yet, we have no evidence linking this supposed sighting of Isard with Krennel, but we do know they had a limited history together concerning Sate Pestage’s murder. We would be foolish to suppose they have no way of communicating with each other, or that they would not be willing to work together for their mutual benefit. Our operation will be planned with the tightest security we can manage, of course, but we have to accept that it might be compromised. We will hit hard and establish acceptable loss parameters to judge our success or lack thereof.”

Ackbar’s words sent a shiver down Wedge’s spine. Intellectually, he understood exactly what the Admiral was saying. In any military operation the strategists had to decide how much expenditure of hardware and supplies and personnel was justified in attaining their goal. With material and munitions, the costing could be done on a credit basis: by comparing the industries on the world to be taken with how much it would cost to get them, they could determine if taking a world was feasible in an economic sense. The New Republic would either gain from the operation, or at the very least deny credits and resources to Krennel, which was also a positive benefit.

When it came to people, though, cost-accounting didn’t work. Acceptable losses were more of a political point. The losses the Rebellion suffered in destroying the first Death Star were hideous, but considered well worth it when compared to what the Death Star would do to other worlds. The Death Star’s threat meant that any level of sacrifice, any body count, was acceptable, and no one, not even Wedge, doubted for a second the wisdom of going after it.

When it came to Liinade III, however, there was no visible threat to the New Republic. In fact, Krennel’s opening of his realm to anyone who wanted haven made him seem almost benign. Humans would wonder why the New Republic was spending lives to take a world that Krennel had all but opened to them. Nonhumans might wonder why the New Republic was willing to be blinded by so clear a deception. If nonhumans took a larger proportion of losses than humans did in the assault and it failed, nonhumans could even suggest that the New Republic was spending nonhuman lives while winking at Krennel and tacitly supporting him.

For Wedge, any losses were unacceptable. He’d certainly ordered men and women, humans and aliens, into situations where their survival was severely in doubt, and he’d gone into those situations himself on countless occasions. He never sent anyone into anything where he knew they would die, but he had often wondered if he would see his people together again at the end of a battle.

Ackbar sat down in his chair. “The New Republic is weary of war, but people, somehow, are never weary of victory. We sustained considerable losses in the Thrawn campaign: ten percent of our forces killed, thirty percent wounded—but those are just averages. On the worlds Thrawn actually hit, the devastation was significant. This operation will need to be clean and crisp. I believe we can sustain a thirty percent casualty rate and still consider the cost justified. I want it to be much lower.”

Wedge nodded and called to mind the pilots in his squadron. A third, gone—one whole flight. Probably two killed, two wounded. Who can I lose? The new people, Slee and Zatoq? Or will it be Hobbie and Janson? Will their number be up?

Ackbar hit another button on his keypad. “Flooding into your datapads is the preliminary operational plan for the assault on Liinade Three. It calls for Swift Liberty and Moonshadow to enter a close orbit, while Freedom remains at the edge of the system. We expect that Krennel will spring any surprises, like bringing other ships in from other systems, with the initial engagement. Which is when Freedom will jump in at a point where we will have tactical advantage.

“Moonshadow will serve as the base for General Salm’s B-wing Assault Group; Swift Liberty will carry Rogue Squadron. Freedom will be home to the assault shuttles we’ll be sending down. Our capital ships will kill or drive off Krennel’s capital ships, then we deploy ground troops to take key factories, energy production centers, mass media delivery centers, and the capital. Once troops are on the ground, we will bring in rising tide reinforcements and supplies. I believe pacification of Liinade Three should take little more than two weeks if Krennel does not launch a counterassault.”

Admiral Bell chewed on a fingernail for a moment, then nodded. “Sending our ships out on different patrols, then having us meet up for the run in at Liinade Three should work to keep our assault secret, but gathering the reinforcements and keeping them hidden is going to be tough. Krennel has to know something is up, and Liinade Three is one of his most vulnerable targets.”

“We plan to preoccupy him.” Ackbar’s lip-fringes twitched as his mouth opened in a smile. “One lesson we learned about Krennel from the last time Rogue Squadron dealt with him was that he believes in his own importance. We plan to have General Garm Bel Iblis conduct a planetary assault exercise on Borleias. That world bears a remarkable resemblance to Ciutric in terms of geography, size, atmosphere, and the like. The reinforcements we’ll devote to you will be staging there for that operation. Bel Iblis will also make a series of speeches to various groups here on Coruscant and elsewhere that will indicate our intention of coming after Krennel, and will suggest that when the head is struck from a rancor, the body dies very quickly. Krennel will interpret all that, we think, as a coming strike on Ciutric, and will defend his capital world appropriately.”

Wedge smiled. “And if Krennel rushes ships from Ciutric to defend Liinade Three, Bel Iblis can always hit Ciutric.”

The Mon Cal Admiral nodded. “When you have to assume your enemy knows your plans, providing him two distasteful alternatives often promotes conservative thinking.”

Even as Ackbar spoke, Wedge knew there was something being left unsaid. It occurred to him that if the New Republic had enough force to be able to hit Liinade III and threaten Ciutric, then it would need to appear to have enough power to hit Ciutric and do exactly what Bel Iblis would be threatening to do. This means Bel Iblis will be working with a fake force at Borleias—skeleton-crewed ships probably operating with droids to simulate a full staff. We’ll be on our own and in trouble if Krennel has gotten any smarter over the years.

Ackbar opened his hands. “So, if you will all please call up the first file, we’ll begin going through the plan step by step and see what holes we need to plug so it does not sink without a trace.”

10

Iella Wessiri sat back in her chair and closed her eyes in spite of the sandpaper feeling of lids sliding down over eyeballs. She rolled her shoulders and let her head droop back a bit. She slowly worked her head to the right and left, loosening the muscles of her neck, then took in a deep breath, held it, and slowly exhaled.

With the next deep breath she caught the scent of hot and strong caf. Her eyes snapped open and she spun her chair toward the doorway. “Wedge?”

Mirax smiled sheepishly and extended a steaming mug toward her. “Sorry to disappoint you, Iella, but I figured you could use this when you called and canceled dinner this evening.”

“Thanks, I can use it.” She accepted the mug from Mirax and inhaled the steam. “Where’d you get this caf? I haven’t smelled anything this strong since … since I left Corellia.”

Mirax stepped in from the doorway and Whistler warbled triumphantly as he rolled into Iella’s office. His head turned in a circle, and he stopped and extended toward her a small bag clutched in his pincer. A tone ran from low to high, and Iella accepted the bag with a gracious bow of her head.

Mirax smiled. “Whistler seems to recall the settings you CorSec folks used on your caf distiller back on Corellia. I don’t allow him to make it that strong at home, but I gather he still brews it that way at the squadron. I found a caf shop that let him play with the controls in return for some exotic blends I managed to get my hands on. The result is in your mug.”

Iella took a sip, then set the mug down on the desk. She opened the bag and peeked inside. “And the pastries, they were your idea, Whistler?”

The droid trumpeted triumphantly.

Mirax sighed. “I tried to convince him that something a bit more substantial would be better for you, but he seems to think all CorSec officers function on strong caf and foods full of fat and sugar and gluten.”

“Well, it couldn’t hurt at the moment.” Iella narrowed her eyes. “Um, how did you get in here, anyway?”

Mirax fished a security datacard from the pocket of her nerf-hide jacket. “General Cracken and I have an understanding. He uses me to keep tabs on my father’s Errant Venture. I pass on rumors that I hear while trading, offer opinions.”

“Cracken doesn’t worry too much when your cargo manifests don’t actually square with what arrives?”

“He knows he can trust me not to do anything harmful, and I did have a little to do with rylca production on Borleias, so it’s an easy détente.” Mirax smiled. “Neither Corran nor my father know of my arrangement with Cracken, and I’d just as soon keep it that way.” She reached out with a foot and tapped Whistler’s barrel body with a toe. “You got that, Whistler?”

The droid warbled emphatically.

Iella raised an eyebrow. “Whistler keeping secrets from Corran? How did that happen?”

Mirax winked. “When he retires, Whistler wants to be the navigator on the Pulsar Skate. We have an understanding, which is good, because he’s been on the Skate enough that he could run it all by himself. He probably knows more about it and my business than I do.”

“Whistler used to be that way with our caseloads in CorSec, too.” Iella laughed out loud. For years Whistler had helped Corran fight smugglers in and around Corellia. And now he wants to work with Mirax and her “exotics” trade. Interesting. She pondered this change of heart on Whistler’s part, but then decided it wasn’t that radical a shift. If Corran could fall in love with Mirax, there’s no reason why Whistler couldn’t do the same.

“Well, I think Whistler will be great at his new career. He was wired to be an overachiever.” Iella drank a bit more of the caf. “This is really good. I’m sorry to have canceled dinner with you, but analyzing the data from the prisoners’ debriefings is taking forever.”

Mirax tucked a dark strand of hair behind her right ear. “Don’t worry about dinner, we’ll do it another time. Corran got called back to squadron headquarters for briefings anyway. Looks like something big is going down.”

Iella looked up at her friend. “So then I cancel and you’re all alone.”

Whistler cheeped.

Mirax patted the droid on the head. “No slight against you, Whistler, but I can’t force you to order a dessert, then eat half of it.”

Iella offered up half a pastry. “I’ll split one with you.”

“It’s a deal.” Mirax cleared some datacards off the small office’s other chair and sat down. “Anything to clarify the report that Isard is alive?”

Iella chewed a mouthful of pastry, then washed the sticky sweetness from her mouth with caf before answering. “Corran shouldn’t have told you that.”

“True. But since he figures she’s the one who sent Urlor and murdered him, Corran also figures I’m a target, so he wants me to be careful. Give it up, Iella. You know I’m not going to tell anyone.”

The intelligence officer sighed. “Several prisoners said they saw her and heard her, but they’re in pretty bad shape. I can’t give their identifications too much weight since some of them are in the grips of dementia. It seems pretty clear that whoever put those people there wanted them to starve to death, and they were pretty close. If we’d waited another week, we’d just have corpses.”

“And dead men tell no tales.”

“Not true. Urlor’s body led us to these guys.”

“Do these guys lead you to Isard?”

Iella sighed. “Not directly.” She waved a hand at the datapad monitor on her desk. “I’ve been going over the reports we all made at the time of Thyferra’s liberation and a couple of details don’t seem to mesh well.”

Mirax licked sugar residue from her fingers. “Like what?”

“Well, first off, I’ve not been able to find any indication in any record or anecdote or anything that Isard was capable of piloting a Lambda-class shuttle. She wasn’t a pilot before she went to Thyferra, and no one there knows anything about her being able to fly.”

Mirax nodded. “That makes it less likely that she was in the shuttle that Tycho blew up. Still, didn’t Corran have sensor readings indicating someone was on board?”

Whistler tootled positively.

“I’ve pulled the sensor-trace data records and that’s right. I also noted something else: There were two comm frequencies being used by the shuttle. Isard conversed with Corran over one, but I don’t have any record of what sort of data was flowing over the other.”

“So you think Isard was having the shuttle flown remotely from Thyferra to make the Rogues think she was escaping.” Mirax’s brown eyes narrowed. “If it got destroyed, or if it jumped out, either way no one would be looking for her on Thyferra itself. She smuggles herself out with the Xucphra refugees and she’s clear.”

“Isard certainly would have had the resources to fake documentation that would get her clear.” Iella held the caf mug in her hands and let the warmth bleed into them. “I very much want to believe that Tycho’s proton torpedo converted her into free-floating hydrogen, but this little kink in the facts that we overlooked before is a problem.”

“Still, it doesn’t mean she’s back in action.” Mirax frowned. “Why would she lay low during the whole Thrawn thing?”

“Isard help an alien Grand Admiral? I don’t think so.” Iella tapped a stack of datacards on the desk. “Imperial records concerning Thrawn might as well not exist, but I can’t believe Isard didn’t know about him and his existence out in the Unknown Regions. She didn’t ask him back to help her when she was running the Empire, and I can’t imagine she wanted to help him reestablish it with him as the new Emperor. She probably just crawled into some tiny hole and licked her wounds, hoping Thrawn and the New Republic would kill each other.”

“Yeah, and she did have some wounds to lick. She lost Coruscant, she lost Thyferra, she lost her own private Super Star Destroyer, Lusankya. Getting away with her life and the location of the prisoners was the only up side for her.” Mirax leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “How many more facilities like the one on Commenor does she have for stashing prisoners?”

Iella shook her head. “No way to tell. In fact, I’m not sure the Xenovet facility was much more than a blind.”

“I don’t understand. You found the prisoners there. Your forensics team must have found clues and everything.”

“They did, plenty of evidence of records being destroyed, shallow graves for some of the dead, everything we need to piece together a circumstantial case that points to the prisoners having been there a while.”

Mirax’s black hair brushed down past her shoulders as she lifted her head. “The problem is?”

“The problem is that the evidence would have been perfect had the prisoners all been dead. From them, however, we have details that make me wonder. For example, they remember huge, long hyperspace flights, but they were locked in little cells at the time. According to them, they were bounced from planet to planet, and they’ve been in the current facility for years.”

“Corran thought he’d been on a long space journey taking him from Coruscant to Lusankya, but Isard just faked it all along.”

Iella nodded emphatically. “Exactly. Using drugs on the prisoners, she could have warped their sense of time, or even had them totally unconscious as she moved them from one place to another. As long as their cells looked the same, the staff was the same, and the food was the same, the prisoners would have no clue where they had been.”

“You’re basing a lot of this on the idea that someone as smart as Isard was doing all this.”

“Probably, but what if it’s an individual just following Isard’s instructions? Isard would have had to trust this person implicitly to turn the prisoners over to them.”

“Okay, if not Isard, someone she trusted to do what she told them to do. Someone who’s now making his own play at power.” Mirax nodded solemnly. “Someone who has Isard’s resources and contacts in the New Republic, giving him the information he needed to plant Urlor Sette here at the party.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay, you’re suspicious of the situation at Commenor, but what’s the purpose of faking that facility? I mean, the clues from Urlor led there, so we went. The Interceptors might have been an ambush, but a pretty poor one. What did Isard’s agent want to have happen there?”

“I think it was bait.” Iella smiled grimly. “We backtracked the trail to Commenor and there’s more trail to follow. The bodies pulled from the graves could only have been there a couple of years, but they show more decay on the bones than we’d expect from the soil in that area on Commenor. I think they were buried somewhere else, disinterred, and moved to Commenor. Once we figure out where they came from, we’ll go to that new world and find more bait.”

“Or a trap.”

“Right.” She shrugged and sipped her caf. “We get so happy at having broken through the puzzle this person is laying out for us that we allow ourselves to think it was never meant to be broken. We figure we have the upper hand, but we’re just following the trail they’ve laid.”

“Interesting hypothesis. How do you test it?”

Iella winced. “There’s the problem. The obvious way to test it is to have teams go back to Commenor and look around for clues that indicate the site was faked. If it is a fake, then there ought to be redundant clues that will point this out. The bodies that I mentioned would have been missed except I saw them described as being in an ‘advanced’ state of decay. I checked with the forensic tech to find out what that meant and he walked me through it. I checked with the guys who took soil samples, and I was able to pull together a picture that looks like the bodies weren’t always there. That was a tough way to get at the fake data and I’m willing to bet there are easier ones.”

Mirax sat back and crossed her legs at her booted ankles. “Of course, if you send teams back, you’ll tip the enemy to the fact that you’ve found the deception and will be following it up.”

“You never want the Hutt you’re after to know you’re following his slime trail. Plus, we don’t know how much of our planning and intelligence is getting to the other side.”

Corran’s wife smiled slyly. “Why not just go there ‘off duty?’ Corran said you used to do that back when you were with CorSec. We can go without telling anyone. They’ll never know. If we find something, we know you’re right, and if we don’t, that’s a step forward, too.”

Iella sipped at the caf and nodded. “It could work. We’d have to go in very covertly, since the political situation is a bit touchy in the aftermath of the raid.”

Mirax winked at her. “I think I know a thing or two about getting into and out of spaceports without attracting too much official attention. You can leave those details to me. You just get together the gear you’ll need and we’ll be good to go.”

Iella thought for a moment, then nodded. “It’ll take me about three weeks to clear up things here.”

“Perfect. I can get some vaguely legit business set up on Commenor in that time.” Mirax smiled happily. “It’ll just be you and me on a girls’ night out.”

“So you’re not going to tell Corran?”

“Wedge and squadron business are what he’s focusing on at the moment. I see no reason to distract him.”

“He’s your husband.”

Mirax laughed. “He was your partner. Would you handle him differently?”

“Hmmmm, good point.” Iella fed a datacard into her datapad. “I’ll prep a report and entrust it to Whistler here. If anything goes amiss with us, he can turn it over to Corran.”

“It’s a plan.”

“And a workable one, I think.” Iella raised her mug of caf in a salute. “If we can confirm that we’re being played, we stand a chance of turning the tables on our enemy, and that’s definitely a position I want us to be in.”

11

Corran Horn looked over from his conversation with the Issori pilot, Khe-Jeen Slee, and smiled at Gavin Darklighter, who stood next to the table’s open seat. “Sure, Gavin, sit down. We’re just telling stories.”

The Issori’s dark green scaled flesh lightened slightly in hue as Gavin off-loaded his tray. “We are pleased to have you join me and Corran.”

“I don’t want to interrupt, but I did have a question for Corran.”

Khe-Jeen waved a hand toward Corran. “Please, ask it.”

Corran looked at Gavin and rolled his eyes. “Sure, what is it?”

Gavin glanced down at his food and his voice barely rose above the din in the crowded base commissary. “Have you ever wanted to be a father?”

The question rocked Corran back in his chair and he noted that Khe-Jeen watched his reaction with the pure intent of a predator tracking prey. “I haven’t thought that much about it. Mirax has said we should talk about it, but we’ve been kind of busy with Thrawn and all. Is this something you’re thinking about?”

The younger pilot smiled and nodded. “You met my family back on Tatooine.”

“Right, lots of brothers, sisters, cousins, and all.” Corran fingered a round brown biscuit, spinning it as he ran his finger along the edge. “Are you getting the itch to have a family?”

“I think so, yes.”

Corran frowned. “Ah, not meaning to pry here, but are you and Asyr, um, capable of doing that? I mean, I thought Bothan-human matings didn’t work.”

Gavin gave him a goofy grin. “Well, the parts line up fine as far as I’m concerned, but things don’t connect that well on a cellular level, I guess. We want to get married, then we’re going to adopt. We’ve filled out the preliminary datafiles and we need to gather all the other stuff they’ll want—the officials, I mean.”

“That’s great, Gavin.” Corran slapped him on the arm. “You’ll make a great father. You’re compassionate and intelligent. You have a great sense of humor, and you’re pretty good at feeling out the moods folks are in.”

“Thanks, Corran, that means a lot.”

Khe-Jeen Slee sucked the meat off a small bone, then began to crunch cartilage. “We are pleased for you, Gavin, and your willingness to accept responsibility for younglings not your own. We have noted a nobility about you which is impressive.” The Issori swallowed hard and a big bulge started to work its way down his throat. “On Issor, you would never face the choices you do here.”

Gavin looked up, a brown, gooey bean mixture dripping from the spoon he’d raised halfway to his mouth. “You don’t allow adoptions on Issor?”

“There is no need for them.” Khe-Jeen nibbled the end off the bone and crushed it between his teeth. “We Issori are oviparous. The females of the species produce eggs which are tended and hatch, provided they have been fertilized. The males produce a packet of the fertilizing agent …” The Issori unzipped his sleeveless flight suit and began to slip a clawed hand down toward his abdomen.

Corran reached out and grabbed his arm. “We’ll take your word for it, you don’t have to show us.”

A clear membrane flashed up over Khe-Jeen’s amber eyes. He slowly withdrew his hand, bringing with it a sheaf of holographs. He wordlessly selected one, then handed it to Corran. “Perhaps this will enlighten you.”

Corran held the static holograph so Gavin could see it. The image showed two Issori, one male and a smaller, lighter-colored female. He was pouring a liquid from a pitcher onto an egg and she was brushing the liquid over the egg. To Corran, it looked similar to what he’d seen chefs do in basting a roast, but he decided to keep that observation to himself.

Gavin’s brown-eyed gaze flicked up. “You’re the egg?”

“I was, yes. The Issori have a caste-based society. The caste of the egglayer determines the caste into which the child will be born. The caste of the fertilizer determines rank within that caste and political alliances between the families involved. Breedings are negotiated, sometimes with eggs or packets traveling great distances to be used in a fertilization ceremony such as this. This image is of a Whooncha. It is an intra-caste breeding of the nobility, meant to strengthen the standing of two families within the ruling caste. A Whoon-li would be an inter-caste breeding within one realm involving a noble and a more common caste. A Vuin-cha would be a breeding between nobles from different realms.”

Corran nodded. “And a Vuin-li would be a noble breeding with a common caste from outside the realm.”

The Issori stiffened. “Such a thing would never happen.”

Corran frowned. “Wait, you’re telling me that no two Issori from different castes and different nations would ever breed together? What if they are in love?”

Khe-Jeen allowed himself a little laugh. “These displays of emotion that so often rule other sapients are taken in perspective by the Issori. We consider love much like a rainstorm. It can be light or hard, long or short, mild or tempestuous. It can also end. To tie the life of a child to the mercurial emotional attachments of its parents is cruel. Families agree on breedings, families raise the children. My name, for example, has three elements. Khe indicates I am of a single breeding which my father’s family negotiated. It is not his family name, but instead comes from the character of our alphabet that my father’s family uses to mark such a union. My mother was of the Jeen family. I am known as Slee. Both the Khe and Slee parts of my name were chosen based on a formula that allowed the numerical values of the letters of my name to add up to an auspicious number.”

Corran shot Gavin a glance. “Get your hands on that formula and you’ll have no problems naming the kids you adopt.”

Khe-Jeen crackled the rest of the bone to splinters in his mouth. “Our point is this: On Issor there are no unwanted children, and even those orphaned are the responsibility of the families of those who were bred to create them.”

Corran scratched at his forehead. “But if eggs and packets can travel, isn’t it possible that children are actually born after the parents are dead? And isn’t it possible that someone could breed a rival to a leader by stealing eggs and packets from people closer to a throne than he is?”

“Indeed, we have often bred using packets of dead heroes or leaders—we have used the eggs of their sisters or wives or daughters similarly to preserve the bloodline. The families always care for these newborns.” The Issori shrugged his broad shoulders. “As for unsanctioned breedings, they are known as vrecje. The closest Basic word is stranger, but it runs deeper since not only do we not know them, but they have not been raised by a family, so they are not really considered Issori. They are wretched, tortured creatures and are slain as wild beasts are slain.”

“Having families raise kids sounds right by me.” Gavin smiled, then wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Asyr has said that family means a lot to the Bothans, and I’ve agreed that any children we adopt should have a full understanding of their own culture.”

Corran raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to adopt Bothan children?”

“At least one, yes.” Gavin reached out and rested his right hand on Corran’s left forearm. “Look, after we’re married, a lot of people are going to come around asking about Asyr and me, and whether or not we’re suitable for raising kids and everything like that. I want to use you and Mirax as references, if that’s okay with you.”

Corran raked a hank of dark brown hair out of his eyes, then nodded, dropping it back down again. “Sure. I’ll run it by Mirax, but I’m sure she’ll agree. We’d be happy to help you.”

“Great, I’ll tell Asyr. She’ll be excited.”

“Where is she?”

Gavin shrugged his shoulders and chewed a mouthful of beans. He glanced around the room, then shook his head. “I thought she was going to try to join me for lunch. She got a message right when our briefing let out. She said she would try to be back.”

Corran glanced at his chronometer and stood. “Speaking of back, we’ve got fifteen minutes before we’re due in the simulators. I’m going to get come caf, then find Whistler. Anyone else need caf?”

Khe-Jeen Slee shook his head once, sharply, as if tearing a hunk of flesh from an invisible beast. “Our digestive system is too refined for your caf. If there is chokolate, I would take that.”

“Got it. Gavin?”

“I’m good to go, Corran.” Gavin fished some credits from his pocket and held them out. “Let me buy for you two, though. For the help with this adoption thing.”

Corran waved the money away. “Save it, Gavin. When you finally get kids, there will never be enough of it. Somehow, though, I think the two of you—and your family—will do just fine.”

Borsk Fey’lya turned slowly from the window looking out over Coruscant. He found Asyr Sei’lar standing just inside the door to his office, with the sunlight streaming past him making the white fur on her face and hands glow with a dazzling intensity. Her violet eyes still had the fire he’d seen in them years ago, and her expression had a determination to it that matched the fire. Good, she is prepared to fight, which means she is prepared to deal.

“You sent for me, Councilor Fey’lya?”

Borsk opened his hands slowly and let a little hurt tone play into his voice. “You feel the need to be so formal, Captain Sei’lar? I thought, between us, between Bothans, we could be more familiar.”

Asyr’s eyes tightened, as did her fists. “I merely wished you to know that I am aware of where the power resides, Councilor.”

“I see.” Borsk smiled carefully, then stroked his creamy chin-fur. “Congratulations on your promotion, by the way. Well deserved and long overdue. Just like a human to keep your rank artificially low.”

The black fur rose at the back of Asyr’s neck. “Rogue Squadron has never been overly worried about rank, Councilor. Getting our jobs done has been our paramount concern. The reward of rank has been more than justified by our actions. In fact, I would say that the New Republic has been quite penurious in rewarding heroes such as Wedge Antilles.”

Very good, Asyr. Borsk nodded and moved from the window toward his desk. You suggest that Antilles has been insufficiently rewarded, and allow the implication that we have been similarly neglectful of the rest of the Rogues to chastise me. You play the game well.

Borsk waved a hand toward the chair before his desk. “Please, be seated. I want you to be comfortable.”

Asyr moved forward, but stood behind the chair. “I’ve been sitting all day during briefings. It feels good to stretch my muscles, but do not let me stop you. Please, be seated.”

And let you look down upon me? Borsk nodded and seated himself in a massive chair. He tapped a datacard—the only datacard—on his desk with his index finger. He let the sound of his nail clicking on the datacard’s casing fill the room, then he scooped up the card into his hand and slowly turned it over. “You know what this is.”

Asyr stiffened, then gathered her hands at the small of her back. “I assume it is my application to adopt a Bothan orphan.”

“You do know, of course, that a hero of your stature would never be denied such an honor. There are doubtless Bothan families that would gladly give up one of their children to you, knowing their child would be raised in a home where power does not trickle, but flows and floods.” Borsk tapped the datacard against his muzzle, then lowered it and smiled. “After the second Death Star was destroyed and the role of the Martyrs was revealed, their families were overwhelmed with claims that children had been fathered by the Martyrs. Claiming a piece of the grand Bothan tradition is so important to our people that we would give our own flesh and blood away so they can be part of it.”

Her chin came up. “Then you called me here to tell me the application has been approved?”

“No, and you know that is not true.” Borsk slid the datacard across the desk toward her. “I want you to withdraw the application.”

“What?”

“Please, Asyr, you know how impossible this is. You are involved in a liaison with a human—you want to marry him. It might add a bit of exotic luster to your image on Bothawui, but the vast majority of Bothans consider it something of a perversion. He’s all but furless and his face is so squashed it’s, well, hideous. That you have found something in him that attracts you, this I can understand, but you cannot allow this infatuation with him to last.”

“It’s not an infatuation. We love each other.”

Borsk Fey’lya raised his hands and waved away her declaration. “Infatuation, love, lust, whatever you call it, it doesn’t matter. What matters is this: We were prepared to indulge your dalliance, but no more. You cannot be permitted to marry him and create a family with him.”

“His name is Gavin Darklighter, and he’s every bit as much a hero as I am.” Asyr’s clawed hands came around and gripped the back of the nerf-hide chair. “I cannot believe you have the impudence to sit there and tell me what I can and cannot do with my life.”

“No?” Borsk kept his voice low and even, meeting her hot stare with a cold one of his own. “And I do not believe you can stand there and have the impudence to totally abrogate your responsibility to your people.”

“What?”

Borsk spread his arms, resting his hands flat on the desk. “I have told you before that you have become a role model for young Bothans. The Martyrs represent what we all hope we could achieve, what we hope we would be willing to do when called upon. They are shining examples of what we are at our best. Their greatest virtue is that they are dead. They are defined by the moment of their death, and nothing that went before matters. All their weaknesses, their frailties and vices were washed away when the Empire spilled their blood.

“You, my dear, are different. You have accomplished much and you still live. You provide an ongoing example to our people. When a young female faces a decision, she might ask herself, ‘What would Asyr Sei’lar do?’ You defied your parents and entered the Bothan Martial Academy. You’ve taken up with a human. You have no interest, apparently, in bearing children of your own, but are content to raise a mongrel pack of children salvaged from the ruins of the Empire. Yes, humans certainly see that as charitable and enviable, but it is not the Bothan way. By following your example, others will destroy the Bothan way of life.”

Asyr shook her head. “No, it is not fair to put the blame for change on me. Bothan society was repressed by the Empire and by turning inward, by maintaining our strength, we survived that oppression. Now things are different, change is happening and there is no way to stop it.”

“I don’t want to stop it, Asyr, but I do need to direct it.” Borsk paused for a second, less for dramatic effect than for a genuine need to gather his thoughts. If I cannot convince you of your part in the salvation of the Bothan people, other steps may have to be taken. He admired the steel in her spine, the energy blazing from her eyes, but if he could not control her and the direction she took, the disaster he saw looming on the horizon would swallow the Bothan people.

Desperation fueled inspiration.

He sighed heavily. “The Empire put forward the idea that any species that was not human was inferior. Humans were held up as the absolute acme of accomplishment. If we were to aspire to greatness, we had to aspire to be human or more than human. That is a message we had beaten into us during the Imperial period. Children of your generation have been raised in a world where that is the reality. Humans are the measure against which we compare ourselves.

“Now you, a Bothan, are a hero who has attained parity with human heroes. They accept you, and you accept them, and this is very good. The same is true for Ooryl Qyrgg or Chewbacca. You are shining examples to humans of what nonhumans can do. In this capacity you serve every nonhuman species in the New Republic very well.”

Borsk drew his hands together, rubbing one over the other. “You, however, have a romantic relationship with a human. The message that sends is not one of equality. It suggests that, somehow, a nonhuman is not sufficiently worthy of your affections. This relationship was tolerable and manageable when it could be dismissed as a dalliance. Settling down for a life with Gavin Darklighter will confirm what the Empire has been telling us all along: We are inferior to humans, and even our heroes know that, which is why you, Asyr Sei’lar, take as your life companion a human.”

“No, that’s not right.” Asyr shook her head, but the earlier vehemence in her voice had lost something. “By choosing Gavin, it says there are a galaxy of possibilities out there.”

Borsk slowly shook his head and allowed a kindly note to enter his voice. “Possibilities, yes, but sterile ones, unfruitful ones. You’re telling everyone that you would rather turn your back on the family traditions of the Bothans to marry a human than accept your responsibilities in our community. That may not be the message you intend to send, but that is the one everyone is hearing.”

Asyr leaned forward, bending over the back of the chair. “You’re telling me that by exercising my freedom of choice, a freedom I fought for and helped win from the Empire, I will be perpetuating the Empire’s influence?”

“It is not as grave as that, but essentially you are correct. You have the misfortune to be a Bothan hero in a time when we desperately need Bothan heroes to be very Bothan. It’s not fair. It’s even cruel. But it is your lot in life, and your responsibility to deal with it.”

She looked up at him. “What would my future be? What do I have to do to be more Bothan?”

“I have not thought along those lines.”

Asyr snarled, curling a lip to show some teeth. “You can badger me, you can hurt me, but do not treat me like some stupid child. The second you saw my application you plotted out the course you would like my life to take. You would have me break off my relationship with Gavin and then what? Resign from the squadron, return to Bothawui to command my own squadron? Then, after a time and suitable negotiations I would be wed to a nephew of yours? Perhaps a son?”

Borsk narrowed his eyes. “That would be an acceptable course, yes. Your family is desirous of your return to our world, and there are many Houses that would welcome you into them.”

She nodded. “And the alternative is what, to be ostracized, cut off from my people? I would get no Bothan child to raise, and you would use your power to see to it that Gavin and I never adopted any other child? You would make my life miserable because if I am unwilling to serve as the sort of example you want, you can make me into a negative example that will serve your purpose just as easily.”

Borsk nodded a brief salute to her. “You are very Bothan at the moment, Asyr. This is good. Your choices are clearly laid out for you.”

“You would have me break Gavin’s heart.” Asyr hesitated for a second. “You’ll let our people break mine for me.”

“Better one heart broken than the culture of a people lost forever.”

Asyr straightened up. “I will need time to think on this.”

“It is understandable.” Borsk Fey’lya smiled easily. “Rogue Squadron’s current mission should redouble your fame. At its conclusion your decision would be expected.”

She nodded once. “You’ll see how truly Bothan I am, Councilor Fey’lya. As power flows are warped and twisted, just remember it is you who made me remember, and made me live up to my heritage.”

12

Adjusting his blaster belt, Corran Horn sprinted across the Swift Liberty’s launch bay and leaped halfway up the ladder connected to his X-wing’s cockpit. The X-wing had been repainted the green, black, and white color scheme it had sported when he’d been with CorSec. The techs had even dutifully painted on his kill markers again and stenciled his name, CAPTAIN CORRAN HORN, on the side. He let his fingers brush over his rank, then he climbed into the cockpit and waved at the techs pulling the ladder away.

Whistler blatted harshly at him as he pulled on his helmet.

“Yes, Whistler, I heard the call, but I was finishing up a message to Mirax in case we don’t make it back. Of course, I figure she’ll miss you more than me.”

The droid warbled in a very self-satisfactory manner.

“Good to know we’re in agreement.” Corran strapped himself into his seat and hit the switch that lowered the canopy and locked it into position. He punched the ignition sequence into the command console. The engines caught on the first try, sending a gentle thrum through the fighter.

“Whistler, set my inertial compensator at point-nine-five gravities and load fleet, squadron, and Three Flight comm channels into switches one through three respectively.” As the droid did that, Corran ran power from the engines into the weapons system. One by one the X-wing’s lasers all came online and began charging. The proton torpedo launcher’s computer reported the device was set to go, and the magazine was loaded with six torpedoes. The diagnostics screens showed that the X-wing sported an auxiliary belly tank with enough fuel to allow them to fight both in space and down in atmosphere for an extended period of time.

I hope this belly tank works better than the one I had on Borleias.

Wedge’s voice crackled through Corran’s headset. “Good to have you with us, Captain Horn.”

“Sorry about that, General Antilles. I was recording a message for my wife and there was a bit of a line to use the equipment.” Corran looked over at the mission chronometer on the command console. “We’ve still got two minutes to reversion. Besides, with General Salm’s B-wings out there, we won’t be needed at all.”

“Then they’ll release us to hit ground targets.” Wedge’s voice carried with it a hint of amusement. “The B-wings are tough and will take a lot of damage, but they’re still slower and less maneuverable than the eyeballs and squints we’ll be facing. Salm may only leave crumbs behind, but they’re our crumbs.”

“I copy, Rogue Leader.” Corran switched his comm unit over to Three Flight’s channel. “Okay, Rogues, we’re under two minutes to reversion. All systems should be green. I don’t know exactly what there will be out there for us to light up, but whatever it is, I want us shining really bright.”

Commander Vict Darron strode onto the Direption’s bridge and was pleased with the fact that his crew kept hard at work. When I was Krennel’s executive officer, if the crew didn’t immediately fawn all over him when he appeared, he’d start working up insubordination charges for the lot of them. Darron knew any distraction for a crew on a warship was an invitation to disaster, and disasters are never good on a warship.

Krennel had given him command of the Imperial Star Destroyer, Mark II, after its previous commander, a Captain Rensen, had been executed for failing to raze a village that had been home to someone who tried to assassinate Krennel. Darron immediately set about locating those crewmen who Krennel had cited for being insubordinate and asked for them to be assigned to his ship. He promised Krennel they would no longer be a problem, and Krennel gladly gave them up.

But Krennel also demanded he raze the same village his predecessor had refused to destroy.

Being well aware that Krennel’s mechanical hand could crush his throat as easily as it had Rensen’s, Darron had immediately agreed to carry out the mission. From the second he left Krennel’s presence he sought for a way to preserve his life without engaging in the wholesale slaughter of villagers. His search took him back over old territory, for every Imperial officer in any position of authority had long since wrestled with his piece of responsibility for the destruction of Alderaan and the policies of the Empire.

Many simply laid the blame on Grand Moff Tarkin and said, had they been in charge, they never would have used an inhabited planet as a target. That, of course, overlooked the fact that the Empire had created a weapon that could destroy planets, then built another one after the first was destroyed. Clearly the Emperor intended to be vaping worlds, and any officer who didn’t do something to stop that madness bore some guilt for it.

Darron himself acknowledged that there were cruel and even evil policies carried out under the Emperor. Still, he saw the anarchy promulgated by the New Republic as even worse. His role in the galaxy was to preserve order and allow people to live in peace. He and the Direption’s crew were the bulwark behind which those whom the New Republic’s forces would devour could hide.

When Krennel had made himself into a warlord, Darron had followed and brought his family with him. While Krennel’s mental stability—or lack thereof—did bother him, Darron feared more a world in which his children would be forced to cohabit with aliens. Such things went against the natural order of life, and he couldn’t consider himself true to his responsibilities as a father if he did not fight against such things.

But wholesale murder did not make him comfortable, either, so he found a creative solution to the village problem. With the Direption in orbit above Liinade III, Darron took a shuttle down to the village and addressed the people there. He told them that because an assassin had arisen from their ranks, their village had to be destroyed. In exquisite detail he laid out how the village would be destroyed, grid coordinate by grid coordinate. He told them that when he returned to his ship, the assault would begin, and that it would not end until every building in the whole place had been slagged.

Then he returned to his shuttle, but before it lifted off, he discussed his plans with his weapons-officers. He had them run full checks on their heavy turbolaser batteries, targeting arrays, and planetary survey data. He demanded that everything be perfect for his demonstration against these people, and when he was satisfied that all was ready, nearly three hours after he had spoken to the villagers, his shuttle returned to the Direption.

The village was razed, but no one died in the attack. Darron filed a full report that Krennel had not liked, but Darron pointed out that the homeless refugees were taken into other communities on Liinade III and carried with them their tale of Krennel’s swift retribution. The implication was that future rebellion would bring quick and probably more dire attacks. Krennel reluctantly agreed to how the situation had been handled, but had warned Darron never to fail him again.

At the front of the bridge, Darron looked out at the green-blue, cloud-streaked ball of Liinade III spinning below him. To me falls the duty of preventing the New Republic from taking this world. He sighed. Liinade III was clearly the most viable target for the New Republic. Darron had made a strong case for that point to Krennel, but the Prince-Admiral had refused to allot any more troops to its defense. At least he gave me full control of deployment. When they come, we’ll be ready.

A warning klaxon began to sound, and the blondhaired man spun around. “Lieutenant Harsis, report!”

A small, slender, dark-skinned man looked up from the sensor station. “I have two contacts, Commander. They came out of hyperspace two klicks to our aft. Looks like an Imperial Star Destroyer and a Victory-class Destroyer. Broadcast codes make them New Republic. They’re deploying fighters, X-wings, and B-wings.”

“Helm, roll us to port and bring us about. Flight Command, have our TIEs deploy while we’re turning so they can’t see them coming. Shields, I want full power now.” Darron smiled. “The mongrels have arrived, people. They aren’t welcome and we’d best let them know that.”

Admiral Areta Bell watched the holograph of the Direption roll and begin its turn from her Combat Command Center deep in the heart of the Swift Liberty. She stood there, arms folded across her chest, her booted feet firmly planted on the deck, and narrowed her blue eyes. “Helm, give me three-quarters full, heading zero-seven degrees, mark twenty. Roll me forty-five degrees to starboard.

“As ordered, Admiral.”

“Guns, give me firing solutions for the starboard guns. Pick a point and have everything hit it.” She raised her left hand to her mouth and gnawed on the flesh of her index finger for a moment. “Flight Control, get the Rogues out there. Tell them Direption is launching something while we’re blind.”

“Relaying the order now, Admiral.”

Areta nodded slowly. Given her angle of attack, she’d exchange broadsides with Direption, which would hurt her ship badly. Still, the way Moonshadow would be coming in meant that the attention paid to Swift Liberty by Krennel’s ship would leave it open to a devastating broadside from Moonshadow. And if Direption’s Captain deals with Moonshadow, I get to hammer him. His turning to attack both of us makes no sense. He should be remaining at range and fighting a delaying action until he can get reinforcements here.

“Sensors, be sharp. Someone else is coming in, or something is going to intervene. Watch for dirtside action, or something popping into our aft.”

“As ordered, Admiral. Scopes clear at the moment.”

“Sing out when they’re not.” She stared hard at the holograph of the unfolding battle. “The only surprises I want here are the ones we bring to the fight.”

Wedge jammed his throttle forward as the X-wing cleared the Victory-class Destroyer’s belly. He rolled out to port, getting himself well away from Swift Liberty as the capital ship started to maneuver in toward Direption. Further starboard, driving in at a sharper angle but still level, Moonshadow disgorged its B-wings, which formed up and flew toward the Direption. Already Wedge could see TIE starfighters and Interceptors coming up around the enemy Deuce’s hull.

Looks like they launched a whole wing. With seventy-two TIEs in the battle up against an equal number of B-wings, it looked like Corran’s comment was accurate. Then again, just because B-wings have shields and TIEs don’t, there’s no guarantee our side will prevail.

Wedge opened his comm channel. “Rogues, on me. Come up over the top of Swift Liberty and down on the squints. They’ll be outdistancing the slower TIEs. We’ll pounce, break them up, then let Salm and the others pick up our crumbs.”

He rolled his X-wing up onto its right S-foil, then pulled back on the stick. He pointed the nose up over the Swift Liberty’s knife-edge, then inverted as he came over the top. The X-wing flashed over the capital ship’s white hull, then rolled to starboard to bring the Direption into view.

The Hegemony Impstar had already leveled out to match Moonshadow’s profile. He’ll accept what Bell’s ship can do just to pound Moonshadow. Wedge shook his head. I don’t understand those tactics, which is why I’m better in this cockpit than I will ever be on the bridge of a capital ship.

Wedge nudged his stick around and, with the flick of a thumb, switched his weapons over to proton torpedo control. He centered the box on his heads-up display over the distant spark that was the lead Interceptor speeding toward the B-wings. The box started green, but quickly went yellow and, when Gate started piping in a constant tone, the box went red. Wedge pulled the trigger on his stick and launched a proton torpedo.

His target immediately rolled and broke toward the planet. There wasn’t much of a chance that he could outrun the torpedo, but Wedge knew what he was trying to do. If the Interceptor pilot could get the torpedo pointed at Liinade III, then break sharply at the last second, the missile would slam into the planet’s atmosphere and would be reduced to so much space junk.

Three other squints broke off their run on the B-wings to follow their flight leader, which suggested to Wedge that the pilots were a lot more green than they should be. Switching his weapons back to lasers and quading them up, he dropped the aiming reticle over another squint’s outline. When the crosshairs pulsed green, he tightened up on the trigger.

The four laser bolts converged on the Interceptor’s starboard wing, slicing down through it. Sparks exploded from the blaster cannons and the panel disintegrated. The squint flew on, slowly rolling over and over, functionally out of the fight.

Asyr’s X-wing flashed past Wedge’s, so he dropped in behind and starboard of her fighter. She rolled onto her port S-foil as she dove at a climbing Interceptor. The two fighters twisted around, each one’s energy weapons firing above and below the target. Then Asyr’s X-wing snaprolled ninety degrees and clipped off a quad burst before she began to climb up and out of the way.

Her four bolts hit. Two burst through the inside of the starboard wing, melting long gashes in it. The other two pierced the transparisteel bubble between the pilot and the vacuum of space. Something burned red and hot in the cockpit for a second, then a roiling gold explosion ripped the dead craft apart.

Wedge rolled out to the right to avoid the explosion and pulled the stick back to his chest. He brought his X-wing around, ready for another pass up through the Interceptor formation. Liinade III loomed above him for a moment, then a trio of daggerlike ships filled his vision of the sky. All three had moved into range and cut loose.

Moonshadow’s gunners concentrated their fire along Direption’s port edge, seeking to destroy the other ship’s weaponry. Heavy turbolasers, heavy turbolaser cannons, and ion beams all played out, splashing red and blue energy across the Direption’s shields. The weapons’ energy bled into the sphere of the shields, nibbling away at it, shrinking it like a balloon with a slow leak. Then suddenly the shields collapsed and beams played along the hull. Turbolaser batteries exploded and hull plates evaporated. Fire jetted into space as shots burned through the hull and consumed the atmosphere within.

Direption’s return salvo proved no less deadly to Moonshadow. The Hegemony’s gunners concentrated their fire on several points, driving energy wedges deep into the shields. Breaches opened and beams ripped long, jagged scars over Moonshadow’s surface. Sensor towers exploded and ion cannons melted beneath the withering assault.

Swift Liberty had swung down and around beneath Direption on a sharply angled course that took the ship across the Hegemony ship’s line of flight. When the gunners cut loose, half of them pounded on the pristine ventral shields, while the forward gunners hit bits of the ship left naked after Moonshadow’s assault. The Victory-class Destroyer’s weaponry was neither as extensive nor as powerful as that of the larger ships, but the turbolasers and double turbolaser batteries still ate away at the Hegemony Deuce. Liquefied weapons congealed into metal threads, and at least one secondary explosion blasted a small chunk of Direption into space.

The joyful spike that sent Wedge’s spirits soaring as he watched the damage inflicted on the enemy crashed back down as another ship materialized in the system. Smaller and blocky, it appeared slashing across Swift Liberty’s aft. That’s a Dreadnaught. It’s not that powerful, but in that close, in Bell’s aft, it can cripple her.

Tycho’s voice filled the comm channel. “Direption has a friend. Shall we introduce ourselves?”

“Squints and eyeballs first, Rogues. The big ships play with the big ships.” Wedge felt a knot tightening in his stomach. “When it comes to the point where they depend on us for a rescue, we’re all in worse shape than we ever wanted to be.”

13

Admiral Bell staggered for a second when the Dreadnaught’s attack blasted into Swift Liberty’s aft. “Did their attack breach the shields?”

“Negative, Admiral.” The Twi’lek sensor officer, Commander Tal’kina, looked up from his sensor array. “We lost gravity for a second because I had to shunt power to reinforce them.”

“Well done, Commander.” Bell flicked long locks of red hair back over her shoulder. “Helm, heading zero-four-five and level us out.”

The helmsman looked up, surprise on his face. “That will leave the Dreadnaught in our aft, Admiral.”

“Thought occurred to you, too, did it, Lieutenant Cyslo? We can weather another of their shots, and we want them watching us.” She gave the man a quick nod. “Do it, now!”

“As ordered, Admiral.”

“Good. And Guns, pour more fire into the Direption. I want it hurt and hurt now.”

•   •   •

Wedge snaprolled his X-wing onto the port S-foils and followed Asyr through a quick split-S maneuver that let the squints that had been on their tails overshoot them. They leveled out again and broke to starboard, applying rudder to get their noses around, then cruised in on the Hegemony fighters. Wedge chopped his throttle back a bit as he made his approach, but Asyr shot ahead and closed fast with her target.

The Bothan pilot fired off a quad burst of lasers that converged on the squint’s cockpit. The scarlet beams burned the top off the cockpit, instantly liquefying the Quadanium steel. It condensed into tiny round pellets that sparked off Asyr’s forward shields, but that was as much of a threat as the Interceptor posed to her. Fire flared in the engines, and the ship started a slow spiral down toward Liinade III.

Wedge settled in on his target and dropped his aiming reticle over it much too easily. Part of him wanted the pilot to juke and move the ship, to make the shot tough for him. He realized instantly that his desire did not come because he wanted to prove himself the superior. It’s just that I’d rather not slaughter some kid on his first mission.

Wedge immediately pushed that thought aside and tightened up on his trigger. The quad burst of laserfire drilled the Interceptor in its twin ion engines. The engine housing began to melt, warping out of shape, which compressed the reaction chamber. The engine exploded with a great gout of golden flame, jetting the Interceptor forward. The fire at the squint’s aft winked out, snuffed by the vacuum of space, leaving the fighter to fly on powerlessly.

Wedge felt a moment of remorse for the pilot’s death—whether it had come with the engine explosion or would come from exposure and suffocation as the squint’s lifesupport systems failed. He didn’t let himself dwell on the enemy’s fate, though. The other pilot had accepted the same risks Wedge did when he entered a cockpit and flew into combat. Dead is dead, no matter how you go. Wedge’s brown eyes narrowed. And the object of this exercise for me is to avoid getting dead at all

Wedge glanced at his sensor scopes, and aside from some fighters tied up in a dogfight with the B-wings, the Rogue Squadron area of operations appeared clear. “Rogue Lead to Flight Control. We are negative for targets. Do you want us on the Dreadnaught?”

“Negative, Rogue Squadron. Prepare for targeting run on Alpha target dirtside.”

“I copy, Control.” Wedge punched up the squadron’s tactical frequency. “Form up on me, we’re being cleared to go to ground.”

“There’s more targets up here, Lead.”

“Really?” Wedge smiled. “You mean Asyr left a few?”

The Bothan’s voice came on the comm channel. “I didn’t think I had.”

No, you were on a crusade, Asyr. I wonder why? Wedge shook his head. “Punch up your ground attack data. We need to be ready to go as soon as it comes time to ferry troops down.”

Tycho asked a question. “Swift Liberty doesn’t want help with the Dreadnaught?”

“They seem to think they have that situation under control, Tycho.”

Even as Wedge made that observation, he looked up through his canopy and saw the capital ship battle still under way. The Direption had begun to come about to starboard, swinging its shieldless port side away from Moonshadow. Moonshadow was coming up and turning to port, its port-side batteries firing against Direption’s aft shields. Red and blue laser and ion cannon fire pumped terajoules of energy into the shields, but somehow they stayed up.

Probably shunting energy from the port side shield projectors into the aft shields. Wedge watched as Swift Liberty cut inside Moonshadow’s maneuver and cruised beneath Direption. As Swift Liberty’s gunners got target locks, they blazed away at the larger ship’s naked left side, further compounding the damage done by the Moonshadow’s assault.

In Swift Liberty’s wake came the Dreadnaught. It continued to target the Victory-class ship’s aft shields, finally collapsing them. Red-gold turbolaser blasts scored armor around the Swift Liberty’s engines, but Wedge saw no secondary explosions. Even so, that sort of pounding will eat a ship up if it continues.

But continue it won’t.

Captain Sair Yonka’s Freedom knifed its way from hyperspace and into the battle on a course that drove it beneath Direption and straight at the Dreadnaught. Yonka’s ship had come in perpendicular to Direption’s keel and raked it with shots from all its starboard guns, running from bow to stern as it passed. Heavy turbolaser batteries played shots over the Hegemony ship’s unprotected port side, burning great black pits in the ship’s white hull. Flames exploded and curled away as superheated atmosphere blew out through weakened hull plates. Ion cannons sent blue lightning skittering and leaping across the ship’s hull, with several bolts joining like ivy to grow up over the bridge. In yet more spots more laserfire burned straight through the hull. Wedge could see space through the stricken ship.

Freedom’s port gunners had no intention of being cheated of their chance to wreak havoc on the enemy. As Freedom drove forward, guns started firing on the Dreadnaught as they came into range. The sheer volume of fire filled the smaller ship’s shields with color and seemed to stop the Dreadnaught in mid-flight. Then the shields collapsed and Freedom’s precision fire started burrowing in on the Dreadnaught, right beyond the forward superstructure of the bridge. Hull plates, all twisted and half melted, flew off as secondary explosions racked the vessel. What started with fire-blackened armor became a glowing metal pit that drilled deep into the ship’s interior. Finally one huge explosion shook the ship, and all the lights in the forward section winked out.

Seconds later Wedge watched as the Dreadnaught broke into two at the point of the assault. In the cold silence of space, the bridge began to drift away from the aft, one piece twisting toward the planet and the other toward space. Fires burned at the point of the break, but quickly died as they exhausted the available oxygen.

Direption pulled its nose up and began to make a run deeper into the system. Moonshadow and Swift Liberty both fired full salvos at it and collapsed both the aft and starboard shields. Outgunned and already weakened, Direption didn’t stand a chance of escaping. Despite its troubles, it could still inflict a great deal of damage, so Freedom maneuvered into position to slag it if necessary.

Direption’s running lights blinked on and off four times in rapid succession, then stayed off. “Control, this is Rogue Leader. What is the status up there?”

“Standing by, Rogue Leader. Looks like Direption’s commander may be reasonable. New orders just flashed for you, Rogue Lead. Freedom is deploying troop carriers and assault shuttles. Head to your assigned ground targets. May the Force be with you.”

Corran nodded and punched up his target zone. “Three Flight copies, Lead. We’re on blue sector.” He switched over to the flight’s tactical frequency. “We’re clear to blue sector. Think you can stay with us, this time, Eleven?”

Asyr answered in a voice that wasn’t quite as subdued as Corran wanted to hear. “I copy, Nine. I’ll work on it.”

“Stay sharp down there. We don’t know what they have, but it could be decidedly nasty.” Corran rolled out to port and started the atmospheric insertion. He felt a slight bump as they entered Liinade III’s atmosphere and he had to keep his hand steady on the controls. Despite the more difficult flying, he felt a bit of tension flow from him. At least we can breathe this atmosphere, which makes survival here more likely than out in space.

As the X-wing broke through cloud cover he saw a lush green planet spread out before him. Three Flight was coming in over the southern continent, which featured a prominent spine of mountains dusted with snow running up the west side. The target for Three Flight was a hydroelectric powerplant that supplied most of the electricity for the large city on the plains to the east of the mountains. The mission goal was for the X-wings to eliminate any fighter cover around the powerplant and suppress opposition as a shuttle full of commandos came in and secured the place.

Corran caught the flash of sunlight off a slender ribbon of water running through a canyon and dropped down toward it. “This should be the outflow from the dam, right, Whistler?” White water churned through the canyon and a small flotilla of boats made its way down through the perilous watercourse.

They have to be freezing down there—there’s snow on the ground. What some folks think of as fun I just don’t understand. He shook his head, then keyed his comm unit. “Target is two klicks out. Ten, with me. Eleven and Twelve, fly high cover.”

Corran brought his fighter down on the deck and Ooryl’s X-wing came in behind him. Corran kicked the X-wing up on its starboard S-foil and tugged back on the stick to curve to the right, then rolled back to port and sailed around to the left. The inertial compensator’s adjustment allowed him to feel the twists and turns he put the fighter through and just for a second he felt the absolute joy and freedom flying had always given him.

Then he came around a bend and saw the dam.

In the simulations they’d run on this mission the dam had always been tall, but seeing the solid edifice of ferrocrete, with spots where moss had grown along seep lines, and seeing the great rush of water pouring from the sluice-gates, that he’d not expected. Evergreen trees and bushes grew thickly through the riparian area along the riverbanks, but thinned a bit up on the hillsides in the canyon. Everything, save the twin Atgar 1.4 FD P-tower units built atop the dam, looked peaceful and sedate.

The antivehicular artillery units, with a laser cannon centered in a round dish, looked decidedly hostile, but they came as no surprise. A single stormtrooper crewed each weapon and the Rogues had known about them going in. Corran tugged back on his stick a bit and ran his throttle down as he dropped the aiming reticle over the outline of the leftmost weapon. “I’ve got port. Ten, you take starboard.”

“As ordered, Nine.”

With the flick of a thumb Corran shunted power from his rear shields to his forward ones. Staggered red bolts from the P-tower hissed as they splashed harmlessly over his reinforced shields. Corran stroked his trigger once, sending a quad burst of laserfire to burn through the P-tower, but even before it exploded, an overwhelming sense of dread pounded him.

Unthinking, he jerked the X-wing stick to the left and saw a small projectile sizzle past him from behind at an angle in from the right. It flew on and impacted to the left of the dam. The warhead exploded, spraying dirty snow and launching a tall evergreen into the air. Other trees sagged and fell on the forested hillside.

“Abort, they’ve got missiles. Ten, pull out.”

Before Corran could punch the throttle forward, something hit his low port stabilizer and detonated. Whistler’s high-pitched shrilling matched the warning buzzers in the cockpit. Corran saw a whole bank of red lights start to burn amid curls of smoke. Power level indicators showed a quarter of the X-wing’s power lost immediately, and the fighter’s nose began to swing around to the right.

Corran stomped on the left rudder to stop the flat spin, then dove toward the river to pick up some airspeed. Pulling back on the stick, he started a climb, then inverted and flew toward the small fire the other missile had started. Rolling again, he righted his craft and carried it over the canyon’s ridge.

“Ten, I’ve been hit. I’ve lost port-two engine.”

“Nine, that S-foil is gone.”

“What was it?”

“Ooryl doesn’t know. Ground-launched and didn’t scan.”

Corran nodded. “Probably stormies with Merr-Sonn PLX-2Ms.”

“A chip shouldn’t have taken off an S-foil. Shouldn’t have gotten through your shields.”

“I shifted power forward and they caught me in an engine.” Another warning light started to burn on his command console. “Ten, I’m losing engine coolant and will lose my other engines if I don’t do something soon. I’ve got to set down. You’ve got the flight. Warn Control about the chips here. There must be something else of value here, too, otherwise they wouldn’t have guarded it that way.”

“I copy. We’ll fly cover for you until they pull you out.”

“No, get out of here, all of you. They might have other weapons to take an X-wing down. Leave, but promise me you’ll be back with help.”

“As fast as Ooryl is able.” The faint clicking of the Gand’s mandibles came through the comm channel. “May the Force be with you.”

“Thanks, I’m going to need it. Nine out.”

Corran rolled the X-wing once to give himself a quick look at the terrain below, then pushed his fighter over another ridge about three kilometers away from the dam. He would have liked to have gotten further away, but the heat indicators on his engines were spiking enough that the computer reported the numbers in blinking red numbers.

Gotta get down now. “Hang on, Whistler, this isn’t going to be much fun.”

He picked a spot uphill of a rocky outcropping and clipped off a series of laser shots at it. The red bolts scythed through the underbrush, melted snow, and exploded venerable evergreens. Smoke from a small fire obscured the landing zone, but he nosed the craft toward it nonetheless. He shifted power into his repulsorlift coils, lowered the landing gear, and slowly, awkwardly settled the fighter into place. The aft port landing gear ended up planted on the stump of a tree, making the craft list heavily to starboard, but Corran shut down the engines rather than risk a total meltdown to shift the X-wing to another position.

A chill settled over Corran as he hit the release on his restraining straps. “Think it’s over for this fighter, Whistler? We’ve seen a lot of action together.”

The droid mewed weakly.

Corran cracked the cockpit canopy, then swung himself out and under the cockpit lip. He moved up to the fuselage and crouched on the back end of the canopy. The chip missile’s blast had peppered the left side of the fighter with engine shrapnel and Whistler had caught a chunk in his left shoulder joint. Corran reached out to touch it, but Whistler squawked sharply at him.

“Okay, okay, I won’t touch it. No, I don’t want to do more damage.” He shook his head slowly and felt his stomach begin to knot up. “I’ll get you out of here somehow, Whistler. Not a problem.”

The R2 unit piped bravely.

“Thanks.” Corran returned to the cockpit and pulled the small survival kit from the compartment beneath his seat. He opened it and transferred a couple of spare powerpacks for his blaster to the gunbelt pouch over his right hip. He stuffed some survival ration bars into his green flight suit’s pockets, though he thought of them as fairly lethal weapons. If only I could get stormies to eat them.

He looked up and was going to share that thought with Whistler, but he saw the little droid’s lights blinking painfully slowly. His throat immediately thickened.

“I will get you out of here, my friend.” Corran brandished the lightsaber he pulled from the survival kit. “We’ll teach these Imp-wannabes that by grounding me they haven’t made me switch from hunter to hunted, just switched the direction I’ll be coming at them from.”

14

General Wedge Antilles leveled his X-wing out and glanced at the range indicator to his target. Fifty kilometers, we’ll be on it in no time. I wonder what they’ve got waiting for us there.

He punched up the flight’s tactical channel. “Okay, Rogues, Three Flight ran into trouble in blue sector. Ground fire damaged one. They think it was from chip missiles, so keep your shields strong and eyes open.”

The rest of the flight acknowledged his message, then followed Wedge down onto the deck for the final run at the Valleyport spaceport facility. Located in a river valley to the east of the mountains where Corran had gone down, Valleyport was by no means the largest city on the continent. In fact, it was relatively small, but it sat astride the main ground transportation route through the mountains and likewise was a communications nexus. The spaceport facility, while underutilized by local traffic, was more than sufficient for bringing in ground troops who would take the planet.

Below him the landscape changed. Forests gave way to vast tracts of treeless land covered by a thin blanket of snow that let the stubble of harvested grain stalks poke up through it. Houses dotted the landscape and, since it was midmorning, some people were out and about in the fields, directing the droids tending to livestock. Wedge knew that any of them could use a comlink to alert Valleyport officials that fighters were incoming, but by the time the report got through, the Rogues would be over their target.

The city of Valleyport came into view, obscured by a brown haze. A few tall buildings rose above the haze, but most sprawled within it. The haze covered both sides of the river and spread out onto the plains above. The spaceport’s towers showed up clearly on the northern side of the river, against a mountain backdrop toward the west. Wedge let his X-wing sideslip to port, then flashed across the river and set his lasers for single fire.

Already E-webs and a couple of P-towers started filling the early morning air with sizzling bolts of coherent light, but tracking an X-wing running in at full throttle proved more difficult than the gunners would have liked. A stray bolt hissed against Wedge’s shields and in return he clipped off a cycle of four shots—one from each of the X-wing’s laser cannons—then pulled his fighter’s nose off onto another target.

His laserfire tracked bolts across icy ferrocrete decking and up the sides of buildings. Misses left little black stains centered on a guttering flame. Hits blew chunks out of the enemy’s mounted blasters and antivehicular weapons. One bolt caught a stormtrooper in the chest, ablating his armor away in an eyeblink and continuing on unabated. The man’s burning corpse slammed into a wall, then rebounded and pitched forward over the balcony railing he had tried to take cover behind.

“Lead, I’m getting fire from the west, coming from within those hangars.”

“On it, Hobbie.” Wedge hit some right rudder and chopped back his throttle, shortening a turn to port. A line of large hangars formed the western perimeter of the spaceport and the red-gold bolts from a pair of heavy laser cannons sprayed out at the X-wings. Seeing a line of fire begin to track his fighter, Wedge goosed the throttle back to full and began a port spiral to get some altitude.

Out of the hangars trotted a quartet of AT-ATs, the Imperial walker units that had wrought so much havoc at Hoth. They moved quickly, not looking as cumbersome and slow in the light snow as they had on Hoth’s icefields. Back then we were in airspeeders—undergunned and overmatched. A smile slowly twisted his lips. Not the case this time.

“On them, Rogues. The groundpounders are incoming and we need to get rid of the walkers. Be careful.”

“Starting a run on the first one.” Lyyr Zatoq, the Quarren, rolled her X-wing out to port, then let it swoop down in a glide that brought it in on a diagonal slashing course on the last of the walkers. The machine’s head slowly swung to the left to try to track her fighter, but she blasted away at it with her lasers at point-blank range, then climbed hard and pulled out to the left, too fast and too tight for the walker to target her.

Hobbie, her wingman, came in on a crossing path that gave him a clean shot at the tail. Lyyr’s shots had slagged armor on the mechanical beast’s flank, but hadn’t done any serious damage. Hobbie’s attack ran from below the AT-AT’s body on up the back, and at least one shot holed the fuel tank. Flaming fluid streamed down like a tail, then an explosion ripped the walker’s back end open. The blast pitched the walker up into the air and through a somersault that landed it on its back. The massive legs telescoped down into the body, then tore free. The walker’s armored head slammed into the snow-covered ground, cracking armor plates, and started leaking smoke.

Tycho growled over the comm channel. “Running on the next one. Decap shot.”

Wedge nodded. “On your tail.”

Tycho brought his X-wing down in a dive, then leveled out ten meters. Coming in at shoulder height on the walker, Tycho banked right to run from tail toward the head, then snaprolled his ship level and hit right rudder. The X-wing’s tail skidded toward the left, bringing its nose in line with the walker. Tycho’s first cycle of shots vaporized armor on the walker’s body, but the second quartet blasted away at the joint of the flexible neck and the body itself.

Wedge marveled at Tycho’s soft hand on the X-wing’s stick. He followed him into the dive, but rolled out right and cut his throttle back. The walker had begun to turn to its right, so Wedge’s roll put him on a direct line with the AT-AT’s head. He nudged the aiming reticle over the walker’s head and pulled the trigger.

A stuttered quartet of bolts hit the walker. Two glanced off, leaving long scars on its forehead, but the other two pierced the transparisteel viewports on the pilot’s compartment. Fire exploded back out, and the walker slowly started to sag forward. Its chin slammed into the ground, then the body’s weight snapped its neck.

“Easier ways to decap it, Wedge.”

Wedge throttled up and banked starboard into a climb. “Sorry, didn’t have time to consult with Ewoks to find out how they’d handle the situation.” He glanced down at his chronometer. “No time to be fancy on the other two, just swarm them.”

Coming back in and down, Wedge kept his X-wing very low, cruising in at a sharp angle. Tipping his fighter up onto its port S-foil, he banked in toward the walker and switched over to dual fire. One double burst missed, but the second caught the walker in the hip. Tycho’s shots on the same one hit the body above the drive motor, then the two of them climbed out, pulled a half-loop, inverted, and dove back down at their target.

“Port rear leg is scraping the ferrocrete, Two.”

“I caught that, Lead.” Tycho swooped his fighter through a run that pumped more hot light into the walker’s hip. Black smoke began to issue from the joint. Wedge’s attack followed Tycho’s line and drilled four more bolts into the leg.

Superheated metal sprayed out, and the walker began to list badly to the left. The AT-AT’s leg bent, then snapped off at the hip. The forward feet shuffled as the rear leg fell away, but the walker had already been seriously overbalanced. The rear end started to fall to the left, spinning the AT-AT around and pulling the front legs from the ground. The walker’s body pounded the ferrocrete, pulverizing both it and the armor plates on which it landed. Black smoke started to issue from the walker’s body, and escape hatches opened up and stormtroopers began to run, walk, or limp their way away from the broken machine.

Lyyr and Hobbie made short work of the remaining walker. Several runs on it had left the armor in ruins, and Hobbie cruised up along its spine and triggered a quad burst at the head from point-blank range. The red bolts burned through the neck and dropped the head to the ground. The body, leaking smoke, froze in place, leaving the soldiers contained inside stranded ten meters from the ferrocrete.

“Nice shot, Hobbie.”

“Thanks, Lead.” Hobbie sighed. “We could have taken them with four proton torps. Would have been easier, you know.”

“Sure, but what if Krennel showed up with ships and we had to go hunting in the void again.” Wedge shrugged. “Doing it the hard way worked.”

Wedge brought his X-wing down and routed power to the repulsorlift coils. He hovered a couple of meters above the ground and guided the ship over to position it between the burning walkers and the landing zone for the assault shuttles coming in. The stormtroopers on the snowy ferrocrete slowed and raised their hands. Those who had escaped with weapons dropped them and a few of the more injured individuals just collapsed.

“Lead, I have a question for you.”

Wedge glanced over at where Tycho hovered his X-wing. “Go ahead, Two.”

“Wouldn’t the AT-AT assault been more effective if they’d waited to launch it until the shuttles landed? Walkers are death on ground troops.”

“True, and stationing the stormies around the spaceport instead of inside those monsters would have been better, too.” Wedge frowned. “These guys might look like stormtroopers, but they certainly aren’t thinking that way.”

“And yet Intel said there were crack units here, but if not here, where?”

Wedge’s mouth soured. “The sector where Three Flight ran into trouble. You think Krennel is hiding something there? Save for the dam, that’s a pretty remote area.”

“Where better to hide something you want to remain hidden?”

The first of the assault shuttles landed and started to disgorge troops. A couple of squads moved forward to deal with the captured stormtroopers. The others fanned out, found cover, and established a perimeter on the ferrocrete. The second shuttle landed its troops closer to the hangars and a third dropped its troops near the main spaceport facility.

A light blinked on Wedge’s communications console. He punched it. “Rogue Leader here.”

“Commando One here.” Kapp Dendo’s voice came through strongly. “Thanks for vaping the stalkers. I wouldn’t mind it if you want to strafe the approaches to the spaceport, just in case some local militia decides to hop a hoverbus here.”

“I copy, Commando One. I help you, you help me?”

“What do you need, Wedge?”

“I have a flier down at the dam in blue sector. Lots more activity there than here.”

“Search and rescue ops are a bit down in priority, Lead. I’ll see what I can do.” A grave tone ran through Kapp’s words. “How hard did your boy go down?”

“Under control, I’m told.” Wedge smiled. “He can probably take care of himself, but if the stormies we were expecting to be here are actually there, for just how long I don’t know.”

15

I don’t like the looks of this at all. Corran crouched in some brush overlooking a ravine with a small, ice-crusted streambed at the bottom of it. The ravine showed signs of flooding with seasonal runoff, but had a high-water mark far higher than he would have expected. Just north of his position lay the reason for the extraordinary high-water mark: A tunnel had been bored through the granite hillside and clearly, once upon a time, had been used to divert river water around the site of the dam.

The tunnel mouth had been plugged with ferrocrete and two sets of durasteel security doors. The larger pair of doors would admit vehicles; the other was for personnel. Four stormtroopers stood guard outside the doors, but had moved from beneath the shadow cast by an outcropping to soak up the direct morning sun.

Corran ran a hand over his mouth. This has to be what they were protecting with those chips—and a lucky shot meant they did more than just chip my hull. This place wasn’t on any of the survey maps of the area, which means it’s very new, or very secret or, worse, both. Getting in there and getting out again is clearly a job for a Jedi Knight.

He fingered the lightsaber clipped to the left side of his belt. Unfortunately, there isn’t one here.

For an instant Corran regretted having rejected Luke Skywalker’s generous invitation to train to be a Jedi Knight. Had he accepted it, he could have used Jedi powers to walk right past the stormtroopers without their noticing. He could use his lightsaber to deflect blaster bolts. He could find out what the facility was all about and likely neutralize it as well.

That sense of regret died quickly, however, as Corran thought about what he’d have had to give up to become a Jedi Knight. He admired Luke Skywalker and wished him the best in his quest to reestablish the Jedi Order, but he also knew Luke was paying quite a cost. Corran had Mirax to spend the rest of his life with, but Luke had no one. Moreover, the fact that he was needed to solve problems all over the galaxy, and his never-ending quest for information about the Jedi, meant that he had become a wanderer. His quest killed any chance for a normal life, and a normal life wasn’t something Corran wanted to surrender.

My father would probably think me terribly selfish in making that decision. He sighed and blew on his hands to warm them. He knew Whistler carried with him an encrypted message from Hal Horn about his Jedi heritage, but he couldn’t bring himself to listen to it. He didn’t want to be torn between his father’s urging him to become a Jedi and his responsibilities to Mirax and their life together. He wished he had the courage to face that dilemma, but knowing he didn’t, he sidestepped it entirely.

Well, I may not be a Jedi, but I am a Rogue, and figuring out what’s going on in there is going to be important. Getting in will be a trick, though. Corran backed away from the edge of the ravine and began to work his way to the west. He wanted the sun at his back as he moved, and once again was pleased that he wore a dark green flight suit, not the bright orange most of the squadron’s other pilots wore. I’d stand out like a Hutt at an Ewok celebration. Of course, white stormtrooper armor isn’t much better in a forest.

The undergrowth made his passage very slow. Though he’d been raised in Coronet City on Corellia, he wasn’t hopelessly unfamiliar with forests and how to move through them. He used the thick-boled trees to his advantage, and watched out for icy patches of ground that would bring him down. Moving from point to point, he avoided skylining himself at the crest of a hill, carefully surveyed the next leg of his journey before moving out, and listened for signs of the enemy, knowing he’d hear them before he ever saw them.

Crouched in the shadow of a snow-capped fallen tree, he scouted his way along a little depression that headed to the southwest. It ran for approximately thirty meters and gradually sloped up into a thicket of thorny zureber bushes. He was looking for a way around them when two stormtroopers came over the depression’s northern lip. They paused and looked around, sweeping the area with their blaster carbines, then one started his way down into the depression.

The lead stormtrooper caught his left toe on a root that had been hidden by snow and pitched forward. He landed flat on his face, bounced once, then rolled to a stop at the bottom of the depression. His blaster carbine flew further south and landed on the depression’s south slope. The other stormtrooper watched his comrade fall, then came down the slope in a high-step gallop that sprayed snow and frozen leaves into the air.

The second man bent over his partner and started laughing. The first stormtrooper rolled onto his back. “Huttspit! If the designer of these helmets ever had to use them in the field …”

“Very funny. Maybe you should just learn to walk.”

“Oh, shut up.” The fallen man sat up, then pressed his right hand against the edge of his helmet. Corran heard a click and a buzz from a comlink. “No, Control, no problem. Just had an equipment failure. I’m going offline to fix it. Seven Six One out.”

The standing man cocked his head. “Equipment failure?”

Seven Six One extended his left leg and ran his foot around in a little circle. “Twisted the ankle.”

“I can use the rest.” The second man sat down and removed his helmet. The first stormtrooper did the same. Steam rose from both of their heads as the second one reached for the canteen on his equipment belt.

Corran’s first blue stunbolt dropped the canteen from the stormtrooper’s hand. The second one hit the same man again, tensing his body for a second, then slackening it. Two more bolts caught the first man as he made a dive for his blaster carbine. It took a third before he stayed down.

Corran came up over the fallen log and slid down into the depression. He quickly crossed to the stormtroopers and stripped them of their weapons and equipment belts. He also removed their torso armor, then dragged them through the snow to a tree at the southern edge of the depression. He tied them to the tree with the cord from their equipment belts. Using more of the cord, he fastened one of the carbines and his own blaster to a tree, then ran cord from the triggers, back around another small tree, to the stormies’ bound feet. He set both blasters for stun and aimed them to catch the men in the stomach. If they move their legs, they get stunned again. Great way to keep them out.

He decided against killing them for a couple of very good reasons. First and foremost, he didn’t need to kill them. He knew of other New Republic soldiers who wouldn’t have blinked an eye at killing helpless stormtroopers, but he considered doing that murder. As he’d learned in CorSec, no matter how much a criminal might deserve killing, it wasn’t necessarily his place to pull the trigger.

Second, and more important, the two downed stormtroopers were intelligence resources. While forensics might allow a dead man to tell some sort of tale—like Urlor—interrogating live stormies would be a lot more productive. Since no one in New Republic Intelligence even knew the installation near the dam existed, he assumed these men would have a wealth of information General Cracken would be very grateful for.

Corran stripped his flight suit down to his waist and pulled on one of the stormtrooper’s torso armor. He managed to get the flight suit on over the bulky armor, and zipped the flight suit back up nearly all the way, but not quickly enough to avoid getting chilled. He knew he looked ridiculous, but having something that would slow down blaster bolts meant he could live with his embarrassment and laugh about it later.

He pulled the comlinks from the stormtroopers’ helmets. Lowering the volume and input gain on one, he listened for a bit to the chatter going back and forth. He couldn’t make much sense of the call signs, but he heard a number of people reporting on that comm channel. Station checks seemed to come on a regular schedule, but he had no idea when the two guards he’d put down would be seen as missing.

He shut the comlinks off, then looked at them and smiled. Using a last bit of the stormtroopers’ cord, he swapped one of the comlinks end for end, putting the mike near the speaker on each, turned the volume and gain up to full on both, then tied them tightly together. With a nod he hefted the remaining blaster carbine, took it off safe, and started north again.

Not the best plan in the world, but one that will work. He got to the edge of the ravine and found himself twenty meters from the doors, at the top of a ten-meter-high scree slope from which the snow had long since melted. The quartet of stormtroopers he’d have to take out were another ten meters beyond the doors, putting them a fair distance away as far as a blaster shot went. Not going to be easy at all.

He took a deep breath and let it flow out, taking his anxiety with it. In the calm clarity that followed, he realized two things. First, by taking down all the stormtroopers he could and causing as much trouble as he could, he would cut down the odds of another New Republic soldier getting killed. Second, he knew it was his responsibility to take care of the site. No one else was in position to take care of it—no one else knows it’s even here—and hitting the Imperials before they prepared for any New Republic ground action was vital.

With his right hand firmly around the blaster carbine’s grip, he flicked the comlinks on with his left thumb. Because of the way they’d been tied together, an earsplitting feedback loop immediately built and injected itself into the comm channel. The four stormtroopers below clapped hands to their helmets and wrestled to pull them off as Corran ran, slid, and leaped down the scree slope.

Once he hit the area outside the doors, he sprayed red blaster bolts over the distracted stormtroopers. His first shot took one man through the stomach, folding him up and pitching him back into a second man. Another shot spun a third man around, having caught him in a hip. A subsequent shot snapped his head back. The fourth stormtrooper tried to return fire, but before he could bring his carbine around to target Corran, a shot to his left thigh dropped him to the ground. A final spray of shots killed him and also slew the stormtrooper who had been knocked to the ground.

Without pausing to check them for signs of life, Corran brought his grandfather’s lightsaber to hand and thumbed the silvery blade to life. With one swipe he carved a line down through the man-sized door, then kicked it in. He triggered a quick burst of blaster fire through the opening, then ducked inside and dove to the right.

A woman in a green Imperial army uniform had gone down with a smoking hole in her uniform over her stomach. She thrashed, clawing for a dropped blaster. Corran shot her twice more, then rolled onto his back and slashed his lightsaber around in an arc through the doorway to his left. The silver blade slashed through the legs of a stormtrooper, toppling the man backward. The stormtrooper’s carbine tracked a line of fire just past Corran’s head and up toward the ceiling as he fell.

Corran laid his own blaster carbine across his stomach and triggered off a burst that caught another stormtrooper in the chest. The trio of shots lifted the stormtrooper up and sent him tumbling back over a desk, scattering a glowlamp and a holoprojector plate.

Corran hit the powerpack release with his right thumb, dumping the spent duraplast packet to the ground. Letting the lightsaber rest on the ground for a second, he slapped a new powerpack into the carbine and rolled to his knees. He recovered the lightsaber, turned it off, and clipped it again to his belt. Then he got to his feet and moved deeper into the installation.

To the left, just beyond the vehicle doors, a ramp led down to a garage area. Off the foyer two corridors led away, one north and one south, going deeper into the facility. From the southern one, off to his right, two more stormtroopers came running. Corran’s initial burst caught the second one on the left flank, punching through his thigh and chest armor. That man slammed against the foyer’s back wall and bounced down to the floor.

The lead stormtrooper twisted and dove, extending his right arm toward Corran. The blaster carbine he was carrying spat hot light. One bolt burned through the flight suit over Corran’s right hip, but the pilot had already begun to move to his own right, so the rest of the stormtrooper’s bolts passed wide.

Corran’s return fire scythed across the man’s midsection. The armor did a good job of deflecting a couple of shots and ablating even more, but one drilled in through the gap between codpiece and thigh. The stormtrooper screamed and clutched at his leg. Corran stroked the trigger twice more as the man came up into a sitting position, dropping him to his back forever.

Something hot and hard caught Corran in the left flank, spinning him around. As he came about he saw a smallish man in an olive uniform holding a blaster in a double-handed grip. Corran staggered a bit, then dropped to his knees and flopped onto his back.

A grin slowly started to spread over the man’s face.

He was deliberately aiming at my back and only caught my flank? Corran groaned aloud. And he only shot once? Has to be a clerk.

The Lieutenant’s expression changed from one of joy to one of wide-eyed horror as Corran sat up. The Rogue’s carbine came around and the burst Corran triggered tracked blasterfire up through the doorway of the office with the two dead stormtroopers. A trio of bolts lifted the clerk from his feet and spun his body back deep into the office.

Corran slowly regained his feet and jogged over to the office. He peeked in quickly, didn’t get shot, then moved in past the dead stormtrooper and clerk. He checked the second stormtrooper to make sure he was well and truly dead, then searched the rest of the office for anyone hiding in desk legwells.

He was alone and slumped back against a wall for a second. He could have used more of a rest, but as he pressed his back to the wall, the wound complained. Reaching back with his left hand, he probed it and found a nice neat hole burned through his flight suit and the armor about the level of his floating ribs. Luckily for him it had come in at an angle and most of the energy had been ablated by the armor. When he poked a finger all the way through, it came back wet and red, but the blood hadn’t begun to soak his flight suit, so he was fairly certain the wound wasn’t that serious.

Looking around at the room again, he realized he was standing in what passed for the small installation’s communications and security office. A dozen monitors showed shifting views of locations within the facility and he took heart that only a couple of the monitors showed folks moving around. Those individuals were not stormtroopers and looked like technicians working on some sort of research project.

Appropriating a datapad, Corran called up a site map and located one of the labs in the north wing. He tried to call for a general security lockdown of the facility, but the computer refused, indicating the user didn’t have the authority to do so. He shifted to another desk—one that looked like it had belonged to the female Major who had died as he broke in—and repeated the request.

The clanging shut of blast doors echoed through the base.

Corran slipped from the office and stopped at the Major’s corpse. He pulled the rank cylinder from her breast pocket, then headed off through the north corridor. It extended twenty meters into the rock and ended in a durasteel security door. He pressed the rank cylinder into the locking mechanism and the door slid open.

The assembled workers, all in long white coats, barely glanced at him at first. When he produced and ignited the lightsaber, they paused and looked at him. He got the distinct impression they were more fascinated by the weapon than they were threatened by it. It’s as if they see it as technology, pure and simple, with no regard for what it could possibly do.

Corran slashed the blade to the left and bisected a duraplast chair. The clatter of both halves toppling to the floor seemed to drill some reality into the techs’ consciousnesses. They returned their attention to Corran and he was pleased to note that a number of them were decidedly pale.

“I’m Captain Corran Horn of the New Republic. Either I’m here liberating you or capturing you, your choice.” He smiled quickly. “One note: I hate taking prisoners.”

He nodded toward a holoprojector on a table in the center of the lab. “Show me what you’re working on and you’d be cooperative, which prisoners never are.”

A small blond woman moved to the datapad connected to the holoprojector and started to punch in a request for data. A man moved to stop her, but Corran waved the lightsaber through the air and its hum seemed to drive the man back. “Cooperative. You want to be very cooperative.”

The woman finished typing her request and an image flashed to life above the holoprojector pad, just hanging there in the air.

“Oh, you have been cooperative with someone, big-time cooperative.” Corran felt his guts tightening into a knot. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks as if you were going to help someone build himself a Death Star.”

16

The briefing room felt hot and close to Wedge, even though it dwarfed the X-wing cockpit he’d ridden in on his return to Coruscant. Corran had flown on his wing in a borrowed X-wing and now stood with him at the far end of the briefing table. Mon Mothma sat stone-faced at its head, with Leia Organa Solo at her right hand and Borsk Fey’lya at her left. In the middle of the table a holoprojector displayed a schematic of a Death Star.

The New Republic’s Chief Councilor looked through the holograph and Wedge felt energy sizzle through her pale, aquamarine eyes. “I am certain that General Cracken and your own experience have made it abundantly clear to you that what you know in this matter is highly classified. You will not speak of it outside this room, neither between yourselves nor to others.”

Wedge nodded. “Understood.”

“As ordered.”

Corran’s voice carried with it the weariness that Wedge felt. The Rogues had brought Kapp Dendo’s Team One in to secure the lab, then New Republic Intelligence operatives had pounced on it, hustling off the workers and dismantling the equipment and carting it all away. In the meantime the Rogues had returned to active duty, engaging in support missions that lasted another three weeks until no Hegemony hostiles were present on Liinade III. Immediately following the planet’s conquest and reinforcement, Corran and Wedge had been recalled to Coruscant.

Borsk Fey’lya’s claws scraped along the table’s matte black surface. “It is hard to believe that someone even as cruel as Krennel would resurrect Death Stars.”

Leia shook her head. “Since we have not found the original shipyard that created the Death Stars, the possibility that one or more are under construction is something we can’t ignore.”

Wedge pointed at the holograph. “You’re also wrong in calling this a Death Star. It looks like one, but this is a decidedly scaled down version. It looks to be inspired by how the Emperor used the Death Star at Endor, targeting capital ships. That was a gross underutilization of its power, but it was very effective.

“What Krennel was creating here is a system domination weapon. It pops out of hyperspace, cranks up gravity well generators—that’s what those blisters around the center are—and all traffic in or out stops cold. The planet-splitting beam from the original Death Star has also been scaled back and multiple sites for it have been created. Those are all the dimples on the thing. With each of those beams capable of killing a Super Star Destroyer, it’s a decidedly lethal ship. It also bristles with smaller antiship weapons and can support a half-dozen TIE wings, which gives it plenty of defensive capabilities.”

Corran folded his arms over his chest. “We’ve taken to calling it a Pulsar Station.”

Mon Mothma calmly pressed her hands together. “Does Krennel have an operational version of the device?”

Wedge shrugged his shoulders. “Unknown, but unlikely.”

The Bothan Councilor’s eyes narrowed. “Explain.”

Wedge raised an eyebrow. “I would have thought it would be obvious to you, Councilor. Creating a ship this size would require an incredible amount of resources. Just the durasteel alone would necessitate the mining of a planetoid and its total conversion into metal. The factories needed to turn out the finished pieces don’t exist in Krennel’s Hegemony—or, as Captain Horn would point out, we don’t know of their existence.”

The Bothan waved a hand graciously in Corran’s direction. “Would you care to explain?”

Corran shrugged his shoulders. “Data on some of the Hegemony worlds is thinner than the cushions on a Hutt’s reclining platform. Krennel is clamping down on information sources, so getting any data out is going to be tough. Some worlds we can eliminate as candidates: Ciutric, for example, is a well-charted and traveled system. Others, like Corvis Minor, are hardly known at all. The shipyards could be there, perhaps positioned to always be opposite the main world in orbit, so the sun blocks any sensor readings of the construction on that world.”

Leia sat back, her brows knitted with concentration. “The only way to confirm this would be to scout the systems.”

“That’s the quickest way.” Wedge nodded. “We can run a T-Six-Five-R through the system and have it pull all the intel it can gather.”

Leia frowned. “The X-wing recon version has no weapons, so such a run would be risky.”

Wedge laughed. “I wasn’t thinking of taking it in all alone, even though an accompanied ship will be easier to spot. Still, we pick the right location to come into the system, make a quick hit, and go, and we might be unnoticed.”

“Fact is, though, we might need to be noticed.” Corran nodded toward the holograph. “The facility we found was relatively new, with the team there assembled only over the last couple of months. As nearly as we can determine they’re not part of a design team per se, but are analyzing the data being produced by the actual designers. They’re trying to look for flaws in the thing the way you did at Yavin.”

The fur rose on the back of Borsk Fey’lya’s neck. “I fail to follow the significance of this information.”

“Two main points really. The first is that we don’t have an exhaust port to dump proton torps into.” Corran ticked points off on his fingers. “Second, their simulated assaults are run against the Pulsar in various stages of construction. Within a year of construction starts, the hyperdrives should be operational. Two months after that, one of the big beams will work, as will shields, gravity well generators, and two of the TIE wing bays.”

“So it can defend itself.”

“Right, but its primary mode of defense will be to run.” Corran opened his hands. “If we can make it run, we stop construction. We can harry it until supplies run out and then take it at our leisure.”

The Bothan Councilor drew himself up tall in his seat. “You mean to suggest that a squadron of X-wings might be enough to scare this Pulsar Station into running?”

Wedge let mock surprise wash across his face. “Well, we are Rogue Squadron.”

“And we were going to let Asyr lead the raid.” Corran smiled. “The fact that they’ve been discovered is going to make them jittery, especially with the New Republic fleet so close by.”

“You overestimate the effect of your reputation, I think.”

“Maybe, but we might be able to enhance it a bunch.”

Mon Mothma sat forward. “What is it you are thinking, General?”

It took Wedge a moment or two to realize she was speaking to him. “You selected Prince-Admiral Krennel as the target of our operations because we had the pretense of murder to justify what we’re doing.”

Fey’lya snorted. “It’s more than pretense. You were there.”

“I was, but that’s not my point. Krennel’s murder of Pestage is not clearly an evil. As you say, I was there, and I was tempted to murder him myself. The other warlords out there have seen us destroy Zsinj because he was an aggressor and attacking the New Republic. Our going after Krennel makes us the aggressor, and something as simple as this murder charge doesn’t carry with it the moral authority that defending yourself does.”

Wedge leaned forward on the briefing table, holding himself up on his arms. “Revealing the fact that Krennel is working on a new and improved Death Star-style weapon does.”

Fey’lya shook his head. “Impossible. We can’t let that news out.”

Leia held a hand up. “Let Wedge finish. He has his reasons, I’m certain.”

“I do, both political and practical. Let’s start with practical: We’re going to have troops hunting for this thing and it would be utterly immoral not to advise them of the threat they face. Moreover, it would be stupid. If they don’t know what they’re up against, they’ll get hammered. And the fact is that no matter how good our security, once word goes out to the troops, it will spread.

“The key thing here, however, is that this news could be very divisive and hurt Krennel a lot. Talk to anyone who ever served the Empire and came over to the Rebellion, and the Death Star resonates in their memory. It’s the embodiment of evil and, sure, lots of folks died when we blew it up, but lots more died on Alderaan and no one doubts the evil of the destruction of Alderaan. Even the most strident supporter of the Emperor—save perhaps Isard—would allow that destroying a moon could have made the point just as clearly as Alderaan’s death.”

Leia stared at the projected Pulsar Station image. “The Emperor’s construction of a second Death Star put a lie to the claim that the first one had been Tarkin’s folly; but the Emperor’s death allowed everyone to shove the blame off onto him. His death absolved their consciences, and they believed that such a station would never appear again.”

Wedge nodded. “Until now. And remember that Krennel has been waging a propaganda war against the New Republic, offering his Hegemony as a refuge for those we’d mistreat. If we reveal this project, folks who are inclined kindly toward him will reconsider. And the other warlords will have to wonder what this station would do to their holdings. If we make this public, we will force a lot of people to ask a lot of questions of Krennel.”

The Bothan looked to Mon Mothma. “If we reveal this information, we could start a panic.”

“Councilor Fey’lya has a point.”

“Revealing the nature of the mission to those who will fight the thing will start news leaking that could start a panic. Coming from the government, this becomes a security advisory that ought to generate support for what we’re doing against Krennel.” Wedge straightened up. “It’s important that we get this Pulsar Station now, while it can’t do much more than run, and explanations about the situation should make that clear.”

Mon Mothma nodded slowly. “This is an intriguing strategy you suggest, General Antilles. The Council shall consider it. You’ll likely be on station again in the Hegemony before you learn of our decision.”

“I understand, Chief Councilor Mothma.” Wedge gave her a smile. “As long as the information is going to get out, I think we should make it work for us. Make Krennel’s allies and the station’s people uneasy. It might even get us the station without a shot being fired.”

Borsk Fey’lya barked a short laugh. “Do you actually believe that, General?”

Wedge shrugged. “No, but I hope it all the same.”

Prince-Admiral Delak Krennel slowly extended his mechanical index finger, letting it uncurl from his fist, and pointed it at Ysanne Isard as she entered his office. “This is your doing, is it not?”

Isard graced him with the hint of a smile. “I admire the way you keep your rage from your voice. A good skill to have.” She turned away from him and looked at the holo-projector unit in the corner of the room. “As for that, no, I had nothing to do with it.”

Krennel shifted his finger to point at the projector, then brought his thumb up to hit one of the buttons on his index finger. The projector’s volume came up as General Cracken moved into the center of the image. He smiled briefly as the holocam pulled back to reveal a smaller holoprojector and a Death Star image behind him. Bitter bile bubbled up into the back of Krennel’s throat as Cracken began to speak.

“One month ago, as New Republic forces liberated the world of Liinade Three, we uncovered a secret research and development base in which scientists were engaged in studies devoted to creating the next generation of weapons based on Death Star technology …”

Isard turned back and waved her left hand dismissively at Krennel. “You may shut it off. I’ve seen it too many times in the last day. I know his boring monologue by heart.”

Krennel’s chin came up. “Ah, you were so entranced by all this that you could not come when I summoned you after my first viewing of this message?”

“Hardly.” She shrugged effortlessly and remained standing in the center of his office as if she owned it. “I was not on Ciutric. I traveled away from here to obtain reports from agents about this lab the New Republic says it found.”

The Prince-Admiral heard something in her voice that sounded like a mixture of boredom and disgust. “ ‘Says it found’? You don’t believe the report?”

“You do? You believe this transparent and pathetic charade?” Isard’s eyes narrowed with disbelief. “Please, Prince-Admiral, do not allow yourself to sink in my estimation. This is an obvious sham, meant to take in those who are a neuron shy of being able to form a synapse.”

Krennel pounded his metal fist against his desk. “It’s not a matter of belief. I know I had no such lab and no such project under way.”

She nodded, slowly crossing her arms over her chest. “I know. You could not have hidden such a thing away from me.”

The Prince-Admiral leaned forward, his teeth set in a feral grin. “But you, Ysanne Isard, you could conceal such a base from me, couldn’t you? You could carry on such researches, couldn’t you?”

“Indeed, Prince-Admiral, I could, but the New Republic’s analysis shows I did not. Certainly, I could have put that lab in place, moved those people in, covered the tracks so you couldn’t find them. That would be child’s play, really—indeed, such projects were my childhood amusements.” Her eyes focused distantly and she chuckled for a moment. “That’s not what you wanted to hear.”

Krennel sat back in his chair. She was right, that wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but it was also what he expected out of her. He had assumed from the beginning she would have any number of little projects going on that he would not know about. His only control over her activities came through the resources he allotted to her. Her budgets, while not tiny, certainly were not overly generous. He expected that she supplemented what he gave her from other sources, but even doubling or tripling her funds would not allow for huge projects.

He smiled. “Ah, I see your point. The New Republic says this base was involved in researches, which you could have financed, but the construction would be beyond your reach.” He held a hand up to forestall her protest. “Or, rather, if you had such resources, you would not have allied yourself with me.”

Isard gave him a respectful nod. “Your Academy education does you proud. This report by the New Republic is clearly a hoax designed to provide them the moral high ground in its struggle with you. Your championing of freedom and personal choice, as well as our painting Pestage as an Imperial butcher on a scale that cried out for his elimination, had pretty well eroded support for their war against you. Their desperation shows in their use of this tactic.”

“So there is no evidence for this lab?”

“There is a hole in the ground where they indicate there should be one, yes. It’s gutted, with all useful material long since gone. How long it was there, none of my agents can estimate. The place has been there for a long time, but any refits were fairly recent. One agent remembers having gone fishing in that area two years ago and he saw nothing. None of your resources were used in guarding it and no traces of transactions regarding it can be found in local records.”

“Were they sliced out?”

Isard blinked her eyes in an uncharacteristic way that Krennel took as a sign of confusion. “It is conceivable that they were, but a completely successful codeslice job leaves exactly the same trace as no slice job at all. I suppose you could conclude the evidence on this point is inconclusive or incomplete.”

“But you don’t think so?”

“No. I think this is all a put-up job by the New Republic to get at you.” Isard began to pace. “We will have to fight this, of course.”

“I have a more immediate concern, which is fighting the New Republic’s armed forces.”

Isard’s features sharpened and a razor’s edge entered her voice. “Be aware of one thing and never forget it, Prince-Admiral: This war against you is a political war. They have forged this moral imperative to get at you because they do not have the belly to exert the force they should. Perhaps they cannot—perhaps Thrawn’s assault hurt them more than we can imagine. They are taking things gradually because slow is the only speed they can hit. Our counterassault will involve three steps that will cause them to seriously re-evaluate their chosen course.”

“Three steps?” Krennel opened his metal hand and ran his fingers across the indentation he’d made when he pounded his fist into the desk. “And they are?”

“First, you will issue a statement concerning this charge against you. You will be distraught and angry. Do you remember Wynt Kepporra?”

Krennel closed his eyes for a second and saw the face of an eager young man, head shaved, blue eyes bright, in a cadet’s uniform from the Imperial Academy. “He was in my class from Prefsbelt Four. We were in the same company because our last names began with the same letter. I recall him, vaguely.”

“Well, now he was your best friend there. He was from Alderaan—this is true—and died when the planet was destroyed. He was home on leave, visiting his family. His death hurt you terribly, so much so that you volunteered for service in the Unknown Regions. Later you reconsidered and returned to try to exert influence to make sure there would be no more Alderaans. For the New Republic to suggest you would have anything to do with a project that would re-create the weapon that destroyed your friend, well, those are tactics that are painfully Imperial in nature.”

The Prince-Admiral pursed his lips, then nodded. “I can deliver that message.”

“And shed a tear?”

“I was a fighter at the Academy, not in the Thespian Union like Kepporra.”

“No matter, we will slice in suitably altered material.” Isard turned quickly and paced back the way she had come. “The second thing we will do is release a series of files that will show that you do not have the resources in the Hegemony to build such a project. One of them, the Corvis Minor file, will have been tampered with.”

Krennel smiled. “Ah, yes, your little trap for Rogue Squadron. Perhaps this new bait will be more to their liking.”

“Indeed, I hope so. When they are gone, of course, the New Republic will hit Corvis Minor rather hard. At that point, the third step goes into play. You will attack Liinade Three, hammering their garrison forces. We will insert insurgents who will undertake a covert war against the New Republic forces and, if we are fortunate, will inspire a popular uprising that will force them to devote more troops to holding the place than they ever intended.”

“Their moral justification is undercut, a storied unit is dead, and I show I have steel to back the political integrity of my realm.” Krennel slowly nodded. “It could work. It must work.”

Isard smiled very coldly. “It will work. And once you’ve shown the galaxy that it is possible to oppose the New Republic, you will be seen as the Emperor’s rightful heir. At that point we will both attain what we most desire.”

17

Though Gavin Darklighter’s eyes burned with fatigue, the image of Delak Krennel coming in over the recreation room’s holoprojector held his attention and kept him awake. The projector rendered Krennel three-fourths his real height, but because Gavin was seated on a couch next to Asyr, he had to look up at the man’s image. Krennel had abandoned a military uniform and instead had adopted well-made civilian clothes, but stayed away from the robes long associated with the Emperor’s intimates.

“So now I am faced with the onerous task of rebutting the charges Mon Mothma and the New Republic have made against me. To many of you it would be inconceivable that such researches were taking place on a world under my control without my knowledge of it.” Krennel’s expression remained open, his eyes guileless. “I concur, and I tell you that I had no knowledge of these researches. I would point out that the New Republic has offered no proof that I knew of them and, in fact, has offered no proof that anyone knew of these researches prior to the New Republic’s conquest of Liinade Three.”

Gavin frowned. “What reason in the galaxy would the New Republic have for faking a lab and accusing you of doing Death Star research?”

The other pilots in the rec center nodded in agreement with Gavin’s question.

Hobbie laughed. “Not like we didn’t have better things to do when pacifying the planet.”

“It wasn’t that hard, Hobbie.” Myn Donos stretched his arms and rolled his wrists around. “I mean, we did have some spare time—an hour or two—in which to plan and execute such deception.”

Krennel’s flesh and blood hand rose innocently. “In suggesting the New Republic fabricated this evidence against me, I would be as remiss as they are if I did not offer you proof of their perfidy. Why would they want to discredit me so? By accusing me of Sate Pestage’s murder they’ve already provided themselves with as much justification as they needed to launch an invasion of my Hegemony. These charges against me serve only to unite the New Republic by making the Emperor’s ghost haunt my activities—a New Republic that apparently was not united behind the attack in the first place. In fact, there was much more division in the New Republic than anyone could have imagined, and that very division is what prompted this move.”

Krennel’s chin came up. “In keeping with my pledge to provide land and shelter and a future to any beleaguered population within the galaxy, I have been involved in negotiations with the leadership of the Alderaanian refugee population. I was prepared to offer them Liinade Three’s southern continent—one known for its parallels to Alderaan—as a haven. By fabricating evidence implicating me in furthering the sort of researches that resulted in Alderaan’s tragic destruction, the New Republic has scuttled this effort that would have provided peace for the peoples of Alderaan, and for the peoples of the Hegemony.”

Gavin glanced over at Tycho Celchu and watched the other pilot’s arms cross tightly over his chest. “Colonel, is what he’s saying true?”

Tycho shook his head slowly, as if barely registering the question. “I don’t know. I don’t pay much attention to the Alderaanian refugee groups and they leave me alone for the most part. They’d see me as linked to the New Republic anyway, so if they were negotiating with Krennel, telling me about it would interfere with their plans.”

Krennel bowed his head for a moment. “What pains me the most about the New Republic’s tactics is that Mon Mothma has accused me of perpetuating the sort of terror weapons that destroyed Alderaan. She has painted me as an inhuman monster in doing so and has suggested that those who forget the horror of Alderaan will again allow such atrocities to be committed.

“The plain fact of the matter is that I have not forgotten the lessons of Alderaan. Captain Wynt Kepporra was from Alderaan and went to the Imperial Academy at Prefsbelt Four at the same time I did. We were friends, good and close friends. He had returned to Alderaan to see his family and was there when Grand Moff Tarkin …”

Krennel’s voice failed him and he brushed away a tear with his left hand. He set his face again, then nodded and continued. “Wynt was on Alderaan when it was destroyed. I’ve been to Alderaan. I’ve been to the Graveyard and I’ve left my offerings to him and his memory. It was in his name that I chose to negotiate with the Alderaanian refugees. It was in his memory that I sought a suitable world to give them. Now, to be accused of such cruel duplicity as to be negotiating with them on one hand and scheming to create a Death Star on the other, well, the Emperor was never so vicious in dealing with his enemies.”

“Besmirch their reputations, no.” Asyr snarled. “Blow up their planet, sure. I’m not certain I like Krennel’s definition of vicious.”

Gavin draped an arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug. “You’re reading my mind again.”

The Prince-Admiral raised his chin. “It is a sad fact that brutality often begets brutality. The New Republic, which in its infancy desired freedom from oppression for all, now has grown into a monster that oppresses those who oppose it, just as the Empire tried to do to them. To the New Republic there is no place for neutrality, there is no chance for others to find their own path to freedom. This has always been my desire.

“We have been through a savage civil war in this galaxy, with its horrors all fresh in our memories. There is not one of us who has not looked back and in perfect hindsight suggested that if I had acted here or there, perhaps, just perhaps, the pain and suffering of billions could have been averted. The brave act of standing up to tyranny could have smothered it at its birth instead of requiring its execution at the height of its power.”

The holocam closed in on Krennel’s face. “The New Republic’s tyranny is in its infancy. Oppose it now and we need not shed the blood of billions. The people of the Hegemony will fight to preserve our freedom. We invite all those who pledge themselves to liberty to make a stand and join with us, so the sacrifices made in overthrowing the Empire will not be tarnished by the rapacious predation of the New Republic.”

The image slowly faded and Gavin found his flesh puckering. He shook his head, then frowned. “Anyone else get the feeling, even for a second, that we’re on the wrong end of this war?”

“Sure,” offered Inyri Forge, “for about as long as it took me to remember the locals trying to shoot my X-wing down.”

The round-faced Myn Donos raked his fingers through his black hair. “I think Krennel would argue that they were just trying to defend their planet against our attack. We were the aggressors.”

“And well we should have been.” Inyri gestured toward where Krennel had been standing. “If we had not come here and someone hadn’t tried to kill Corran, we would not have found that lab. A year from now, or two, Krennel could show up over Coruscant with his Death Star and cause a lot of trouble.”

Myn held up his hands. “Hey, I’m not saying Krennel is right, but I do think there will be plenty of folks who will be given cause to wonder.”

Asyr shifted from beneath Gavin’s arm and sat forward on the couch. “Humans, you mean, Myn.”

“Not necessarily. Take the Bothans, for example.” Myn nodded in her direction. “You’re a sophisticated people who have sacrificed much to help the Rebellion. You’re politically astute, have colony worlds and a thriving economy. What if an indigenous people of one of those colony worlds decides it wants the Bothans gone and the New Republic decides to back this independence movement—largely because of a vote organized among species who don’t care for Bothan politics? You Bothans would immediately be put into the same situation some humans might be feeling squeezed by right now.

“And there are humans who saw the blacker depths of the Emperor’s heart, too. One of the Wraiths came from Toprawa. The Imps reduced them to puling animals. Folks might wonder why we’re not liberating them instead of fighting over worlds that haven’t asked for our help. I mean, I have no more love for Krennel than the rest of you, and I do think he has to go down, but using the idea of Pestage’s murder as justification is rather thin.”

Gavin shook his head. “Myn, if I hear you right, you’re suggesting that because the New Republic says one thing, and Krennel says the exact opposite, most people will wonder if the truth isn’t really somewhere in the middle?”

“Right. They have cause to wonder who’s right.”

Tycho stood. “It’s called the gray fallacy. One person says white, another says black, and outside observers assume gray is the truth. The assumption of gray is sloppy, lazy thinking. The fact that one person takes a position that is diametrically opposed to the truth does not then skew reality so the truth is no longer the truth. The truth is still the truth.”

He nodded slowly. “The truth in this case is simple: Krennel is an unreconstructed Imperial who has been shown in the past to have a penchant for cruelty and murder. We’ve found a lab that indicates he might be trying to build a new Death Star-type station, and maybe that’s as far as it’s gone. The fact that we don’t know means we have to keep checking, keep pursuing. Even if Krennel’s right, he didn’t have anything to do with this lab, I don’t doubt for an Imperial minute that he’d use such a station.”

Inyri raised an eyebrow. “Even after what he said about his friend from Alderaan?”

Tycho snorted lightly. “I attended the Academy at Prefsbelt Four well after the two of them. Krennel’s name appeared on a few trophies for unarmed combat. Kepporra was supposed to have been some engineering whiz. I don’t see them being the best of friends, but even assuming they were, it would take more than a tear to make me believe Kepporra’s death had that much effect on Krennel.”

Inyri folded her arms across her chest. “Do you really think you can judge what went on in Krennel’s heart based on one holocast?”

“Nope, just going by what I know of him in the past. He strafed a crowd at Axxila and murdered Pestage on Ciutric.” Tycho’s eyes narrowed. “More telling, though, is the fact that he didn’t leave the Imperial service until four and a half years after the death of his friend. Alderaan’s destruction caused me to defect immediately, but you’d expect that because I’m from Alderaan. Others took longer to come over, a month, a year, a couple of years, but eventually they did. Krennel remained with the Empire even after the second Death Star’s destruction and only left when he was able to usurp Pestage’s Hegemony. Someone with that track record only cares for himself.”

Gavin let Tycho’s words sink in and in them found a truth. In the whole of his three and a half years with Rogue Squadron, the emphasis had always been on helping others. It didn’t matter how difficult the mission was, they went out and did it because they were making life better for someone, somewhere. Sacrificing our futures so a bunch of other folks had their own futures secured always seemed like a solid bargain. Krennel and people like him never would see it that way because they saw themselves as more important than anyone else.

Which is why we have to stop him.

Gavin ran his hand down over the fur on Asyr’s spine. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but it seems to me that Mon Mothma’s announcement and Krennel’s answer means that having evidence of this station’s existence is going to be very important. I figure we’ve got a bunch of snoop-and-scoot missions in our future.”

He stood and stretched. “It’s about time for me to run some brush-ups on piloting a T-Six-Five-R, so I’m heading down to the simcenter. Anyone else wants to join me, I’d love the company.”

18

Iella Wessiri shifted the toolbelt on her waist so the hydrospanner banged along her right thigh instead of against the back of her leg. The toolbelt, duraplast helmet, and gray-and-blue striped coveralls completed a disguise that started with her dyeing her hair jet black and putting in bright blue contact lenses. Everything worked together perfectly to make it appear as if she were a worker for Commenor Holocom, which was a common enough sight to let her pass unnoticed.

Mirax, on the other hand, had colored her hair a bright red and had donned a red business suit with black blouse beneath it, which attracted a lot of stares. She carried a datapad in her left hand and used a stylus in her right to point Iella this way and that, giving anyone watching the impression that she was Iella’s supervisor making a quality-assurance run with her. The situation clearly pleased neither of them, as was evidenced by muttering on the part of both parties.

Various and sundry sapient characters on the street gave both of them a wide berth.

Iella had wanted to head out to Commenor within three weeks of her conversation with Mirax, but Corran’s discovery on Liinade III had given New Republic Intelligence a brand-new focus. She’d spent the better part of a month pouring over data on Krennel’s Hegemony worlds, looking for a possible shipyard for the Pulsar Station. She hadn’t been able to pinpoint one, and sincerely doubted one existed, but the lack of data on some of Krennel’s worlds disturbed her.

The world’s pacification gave her a bit of a break, so she and Mirax headed out for their mission to Commenor. Their first stop had been the Errant Venture, the Imperial Star Destroyer Mirax’s father had won from the New Republic for his role in the liberation of Thyferra. There Mirax had talked Booster Terrik into using the ship’s facilities to manufacture fraudulent documents to get them into Commenor, and Booster had even managed to find them passage to the world with another ship. Iella had reluctantly agreed with Booster that the Pulsar Skate was too well known a ship to get them onto Commenor unnoticed.

They entered the lobby of a large office building and paused at the holodirectory. With the air of a bored executive, Mirax punched up the data for the offices of Wooter, Rimki, and Vass, Attorneys at Law. The directory noted the offices were on the eighteenth floor and closed for the weekend, but Mirax punched a button to summon a turbolift to carry them upward.

“The offices are closed, Supervisor. They’re not working on the weekend, as we shouldn’t be.”

Mirax spitted Iella with a hard stare and poked her in the shoulder with the stylus. “If you had not cross-melded two lines, we wouldn’t be working on the weekend and they could be.”

One member of the janitorial staff, a Trandoshan, winced, while two insectoid Verpines just waggled antennae at each other. Iella trailed after Mirax rather dejectedly, keeping her eyes cast down at the ground. Wordlessly she entered the turbolift and the doors closed behind her.

Mirax ran her hand over the wooden wall paneling. “Genuine, not some fiberplast substitute. Very stylish and very expensive.”

“Easy to do when you’re on an Imperial expense account.” Iella slowly shook her head. “If Mem Wooter hadn’t decided to get greedy, he could have been in the clear.”

Mirax smiled and curled a scarlet lock of hair behind her left ear. “I thought you were the one telling my father that snatching Wooter and sweating facts out of him couldn’t be done because we weren’t sure he was involved. I thought you were reserving judgment.”

“Well, I was.” Iella shrugged uneasily. “Fact is I’m as bad as Corran in resisting suggestions your father makes.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Okay, maybe I’m not that bad.” She laughed lightly. “After spending years hearing horror stories about him, though, I’m not comfortable doing what he suggests. This is especially true when it comes to the realm of crimes against a person.”

“And what we’re going to be doing is different?”

“Crimes against property, big difference.” Iella hooked her thumbs through her toolbelt as the lift stopped and the doors parted. “I tell you, Supervisor, they made unauthorized repairs to their own line that caused the problem.”

“The problem was unauthorized lum consumption, Splicist.” Mirax led Iella down the hallway to the double doors with the firm’s name emblazoned on them in gold Aurebesh lettering. She knocked firmly on the door, then waited. Under her breath she commented, “Looks like a Kambis Ninety-Four-Hundred lock. Not bad.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Iella fished a square packet from a toolbelt pouch. The device fit neatly in the palm of her hand. With a flick of her thumb she turned it on and a slender tab the thickness of a keycard snapped out on one of the long sides. She flashed it down through the keycard slot once quickly, then twice more. On the third try the door clicked open.

Mirax blinked. “How did you …?”

Iella shrugged. “Whistler could have opened this door.”

“So could I, but folks would have heard the blaster whine.”

Iella ushered Mirax into the office foyer and closed the door behind them. “Intel has some interesting toys. Set it for the lock type, flash through once to blank the current code, a second time to set a new one, and a third to open the door.”

Mirax smiled. “Know where Cracken gets those things?”

“I doubt he’d want you having one.”

“Hmmm, then I guess a brisk trade in them would be out, too.” Mirax looked into the office. “Then again, if this office is any indication, working for the Imps might be far more lucrative.”

Iella couldn’t argue with Mirax there. The office entry-way had halfwalls topped with turned wooden pillars that upheld a reflective silver ceiling. A massive desk crossed the foyer. Off to the right a number of very comfortable-looking chairs surrounded a table in a small waiting area. Off to the left an open doorway led back into what, on the blueprints for the office, had been the research center, file room, utility closets, and small food prep station. Back behind the desk stood three doors to the partners’ offices.

Iella inclined her head toward the open doorway. “File room first, then Wooter’s office. If there is evidence here, we’ll find it.”

In reviewing the evidence collected from the raid on the Xenovet facility, Iella had realized there was very little at the actual site that hadn’t been gone over. She stepped back from the physical evidence and began to examine the environment in which the facility had been located. The presence of the Xenovet site was indeed a physical fact, but the circumstances surrounding its use were not. The prisoners had said that they thought they had been in that facility for years, but that conflicted with the history of the site according to area residents.

Or, if the prisoners had been there during that time, the Imps also ran the breeding business as a cover.

In widening her search for details concerning the Xenovet facility, Iella ran across a local attorney named Mem Wooter. Wooter had made a living during the Imperial era by acting as counsel for thieves, glitbiters, and other lowlifes being prosecuted by Imperial officials. The cases were unremarkable and Wooter got them assigned to him under the Imperial pretense of having a defense representative for all prisoners. He seemed good at making deals for clients and not pushing things where the Empire’s evidence in the case was especially weak.

While Wooter’s experience had been in minor criminal cases, when Xenovet went into receivership, Wooter had been appointed a trustee for the firm. He paid the site’s expenses out of his own pocket, looking to recoup his losses when the site was sold. The bankruptcy records Iella had pulled from Commenor computers appeared to be very tidy and perfectly in order, which was a marked contrast to Wooter’s filings in criminal cases. Still the bankruptcy court had no problem with him since he made no unreasonable demands on them and documented all his expenses. The case judge had even made a note in a file to the effect that if Wooter spent as much as the site cost, the court might just award him the property and close the file.

Mirax flipped on the glow panels in the file room and looked around at an endless array of shelves filled with datacard boxes. “Well, this won’t be an easy search.”

“No, but we’ll have plenty of time to do it.” The building’s blueprints had been cross-checked against utility records, showing that Wooter’s security precautions began and ended with the Kambis 9400. “No alarms, no surveillance equipment. We’re in the clear.”

Mirax frowned as she pulled one box of datacards from a shelf and set it on the long table running down the center of the rectangular room. “Wooter’s certainly a contradiction. Smart enough to have a good lock, too dumb to have a security system. Smart enough to handle the Xenovet facility for the Imps, dumb enough to display his wealth by taking this sort of office.”

“Makes things seem kind of obvious, doesn’t it?” Iella set her duraplast helmet down on the table. “But that’s what brought us here anyway, right?”

“True.” Mirax plucked a datacard from the box. “Look at this one. It’s the Xenovet accounts.”

Iella took Mirax’s datapad from her and slipped the card into it. “Encrypted, but I’ll make a copy of the data and we can slice it elsewhere.”

A shiver shook Mirax. “It’s too easy. There’s something about this I don’t like.”

Iella handed back the datacard and slipped the datapad into her coverall’s left thigh pocket. “You’re beginning to sound like Corran. Don’t tell me you have Jedi blood in you, too.”

“Worse, my father raised me to be suspicious.”

“Then he didn’t do a good enough job.” A man standing in the file room doorway slipped a blaster carbine from beneath his long nerf-hide coat and leveled it at them. “You’ll be coming with us.” He stepped into the room and to the right, allowing them to see another man similarly armed standing in the office foyer.

Iella slowly raised her hands and Mirax followed suit. Long years of training, first with CorSec and later with the Rebellion, told Iella that to make any sort of move would be suicidal. While she knew that going with the two of them meant the chances of her living through the encounter were slender, in the file room they had no place to run. Shooting us here would be easier than blasting a bantha in a turbolift box.

Mirax exited the room first with her hands held high. Iella followed close on her heels and was impressed that the man coming after her didn’t poke her in the back with the muzzle of his blaster carbine. Doing that would let me know where the weapon is, which might give me a chance to knock it out of the way and attack him. His caution showed he wasn’t some streetlurker out to prove how tough he was. He’s a professional, which means he’s not going to panic. That’s good.

In the hallway outside the office two more men joined the first two. They came out of the next office over—the legend on the door proclaimed them to be accountants. Iella smiled. “You ran surveillance gear in through air ducts so the power hookups would be billed through the other office, not Wooter’s. Nice.”

The first man directed them down the hallway to a doorway allowing access to the maintenance lifts.

Mirax nodded. “Very nice. I bet Wooter didn’t even know he was being watched. Just like Isard to think of that sort of thing.”

The lead man let the comment pass, but one of the others hitched for a second. The leader caught the hesitation as quickly as Iella did and stopped. “You two can keep quiet, or we stun you and carry you out of here in trash bins. Your choice.”

Another of the men summoned the freight lift as they assembled in the little tiled room that looked all the more dingy and cheap because of the contrast with the rest of the building. All four of the men were tall and strongly built—Iella guessed they trained on a high gravity world—but they were different enough that she didn’t figure them to be clones. They could have passed for stormtroopers had they been wearing armor, which made Iella think they were probably Special Intelligence operatives, which were just the sort of people Isard had employed on Coruscant and elsewhere to do her dirty work.

All six of them piled into the freight lift and it descended. The blaster carbines all retreated inside jackets for appearance’s sake, but Iella knew that making any sort of a move in the crowded lift would be insane. Crossfire might get some of them, but we’d be in the middle of it, which would hurt a lot.

The freight lift opened onto a freight dock area at the rear of the building. The scent of rotting garbage assaulted Iella’s nostrils, and a hand in the middle of her back propelled her forward. As she stepped from the turbolift she saw one of the Verpine maintenance workers from the lobby. One of their kidnappers flashed his carbine at the Verpine and the creature chittered and bowed his way into a retreat while the others led Iella and Mirax out into the alley behind the building.

A trio of wheeled trash bins along the right side of the alley narrowed it appreciably, and a pair of twitching legs sticking up out of the nearest open one brought a smile to several faces. Beyond the trash bins Iella saw a pair of black hovercars and assumed they were their destination. The doors on the hovercars opened and two more individuals exited each vehicle. She looked around and saw another alley leading off to the left about halfway down to the vehicles. The main street lay behind them, with two of the kidnappers between her and it. Another street capped the alley back beyond the hovercars.

If they get us into the hovercars, they can take us wherever they want to, interrogate us, and kill us. As desperate as she knew the situation to be, there wasn’t anything she could do about it. One kidnapper led the group, followed by Mirax and a second guard. Iella came next with the last two kidnappers following her. And in this narrow alley, shooting us down would be easy. Still, if I had a diversion …

They’d moved past the first trash bin when the diversion came. The grubby figure of a man who had been digging in the bin skipped and capered his way past them, then asked each of them for money. “I’m not a glitbiter, just something to see me by.” He tugged on the sleeve of the first man in line, then swept on down, grabbing at Iella’s right hand. A snarled command from the man behind her brought a shocked look to the derelict’s face, then he backed off, pressing his spine against the middle trash bin.

“Wish I could help,” Iella said slowly.

“You will, kind lady.” The man lunged for the last kidnapper in line, slamming him across the alley and into the ferrocrete wall on the other side.

The kidnappers all turned as their comrade yelped and the men by the vehicles pointed down the alley toward them. Iella brought her right hand up and slid her index finger onto the trigger of the holdout blaster the derelict had slipped her. She shot the third kidnapper in the middle of his back, pitching him forward into the derelict and last kidnapper. She spun to shoot the second kidnapper, but Mirax had already scythed a booted foot through the man’s knee, dropping him to the ground. Iella shot the first kidnapper in the face, then grabbed Mirax’s hand and sprinted with her toward the hovercars.

The men at the vehicles didn’t fire at the running women—whether from surprise or out of fear of hitting their confederates Iella didn’t know and didn’t care. She cut into the alley with Mirax and started running full out. The alley broke to the right and they raced around the corner, then stopped.

“Sithspawn! Dead end.” Mirax slapped her hand against a ferrocrete wall. “Don’t have anything to blow a hole through it on that toolbelt, do you?”

“Sorry.”

“Never a husband around with a lightsaber when you need one, you know?”

“Yeah, having him or Wedge or all of Rogue Squadron here right now would be rather handy.” Iella slid back behind a fiberplast crate and hunkered down. She aimed her blaster twenty meters back at the alley mouth. “They’re going to be coming and they’re going to be angry.”

“I gathered that might be happening.” Mirax shifted another fiberplast crate around and started piling broken chunks of ferrocrete on the top. Smaller pieces she kept closer at hand.

Iella raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to throw ferrocrete at them?”

“Might not work well, but it will make me feel much better.” Mirax shrugged. “Besides, to hear Wedge tell it, rocks worked for the Ewoks.”

“Well, I’d be happy to see a battalion of those furry little critters right now.”

Down at the far end of the alley the white crescent of a face poked its way around the corner, then drew back quickly. The muzzle of a blaster carbine followed and sprayed lethal red energy darts through the narrow, ferrocrete alley. The bolts left guttering flames burning on the walls.

“I’d rather take you alive,” someone called around the corner.

Iella sighted in on the corner, dropped her aim point thirty centimeters, and moved it a meter out. “Don’t expect us to make this easy for you.”

“I didn’t think that was in the plan.”

Iella watched, waiting for them to make a move. A muffled thump rolled down the alley, but she couldn’t place the sound. The stuttered whine of blaster carbines going off followed, with a hail of red darts tattooing the end of the alley. Two men came rolling and stumbling past the alley mouth, driven forward and picked apart by concentrated blasterfire. They rolled to a stop in the middle of the alley, their clothes smoldering and their bodies limp.

Iella glanced at Mirax. “What’s going on?”

Mirax shook her head. “I have no idea, but I think I like it.”

The two of them remained down behind cover until a chittering filled the alley and two blaster-toting Verpines crouched over the dead men. They poked at one of the bodies, then waved someone else along. They remained over the bodies, looking at Mirax and Iella, but they made no move toward them, nor did they point their weapons in their direction.

An older man with a fringe of white hair on his head and a flowing white mustache ducked his head into the alley and pulled it back again. “Don’t shoot, I’m a friend.”

Iella set her blaster down. “We believe you.”

“Good.” The man stepped into the alley, letting his blaster dangle by a shoulder strap from his right shoulder. “You’re both unhurt?”

“We are.” Iella stood and folded her arms across her chest. “Who are you?”

The man smiled. “Baz Korral. Mirax’s father saved my life in the mines on Kessel, and he asked me to keep an eye on you. When one of my Verpines reported you’d been taken, we moved. Meant to be here sooner, but we came as fast as we could.”

Iella nodded. Verpines were able to communicate via energy waves produced and received by their antennae. They were the perfect species for creating a net of watchers. “Don’t worry, the guy you had in the alley had us covered.” She pointed at the holdout blaster. “He gave me this and got things moving.”

“Someone gave you a holdout blaster?” Korral’s white brows arrowed in at each other. “I had no one in the alley, no one with a blaster.”

Mirax frowned. “The derelict, he wasn’t yours?”

“Derelict?” Korral looked at his Verpines. Their antennae twitched, then one shook his head. Korral looked back at the two women. “The Verps in the main alley say there’s no one there but the guys who took you and their friends.”

Mirax looked at Iella. “Remember when I said this was too easy?”

Iella nodded. “I do.”

“Well, I was wrong.” Mirax shivered. “And I don’t think I like it at all.”

19

Wedge Antilles waited until the last of Rogue Squadron’s pilots sat down, then nodded to Nawara Ven to lower the lights in the briefing room. Wedge hit some keys on his datapad and the holoprojector it had been linked to served up the image of a solar system. At its heart lay a yellow star; seven planets orbited it, three outside an asteroid ring that marked the halfway point between the system’s outer edges and the star at its hub.

“This is the Corvis Minor system. The third and fourth planets are inhabited. The third is a semi-arid world with temperate zones at the poles, and the fourth is a water-rich tropical world. Both produce some exotic xenobiological products that sell as luxury commodities within the Hegemony and outside, though all trade outside the Hegemony flows through Liinade Three or Ciutric. The populations on these worlds are small and benign. A Victory-class Star Destroyer is on station around the fourth planet. It’s called Aspiration, came into the Imperial Fleet right after Endor, and joined Krennel when he installed himself as the Hegemony’s leader.”

Wedge hit another button and the image shifted. The focus moved past the asteroid belt to the fifth planet. Then it zoomed in, revealing a gas giant with a half-dozen moons in orbit. “This is the planet we’re concerned with, or, rather, one of its moons. Astronomical data on this section of the system is sketchy at best, but computer simulations indicate that this moon, Distna, named after the discoverer’s wife, may be hollow. It has half-standard gravity, a bit of an atmosphere, and could be the equivalent of a spacedock. It is possible that Krennel is building his Pulsar Station inside it, or even building the station into it.”

Tycho ran a hand over his jaw. “If the station is actually being built into that moon, the crust will act as far more effective armor than the Death Star ever had.”

Hobbie groaned. “How come we never have these superweapons that could eliminate a problem like that?”

Wedge smiled. “Because, Hobbie, we rely on pluck, courage, and skill instead of capital expenditure.”

“I guess, then, that the rumors of a raise are not true?”

Wedge joined the others in laughter, then cleared his throat to settle them down. “Our mission is going to be a simple one. We’re guiding a T-Six-Five-R into the system. We’ll do fly-bys on Distna to collect what data we can, then we get back out. Because of the gas giant, the various moons, and the asteroid belt, jumping into that area is going to be difficult. We have a limited number of entrance and exit vectors, and they will change, so we need to work up a variety of exit solutions.”

Corran raised a hand. “Two questions.”

“Go ahead.”

“First, who gets stuck driving the snoopscoot?”

Wedge pointed to the Quarren pilot sitting next to Tycho. “For those of you who don’t know him, this is Nrin Vakil. He flew with the Rogues back before most of you joined the squadron. The New Republic has had him on other duties for a while, but he’s good with the recon ship. He’ll be Rogue Alpha for this run.”

Nrin raised a hand and Hobbie reached over to slap him on the shoulder. The other pilots nodded and murmured hellos. Wedge assumed Nrin would be interrogated by the others once the briefing was ended. Given Nrin’s penchant for being a bit dour, they’ll learn that whatever hardships they’ve faced, they were nothing compared to the earlier days of the squadron.

“Your second question, Corran?”

“The Vic around the fourth planet, it’s not going to be a problem?”

“Aspiration isn’t likely to come off-station because of the difficulty of navigating in and out of hyperspace for that sort of micro-jump. Thrawn may have used that sort of jumping to tactical advantage, but landing in here would mean the Vic couldn’t jump back out to defend the inhabited worlds without some very difficult maneuvering. Using sub-light drives to get out there would eliminate the problem, but it would also take far longer for transit than we’ll be in the system. If it does jump in, we use Distna to shield us from its guns, run to the asteroid belt, and hit an exit vector.”

“Other questions?”

Khe-Jeen raised a hand. “No reports of fighters being stationed on Distna?”

“None, but intel is weak on that point.” Wedge sighed. “Look, people, we could run into anything out there, and the sims you’ll be running over the next two days will point that out. We’re not expecting heroics, we’re just there to get some data. Clearly, because we’re going in with a full squadron instead of just a flight for cover on the snoop-scoot, we’re prepared for trouble. Regardless, this is a recon mission, not a raid. We’ll fight what we have to fight and roll on out of there.”

He looked around the room and let the gravity of his words sink in for a moment. “Okay, two days from now we’ll be in the Corvis Minor system at approximately twenty-one hundred hours local time. Within six hours you should be back here, safe and sound.”

Janson laughed. “And in another forty-eight hours we’ll be back at Corvis Minor finishing the job by splashing that station.”

“Probably right, Wes, probably right.” Wedge hit a key on his datapad. “Okay, you all have the briefing details in your datapads. Sims commence in an hour. Let’s work hard at this here, people, so we don’t have to work hard over Distna.”

Corran slumped down outside the simulator cockpit and closed his eyes against the sting of sweat. This last run, the squadron’s third, had been the most grueling. The first recon run at Distna had showed minimal electromagnetic radiation, but occasional spikes above normal background readings demanded a closer look. As Nrin came in on a tighter pass, Interceptors and TIEs boiled out of Distna to tangle with the Rogues. The sim pitted them against a full flight group—half a wing—which left them outnumbered three to one. The faster Interceptors broke runs for exit vectors and herded the Rogues back toward the waiting TIEs.

He opened his eyes as Gavin grunted and slid to the floor. “Nice work there, Corran. You got, what, five of the eyeballs?”

“Yeah, but you vaped two squints and let us make a break for it.”

Asyr dropped down beside Gavin and rested a hand on his thigh. “You shouldn’t have waited around for me, Gavin. You should have just gotten out when you could.”

The young man shrugged. “The scenario was done, we’d gotten hammered. I had nothing to lose.”

Asyr’s claws snagged in the orange fabric of Gavin’s flight suit. “Listen to me, Gavin Darklighter, you cannot treat these sims as games. If my ship is disabled out there, I don’t want you disobeying orders and hanging around to protect me against impossible odds. If I have to die, I want to do so knowing that you continue to live. You have to promise me that’s what you’ll do.”

The Quarren, Nrin Vakil, approached, his boots clicking against the tile. “Do not, Captain Sei’lar, ask of Captain Darklighter such a sacrifice. Do not make him give such an oath.”

Intense pain rolled off Nrin in waves that sliced through Corran. “Voice of experience, Major Vakil?”

Nrin nodded slowly, his mouth tentacles knotting and unknotting slowly. “When I was with the squadron we had another pilot, a Mon Calamari, named Ibtisam. She died on Ciutric. Krennel’s pilots killed her. I killed many of them, but she did not make it.” His shoulders slumped forward a bit, and he leaned against Corran’s simulator. “She and I, we had been friends, close friends.”

Nrin crouched, resting his forearms on his knees, and looked at Asyr. “Had Ibtisam demanded of me such a promise, I would have been destroyed. I could not have left her alone, but I would have hated to violate my promise to her. In your heart, in all of our hearts, we know what the right thing to do is. We have to trust each other that we will do it, keeping faith with each other, and with our mission.”

Corran nodded slowly. Even more daunting than the idea of dying was the idea of surviving the death of others. The death of a friend slashed the spirit and made it that much harder to continue living and fighting. The Rebellion had united everyone in the pursuit of a future that would be bright for all, but the deaths accumulated along the way dimmed that future.

“Speaking of the mission, you’re a pretty hot hand with the recon ship.” Corran patted Nrin on the shoulder. “You spend a lot of time driving these things?”

“Some, but mostly on training exercises.” Nrin looked down at his hands. “After Ciutric I took a leave from the squadron, to think about things. I realized I couldn’t quit the Rebellion since it was too important a cause. I also realized that I had no desire to fly in combat anymore. That doesn’t mean I didn’t, but I did get a transfer into a training squadron. Training pilots and then sending them away to die meant I didn’t have to deal with the pain of their deaths.”

Gavin settled his hand over Asyr’s. “But you’re back flying missions now.”

“Indeed, I am. The Thrawn threat caused the New Republic to reshuffle their assets …”

“Which landed your asset in a cockpit.” Corran rolled his head around to loosen his neck muscles. “Is this your first recent combat mission? Because you sure didn’t fly like it in sim.”

“I flew in a few battles against Thrawn.” The Quarren shrugged. “I don’t have the desire for bloodletting that I once had. I also know I’m better suited to some missions than others might be. I accept my responsibility.”

“Do you like being back with the Rogues?”

Nrin hesitated before he responded to Asyr’s question. “Yes, I think I do. There is a proud tradition here and I enjoyed being part of it. Getting a second chance to be part of it is rare. Now I can view Ibtisam’s death with some perspective, which allows me to deal with the pain more easily.”

Corran’s eyes narrowed. “And coming back to deal with Krennel, that has to be satisfying as well.”

The Quarren’s tentacles parted enough to display two needle-sharp fangs. “Yes, that aspect was not lost upon me.” Nrin stood, then offered Corran his hand and pulled him to his feet. “In the old Rogue Squadron we’d often discuss these runs over a mug of lum. Is that behavior still suitable?”

Corran stretched. “Drinking? Rogues?”

Nrin blinked. “Have things changed that much?”

Gavin laughed. “He meant to ask ‘Drinking lum?’ Nope. More lomin-ale these days.” He climbed to his feet and gave Asyr a hand up. “Lead the way, Major, and you’ll see that some Rogue traditions live on very strong.”

Wedge glanced through the numbers hovering above the holoprojector pad. “I don’t know, Tycho. I don’t like the losses we took in that last run. Five pilots lost.”

Tycho, who wore his black flight suit unzipped to his navel, scratched at his throat. “They jumped us with thirty-six fighters and we blasted twenty-five of them apart. Nice kill ratio, and Nrin’s snoopscoot got away with its data intact. I don’t like the results of the exercise, but the performance wasn’t bad.”

Wedge sat back and tapped a stylus against his right cheekbone. “You’re right, we performed better than a computer projection would have had us doing; which means we’re capable of performing the mission within acceptable parameters for a worst-case scenario.”

“ ‘Within acceptable parameters for a worst-case scenario’? Feeling a bit feverish there, Wedge?”

“Would it get this mission scrubbed?”

“Probably not.” Tycho frowned. “What’s with the phrasing?”

Wedge tossed the stylus at his datapad. “Missions are being evaluated on a risk basis to determine if we go or don’t go. We’re only allowed casualties within acceptable limits lest folks in the New Republic think too much blood is being shed for too little gain.”

Tycho’s jaw dropped open, then he snapped it shut again. “Um, for us pilots, the acceptable level of blood being shed is zero, right? Especially if it’s our blood.”

“That’s my thinking, yes. As nearly as I can tell, losing Rogue Squadron would be a negative for the New Republic, and I’m certainly in favor of them doing everything to preserve our lives. Balancing our lives, though, against the discovery of a superweapon I think is rather short-sighted of them.” He shook his head. “I mean, you and I have survived Death Star runs before, but we had a bit more help than just the other Rogues.”

“Right, but this is just a recon run. We’re not being asked to take the thing out, just to see if it’s there.”

“And if Janson’s prediction is correct, that mission will be next.”

“And when was Janson ever right with one of his predictions?”

“Well, I can’t argue with you on that point.” Wedge hit a couple more keys on his datapad and the numbers hovering in the air collapsed in on themselves. “There we go, that’s it, I’ve just sent Command confirmation of our orders and mission specs. Unless we uncover some serious problems in future sims, we’re locked in. We pull a quick swing through Corvis Minor, get out again, and await orders from our masters.”

Tycho stood and stretched. “Back to the simulators, then?”

“Yeah. That worst-case scenario, I want to run it again.” Wedge nodded solemnly. “I want to run it until it becomes Krennel’s worst case, not ours.”

The order confirmation memo that Wedge fed into the Rogues’ computer on Liinade III was shoved through an encryption program and then dropped into the queue for routing through the HoloNet. Once into the HoloNet, the message traveled all but instantaneously to its desired destination, then was decoded and sent on to Admiral Ackbar.

During that process, as the message entered the queue and as it worked its way through the computer network on Coruscant, copies of it were created and appended to other information transmissions. They shot off through the Holo-Net to a different destination where the masking messages were discarded and the Rogues’ message was decoded, compared to the New Republic’s decoded version, and transmitted to a holoprojector for display.

Shrouded by the shadows of her sanctum, Ysanne Isard sat back and steepled her fingers as she reread the simple text message glowing green in the air above her holoprojector. “ ‘Corvis Minor, the moon Distna, 2100 hours local, two days time.’ Splendid, better than I could have hoped. Now I have Rogue Squadron exactly where I want them.”

20

Mirax waited at the base of the shuttle’s gangway and gave Baz Korral a warm hug. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for us. Getting us out of that bind, and finding me that deal on those Alderaanian statuettes. They’re exquisite. If you find more, I have a number of clients who will take them off your hands.”

“I’ll see what I can do to get more.” Korral smiled broadly, then looked past her. “Booster, you look more fit than ever. Running this ship must agree with you.”

Mirax’s father, who towered over Korral and out-massed him by being fit rather than fat, boomed a hearty laugh. His left eye, a mechanical replacement, burned red, while his brown eye reflected his joy at welcoming the shuttle to the Errant Venture. “The profit margin agrees with me, though the overhead does not. Good to see you again, Baz; and you, Iella.”

He held his arms wide open for Mirax, but she poked a finger into his breastbone. “I don’t think I’m talking to you, Father.”

Booster winced. “That formal, and that tone? What did I do?”

Mirax narrowed her brown eyes and folded her arms over her chest. “You had Baz watching us, that’s what.”

Her father looked confused for a moment. “But having the Verpine watch you and report on what was happening saved you from being taken away and killed.”

Iella shook her head. “Booster, just leave it alone.”

“No, just wait a minute there, Iella. Mirax is my daughter and I feel some responsibility for her safety.”

Mirax looked at Iella. “He’s following the script, isn’t he?”

Booster’s head came up and his eyes slitted. “Script? You two discussed how this chat would go?”

Iella nodded and tried to pull Booster away, deeper into the Imperial Star Destroyer’s aft docking space. “We did, and you’re following it too closely for my comfort.”

He slipped his arm from her grip and posted his fists on his hips. “You have a problem with my having Baz watch you, Mirax?”

She studied her father for a moment, all tall and defiant, and felt years slip away. When she was a child he’d been her hero. He told great stories and lived large, talking to her of places she’d only visited in dreams. After her mother died, Booster used to take Mirax with him in the Pulsar Skate on any runs that he deemed safe. When she couldn’t go with him, he left her with friends—including Wedge Antilles’s family prior to the death of Wedge’s folks. As a child she had worshiped her father and felt safe because he had been there to take care of her and protect her.

Then Hal Horn caught up with him and Booster was sent to the spice mines of Kessel for five years. Though not yet legally an adult, Mirax took command of the Pulsar Skate and built her own business. Instead of hauling highly illegal cargoes for next-to-no profit margin, she specialized in exotics for which people paid a great deal. Her father’s reputation, and a certain amount of sympathy for his current situation, had given her a legitimacy and entrée into the shadowy side of the Empire’s economy, but she quickly made marks for herself and earned respect in her own right.

In short, while her father was on Kessel, she grew up from being his daughter into her own person. But he never saw that. I don’t know if any father would, but I know mine didn’t. Even after leaving Kessel he hadn’t gotten in touch with her, and only a chance meeting a couple of years earlier on Tatooine had reunited them.

She purposely kept her voice soft, but she met his hard stare without flinching. “You’re going to want to think a lot about what I’m going to say, Father, and that means you’re going to want to listen, then walk away to think. If you don’t, you’re going to get into a discussion you won’t like and one you will lose. And you’ll lose more than just the argument.”

Booster slid his hands around to the small of his back. He glanced serenely around the Errant Venture’s bay, nodding to a few people, waiting for the pace of activity to pick up again. He then nodded to his daughter. “Go ahead.”

“I’ve never had any complaints about having you as my father. Your getting tossed into the spice mines didn’t bother me. Your gruff bluster about Corran did grate a bit, but I understood. I have been overjoyed that you’ve come back into my life, and I’m very proud that you have the Errant Venture and are making it work. I’m proud to be your daughter, but I’m also more than your daughter.”

Mirax turned back and patted Baz Korral on the arm. “Yes, having your friend keep an eye out for us did get us out of trouble. By the same token, for all we know, the presence of his Verpines in the building alerted the bad guys to something unusual going on. They might have been thinking Baz here was planning some sort of raid of his own, so they set a trap and we fell into it. While he did pull us out of trouble, it could very well be your meddling that got us into trouble.

“And, look, I know this isn’t a male-female thing—though I do know you wouldn’t have alerted Baz if Corran were going to Commenor on the same mission we were.”

“True enough.” Booster’s expression tightened. “I’d have tipped the enemy he was coming.”

“And break my heart? Thank you, Father.”

“Mirax, you know I don’t mean anything by that …”

“No, Father, you don’t see that by making such cracks you show you don’t trust my judgment. You don’t trust my choice of husband, and you didn’t think Iella and I could handle ourselves on Commenor.”

Booster frowned. “But you came here first, looking for help to get in.”

“Right, and if we needed any more help, we would have asked.” Mirax took a deep breath, then let it out in a sigh. “Father, I’ve grown up. I’ll always be your daughter, but I’m not your little girl. I’ll accept your help when I need it, seek your counsel when I need it, and even listen to you when I don’t, but I don’t want you sneaking around behind my back to do things that you think need to be done. What would have happened if Iella and I spotted Baz’s Verpines, decided they were part of the enemy, and killed them? If you have concerns about what I’m doing, let me know, and I’ll decide what to do about them. And if I need you to help me, I’ll ask, no problem. Do you understand?”

Booster’s face remained a hard mask for a moment and Mirax knew she’d hurt him. Her heart ached and her stomach collapsed in on itself, but another part of her felt buoyed and free. The only problem with growing up in someone’s shadow is that when you grow beyond it, everyone but the person casting the shadow can see how much you have changed. She reached a hand out toward her father and fought to control its trembling.

Booster cleared his throat, but kept his hands at the small of his back. “I can think a little bit faster than you probably imagine possible, Mirax, and I do know how to listen. I could tell you what billions of parents have told their kids: You’ll always be my child, and I’ll always worry about you. Thing is, you know that. How I deal with it may not always be right, from your point of view. But, in this case, you are right, I could have gotten you and Baz and Iella in trouble by asking him to do what I did. That won’t happen again.”

He reached out with his right hand and took hers into it. “You have grown up, and I know that. I’m proud of you. You can’t know how it pleases me when people come here and identify me as ‘Mirax Terrik’s father.’ It hurts a little, sure, and too much of it can be irritating, but I’ll get used to it. And it will make me work harder to earn back my infamy.

“Thing of it is, Mirax, the five years I spent on Kessel were years I can’t get back. You went from being my little girl to the woman you are now, and I never got a chance to get used to that idea. Don’t know if I ever will. Don’t know if I would ever want to. I figured I’d delay trying until I had no choice. Delay’s over.”

Mirax let Booster draw her into a hug, and she clung to him tightly. She said nothing and took refuge in his warmth and familiar scent, then let the vibrations of his low chuckle run through her. She rubbed her hands along his back, then slipped from his arms and looked up at him. “What’s so funny?”

“I was just thinking that I knew a heck of a lot less about parenting than I did smuggling, but did better at parenting than I would have ever imagined.”

Mirax smiled. “Just like you to take credit for the quality of the cargo when all you did was haul it around.”

Booster withdrew, a mock look of shock on his face. “Surly children are never pleasant.”

“That’s all well and good, Booster, but we have other problems to deal with.” Iella held up a datacard. “Before we got taken we copied an encrypted file onto this datacard. I need to slice it open and run it down, now. In addition, we have the identification cards for all the men Baz burned down. We need to check them to see if we can determine who they were and who they worked for.”

Booster nodded. “Not a problem, we can get started after I treat all of you to dinner here on the Diamond level. After all you’ve been through, you must want something to eat.”

“We’re hungry, yes, Father.” Mirax nodded, then moved over beside Iella and headed toward her father’s office. “We also have work to do, important work. That datacard will confirm for us whether or not someone is setting a big trap for Rogue Squadron. No matter how good the meal, I’m not interested in delaying our work.”

Booster turned, flung his arms wide, and settled around the shoulders of both women. “No, no indeed, no delay will be acceptable. Come, ladies, the resources of the Errant Venture are at your disposal, and I am at your service. Whatever you want or need you shall have, and anyone looking to ambush Wedge and his friends will have more trouble than they could ever expect.”

Mirax stared at the data readout hovering in the air above the desk Iella had been given. Her father had provided them a suite of rooms on the level above the Diamond level. It was not as opulent as the luxury level below it, but it was quiet and traffic was restricted. I didn’t even know it existed, but most of the other times I’ve been here I’ve been passing through or with Corran. That her father would keep a level hidden from her husband rather amused her.

The data did not. “Okay, let me see if I have all of this stuff straight. The financial records from Wooter’s office indicate that payments were made through financial institutions located in the Corvis Minor system.”

Iella swept a lock of golden brown hair behind an ear. “That’s what it comes down to. The files your father has on this ship—both old Imp intel files and new stuff that he buys—make it look like the payments were part of an intel op, which would make sense. The money was being paid to house prisoners from the Lusankya, so it must have come from some resources Isard had hidden away.”

“Okay, I’m with you there.” Mirax pointed at a second set of data. “Now here you’ve matched dust samples laminated on the identification cards of the men in the alley with traces of mineral content from the bones of the prisoners dug up on Commenor.”

“Not exactly. The forensics tech worked up a profile of soil composition needed to accomplish the decay and leave the correct trace elements on the bones. It matches the dust on the ID cards. Those two samples also match a planetoid in the Corvis Minor system: Distna, a moon orbiting the fifth planet in that system.”

“Which is where you think the Lusankya prisoners are being housed.”

Iella shook her head. “That’s where I think someone—Isard—wants us to believe they’re being housed. I think they’re bait to get Rogue Squadron there and into a trap.”

Mirax stood, a chill running through her. “We have to tell them.”

“I tried. I tried the direct route and sending information through New Republic Intelligence. No reply.” Iella hit a key on her datapad, killing the holographic datafeed. “I also spoke with your father, and that’s why we entered hyperspace.”

Mirax’s comlink squawked. “Mirax, this is your father. Please join me on the bridge.”

“On my way. Iella is coming, too.”

“Good.”

The two of them raced to the turbolift and ascended to the bridge. The lift opened and they stalked out to join Booster where he stood before the large viewport. Below the catwalk a variety of ship’s officers carried out their duties. Beyond Booster the Errant Venture’s bow sailed through a white tunnel of light.

Booster’s expression appeared as grave as Mirax could ever remember seeing it. “Getting into Corvis Minor around the fifth planet will be difficult for a ship our size. Had we not been coming from Commenor, the trip would have taken another twelve hours. As it is, we will arrive at twenty-two hundred hours local time in a pole-to-pole orbit over the gas giant. My helmsman, Hassla’tak, says Distna will be in our forward arc for fifteen minutes if we do nothing.”

Iella glanced at one of the duty stations down below. “Are all your guns operational?”

“Enough are. I have a squadron of uglies and two assault gunboats to keep us safe, and we do have an exit vector within five minutes of our arrival. I’m not worried.”

I am. Mirax reached out with both hands, grabbing her father’s shoulder and Iella’s hand. “The fact that we got here so easily from Commenor, does that suggest even more strongly we’re looking at a trap?”

Booster snorted. “Sure, but the sort of trap that would catch a squadron isn’t the kind that will get the Errant Venture.”

“Ten seconds to reversion.” The Twi’lek, Hassla’tak, twitched his lekku in time with his countdown. “Three, two, one …”

The white tunnel shattered into white needles that quickly resolved themselves into stars. Above the ship appeared the big gray-orange ball that was Corvis Minor V. Lightning played through the clouds in long jagged strings. Directly ahead lay Distna, a dark, rocky ball that looked completely devoid of life.

“Sithspawn!” Mirax stumbled forward to the transparisteel viewport and pressed her hands against it. “We’re too late.”

Some pieces spinning fast, others floating placidly, debris filled the space between the Errant Venture and Distna. Mirax recognized the blown-out ball cockpits of TIE fighters, and their octagonal wings. Melted and twisted twin hulls of TIE Bombers and fragments of Interceptors’ canted wings also hung there. Among them drifted black-clad bodies, some intact, others in pieces, of the pilots who had flown those craft.

She also spotted the shattered hulks of at least two X-wings, and two bodies in the orange flight suits the Rogues wore. As she scanned space for other pieces, she saw debris flare in the distance as it slipped into the gas giant’s atmosphere.

Then one piece of debris slowly tumbled toward the Errant Venture. When she caught sight of it her knees buckled and she slid to the decking. “No, Emperor’s Black Bones, no!”

The S-foil had been painted green, and bore the distinctive markings that left little doubt it belonged to her husband’s X-wing.

She felt Iella’s hands on her shoulders and heard her father’s gruff voice fill the bridge.

“Get recovery teams out there, now!” Booster snapped at his crew. “I want every piece of debris, every body, everything. If there’s a survivor he’s worth a hundred thousand credits. Get it all, now. Reports come to me alone.”

Above Mirax’s outline, Booster’s reflection filled the viewport. “I want to know what happened, who was responsible, then we make them pay.”

21

As his newly repaired X-wing reverted to realspace and the white tunnel of light came apart all around him, Corran Horn finally recalled the first mention he’d ever seen of the Corvis Minor system. It had taken him a while, but he’d had good reason to remember that little detail. Back when escaping from the Lusankya, he’d found a small holdout blaster in a box that was supposed to hold the datacards for a history of the system. I remember thinking then that if a blaster represented the system’s history, it wasn’t a vacation spot.

The uneasiness that memory brought him did not drain away. He checked his sensors and found Three Flight formed up around him. Wedge’s One Flight had the lead and Janson’s Two Flight had swung slow toward Distna. Nrin Vakil’s snoopscoot flew to the rear of Two Flight.

The recon X-wing slowly started to play out a pair of sensor pods connected to the ship by thick cables. They gathered up data to be sorted and stored in computer equipment that occupied all the space that normally would have housed an X-wing’s proton torpedo launchers. The recon ship also did without lasers because the charging coils leaked enough energy to overpower the sensitive probes the ship trailed.

If Nrin gets into trouble he can jettison the pods and run, but that’s about it. Corran keyed his comm unit. “Nine here. Three Flight in and running. Rear scopes clear.”

“Alpha operational. Pods locked in position. Commencing initial run now. Range to target, one thousand kilometers.”

Nrin cruised the snoopscoot past Two Flight and flew it with a very gentle hand on the stick. Corran marveled at how the Quarren pilot put the ship through gentle turns and slow rolls that kept the pods spaced evenly apart. Though the pods were not that large—not much larger than spare fuel pods, in fact—trailing them out behind the fighter like that created all sorts of problems by altering the flight characteristics of the X-wing. While fighter jocks considered themselves the elite—and Nrin had ample kills in his history qualifying him as such—his adept handling of the recon ship showed how skilled a pilot he truly was.

“Alpha here, Lead.”

“Go ahead, Alpha.”

“I am negative for activity from Distna on first pass.” Nrin hesitated for a moment. “I would like permission to come in at five hundred klicks. Storm activity in the gas giant may be masking energy readings from the moon’s interior.”

Tycho’s voice came on the comm channel. “Lead, that close a run will move Alpha and escorts out of quick escape range.”

“I copy, Two. Nine, please take Three Flight up to guarantee our exit vector.”

“As ordered, Lead.” Corran rolled starboard and pointed his fighter toward the gas giant. “Three Flight, we’re holding the door open.”

A series of double clicks on the comm channel confirmed his pilots’ understanding of his orders. They spread out a bit and locked their S-foils into attack position. Ooryl remained in Corran’s port rear quarter, while Inyri dropped into Asyr’s starboard rear quarter.

“Whistler, get me some readings on the storms on that gas giant.” As he gave the order Corran tried to tell himself it was because the information would be useful upon their return to Corvis Minor to destroy the Pulsar Station. The logic of that explanation faded both in the light of the data Nrin would be collecting and the fear beginning to trickle into Corran’s guts. He stared up at the orange ball streaked with gray and shot through with lightning, fearing a vision of the Pulsar Station rising from the planet’s misty depths.

He saw nothing and tried to relax.

Then Whistler hooted anxiously.

Corran glanced at his sensors, then up at the gas giant. Black specs rose up through the clouds, looking for a moment like insects trapped between two panes of transparisteel. Though kilometers distant, he knew what they were: TIE fighters, Interceptors, and Bombers. He keyed his comm unit. “Lead, I have multiple contacts coming up out of CM-Five. Eyeballs, squints, and dupes, enough for a squadron of each.”

“I copy, Nine. We’ve got contacts coming from Distna. Similar numbers.”

Corran’s mouth went dry. Six squadrons! Krennel had deployed a full fighter wing against the Rogues and their positioning meant two things. The first was that the whole Pulsar Station lab was nothing more than bait to lure the Rogues to this place and slaughter them. Corran realized such a conclusion was the height of paranoia, but that didn’t shake his conviction that it was right. Everything he’d seen suggested that Krennel was the sort of commander who would stop at nothing to kill his enemies, and Rogue Squadron had made an enemy of Krennel long before Corran had ever joined it.

The second conclusion he came to was that Krennel had sources inside the New Republic that told him when the Rogue operation was going off. Spies had often plagued Rogue Squadron in the past. Corran had vaped one, Erisi Dlarit, but vaping everyone feeding information to Imperials and warlords would be a difficult task. And a task that would take far more time than we have left to us.

Because of the vast distances in space, the Rogues and their counterparts could see each other long before they could engage each other. Minutes would pass before they would close to effective fighting ranges. Having time to think about what was coming seldom did a warrior any good—and training was meant to take over when thought wasn’t possible. You’re leading Three Flight, Corran. Prep them for what’s coming.

Corran reached out and switched his comm unit to Three Flight’s tactical channel. “Okay, Rogues, this is how we do this. Whistler, designate each of the incoming Interceptors with a unique ID number and squirt three of them to each of us. We’ve got six proton torpedoes and we use them to burn the squints, got it? We engage them at range and pop them, hard. They’re likely to be a bit out in front of the others because they’ll be wanting kills.”

He glanced at his monitor. “Next wave will be the eyeballs. We blow through them and go after the dupes. We want to pull the eyeballs away from our exit vector so Wedge and the others can get out, got it? We mix it up with the dupes and create a lot of targets out there. Call for help when you need it, and let’s slag them.”

“I copy, Nine.” Ooryl’s voice came through calm and strong.

“As ordered, Nine.” Inyri’s voice betrayed no anxiety, but came through a bit subdued.

“Targets logged and firing solutions being prepped, Nine.” Asyr’s reply carried with it a hint of anger at the audacity of Krennel plotting the ambush. “After we finish our targets, we help the rest of the squadron, right?”

“Right, Eleven.” Corran smiled, then punched up the squadron tactical frequency. “Lead, Nine here. We’re prepped to hold the door open.”

“I copy, Nine. May the Force be with you. We’re engaging now.”

Corran glanced at his main monitor. “I copy, Lead. We have contact in two minutes.”

Out in the distance, the flashes of light from the X-wings boiling into a dogfight could be seen as the flickerings of debris sparking against his shields. He punched up a request for data on Nrin’s snoopscoot and saw that it had jettisoned its pods. Shields looked solid and the changing vector data on the ship suggested Nrin was dancing it in and out through the dogfight, offering himself as an elusive target for the enemy.

Whistler beeped as the last fifteen seconds to target scrolled down. Corran dropped his aiming reticle over the distant form of an Interceptor and watched the torpedo targeting box turn yellow. Whistler’s beeping increased in intensity and frequency, then became a solid tone as the box went red. Corran hit his trigger and launched a torpedo.

He immediately punched up his second target Interceptor, but that ship began juking fiercely. He tried to get a lock on the third, but it bounced around too much as well. Either they have early warning systems, or they’re just being cautious.

Other proton torpedoes streaked out from Three Flight and headed toward the incoming TIEs. Two Interceptors winked out of existence, but the rest boiled on undaunted. Corran rolled to port, then pulled back on his stick for a climb that would take him perpendicular to their line of attack. He inverted, presenting his cockpit canopy to them, then pulled back on the stick again and rolled onto a course that brought him in above their flight plane.

The squints began a climb to come up after him, so he barrel-rolled to port and cruised down toward them. He nudged his stick right, boxing one of the Interceptors. The box went red immediately, so Corran pulled the trigger. The proton torpedo shot out and slammed into the squint at point-blank range. It pierced the ball cockpit, then exploded, blasting the Interceptor into a microfine hail of metal, flesh, and fabric.

Corran flew straight through the explosion, then pulled his X-wing up into a tight loop. He chopped his throttle back to tighten the loop even more, then targeted his last squint. The aiming reticle went red and he launched another torpedo. It jetted away on blue flame, then curved up sharply after the Interceptor. The pilot twisted away at the last second, but the proximity fuse made the torpedo detonate.

As fast as the squint was, it wasn’t faster than the torpedo’s shrapnel. A metal storm shredded the starboard solar panels and continued on to hole the cockpit. The ship didn’t explode, but it did begin a slow spiral that aimed it toward the gas giant. Its gravity well is so deep it will swallow that ship whole and pretty much anything else that’s left out here.

An explosion shook Corran’s X-wing and he immediately knew he was in serious trouble. One of the TIE Bombers had nailed him with a concussion missile. The fact that he actually felt the residual effects of the blast meant that his inertial compensator wasn’t functioning right. His rear shield also showed damage, but before he could shift power around to reinforce it, a squint laced his rear shield with fire, collapsing the shield and pouring energy into his upper starboard S-foil.

Corran felt a weird vibration and heard a corresponding whine for a half second before the engine exploded. The squint’s laserfire had melted part of the centrifugal debris extractor, which threw it out of balance and ripped it free of its supports. Parts of it sprayed back through the engine, shattering it and breaking that S-foil clean off. More debris shot out and peppered the starboard side of the fuselage. One huge chunk slammed into the fighter’s transparisteel canopy, spalling off fragments. One of them lashed Corran’s right cheek, cutting him along the bone, then the atmospheric pressure within the cockpit blew the transparisteel panel and all debris out into space.

The personal magnetic containment bubble projector each pilot was issued clicked on immediately, cocooning Corran in a thin layer of breathable air. Even with a full power charge, Corran knew he’d only have a hour or so of breathable air, and the cold of space would kill him sooner than that. He would have expected such a realization would fill him with fear, but he found a calm inside that surprised him.

And allowed him to act.

He slapped his throttle down to zero, which stopped the port engines from pushing him around in a flat spin. Using the etheric rudder he managed to counter the spin. He got himself oriented, with the gas giant below him and the dogfight above, then keyed his comm device.

“Nine is hit, two engines gone. I have power, so if you bring someone in front of me, I’ll shoot them.”

No one acknowledged his call, but he knew all of them had more important things to do. As do I.

“Whistler, are you okay back there?”

The droid blatted harshly.

“No, I didn’t think they would have gotten you. Keep me informed if I have more missiles coming. I’m shifting power to shields now.” A glance at his monitors showed the shields greening up nicely, which meant he could survive two or three more runs by a squint before it took him down. It wasn’t much, but it was much better than being dead outright.

He reached beneath his command chair and pulled out a small metal box. He unlatched it and, from a compartment built into the lid, pulled out a thick duraplast panel. He brushed away the last traces of transparisteel from the broken panel, then slid the duraplast panel into place. It rattled around a bit, but a tube of sealant from the same kit provided a bead of foam that hardened to hold the panel in place.

Corran closed the box and returned it to its place beneath the seat. I don’t think those repairs were ever supposed to be managed in combat, but I’ve got nothing else to do at the moment. The duraplast panel was nowhere near as strong as the transparisteel one it replaced, but it was only meant to hold a single atmosphere in and make the cockpit airtight. It would never deal with laserfire as well as the transparisteel would, but having atmosphere and heat was an immediate concern for Corran.

“Whistler, give me more atmosphere and push the heat.”

When life-support indicators rose enough, Corran turned off the magcon device. Heat hit him solidly, but a shiver ran through his body anyway. “Two engines gone, I’m dead.”

Whistler’s keening tone sliced through his self-pity.

Corran glanced at his monitor and smiled. “You’re right, I still have torps and some lasers. Might be dead, but I can also be a nasty corpse. Get me a readout on the battle.”

The data dump Whistler provided stunned Corran. Three Flight had faced thirty-six TIEs, but that number had already been pared down to twenty-one. Corran had three confirmed kills. The same went for Ooryl and Inyri had four. Asyr had accounted for five and even as he studied the data, another one was toted up as a kill.

Corran ruddered the X-wing around to find her. Her X-wing flashed through the dogfight with a pair of TIEs hot on her tail. She had the X-wing dancing up and down and side to side, letting their lasers slash green bolts wide. In the distance some of the bolts hit other TIEs, and somewhere along her line of flight an eyeball or dupe would catch her quad laserfire. Asyr was flying as he’d never seen her fly before.

Asyr’s X-wing broke hard to port, then immediately rolled up onto its starboard S-foil and cut back along the way it had come. A roll back to port brought her ship back on the tails of the TIEs that had been following her and managed to overshoot her as she pulled the tight turns. A quartet of red laser bolts burned through one eyeball, letting loose a seething golden cloud of energy that devoured the ship.

A little rudder reoriented her ship and let her blast her second TIE. The shots evaporated the fighter’s starboard solar panel. It began a roll that took it high and out toward the gas giant. Asyr made no attempt to follow it or fire again. She rolled right and started a climb right back into the fight.

Which was when her X-wing collided with a dupe. At the speeds the two ships were traveling, there was no chance for avoidance. The shields in front of the X-wing sparked as they hit the dupe first, crumpling the starboard solar panel. They drove it back against the ball cockpit, and shattered the transparisteel viewport. At that point the X-wing’s forward shield flashed opaquely, then imploded.

The X-wing’s nose stabbed into the dupe’s cockpit and lodged deeply. The slender fighter’s nose snapped off about a meter in front of the cockpit. Unspent proton torpedoes spilled out as the aft end of the fighter tumbled up and away from the Bomber. The broken Imp craft continued its flight toward the gas giant, while the remains of Asyr’s rapidly disintegrating X-wing launched themselves up and away from the planet.

“Asyr, do you copy?” Corran dialed up the gain on his comm unit. “Asyr, repeat, do you copy?”

He got no reply from her, but another message blared loud through his comm channel. “Rogues, Interloper and Stranger squadrons are friendlies. Don’t make us defend ourselves.”

“What in the shadows of Coruscant?” Corran looked down at his main monitor. It showed a dozen new contacts, which appeared as red specs on his monitor, indicating they were using Imperial ID codes. He selected one of them as a target and an image of the ship presented itself on his screen.

The fighter had a TIE’s ball cockpit and an Interceptor’s canted wings, but all in a very unusual configuration. The wings had been turned so they canted out, not in as they did on the Interceptor. There were also three of the wings, one mounted above the cockpit and the other two at angles that allowed them to cover low port and starboard. More important, the sensors indicated the ships were sporting shields and had enough power output to support hyperspace drives.

Whoever the new arrivals were, they fell on the remains of Krennel’s pilots with a vengeance. Three Flight had all but evened the odds for the new fighters, which Corran choose to designate as “trips” for their triple wings. The trips let off a volley of proton torpedoes that savaged the remaining Bombers, then they swooped in on the eyeballs. Quad bursts of green lasers melted TIEs ruthlessly. Within five minutes of their intervention, the trips had destroyed all of Krennel’s forces.

•   •   •

Rogue Squadron regrouped on the exit vector, with Corran’s ship limping along. Wedge’s voice filled the comm channel. “I appreciate the fact that you saved us, and I’m willing to accompany you out of here. I even understand the need for comm silence, but I can’t leave without seeing to the pilots who are extra-vehicular.”

“General Antilles, I understand your protest and have logged it.” Colonel Vessery, the commander of what had been identified as two squadrons of TIE Defenders, spoke in strong, even tones. “We’ve made runs looking for survivors, but we find no traces. We have to leave now. Krennel will be sending reinforcements and you’re in no shape to survive another fight.”

The comm channel remained dead for a moment, then Wedge replied, his voice weary. “You’re right. It’s just …”

“I know, General. It’s always been said you were an honorable man.” Vessery’s voice carried compassion with it. “Eight and Twelve, if you will tractor your charges, we can head home.”

A little shudder ran through Corran’s fighter. A Defender latched on to his ship with a tractor beam and would accelerate him to the appropriate speed to make the jump to lightspeed. On only two engines Corran’s ship wouldn’t have made it, though those engines were enough to power his hyperdrive. He slaved his navigation to that of Interloper Eight.

It’s just as well. I don’t think I want to be flying right now. He sat back and shivered. Three Flight had lost Asyr, but the rest of the squadron lost three other pilots. Khe-Jeen Slee had been the first to die, followed by Lyyr Zatoq and then Wes Janson. Corran had a hard time believing Janson was dead, but a concussion missile had blown the back off his fighter and left his body floating in space. All three of the pilots had been people he thought of as friends, but already his memories of them were beginning to fade.

Corran punched up One Flight’s tactical channel. “Lead, is it safe to be going with these guys?”

“I don’t know, Nine. They invited us to travel, but they could compel it, too.” Wedge sighed. “Still, they came along at the right time to keep us alive. Whoever they work for doesn’t want us dead.”

“Yet.”

“Good point, Nine.” Wedge grunted a chuckle out. “Let’s hope we’re in better shape to deal with them when they change their minds.”

22

Prince-Admiral Delak Krennel reveled in the pain evident on Mon Mothma’s face. The New Republic’s leader stood only a meter and a half tall in holo and was being rebroad-cast to him by Isard, but he could still see how much the woman ached as she spoke. The interviewing journalist’s question had clearly caught her off guard, but the answer she gave spoke to her quick wits and the depth of her personal knowledge.

“The question asked was if the rumors of the destruction of Rogue Squadron in the Hegemony theater are correct. As you know, we are prosecuting a war against Delak Krennel and his Hegemony and any comments about ongoing operations stand to jeopardize personnel involved in those operations. I’m certain that none of us here would like to cost the brave men and women of Rogue Squadron their lives, nor put into jeopardy the lives of anyone supporting them in their missions.

“Warfare, as all of us know, is seldom a clean business with crisp, clear results. Rogue Squadron and its leader, General Antilles, are well aware of this fact. Pending further investigation all I am willing to say is that Rogue Squadron was involved in a mission that resulted in an unforeseen set of circumstances. I know you all hope for the best for these brave fighters, and we will provide updates as information is forthcoming.”

Mon Mothma’s figure froze and the holocam on the other side of the connection panned up to frame Isard’s head and shoulders. “There you have it, Prince-Admiral. Rogue Squadron is no more.”

Krennel nodded slowly. Two days previously Isard had given him word that Rogue Squadron was about to fall into her trap. Information from Corvis Minor had indicated that there was an engagement and no word was received from the Hegemony fighter wing that had been hidden in the Distna area to spring the trap. Observers on the Aspiration had little to report and only after Krennel insisted had they sent a shuttle out to the area of the battle. The shuttle found virtually nothing in the way of debris and the Aspiration did report, well after the fact, that another Imperial Star Destroyer had visited the battleground before they sent their shuttle out. The Captain said he had assumed the Star Destroyer was one of Krennel’s on a mission connected with the ambush, so he had done nothing to hail it or interfere with it.

“So, Isard, you do not find it disturbing that we have heard nothing from the fighters you had stationed at Distna?”

The slender woman stroked her sharp chin with a hand, then trailed her fingers down her throat. “A matter of concern, yes. Their silence, and the fact we could find no trace of any ships at the ambush site, means the mystery Destroyer likely scooped up whatever there was left over. What I find intriguing about that is very simple: Aside from the New Republic, the only people running around with Imperial Star Destroyers are other warlords, a pirate or two, and Booster Terrik. Terrik has a son-in-law in the squadron. Since no other warlord or pirate has claimed to have smashed Rogue Squadron, I assume Terrik did the recovery. Anything he learned he would have passed to the New Republic. Since the Rogues faced a foe that outnumbered them six to one, the survival of any of the Rogues would have been broadcast immediately.”

“So you are suggesting that no news from the New Republic indicates that your ambush was wholly successful?”

“I think that conclusion is warranted.”

“What of the pilots of ours who survived?”

Isard shrugged. “I would guess there were fewer survivors than either of us would care to imagine. While your Hegemony troops have heart and a desire to protect their homeworlds, their level of training is hardly up to Imperial standards. Those who did survive probably found themselves under the guns of the Errant Venture and chose to surrender. Terrik probably promised them freedom and money in return for their ships and stories.”

“When you find them, have them slain.” Krennel rose from the command chair in his ready room on the Reckoning and stared out the viewport at the black expanse studded with a rainbow of stars. “The loss of six squadrons of fighters is annoying, even if they did destroy Rogue Squadron. Replacing them will not be easy.”

“Your fighters, or Rogue Squadron?”

“My fighters.”

Isard smiled. “Actually, you will find that replacing them might not be so difficult. Thrawn showed that the New Republic was not invulnerable, and you are proving that they are not as mighty as once had been believed. We have already begun to get inquiries—careful, guarded inquiries—from a variety of groups who realize the Empire is waning and cannot bring themselves to support the warlords. Your battle against the New Republic seems to them to be the last chance to preserve life as they knew it.”

Krennel’s head came up. “Have you had word from Pellaeon?”

“None, my lord, but he will come around. Soon. After your victory.”

“Indeed, after my victory.” Krennel chuckled. “I expect you to keep digging into the New Republic’s affairs and determine if Rogue Squadron is truly gone or not.”

“I shall, Prince-Admiral.” Isard nodded slowly. “I suspect, however, what you accomplish now will occupy more of their time and consideration.”

“It shall.” Krennel waved a hand dismissively at her. “Krennel out.”

Isard’s image faded, but not before a momentary flash of anger arced through her eyes. Krennel knew that dismissing her would anger her, but he wanted her distracted. When she came to him originally, she said her agenda was the destruction of Rogue Squadron. That had been accomplished, which left her needing a new goal. He expected it would be supplanting him. Knowing that, he wanted her to be angry enough to plan a vicious downfall for him—which he would prevent by eliminating her the moment she outlived her usefulness.

Krennel did have to admit she had been very useful. Isard had an understanding of politics that he did not possess. The idea of negotiating with the homeless pacifists of Alderaan had been enough to turn his stomach, but the pressure they put on the New Republic when the world he said he had been intending to give turned out to be Liinade III had been terrific. A variety of sources suggested that a second series of attacks had been delayed by the internecine squabbling within the Provisional Council.

Likewise her handling of the Pulsar Station controversy had been masterful. It sowed distrust between the government and the people. The loss of Rogue Squadron—and Krennel had no doubt that the journalist who asked the question about them was on Isard’s payroll—would further undermine the New Republic’s war effort. Isard had been very effective in fighting the New Republic on the political front.

War may be seen by some as political action carried to the extreme, but I know there is a difference. Krennel turned to watch the Interdictor Cruiser Binder drift up alongside his Imperial Star Destroyer Reckoning. Warfare is a different beast, where power is displayed in its raw and naked form and there is no running or hiding from it. In politics one seeks to bend another to his will. In war the object is to shatter another completely, so neither he nor his will offers further resistance.

“Warfare is what I do best.” Krennel pulled a comlink from his pocket. “Communications, get me Captain Phulik of the Binder.”

“As ordered, Prince-Admiral.”

Phulik’s holograph flashed to life. “At your service, Prince-Admiral.”

Krennel looked down at the image of the portly man. “It is time for you to power up your gravity wells, Captain Phulik. Your gunners will concentrate on vectors five and six. We will cover the rest.”

“Gunnery solutions are already locked in, Prince-Admiral. My people await your command to fire.” Phulik looked off cam for a moment. “Gravity wells coming up, now.”

A slight tremor ran through the Reckoning as the Interdictor’s gravity wells powered up. Their power was sufficient to momentarily override the inertial compensators built into the larger ship. With all four gravity wells online, the Binder now projected a hyperspace mass shadow roughly equivalent to a good-sized planet. Any ships moving through hyperspace in the area would automatically revert to realspace, since the alternative was to smash into whatever was creating the shadow.

Interdictor cruisers often accompanied larger ships on missions because they prevented enemy ships from escaping into hyperspace. Any course laid through hyperspace had to avoid gravitic anomalies, so transit routes were plotted out with precision and, depending upon where bodies were in their orbits around a star, a system could be wide open, or only have a narrowly defined route through it. The advantages of flying through or near systems came if a ship suffered damage, since out in deep space the chance of being rescued was slender. An Interdictor’s presence in a system changed the system profile, requiring new escape routes to be plotted and ships to head far enough away from the Interdictor to escape its gravity well and make it into hyperspace.

Krennel was not interested in the escape of ships in the system, but with the transit through it. The routes that connected Liinade III with worlds outside the Hegemony were few in number. The system in which he waited sat astride one of the routes and didn’t even rate a name: Imperial surveyors had only designated it M2934738. While it did not provide the most direct path from the New Republic to Liinade III, it did allow for a quicker transit than many of the other routes.

The only problem the New Republic had with taking Liinade III was in supplying it and the troops on it. Even before hostilities had ceased, New Republic supply ships began ferrying in a variety of necessities, from medicine to munitions, spare parts to food. The New Republic clearly intended to use Liinade III as a staging area for further operations in the Hegemony, so the buildup continued.

Continued until now. Isard had been correct in noting that a victory against the New Republic would create even more opposition to the war against the Hegemony. A direct assault on Liinade III would prove very costly in men and materials. Cutting the supply line to Liinade III would weaken the garrison and provide him his victory, so, using information from Isard’s sources within the New Republic, Krennel laid his ambush.

The New Republic supply convoy came out of hyperspace in the middle of M2934738. It consisted of a dozen freighters, a Nebulon-B-class Frigate, and two Corellian Corvettes. The two smaller warships drove hard toward the Reckoning, their double turbolaser cannons blazing away, but the Imperial Star Destroyer Mark II’s shields and hull absorbed the damage without significant difficulty. The Nebulon-B Frigate made a run at the Interdictor, with the freighters scattering in its wake.

Krennel’s forward gunners targeted the lead Corvette, a ship called Pride of Selonia. Heavy turbolaser fire crushed the ship’s forward shields, then burned tattered, black furrows along the ship’s hull. Debris and bodies vented into space, expelled by flaming gouts of superheated atmosphere. Heavy turbolaser cannons scattered shots over the bridge and back along the ship’s spine, destroying its communications array. In one terrible swift salvo, the Pride of Selonia went from being a warship crewed by brave individuals to a floating charnel ship trailing webs of congealed metal.

The Frigate Intrepid fired its turbolaser batteries and laser cannons at Binder, but the Interdictor’s shields deflected their fury. Instead of firing back at the Intrepid, Binder’s gunners shot at two freighters, each one making a run toward one of the exit vectors the Interdictor had been told to control. Quad laser cannon fire linked the Interdictor to the fleeing freighters with a stream of red-gold bolts. The laserfire pierced the freighters’ shields and burned through them, leaving each ship a burning hulk floating in an escape lane.

Another salvo melted the front half of the second Corvette, leaving it to tumble out into space. The Reckoning’s ion cannons laced fleeing freighters with blue bolts that sank each in a lightning storm. Shields imploded and components exploded, rendering the small supply ships helpless. Escape pods burst forth from their hulls and Krennel chuckled. Either we pick them up or they die out here. There is no escape for them.

Intrepid again fired on Binder, and with its second salvo managed to punch through a shield and score the Interdictor’s hull. Krennel immediately flicked his comlink on. “Gunners, this is Prince-Admiral Krennel. Break Intrepid’s back.”

The Reckoning’s turbolaser fire concentrated itself on the Frigate’s slender neck, which connected the bridge with the aft drive portion of the ship. Red-gold energy lances stabbed through the shields and drilled deep into the ship’s structure. Hull plates bubbled up into vapor and drifted away while energy bolts disintegrated bulkheads and deck. Crew members caught at the point of assault exploded into flames and died before they were even aware of their danger.

All the energy being poured into Intrepid gnawed at the durasteel support structures, weakening them and making some run like ice under a welding torch. The drive portion of the ship still pushed the massive craft forward, causing the ship’s narrow hull to buckle and begin to telescope. More structures gave way, allowing the drive portion to sheer off the bottom of the neck, which started to pitch the bridge portion higher. The bridge began a long, lazy somersault and—like a flower spilling pollen—escape pods erupted from it and flew away.

Krennel watched and nodded, then even allowed himself a smile. Grand Admiral Thrawn had always maintained that studying the art of a people would give an insight into how to deal with them. What Krennel saw floating in system M2934738 appeared to him to be art, and he very much enjoyed the fact that he had created it. How better to be the artist than to be the one studying the art.

He flicked his comlink over to a channel that would address the Reckoning’s crew. “This is Prince-Admiral Krennel. You have all done very well today. I want recovery crews out there to pick up the freighters we have disabled and bring their supplies to us.” He hesitated for a moment, mulling a point over, then decided to address it in a way he thought Isard would approve of. “I want shuttles to go out to see to the escape pods. Inform the people in them that we are fighting the New Republic, not them. We will take them aboard and return them to the New Republic, asking only their parole. As long as they agree not to fly or fight for the New Republic for the duration of its war with the Hegemony, they will be free to go. Otherwise we will treat them as prisoners of war and house them in accord with all civilized regulations concerning such prisoners. Krennel out.”

He allowed himself a smile, and imagined the praise Isard would heap upon him for his decision concerning the prisoners. She may know politics, but I am learning. When I know enough, I will no longer need her. That day will come sooner than she can imagine, to her regret and my great joy.

23

Wedge Antilles was glad Colonel Vessery remained silent as they walked through the interloper’s base. Wedge didn’t know where they were and respected Vessery’s being tight-lipped about their location. The base looked relatively new and decidedly Imperial, with personnel being almost entirely human, mostly male, and outfitted with Imperial uniforms.

Broak Vessery could have stepped from a recruiting poster. He stood a bit taller than Wedge, with black hair that was beginning to lighten at the temples and sharp, noble features. His grip was firm when they met face-to-face for the first time and shook hands. He chose his words carefully, it seemed to Wedge, and had a nervous habit of picking all-but-invisible pieces of lint from the sleeves of his black jumpsuit.

Wedge walked beside him and realized that he ought to be drinking in more of the base’s details. The two squadrons that had come to rescue the Rogues had more TIE Defenders in them than Wedge thought had ever been manufactured. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that the base belonged to High Admiral Teradoc or even had been set up by Grand Admiral Thrawn. And if that’s the case, I should be gathering all sorts of intelligence here.

The industrious portion of his mind couldn’t shift the weight of his emotions and the numbness he felt inside. He’d lost four pilots in the Distna ambush. While part of him acknowledged that survival rate was miraculous considering the odds they faced, the pilots resisted becoming statistics. Lyyr and Slee had been relatively new to the squadron, but the fact that he identified them by their first names meant they’d gotten past the defenses he usually raised against getting to know new pilots.

Asyr’s loss sent a chill through him. He’d liked her and admired how she had defied the Bothan hierarchy in continuing her membership in the squadron and her relationship with Gavin. Asyr never compromised or backed down from a fight. Her spirit and determination had always pushed everyone in the squadron to perform at their highest level. The pride that the Bothans felt in her exploits meant Borsk Fey’lya and other politicians left the squadron largely alone.

Wes Janson’s death—Wedge couldn’t even begin to think about it without feeling an invisible hand squeeze his heart. He’d known Wes for what seemed like forever. They’d been through everything together since just after Yavin to when the squadron had been re-formed. After the overthrow of Isard’s regime on Thyferra, Janson had joined Wedge in running Wraith Squadron, then had stuck with him during the Thrawn crisis. Though Janson’s sense of humor rankled from time to time, Wedge would have given his right arm to have Janson pop up with a quick “Yub, yub, Commander.”

Vessery looked over at Wedge. “I don’t wish to intrude on your thoughts, but I have two things to say to you.”

Wedge sniffed and blinked. “Please, Colonel.”

“First, I wish my people and I had gotten there sooner. I count the deaths of your people as failures on my part. Traveling through hyperspace seldom allows one to get split-second rescues right, but I should have. If I had trimmed some margins on some of the courses, we’d have been there on time.”

Vessery’s voice came low and sincere, bringing a solemn nod from Wedge. “Thank you, Colonel. You couldn’t know exactly when they would strike, so it’s not your fault. The fact that you did arrive means we lived, and for that I’ll be eternally grateful.”

“You are too kind, General.” Vessery paused before a door. “The second thing I would like to say to you is this: The person you’ll meet in here is responsible for our arrival. Without orders originating from this office, Rogue Squadron would be dead. Try to remember that.”

Wedge frowned. “You shouldn’t believe Imperial propaganda, Colonel. New Republic officers can be very grateful and gracious.”

“Good.” Vessery punched a code into the keypad on the lockplate and the door slid open. He waved Wedge into the darkened room. “After you.”

Wedge entered the darkness boldly, striding ahead for the full length of the patch of light streaming in through the door. When the door closed and cut off the illumination, he stopped and clasped his hands at the small of his back. He heard the scrape of Vessery’s boots on the floor as the other pilot joined him.

The lights in the room came slowly up, infusing an orange glow into the wooden strips that formed the walls, floor, and ceiling of the oval room. The woods had been fitted together with such precision and artistry that the growth rings and grain formed exquisite patterns in which the casual observer could easily become lost. Cabinets built into the walls were faced with great slabs of golden brown wood featuring wonderful grain markings into and out of which the wall designs flowed. While everything remained static, the eye was drawn through an intricate tracery of lines that made the room seem alive.

The desk across from the door had likewise been fashioned of heavily patterned wood and seemed as if it had grown up out of the floor. The back of the chair behind it rose above the head of the person seated in it and matched the wood designs of the wall. It took Wedge a moment to recognize who he was looking at, then that realization tightened his guts and threatened to drop him to his knees.

He couldn’t remember ever having seen her in the flesh, but her image had been burned into his brain during the years after Endor. She still wore the scarlet uniform that had been her trademark, though her hair had gone completely white and her face and figure had thickened slightly. She was still a handsome woman, but had slipped beyond middle age toward becoming a matron.

Any thought that she might have softened was banished by her eyes. One, a bright, icy blue, reminded him of the coldest day on Hoth, when ice screamed and cracked. The other, a fiery red, burned into him, searing his spirit. He’d thought her dead at Thyferra and even though the Commenor prisoners had said they’d seen her, he’d refused to believe she lived until he saw her now.

Wedge’s brown eyes narrowed. “General Wedge Antilles reporting.”

Ysanne Isard stood slowly behind her desk. “You know who I am. It is interesting that we have not met before, you and I, having been foes for so long. I expected you to be taller.”

“I expected you to be dead.”

She nodded. “Defiant, I like that. It makes you an interesting enemy and, I trust, a more interesting ally.”

Wedge blinked. “Me, an ally? After what you did with the prisoners on Commenor, leaving them to starve like that?” He turned to Colonel Vessery. “You can take me away from here now.”

Isard raised her hand. “If you will indulge me, General, I will explain a great many things to you. You owe me at least that much, since I sent Colonel Vessery to save you.”

That remark brought Wedge’s chin up. “After all you have done, the debt I feel to you for saving us is still very small.”

“Of this I have no doubt.” Isard leaned forward on her desk. “After I had taken control of Thyferra and you began your campaign to oust me, I realized that if you succeeded, I wished to rob you of the goal you truly sought: the prisoners from my Lusankya. I decided to scatter them. This was a mission I felt I could entrust to no one—it was one I wanted to handle myself, but I was needed on Thyferra. What I did was activate a clone of myself, lead her to believe she was me, and charge her with the task of scattering the Lusankya prisoners. When she returned to Thyferra with her task complete, I had her killed—or so I thought.”

Isard’s face hardened as scorn entered her voice. “Your assault on Thyferra meant the job was not completed and the clone survived. How and why she was not recognized as me, I have no idea, but she believes she truly is me. She spent the time during the Thrawn crisis gathering the Lusankya prisoners back up and now has them ensconced on Ciutric.”

Wedge shook his head. “Explain the prisoners on Commenor.”

“Bait, for a trap.” Isard shook her head. “She wanted to lure Rogue Squadron to Distna so you could be ambushed, but she did a poor job of layering her clues into the site. She was trying to be too smart and too clever. Mirax Terrik and Iella Wessiri returned to Commenor and discovered the clues she’d left there, but you were already in the Hegemony and involved in the war against Krennel, so the Lusankya rescue became of secondary importance. She never saw that.”

“But we went to Distna because of the Pulsar Station problem.”

Isard smiled and Wedge decided that her smile was not a pleasant thing to see. “Yes, and Krennel’s protestations of innocence sounded genuine because they were. The lab you discovered on Liinade Three was one I had constructed there. I wanted you to go to Distna because I wanted Colonel Vessery to help you defeat Krennel’s people. Without rendering that sort of direct aid to you, you never would believe that I could be your ally.”

“I don’t believe it now.” Wedge’s eyes became slits. “You could have sent an embassy to the New Republic if you sought an alliance.”

She snorted a laugh. “They’d no more have believed it than you do, but you already know things that point to my sincerity.”

“Such as?”

“Such as my ability to build the lab on Liinade Three. That means I have thoroughly compromised Krennel’s security. How? My clone is using the procedures and codes I would have used. In this same way I knew she wanted to ambush you at Distna, so I arranged for you to be saved. As far as the New Republic and Krennel are concerned, however, both forces wiped each other out. This means no one knows you are alive, which is something I also desired.”

Wedge thought for a moment. Isard’s point about having compromised Krennel’s security was right, and she had sent Vessery and his people to spoil the clone’s ambush. Granted, Isard got us there, too, with the Pulsar Station decoy, but the clone’s clues would have been found and led us there in any event. Isard had put together an elaborate charade that had Rogue Squadron dead, and therefore, she had an ulterior motive in mind.

“What is it you want, Isard?”

She sighed heavily and let her head slump forward. “My battle with you, my ouster from Thyferra, and even Thrawn’s unsuccessful campaign to reestablish the Empire has shown me that the cause I held dear is dead. This does not mean I like the New Republic or consider it an improvement over the Empire. I just no longer have the will to oppose it. I want peace. I want to be left alone.”

She heaved her torso up and opened her arms. “After escaping Thyferra I made my way to this place, one of many hidden facilities within the Empire. A General Arnothian was in charge here. This facility is capable of producing TIE Defenders, and Arnothian saw himself as a warlord in training. He refused to relinquish control of the station to me, so he was dealt with. I watched events unfold throughout the Thrawn crisis but chose not to intervene. I realized this place could be a base from which I could continue a campaign of terror against the New Republic, but to do so would be to sully the commitment to the Empire made by Colonel Vessery and his men.

“I realized that for us to be sanctioned by the New Republic, I would have to offer them a grand prize, and offer it in a manner that would not cost them a lot of blood. I decided that prize would be Delak Krennel and his Hegemony. I decided I would put into position the forces that would allow the New Republic to take Ciutric and shatter his power, and I decided Rogue Squadron would be the key to that operation.”

Wedge frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“You will.” Isard smiled and touched a button on a datapad on her desk. An image of a man with a metal prosthesis covering the right side of his face, replacing that eye, and an artificial right forearm and hand burned to life in the middle of the room. “You will recall your posing as Colonel Antar Roat?”

A trickle of ice ran through Wedge’s guts. “I assumed the Roat identity when slipping onto Coruscant to liberate it.”

“I have taken the liberty of updating Roat’s profile to reflect his being in charge of an experimental unit—two full flights—of TIE Defenders. You are in the process of negotiating a deal with Krennel that will bring your force in as part of his troops. You are one of many Imperials offering their services to him. You’ll be able to slip into Ciutric and wreak havoc there. What you did on Imperial Center to free it, you can do on Ciutric.”

Wedge ran a hand over his stubbly chin. “You’ll give us Krennel to get the New Republic to leave you alone?”

“I do not expect public rehabilitation, just a quiet retirement.” Isard smiled coldly. “As for why Krennel, you know as well as I do that he defied my orders in the Pestage matter. I also want my clone eliminated. One of me is enough.”

“I heartily concur.”

“I thought you might.” Isard opened her hands. “You and your people will begin training in Defenders immediately. We will work up a plan of attack that will involve a New Republic fleet. When the attack is set, you will communicate with the New Republic to let them know when to strike. We can’t communicate with them too early because my clone still has some intelligence resources in the New Republic. If there is a leak, the mission will be doomed.”

Wedge nodded, then looked up. “If we refuse to help you?”

Isard arched an eyebrow at him. “Refuse?”

Vessery cleared his throat. “If you refuse, General, then my men will go into Ciutric in your place. Krennel will fall, but not quite so bloodlessly. He has to.” The Imperial pilot rested a hand on Wedge’s shoulder. “Despite our differences, you and I are united in the knowledge that Krennel is a scourge on the Hegemony’s people. He must be dealt with, and with your help, his disposition will bring other warlords in line.”

Wedge felt a shiver run down his spine. I know I can’t trust you, Isard, but I also know that if I don’t go along with your plan, you can kill me and my people, and no one will know you’re out here until too late. I don’t know what your plan is, but I know you have one, and that, for now, is enough.

He nodded slowly. “I hate to think you and I are of like mind in anything, Isard, but the desire to see Krennel taken down seems to qualify. Rogue Squadron is at your disposal. Let’s get started.”

24

Corran Horn rested a hand on Gavin Darklighter’s shoulder, noticing how the dark green of his own flight suit contrasted with the bright orange of Gavin’s. He felt the younger man stiffen, so he gave Gavin’s shoulder a squeeze and slowly lowered himself to a spot on the concussion missile storage crate. “I hope you don’t mind my sitting here, Gavin.”

The younger pilot looked at him with red-rimmed brown eyes. “I’d really rather be alone.”

“I know you would, Gavin, which is why I’m sitting here.” Corran’s left hand slipped from Gavin’s right shoulder and patted the man’s knee. “I remember, back when we were first on Coruscant, you came to me to ask me about Asyr and if things could work between you. You wanted some perspective then, and you need some perspective now.”

“No, Corran, what I need now is grieving.”

“I know.” The bleak pain in Gavin’s voice stabbed deep into Corran’s heart and threatened to reopen the wound left there by his own father’s death. No, now’s not the time for self-pity. “Look, Gavin, there’s all kinds of trite things I could tell you. I could tell you that I’ve been where you are, when my father died. I could tell you the same things that folks told me at that time, that I had to buck up, I had to be tough, because that’s what my father would have wanted of me. And you and I both know, that’s what Asyr would have wanted of you.”

Gavin sniffed and glanced over at him. “You’re right. That’s pretty trite and doesn’t help at all.”

Corran nodded and glanced around the hangar area into which the surviving Rogues had been conducted. The site itself appeared to be vintage Imperial—the Rogues had been in enough captured facilities to know the architectural style. The main difference here was that Imperials were in full force, and three squadrons of TIE Defenders filled the launching racks above the scattered X-wings. The R2 and R5 units milled about together, while the pilots had broken up into small groups, each one dealing with the loss of his comrades and wondering what news General Antilles would bring on his return.

“I know that, Gavin, which is why I’m going to share something with you that I’ve not shared with another living being—except Iella. Even Mirax doesn’t know this.” He took a deep breath and hesitated until Gavin nodded slightly. “You’ve heard how my father died, but not my mother. In CorSec, given what my father and I were doing for a living, we figured that we were more likely to die than she ever was, but she went first. It was a stupid landspeeder accident. A truck was blocking the other lane, some lum-dumb whipped around it and smashed head-on into her. It busted her up badly, too badly for bacta to help.

“My father and I arrived at the hospital as fast as we could, and we were allowed to visit her. We’d been told she had no chance, there’d just been too much damage. She knew that, but she lay there in bed just talking to us about what we’d be doing the next week and month. She wasn’t regretting the fact that she’d not be there with us, but pretty much letting us know that she would be, in our memories and in our hearts. The whole time she was dying, she just went on living. And when she finally closed her eyes, it came as a surprise to everyone, her included.”

Corran brushed a hand across his face, smearing tears away to nothingness. “Understand this, Gavin, the pain you’re feeling right now, it never really goes away. It will always be there, and you can find it whenever you want to, but, in time, the amount it dominates your life will shrink. It will become a small part of the memories you’ll have of Asyr, and the good memories will dominate. You can’t see that now, and telling you this now doesn’t mean much, but you need to hear it to know the sphere of pain you’re in isn’t inescapable.”

Gavin rested his head on his hands, with the heels of his palms grinding into his eye sockets. “It was in the squadron that the first person I actually knew died: Lujayne Forge.”

“I remember.”

“And I remember wondering if I could have saved her. I wonder the same thing about Asyr.”

“You’re not alone. But let me tell you, Asyr was wondering what she could do to save us. She was magnificent out there, Gavin, flying beyond herself.” Corran rubbed his left hand over Gavin’s back. “All of us knew we were in a hopeless situation, but she understood it and rejected it. It was as though she stopped being a flesh and blood pilot and became flight and fight and death all rolled into one. We didn’t fail her, nor she us, but some obscure rule of the universe broke her ship and grounded her back in reality. She was truly stellar and, after that performance, I don’t know that there was any way for her to return to just being mortal.”

Gavin sighed and sat back, raising his face toward the dim ceiling of the cavernous room. “That’s it, though, now, isn’t it? She’s no longer mortal. She joins my cousin Biggs and Lujayne Forge and Wes Janson and Dack and the others on the Rogue Squadron roll of the dead. The Bothans will have another Martyr to celebrate.”

Corran’s eyes narrowed. “And you’re afraid that they’ll take her away from you, right? You’re afraid the Asyr you knew will be forgotten as she’s memorialized?”

Gavin’s lips pressed together tightly, his goatee bristling. His larynx bobbed up and down once, then he nodded, splashing tears down his cheeks. His voice failed him as he first tried to speak. He rubbed his throat, then nodded. “I think I knew her better than anyone and that, with me, in private moments, she could relax. She didn’t have to be a Bothan hero. She didn’t have to be a pilot. She could just be herself. When we talked about getting married, adopting kids, she came alive.”

His voice trailed off and Corran sensed a flash of anger like lightning run through Gavin. “What is it, Gavin?”

He frowned. “She met with Borsk Fey’lya. She didn’t tell me what happened, but I think he tried to make trouble for her about adopting. I think she may have fought as well as she did at Distna in the hopes that no one, not Fey’lya, not anyone, could deny a hero of her stature what she wanted. She would have gotten her way, but now she’s dead, so the point is moot.”

“Maybe your chance to adopt kids with her is gone, but remember what was behind that whole plan: the fact that you’d make great parents. I’m not going to tell you that you owe it to her to continue on and prove her right, but you can bet the Emperor’s Black Bones that I’d rather see you teaching a child right from wrong than any of a billion ex-Imp bureaucrats.”

“Maybe it’s a plan for the future.” Gavin shook his head slowly. “Admitting there’s a future at all is the tough part right now. I don’t really care and I hurt enough that if there isn’t one, it’s all the same to me.”

A fearful bleating from Whistler and the droid’s sudden appearance as he raced around from behind Corran stopped the pilot’s response to his friend. “What’s the matter?”

Clattering after the droid came an Imperial tech with a restraining bolt and a welding rod. “Gotta put a restraining bolt on him. All droids get them.”

Corran shot to his feet. “I can tell you where you can affix that restraining bolt, Huttpuss-for-brains.”

The tech raised a hand and two armor-clad storm-troopers came jogging over, blasters in hand. “You want to get out of the way, Captain Horn.”

“You’ve no idea what I want.” Corran dropped a hand to the lightsaber hanging at his left hip. “You’re putting a restraining bolt on Whistler over my dead body.”

The tech raised an eyebrow. “Over your stunned body, perhaps. I have my orders.”

“Back off, Captain Horn.” Wedge Antilles entered the hangar area and headed toward the confrontation, drawing the rest of the squadron in his wake. “Let’s not make things more complicated than they need to be.”

Corran turned to Wedge, and was pleased to notice that Gavin had risen to his feet and was shielding Whistler with his own body. “General, they want to put a restraining bolt on Whistler.”

Wedge nodded solemnly. “I know, all our droids get them, even Gate.” He held up a hand to forestall comment. “The situation here is complicated, but it’s working in our favor. We’re going to be trained to fly these Defenders, then we’ll be given a back door into Krennel’s capital. We’re dead right now and if we can stay that way—as far as Krennel is concerned—until we’re ready to strike, he will fall and fall hard. What that means, though, is that our droids have to be stored away for the time being.”

Tycho arched an eyebrow. “Hostages?”

Wedge shook his head. “Just more variables than can be controlled right now. They’ll be locked away, safe, out of trouble.”

Corran frowned. “I don’t like it, but if you say that’s the way it has to be …” He walked over to the tech and snatched the restraining bolt and welding rod from the man’s hands, then dropped to one knee in front of Whistler. “Sorry to do this, pal, but it’s not the first time. You’ll get through it.”

He pressed the bolt to the droid’s chest panel, then turned to the tech. “Okay with you?”

“A little to the left.”

Corran made the adjustment, then used the welding rod to fix the bolt in place with a shower of sparks.

The tech pointed a remote at Whistler, hit a button, and the droid shut down. Another button and Whistler was back on, moaning mournfully.

Corran rose in one swift motion and gently tapped the tech under the chin with his dormant lightsaber. “Hey, just because you have the power, don’t abuse it.”

Wedge laid his hand on Corran’s forearm. “Put it away, Captain. The tech here will take good care of all the droids, won’t you?”

“Lock ’em up snug and tight.” He glanced at Corran. “I may not understand your attachment to the droids, but I’ll respect it. We aren’t all heartless monsters.”

“Good.” Corran smiled coldly and tapped the man on his chest with the lightsaber. “Something happens to Whistler and you will be. You have my promise on that.”

Borsk Fey’lya was not accustomed to being kept waiting, but he understood Booster Terrik’s game and decided to humor him. The Bothan Councilor had never before been on the Errant Venture, and he occupied his time studying the ship. He recalled his ire when General Cracken reported that an intact though largely disarmed Imperial Star Destroyer had been turned over to a smuggler who had served five years on Kessel. The idea that a private citizen—an outlaw even—could bully the government into tolerating his possession of a war engine seemed the first sign of impending anarchy. Fey’lya wanted to demote Cracken for his failure to secure the Errant Venture for the New Republic, but the rest of the Council disagreed.

He’d let memory of the ship slip from his mind until the Thrawn crisis. Fey’lya had advocated the immediate nationalization of the ship, but New Republic Intelligence had a hard time locating it. Through Terrik’s daughter, the Council had been informed that Booster would welcome the ship’s rearming and his own commissioning as an Admiral. That idea had been rejected outright. Fey’lya got a degree of satisfaction when Cracken suggested leaking intelligence that would have Thrawn looking over his shoulder for the Errant Venture, but Terrik’s failure to rally to the cause of the New Republic still infuriated him.

And now I am here, but now I have the measure of the man, and a mission for which he is well suited. A quick message from the Errant Venture had alerted the Council to Rogue Squadron’s destruction. Terrik had returned immediately to Coruscant from Distna, bringing with him the debris which was all that was left of Rogue Squadron and those who had killed them. The ship also brought back a sole survivor: Wes Janson, and the body of one other pilot, the Quarren, Lyyr Zatoq. Save for ship scraps, there was no trace of anyone else.

Fey’lya looked out over the docking bay at the variety of ships occupying deck space. Aside from his own Lambda-class shuttle, with two Bothan warriors standing guard at the base of the gangway, the ships present all could easily have been described as salvage. While Fey’lya was fairly certain the Errant Venture’s aft docking bay was reserved for customers who patronized the Diamond deck, the level of deterioration in the forward bay marked how difficult it was for Terrik to keep his ship operational. At least one of the turbolifts didn’t work, and several of the winches that lifted small ships into storage racks were frozen. Terrik’s dream of a ship that would pay for itself clearly had become a nightmare.

“Welcome, Councilor Fey’lya. How good of you to grace my humble ship with your presence.” Booster appeared in the doorway of an office on the main deck and waved Fey’lya into its dim interior. “How may I be of service to you?”

Fey’lya flicked a finger toward his shuttle in a subtle gesture meant to tell his bodyguards to stay where they were. He strode past Booster and into the interior of a small office choked with datacards, cargo crates, enough parts to construct a half-dozen droids, and sufficient personal weapons to hold off an Imperial boarding team. The cloying scent of human habitation caused Fey’lya to wrinkle his nose, but he sat in the one chair that had been cleared of debris.

Fey’lya waited for Booster to take his place behind his desk, but the smuggler vexed him by perching himself on the corner of his desk and folding his arms over his chest. The Bothan smoothed the fur at the back of his head, then glanced up at the man’s face. “I have come to thank you for bringing back to Coruscant as much of Asyr Sei’lar’s ship as you did. The images recovered from her battleroms have confirmed her great skill and bravery in this, her final fight. Bothans everywhere will take pride in what she did.”

Booster nodded solemnly. “ ’Pears she even scraped a TIE or two off my daughter’s dead husband.”

Fey’lya noted that Booster did not refer to Corran Horn as his “son-in-law” and catalogued that fact away for possible use. “Her devotion to her squadron-mates was quite clear. Likewise her devotion to the highest of Bothan ideals. She is an example to the younger generation.”

“Indeed, appears you have another Martyr to hold up.”

“It is a pity you were unable to recover her body.”

Booster leaned back, pressing his hands behind him against the surface of the desk. “When we got there I sent recovery teams out. We found Captain Janson still alive—just barely. Got him into bacta. All the bacta on Thyferra wouldn’t have helped the Quarren. Your Asyr and the rest, I suspect they burned up in the gas giant. Kind of fitting for Rogue pilots—blaze of glory and all.”

“True, but this presents something of a problem because I had a different glory in mind for one of them.” Fey’lya shifted in his chair and studied the talons on his left hand. “I was wondering if you had considered going back to look for more bodies.”

The eyebrow above Booster’s mechanical eye shot up. “Go back into a war zone to a system guarded by a ship better armed than this, to look for bodies that long since have been sucked into a gas giant? I’ve no reason to do that.”

“But your daughter’s husband—”

Booster’s voice dropped into a bass growl. “He’s dead and I’m helping her deal with that.”

“And I want to help the Bothan people deal with their grief, too.” Fey’lya looked up. “The Bothan people hold dear the memory of the Martyrs, but the Imperial troops who killed them also destroyed their bodies. The monument on Bothawui is empty and, because of that, it is diminished somewhat. I wish to see Asyr interred there, and I am willing to cover the costs of an expedition to find her. I really think, if you went back, you would find Asyr’s body.”

Booster frowned. “Did you miss what I said? It’s not there.”

“And I think you missed what I said. I need a body as a symbol.” Fey’lya smiled. “I think a man who is as resourceful as you could find a suitable body, and you would be well rewarded for that search.”

Booster’s mouth slowly opened as he sat forward. “You think I could just find a Bothan body out there?”

“I have the utmost respect for your ability to get things done discreetly.”

“Even if it meant the death of a Bothan?”

“There are bandits and others whose lives will come to no useful end. This could redeem them.” The Bothan smiled. “I would be most generous and grateful. You would find my gratitude very useful.”

“Perhaps I would.” Booster slid from the desk and peered past Fey’lya for a second, then snatched him up by the front of his tunic and hauled him out of his chair. The Councilor struck at Booster’s arms and felt the chair go tumbling behind him. As surprised as he was, it took him a moment to remember his claws could open the man’s arms in seconds.

Booster slammed Fey’lya into a bulkhead with tooth-rattling force. All reason evaporated from Fey’lya’s brain as stars exploded before his eyes. The man hammered him into the wall again, then drove his forehead into the Bothan’s sensitive snout. Fey’lya raised his hands to protect his nose, then felt a heavy fist pound his stomach. Air whoofed from him and he wanted to vomit.

The dim closeness of the office vanished as the man carried him out to the docking bay and tossed him to the deck. Booster towered over him, his fists doubled, and Fey’lya shrank back, pulling himself along the decking for a moment. Then he remembered who he was. He stopped, but still flinched as Booster feinted with a fist.

Booster straightened up and posted his fists on his hips. “I don’t know how your Bothan Martyrs got their hands on Death Star plans, but I’ll bet it wasn’t by asking others to do their wet work for them. It’s pretty evident you don’t think highly of me, my species, or my ship. I won’t say I can’t be bought, but I can’t be bought by the likes of you.”

He lowered his voice. “How you could even dream of sealing some glitbiter away in Asyr’s tomb, I don’t know.”

Borsk Fey’lya felt the hot lash of the man’s words and almost, for a nanosecond, let shame ruffle the fur on the back of his head. I never had Asyr’s compliance with my wishes, and I would have had it from the grave. It would have been for the glory of Bothans. Could that be wrong? Yet before he could frame an answer, his bodyguards arrived at his side and were helping him up. His embarrassment at needing their aid swallowed any shame he might have felt.

Borsk coughed and rubbed at his nose. “You have misunderstood …”

Booster waved away his words. “Oh, I understood you. You didn’t understand me. When I smack someone into a bulkhead and toss him on the deck, that’s me saying he should get his carcass off my ship. The other things, the head butt and the stomach punch, that was just because I don’t like you.”

“Then our business is concluded.” Borsk Fey’lya freed his arms from his bodyguards’ grips and straightened his tunic. “I shall not forget this, Booster Terrik.”

“Never did think you were stupid enough to let this lesson get away from you.” Booster pointed at his shuttle. “Get off my ship, now!”

Booster watched as the shuttle descended from the Errant Venture’s belly and unfolded its wings. “That was a nasty piece of business.”

“That’s one way of describing it.” Iella Wessiri’s heels clicked against the decking as she walked over to him. “Borsk Fey’lya is not the sort of enemy I’d want to make.”

“I’ve made worse.”

“Have you?” She shook her head. “Fey’lya’s the kind who will go after you, after your friends, after your friends’ friends. He knows you know Karrde, so any of Karrde’s associates will be on his enemies list. Through Corran anyone connected with CorSec will be an enemy.”

Booster smiled. “And the downside to that is?”

“You don’t mean that.”

“For the most part you’re right.” Booster frowned. “How is she?”

“Last bacta treatment now. Mirax is with her. Should be there for another two hours.”

Booster sighed. “No improvement in her memory?”

“Of the events at Distna, no. Everything else, including her last meeting with Fey’lya, that’s all fine.” Iella shrugged. “She’s not going to be very helpful in letting us know what happened at Distna, but when we figure it out and go after the folks responsible, she’ll be ready to go with us.”

“And willing to do her own wet work.” Booster watched Fey’lya’s shuttle become a dim speck. “It’s a start, and I bet there will be plenty of wet work by the time we’re done.”

25

Corran Horn saw the Imperial flight instructor vectoring in on him as he entered the simulation chamber, but he didn’t slow or alter his course. He snapped the comlink into place inside the TIE pilot’s helmet and headed toward where the rest of the Rogues stood, dressed in black flight suits. Only Tycho looked natural in it—mainly because he’d always worn black and still had his Rebel battle tabs sewn on the flight suit.

That big, bright Coruscant one really has to gall the Imps.

The flight instructor planted himself in front of Corran. “You’ll do well to be on time, Captain Horn.”

Corran shrugged, sweeping a lanky lock of brown hair out of his eyes. “I knew what time it was.”

“And you weren’t here because?”

He lifted the helmet and showed the comlink to the instructor. “I was checking out my equipment.”

The instructor’s eyes narrowed to brown slits. “There is nothing wrong with the comlinks in those helmets. They’re all preset to the training frequency. You had no cause to adjust it.”

Corran leaned forward, leaving his nose barely three centimeters from the instructor’s nose. “Ysanne Isard is running your operation, which means I have every reason I need to check out every little detail of what’s going on here. Got it?” He’d discovered, among other things, that the comlinks had restricted power so they couldn’t get much outside the Imperial compound. He was fairly certain that the folks in the surrounding city really didn’t have any idea what was going on there, and that they were discouraged from paying too much attention.

The instructor lifted his head and sniffed the air officiously. “Your suspicions are unwarranted, given the objective of your mission and ours. We’re prepping you to be an Imperial squadron that will get in past Krennel’s defenses. We’re giving you the most advanced starfighter in the galaxy to do so. The secret of your death is being maintained so Krennel will relax his guard. Do anything to upset that delicate balance and you could destroy the last best chance at ending Krennel’s reign of terror over the Hegemony.”

“I’ll remember that.” Corran winked at the man, then stepped around him. “Let’s see what these things have.”

The instructor’s voice rose, but Corran didn’t turn around to look at him. “Your attitude, Captain Horn, is not really conducive to learning.”

Corran shrugged, then turned and dropped into a crouch beside Gavin. “Go on.”

The Imp sighed. “This first exercise will be a simple one. You’ll find the Sienar Fleet Systems TIE Defender is the fastest, best-equipped starfighter in the galaxy. Unlike other TIE designs, it incorporates shields, which provide the pilot with an improved survival profile. It has four lasers that can be fired singly, linked, or quadded, as well as two ion cannons. It carries eight concussion missiles or proton torpedoes depending upon mission profile, and has a tractor beam. It is very fast and highly maneuverable, both in space and atmosphere. Finally, it has hyperspace drive, which allows the ship to accomplish deep space missions without requiring a larger ship to deliver it to the target.”

Corran shifted his shoulders uneasily while Hobbie coughed into his hand. Had the Imperials managed to deliver the TIE Defenders in sufficient quantities before the Emperor’s death, the Rebellion could have foundered. The shields alone would have allowed pilots to survive errors and learn from their mistakes, which would have made the Imperial Navy’s fighter corps much deadlier. While it still took a good pilot to get a fighter through combat in one piece, pilots only got good if they didn’t die; and the Defender would keep a lot more of them alive.

The instructor pointed a remote toward the dozen ball cockpit simulators and pressed a button. The round egress hatches on the tops hissed open and rose slowly. “Get into your fighters, seal up your flight suits, and initiate the engine start sequence. Once everyone is ready to go, we’ll begin.”

Corran climbed up on the cockpit. He pulled the hatch closed behind him, locked it down, and flipped the safety switches on the explosive release bolts. Dropping down onto the seat, he strapped himself in, then pulled on his helmet and sealed it against the flight suit’s high collar. He connected the hoses to the environmental control unit he wore on his chest, then stuck out his tongue and activated the comlink via a tongue switch.

“Red Nine online with communications.” Corran shook his head. He didn’t like the Rogues having to shift away from the Rogue designator. Wedge hadn’t liked it, either, which is why he’d chosen Red. As he’d explained out of earshot of the Imps, Red Squadron had been the designation for the group that destroyed the first Death Star, and that made the choice a bit more palatable to Corran.

He shrugged. We’ll just have to use the Red designator as inspiration, I guess. Corran punched up the ignition sequence and got console lights showing his engines were both running at 100 percent efficiency. He hit two other buttons that shunted energy into the shields and energy weapons. He brought his heads-up display to life, then reached out with his gloved hands and took hold of the fighter’s controls.

As with other TIEs, the Defender worked with a wheel and yoke control system. Pulling back and pushing forward would make the fighter climb and dive respectively, just as the X-wing stick would do the same on that fighter. To get the ship to bank and turn, however, the pilot twisted the blocky panel mounted to the top of the yoke. As with a landspeeder’s controls, turning to the left would send the ship left and vice versa. The grips on either end of the panel had trigger switches to fire weapons, and between them lay an array of buttons and switches that controlled the throttle, weapon selection, target acquisition, data streaming to the primary monitor, and a variety of lesser functions. Each was manipulable with a flick of a thumb, and though Corran preferred the X-wing’s stick, he didn’t find this system that tough to work with.

Rudder pedals contracted and expanded maneuvering planes that vectored engine thrust, swinging the fighter’s tail around for quick course alterations. This contributed to the fighter’s added maneuverability which, along with the shields, would make the ship very hard to kill.

“Red Nine is good to go.” He glanced low left at the auxiliary monitor showing the status of his shields, then up at the lines of lights representing his weapons. Dead center in the weapons display bar were two counters indicating he was carrying eight concussion missiles. This is a lot of firepower for a fighter—more than enough to fight a B-wing to a standstill.

The instructor’s voice filled his helmet. “The mission is simple: You will engage your hyperdrive on your current heading and drop out of hyperspace in thirty seconds. You will find a small space station and some freighter traffic around it. Approach the freighter and station closely enough to scan their cargoes. Expect possible Reb … pirate activities in the area and deal with them as warranted.”

“Red Lead copies. Hyperdrive on my mark. Three, two, one, mark.”

The computer-generated display in the fighter’s various viewpoints became a shifting tunnel of light. Corran began to yawn and lifted his hand to cover it, but his hand bounced off his helmet. He growled mildly. Having to wear these helmets is reason enough for any Imp pilot to come over to the Rebellion.

He watched the chronometer on his main display trickle down to zero, then his ship reverted to realspace. A space station with three wedge-shaped platforms grafted at regular angles to the middle of its long central spindle came into view. He dropped his crosshairs on it and called up a sensor scan. The computer designated it Yag-prime and a chill ran through Corran. It’s the station at Yag’Dhul, the one we used as our base for ending Isard’s rule of Thyferra. Someone here is being very cute.

Corran brushed his right thumb over a targeting selection switch, toggling his way through the variety of ships in the system. One freighter came up as the Pulsar Skate, another as the Last Chance, and yet another as the Millennium Falcon. They even have the Star’s Delight here, the freighter that took me off Garqi and brought me to the Rebellion. Isard’s tossing up here all the freighters I mentioned in my Lusankya interrogations, reminding me how much she’d gotten out of me.

He keyed his comlink. “They’re playing some games with us, Lead. Not a problem for me, but we need to stay sharp.”

“My thoughts, too, Nine.” Wedge’s voice faded for a moment. “Five, take Two Flight and head along two-four mark two-seven-three to check the two bulk freighters, then take a run by the station.”

“As ordered, Lead.” Tycho’s voice crackled along the comm frequency. “Two Flight on me.”

Corran rolled his trip to starboard, then leveled out and swooped in behind Tycho’s fighter. Inyri brought Red Six up on Tycho’s port side and Ooryl dropped Seven aft right of Corran’s fighter. Nrin cruised Eight into a high cover position to the formation’s aft. Their course brought them in below the Falcon and sensors reported it was hauling droids and weapons. Corran snorted, half expecting Isard to have filled the imaginary freighter’s hold with spice.

Next came the Pulsar Skate, but sensors showed it as carrying passengers. Neither of the freighters reacted in any way to the fighter fly-by, but Corran kept watching them on his aft scope. If the shields come up, they could be the backstop for an ambush. He ruddered his fighter around to star-board, following the course correction Tycho made to bring the flight in on a long loop toward the station. Way out to port he could see flashes of One Flight lining up to do the same thing.

“Six has readings of ships powering up in the station.”

“Seven confirms. Profile is that of Defenders.”

Corran frowned as a dozen TIE Defenders came up out of the station. A red light began blinking on his HUD, indicating that something had a target lock on him, then a second burned to let him know a missile had been launched at him. “Nine has incoming missiles.”

“Evasive, all, now!”

Tycho’s fighter rolled hard to port, while Corran went starboard. He hesitated for a second, then began to thumb his way through the various threats in the system. He found the missile heading his way and turned his ship until it was coming straight in at his tail. He watched its range scroll down on the main display, and when it hit a hundred meters, he snaprolled to port, inverting his fighter, then he dove for a second.

The missile shot past and its momentum took it well beyond his ship. Reversing his roll, Corran brought the Defender’s nose back up and targeted the missile. He ruddered his ship around, keeping his fighter facing the missile as it cruised through the arc that would bring it back on target to him. When it oriented on him again, he hit the trigger under his right index finger. Two pairs of green laser bolts hissed out. The second pair hit the missile, melting it. The propellant combusted into a big ball of flame, and an explosion by the warhead a second later snuffed it.

Something inside of Corran kind of gave way as he glanced at his scopes. The Yag’Dhul station bristled with turbolaser batteries and was filling the space around it with lots of cohesive light. A dozen enemy trips twisted and spun through the system, while the Rogues scattered via evasive maneuvers. Part of him realized it was only an exercise, and the fact that the Imps would ambush them just to show the cocky Rebels how good they were didn’t surprise him. He even allowed as how, in their boots, he’d have seriously contemplated the same thing. It probably was good for both groups of pilots.

Another part of him disagreed though. For these Imps, this simulator battle was redemption and justification. If they could beat the Rogues, then the Empire for which they worked, the Empire that had been their mentor and provider, that Empire suddenly had been lost only because they had not been employed in its defense. The frustration they felt at not having been present at Endor could be erased. In their minds the Emperor could have lived, his Empire could have continued, and Coruscant would never have fallen, if only they had been there to defeat the Rebels, to defeat Rogue Squadron.

But they weren’t there. Corran snorted angrily. Time to show them why it was just as well they weren’t.

Hitting switches on his control panel, he flipped his weapons over to concussion missiles and doubled them up. Then he dialed his throttle back to two-thirds of maximum. By hitting another switch, he shunted the energy stored in the energy weapon capacitors into the engines, bringing his speed back up to the maximum the fighter could do while fully recharging weapons and shields. Rolling to port and starting to climb, he oriented himself toward a pair of trips that were cruising in on Ooryl’s fighter. The Gand had his Defender dancing, making it tough for the Imps to do more than hit him with grazing shots.

“Seven, this is Nine. Move to two-four-oh mark ten, now. Break port on my mark.”

A double-click came back on the frequency to let him know Ooryl heard the order and would comply. The Defender leveled out and started off on the vector Corran had indicated. The Imps made course corrections to keep coming on Ooryl’s tail. Corran pointed his Defender at an intercept point, then kicked the throttle in at full.

His speed climbed, as did his closure rate with the two trips following Ooryl. “Seven, mark.”

Ooryl’s Defender rolled hard to port and the Imp trips trailed after him like hatchlings after a mother mynock. They cruised right across Corran’s crosshairs and his target acquisition system gave him a hard lock fast, since he’d closed to point-blank range faster than the Imps expected. He hit his trigger, drilling two concussion missiles into the first trip, then ruddered around and launched two more at the second one.

The first pair of missiles hit the Defender’s aft shield simultaneously and collapsed it, only expending half the energy released by their detonations. The rest of the burning plasma ball they created melted away the top fin and took with it the top of the cockpit. It also fused thrust louvers, whirling the Defender into a spin that sent it back toward the Yag’Dhul station.

The next pair of missiles hit their target in sequence. The first missile blast took down the aft shield, while the second missile flew straight into one of the two ion engines. Ion thrust flared into a silver-white cone, then the missile’s explosion blew the cockpit’s forward viewport out. The Defender ripped itself into huge pieces and Corran flew through the middle of the dying explosion.

He nodded grimly. Given the Defenders’ warning systems for target locks, any long-distance shots would give his prey the same chance to destroy the missile or begin to evade that he would have. Only by refusing to aim at them until the last second could he take them by surprise. The only true surprise he had to work with was the enemy’s failure to realize that he could manufacture strategies that would work with their equipment as well as they could, if not better.

Two of the enemy Defenders vectored in on his aft, so he rolled to starboard and began a weaving run in at the space station. Green laser bolts flashed past him from the rear, while curling lines of red bolts rose toward him from the station. Course correcting a bit to the right, he raced in at the station’s central spire. His flight path set him up to run a bit starboard of it, and on his rear scope he saw the Defenders split to pursue him as he came around.

As he came in tight he chopped his throttle back, then activated the Defender’s tractor beam. It latched hold of the space station, but since it massed far more than the star-fighter, it didn’t go anywhere. Instead the tractor beam acted like a line that shortened the arc of Corran’s turn. The pilot flicked the beam off again, then throttled up and hauled back on the yoke to climb.

His HUD went red as his crosshairs swept over one of the Defenders coming after him. He launched another pair of concussion missiles, which drilled into the trip and ripped it apart. Then the missile-lock warning light flashed on his display, prompting him to invert and dive. The concussion missile that had been coming at him shot past, but his dive carried him straight into a turbolaser salvo from the station.

The simulator screens went black, then the egress hatch’s emergency release triggers snapped back into the safe position and the hatch opened. Corran pulled off his helmet, released his restraining belts, and hauled himself up out of the simulator. Sweat poured down his face and stung his eyes. He licked salt from his lips and sat perched on the hatch, luxuriating in the cool air of the simulator chamber.

Looking around he saw some of the Rogues chatting with Imperial pilots. That surprised him, but as he watched the men and women weave their hands through simple pantomimes of the battles they’d fought, he began to smile. They ambushed us, but they ended up being as surprised as we were by it. Toward the back of the room he saw Wedge and the Imperial leader, Colonel Vessery, smiling as they conversed closely.

Corran nodded slowly. Both leaders had clearly seen that their pilots would be suspicious and defensive, ready to take offense at whatever the other group might say or do; yet both groups needed to work together. This little exercise pointed out that each side had good pilots, and that the pilots had more in common than they might have otherwise expected. Mutual respect will bring us closer faster, and let us compete as equals. That’s good.

He swung his legs up over the edge of the hatch, and slid down to the deck. He stumbled as he landed, but an Imperial pilot helped steady him. “Thanks.”

“Not a problem.” The Imp smiled at him. “You were the guy who tractored the station?”

“Guilty as charged.”

The Imp nodded. “Very impressive. I’ll have to keep my eye on you.”

Corran laughed lightly. “Use both of them. I am a Rogue, after all.”

26

Whistler’s lights popped on and the little R2 droid began surveying the room in which he found himself. Aside from the light he produced, he detected no other source of light energy. His scan did reveal power conduits, computer cable conduits, and a fairly large system of air duct-work behind the walls. The room had only one door, which appeared to be quite dense, and he found no thermal bleed-through from any living creatures standing guard near it or against the wall.

All of this data filtered into a simple program that assessed his situation and made available different options for his future actions. In the past the program had recommended returning to a dormant state, with lights off, monitoring local comm frequencies for any communication from Corran. He had been in that passive wait state from the moment the Imperials had placed him in the room with the rest of Rogue Squadron’s astromech droids. Corran had managed to communicate with him via comlink and gave Whistler access to the scramble codes the Imperials used, as well as a way to tap the comm traffic during the training sessions they went through.

Corran had also informed him of the Rogues’ status. The circumstances they found themselves in were indeed alarming. Whistler’s awareness of this fact was based on his analysis of Corran’s speech patterns and the signs of stress in his voice. He catalogued those signs of anxiety along with the key words that seemed to trigger them: Isard [status alive], Imperial Base [secret], TIE Defenders [secret], and mission [secret, dangerous].

Whistler began a passive scan of comlink frequencies. He catalogued the vocabulary being used on each, then ran a correlation between them. First he determined that the Rogues and their Imperial counterparts were running yet another simulation that pitted the rival pilots against each other. Over the past two weeks this sort of training mission had become common. On the other frequencies he began picking up comments that indicated Corran’s hunch about the base had been correct. The pilot had guessed that in such a small facility, with no serious threats to deal with, watching the simulator battles between the Rogues and the Imps would attract a lot of attention. Whistler’s correlations indicated voyeur traffic on 65 percent of the local frequencies and, more importantly, 85 percent of the security frequencies.

That percentage flipped a bit in a program. A line of code called up Whistler’s evasion and escape programming. Such programming was not common in an astromech droid, but few astromech droids had been refitted for work in the Corellian Security Force. Not only had his preparation for that work equipped him with special circuitry that allowed for surveillance and analysis, escape and evasion, and an array of code-slicing programs, but it had even shifted internal components around such that when a restraining bolt was fastened to him it did little more than communicate the result of commands sent by a remote. When the Imperial tech had used the remote on him, Whistler feigned shutting down and starting up again. More than once criminals had assumed a security droid was disabled by a restraining bolt and had learned to regret that assumption.

Regardless of the fact that the cylindrical device affixed to his torso did nothing to restrain him, Whistler rolled over to the corner of a shelving unit, lodged the cylinder next to the edge, and quickly spun his body. The restraining bolt snapped off and clattered to the floor.

Whistler allowed himself a low, barely audible whistle. Whirling his head about he spotted Gate and rolled over to the red and white R5 astromech. Whistler reached out with his pincer arm, sent a blue trickle of energy over the restraining bolt on Gate’s torso, then pulled it free.

Gate’s lights flashed on and the droid began to shudder, bouncing from foot to foot.

Whistler tootled at him to calm down, then quickly answered the taller droid’s inquiries about location and status. Whistler reassured him that the mission they were being sent on had official sanction. He also informed Gate of the highly risky nature of their mission with a low tone.

Gate countered sharply that his microprocessing time was too valuable to waste analyzing meaningless odds. In the final analysis, he suggested, they were droids who had been entrusted with a mission and they would accomplish it. All non-vital calculations would only waste time and power.

Whistler hooted happily and rolled over to the large air intake vent mounted in the wall. He brought out his cutting attachment and sliced through one of the screws holding it in place. Gate joined him, cutting the grate free. Whistler slowly backed away, letting the grate lean into the room, then he caught hold of one edge with his pincer and pulled it away from the dark cavity beyond.

Gate entered the ductwork with no difficulty at all. The maintenance and construction droids used to create and repair the environmental system in the base were slightly taller and decidedly broader than the astromech droids. Gate caught hold of the other edge of the grate, allowing Whistler to come around to the opening. The smaller droid took hold of the grate and pulled it into place, while Gate extended his pincer and crimped ductwork around the edge of the grate to hold it in place.

The astromech droids rolled into the ducts and paused at an intersection. Whistler extended his communications probe and jabbed it into a communications port. The metal ductwork distorted comm frequencies enough that the repair droids regularly hooked into the base’s communications and computer system for position updates, repair requests, and other data. During his time passively surveying the comm frequencies on the base, Whistler had picked up enough transmissions from repair droids coming online and hooking into the communications network that he easily mimicked one and got into the system in nanoseconds.

First he calibrated his internal clock with local and Imperial standard times. Second he sliced his way into the local spaceport scheduling and control system to download a complete schedule of arrivals and departures for the next week. He found several ships that were leaving within the next day, most of which could easily find space for a pair of astromech droids. The spaceport computer system even provided a link to a number of cargo brokers. Once in their systems, he could obtain passage for himself and Gate.

Paying for their passage faced him with a quandary. Corran had explained that Isard wanted Rogue Squadron to seem dead. If Krennel was unaware of their continued survival, they could be used against him. The very fact that Rogue Squadron had been ambushed at Distna indicated that Krennel had some intelligence resources in the New Republic, and the intervention of Isard’s forces meant she had intelligence sources within Krennel’s Hegemony—and possibly within the New Republic as well. Paying for the passage from the various accounts Corran held—accounts Whistler could embezzle from without too much trouble since he knew all the relevant passwords and numbers—might suggest Corran lived. That word would get back to Krennel and Isard, placing the Rogues in danger from whatever Isard’s angry reaction might be.

From his communications with the Pulsar Skate’s computer, Whistler had drawn a list of accounts that Mirax maintained for her business dealings. Using one of them seemed most effective, since she often authorized shipments between points so she could pick them up at some waystation. Still, unauthorized use of one of her accounts would likely attract too much attention and might suggest to her that the Rogues had survived. While Whistler had no evidence to suggest Mirax was anything but smart, her reaction in absence of solid evidence might also jeopardize things.

The Skate had yielded yet older accounts, ones that Mirax had not tapped in a long time. All the data concerning them indicated they had been established by Booster Terrik well before he’d been sentenced to Kessel, and had not been touched since. Whistler analyzed the account activity and balances, and picked one of them to finance their escape.

Whistler ran through a quick threat analysis of their escape route, cross-correlating reports of crimes, percentages of Jawas and Ugnaughts in the local populations, and the fluctuating resale prices on droids along the course to their destination. Most of the risks seemed minor but there were a couple of points where the potential for interference seemed high. That assessment clicked in another piece of program that sent off a message setting up a rendezvous with someone who would be able to get them past the dangerous part of their journey and to their final destination.

If he showed up.

Whistler went over the text of the message again, edited it more closely, and sent it.

He would show up.

Whistler quickly established their primary connections, then created four separate and alternate routes to get where they needed to go. With a high-frequency series of squeals and whistles meant to register above the level of human hearing, he communicated full details to Gate. Then the two of them rolled off together to the maintenance egress hatch near the atmospheric control plant at the rear of the building. Once it grew dark outside, they’d escape the base and world, to get Rogue Squadron the help it was sure to need.

27

Corran Horn wiped the sweat from his face and let his torso sag forward over the padded bar of the abdominal muscle weight machine. Though only driving sixty-five kilos on one gravity per repetition, the weight added up, and his sore stomach muscles were beginning to burn. Something about the dull pain felt good, as if it were reminding him he was alive.

“Flat abdominals? I suppose your wife likes them?”

Corran’s head snapped around. Ysanne Isard, clad in a skintight workout uniform that covered her from knees to elbow and throat, stood in the doorway. Black stripes running down the sides of the arms, flanks, and legs of the red bodystocking matched the fingerless black gloves she wore. She clung to each end of the black towel she had looped around her neck, making her appear almost casual, as if their meeting in the base weight room had been by accident.

Nothing she does is by accident. The pilot narrowed his eyes. “You want something?”

Isard shrugged and moved into the room to seat herself at a leg-curl machine. “I thought I would tell you that your latest attempt to get a message out to your wife has failed. Using her designator code as the origin code for a message destined to be rejected by our system was an interesting idea, but an old one. Our systems here are quite secure.”

“So far, you mean.” Corran gritted his teeth and curled his body forward, hoisting the machine’s weight with his stomach muscles. He forced himself to breathe with each repetition, focusing on the burning sensation in his muscles and using it to drive Isard from his mind.

She waited until he finished. “Your persistence is admirable, as is the passion you express for your wife in the messages.”

“Enjoyed them, did you?” He shook his head, spraying sweat around the room. “I’ll continue to send them.”

“Why? You know I’ll intercept them all.”

“Nice to know you’ll have something to do with your time.” Corran unwrapped his body from the machine and slowly stood. “As for why, it’s because I love her and I know she’ll be hurt thinking I’m dead.”

Isard raised an eyebrow. “You’ll be reunited with her once you’ve destroyed Krennel.”

“So that’s what, another month of pain? No good.” Corran frowned at her. “Haven’t you ever loved anyone?”

The question seemed to catch her off-guard and Corran felt a wave of surprise roll off her. Once again Corran regretted not having gone with Luke Skywalker to train himself to be a Jedi, because he could have used that moment of vulnerability to open her up. I could find out what she’s really planning and prevent her from accomplishing it.

Isard brushed her hands down the tops of her thighs. “I have loved, yes, but I trusted that he would know if I lived or died.”

“That’s asking a lot. No one can possibly know …” He stopped in mid-sentence as he recalled a rumor about her. “The Emperor? You loved the Emperor?”

“Captain Horn, the surprise in your voice is hardly appropriate. Is it any surprise that I would find myself attracted to the brightest star in the galaxy? I was raised on Imperial Center, I came of age during Palpatine’s time. He was immensely charismatic. He could look you in the eyes and touch the person you were. He lived for his dream of a stable galaxy.” Her voice took on an edge. “And he died for it.”

“I hope you’re not expecting an apology.”

“From you? For that? No.” Isard set the weight machine for forty kilos, then began bending her legs, lifting the weight. Her voice remained even though the strain began to flush her skin. “You do owe me an apology, though.”

“Oh, really? For what?” Corran folded his arms across his chest. “Not the destruction of Lusankya, I hope, because I’m not at all sorry about that.”

“No, no, not that.” Isard finished the last rep and smiled up at him. “Actually I’m pleased the ship is gone. Until you escaped from it, the ship had been pristine, even virginal. Your escape … violated it and soiled it. While I used it to escape Imperial Center, I had little to do with it after that. I couldn’t think of it in the same way. In many ways I was glad it died.”

“So were we.” He shook his head. “I’ve heard from Wedge how you scattered the other prisoners, which answers one of the two questions I had concerning the ship.”

“And the other was?”

“How you got it buried beneath the surface of Coruscant?”

Her nose wrinkled with his use of the pre- and post-Imperial name for the world, but it took a moment or two beyond that for her to provide her response. “I wish I knew. I know where and when Lusankya was created, and I know when it was given to me, so I have narrowed down the possible dates for its insertion into the world, but even as director of Imperial Intelligence I could find no clue as to how the insertion happened.”

“But it had to have taken hundreds of construction droids and weeks of time. A project that size could not have gone unnoticed.”

“I would agree, unless … the Force is something I do not understand and cannot touch, but the Emperor could. Is it possible he drew the ship down and buried it using the Force? I suppose. Is it possible that he merely stretched his mind out and prevented anyone from noticing the ship’s descent? Also possible.” She shook her head. “All I know is that the Emperor confided its location to me at roughly the same time its sister ship, the Executor, became operational.”

A chill ran down Corran’s spine. Even unschooled as he was in the Force, he’d managed to blank the mind of a stormtrooper looking for him. If the Emperor could manage to do that for billions of people, the miracle of the Rebellion is that it succeeded at all.

“So, the Emperor never really reckoned with the threat the Rebellion represented to him, did he?”

She began pumping her legs again. “I always thought you were more trouble than he did. He exerted great energies suppressing the internecine warfare between species in the Empire. He underestimated his enemy. This makes him much like you, Corran Horn.”

“Me? How does that follow?”

“The apology you owe me. It’s for underestimating me.” Isard gave him a smile that puckered his flesh. “You thought you’d killed me, but you hadn’t. You didn’t push, you didn’t pursue. I had thought you would have been more diligent than that. Your father certainly would have been.”

Corran stiffened, then spitted her with a harsh glare. “What you know of my father you stripped from my brain when you had me on Lusankya. I’m not going to let you use my own memories against me.”

“Oh, it’s not your memories I’m using, but my own.” Her smile tightened slightly as she began a third set of repetitions. “I met your father once. Spent some time with him. He was most annoying and prevented me from accomplishing my mission.”

“Like father, like son.”

“Indeed.” Isard crawled out of the weight machine and stood slightly taller than Corran. “The annoyance factor with you is getting to be too much. I want you to stop trying to send messages out of here. You’ll jeopardize the mission.”

Corran shook his head, then walked over to a triceps extension machine and sat down. He glanced over at her. “You don’t fool me, Isard. You don’t fall in love with someone like the Emperor because you like the way he laughs or the cute dimples he has. You fall in love with him because you feel a kinship to him. You wanted what he wanted, which was power; and that lust for power won’t go away. Just the way you brought us here and keep us here reflects your need for control. You have a goal and everything else will be subordinate to it.”

She dabbed with her towel at a droplet of sweat running down from her left temple. “General Antilles knows what I want. He knows what the price for my cooperation is. What I want from you is your cooperation so that I have my best chance at success.”

“And if I don’t agree?”

Her eyes narrowed. “I know, Corran Horn, you are capable of fierce loves and loyalties. If you persist in sending messages out, I will have your astromech taken apart, and I will scatter those parts further than my clone ever scattered the Lusankya prisoners. With a thousand years and a thousand Jedi you would not be able to reconstruct Whistler. His fate is in your hands.”

Corran let his jaw drop open to cover his surprise. Her bald-faced threat to Whistler didn’t surprise him. He’d considered the droids hostages from the second the restraining bolts had been placed on them. What her threat did mean, however, was that no one had noticed Whistler was missing yet. As nearly as Corran could determine the droid had vanished a week previously, which meant he was fairly well along on the mission Corran had given him.

He scrubbed his hands over his face, then hung his head. “You know, the only problem with you is that while you might have loved, you never were loved back. You know how much your threat hurts, but only because you’ve seen such threats hurt others. You don’t know firsthand the pain you’re inflicting.”

“I don’t have a problem with being saved that sort of pain.”

“No, I don’t suppose you do.” Corran looked up at her and met her bicolored stare openly. “You know, the real pity in that is this: You also don’t know that the best balm for that pain is having a friend, a true friend, someone you can trust no matter what. But, I imagine, to you that sort of blind trust is simply a tool that can be used against someone.”

“Very effectively, too.”

“I’m sure.” Corran reach back behind his head for the weight bar. “Well, the one thing I trust about you is that you’ll be true to your nature. And that nature, Madam Director, is what will kill you in the end.”

Wedge Antilles raked his fingers through his brown beard. He didn’t think the beard made him look any different, and his mental image of himself still hadn’t adjusted to include it. Even so, it changed the outline of his jaw enough to fuzz recognition and, combined with the prosthetic he’d wear to become Antar Roat again, it should enable him to get past any security screening Krennel put him through.

Colonel Vessery looked over at him from across the holoprojector’s sector map of Ciutric. “Do you have reservations about this plan?”

Wedge shrugged. “Same I have about every plan before it goes off. We get slipped into Ciutric as an Imperial unit looking for sanctuary. We fit in, then I send out a message that gets to you and in twelve hours you show up with the commandos we’ll need to break open the prison holding the Lusankya prisoners. At the same time the New Republic shows up with a fleet that will pound Krennel and liberate Ciutric. A lot of things can go wrong there.”

Vessery smiled. “True enough, but most of them come in along the lines of command and control. With the Director controlling communications and making sure messages go where they’re meant to go, everyone should show up on time. Your flight missions are fairly straightforward. One flight will eliminate the shields over Ciutric while the other neutralizes the defensive positions around the prison. Both units will then suppress ground defenses and air support. As you have seen in the simulations, the Defenders are well suited to these tasks and more than capable of standing up to the punishment.”

“Nice machines. I still prefer my X-wing, but I’ll take a trip in a pinch.”

“Flying one in combat will convince you.” Vessery looked over at the doorway as a silhouette filled it. “Come in, Major. This is General Antilles, Major Telik. Major Telik will be leading the commandos on the operation.”

Wedge took the slender man in with a glance. His high cheekbones and sharp nose gave his face an angular cast. Dark brows, which matched the close-cropped hair on his head, shadowed deep brown eyes. Not terribly muscled, Telik took Wedge’s proffered hand and shook it with a surprisingly strong grip.

“Glad to have you with us, Major.”

“My pleasure, General.” He turned to Vessery. “I’ve studied and annotated the plan for hitting the prison. I like the basic setup, but I’ve got a few changes in mind. I don’t want to lock them in until I can run through a sim with my people, but I think they will streamline the operation and minimize casualties.”

Vessery nodded. “That’s to be desired.”

Telik turned back toward Wedge. “I would have preferred to be in on the planning from the start, but I was on Commenor and have only recently returned. While I was there I saw two acquaintances of yours: Mirax Terrik and Iella Wessiri.”

Wedge blinked. “What were they doing on Commenor?”

“Following up on the leads planted by Krennel’s people to lure Rogue Squadron to Distna.”

“Interesting.” Wedge scratched at his throat. He’d noticed that Telik had referred to “Krennel’s people” and not “Isard’s clone” as the one who had been planting those clues. Either he didn’t know, or didn’t feel he could pass that information on to Wedge if he did. Wedge expected no less in the way of informational security by Isard’s people, which was why the whole mention of Commenor struck him as odd.

Telik smiled. “The Wessiri woman impressed me a great deal. She was in a difficult situation and I managed to slip her a blaster, which she used to effect her escape. Terrik went with her and, later, I saw they were fine. Not but one out of a dozen people could have done what she did.”

“For as long as I’ve known her, she’s been very good.” Wedge pasted a smile on his face. There was no way Telik would have mentioned his run to Commenor, his having helped Iella and Mirax, and their escape, if Isard had not told him to do so. Hearing what he’d heard certainly put Wedge in Telik’s debt, which would help inspire the sort of trust that would make the mission work more smoothly.

By the same token, I’ve just been told that Isard has a line on two friends of mine. If things do not go the way she wants them to go, Iella and Mirax could be killed, or worse. The sorry plight of the Lusankya prisoners had not escaped Wedge’s mind. Just because Isard wants me to trust Telik isn’t a reason not to trust him, but I will guard against problems, somehow.

Wedge sighed. “Well, we’ll be going back and forth over these plans for a long while, I guess, since we don’t have someone as good as Iella here to tell us how to fix them. It strikes me that the only remaining part of the plan to put into place is for me to record a message for Admiral Ackbar that will get him to bring a New Republic fleet with him to destroy Krennel.”

Vessery nodded. “Two messages, actually. One will outline the plan and prepare the New Republic to move. The second will contain the order for them to go. Moving forces around a galaxy seldom allows for split-second timing—as we have all learned—but it can be closely simulated and we’ll have to settle for that.”

“Worked when we took Coruscant.” Wedge suppressed a smile. “Well, let us cook up the text of the first message I’ll send, so the Director can approve it. Then we can set about ending Delak Krennel’s long reign.”

28

Whistler dodged around workers stacking crates on binary load lifters and shot down the ramp from the Worldhopper’s cargo hold. The captain, an older man with two twin sons who crewed for him, glanced in his direction but did nothing to stop him. Rennik had been paid to get Whistler and Gate to Oradin, on the planet Brentaal, and no further. He’d done his job and turned his attention back to adjudicating a dispute between his sons.

Whistler whirled his head around and piped a call to Gate to join him. The R5 droid whistled back mournfully, then slowly rolled down the ramp. His previously pristine red and white exterior was stippled with a series of black and brown burn marks. More galling than that, however, Gate had been fitted with a conical scrap-metal cap that trailed a long ribbon of bright blue fabric. A few spot welds held it in place and, despite their best efforts, neither droid had been able to free Gate from the cap.

Whistler fixed his visual lens on the Rennik brothers and digitized their exact likenesses. He had no program in place at the moment to exact revenge for what they had done to Gate, but when time allowed he would pull up one of the many practical joke programs he’d picked up at CorSec and in his time with the squadron, and implement it with the Rennik twins as the target.

He communicated his intention to Gate.

Gate replied that it would be suitable for the two boys to be made targets.

Whistler agreed. To relieve the boredom of the trip, the two boys had welded the cap to Gate’s head, then used powered-down blasters to try to shoot the ribbon that trailed after Gate as the droid ducked and dodged through the cargo hold. The ribbon quickly proved to be too tough a target for them, so they settled for shooting the droid. The number of crates being unloaded from the ship bearing burn marks gave testimony to how bad the brothers were at marksmanship, but in the confines of the hold Gate couldn’t dodge forever.

Whistler swiveled his head around, taking in a full view of the hangar area where the Worldhopper had landed. Oradin boasted an Imperial-class spaceport, but the Worldhopper had put down at one of the older portions of it. The center of the landing bay area was open to the night sky and, once ships touched down, a small tractor beam in each unloading bay would pull the ship into its own little niche. A dozen ships could be serviced at this one area, making it a hive of activity.

For a living creature, the chaos might have been overwhelming, but Whistler remained focused. Large holographic projectors filled the air with all sorts of advertisements for everything from upscale resorts like the Grand Oradin Hotel to places that offered tiny coffinlike spaces for sleep. Restaurants displayed endless assortments of dishes, all glistening, some still moving, to temp spacers tired of prepackaged fare. Machines large and small darted about, shifting crates from ship to ship, or ship to storage, with customs officials and transit agents all screaming at each other in loud voices. All manner of creatures and droids wandered around, some with clear intent, others moving furtively—causing Whistler to classify them as possible threats. Everything else he ignored because none of it was important to accomplishing his mission.

He asked Gate to keep watch on some of the threats, then moved over to a communications station and inserted his probe into the appropriate jack. He entered the MESTOP system with ease and fed into it the communications address he’d fabricated for any messages. The “Messages to Spacers” system took a little while to retrieve the single message that had been sent to him while in transit, and the message itself consisted of nothing more than a room number at the Grand Oradin Hotel and a span of dates.

Whistler confirmed that the present date was within the span and hooted with joy. He spun his head around to let Gate know they were in time to make their next leg of the trip, but only managed to get out a low moan. Gate echoed the tone and slowly rolled back toward Whistler.

In knots of two and three, some Ugnaughts slowly sauntered toward them. The little creatures avoided looking at them directly, but some carried restraining bolts and others the flash-welders needed to fix them to the droids. Lurking further back, a hooded Twi’lek flicked lekku impatiently at the Ugnaughts, encouraging them to be bolder.

Whistler hooted at Gate and the larger droid brought out his pincer. Blue sparks arced between the forks, widening the Ugnaughts’ eyes. They slowed their approach, which drew the Twi’lek in close enough for Whistler to get a good look at his face.

In seconds, using codes he’d employed many times with CorSec, Whistler sliced into the Spaceport Security Authority. He married the Twi’lek’s image to a fugitive warrant template, added charges of smuggling, slavery, and several other unsavory crimes, tacked on a reward of 25,000 credits, and pumped it into the system. He flipped a bit that noted the suspect was armed and extremely dangerous and a moment later the Twi’lek’s image burned to life in the air over the hangar, accompanied by the blaring of a dozen loud sirens.

The Twi’lek, the Ugnaughts, and just about everyone else in the hangar looked upward. The Twi’lek’s lekku twitched furiously and he began to run in the direction of the Worldhopper. The Rennik twins immediately shouted at him and, with blasters in hand, started scattering shots in his general direction. People screamed and ran, more blaster-fire erupted, and scarlet energy bolts filled the air.

Into the maelstrom Whistler charged, with Gate at his side, ribbon snapping and popping. Rolling at full speed they blasted into a trio of Ugnaughts, toppling them and sending their tools flying. Other Ugnaughts gave chase, but an errant burst of blasterfire cut one down and sent the rest diving for ferrocrete.

Howling like wounded banthas in the Jundland Wastes, the droids cut to the left and into a small corridor. Whistler took the turn a bit wide and crashed into the wall, with sparks trailing from his right flank. Spinning his head about he saw the smear of green paint he left behind on the wall, but two blaster bolts burned into it, leaving guttering little fires to consume it. Cutting to the left to see past Gate and his ribbon, Whistler just missed toppling a customs official. The droids raced past her, ignoring her calls to stop, and sped out into the shadowy Oradin streets.

Finding the Grand Oradin Hotel did not present much of a Problem for the droids. A quick scan of the facade revealed hints of old lettering that had once graced the building. The owners had simply replaced the word “Imperial” with the word “Oradin” to reflect the planet’s changing loyalties. Inside the lobby the Aurebesh letter Isk still appeared in decorations, but all the new signs had the Osk for Oradin in the appropriate place.

The main turbolifts steadfastly refused to admit two unescorted droids, informing Whistler that the hotel had standards. Whistler matched Gate’s sulking tone, then headed off around the corner and through a door marked STAFF ONLY. At the rear of the main lifts lay the freight lift, which was quite happy to help the droids out. It turned out that the freight lift’s main processing unit had once operated one of the passenger turbolifts until it had been replaced during an upgrade cycle. The lift indicated its processor had been deemed too “Old Republic” to work during the Imperial regime.

Whistler and Gate patiently exchanged glances as the turbolift went on about the various individuals he’d lifted and lowered during his time. The lift rose to the fourteenth floor and opened slowly, spinning out a tale of the battle for Brentaal that Gate actually wanted to hear, since it involved Wedge, but from a time well before Gate flew with him. Whistler suggested they could get the download on their return trip and the lift promised them a smooth ride.

The droids rolled down the hallway to the room 1428. Whistler played out a series of tones meant to announce them, but the door did not open. He tried again, but the door remained closed. Gate rolled forward and played the tones out, too, getting a result neither of them expected.

Behind them, the door to 1429 opened. Whistler swiveled his head about and looked up at the dark-haired man staring down at him. The man stroked his goatee, then smiled slowly. “Well, I knew Booster hadn’t sent that message to me, but I didn’t expect a droid, much less two.”

“You should be careful, Karrde, they could be bait for a trap.”

Talon Karrde glanced back into the room and tossed the datapad he’d been holding to the man standing there. “They didn’t scan for explosives or weapons, though that hat looks somewhat lethal.”

Gate moaned.

Whistler turned his body around and projected a message identifying himself.

Karrde squatted down to read it. “Whistler, yes, the droid partnered with Booster’s son-in-law. Now that’s curious, since you’ve both been reported dead at Distna. What is it I can do for you?”

Whistler spelled out his request.

“Take you to Booster’s Errant Venture?” He turned in the doorway and looked at the other man. “Mind if we take a side trip on our way to picking up your ship, Aves?”

“I’ve waited this long for my own command, Karrde, another week or so won’t hurt.” The man smiled broadly. “Besides, seeing Booster and the Venture is always amusing.”

Whistler hooted and flashed another message in the air.

Karrde laughed and patted Whistler on the head as he straightened up. “Yes, Whistler, I do demand payment for my services. I suspect there are things you can tell me that will more than pay for your passage. If you negotiate with me as well as you negotiated your way here, I’m certain we’ll reach a deal that will work for all concerned.”

Waiting beside her father for the Skipray Blastboat to come to rest on the deck of the Errant Venture’s forward landing bay, Mirax wished she could be anywhere else. Just thinking about meeting Talon Karrde again took her back to the time when they’d worked together closely to bring Ysanne Isard down. And thinking of those times made her remember when Corran asked her to marry him, and her father’s reaction when he discovered they were married.

Those memories ripped open the wound in her spirit caused by Corran’s death. In it she found echoes of the pain she’d felt when Corran was believed to have died on Coruscant, but that pain seemed dull and distant. She realized that part of the reason she felt things more keenly now was because previously Wedge had helped her through the trouble, but he was gone, too. Wedge’s death also hurt Iella and conjured up for her the pain of having lost her husband, Diric, on Coruscant.

The fact that the Errant Venture had visited Distna and found evidence of Rogue Squadron’s demise made it impossible to believe they had not all died. When Corran went missing on Coruscant, the lack of a body meant she hadn’t fully accepted his death as being real. While they found no body at Distna, they had found part of his X-wing, and some of the battleroms recovered from other ships showed Corran’s fighter had been hit and out of the battle fairly early on. He would have been helpless to defend himself.

She looked over at her father as the Blastboat’s gangway extended itself and Booster started forward. “I really don’t want to be here, Father.”

“I know, Mirax, but Karrde requested your presence.” Her father reached out with his right hand and drew her in under his arm. “Karrde might not be as smart as he thinks he is, but he’s not a cruel man. If he wanted you here, it’s not to hurt you.”

She sighed and wrapped her left arm around her father’s waist as they walked toward the ship. Booster had always bristled around Corran and found fault with him, but since his death Booster had been very kind and understanding. She was certain he would never admit to liking Corran, but he clearly understood how important Corran had been to her and refrained from disparaging him in front of her since their discovery at Distna.

She smiled. Part of his desire to avenge Rogue Squadron doubtlessly comes from his love for Wedge, but I’ll bet he wants to take a piece out of whoever killed Corran for having deprived him of something he planned to do himself someday. She looked up at her father, then laid her head against his chest as he looked down at her. “Thank you.”

Booster gave her shoulder a squeeze, then brought his arm up over her head and extended it to Talon Karrde. “You’re looking smug as always, Karrde.”

“I’m pleased to see you again, too, Booster.” Karrde smoothed his mustache with his left hand. “You remember my associate, Aves?”

Booster shook the other man’s hand. “This is the one you’re turning the Last Resort over to? Congratulations on getting that command, Captain Aves.”

Aves blinked with surprise, then looked over at Karrde. “I’m getting the Last Resort? How come Booster knew before I did? Either our security is slipping …”

“Or I’m just as brilliant as ever.” Booster beamed and Mirax found his smile infectious. “I deduced it, actually.”

Karrde arched an eyebrow at Booster. “Deduced it? This sounds very good.”

“It was simple, really. You’ll recall that because you’re now ‘retired,’ I suggested obtaining the services of some of your people and ships.”

Aves frowned. “You were going to sell him the Last Resort?”

“I only wanted to lease it from Karrde, provide him some retirement income.”

Karrde laughed. “As I recall, you don’t have any money.”

Booster’s head came up. “I’m not as liquid right now as I would like to be, but that is beside the point. Karrde told me the Last Resort was not available, but that the new commander might consider some sort of an arrangement. That’s why you brought Aves here, isn’t it, Karrde?”

“Oh, you thought …?” Karrde shook his head. “It’s the right answer for all the wrong reasons. This is what makes you dangerous, Booster.”

Mirax’s father nodded. “Don’t forget it.”

“Not likely.” Karrde reached out and took Mirax’s right hand in both of his. “I actually came to see you. I would never intrude on your grief, but I think I have some good news for you.”

Mirax rested her left hand on top of his and smiled. “Thank you.”

Karrde freed a hand and waved back at the Blastboat’s hatchway. Mirax heard a triumphant squeal, then tore her hands from Karrde’s and ran up the gangway. Dropping to her knees, she wrapped her arms around Whistler’s cylindrical body. She clung tightly to the droid, feeling the breeze caused by his dome spinning around.

She eased her hug open, then sat back on her haunches. “Whistler, you’re okay!” Another droid behind him hooted and she smiled at him, too. “Gate, you’ve survived!”

Karrde rested a hand on her shoulder. “Both of them are brimming with data, but a fair amount of operational secrecy is involved here. We might want to move to your father’s office.”

“Good idea.” Mirax stood and walked down the gangplank with Whistler. She kept her hand on his dome, relishing the coldness of his metal flesh. Even without word of Corran’s survival, she knew he lived. If he were dead, Whistler would have been destroyed along with him. If he were injured, Whistler never would have left him. The only way Whistler could be here is if Corran sent him, which means Corran’s alive. Same thing goes for Wedge and Gate, so I have to imagine that most of Rogue Squadron survived and is elsewhere.

The two droids, Booster, Aves, Karrde, and Mirax crowded into Booster’s small office. Booster took the chair behind the desk, leaving Aves and Karrde to shift debris from other chairs to the floor. Booster slid the holoprojector plate on his desk toward the forward edge and Whistler approached it with his datajack extended. Yet before he could plug himself in, a light on the projector’s comlink console blinked and Booster hit it.

“Booster here, this better be good.”

Iella’s head and shoulders appeared above the device. “Very good, Booster. I just had a message from General Cracken. He wants us on Coruscant as fast as possible. He didn’t say much, but I gather he has news about Wedge. I can’t believe it, but I gather Wedge and the others might be alive.”

Booster smiled. “I think you can believe it, Iella. Come down to my office and you’ll have more proof than you ever needed.”

29

General Airen Cracken pointed the remote at the holo-projector set up in the center of the New Republic Ruling Council’s private briefing room. The Councilors’ tables made a three-sided square and the projector had been set up at the open end of the formation. It had been oriented toward Chief Councilor Mon Mothma, so when Wedge Antilles’s image appeared, it looked straight at her.

“Admiral Ackbar, General Cracken, you have my sincere welcome. I apologize for any shock you feel at seeing me again. I am alive and on the day I recorded this message, Sienar Fleet Systems stock hit sixty-seven and seven-eighths on the Coruscant market, with twenty-three billion shares traded.

“Rogue Squadron survived the battle at Distna through the intervention of a group that has as much reason to hate Krennel as we do. They have offered their aid in destroying him and his Hegemony. Toward this end they have been training Rogue Squadron for a mission that will leave Ciutric open for conquest and allow us to rescue the Lusankya prisoners, including General Jan Dodonna. When Rogue Squadron is in place, you will be sent another message. You will have ten hours from that point to deliver a fleet to Ciutric. Details on Krennel’s defenses are appended to this message.

“I regret there is no way for you to reply to this message. You’ll have four weeks to gather your fleet at the staging area and, within a week after that, the order to go will be given. If you do not come, I have no doubt that Rogue Squadron will truly die. I mention that not as motivation, but as fact. Since we are already believed dead, you may not want to confuse issues by announcing our survival just to let people know we’ve died again.”

Wedge raised his right hand and touched it to his brow in a salute. “I look forward to speaking with both of you on Ciutric. Antilles out.”

The image faded to the Rogue Squadron crest, then Cracken used the remote to shut off the projector. He raised a hand as the Council members began to speak among themselves and quieted them. “That message came in three days ago, and was recorded four days before that. The delay in bringing it to your attention is my responsibility because I wanted my best people to look it over and they were unavailable until yesterday. They concur that, despite the beard, the speaker is Wedge Antilles.”

Mon Mothma pressed her hands together and rested her forearms on the table before her. “Did the datafiles shed any more light on who else might have survived Distna?”

“It is clear from the files that Wedge thinks Janson is missing. Their file also lists Asyr Sei’lar, Lyyr Zatoq, and Khe-Jeen Slee as missing in action—none of them were listed as being dead. Everyone else is alive, but only one person’s immediate family has been notified of the squadron’s survival. I would not have let anyone know, save for the fact that Corran Horn’s wife was one of the people I used to verify the message was from Wedge Antilles.”

Leia Organa Solo nodded. “Understandable, General. It looked to be Wedge to me, too. How do we know he was not under duress delivering this message?”

“Indeed, it could be bait for a trap.” Sian Tevv, the Sullustan Councilor, looked around at the others. “Krennel could have taken him in and be using him to trap our fleet.”

Ackbar waved a webbed hand to dismiss that notion. “First, we have a code system in place to provide warnings if one of our people is being forced under duress to make a message, and General Antilles used none of the code words that would have alerted us to trouble. More importantly, the plan appended to the message calls for a fleet of sufficient force to smash Krennel’s fleet. We have not employed such a large force against Krennel so far because we could not be certain we would catch him in one place. If we deployed that force against him and he struck outside the Hegemony, he would seriously damage the people’s belief in our ability to free worlds of tyranny.”

“As he continues to do by ambushing supply fleets headed for Liinade Three?” Borsk Fey’lya stroked the creamy fur on his throat. “That concerns me less, however, than the fact that Antilles is coyly silent about the identity of the individuals who rescued Rogue Squadron at Distna. I would bet they are old-line Imperial in nature.”

Cracken frowned at the Bothan Councilor. “Why would you suppose that, Councilor?”

“Do you not find it curious that out of the thirteen X-wing pilots flying that day, the three confirmed kills we have were nonhuman? Over three-quarters of those rescued were human. It strikes me that the Imperial bias is at play here.”

Ackbar shook his head. “Ridiculous.”

Cracken said nothing, and hoped he kept his surprise at Fey’lya’s comments hidden. When Iella had arrived at Coruscant, she asked Cracken to come to the Errant Venture and there revealed to him Whistler’s evidence of Ysanne Isard’s survival and leadership of the group that was helping Rogue Squadron. The way the ambush at Distna had been set up certainly proved that the real Isard had intelligence assets in the New Republic still, and the fact that she’d not been mentioned by Wedge meant she wanted her role in things hidden. Since her help eliminating Krennel could be the basis for an amnesty, keeping her identity hidden seemed like a good ploy; but Cracken had sparred with her for too many years to let himself underestimate her or her penchant for duplicity.

Leia glanced over at the Bothan. “I would remind my learned colleague that the Hegemony worlds—despite Krennel’s attempts to make them into a haven for humans—are only fifty-six percent human in population, and several worlds have a strong nonhuman majority.”

“Who are ruled by a human minority, yes, Leia, I recall those worlds well.” Fey’lya looked around the room at the other members of the Council. “I believe we have an unsavory situation here. I suspect very strongly that Krennel’s subordinates are using Rogue Squadron to stage an uprising that will unseat Krennel, and they expect us to put them in his place. While they will say they are joining the New Republic, the reality of human oppression in the Hegemony will not be changed. I think we should reject this plan because of the obligations it will place on us.”

Ackbar stood to disagree. “With all due respect, Councilor, I believe you are dreading a poor harvest and the first algae cloud has yet to appear. The plan appended to the message is decidedly sound and I see much of General Antilles’s direction in it. This will be a stunning opportunity to smash Krennel. Even if he were to escape, we would still possess Ciutric, which is the political and economic hub of the Hegemony. We have always known a strike at Ciutric would shatter the Hegemony, and here is a plan that will allow us to do it.”

“That is all well and good, Admiral Ackbar, but it still says nothing about the shadowy partners in this enterprise.” Fey’lya stood and opened his arms. “What do we do if we discover that Grand Moff Tarkin didn’t die on the Death Star, but has been lurking, waiting for this opportunity to ask for sanctuary? What do we do when he asks to be repaid for his role in this conquest of Ciutric? What if General Derricote, the architect of the Krytos virus, is not dead, but instead is behind this move? Do we welcome him? Perhaps this is Thrawn’s ploy, or even one masterminded by Ysanne Isard. Don’t look so surprised, Admiral, I have my sources that have told me what your Lusankya prisoners from Commenor have told you. No matter how beneficial their contribution to the New Republic is in this operation, could we reward them?”

Mon Mothma raised a hand. “If you will permit me, I must say that Councilor Fey’lya raises some interesting points. The question of when and how someone who has worked for the Empire may make a transition from enemy to friend is one we have not sufficiently addressed. We have accepted people like General Dodonna and General Madine without question. Even after the Emperor’s death, we allowed Imperials who had seen the folly of their allegiance come over to us without penalty. General Garm Bel Iblis presents a different sort of example, one of someone who, while he was one of the Rebellion’s founders, left us for a while because of differences with how things were being done. In choosing to rejoin us at an important moment, he contributed greatly to the New Republic’s survival. We’ve accepted him, but there have been those who have grumbled over that fact.”

Borsk Fey’lya smiled, bowed his head toward Mon Mothma, and seated himself.

She continued. “These questions, however important, really have little bearing on the issue at hand. We started a war with the Hegemony and, so far, have failed to achieve a satisfactory outcome. Wedge Antilles offers us a perfectly good plan that will allow us to end this conflict quickly. The only reason I can see for rejecting it is if it is unmilitarily sound. Admiral Ackbar says it is not, and we have trusted his judgment before in similar matters. I see no reason to doubt him now.”

Ackbar lowered himself to his chair. “I believe I can assemble the taskforce required to take the world within the two weeks. We will be ready to go then.”

Sian Tevv’s large ears curled forward. “You should take the full month. If you do, if the reports from the Bilbringi shipyards are correct, the Lusankya will be operational. I would think adding a Super Star Destroyer’s firepower to any taskforce would be worth the delay.”

“The Lusankya will take longer to be combat ready. We have not finished training a crew, and several more shakedown runs will be needed before the techs turn it over to a crew that can fight from her.” Admiral Ackbar’s barabels twitched. “Still, your point about firepower is a good one. To be on the safe side I will bring in more ships than called for, to provide me with a reaction force in case Krennel finds new allies.”

Cracken pointed a finger and swung it around to include everyone in the room. “The most important point concerning this operation is simple: No word of it may leave this room. We suspect Krennel has some intelligence assets within the government here—ex-Imperials, speciesist crazies, whomever. If any word of this leaks, the whole operation will fail horribly.”

Mon Mothma nodded solemnly. “I’m certain all the Council members understand this. No leak of this affair will come from Coruscant.”

Ackbar stood again. “Then, if I may have your leave, we have planning to do.”

Outside the chamber, Ackbar rested a heavy hand on Cracken’s shoulder. “Did I cover it well?”

“Yes, Admiral, better than most of my operatives would have.” Cracken smiled. The message from Wedge Antilles had come in two forms. One, which they had played for the Council, specified five weeks before an attack. The other, which they kept secret, chopped two weeks off the staging time. The inevitable leak from Coruscant would have Krennel waiting for an attack that would take place two weeks after they’d already smashed his fleet. Cracken had no real love for deceiving his bosses, but if a deception would protect the warriors who would die because of leaks, he had no problem lying as much as necessary.

“Better than your operatives? I find that hard to believe.” Ackbar led the way between two guards into Cracken’s office suite in the Imperial Palace. They passed through his antechamber, into his office, and into the totally secure briefing room beyond it. Cracken closed the door behind them and Ackbar seated himself at the briefing table.

Cracken smiled and took his place at the head of the table. “Admiral, I believe you know these people. Iella Wessiri was an investigator at the Celchu trial, Mirax Terrik you’ve met, and this is her father, Booster.”

The Mon Cal nodded his head. “I know of Booster only by reputation, and quite the reputation it is.”

Booster nodded to Ackbar. “It’s so good to be loved.”

Airen Cracken posted his arms on the end of the table to hold himself up. “Okay, this is the situation. The Council has given us the go-ahead to run with Wedge’s plan. We’ve not told them that the real Ysanne Isard is alive. They’ve discovered Ysanne Isard is supposedly working for Krennel, but they don’t believe it and we’re not about to tell them she’s a clone. The only source we have for the real Isard’s survival is Whistler, which is good enough for me. News about Isard’s survival can’t leave this room.”

Mirax leaned forward. “Isn’t having the Council think Isard is working for Krennel as dangerous as letting them know the real Isard is alive?”

“No, because any rumor of Isard working for Krennel that gets back to the genuine Isard will just confirm how good her intelligence sources are. If she knows that we know she’s alive, however, she’ll vanish and we’ll never find her until she wants to be found, and I don’t like that idea at all.” Cracken sighed. “Look, you’re three of the shrewdest people in the galaxy, with access to intelligence resources I don’t have. You’re already in on the secret here, and expanding the circle of knowledge is not going to be a good thing, so you’re it. The game here is this: If Isard is offering us Krennel, it’s because she’s after something bigger. I want to know what it is and I want to make sure she doesn’t get it. That’s your job. You have to figure it out without letting anyone know what you’re doing, and have to stop her.”

Booster laughed. “Is that all?”

Cracken snarled. “You have two weeks in which to do it. Maybe less. If she discovers Whistler and Gate are gone, she may bolt.”

Booster smiled. “Records will show the two droids were destroyed on Brentaal.”

“Nice work, Booster, but this is Isard we’re talking about. If anyone will see through that deception, she will.” Cracken straightened up and folded his arms over his chest. “You’ve got to see through her deception and, for all our sakes, I hope your first guess is your best guess, because we won’t get another shot at her.”

30

Wedge Antilles looked at the datapad in his left hand and nodded when an ALL CLEAR message flashed across it. He unplugged the small surveillance device detection scanner from it and tossed the wandlike item to Corran. The ex-CorSec officer wound the cord around the wand and slipped it into his pocket. Wedge hoped he’d be able to slip it back into the base’s security office before it was noted as missing. And I hope this meeting is over before security comes in to see why the bugs Corran deactivated aren’t working.

He looked around at the other eight pilots gathered with him in the small briefing room. “I don’t know how much time we’ll have before someone is sent to look in on us, but we’re clear for the moment. I know you’ve been briefed on the plan and we’ve run some very good sims of it, but I’m sensing some anxiety. Tell me what’s going on.”

Down in the front row, Gavin leaned forward in his chair and rested his elbows on his knees. “We’re taking all the risk on this run. We go in first, we’re there for a week before the attack comes. We have a lot of exposure, and I can’t help but feel that Isard might just betray us to Krennel.”

Wedge nodded. “Of course, if she wanted us dead, she could have killed us at Distna, or at any time she’s had us here. She could have even brought us to Krennel as prisoners.”

“But by having us inserted into Ciutric, she shows Krennel the weakness in his security setup.” Inyri Forge fingered her lower lip for a second. “Revealing that breach to him could reinforce the idea that Krennel needs her.”

Tycho disagreed from his position by the square room’s only door. “Allying herself with Krennel would put her in an inferior position. If we pull this off, if she’s instrumental in taking Krennel down and freeing the Lusankya prisoners, she’ll put the New Republic’s government in a difficult position. They will be in her debt, but she’s the one who had the Krytos virus created. How she is dealt with could create major human-nonhuman fractures in the New Republic.”

“I agree with Tycho, but I think that political pressure angle is too slow for her.” Corran sat back, tugging absently at one end of the long mustache he’d grown as part of his disguise. “I think we can all agree that she’s going to backstab us somehow, right?”

Wedge saw everyone’s head bob in agreement with Corran’s question. “Okay, so now we have to figure out how she’ll do it.”

Myn Donos raised a hand. “Look, I don’t have the same history with her that the rest of you do, but from all I’ve heard I get the impression she’s very pragmatic.”

“Keep going, Myn.”

“Okay, so if she’s pragmatic, it strikes me that she’s going to use the group that beat her—Rogue Squadron—to hurt Krennel badly. You did it before on Axxila and Ciutric, so you can do it one more time, putting an end to him. This suggests to me that whatever she’ll do to us, she’ll do after we take Krennel down.”

Wedge felt a chill run down his spine. “Or she’ll do it before we take him down, but have it take effect after we’ve succeeded.”

Gavin frowned. “I’m not sure I follow that.”

“Remember the mess she made with the Krytos virus?” Wedge, feeling weary, rubbed his eyes with his left hand. “She gets someone into the facility where the Lusankya prisoners are being held and infects them with a deadly virus that takes a long time to manifest: a month, a year, maybe longer. All of them will be heroes, all of them will be paraded around through the upper crust of the New Republic. All at once this disease wipes out the New Republic’s leadership, leaving the nation in turmoil while a public health crisis looms. Isard and an alliance of ex-Imperials step in to restore order, offering a cure for the disease. She blames the initial infection on her clone, comes in as a hero to save the day, and suddenly she’s back in power.”

The room fell silent as the pilots pondered Wedge’s scenario. The surprised expressions and pale faces reflected the horror Wedge felt in his gut. What amazed him the most was that no one offered a denial of the plot he’d described. We all know, firsthand, that she’s capable of such cruelty.

Corran spoke first. “The nastiest part of your scenario is that it would also kill off the Lusankya prisoners. When she and I spoke, she said she was glad the Lusankya had been destroyed at Thyferra because after I escaped from it, it had been soiled. The prisoners were part of that desecration and I think she would have killed them if she had been in control of them. She doesn’t like keeping reminders of her failure around with her.”

Wedge nodded. “That’s a good point. Tycho?”

“I think we all agree she’s more than capable of doing what you’re suggesting. I also think there are simpler ways of causing us trouble. Perhaps the defenses for the prison are tougher than we imagine, so the guards will have a chance to kill all the prisoners. That would make us all feel horrible, and likely get Two Flight killed in its attempt to neutralize the defenses.”

“Okay, so we run sims in which we toughen up the opposition.” The General looked around the room. “What else?”

Nrin raised a hand. “I think it will be important for us to have a plan to quarantine the prisoners to prevent the disease from spreading. We need to let them know they’re at risk. They’ll need to speak with someone they know and trust, which means Tycho or Corran.”

Corran shook his head. “Ah, um, the last time I was with them, I let them know that Tycho was a traitor. I can roll in and talk to them.”

“Ah, Corran, General Dodonna knows me, too.” Wedge smiled. “We’ll both record messages to him and everyone will carry a datacard with the messages on them. If we go down, the messages still get in.”

A knock at the door ended the discussion. Tycho opened the door and admitted Colonel Vessery. “Sorry to disturb you.”

“Just debriefing after a sim run. We want to make some changes—a worst-case scenario thing. We want to see how bad it can get.”

Vessery nodded. “Good idea, but you’ll have to hurry. Negotiations are final. You’ll be going in to Ciutric two days from now. Krennel believes you’ll be hyperspacing for a couple of days to get there, but the trip will only take six hours or so. Once you’re in place, you send the appropriate message and set things in motion.”

“Thank you, Colonel. We’ll be ready.”

“I’m sure you will.” Vessery hesitated. “I’ve enjoyed working with you all. I believe you have a saying for times like this: May the Force be with you. I really do hope it is. If you succeed, if we succeed, we can all go home again.”

Popping out of hyperspace near Ciutric, Wedge tried to match his memory of the system with what he saw now. He got no sense of recognition, of having been there before, but that struck him as just as well. On Ciutric Rogue Squadron had lost one of its most beloved pilots, Ibtisam. Remembering brought a lump to his throat, which he swallowed against.

He keyed his comm unit. “How are you doing, Eight?”

Nrin’s voice came back even, but a bit tight. “I am fine, Colonel Roat.” His words revealed none of the pain he had to be feeling. He had been closer to Ibtisam than anyone else had—a fact made remarkable because of the traditional rivalries between the Quarren and the Mon Calamari. Her death had crushed Nrin emotionally and, after a leave of absence, he had accepted a transfer from Rogue Squadron to a training squadron.

“Good to hear, Eight.” Wedge flipped the comm unit over to the Spaceport Authority channel he’d been given. “This is Colonel Antar Roat with Requiem Squadron. We are nine ships in total and wish landing clearance.”

“Ciutric Spaceport Authority here. You will be switched to military control. Destination beacon at one-three-nine-three-eight coming on now. Please tune your autolanding function to that frequency and initiate autolanding programs.”

“As ordered, Ciutric. Executing now.” Wedge punched a red button with his left thumb and felt the control buck a bit as the Defender’s computer controls locked on to the beacon and began to use the data it was sending to plot the entry and landing speed and vectors. Wedge relaxed his grip on the yoke, but didn’t let it go entirely. He had a pilot’s distrust of mechanical flying systems, and since he was running into a hostile environment, he wanted to take full control of the ship if anything started to go wrong.

Of course, the disguise he was wearing did make flying a bit more awkward. When he had assumed the Roat identity to get onto Imperial Center, the head prosthetic had been an extensive affair that covered the right side of his face, from forehead to cheek and back over his ear. A piece of it had wrapped down over his jaw and pressed against his voice box. Because Roat had been bound for Imperial Center for reconstructive surgery, the prosthetic had been modified and minimized to be a metal device that built up his right eye socket, with a thin line of metal that led down to the blinking device that pressed against his larynx and altered the sound of his voice. The eye construct unbalanced his face enough that, coupled with the beard, he looked nothing like the various images the Empire had circulated of Wedge Antilles.

His helmet hid the facial modifications, but his flight suit did not hide the other change. His right hand ended in a blocky construct that featured only two thick fingers and a thumb. It whirred and clicked as Wedge moved the hand around. The device slowed his hand movements somewhat, but it had a cutout switch that he could use in combat to let him have full use of his hand.

As annoying as all this stuff is, it’s much better than flying with an Ewok puppet in my lap. That recollection tightened Wedge’s gut. He’d been forced to fly disguised as an Ewok pilot because of one of Wes Janson’s practical jokes. Wes will be sorely missed.

Despite his misgivings about turning control of his fighter over to Krennel’s people, the automatic beacon brought the Defenders down without incident. Military control informed the pilots that they would have to land their own fighters and designated landing spots for each of them. Wedge offered his thanks. Letting his pilots land their own craft marked the respect the military controllers had for pilots.

Wedge was impressed to see Krennel waiting with other staff officers to greet his people. Wedge set his Defender down with a gentle hand, shut down all systems, and popped open the egress hatch. He thanked the tech rolling up a staircase for him, and when on the deck, doffed his helmet and handed it to the tech. He stepped to the front of his fighter, then looked to his left, down the row of pilots. When they’d all taken their places, he took one step forward and saluted Krennel.

The Prince-Admiral returned the salute, then stepped away from his advisors and approached Wedge. “Colonel Roat, I am most pleased you have chosen to bring your squadron of Defenders to me. You will be a great asset to the Hegemony.”

The modulator on Wedge’s throat injected a buzz into his voice. “It is our pleasure to find the single man with the courage to keep the spark of the Empire alive.”

“Walk with me, Colonel. Introduce me to your me … people.”

Wedge fell into step with Krennel. He introduced him to Gavin, Hobbie, and Myn as One Flight. Krennel spoke with each, but never offered his right hand to them. Since it was a prosthetic, this did not surprise Wedge at all. Krennel instead patted them on the shoulders with his flesh-and-blood hand, gracing each with a smile and a nod of the head.

Wedge had to admit Krennel was good. The display suggested Krennel took it as a personal compliment that the pilots had come over to join his Hegemony. He made a personal connection with each of them and Wedge had no doubt Krennel would remember and use the details he learned about them in subsequent conversations, when or if he ever saw them again. He does have a certain charisma, which explains how he has gotten this far.

Krennel slowed as he reached Two Flight. First in order were Tycho and Inyri. Both had dyed their hair a bright red and they looked enough alike to be brother and sister, which was exactly how Wedge introduced them. “Prince-Admiral, this is Major Teekon Fass and his sister, Inyon. While it is unusual to have a female pilot in a squadron, Requiem’s mission required the best pilots we could find. Inyon tested out very highly, so I brought her into the program. It is a decision I have not had cause to regret.”

“Indeed?” Krennel’s smile diminished only slightly. “I shall look forward to a demonstration of her prowess. A pleasure to meet you both.”

They moved on down the line to Ooryl. “This is the Gand Zukvir. He is a Findsman, much like his kinsman Zuckuss, who worked for Lord Vader. The Findsman’s skill in a fighter is superior to most men, and his loyalty is absolute.”

“Fascinating.” Krennel pointed toward Nrin with his metal hand. “And here we have a Quarren.”

“Captain Notha Dab, yes.” Wedge smiled as much as his prosthetic allowed him to. “Dab has been tireless in his training and, while we were considering joining your Hegemony, he was your greatest proponent.”

“Really?” Krennel lifted his chin. “And why was that, Captain Dab?”

Nrin’s facial tentacles curled up to reveal two needle-sharp fangs. “Can’t kill Mon Cals in the New Republic, Prince-Admiral. You will give me the best opportunity to do that.”

A cold smile blossomed on Krennel’s face. “You’ll get that chance, Captain Dab, very soon, I’m certain.” The Prince-Admiral turned to Wedge. “I commend your employment of interspecies rivalries to fuel your people’s desires to fight.”

“So nice of you to notice, Prince-Admiral.” Wedge led him on to where Corran stood. In addition to growing the mustache, Corran had dyed his hair jet black. His pale skin and green eyes made for a sharp contrast that made him a bit difficult for Wedge to recognize. “This is Captain Pyr Hand. He is better known among us as Klick.”

“ ‘Klick,’ as in slang for kilometer?”

Corran nodded.

“And why is that?”

Corran blinked his eyes once, slowly. “I’m a dead shot at that range, Prince-Admiral.”

“Excellent.” Krennel turned from the line and led Wedge with him toward his knot of advisors. “Well, Colonel Roat, your people impress me, for the most part. I’m pleased to have you with us.”

“Thank you, Prince-Admiral.” Wedge gave the man a quick smile. “I think you’ll find we add a dimension to your defenses you haven’t even realized you lacked until now.”

31

Iella Wessiri glanced over to where Booster Terrik lay sleeping in the corner of the briefing room, then smiled at Mirax. “Nice thing about Booster’s snoring is that it’s likely to knock out any listening devices the scanners have missed.”

“I’d begrudge him the sleep, but he’s been really good at thinking like Isard.” Mirax rested her chin on both hands. “Of course, realizing my father can simulate a cold-blooded mass murderer so well isn’t very reassuring. If we have kids, I’m not sure how often we’ll let them stay with their grandfather.”

Iella hid a yawn behind a hand. “I know I should press you on this ‘kids’ thing, but I’m too tired. It’s not that I don’t care.”

“Good. I’ve got ‘Aunt Iella’ first on the list for free baby-sitting services.”

The briefing room doorway opened and Iella caught the scent of caf before General Cracken could make it all the way into the room. He brought with him a tray containing four large, steaming mugs and slid it onto the table. “Thought you could use some caf at this hour of the night.”

“We could use some of what Booster’s getting, really.”

“Iella’s right, but I’ll settle for half my father’s caf at this point.”

Cracken seated himself and passed out the beverages. “Please, drink up. I wanted to tell you that I’m very pleased and grateful for your work. Hmmm, just as well Booster’s asleep for that part. Admiral Ackbar and I have gone over your various scenarios and agree that several are highly probable. We’re focusing in on those that involve the prisoners.”

Mirax lowered her mug and jerked her head toward her father’s sleeping form. “Those were largely Booster’s work. He concocted what he called Isard’s ‘Hierarchy of Hatred,’ then figured out what she could do to maximize damage to her enemies. Something as simple as denying ground support to liberate the prison would result in the deaths of the prisoners, a rough time for the Rogues and ground-based defenses that would make the New Republic’s fight against Krennel much closer. Everyone gets hurt: the prisoners, the Rogues, Krennel, and the New Republic. Just the kind of mischief she’d love.”

“We’re taking precautions that should cover all of those eventualities. No guarantees, but we’ll be doing our best.” Cracken sat back in his chair, wrapping his hands around the caf mug. “The other scenarios, ones based on her repeating the Krytos virus situation, are frightening as well. We’re mobilizing assets that can help us detect, isolate, and cure anyone who is infected, but for all we know Ciutric is just going to be one big sick world. It’s not at all what we want to deal with, but we can’t discount that possibility either.”

Iella shook her head. “It doesn’t seem like we’ve come up with much for two weeks’ worth of work, but we’ve gone over every file that mentions her, all the rumors about her that we’ve heard over the years, and even had Booster trying to think like her. I know we’ve worked hard, but I can’t help feel that we’ve missed something.”

Mirax reached across the table to squeeze Iella’s hand. “Isard is just one big ocean of evil. No real way to know if we’ve found all the currents running deep there.”

Iella arched an eyebrow at Mirax. “We really have been speaking a lot with Admiral Ackbar, haven’t we?”

“Yeah, it’ll be months before I stop using ocean analogies.”

“Well, you’ll get your chance to begin recovering soon. Admiral Ackbar and I leave for the primary staging area in four hours.” Cracken fished inside his tunic and withdrew two datacards. He slid one to Mirax and the other to Iella. “Because you won’t be able to talk to us, I want you to have these.”

Iella picked up the datacard and turned it over. It looked entirely normal, save for platinum triangles at each of the corners. She flipped it front again, then held it up between her left thumb and forefinger. “This contains ultra-clearance codes?”

Cracken nodded solemnly. “Army, Navy, Intelligence, Governmental from the Republic level on down to major municipal levels, and many corporate levels as well. It also has codes that will allow you to access five million credits—each. Based on the authorization in the card, you can go anywhere and do anything you need to do. If you think of something, no matter how wild, and you need to take steps to stop Isard, this will allow you to take them.”

Booster rolled over onto his back. “Good, we can use it to buy more guns for my ship.”

“That’s why you don’t have one of the cards, Booster.”

The smuggler stretched. “The New Republic has no sense of gratitude at all.”

“Go back to sleep, Father.” Mirax slipped her card into a pocket. “I take it you want us to keep working on this until Isard is found or gives herself up?”

“That’s it. Do whatever you have to do. If you have to break laws, try to be discreet, and if you have to kill anyone, well, try not to raze any planets.”

Mirax blinked. “You’re serious about this.”

“Very.” Cracken finished his caf and stood. “May the Force be with you.”

Iella watched him leave the room, then looked again at the card in her hands. “They’re putting a lot of trust in us. They’re giving us a lot of responsibility. We can’t fail.”

“We won’t.” Mirax got up, walked over to where her father lay, and gently nudged his ribs with her toe. “Wake up, old man, time to start working again. Come up with something brilliant.”

Booster smiled as he sat up. He stretched again, then walked around and usurped Cracken’s place at the table. “Okay, ladies, we’ve examined Isard’s history of atrocities. We’ve gone through her Hierarchy of Hate. There’s only one thing left for us to look at. We have to examine her dream ladder.”

Iella shook her head and bolted another slug of caf. “I must be dreaming myself, because that made no sense. Her ‘dream ladder’?”

Mirax held a hand up. “I think I know where he’s going with this. Care to open the help files for us?”

“It’s simplicity itself, ladies.” Booster hefted the remaining full mug in a salute. “We look at her sense of greed. If control of the galaxy is her goal, we know where she’ll get when she scales that ladder. Starting from the top, then, we go down, rung by rung, looking at how she’ll have to plan her ascent. Eventually we’ll work down to the lowest rung she has access to right now, and that’s where we’ll have her.”

Iella exhaled slowly. “That will take forever and we have, at best, a week.”

Booster flicked a finger against her card. “Let’s order more caf then. If you’re right that we missed something before, this is the way we’ll find it. And when we do, we’ll spill Ysanne Isard and her dreams into a black hole she’ll never escape.”

Wedge Antilles kept his gloved right hand on his thigh, beneath the level of the table at Shine Astara, one of the premiere restaurants in Ciutric’s capital, Daplona. Wedge realized the place would require his best behavior, since the first word of the name was pronounced “sheen” with an Imperial lilt that required the speaker to press his teeth together as he said it. Given that I’ve already sent the message that will bring Admiral Ackbar and Isard’s people down on this world inside a week, being on my best behavior is the least I can do for my host.

Keeping teeth clenched together that way did make it easier to sneer, a trait that his host, Colonel Lorrir, had perfected. Lorrir struck Wedge as being an Imperial’s Imperial. Tall, slender, angular, and very proper, Lorrir almost seemed to have been put together from a kit. The fact that he only had a white fringe of hair on his head indicated this wasn’t true, since a full head of black hair would have made him the perfect image of an officer. Lorrir made up for that defect by being very demanding, which meant working with him had been tough for Wedge.

But shooting him down in sim wasn’t that tough. Wedge suppressed a smile.

Colonel Lorrir nodded in his direction. “You are to be congratulated, Colonel, for how well your troops are trained. You are very formidable in combat.” He looked around at the others gathered at the table. “If you can believe it, Colonel Roat even shot me down.”

The other dinner guests gasped in astonishment, then looked at Wedge. “How ever did you manage that?” asked one officer’s plump wife.

“Colonel Lorrir is too kind. He made shooting him down very difficult.” Wedge nodded to his host. His reliance on sideslipping to evade a following ship made me sure he was luring me into a trap. I was far too cautious because he’s just not that great a pilot. “Colonel, you clearly have superior flying skills. You have many combat kills under your belt, I imagine.”

Lorrir’s bald head glowed golden in the restaurant’s muted light. “Yes, well, before I was transferred to the Prince-Admiral’s ship Reckoning, I spent some time in the One Eighty-first Imperial Fighter Group. That was back when Baron Fel was in command. I was a mere Lieutenant, but a Lieutenant in that unit was the equal of a Major in any other.”

Wedge tuned the man out as a waiter came over with two bottles of wine. “Since I am having the braised nerf, I’ll have the green, if you don’t mind.”

The waiter hesitated and Wedge quickly caught the curling of Lorrir’s lip into a sneer.

“Of course, I meant I would prefer the emerald.” Wedge shook his head. “Back where I came from the wait-beasts were hardly discerning enough to understand the proper terms for wine. They would even opt for a ruby when consuming fish, if you can imagine it.”

The voice modulator erased the slightly mocking tone in Wedge’s words, though he had serious doubts that the two Hegemony officers or their wives would have caught them. Krennel’s staff seemed to be largely filled with courtiers whose ability to please the Prince-Admiral outshone their ability to fight or properly administer a unit. He had no doubt that they followed orders to the letter, which made them perfect for Krennel’s purposes, but dulled the sort of initiative that would have made them a threat to the Rogue operation.

Lorrir’s wife, Kandise, patted Wedge’s left hand. “Now don’t you be worried about that sort of thing anymore, Colonel Roat. The Hegemony is a bastion of Imperial culture, so you are safe here.”

“You are too kind, Madam Lorrir.” Wedge gave her a quick smile, then focused on her husband. “You were telling of your time with the One Eighty-first. You were with them at Brentaal?”

“I was.” Lorrir sniffed mightily, then sipped some of the dark red wine the waiter had poured for him. “We would have held the world against the Rebels save for one man’s betrayal.”

“Admiral Lon Isoto.”

Wedge’s comment blanketed the table in silence. Lorrir set his wine glass down carefully and clasped his hands together. Kandise laid her left hand on his right forearm, but he shook it off irritably. Lorrir’s dark eyes narrowed and the man clearly struggled to keep from exploding.

“Colonel Roat, I shall assume that because you have long been involved in researches and developments that have kept you outside the mainstream of the Empire that you have said what you said. Your ignorance of the true facts will shield you at this time from my wrath, but understand that I will not allow you to slander the name of one of the finest military minds the Empire ever had.”

Wedge went cold. Rogue Squadron had been part of the Rebel operation that took Brentaal IV from the Empire. Admiral Lon Isoto had been given command of the world and failed utterly to do anything that would protect it. He allowed the Rebels to take the moon and, from there, stage and land on Brentaal. The only serious opposition had come from Fel’s 181st.

“I apologize, Colonel, for angering you. I assumed … but that assumption was wrong. Who was it that betrayed us on Brentaal?”

“Baron Fel.”

“What?!” Wedge made no attempt to cover his surprise. “I find that hard to believe. Not to question your integrity, but I understood that Fel had fought hard at Brentaal.”

“Oh, he did, fought hard enough to lure us into a trap.” Lorrir’s voice dripped with contempt. “You probably are unaware that after we lost Brentaal Four, Fel went over to the Rebellion. He joined Rogue Squadron. Clearly Brentaal Four was the price he paid for clemency in their eyes.”

Wedge nodded. “Ah, I see.” After Fel’s defection, the Empire had begun a disinformation campaign that clearly vilified Fel and elevated Isoto to the level of a hero. By doing that they shielded others from facing the dilemma Fel had, and prevented them from making the same choice he did. He saw the Empire was evil and rejected it, but these others, they remain willfully blind.

He sipped some of his emerald wine and relished the hints of berry flavor in the vintage. “I also understood Rogue Squadron was there at Brentaal Four.”

“Yes, the squadron that cannot die.” Lorrir laughed and his companions joined him. “Rogue Squadron is the biggest fraud perpetrated by the Rebels on their sick adherents. That squadron is constantly being rebuilt because they die so easily. We killed eight or nine at Brentaal, and would have gotten the rest of them had they not run off. We shredded the Y-wings they should have been protecting, destroying an entire wing of them. That engagement alone, around Oradin, would have made me an ace—had I not already been one, of course.”

“Fascinating.” Wedge frowned for a moment. “I did think, however, that some Rogue Squadron members had been around for a while.”

“Indeed, and you can expect them back again. Antilles, Janson, Celchu—they will show up as a nucleus for the unit.”

“But they’re dead. Didn’t you destroy them at Distna?”

“The Rebels claim they never found bodies. Part of the ploy to bring them back again.” Lorrir lowered his voice. “Clones.”

“Oh my.” Wedge shivered. “I never would have thought they would do something like that.”

“No, nor does anyone else. That’s the pity of it, really, so many people being misled by such a dishonest group.” Lorrir shook his head, then raised his glass. “A toast: to a time when such lies will die the death they deserve, and the truth will shine forth.”

“I’ll drink to that.” Wedge touched his glass to the others. “And may that day come sooner than we might dare to hope.”

32

Colonel Vessery entered the dimly lit briefing room with his helmet under his left arm. He started to sketch a salute, but neither Major Telik nor Ysanne Isard looked up at him. Instead they intently studied the small holograph of a man’s head and shoulders.

The holographic figure spoke in hushed tones. “Ackbar’s fleet left here ten standard minutes ago on an outbound course that will bring him to Ciutric. Ship list appended.”

Telik stood back and smiled. “The message was sent two hours ago, which means Ackbar has eight hours to hit his target. We only need six to get to ours.”

Isard nodded solemnly, then turned toward Vessery. “Colonel, I know you developed some affection for the Rogues while you trained them.”

The cold tone of her voice sent a chill through Vessery, but he met her gaze openly. “I did. They are fine pilots. I have little doubt they will acquit their portions of the operation admirably. My feelings and respect for them aside, Madam Director, my pilots and I stand ready to execute our orders as well.”

“I had no doubt of that, Colonel.” Isard pursed her lips for a second. “I have allowed a message to reach Krennel that indicated another attempt to reinforce Liinade Three is being made in two days. That will keep Krennel at Ciutric in preparation for another ambush. He may even call in additional troops and ships, which would translate into a surprise for Ackbar. It will be a glorious battle over Ciutric, I believe.”

Telik shrugged. “We would not have time to watch much of it anyway.”

“No, indeed you wouldn’t, so it’s just as well you won’t be there.” She laughed, but Vessery heard no mirth in it at all. “In rushing out to destroy Krennel, Ackbar has stripped the defenses from the greatest prize of all. Come with me, men, and in six hours we will be in a position of power that will make the New Republic tremble itself to pieces.”

Prince-Admiral Krennel smiled predatorily as he listened to Isard’s report. “Another convoy? How rich. How can they afford to be sending so many freighters on these very dangerous missions?”

Isard stalked the shadows at the fringes of his office. “I am not certain they can continue to do so, Prince-Admiral.”

Krennel looked up from his desk. “Explain.”

She stopped pacing and faced him. “The primary problem with a free society of the sort the New Republic represents itself to be is that a great deal of information is available on any and all subjects, save those they wish to keep secret. The fact remains, however, that a great deal of the publicly available information does touch on the secret. For example, in the past, when freighters have been diverted from their normal commercial duties to haul supplies, commodity prices on worlds that are experiencing a delay in shipping tend to rise and fall depending upon their import and export status. Factories that produce the sorts of materials a convoy like that will carry have to hire new workers, or offer overtime pay, all of which is data that is noted in stock advisories. These and dozens of other indicators like them can be correlated to a military operation. The plain fact is that I’ve not seen such indicators rise in the pattern set by the previous convoys.”

“No movement at all?”

“I didn’t say that.” Isard frowned. “There are movements, but they hint more at another planetary invasion. It has been a quiet buildup and would have been unnoticed save for downward fluctuations in entertainment sectors of the economy that are tied to military bases from which the troops are drawn. As well an inordinate number of ships are being reported as being ‘on maneuvers,’ which usually presages action.”

“And this information about a convoy, it was leaked to you through a previously reliable source?”

“Yes, though no report goes unverified.” She pressed her hands together and rested her chin on her fingertips. “This is why I have noted the problems to you.”

“I gathered that, thank you. I suspect, if we check the course of that convoy, there is really only one good spot for an ambush, and we would have been hit there ourselves. Two days, is it, when they expected to hit us?”

“Two days, yes.”

“Good.” Krennel stood and punched a button on his desktop comm unit. “Captain, have my shuttle standing by, I will be heading up to the Reckoning. Issue recall orders for all crew on leave. That recall applies to Binder as well. Have Captain Phulik meet me on Reckoning. Krennel out.”

Isard nodded her head at him. “You’ll be striking somewhere in the New Republic.”

“I will. Once on Reckoning I will call for Emperor’s Wisdom and Decisive to join me here to stage our raid. They should get here in four hours or so. From here we will be ready to launch the boldest raid yet, one that will show the New Republic as the sham it truly is. Eighteen short hours after we leave here, they will learn the folly of attacking me.”

Isard’s eyes glistened. “Eighteen hours. You’ll strike at Coruscant?”

“Yes. It’s a lesson the New Republic has never learned.” Krennel gave Isard a thin-lipped smile. “To kill an enemy, the quickest method is always to strike at the head.”

Corran Horn had actually gotten to like some of the pilots in Krennel’s employ. The nicest were the guys drawn from the Hegemony itself. They seemed interested in defending their homes from encroachment by the New Republic, and Corran had to respect that. Still, their motivation wasn’t the main reason Corran liked them.

He looked down at his sabacc hand and stifled a smile. These guys from the Hegemony must be the worst sabacc players I’ve ever met. The stack of credit chits in front of him dwarfed the piles before the other three men playing. Better yet, he had the ace of flasks down on the table, in the interference field, and the flux had shifted the two cards in his hand into the ace of coins and the court card endurance, which was worth negative 8. Since each ace was worth 15, this left his hand with a total of 22, which was only one shy of the 23 total to win.

A grizzled older pilot looked at him. “Your bet, Klick.”

Corran slid his other two cards facedown on top of the ace of flasks. “I’m locked. I’ll bet two hundred credits.”

Two of the pilots tossed their hands in, but the older man squinted at his cards, then tossed two gold credit chits onto the hand pot pile. “I call.”

“Twenty-two.” Corran slowly flipped his cards over so the others could read them. “Can you beat it?”

“No.” The older man snarled. “Emperor’s Black Bones, you are the luckiest cardplayer I’ve ever met.”

“Not luck, skill.” Corran glanced at the sabacc table’s data readout. It indicated the pot contained 2,500 credits, 250 of which he skimmed off and fed into the sabacc pot, which currently stood at 15,000 credits. A two-card 23—which was known as a pure sabacc—or another three-card combination of 0, 2, and 3—the idiot’s array—would win that pot and end the game. “My deal, I believe.”

Corran gathered the cards and reached up to feed them into the LeisureMech RH7 Cardshark dealer-droid. The dealer-droid—which hung down from the ceiling—shuffled the cards, then extended its body so its manipulator arms could drop a card before each player. It swiveled around noiselessly and the twin stun pikes—which most players called “cheater prods”—remained retracted. After a second circuit, the cylindrical body withdrew into its base. Its with-drawal triggered the flux, shifting the value of the cards.

Corran reached for his cards, but before he could get them off the table, a siren began to rise and fall in tone and volume. Yellow lights began burning over every doorway. The other players immediately looked up, scooped up their winnings, then turned away from the table.

“What’s going on?”

The old man shrugged. “Report to your ship.” He gestured at a holographic imaging station at the far end of the hangar. “If it’s like before, the Prince-Admiral will tell us what’s going on.”

“What about the pot?”

“We give sabacc pots to the Survivor’s Fund. You have a problem with that?”

“Not me.” Corran stuffed his winnings into the pockets of his flight suit. “Get going, I’m right behind you.”

They ran from the ready room and Corran split off to the right where the whole Defender squadron had been assembled in the back of the hangar. He found the rest of the Rogues already there, with Hobbie and Myn rubbing sleep-sand from their eyes, and Tycho rubbing his wet hair dry with a towel from a refresher station. The only person he couldn’t find was Wedge.

The imaging station at the other end of the hangar filled with bright light that resolved itself down into the face of Prince-Admiral Krennel. “Greetings loyal warriors of the Hegemony. I would apologize for summoning you so abruptly, but this is a call to war and one I imagine you will relish. Our enemies have made a mistake and have provided us an opportunity that is quite rare. With one blow we can end the tyranny of the New Republic and send their shattered forces scurrying home.”

Corran glanced over at Tycho, then tapped the chronometer on his left wrist. By my count, we’ve got a couple of hours yet before Isard’s people and the New Republic get here. “Any guesses?”

Tycho shook his head. “Too soon for guesses.”

Krennel smiled magnificently. “All squadrons will be getting their assignments. You will be on board your appointed ships as fast as possible, and then we will depart to fulfill our destiny.”

33

“Colonel Roat!” Lorrir’s voice echoed through the nearly empty hangar. “Why aren’t your people in the air yet?”

Wedge spun on his heel and hooked his thumbs through the blaster belt he wore outside his flight suit. “I believe, Colonel Lorrir, we had an understanding about that. My Defenders are equipped with hyperdrive, we don’t need to be loaded on the Reckoning or any other ship to reach our destination. If we are to be loaded in the launching racks, it makes sense for us to be the last in and the first to be launched because of our capabilities and, you noted yourself, that the loadmasters on the capital ships are still reviewing procedures for our ships to be loaded.”

Lorrir’s face tightened into a scowl. “That is no excuse for you to still be here in the hangar.”

“But, Colonel, your Interceptor is still here.” Wedge held a hand up. “Perhaps we should be discussing this in an office, away from the troops?”

The Hegemony officer nodded. With his helmet under his arm, he led Wedge off to a small office with a single, rectangular window as tall as the door built into the wall beside it. The legend on the door proclaimed it to be the operations room.

Once inside, Lorrir perched himself on the desk and shook his head. “This cannot be tolerated, Colonel Roat.”

Wedge closed the door, then dialed down the opacity of the window, taking it all the way to black. “No, Colonel, I expect it cannot.”

“You have been given your orders and I expect you to follow them.”

Wedge nodded solemnly and looked at his chronometer for a second. “I am following orders, Colonel.” He tugged the gloved construct off his right hand, then flexed his fist.

“What are you doing?” Lorrir blinked with surprise. “What is going on here?”

“You remember you told me about Brentaal the other night at dinner. You told me how the Empire had been betrayed by Baron Fel?”

“Yes.”

Wedge reached up and pulled off the prosthetic over his eye, then peeled the piece off his throat. “Ah, much better. And you recall mentioning that you’d killed plenty of Rogue Squadron members on Brentaal, and that Wedge Antilles would be back.”

The man’s voice quaked. “Y-yes?”

“You were right. I’m Wedge Antilles. I’m back.”

The couple of seconds it took for Wedge’s statement to blossom with all its import in Lorrir’s brain proved to be about a second longer than it took for Wedge to draw his blaster and shoot the Hegemony officer. The blue stunbolt hit Lorrir dead center in the chest, pitching him backward over the desk. His helmet clattered against the floor and a metal chair skidded back beneath him and bounced off the room’s rear wall.

Wedge holstered the blaster and pulled the desk back. He stooped down, found a strong pulse in Lorrir’s neck, then yanked Lorrir’s right glove free of his hand. Wedge slid the glove on and picked up Lorrir’s helmet. “I need a mask for a moment, so I’ll keep this. You won’t be able to go up without it, but then I won’t have to shoot you down again. Sleep well.”

Donning the helmet, Wedge slipped from the office, locked the door, and closed it behind him. He walked sedately over to the rest of the Rogues, then waggled his fingers at them.

Tycho looked surprised. “Things didn’t go well?”

“Lorrir developed a new sense of irony. He found my revelations stunning.” Wedge pointed to the Defenders. “Get in, get these things going. Fly in formation to the southern shield projector facility. We’ve got ten minutes for incoming and I want us ready to go.”

Everyone split to their machines and Wedge climbed into his. He brought the power up, then locked the restraining straps in place. As the Defender cycled power to systems, his communications console lit up with positive check-ins from the rest of the squadron. The fleet frequency button flashed, so he punched it.

“Colonel Roat here.”

“This is Reckoning Flight Control. When are your people going to report for loading?”

“I understood we were to head up after Colonel Lorrir. His Interceptor is still here. Do you want me to find him?”

“Negative, Colonel, just get your people airborne and headed this way. Someone else will deal with Lorrir.”

“As ordered, Control. On our way.”

The clone of Ysanne Isard did not realize she was a clone. She was possessed of all the original’s memories, her entire life history up to a point just prior to the Lusankya’s escape from Imperial Center. Along with these memories came the original’s attitudes, which included a healthy dose of skeptical contempt for things mystical, including the Force.

Yet, despite those prejudices, something struck her as very wrong about the message she’d gotten from Krennel. He asked her to dispatch someone to find Colonel Lorrir. She would have sent a subordinate, but she actually wanted to locate Lorrir for herself and pass on the message of Krennel’s displeasure. In Lorrir she had seen a grasping man who was abrasive with his inferiors, and fawningly obsequious with his betters. Because she stood outside the military establishment, he had treated her with cautious courtesy, which she knew would be stripped away and replaced with subservience once he knew how much power she commanded.

She reached the hangar in no time and saw Lorrir’s Interceptor still sitting on the ferrocrete deck. She knew it was his because he’d painted red stripes on each wing, just as the 181st used to do. She thought it a pity that a man’s life should be so paltry that he had to cling to a hideous defeat as the high point of his existence.

The clone called a tech over and asked if he’d seen Lorrir. The man pointed toward the closed operations room door. She walked over to it, tried the handle, and found it was locked. Glancing at her chronometer, she mentally calculated the security override code for that quarter hour, punched it into the keypad, and entered the office.

She took immediate notice of the ozone stink in the air which, combined with Lorrir’s body lying on the floor, told her the man had been stunned with a blaster. She squatted down and batted one of Lorrir’s feet aside, then pulled a black glove from beneath it. The glove only had two fingers and had been fitted with metal parts to make it appear to be a prosthetic replacement.

“Colonel Roat.” If Roat’s hand had not been genuine, then neither had he. This meant he and his group of Defenders had been inserted into Ciutric, but for what purpose? They could do no good on Ciutric, she reasoned, unless …

Throughout the building and the entire city of Daplona, sirens began to squeal with a pulsating message of warning. Red lights strobed and out in the hangar techs began scurrying around.

She slapped Lorrir to wakefulness, then hauled him to his feet. “Come with me, I need you.”

“Madam Director!” The man blinked his eyes in surprise. “It was a traitor, it was …”

“Yes, yes, no time for that. You’re under my command now.”

“What?” Lorrir straightened up and smoothed the breast of his flight suit. “I’m a pilot.”

“So you are, and now you’ll be flying for me.”

“For you? Why?”

“Listen to the sirens, fool.” The clone smiled and nodded a salute toward the sky. “There is a military operation planned. It’s coming here. They don’t care about Krennel, they’re after me and my prisoners. We’ll have to see they end up very disappointed.”

The primary monitor on Wedge’s Defender flashed brightly for a moment as image after image of ships filled the screen in rapid sequence. He caught a glimpse of a Mon Calamari Cruiser on the scanner screen, then an Imperial Star Destroyer Mark II, which matched the Reckoning in firepower. After that came three Nebulon-B Frigates, a half-dozen Corellian Corvettes, and a couple of fast little freighters. That’s pretty much the taskforce description I sent Admiral Ackbar, and it would have been more than sufficient for taking on Reckoning and Binder.

The problem was that Krennel had called in Emperor’s Wisdom and Decisive, giving the Hegemony forces a hideous edge in firepower. The Victory-class Star Destroyer, Emperor’s Wisdom, had eighty concussion missile launch tubes on it. Any single salvo could bring down the Mon Cal cruiser’s shields, leaving it open for raking fire from the ship’s energy weapons. Decisive and Reckoning both could pound on Emancipator—an Impstar Deuce the New Republic had captured at Endor. While it could severely damage any of the opposing ships, it would be lost.

Wedge shivered, then punched up the squadron frequency. “You’ve all seen the scans, Rogues. It’s not going to be pleasant. One Flight, we take out the shield generators down here, then we go to the spaceport and heist a freighter big enough to get the prisoners out of here. Two Flight, as planned, you neutralize prison defenses.”

“As ordered, Lead. How do we take the prison? I didn’t see Telik’s commandos or Vessery’s fighters in the mix.”

“I don’t know, Tycho. I hope they’re just late. First things first, then we do whatever we have to do.”

“On it, Lead. Two Flight on me. May the Force be with all of us.”

Wedge rolled his Defender up onto the port side and peeled off toward the south. As he leveled out, Hobbie appeared on his starboard wing, Gavin and Myn on his port. The Defender cockpit gave him a great view of the cityscape over which they flew. Bulbous tan buildings alternated with green belts and parks, the tall skyscrapers of the municipal center giving way to smaller residential buildings and individual homes. Out beyond the residential areas he saw the massive edifices of the factory district and right in the middle lay the shield generation facility.

“Three and Four, you have the towers on the east, Two, take the ones on the west. I’m going straight in.” Wedge thumbed his weapons-selector to concussion missiles. He set them for linked fire, then settled his crosshairs on the central dome. His rangefinder put him two kilometers out, with distance falling away fast.

The ion cannons mounted on towers around the facility had been cranked skyward. They pulsed out massive blue bolts that shot upward at the invading fleet, pouring out through momentary gaps opened in the shields by fire-control computers. Below them, on the same towers, turbo-laser cannons traversed their muzzles across the landscape. Three sets of four cannons had been stacked at twenty, forty, and sixty meters on the towers, with the ion cannons at the top. Bristling with weapons, the towers made formidable targets.

But targets nonetheless. Myn and Gavin let fly with the concussion missiles. Four incandescent rockets shot out at the eastern towers. Myn’s hit a second before Gavin’s, since Gavin’s traveled a bit further, but all four were on target. They nailed the lowest gunnery station, demolishing the turbolaser cannons in a brilliant flash of light and heat. The force of the explosion expanded outward and up, jetting superheated plasma up through the next gunnery station. The ferrocrete slabs forming the intervening section buckled, then burst outward. The tops of the towers wavered, then began a tortured fall to the ground. To the west the first tower Hobbie targeted likewise crumbled in flame and smoke.

Wedge’s targeting reticle went red, so he pulled the trigger and sent two concussion missiles flying toward the shield generator. The pink missiles bored through the ferrocrete dome, then detonated. Twin gouts of argent fire shot back out of the holes the missiles had made. The fire expanded and linked them into a single, larger hole, then proceeded to gnaw up into the dome until it collapsed in on itself. Windows and doors on the shield facility blew out and flaming debris rode a shockwave out to be scattered over the well-manicured landscape.

“Break port, Lead.”

Wedge immediately rolled his craft left and saw an ion bolt the size of a small freighter sizzle past. The only intact tower’s ion cannon had tracked him on his approach and had almost gotten him. Before he could apply some rudder and correct for an attack run, Gavin and Myn came in on a strafing run that pumped a pair of quaded-up laser bursts into the ion cannon.

The cannon exploded like an overripe fruit hit with a gaffi stick. A huge chunk of its armored shell fell away like a rind and collapsed a corner of the burning shield facility. Secondary explosions in the facility itself pitched the armor off onto shrubbery, which ignited when the hot metal touched it.

Wedge punched up a sensor scan just to confirm that the southern quadrant shield over Daplona was down. The city now lay open for Telik’s commandos. If they ever get here.

He keyed his comlink. “Lead to Five, we’re clear here. What’s your status?”

“Busy, Lead, and could use some help. The guys on the ground won’t go away, and I’ve got a dozen TIEs inbound our position.” Tycho hesitated for a moment. “Better get here fast, or there may be no reason to come at all.”

34

Admiral Ackbar, on the bridge of the Mon Calamari cruiser Home One, glanced with one eye at the holographic display of the near-space sector, and with the other looked out the viewport at the array of ships Krennel had brought to the fight. Only the unconscious twitching of his barabels betrayed his surprise. From the depths always comes amazement.

“Weapons, shields up and concentrate all fire on Reckoning. Fighter Command, deploy the A-wings and have them try to pick off the missiles that will be incoming from the Vic. After that, they’re free to go after the TIEs and Interceptors.”

“As ordered, Admiral.”

“Helm, reverse course. Start pulling us back out on our exit vector.”

“Yes, Admiral.”

Ackbar looked at the small brown Sullustan serving as his communications officer. “Lieutenant Quiv, tell Emancipator to withdraw, but concentrate fire on Reckoning. Tell Peacemaker, Pride of Eiattu, and Thunderchild to go after the Vic. Relay those same orders to all the Corvettes. I want an orderly withdrawal. Krennel has to know we didn’t expect this much strength here.”

The Sullustan cheebled his assent and relayed the orders.

The smaller ships in the taskforce all curled out and around from the two main ships and drove hard at the Emperor’s Wisdom. Ackbar knew that the Nebulon-B Frigates and the half-dozen Corvettes couldn’t do that much damage to their target, but he wanted the Vic’s gunners, especially those manning the concussion missile launchers, to have a lot of targets to deal with.

The Corvettes laced into the Vic first, taking care to come in at high and low angles that forced the Hegemony gunners to crank their weapons to their highest attitude or lowest depression to get off a good shot. The Mantooine, Dantooine, and Ryloth slashed in over the top of Emperor’s Wisdom, pumping double turbolaser cannon fire into the dorsal shield. The shield glowed pink for a moment, then began to tear apart like an algae cloud ripped by fast currents.

The Frigates exploited the gap opened in the shield, hammering the Vic with fire from their turbolaser batteries and laser cannons. Red-gold energy bolts splashed over the larger ship’s hull, vaporizing armor and occasionally exploding a weapons platform. Despite the fury of their attack, and of the Chandrilla, Mrlsst, and Sullust in taking down the port shield, the real damage done to Emperor’s Wisdom was minimal, leaving the ship more than capable of inflicting serious damage on the New Republic taskforce.

Ackbar’s attention shifted as Reckoning and Decisive split and began to move forward, their daggerish prows jutting toward the retreating fleet. Decisive came in high and off to port, leaving Emancipator between it and Home One. Reckoning hung back ever so slightly, but sought to insert itself between the two New Republic ships. Binder remained behind the both of them, and clouds of fighters swirled and broke like schools of fish in the void around the larger ships.

“Weapons reporting positive weapon locks on Reckoning, Admiral.”

Ackbar nodded to his weapons officer. “Fire at will, Lieutenant Colton. Make them all count.”

•   •   •

Corran banked his Defender to starboard, then ruddered around to port to line up for his run on the prison. He unlinked lasers, letting them fire in sequence, then swooped low and leveled out barely five meters above the wall he’d been assigned. His finger tightened on the trigger, pulsing out verdant energy darts. He walked the fire straight down the wall, exploding E-webs, igniting storm-troopers, and sending faster men leaping fifteen meters to the ground.

He held his ship on target on the northeast tower and sent two bolts boiling into the guardpost on top of it. The square little building exploded into a ball of flame, scattering men and equipment. Tugging back on the yoke, he brought the trip up through the fireball, banked to starboard, and started a long loop around the prison’s south end.

“Nine here. North wall is clear, northeast tower is gone.”

“I copy, Nine. Wall defenses seem to be down.”

“Six here, I see a lot of activity on the ground. Stormies and guards.”

Corran glanced down at the prison. He saw a lot of armored individuals milling around in the open area on the western edge of the rectangular compound. The main building ran from north to south, but between it and the southern wall were three smaller buildings which seemed to house plenty of guards. All four corner towers leaked black smoke, and the ruins of heavy blaster emplacements and E-webs on the walls burned, but without troops on the ground, there was nothing to prevent the guards from entering the main building and slaughtering the prisoners.

I promised Jan Dodonna I’d see him and the others freed. I’ve already failed Urlor. I’m not failing them.

“Five, set up strafing runs on the guards. Scatter them. I’m going in.”

“Nine, you can’t.”

“Colonel, I have to. Isard’s people are late or aren’t coming. Someone’s got to go in.”

Tycho remained silent for a moment. “Okay, take Ooryl and Nrin with you.”

“I’ll take Ooryl. Nrin will be more useful up in the sky.”

“You haven’t seen him in a firefight, Nine. He’s with you. Go!”

“Thanks, Five.”

Pulling back on his fighter’s yoke, he brought the Defender back around to the north wall. Swooping down to two meters above the ground, he ruddered around until the trip faced the towering metal doors in the front wall and locked his tractor beam on them. He reversed thrust, then pulsed the throttle to full. The doors bent in the middle and metal screamed as the hinges ripped loose. The doors flew at his ship until he cut the tractor beam, then they rolled across the ground, knocking over streetlamps, pulverizing ferrocrete walkways and curbs, and finally coming to rest on top of a couple of landspeeders that promptly exploded as the great weight compressed their fuel tanks.

Corran set the Defender down and switched the ship into a passworded standby mode. Freeing himself from his restraining belts, he left his command chair, then pulled up the seat, exposing the small storage compartment. He pulled out a blaster carbine and a belt of powerpacks for it, which he looped over his chest from right shoulder to left hip. He also pulled out a fire extinguisher canister, which he flipped over. He unscrewed the bottom and tipped it upright so his grandfather’s lightsaber slid out. He clipped that to his blaster belt at the small of his back, then opened the fighter’s egress hatch. He poked the blaster carbine out first, then pulled himself out of the fighter’s cockpit.

He slid down the ship’s hull and landed in a crouch. Ooryl and Nrin had landed to his left and looked over at him. He scanned the line of the wall for signs of life, saw none, and sprinted forward. He crouched again in the shadow of one of the doors for another look, then darted forward again. He wove a zigzag course to the prison wall, then waited with his back against it, just to the western edge of the doorway.

Ooryl and Nrin joined him. Ooryl carried the standard issue blaster and carbine, but Nrin hefted a blaster rifle and a spare belt of powerpacks.

“You didn’t have that in your ship, did you?”

The Quarren shook his head and then pointed the gun’s long barrel at a smoldering corpse on the greensward between them and their ships. “You got him on your strafing run. I just appropriated things he no longer needs.”

Corran nodded, then took a peek around the corner. He drew his head back just in time as a flurry of blaster bolts chewed into the wall near him. Opening his mouth, he activated the comlink built into his helmet. “Five, you can come in at any time.”

“Copy that, Nine. Keep your heads down.”

Ooryl pointed to the north. “There.”

Corran crouched as the Defender came screaming in. He saw blaster bolts streak up into the sky and spark off the fighter’s forward shields, but they were mere droplets in comparison with the torrent of energy coming back toward the ground. Through the thick fabric of his flight suit Corran could feel the heat pouring off the Defender’s shots. The roar of the fighter’s passing thundered through his chest.

As Tycho’s ship flew over the wall, the trio rose to their feet. They ducked again, quickly, as Inyri’s fighter shot past and came up in a high loop to finish her south-to-north run. Keeping low, Corran looked around the corner, then waved the others on with him.

The main gateway had a fence-enclosed walkway that led to the main building. Looking to the right, Corran saw the western yard where stormtroopers and guards had been gathering. Thick smoke drifted over it, but not so thick that he couldn’t see burning bodies and figures crawling across the ground toward fallen comrades or parts of themselves that they’d lost. Screams of pain echoed within the yard, but a rising chorus of angry shouts started to eclipse them.

With the shouts came a scattering of blaster bolts. Corran swept his carbine over the yard, firing from the hip. Red bolts pierced the fog, pitching men over backward. Sprinting forward, he dropped an empty powerpack and slapped in a new one, then resumed firing. Hegemony troopers tracked their fire after him, spattering him with hot metal from the deteriorating fence.

Ooryl came running after him, keeping his blaster covering the eastern flank. Nrin advanced ten meters into the walkway—a third of the way to the main building—then scythed fire back and forth over the yard. His bolts spun men around, twirling them to the dirt. Their weapons flew as they went down. Other men snapped forward as bolts burned tunnels from stomach to spine. With the blaster’s backlight burnishing red highlights onto his black helmet and flight suit, the Quarren seemed the antithesis of the stormtroopers in their white armor. Remorselessly and deliberately Nrin fired until the enemy resistance dribbled to a few sporadic shots, then he jogged forward and took up a sheltered position at the base of the steps to the main building.

Corran dashed up the steps and pulled his lightsaber from his belt with his left hand. He thumbed it to life, letting its silver glow banish the shadows, then stroked it down either side of the front door. Hot metal glowing red on each side, the door fell forward, then surfed down the steps to strike sparks on the ferrocrete walkway.

Corran darted into the smoky foyer, dropping to one knee. He tracked the blaster across the opening, then raised it as Ooryl came in and took up a similar position on the left side of the door. Corran glanced quickly behind him to make sure there was no office at his back.

Nrin entered the building, doffed his helmet, and clipped the comlink from it to the throat of his flight suit. “Where to from here?”

Ooryl pointed at a large painted diagram of the building on the wall. “Blue level is supposed to be the isolation block. The Lusankya prisoners would be there, I would think. There seems to be only one stairwell allowing access up there.”

“Makes sense for security reasons—prisoners get loose, only one way out of their hole. Besides, I like to start at the top anyway.” Corran snapped off his lightsaber, clipped it to his belt again, and led the way off to the right, to the stairwell that occupied the northwest corner of the building. “Eight flights up and we’re there.”

The stairwell had been built tightly, with each flight covering half the distance to the next floor. At the top of one an immediate right-angle turn would lead to the next flight. The metal underside of more steps formed the roof of each flight and a wall ran down between flights, preventing someone on one course from seeing what was on the next.

The steps themselves had been floored with cheap brown duraplast tiles that were already worn, chipped, and cracking from constant use. The walls themselves were covered with a glossy beige tile with a matching tan mortar. Corran had visited many prisons during his time with CorSec, and he recognized the decor and knew the materials had not been chosen for their aesthetic effect. The fact was that they could simply be hosed down to remove blood stains. And I’d bet that more than one prisoner has slipped and fallen down a flight or two here.

Because they didn’t know if they were walking into trouble or not, they crept up the stairs slowly. At each floor landing they paused and checked the doorway, but found no one waiting for them. Finally, after five agonizing minutes, they reached the top floor and entered a small containment area.

The isolation cells themselves ran in two long blocks down the center of the fourth floor, oriented north to south. On the east and west sides two spacious galleries, easily five meters wide, separated the back walls of the cells from the tall, translucent windows along the exterior walls. A wall of heavy durasteel bars separated the containment area from the cells and galleries, but allowed Corran to see everything on the fourth floor very clearly.

And it allowed the guards who had overturned a desk and were using it for cover to see Corran. They opened fire from the western gallery, which drove him to the floor. He rolled to his right, reaching the doorway to the stairs. Nrin and Ooryl grabbed him and dragged him onto the landing.

He looked up at them. “Good news is that there’s only four of them. Bad news is that they have cover and there’s a metal bar wall between us and them.”

Nrin shrugged. “Use the lightsaber to slash it open.”

“Oh, I’d love to, but I’d be shot to pieces while getting there.” Corran hesitated for a moment, then bounced the heel of his left hand off his helmet’s forehead. “Sometimes I’m an idiot.”

Ooryl’s helmeted head canted to the side. “Sometimes?”

Corran gave his wingman a contemptuous sneer, but being hidden by the helmet drained it of its effect. “Nrin, give me your blaster rifle.”

The Quarren handed it over. Corran took it, ignited the lightsaber, and laid it parallel to the blaster rifle’s barrel. He walked over to the wall near the door and pressed the muzzle to the wall. He then slid the lightsaber forward until its tip poked through the wall on the far side. He retracted it to about a centimeter shy of the surface, then held it tight against the barrel.

Nrin and Ooryl both ducked down the stairs as Corran brought the weapon around and stabbed it into the wall on the south side of the stairwell’s landing. Because he was using the rifle barrel as a guide, the silver blade only penetrated the wall to the depth of twenty-nine centimeters instead of piercing it completely. Corran cut across for about a meter, then ran down for a meter and a half, burning a black outline of a doorway into the wall. He shut the lightsaber off and handed the rifle back to Nrin.

“There should only be a centimeter of tile between the wall and the gallery at the cut lines. I’ll draw their fire, you break through and catch them with flanking fire.”

Nrin’s tentacles curled up smartly. “For an idiot, you seem to think well.”

“First time for everything.”

“Thanks, Ooryl.”

Leaving his two friends poised to act, Corran dove out through the doorway and triggered a burst of blasterfire. He let himself continue to slide to the left, using the security cell block corner to eclipse the guards’ fire, then he sprinted forward to the wall of bars. Peeking around the corner he triggered another burst of red bolts, then ducked back as a flurry of bolts burned into the walls and scorched metal bars.

He heard a crackling sound, then heard the whine of more blasterfire. He scooted forward and fired. His bolts nibbled away at the desk, but Nrin’s heavier bolts burned clean through it. One guard tumbled back and another scrambled to maintain his balance. His arms flailed, then a bolt to the chest picked him up and sent him flying deeper into the gallery. A third guard took a bolt in the shoulder, and the fourth tossed his blaster out onto the floor before raising his hands.

Corran slashed the gate in the wall of bars open while Nrin and Ooryl kicked their way free of wall debris. As the other two kept their weapons on their captive, Corran used his lightsaber to cut away a corner of the stairwell wall, allowing someone to cover the lower landing and the flight up to the door. “This should let you hold off reinforcements.”

Ooryl nodded and took up a position beside the corner hole.

Corran waved the man who had surrendered over to him. “General Dodonna, now!”

The man’s jaw dropped. “But I can’t open the cell. I don’t have a cardkey.”

Corran worked the humming lightsaber blade through an infinity loop. “I can handle it.”

The guard led him into the isolation cell area and pointed at a cell about a third of the way down. Corran stabbed the lightsaber into the lock mechanism, then worked the blade around in a spiral to sever the latch. The door slowly swung open, the lightsaber’s light seeding the recesses with dark shadows.

In the corner, on a hard pallet that served as a bunk, an old man raised his left hand to shield his eyes from the glare. The white hair and beard spoke to the man’s age, and the way he straightened up in the face of what seemed to be an Imperial pilot armed with a lightsaber gave testament to his inherent courage.

“General Dodonna?”

The old man nodded. “I’m Jan Dodonna.”

“It’s been a long time, General.” Corran removed his helmet and smiled. “Are you ready to go home?”

35

The reddish glow from the fist Prince-Admiral Delak Krennel made with his mechanical right hand painted his face in bloody highlights. Through the viewport on Reckoning he watched the New Republic fleet begin its withdrawal. Yes, they’re running. This is better than I could have expected.

Krennel could not believe his good fortune. He’d been staging for a long grazing strike at Coruscant. He expected it to embarrass the New Republic while they were waiting to ambush him. In reality they struck at Ciutric, expecting him to be away waiting to ambush another convoy. Their error, which was compounded by the relative weakness of their taskforce, would allow him to crush them and then make his strike at Coruscant.

“Weapons, target the Mon Cal cruiser. Same orders to Decisive and Emperor’s Wisdom.”

“As ordered, Prince-Admiral.”

A smile spread over Krennel’s face as his forward gunners lashed Home One with heavy turbolaser battery fire. Gold-tinged scarlet energy bolts battered the New Republic ship’s bow and port shields. The Mon Cal shield sphere slowly shrank as the incoming fire boiled off layers of energy. Finally the bow shield collapsed and the hull itself crisped to a blackness as paint ignited and armor ablated. Ion bolts skittered, arced, and danced over the rounded ship’s surface, then a dozen concussion missiles from Emperor’s Wisdom tracked a series of explosions over the hull. Fires raged in a couple of craters, prompting cheers from the bridge crew.

Krennel stared down at the crew pit from his catwalk. “Why isn’t Decisive firing?”

The communications officer looked up from his station. “Decisive reports that Emancipator reinforced their port shields and soaked off the damage that had to pass them to get to Home One. They request leave to engage Emancipator.”

“No! Tell Decisive to roll to port, then come up and over Emancipator.” Krennel thrust a finger at the viewpoint. “I want that cruiser dead!”

The Mon Calamari cruiser and Emancipator fired. The Mon Cal’s turbolaser batteries concentrated their fire on Reckoning’s forward shield. The invisible energy bowl protecting the ship’s bow suddenly filled with a translucent pink that quickly evaporated as blue ion cannon bolts lanced through it. Blue lightning crawled from corner to corner and glided along lines over the ship’s hull. Two heavy turbolaser batteries exploded and Krennel saw at least two gunners ejected into space as their stations ripped themselves apart.

Emancipator’s weapons on both sides cut loose. The port gunners delivered a full broadside into Decisive’s port shield, shredding it. Turbolaser fire slashed black furrows along the Imperial Star Destroyer’s hull, and drilled deep at several points. Ion cannon bolts sent jagged lightning whips cavorting over its hull, with a couple scurrying up the command tower as fast as Jawas after droids. The New Republic ship’s starboard batteries targeted Reckoning and peeled away its starboard shield. Krennel felt the deck shift beneath his feet as a power surge momentarily knocked the inertial compensators offline. Turbolasers vaporized portions of the hull. Warning sirens blared and fires burned as atmosphere vented.

Krennel clutched at the catwalk railing. “Sensors, are they still withdrawing?”

“Yes, Prince-Admiral. They’re pulling out on an exit vector that will allow them to go to hyperspace in thirty seconds.”

“Security, damage report.”

“Minimal, Prince-Admiral.”

Krennel nodded solemnly. “Helm, come about to a heading of ninety degrees, but keep her level. We’ll give them our port shield to shoot at and a full broadside on the Mon Cal. Weapons, port on the Mon Cal, starboard targets of opportunity.”

“As ordered, Prince-Admiral.”

“Prince-Admiral!” The man at the sensor station waved a hand at him. “I have the southern Daplona shield down. Two of the New Republic ships are heading to ground.”

“Weapons, send a squadron of TIEs down to deal with that problem.”

“Done, Prince-Admiral.”

“Two are running for the ground, and the rest for space. We can’t have that.” Krennel flashed teeth in a cruel smile. “Communications, tell Binder to power up the gravity wells. Our dying enemies can’t be allowed to leave. After all, the fun has just started, hasn’t it?”

Recognition bloomed in the old man’s eyes, bringing a smile to Corran’s face. “So you did escape Lusankya after all. Isard tossed us a skull and said you didn’t make it.”

Corran nodded. “I did, and even had a hand in killing her. At least, I thought we killed her.”

Dodonna stood. “She’s still been in charge of us.”

“That’s a clone. The real thing is still out there, too.”

Dodonna’s eyes widened. “Two of her?”

“Yes, General. Now you know why we need you back.” Corran tossed the General his blaster pistol, pulled the comlink from his helmet, and clipped it to his flight suit’s lapel. He tossed the helmet on the General’s cot, then turned and poked his blaster carbine at the guard. “Can you pop the rest of these cells?”

“Some.”

“Good, get them open and I’ll get the rest.” Corran crossed the hallway and started slashing open cells. A motley assembly of individuals slowly shambled out. Some he recognized from his time on Lusankya. Forty cells produced a total of ninety prisoners.

“Is this everyone, General?”

Dodonna squinted, then nodded. “We all managed to communicate despite the guards’ best efforts to the contrary. A few here weren’t on the Lusankya, but Krennel had them imprisoned for political crimes.”

“Well, you’re all free, courtesy of the New Republic.”

Nrin’s voice rose above the husky cheering. “Corran, come here, fast.”

Corran sprinted back toward the stairwell and immediately identified the reason for Nrin’s yell. Both he and Ooryl stood at the corner hole in the wall, shooting down into the stairwell. Shots were coming back up at them, but they managed to dodge back before any burst could hit them.

Ooryl pointed at the hole. “Guards and stormtroopers have worked their way up the stairs. We’ve been keeping them back. I think they’re going to get a door from below to use as a shield.”

“Got it.” Corran pointed two of the Lusankya prisoners at the dead guards. “Get their blasters and come with me.”

He ran over to the stairway and dropped to one knee. He stabbed his lightsaber into the top landing and cored out a big circle. It dropped down three meters, clanging off the heads of some stormtroopers who fell back down the stairs. Thrusting his blaster into the hole, he triggered a burst that danced two guards back against the wall, then left them twitching on the landing a half a floor below.

He leaped back as a flurry of shots burned up at him. The blaster bolts chewed flaming holes in the wall and scattered hot shards of ceramic tile all over. Corran felt a sting on his right cheek and his hand came away bloody. He fired another burst down the hole, then pulled back and let the two freshly armed prisoners take over.

Halfway between that hole and the other one, he met General Dodonna. The older man studied the situation for a moment, then nodded. “One stairwell was put in to limit access of the prisoners here to any escape routes. If there was a riot, however, the guards probably would have come through the roof to deal with us. Your lightsaber can cut us an opening to get out, but what then?”

Corran shrugged, dousing his lightsaber and hooking it to his belt again. “I don’t know. Let me ask.” He keyed the comlink on his lapel. “Five, we have the prisoners, but can’t get down the northwest stairwell. We’re going to the roof. Can you get us off it?”

“Negative, Nine. Things are hot up here. We’ve got a dozen TIEs inbound and there is ground traffic. Looks like the local answer to CorSec coming to contest your hold on the prison.”

“I’m not liking what you’re saying, Five.”

“I’m not terribly keen on it myself, Nine.” A certain amount of strain came through Tycho’s voice. “Krennel’s got us outgunned up-atmosphere, so you may well be in the best position of all.”

“Youch! I copy, Five. Let me know when help is available.” Glancing over at General Dodonna, he shook his head. “If you have any ideas, General, I’m open to them. After all, you saved the Rebellion at Yavin. By comparison, this should be child’s-play.”

Wedge smiled as he keyed his comlink. “Nine, he saved the Rebellion by putting pilots in the right place at the right time. One Flight is inbound. Standby.” He flicked the comm unit over to the flight frequency. “Two, Three, and Four, join Five and Six tackling those TIEs. I’ll take care of the incoming ground troops.”

“As ordered, Lead.”

The other three Defenders peeled off, breaking starboard to intercept the TIE formation closing fast on Tycho and Inyri. The Defenders launched a concussion missile each. The projectiles streaked through the sky and hit their targets hard. Three small explosions twinkled brightly and flaming debris fell from the comets that were the burning remains of three TIEs.

Wedge flicked his targeting computer over to ground-search mode and immediately picked up flickering readings from a convoy of landspeeders, a couple of gravtrucks, and a Chariot light assault vehicle. The LAV was the most heavily armored transport in the convoy, but it might as well have been made of flimsiplast as far as its ability to deal with the Defenders’ weapons was concerned. The commanders of the convoy are likely in that thing, and it looks as though they don’t mind leading from the front. Right idea, just wrong place and time.

Wedge dialed his throttle back down and brought up the power in the repulsorlift coils. A little rudder straightened him out as his fighter drifted down into a canyon of tall ferrocrete buildings. Half a kilometer east, battering smaller landspeeders out of the way, the Chariot LAV came boiling down the center of the roadway. The wedge-shaped craft used its armored prow to push aside anything blocking the street. Given the slightly erratic path it made, sideslipping left and right down the road, the pilot clearly enjoyed tipping smaller speeders over, dumping them into sidewalks.

Wedge centered his crosshairs over the LAV’s outline and waited until it reached the closer end of an enclosed block before he opened fire with his lasers. The weapons fired sequentially, punching the first two bolts through the transparisteel windscreens, which blackened, then exploded back out in a geyser of golden fire. A third bolt lanced through the starboard repulsorlift engines. They exploded, dropping the craft’s right side to the ground, then slewing it around to the left. The fourth bolt hit the broadsided vehicle in the middle, melting enough of the support structure to crack the Chariot and allow flames to shoot skyward through the gap.

He kicked in a bit more throttle and brought the Defender up so he could shoot over the burning roadblock. He shifted from lasers to ion cannons and fired at the vehicle furthest back in the convoy. His initial shot fell short, but wreathed a gravtruck with blue lightning. It immediately grounded with sparks shooting from the undercarriage.

The guards who had been in the back spilled out, most of them jerking and twitching with the energy. One guard’s clothes were smoldering. He stumbled into the street and the landspeeder following the gravtruck hit him when it swerved to miss the dead truck. The guard pitched up and over the speeder and landed in the road behind it, while the speeder went out of control and slammed into a storefront.

Wedge walked fire back down the convoy, hesitating a couple of times as guards leaped from their gravtrucks and sought shelter in doorways or behind ferrocrete benches or old monuments to Imperial glory. The ion blast would short out a vehicle’s electronics, and wasn’t much kinder to any living creature it hit. He continued to target vehicles, stopping the ones he hit, bottling up the ones he did not.

A few of the men on the ground fired blasters at the Defender. Wedge scattered them with an ion blast and searched for more vehicles to shoot, but something moving through the sky caught his attention. He brought his sensors back into air-to-air mode and directed them at the object lifting from Daplona and heading out toward the prison.

The sensors reported it was an Imperial Assault Shuttle, with shields at full, all four laser cannons charged, and concussion missile launchers in working order, with one life-form on board. Bringing his throttle up, he punched in a request for a comm frequency scan of the ship and switched his comm unit over to the unscrambled one it was using.

“This is General Wedge Antilles of the New Republic. You would be Ysanne Isard.”

There was momentary silence. “General Antilles? I thought you died at Distna.”

“I thought you died at Thyferra, so we’re even.”

Pure venom poured through her voice. “If you think to make this the tiebreaker, you’ll lose.”

Before Wedge could contradict her, fire blossomed in the shuttle’s concussion missile firing tubes. Two missiles jetted out and began a gently curved flight toward the prison’s top floor. “Corran Horn has returned to be with those he escaped,” she hissed, “now it’s time for all of them to die.”

36

Admiral Ackbar climbed back into his command chair. “Damage Control, report.”

A Twi’lek female turned in his direction. “Artificial gravity restored. Hull breaches forward, decks one and three. The Mrlsst is dead in space, Sullust and Mantooine are badly damaged. Peacemaker is also dead in space.”

The human at the sensor station raised a hand. “Admiral, Binder has brought its gravity well projectors up. Nothing is leaving the system.”

The Mon Calamari nodded slowly. “Signal the fleet. Begin the Thrawn Pincer.”

In waging his war against the New Republic, Grand Admiral Thrawn had proved himself to be a masterful martial tactician. Rumor had it that he credited the study of a people’s art as being the key to understanding and defeating them. Ackbar didn’t know if that were true or not, but what he did understand was that Thrawn had a superior command of how to utilize the tools of his trade. Thrawn had again and again used an Interdictor cruiser as the equivalent of a magnet. He sent it into systems to pull a fleet from hyperspace with more precision than most navigators could plot.

Ackbar had learned well from him.

While Ackbar’s main battle group had jumped directly into the Ciutric system, arriving to the sun side of the planet, the second part of the taskforce had exited hyperspace deeper in the solar system. When the signal from Ackbar reached them, the two Victory-class Star Destroyers jumped in toward Ciutric and were dragged from space by Binder’s presence.

This brought the two ships out of hyperspace at Binder’s aft. The second the crews oriented themselves, General Garm Bel Iblis issued orders to engage the enemy. They unloaded their beam weapons on the Emperor’s Wisdom and launched their concussion missiles at Reckoning. They did this just after Reckoning completed its ninety-degree shift to starboard, presenting its undamaged side to Home One, and its unshielded flank to the newly arrived Selonian Fire and Corusca Fire.

A terrifyingly beautiful garland of explosions rippled down Reckoning’s right flank and on up the command tower. Heavy turbolaser batteries disintegrated, hull plates buckled, while even more missiles stabbed deep into the ship’s interior to detonate and tear holes that breached multiple decks. Fires raged as the void of space sucked air out of the ships. Pieces of the hull broke away or twisted out of place, leaving the Impstar looking as if it had sideswiped an asteroid.

One missile shot past the front of the command tower, then course corrected and circled around to strike the forward viewport. The transparisteel resisted the impact at first, but the interior layer cracked and spalled off a hail of crystalline fragments that stormed through the bridge. They passed over the heads of those individuals at the action stations, but blew through Prince-Admiral Krennel so fast that they had exited his back without appreciably slowing down at all.

Krennel looked down to see his white uniform covered with red dots slightly lighter than the scarlet trim on his cuffs and hem. Only his right forearm sleeve remained pristine. He got as far as realizing that it had not changed color because the arm underneath was purely mechanical, before blood running from his forehead dripped down into his eyes, blinding him.

Then the concussion missile detonated.

The comlink on Corran’s lapel squawked loudly. “Concussion missiles incoming prison east!”

“Everyone, down! Get down!” Corran screamed at them, waving his arms at the ground. “Down, DOWN!”

A missile slammed into the prison at the southeast corner of the fourth floor. Corran saw a brilliant light blossom in that direction and caught a fleeting glimpse of cracks appearing in the mortar between the building blocks that made up the isolation cells. Then the explosion’s shock-wave hit him, blasting him off his feet and knocking him backward into the wall. He saw stars as his head hit, then sputtered as dust from the tops of the hanging lights drifted down to choke him.

He rolled to his feet and saw Nrin getting back up, too. The Quarren fired a short burst through the hole in the floor, then backed off to feed another clip into his blaster rifle. Ooryl took over for him, firing off a long burst that brought weak return fire. Corran ran to the corner cut he’d made and triggered a burst through it. He heard a scream and a clatter, but wasn’t certain who or what he’d hit. More distant sounds of sporadic firing came to him, but no hot light burned its way up toward his position, so he wasn’t certain what to make of it.

His comlink crackled again, this time with a voice he could not instantly place. “Nrin, please advise as to your situation.”

The Quarren frowned, then keyed his comlink. “Fourth floor is secure. The isolation cells shielded us from the missile blast. We’re holding off the guards, but are running low on power.”

“I copy. We’re incoming.”

Corran keyed his comlink. “Who’s ‘we’ and where are you incoming from?”

“We’ve cleared the tower to the second floor. Team One is on the way up.”

Nrin laughed aloud. “Come fast, Kapp. We promise we won’t shoot any Devaronians.”

“I like hearing that, Nrin.” Kapp Dendo’s voice pulsed confidently through the comlink. “Sit tight and we’ll have you out of there in no time.”

Wedge punched up the Rogue comm frequency. “Concussion missiles incoming prison east!” Even as he shouted the warning, he ruddered his fighter’s front to starboard and dropped the aiming reticle over the spark that was the first missile. He tightened up on the trigger and sent an ion bolt sizzling out after it. He cursed, switched to lasers, but by the time he tracked the second missile, it was too late.

The ion bolt succeeded in hitting the first missile, surrounding it with a blue energy web. The missile corkscrewed into a spiral and climbed skyward before detonating. A sky-fall of burning sparks slowly descended at the base of smoky snakes, falling among parks and homes.

The second missile slammed into the prison’s top floor at the southeast corner. The resulting explosion ripped a hole in the building that extended down two floors and shot debris hundreds of meters into the air. Bodies hung from the hole, then were pitched to the ground as prisoners from the second and third floors began a dash for freedom.

Wedge punched up One Flight’s tactical comm channel. “Gavin, Myn, Hobbie, give me full spectrum scans of the shuttle. Myn, Gavin, move to cut it off from the prison. Send the sensor data to me immediately, and take the shuttle with ion cannons if you can.”

Without waiting for a reply, Wedge rolled his Defender to port and came up, leveling out at the same altitude as the assault shuttle. His maneuver brought him in for a deflection shot that would hit the starboard aft section of the ship. The assault shuttle ruddered around to present its aft to him, then sideslipped to port.

Wedge switched to ion cannons and dropped his crosshairs on the shuttle. It juked up, then sideslipped port again. The pilot made the ungainly craft dance with a surprisingly light hand on the stick. There has to be a targeting warning system in there. The moment my sensors pinpoint him, he gets a light on his HUD and jinks.

Getting the shuttle wasn’t going to be easy, but the evasive maneuvers had moved the shuttle away from the prison. Wedge keyed his comm unit. “Myn, stay ninety degrees off my position. Gavin, get above it. He’s got an early warning system so we’ll have to herd it.”

He then punched up the shuttle’s comm channel. “Nice flying, Isard.”

“Coming from you, that’s a compliment.”

“I appreciate my foes and their abilities.” Wedge hesitated for a moment, then spoke with a cold confidence in his voice. “Then again, I would hope a clone would be an improvement over the original.”

“What?”

“You didn’t know you were a clone? No, of course not. Isard wouldn’t trust the dispersal of her prized captives to just anyone: She gave the job to herself. With you she could actually be in two places at one time.”

“That’s insane.”

“So was she.” Wedge triggered an ion bolt that laced aquamarine fire through the shuttle’s aft shield. “Corran’s escape and her evacuation of Coruscant broke her, but you were imprinted before then, so your brainwelds weren’t loosened. You did your job and she had you shot. She expected you to die, but you didn’t and here you are.”

The shuttle sideslipped starboard as gracefully as a hawkbat riding air currents in Coruscant’s citified canyons. “No, not possible.”

“It’s true.” Wedge laughed aloud. “In fact, I can prove it.”

“It’s a lie.”

“Oh, then explain why, in a similar situation on Thyferra, Isard was using her shuttle to run and you, on the other hand, are still trying to deny us the Lusankya prisoners, as per her orders to you?”

He cut off her anguished scream by switching over to One Flight’s tactical channel. “Myn, move into the shuttle’s aft port. Gavin, set up for shots after a sideslip starboard.” Wedge punched an inquiry into his tactical computer. “Take it down, now.”

The other two trips moved in for the kill like teopari on the hunt. Myn’s Defender curled in past Wedge’s fighter and snapped off a pair of ion bolts that took the shuttle in the aft. Electricity played through the aft shield, shrinking it to a tiny sphere that imploded in a brilliant flash.

The shuttle, as predicted, sideslipped to the right. Gavin’s two bolts shot down at it and caught the shuttle on the high dorsal stabilizer, gushing down as if a fluid. Sparks shot from shield projectors as they shorted out and smoke began to trail from the concussion missile launchers. The light in the engines died out as the ship’s electrical system failed and a ship that had once been elegant in flight became a heavy construct of metal and ceramics suddenly unable to defy gravity.

The left wing tip hit the ground first, gouging a furrow in a bridge roadway. Scattered speeders whirled, spun, and flipped away as huge chunks of ferrocrete decking dropped twenty meters to the shallow river below. Portions of the wing whipped through the air as it hit the durasteel supports at the bridge’s edge.

The shuttle’s flattening spin would have slammed it into the ground, crushing the pilot’s compartment completely, but the river valley meant there was no ground for it to hit. The ship continued to spin and the right wing tip came down to splash through the water and strike riverbed. The wing lodged as firmly as if the riverbed were solid stone.

Metal screamed and ferroceramic armor tiles snapped along the wing’s joint with the ship’s hull. Because the wings were meant to fold up for ease of storage in the belly of a ship, the joint was not nearly as strong as it would have been were the wings part of the basic hull. Hydraulic fluid sprayed out as the hinges parted and the wing tore completely off.

The hull whirled through the air, the nose almost kissing the water after the first revolution. It came up again, sparing the pilot’s life, then the shuttle hit on the right rear quarter. The section of the boxy hull crumpled, splashing out great torrents of the river water it displaced. The ship bounced up, then landed hard on the aft. The impact jolted the drive units, tearing them free of their mountings and slamming them forward into the passenger compartment.

The shuttle wavered there for a second, then the last bit of its momentum pitched it over onto its port side. Water splashed up on both sides, then the craft settled back, resting on its blackened dorsal stabilizer. Water washed up around the ship’s hull and steam rose from the drive units.

After ten seconds, though, aside from the splashing of debris falling from the bridge, the lazy Daplona River had absorbed the violence of the shuttle’s crash and wended on its way.

Wedge glanced at his secondary screen and the answer to his computer inquiry. He punched up Isard’s comm frequency again. “I know you won’t reply since you’re busy playing dead. Just to let you know, there’s one more way I know you’re a clone. Isard tried the same trick to escape us on Thyferra. Won’t work this time. It’s over.”

He ruddered his Defender around on a course that directed it toward the Daplona base training center. When he’d asked the others in One Flight for a full scan of the shuttle, it had included data on the comm frequencies being used, including their strength and the direction from which they were coming. By having his computer compare the vectors, he triangulated Isard’s location and the place from which she was directing the shuttle.

“Oh, one more thing,” Wedge added. “Tell Colonel Lorrir he sideslips too much. That’s why I got him. And you.”

Switching over to concussion missiles, Wedge targeted the building and tightened his finger on the trigger. A pair of concussion missiles jetted out on azure fire and another pair quickly followed it. All four hit it in sequence, blowing into the squat building’s lower two floors. Brilliant explosions ripped through the building, blasting out transparisteel windows and cutting through support structures. The comm dish on the roof tipped and broke off as the upper two floors twisted, then descended into the dust cloud below them. Smoke, both black and white, rolled through the surrounding area like surf breaking. In its wake lay a mountain of rubble leaking thin vapors.

Wedge got nothing but static on Isard’s comm frequency.

With a smile blossoming on his face, Wedge brought his Defender around and headed it toward the prison. Isard had betrayed them, and the individual that was a slice of her tried to deny them the prize for which they had worked so hard. Both Isards had been thwarted and, no matter what else happened, that made it a very good day.

Corran and Jan Dodonna were the last two people to come down the stairs. Because of the hole at the top of the stairs, Corran had used the lightsaber to widen the door and let folks mount the stairs from the side instead of the landing. Nrin and Ooryl led the way down and the former prisoners filed out without incident.

Corran felt an odd chill as they made their way to the lower floors. Stormtrooper and guard corpses clogged the stairwell save for the narrow path that wormed its way between their bodies. It struck Corran as very odd that very few of the bodies showed signs of having been killed with blaster bolts. Blood leaked from most of them, with knife wounds in the chest, or armpits, or any other location where a blade could easily sever a major blood vessel. Broken arms and legs appeared on some of the corpses, along with spinal dislocations. A couple of guards had broken necks, with the damage so severe that it appeared someone had tried to twist their heads right off.

They came out into the sunlight and Kapp snapped to attention. He tossed a salute to Jan Dodonna, which Dodonna returned with a crisp grace. The Devaronian extended his hand to the older man. “It is a pleasure to meet you, General.”

“My thanks to you and your men.” Dodonna smiled broadly and handed the borrowed blaster to Corran. “I never doubted you’d make good on your promise, Corran. You even got around to it faster than I expected.”

“Not as fast as I wanted to, but Warlord Zsinj and Grand Admiral Thrawn took up a fair amount of our time.” Corran turned to Kapp, shifting his recovered helmet beneath his left arm so he could shake hands with Team One’s leader. As he did so he glanced from the line of freed men making their way to the two freighters parked beyond the twisted prison doors to Kapp. “Speaking of your men, where are they?”

Kapp smiled and opened his arms. “They’re all here.”

Corran looked around and only saw a half-dozen bipeds he didn’t instantly recognize. The small, gray-skinned bipeds’ exposed legs and arms rippled with muscles and their large dark eyes watched each passing individual with the closeness of a predator seeking prey. They smiled at men who nodded thanks to them, exposing mouths full of sharp teeth. Gathering their homespun robes at the waist, they wore a belt that bore a holstered blaster on one hip, a sheathed knife at the other, and a couple smaller throwing blades sheathed at the small of their backs.

Corran frowned. “Those are all the men you brought?”

Kapp laughed aloud. “They’re Noghri, Corran, a half dozen is all I needed.”

“Those are Noghri?! I’m glad they’re on our side.” Corran glanced more closely at one and got a broad, tooth-studded smile in return. “They are on our side, right?”

“They worked for the Empire because Vader had tricked them. Princess Leia managed to turn them to our side. They’re a peaceful people, but they’re willing to act for us to atone for some of the things the Empire had them do.” Kapp offered Dodonna his arm and the older man took it to steady himself. “General, if you’ll come with me, we’ll get you off this rock.”

Corran pointed to the sky. “What happened up there?”

“Bel Iblis’s battle group blasted Reckoning and Emperor’s Wisdom. Reckoning’s bridge is gone, and Krennel along with it. The crews of Binder and Decisive found themselves outgunned and decided accepting a New Republic amnesty was preferable to being reduced to scrap.” Kapp shrugged easily. “I think the pols intend for the Hegemony to enter the New Republic as a unit, and these guys would get stationed here to maintain order. They still protect their homes and we don’t have to kill them.”

“Win, win.” Corran nodded, then waved Kapp on toward the freighters. “I’ll catch up with you—I need to get air between me and dirt.”

Corran jogged over to where he’d landed his Defender and smiled as Wedge’s ship set down easily. He waited for Wedge to exit the ball cockpit and offered him his hand. “Thanks for the warning, Wedge. Air got a tad warm there, but no serious damage done.”

“Good.” Wedge surveyed the prison and the line of men heading toward the freighters. “Got them all?”

“As nearly as we can tell, yes. Did you get Isard’s clone?”

Wedge smiled. “She had Colonel Lorrir flying a shuttle by remote—I recognized his love of sideslips. Myn and Gavin brought the shuttle down, I triangulated back to the point of origin of the control and comm broadcasts and laced it with two concussion missiles. Brought the whole training center down.”

Corran arched an eyebrow at him. “Great, now I’ll never get my deposit back for locker rental in the recreation area.”

“Don’t worry about it, Corran. If the New Republic ever comes through with our pay, I’ll cover it.”

“Works for me.” The younger man looked around, then shifted his shoulders uneasily. “Kapp says our fleet took Krennel down and, without their leader, the others surrendered. Everything turned out very nicely.”

“It did, so why the shiver there?”

“We did better than expected, muddling through without Isard’s help.” Corran’s green eyes narrowed. “So, where is she, and just how good a day is she having?”

37

The daggerish hull of the Lusankya hung in the middle of the Bilbringi shipyard like a vibroblade waiting to be plucked up and used to kill an enemy. The eight kilometers of its length had been restored fully, with running lights burning around its edges, the prow returned to needle-sharpness, the armor restored, and the ship painted an even gray tone. Two bloody Rebel crests graced the ship toward the aft, both on top and bottom—marred it really—and destroyed any chance of the gray hull vanishing against the backdrop of space.

But then, she thought, hiding a Super Star Destroyer has always been impossible. Isard laughed lightly. The New Republic had tried to hide Lusankya from her. They had circulated rumors that it had been taken apart for scrap or cannibalized to repair countless smaller ships, but she had known from the start that all such stories were deceptions. The Lusankya was a prize they had sought to deny her. Such a ship could lay waste to fleets and project political power to the furthest reaches of the galaxy.

She pressed her right hand against the transparisteel viewport on the incoming freighter Swift. Behind her she heard the communications officer play out the watch code that allowed their freighter to approach the larger ship. Her spies in the New Republic had managed to produce it, as well as a copy of the program used to determine watch codes. Nothing the New Republic could do would deny her a return to her ship.

“This is Bilbringi Control. Swift, you are approved for docking on the command tower. Proceed on vector three-three-two mark three-four-five, steady as she goes.”

“Swift acknowledges three-three-two mark three-four-five, Control. Swift out.”

Isard stared at the reflection of the bridge behind her. “Sensors, data please.”

“Only thirty percent of the ship has gravity and atmosphere, all along the central spine and up into the command tower. Only essential systems are engaged, with no power to weapons. Engines are in station-keeping mode only.” The sensor officer’s reflection ducked its head toward the screen he was studying. “I have nearly five hundred mixed lifeform readings on board, human and other. They are largely confined near the bow, working on the restoration of areas that were severely damaged at Thyferra.”

“Very good. Captain, take us in.”

Isard watched, her eyes widening hungrily as the Lusankya loomed larger. She had not lied when she told Corran Horn that his escape from Lusankya had soiled the ship, disgraced it and tainted it. She really didn’t want anything more to do with it and had been pleased when the New Republic had pounded it mercilessly. In fact, her command to Captain Drysso, telling him to flee before the New Republic killed him and Lusankya, had been calculated to have just the opposite effect. As she intended, Drysso had remained at Thyferra and had been killed in the battle.

Now, with years of hindsight, Isard realized how Horn’s escape and her forced evacuation of Imperial Center had affected her. It had worn her down. She had not been thinking clearly during her time as ruler of Thyferra. She made mistakes that now she could see were clearly preventable. The loss of Imperial Center through her narrow escape from Thyferra had been a crucible in which her desperation and insanity had been burned from her. During the time of Thrawn’s campaign she had pulled herself together, tapped into still existing sources of information, and had taken over one of the many hidden Imperial installations, from which she plotted her renewed rise to power.

Crucial to that rise had been the repossession of Lusankya. At Thyferra Lusankya had likewise been in a crucible. Its defects, the taint Horn had left on it, had been burned out of it. The New Republic had taken it away from Thyferra; first to a hidden Rebel installation where the basic refits had been done, then to Bilbringi where the final work could be completed. The New Republic had fully restored Lusankya.

And now I shall use Lusankya to restore me to power. With the Super Star Destroyer under her command, bringing the various warlords to heel would be simple. As powerful as they were, she would threaten them with destruction unless they allied themselves with her. Teradoc and Harssk might pose a problem at first, but people like Tavira, with her Invidious, would flock to Isard’s banner. With a new Imperial force she would be able to negotiate with whoever succeeded Thrawn and even unite the disparate worlds that still claimed allegiance to the Empire. In a very short time she would forge a new Empire and press in on the New Republic, shattering them. I will have a realm which will make the Emperor proud.

The Swift slowed as the command tower loomed up over it. The freighter rotated ninety degrees to orient its docking collar with the docking point at the base of the tower. Below her, booted feet clanked along grating as Major Telik’s commandos positioned themselves to move forward and take possession of the ship. They would make immediately for the bridge along with a hand-picked crew of Naval officers who had been training for months on how to run a Super Star Destroyer.

Her ears popped as a small pressure wave pulsed through Swift. Isard turned from the viewport and descended a ladder to the lower deck. Commandos in dark gray armor poured through the docking collar and into Lusankya. The black-clad sailors jogged after them and soon were lost in the bowels of the larger ship.

Isard started toward the docking collar, but the Swift’s Captain stopped her. “Colonel Vessery’s squadrons have made the jump in-system and have taken up patrolling in case garrison troops from Bilbringi come up. I’ve told him you’ll issue a recall for his fighters to dock with Lusankya or that Helm will send him coordinates for a jump when we leave the system.”

“Very good.” Isard eyed the man up and down. “Perhaps it is time for you to move up and command something larger than this freighter.”

The man smiled. “It would be my pleasure.”

“Report to the bridge and let me know when you get there.”

The Captain straightened up to his full height. “It would be my honor to escort you to the bridge, Madam Director.”

“I’m certain, but I am headed elsewhere.”

“We only have fifty commandos on the ship. Not all areas are secure.”

Isard drew back her left sleeve to reveal a holdout blaster concealed there. “I am not without resources to defend myself, Captain Wintle. Contact me when you reach the bridge.”

“As you command.” Wintle took off running into Lusankya, as eager as a little boy being given his first airspeeder.

Isard allowed herself to smile at that, less taking joy in his display of enthusiasm than in her realization that allowing someone to attain a dream, or think a dream is within grasping distance, creates a vulnerable period during which striking at and destroying them is easy. In their joy they let their guard down, and that is when they die.

The solitary echo of her footfalls as she entered Lusankya reminded her of the first time she set foot on the ship. The Emperor had brought her to one of his hidden sanctums, one of the various satellite palace complexes he maintained on Imperial Center. He let her enter Lusankya all alone, being the first person to touch it, the first person to see it. If it was true that the very act of observing and experiencing something changed the thing being observed, then Isard had been the agent of change in Lusankya, and it had changed her as well. It became her source of power, hidden, lurking, much as she hid and lurked and worked to preserve the Emperor’s power.

She entered a turbolift and ascended to a midway point in the command tower. She exited the lift and paced down a half-lit hallway. A couple of twists and turns later she stood before a pair of red doors. She pressed her hand to the center of them and they opened at her touch. She smiled. The ship’s ability to recognize her had been hard-coded into the basic systems and clearly the New Republic had not found all of them.

She entered a room that was small by planetary standards, but huge when compared to the cabins on a ship—even a ship the size of a small city. The Emperor had ordered it finished in fine exotic woods—something he knew would please her—and the New Republic had not stripped away his handiwork. The dimmed lights glowed golden off the strips of paneling, imparting a warmth to the room that made her realize that for the longest time she had felt terribly cold and disconnected from the world.

Stepping deeper into the room, she did notice one change. There, on the back wall, between the hatchways to the rest of her suite and a small storage closet, the wood-workers had once used ebony to create the Imperial crest. The whole of that inlay had been pulled out and, in its place, natural reddish woods had been employed to display the Rebel crest.

She hated the Rebel crest’s soft curves and languid angles. To her it had no strength, no ability to stir the spirit. The Imperial crest, all hard and angular, sharp and dark, radiated strength and commanded fealty. The Rebels, they never could appreciate that fact. I will give them another chance to learn that lesson.

Isard strode to the high-backed chair set in the middle of the forward part of the room. She sank into the thick nerf-hide cushions, letting the raw, wild scent of them take her back to more pleasant times. She unclipped her comlink from her belt and snapped it into the circular jack on one of the blocky chair’s arms. “Captain Wintle, report, if you please.”

A holoprojector mounted in the floor conveyed a three-quarters tall image of a winded Wintle to her, placing it at her feet. “Forgive me, Madam Director, but I only just got here. The atmosphere here is a bit lighter than expected—the equivalent of a mountaintop. We are working with environmental controls to change that now. The atmosphere would be appropriate for Verpine technicians, and there is some indication the creatures have been working here.”

“I see.” Isard’s eyes narrowed. “Is there a problem adjusting the atmosphere? That should be a simple matter.”

“It should, yes, but environmental and helm controls seem to be locked out up here. They are routed into the auxiliary bridge. We’re preparing a team to go down there and shift control back up here.”

Isard’s frown deepened. “Dispatch your team, and send commandos with them. Do it at once. I will meet them at the auxiliary bridge.”

“As ordered, Madam Director.”

“Be quick about it, Captain Wintle. Isard out.”

She plucked her comlink from the chair slot and stood, for the first time noticing the open door to the rest of the suite and the woman standing there with a drawn blaster. Isard thought for a second, then nodded slowly. “Yes, you are the Wessiri woman. You work for Cracken. You were married to one of my people.”

Iella Wessiri’s brown eyes hardened. “Diric was never one of your people. Even at the end he defied you.”

“Ah, then the reports I read of his killing Kirtan Loor and your killing him were incorrect?” Isard allowed herself a smile. “I can tell you about your Diric. He broke almost immediately. We’d barely gotten him strapped into the interrogation unit when he started babbling on about all manner of things. I know more about you and the intimate details of your life with him than anyone should have been forced to listen to. Why …”

“Shut up.”

What surprised Isard was not what Iella said, but how she said it. Isard expected a shrill, snapped answer, uttered as censure and meant to inflict pain. Instead it came as a matter-of-fact comment, devoid of emotion. Isard couldn’t believe Iella could be so calm in the face of what she had been saying. And she will not remain so forever.

Iella shook her head. “You’re not in control here, Isard. I have three people in the auxiliary bridge. Your people left on the bridge will suddenly find themselves with too little oxygen to function and they’ll drop into a deep sleep. Those heading down to the auxiliary bridge will find themselves trapped in a section of corridor in which the atmosphere will be pumped up to five times normal pressure. Even if they have their own sources of oxygen, the pressure will prevent them from being able to breathe. They’ll go out, too.

Isard twisted the bottom of her comlink, then raised it to her lips. Her words burst out over the ship’s internal communications system. “Now hear this, I am Ysanne Isard. To the three people in the auxiliary bridge, I offer twenty-five million Imperial credits each to turn the ship over to my representatives. If your compatriots object, kill them and the whole amount is yours.”

The holoprojector burned to life again, showing a tall, white-haired man with a mechanical left eye standing between a dark-haired woman and a black Bothan with splashes of white over her fur. “This is Booster Terrik, Acting-Captain of the Lusankya. My loyal bridge crew and I agree there are not enough credits in the galaxy for you to buy control of this ship from us. Iella, kill her and be done with it.”

As the holograph faded, Isard looked over at Iella. “So, I forced you to murder your husband, and now you will shoot me in cold blood? Is that the plan?”

Iella shook her head. “Booster’s idea of justice is a bit more direct than mine, a little less refined.”

“Really? No desire for revenge?” Isard arched the eyebrow over her blue eye at Iella. “I am the one who warped your husband. I bent him to my will, shattered his mind, made him into my plaything. Don’t you want me dead?”

“I’m not going to shed any tears when you die, Isard.” Iella smiled easily. “Killing you would be too easy, though. It would deny you the time you’ll spend agonizing over how we found you, how we knew you were coming for this ship.”

A shiver ran down Isard’s spine at the thought she was predictable, but she twisted a smile onto her face to hide her consternation. “Actually, I wonder how you even knew I was alive. Deducing the rest from that fact I can imagine. None of Horn’s messages got out.”

“No? And when was the last time you checked on the droids you had put into storage?”

Isard’s head came up and an unfamiliar sensation of dread crawled through her belly on sharp, icy claws. “The droids were restrained and used as hostages, but no one checked on them. So, one got away.”

“Two, actually.”

“Base security will be purged for that.” Isard nodded a salute to the other woman. “Next time, no such mistake will be made.”

“There won’t be a next time.”

“No? The New Republic won’t dare put me on trial. Too many of the people you rely upon to administer the government could be exposed. I know all their secrets, and that includes many members of your precious Senate.” Isard allowed herself to smile broadly. “I’ll never come to trial in a Ministry of Justice court.”

“No, you won’t.” Iella’s smile matched her own. “You attempted to take control of this New Republic ship. That’s piracy, and that’s an offense for which you can and will be tried in a military court. No public trial, no chance to stir up hysteria. You’ll just be convicted and sent to a very secure prison.”

The woman hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “I understand they’re thinking of keeping you here, on Lusankya. You’ll be an anonymous prisoner, cared for by droids, forgotten, locked away in the heart of the very prison you yourself created. For the rest of your natural life.”

That prospect stunned Isard and, in a moment’s introspection, was what undid her. The terror inspired by such a fate prompted her to shoot her left arm forward, letting the holdout blaster slide down into her left hand. It was a rash act, one only possible when the horror of life entombed outweighed the horror of death.

Her shock also made her a bit slower than she should have been. Her first shot took Iella Wessiri in the left shoulder, halfway twisting her around. The blaster in Iella’s right hand remained steady, however, and the shot from it caught Isard square in the stomach. She felt herself snapping forward, then flying back. Pain shot down her legs as she struck the wall, then stars exploded before her eyes as her head rebounded. She heard the distant clatter of her blaster on the floor as she slid down the wall.

Peering down, she saw her red uniform jacket was smoldering. Smoke rose to her eyes, which was the only reason she began to shed tears. Blood soaked her jacket and began to seep into her trousers. Pain, a raw, fiery sensation, pulsed through her body, and every breath came with wringing agony.

She looked up at Iella and opened her mouth to make yet one more taunt about Diric, but her lungs couldn’t project as much as a squeak. Isard tried to give her a hard stare, the sort of hard stare that had broken Imperial nobles and invoked fear in her inferiors, but her gaze swam out of focus.

Then, before she could find any other way to try to hurt another human being, the world grew dark around her. In that last moment, in the sanctum the Emperor had given her, she realized she had failed him. With that realization held solidly in her mind, she admitted to herself that death would not be so bad after all.

38

Standing in the midst of a party being held on the Lusankya summoned up for Corran Horn a variety of conflicting emotions. The freed prisoners and anyone who had been in contact with them had been brought to Lusankya and ensconced on a crew deck, being served by droids alone, for two weeks until New Republic medical officials completed their scans and decided they were disease free.

The release of the prisoners from isolation became a cause for celebration that drew officials and important people from all across the New Republic. At the far end of the large reception room, with his back to a massive transparisteel viewport that looked out over the vast expanse of the ship’s prow, General Dodonna stood flanked by Admiral Ackbar and Generals Bel Iblis and Antilles. A constant stream of well-wishers moved past them, exchanging comments, glances, handshakes, and smiles. Dodonna greeted warmly those individuals he recalled from Yavin and before, exuding the warmth and wisdom that had made him the natural leader of the prisoners.

Corran smiled slowly. During his escape attempt from Lusankya, Jan Dodonna had killed a man who tried to stop Corran. The way to freedom was clear and Corran offered to let Dodonna accompany him. Dodonna had refused, knowing that if he escaped, Isard would have wiped out the rest of the prisoners. He traded his freedom for their lives, a sacrifice that earned him two more years of captivity.

I’m not sure I could make that choice. Corran sipped Corellian whiskey. I hope I could, but I don’t know if I’m that good a man.

While everyone around him seemed to be very happy—with Booster’s booming laughter echoing from the far corner of the room—something felt out of place for Corran. The last party I was at, Urlor Sette died, propelling all of us down the path that brought us here.

Friends died and countless people suffered. Through the milling crowd he caught sight of Gavin Darklighter talking with Myn Donos and a couple of other people Corran didn’t recognize. Gavin had a smile on his face, but the way he moved and his short responses told Corran that Asyr’s death still ate away at him. Gavin’s a good man and doesn’t deserve such pain. I’m going to make sure to talk with him, help share the burden. He’s strong, he just needs someone to remind him of that fact.

Wes Janson came over and slapped Corran on the back. “We dress well for dead men, don’t we?”

“Well, better for me this time than the last one.” Corran smiled at him. “But making a habit of being left for dead isn’t a good idea.”

Wes nodded solemnly, though his smile only eroded slightly at the corners of his mouth. “When I thought you guys were all gone …” He shivered for a second and his voice faltered. “Then to see you again, albeit through a transparisteel wall while you were in isolation, you don’t know how happy I was.”

“Oh, I have a clue.” Corran jerked his head toward the front of the room. “My ears are still ringing from the happy whoop Wedge let out. He really couldn’t contain himself.”

“Yeah, and that little Ewok dance of joy is pretty ugly to watch, isn’t it?”

“Watch? I was trying to get my feet out from under his.” Corran and Wes both laughed, then the Corellian pilot gave his friend a nod. “Wish you’d been with us on Ciutric, and I’m very glad to have you back with us now.”

“Yes, active duty beats being dead all hollow.” Wes tossed him a wink, then threaded his way off in Wedge’s direction.

Corran shifted his shoulders to loosen them. Probably going to pull some Ewok prank on Wedge, and Wedge will love hating every minute of it. Turning away from Wes’s departure, Corran smiled as Iella and Mirax cut through the crowd and joined him.

Mirax looked radiant in a long, sleeveless gown worn daringly off one shoulder. The garment appeared black, but a shimmering rainbow of pinpricks channeled light over it and her. She wore her dark hair up, and two tiny diamond studs sparkled from her earlobes.

Iella wore a white gown with a short jacket over it. A single diamond on a platinum chain lay at the hollow of her throat, casting off dazzling light darts as she moved. Her hair had been gathered loosely at the back of her neck with a simple black cord. Her outfit, while not as flashy as Mirax’s, had an elegance to it that matched Iella’s noble bearing.

Mirax slipped her right hand through the crook of Corran’s left arm. “Enjoying yourself?”

“Now I am, yes.” He smiled at his wife. Her physical warmth and presence bled into him, pushing aside the sense of foreboding he’d been feeling. “How’s the shoulder, Iella?”

She worked her left shoulder forward and back. “It’s fine. Full range of motion and all. Nothing bacta couldn’t handle. You know that—you’ve been wounded much worse and survived.”

“True, if there’s a spark of life, bacta will keep you going.”

Iella nodded. “Happy to be out of isolation?”

“Very.” Corran jerked his head toward General Dodonna. “It was very weird to be a prisoner of sorts on Lusankya again. We got the run of the deck they trapped us on, which happened to have been the deck where we were held the first time. The accommodations were a lot nicer this time around, though.”

“Lusankya looks nothing like it did when we were married on it.” Mirax took his whiskey from him and drank a sip. “I definitely think it’s an improvement.”

Corran nodded. “I guess a lot of refitting went on. There’s a whole forward area where living creatures aren’t allowed to go. It’s just serviced by droids.”

Iella coughed into her hand. “It’s a bio-containment facility. It apparently struck some of the designers that in rebuilding the prow, they could put in scientific and medical suites that would allow Lusankya to be more than just a military ship. I think their sense of irony prompted them to put an area on board that, had it existed when the Krytos virus broke out, would have been useful in thwarting Isard’s plan. In the heart of that area there is supposed to be a containment cell so secure that any breach in it will immediately vent the whole area to space. Nothing, no virus or germ, will be getting out of there alive.”

“That’s a plus.” Corran smiled slightly, then looked around. “Kind of funny about Isard coming back here. I guess it makes sense, but she had me fooled. She told me she was glad the ship had been destroyed, since I ruined it for her. How did you figure out she was coming back for it?”

The two women exchanged a laugh. “Actually it was Mirax’s father who figured it out.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.” Iella shook her head. “The process sort of involved logic, but it was a bit twisted …”

Mirax sighed. “It was Booster-logic.”

“I hope you had a Three-Pee-Oh there to translate.”

Mirax slapped Corran on the arm. “Easy, husband. If not for him you’d be fighting this monster.”

Iella smiled. “Booster started from the idea that Isard wanted to reestablish the Empire, then he started breaking it down into all the steps she’d need to succeed at to get there. Somewhere in that list was a serious need to be able to inflict heavy damage on her enemies. From there Booster got to the Lusankya reborn, which he’d figured the New Republic was refitting because of the prices being offered for parts on the secondary commodities markets.

“Cracken provided us with authorization to commandeer whatever we needed, so the four of us came here and took command.”

“Four of you?”

Mirax and Iella exchanged a quick glance, then Corran’s wife gave his arm a squeeze. “Booster, Iella, me, and a Verpine tech who did some quick rewiring. We trapped Isard’s people and Iella took care of her in her own private quarters.”

Corran remained silent for a moment, then nodded. “You think Diric is finally at peace?”

“I hope so. Isard had reduced Diric to something he never wanted to be. Eliminating her won’t bring him back, but she’ll never do that to anyone else, so that’s a plus. I can live with it.”

“And live much better for it.” Corran shivered. “I wonder if she’ll end up haunting this place.”

“I have no doubt part of her will always be with the Lusankya.”

“Right where it belongs.” Corran sipped more of his whiskey. “Any word on what happened to Colonel Vessery and his people?”

Iella shook her head. “He vanished, taking his two squadrons of Defenders with him. General Cracken isn’t looking forward to his return.”

“I can understand that, but I don’t fear it.” Corran smiled. “In his own way Vessery is a very honorable man. He’ll do what’s right for his people.”

“Let’s just hope that doesn’t include piracy.” Iella looked up toward the front of the room. “Looks like speeches are about to begin.”

Corran turned to follow her gaze. Borsk Fey’lya was moving toward a podium, with Admiral Ackbar and General Dodonna standing near him. Other officials lined up off to the right, and in the background a disk-shaped freighter lazily cruised down the Super Star Destroyer’s length. “I think we can get closer.”

“You two go ahead. I’m going to slip out for a moment, get something from my room.” Iella patted Corran on the shoulder. “It’s another adventure we’ve survived, Corran. Twice now you’ve been declared dead and come back. Impressive.”

“But that’s the last time for that.” Mirax gave Corran a hard stare. “Anybody goes missing and next time it’s me. You can do the worrying, okay?”

“Okay.” He turned to Iella. “Hurry back, we’ll save a spot at our table for you for dinner.”

“Thanks.” Iella turned and headed for the hatchway leading toward the turbolifts.

Corran took Mirax’s hand in his and led her forward to where they could see the speakers. She moved around to stand in front of him and pressed her back against him. He rested his chin on her bare shoulder and snaked his arms around her waist.

Mirax turned her head and kissed him on the cheek. “It truly is wonderful to have you back. And I very much appreciate the sacrifice you made in sending Whistler to find me and let me know you were alive.”

“I floated it as a plan, and Whistler insisted. He’s quite fond of you, you know.”

“And I am of him.” Mirax smiled and kissed him again as Fey’lya began to speak. “After all, he’s my ally in keeping you safe and that’s a job we intend to continue for a very long time to come.”

Iella slipped into her small cabin on Lusankya and inserted her comlink into the room’s comm unit holoprojector. “This is Iella Wessiri calling Starweb.”

The image of the disk freighter she’d seen from the reception hung above the projector pad for a second, then it shifted to Asyr Sei’lar’s head and shoulders. “I left a message for you and for Mirax to let you know I’m leaving.”

“You don’t have to, Asyr.” Iella glanced out the room’s viewport and saw the freighter hanging off the starboard bow. “You can come back, we can explain things.”

“No. I’m better off dead.”

“But, Gavin, he’s … you can tell he hurts inside.”

The Bothan looked away from the holocam for a moment, then sniffed and turned back. “I know, Iella. I know how much he must hurt, but he will get over it. He’s a strong man. He will mourn, then recover and thrive. I know it. You have to remember what I told you from the start, when you recovered me at Distna, about why you had to tell no one I lived.”

“Borsk Fey’lya isn’t the Emperor.” Iella opened her arms wide with exasperation. “You said he told you he’d never allow the two of you to marry and adopt, and that he would make your lives miserable. That’s a gross abuse of power. He can’t be allowed to get away with that.”

“I know that, Iella, and I won’t let him.” Asyr’s lips peeled back in a smile that revealed sharp white teeth. “I’ll go to one of our colony worlds and assume a new identity. I’ll work to make changes within Bothan society that will guarantee politicians like Fey’lya cannot ruin other lives. If I come back to life now and expose what he’s done, I will take one individual down. The system still fosters that sort of power, and I need to work to change it.”

“Gavin would be a great help to you in all that.”

“I know, but it will be a dirty battle, fought the way only Bothans can fight.” She blinked her violet eyes. “It will consume my life, but I won’t have it consume his. Gavin is a good enough man that he would devote himself to helping me, but I can’t do that to him. He deserves better. Help him through it.”

“I will, we will.”

Asyr nodded. “Thank you. And I apologize for putting you and Mirax through the pressure of keeping my survival hidden. Spouses shouldn’t keep secrets from each other.”

Iella raised an eyebrow. “Never been married, have you?”

Surprise showed on Asyr’s face, then she laughed. “No. Perhaps someday. Well, I’m clear on a vector to hyperspace. Let Booster know this ship will be waiting for him at Commenor, as we discussed. Good-bye, Iella, and thank you.”

“Bye, Asyr, until we meet again.”

The Bothan’s image blinked out as the freighter shot into hyperspace. Iella brushed a tear from her right cheek, then took her comlink and headed toward the door. It slid open, with a man standing there, his hand poised over the door buzzer button.

“Wedge!”

“Iella, good, I did find you.” The leader of Rogue Squadron gave her a sloppy, boyish grin. “I saw Corran and Mirax. They said you’d come down here.”

“And you came to find me.” Iella grinned. “Looking to have me recommend to General Cracken that we make you an intelligence operative based on this tracking experience?”

“Ah, um, no.” He raised his head. “I was wondering, I mean, I thought of this before, but never got a chance to ask you … They said they would be saving a place for you at their table, but I’m having to sit with a bunch of Senators who I don’t know …”

“And you want someone on your wing?”

“Yeah, someone on my wing.” He extended his arm to her. “Interested in the job?”

“Sounds like a dangerous assignment.” She squinted at him for a moment. “Think I can handle it?”

“Definitely, Iella. You’re Rogue material.” Wedge smiled as she slipped her hand on his arm and laid his left hand over hers. “We both eliminated a Ysanne Isard from the galaxy and, after that, together, there’s nothing that can beat us.”

To Peet Janes and Peter Schweighofer

Thanks for providing me the opportunity to play in this universe in new and wondrous ways.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank the following people for their various contributions to this book:

Janna Silverstein, Tom Dupree, Pat LoBrutto, and Ricia Mainhard for getting me into this mess.

Sue Rostoni, Allan Kausch, and Lucy Autrey Wilson for continuing to let me work in the Star Wars universe.

Peter Schweighofer, Peet Janes, Bill Slavicsek, Patty Jackson, Dan Wallace, and Steve Sansweet for material they created, ideas they encouraged, and advice they offered.

Aaron Allston and Timothy Zahn for letting me play with characters they created.

Paul Youll for another stunning cover.

Lawrence Holland and Edward Kilham for the X-Wing and TIE Fighter computer games.

Chris Taylor for pointing out to me the ship in which Tycho was flying in Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi. (It was the 2nd A-wing that flew out of the Death Star to lead off some pursuit.)

My parents, Jim and Janet; my sister, Kerin; my brother, Patrick; his wife, Joy; and Faith, my niece; for their encouragement and support.

Jennifer Roberson and especially Elizabeth T. Danforth for listening to bits of this story as it was being written and enduring such abuse with infinite patience and grace.

STAR WARS: STARFIGHTERS OF ADUMAR
A Bantam Spectra Book/August 1999

SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

© 1999 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM
All rights reserved. Used under authorization.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.

eISBN: 978-0-307-79639-4

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada.

v3.1

Contents

Master - Table of Contents

Starfighters of Adumar

Title Page

Copyright

Dramatis Personae

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15

Acknowledgments

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Red Flight

General Wedge Antilles (Red One) (human male from Corellia)

Colonel Tycho Celchu (Red Two) (human male from Alderaan)

Major Wes Janson (Red Three) (human male from Taanab)

Major Derek “Hobbie” Klivian (Red Four) (human male from Ralltiir)

New Republic Armed Forces, Intelligence, and Diplomatic Corps

Iella Wessiri (human female from Corellia)

Tomer Darpen (human male from Commenor)

General Airen Cracken (human male from Contruum)

Captain Geng Salaban (human male from Bestine)

New Republic Civilians

Hallis Saper (human female from Bonadan)

1

She was beautiful and fragile and he could not count the number of times he had told her he loved her. But he had come here knowing he had to hurt her very badly.

Her name was Qwi Xux. She was not human; her blue skin, a shade lighter than her eyes, and her glistening brown hair, downy in its softness, were those of the humanoids of the planet Omwat. She was dressed for the occasion in a white evening gown whose flowing lines complemented her willowy form.

They sat at a table in a balcony café three kilometers above the surface of the planet Coruscant, the world that was a city without end. Just beyond the balcony rail was a vista made up of skyscrapers extending to the horizon, an orange sky threatening rain, and the sun setting beyond one of the more distant thunderheads. Breezes drifting across the two of them smelled of rain to come. At this early-evening hour, he and Qwi were the only diners on the balcony, and he was grateful for the privacy.

Qwi looked up from her entree of factory-bred Coruscant game fowl, her soft smile fading from her lips. “Wedge, there is something I must say.”

Wedge Antilles, general of the New Republic, perhaps still the most famous pilot of the old Rebel Alliance, breathed a sigh of silent thanks. Qwi’s conversational distraction would give him at least a few more moments before he had to arm his bad news and fire it off at her. “What is it?”

Her gaze fixed on him, she took a deep breath and held it until he was sure she would begin to turn even more blue. He recognized her expression: a reluctance to injure. He gestured, not impatiently, for her to go ahead.

“Wedge,” she said, her words all in a rush, “I think our time together is done.”

“What?”

“I don’t know how to say it so that it doesn’t seem cruel.” She gave him a helpless shrug. “I think we must go our separate ways.”

He remained silent, trying to restructure what she’d said into something he understood.

It wasn’t that her words were confusing. But they were the words he was supposed to be saying. How they’d defected from his mind to hers was a complete mystery to him.

He tried to remember what he’d thought she would say when he spoke those words to her. All he could manage was “Why?” At least his tone was neutral, no accusation in it.

“Because I think we have no future together.” Her gaze scanned his face as if looking for new cuts or bruises. “Wedge, we are good together. You bring me happiness. I think I do the same for you. But whenever I try to turn my mind from where we are to where we will be someday, I see no home, no family, no celebration days special to us. Just two careers whose bearers keep intersecting out of need. I think of what we feel for one another and every time it seems ‘affection’ is the proper word, not ‘love.’ ”

Wedge sat transfixed. Yes, those were his thoughts, much as he had been marshaling them all day long. “If not love, Qwi, what do you think this relationship meant to us?”

“For me, it was need. When I left the Maw facility where I designed weapons for the Empire, when I was made to understand what sort of work I had been doing, I was left with nothing. I looked for something to tractor me toward safety, toward comfort, and that tractor beam was you.” She dropped her gaze from his. “When Kyp Durron used his Force powers to destroy my memory, to ensure I could never engineer another Death Star or Sun-crusher, I became nothing, and was more in need of my tractor beam than ever.”

She met his gaze again. “For you, it was a simulator run.”

“What?”

“Please, hear me out.” Distressed, she turned away from him to stare at the cloud-mottled sky and the distant sunset. “When we met, I think your heart told you that it was time for you to love. And you did, you loved me.” Her voice became a whisper. “I understand now that humans, in their adolescent years, fall in love long before they understand what it means. These loves do not usually endure. They are learning experiences. I think perhaps that you, shoved from your childhood home straight into a world of starfighters and lasers and death, missed having those learning loves. But the need for them stayed with you.

“Wedge, I was the wrong one for you. Whatever your intent, whatever your seriousness, I think that all you have felt for me has been a simulator run for some later time, for some other woman. One with whom you can share a future.” Her words became raspy. She turned her attention back to Wedge, and he could see tears forming in her eyes. “I wish I could have been her.”

Wedge sagged back against his chair. At last her words had become her own again.

“And I am at fault,” she continued. “I have—oh, this is hard to say.”

“Go ahead, Qwi. I’m not angry. I’m not going to make this harder for you.”

She flashed a brief smile. “No, you wouldn’t. Wedge, when we came together I was a different woman. Then, when I lost my memory, I became someone else, the woman I am now, and you were there—brave and modest and admired, my protector in a universe that was unfamiliar to me—and after I realized this, I could not bring myself to make you understand …”

“Tell me.” Unconsciously, he leaned over to take her hand.

“Wedge, I feel as though I inherited you. From a friend who passed away. You were her choice. I do not know if you would have been mine. I never had the chance to find out.”

He stared at her for a long moment. Then a laugh escaped him. “Let me get this straight. I look on you as a comfortable old simulator, and you look on me as an inheritance that doesn’t match the rest of your furniture.”

She started to look stricken, then she laughed in return. She clapped her free hand over her mouth and nodded.

“Qwi, one of the things I truly admire is courage. It took courage for you to say what you’ve said to me. And it would be irresponsible, even cruel, of me if I didn’t admit that I came here tonight to break up with you.”

She put her hand down. Her expression was not surprised. Instead, it was a little wondering, a little amused. “Why?”

“Well, I don’t think I have your eloquence on this matter. I don’t think I’ve thought it through the way you have. But one reason is the same. The future. I keep looking toward it and I don’t see you there. Sometimes I don’t see me there.”

She nodded. “Until just now I had a little fear that I was wrong. That I might be making a mistake. Now I can be sure I was not. Thank you for telling me. It would have been so easy for you not to have.”

“No, it wouldn’t.”

“Well … maybe it wouldn’t for Wedge Antilles. For many men, it would have been.” She turned a smile upon him, a smile made up, he thought, of pride in him. “What will you do now?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about that. I’ve been looking at the two sides of my life. My career and my personal life. Except for the fact that I’m not flying nearly as much as I want to, I have no complaints about my career.” That wasn’t entirely true, and hadn’t been ever since he’d been convinced to accept the rank of general, but he tried not to burden her with frustrations he was convinced arose from his own selfishness. “I’m doing important work and being recognized for it. But my personal life …” He shook his head as though reacting to the death of a friend. “Qwi, you were the last part of my personal life. Now there’s nothing there. A vacuum purer than anything in space. So I think, in a few weeks, I’m going to take a leave of absence. Travel a bit, try to sneak a visit into Corellia, not think about my work. I’ll just try to find out if there is anything to me except career.”

“There is.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Keep your visual sensors turned up, then.”

He laughed. “What about you?”

“I have friends. I have work. I am acquiring hobbies. Remember, the new Qwi is less than two years old. In that way, I’m still a little girl experiencing the universe for the first time.” She looked apologetic. “So I will learn, and work, and see who it is I am becoming.”

“I hope you’ll still consider me a friend,” he said.

“Always.”

“Meaning you can still call on me. Send me messages. Send me lifeday presents.”

She laughed. “Greedy.”

“Thank you, Qwi.”

“Thank you, Wedge.”

He packed as though he were still an active pilot. Everything went into one shapeless bag, a bag chosen for its ideal fit within the cargo compartment of an X-wing fighter. Nothing his life would depend upon went into the bag—just clothes, toiletries, a holoplayer. More crucial items—identicards, credcards, hard currency, comlink, a holdout blaster pistol—he kept on him, so that a sudden separation from his bag would be an inconvenience rather than a crisis.

He sealed the bag and looked around his quarters. They were spacious, as befitted a general of the New Republic, and well situated high in a Coruscant skyscraper. He had only to speak a word and the quarters’ computer would change the polarity of the wall-to-wall viewports to give him a commanding view of sky, endless cityscape, ceaseless streams of vessels large and small.

These quarters were clean and spare as a military man kept them. They were—

They weren’t home. Neither were the smaller but equally lavish quarters he enjoyed on the Super Star Destroyer Lusankya, the seat of his military operations—though he was still assigned to Starfighter Command, the special task force he commanded kept him in circumstances and settings more suited to a Fleet Command officer.

Here, as there, the presence of a few mementos, of a framed holo showing his parents in a happy embrace, of friends captured at celebrations or launch zones, didn’t conceal the impersonal nature of the furniture. If he received a new posting while he was away on leave, he wouldn’t even have to come back here. He’d send a short message to the right department and an aide or droid would pack everything up and ship it off, and an identical one would receive it all and unpack it into a new set of quarters on some other world or station, and that would become the place where he lived.

But not home. Home was a family-owned refueling station, destroyed half his life ago with his parents still aboard, and nothing had ever come along to replace it.

He slung his bag over his shoulder. While on leave, maybe he’d be able to see in the faces and hear in the words of those he visited what it was that had turned their housing into their homes. Maybe—

His door chimed. He set the bag down again. “Come.”

The door slid up. Beyond was a man, muscular, graying, a bright and often cheerless intelligence in his eyes. He wore the uniform of a New Republic general.

Wedge approached, hand extended. “General Cracken! Come in. Have you come to see me off? I wasn’t expecting a military escort.”

Airen Cracken, head of New Republic Intelligence, entered and took Wedge’s hand. His expression did not brighten; he looked, if anything, regretful. “General Antilles. Yes, I’m here to see you off.”

Something in his tone sounded a quiet alarm in Wedge’s mind. “Should I be going evasive?”

That brought a faint smile to Cracken’s face. “Probably. I have an assignment for you.”

“I’m on leave. It’s already begun.”

Cracken shook his head.

“General Cracken, you’re not in a position to issue assignments to me. So what you’re saying is you have something you’d like me to volunteer for.”

“I have something you’re going to volunteer for.”

“I don’t think so.”

“The following information is for your ears only. You’re not to discuss it outside these quarters until you reach your rendezvous point.”

“That explains it.”

Cracken frowned. “Explains what?”

“When I was packing this morning. Why things seemed a little different. As if a cleaning detail had been through and picked up everything, putting it back almost exactly where it was before. Your people were through here when I was out, weren’t they? Making sure there were no listening or recording devices present.”

Cracken didn’t reply to that. He just looked a little surly. He continued, “The world of Adumar is on the near edge of Wild Space. It was colonized as long as ten thousand years ago by a coalition of peoples who had staged a rebellion against the Old Republic, been defeated, and been spared … so long as they went far away and never caused any more trouble.”

Wedge just stared. Perhaps if he demonstrated continued indifference Cracken would go away. That wasn’t usually the way it worked, of course.

Cracken said, “According to what we’ve been able to gather, their spirit of rebellion and divisiveness didn’t end when they found a world worthy of settling. Their history suggests they fought among themselves a number of times, eventually reducing themselves to poverty and barbarism—not once, but twice at least. Though apparently their ancient teaching-recordings survived for thousands of years; their language is recognizably a dialect of Basic.” He paused as if anticipating questions from Wedge.

“I’m not curious.”

“Anyway, they were completely forgotten by the Old Republic. There is no mention of them in Imperial archives, either. We were fortunate that one of our deep-space scouts stumbled across them when returning from a mapping mission into the Unknown Regions.”

“If you continue to map the Unknown Regions, you’ll have to call them something else.”

Cracken blinked, his expression suggesting that he didn’t know whether to interpret that comment as humor or not. “Adumar is heavily industrialized, and a large portion of its industrial development is military. Their weapons are oriented around high-powered explosives. Our analysts suggest that it would be a simple matter to convert a portion of their industry over to the production of proton torpedoes. General, how would you like it if the New Republic’s X-wings never had to face a shortage of proton torpedoes again?”

Wedge suppressed a whistle. Lasers were the most often-used weapons of starfighters, the means by which they shot one another down … but it was proton torpedoes that gave some starfighters the punch necessary to damage or even destroy capital ships. “That would … be helpful.”

“You’ve pushed for years for increased production of proton torpedoes. Since you made the rank of general, people have even been listening. But the New Republic has so many demands on its resources that efforts to boost production of the secondary or tertiary weapon of choice among all starfighters tends to get lost in the shuffle. It wouldn’t keep getting lost if we could bring Adumar into the New Republic; then, it would just be some industrial retooling.”

“So send a diplomatic mission and work things out with them.”

“Ah, that’s the trouble.” Cracken rubbed his hands together. “The people of Adumar have no respect for career politicians. A very sensible attitude, in my opinion—though if you tell anyone I said that, I’ll merely have to deny it. Do you know what sort of individual they hold in highest regard?”

“No.”

“Fighter pilots. The Old Republic had its Jedi; Adumar has its fighter pilots. They love them, a case of hero worship that spans their whole culture. Their entertainments revolve around them. Social promotion, properties, titles, all accompany military promotion in their pilot corps.”

“That sounds like a reasonable arrangement. Let’s implement it in the New Republic.”

“And so they’ll talk with a diplomat. But only if he’s also a pilot. Our best.”

Wedge sighed. “I’m no diplomat.”

“We’ll assign you an advisor. A career diplomat, already on station at Adumar, named Darpen. By the terms by which the Adumari are allowing our diplomatic mission, you’ll be accompanied by three other pilots, your choice, a crew of aides, including that advisor, and one ship—you’ll be in command of the Allegiance, an Imperial-class Star Destroyer—”

“I remember her. From the Battle of Selaggis.”

“Well, then.” Cracken took a datacard from a pocket and held it out. “Your orders. You and the pilots you choose will rendezvous with Allegiance at the coordinates provided here. Tell your pilots nothing about the mission until the rendezvous.”

Wedge offered him nothing but a steady stare. “I need this leave, General. This is no joke. Find someone else.”

“You need. Antilles, the New Republic needs. You’ve never turned your back on the New Republic in its times of need.”

Wedge felt his last hope slipping away, to be replaced by anger. “What’s it like, General?”

Cracken’s expression turned to one of confusion. “What’s what like? Adumar?”

“No. What’s it like to have so many resources? So that you can simply turn to your staff and say, ‘I need so-and-so for this task. Find me the button I can push so he’ll do whatever I say, regardless of what it costs him.’ What’s that like?”

Cracken’s face flushed. “You’re coming dangerously close to insubordination, General.”

“No, General.” Wedge took the datacard from Cracken’s hand. “I’m not your subordinate. And what I’m coming dangerously close to is violence. Perhaps you’d better leave.”

Cracken stood there a moment, and Wedge could see him struggling against saying something further. Then the man turned away. The door opened before him.

As he passed through it, Cracken said, “Pack your dress uniform, General.” Then he was gone.

Wedge’s X-wing and the three snubfighters accompanying him dropped out of hyperspace at the same instant.

Unfamiliar stars surrounded them. But within visual range was something he recognized—the white triangular form of an Imperial-class Star Destroyer, a 1.6-kilometer-long package of destructive force.

His sensor unit tagged it immediately as Allegiance, his expected rendezvous. But his heart rate still quickened a bit as he oriented his X-wing toward the vessel.

For many years, Star Destroyers had been objects of dread among Rebel pilots. Wedge had fought against so many of them, participating in the destruction of some, losing friends to several. Over the years, the New Republic had captured a number of them, turning their awesome firepower against the Empire. Now they were almost a common sight in New Republic Fleet Command, but Wedge could never rid himself of the presentiment of evil he felt whenever he saw one.

His comm unit beeped and words appeared on the text screen—acknowledgment by Allegiance that they had recognized him, authorization for landing, and a small schematic indicating the small landing bay, suited for dignitaries, where they were supposed to put down.

“Red Flight,” he said, “we are cleared to land. Main starfighter bay. Follow me in.”

He heard acknowledgments from his three pilots, then began a long, slow loop around toward the Star Destroyer’s underside.

Almost immediately his comm unit crackled. “X-wing group, this is Allegiance. You, uh, seem to be off your approach vector for Bay Alpha Two.”

“Allegiance, this is Red Leader,” Wedge said. “We’re inbound for the main bay. By orders of the expedition commander.” He let the comm officer stew over that one for a moment. He, Wedge, was the expedition commander.

There was a moment of delay—just long enough, Wedge estimated, for the comm officer to make one short broadcast to the ship commander and get one short reply. “Acknowledged, Red Leader. Allegiance out.”

Wedge and his companions took up position beneath the gigantic vessel and rose within the spacious confines of the ship’s main bay. Wedge hovered, ignoring the flight line worker beckoning to him with glowing batons, and took a look around.

Starfighters stood ready to launch into battle—A-wings, B-wings, X-wings, Y-wings, and even TIE fighters that had once fought the New Republic. Retrofitted with shields, the TIEs were now a common sight in friendly hangars. Mechanics worked briskly on fighters in need of repair or maintenance. The metal floors and bulkheads wore a dull sheen, showing age and wear but also cleanliness, rather than a shine suggesting that the captain was too concerned with appearance. These were good signs.

The smaller bay they’d originally been directed to could have been put in tiptop shape for their arrival with comparative ease, but the state of affairs in the main bay was a better indicator of how the ship was being run, and things here looked good.

Wedge finally allowed the worker to direct Red Flight to a landing spot, near the vessel’s single squadron of X-wings. The unit patch on those snubfighters, showing a single X-wing soaring high above a mountain peak, identified them as High Flight Squadron. Wedge nodded. They weren’t the best X-wing unit in the fleet, but they were a veteran squadron with plenty of battle experience.

As he and his fellows set down, Wedge saw the main doorway into the bay open upward and a crowd of people enter at a run. Some of them skidded as they spotted Red Flight and turned in the direction of the recently arrived snubfighters. Among them were a man in a Fleet Command captain’s uniform, the usual complement of junior officers and guards, and, most odd of all, what looked like a woman with two heads, one of them shining silver.

Wedge descended his access ladder and turned to face the delegation. He felt and heard his own pilots fall into line behind him. He extended his hand toward the highest-ranking officer. “Captain Salaban. I was glad to hear you’d been promoted off Battle Dog.”

The captain, a lean, bearded man with skin the color of tanned leather, still breathing hard, hesitated. Obviously confused for a moment as to whether he should salute properly or follow Wedge’s informal fashion of greeting, he chose the latter and shook Wedge’s hand. “Thank you, sir. And welcome aboard. Allow me to introduce you to my senior officers …”

It was a ritual Wedge knew from countless repetitions in the past. He committed each officer’s name and face to memory, hoping his retention would last until the end of the mission; it usually did.

Then the captain gestured to the two-headed woman. “And the mission documentarian, Hallis Saper.”

Wedge could finally give her his full attention. She was a tall woman, taller than he by two or three centimeters, with long brown hair worn in a braid and wide-open features; she looked as though she’d recently arrived from a one-shuttle agrarian world. He could not read her eyes, as they were concealed behind goggles darkened almost to opacity. She wore a brown jumpsuit festooned with belts, pouches, and pockets.

And on her right shoulder, held on a bracket affixed to her clothing, was the silver head of a 3PO protocol droid. Its eyes were lit.

“I’m so happy to meet the most famous pilot of Starfighter Command,” she said; her voice was pleasant but loud, unrestrained.

“Thank you,” he said. “Um, I couldn’t help noticing that you have two heads.”

She smiled. “This is Whitecap, my holo-recording unit. I put him together from a ruined protocol droid and a standard holocam. I added memory and some basic conversational circuitry and programming. He looks wherever I look—the goggles have sensors that track my eye movement—and records whatever I see.”

“I see,” Wedge said. He didn’t, but the words served as building tones useful for plugging up holes where conversation should be. “Why?”

“I record a lot of interviews with children. Studies suggest that they find 3PO units nonthreatening.”

“Ah. And have you had much luck with this approach?” He was pretty sure he knew the answer to this one.

“Well, not yet. I’m still working out the kinks in the system.”

It would help if you started with the fact that you’re a two-headed lady with eyes that children can’t see, Wedge thought, but kept it to himself. “And now you’re taking a temporary break from children to record starfighter pilots.”

She nodded. The 3PO head remained stationary on her shoulder, unaffected by her motion. “It’s a wonderful opportunity. Thank you.”

“Well, you’re welcome. But I’m afraid that Whitecap is going to have to suffer some additional coding. I need to be able to issue a verbal command and shut him off. Circumstances sometimes demand privacy.”

Hallis fidgeted. “That was never part of the arrangement. I’ll have to refuse.”

“Very well. You’ll be getting some very good footage of the inside of your cabin.”

“Oh. Well, in that case, I accept. I’ll do the coding myself.”

“And then hand Whitecap over to the Allegiance’s code-slicers briefly for, oh, code optimization.”

Hallis’s smile flickered for a moment and Wedge knew he’d guessed correctly. Hallis must have intended to arrange things so that a second code issued by her would secretly override Wedge’s shutoff command. “Of course,” she said, but there was now just a trace of brittleness to her voice.

Wedge returned his attention to Captain Salaban. “Allow me in turn to introduce you to my pilots. I present Colonel Tycho Celchu, leader of Rogue Squadron.”

Tycho offered the ship captain a salute. “Sir.” He was a lean man, blond, graying in dignified fashion at the temples, with handsome features and an aristocrat’s bearing. The perfection of his looks might have made him appear severe, even cruel, in earlier years, but the beatings life had handed him—the loss of his family on Alderaan at the hands of Grand Moff Tarkin and the first Death Star, capture and attempted brainwashing by Imperial Intelligence head Ysanne Isard, and suspicion on the part of New Republic Military Intelligence forces that despite his escape he had succumbed to that brainwashing and was an enemy in their midst—all had weathered him in spirit if not in form. Now, he still looked in every way the cold aristocrat … until one looked in his eyes and saw the humanity and the signs of distant pain there.

“This is Major Wes Janson, and if you’re not aware of his exploits, I’m sure he’ll be delighted to give you the whole story.”

Janson shot Wedge a cool look as he shook the ship captain’s hand. “Good to be here.” He turned to the documentarian. “Oh, and, Hallis, I’m better known for my breathtaking looks than my fighting skills, so don’t forget that this is my good side.” He turned his head so Hallis’s recorder would get a straight-on look at his left profile.

Wedge suppressed a snort. Janson’s self-promotion came out of a desire to entertain rather than from any serious case of narcissism, but he was as good-looking as he suggested. Like Wedge and a majority of other successful fighter pilots, he was a few centimeters short of average height, but Janson was unusually broad in the shoulders, and endowed with a body that showed muscle definition after only light exercise and was not inclined to fat. His hair was a rich brown, and his merry features were not just handsome but preternaturally youthful; he was now in his thirties but could pass for ten years younger. A most unfair combination, Wedge thought.

“And Major Derek Klivian,” Wedge concluded.

The fourth pilot leaned in for a handshake. He was lean, with dark hair and a face best suited to wearing mournful expressions. “Captain,” he said. Then he, too, turned to the documentarian. “Everyone calls me Hobbie,” he said. “And I’ll get back with you on my last name. Lots of people misspell it.”

Wedge resisted the urge to look into the eyes of the recording unit. He knew that second head would attract his attention during upcoming events; it was best to train himself now to ignore it. But he couldn’t help but wonder what sort of scene would emerge from this recording, what part it would play in the documentary Hallis would be assembling. Or how he’d look beside his more colorful subordinate pilots. Wedge was, like Janson, below average height, and he thought of himself as one of the most ordinary-looking men alive. But admirers had told him that his features bespoke intelligence and determination. Qwi had said there was a mesmerizing depth to his brown eyes. Other ladies had been charmed by his hair—it was worn short, but as long as military regulations allowed, and was the sort of fine hair that stirred in any breeze and invited ladies’ hands to run through it.

He gave an internal shrug. Perhaps he didn’t suffer as much as he feared in comparison with extroverts like Janson. He just wished that when he was shaving he could see some of these traits his admirers noted.

“I’d appreciate it,” he said, “if we could get a temporary paint job on the X-wings. Red Flight One, Two, Three, Four.” He pointed to himself, Tycho, Janson, and Hobbie in turn. “A white base, but Rogue Squadron reds for the striping, no unit patch.”

Salaban nodded. “Easily done.”

“So,” Wedge said, “what’s first on our agenda—settling in to quarters or a mission briefing?”

Salaban’s expression suggested that the question was not a welcome one. “Settling in, I’m afraid, sir. There won’t be a briefing until you land on-planet. Intelligence decided not to provide a liaison at this time.”

Wedge bit back a response that would not have sounded appropriate in the mission documentary. “We’re going in cold?”

Captain Salaban nodded.

Wedge forced a smile for the holocam. “Well, just another challenge, then. Let’s see those quarters.”

2

Wedge was still occasionally fuming, days later, when Allegiance dropped out of hyperspace at the edges of the Adumar solar system. There was such a thing, of course, as overplanning. With too much time and too much desire to put every mission detail into a mission profile, it was possible to lose perspective on which objectives were most important, on which tactics were most effective.

But this was the polar opposite of that situation. He didn’t know any more now about the people of Adumar than when he received the datacard from Cracken. As he sat in his X-wing, running through his preflight checklist, he had available to him only a set of coordinates on the planet’s surface. Once Allegiance made its approach to the world—an odd, inconvenient path like an obstacle course, with direction changes at one of the system’s uninhabited worlds and one of Adumar’s two moons—Wedge and his three pilots would launch and make the final approach to their destination … whatever it was that the mathematical coordinates represented. One of Allegiance’s shuttles, filled with support personnel, including Hallis Saper, had already descended to make preparations for their arrival.

“Red Flight, this is Allegiance. Our final leg terminates in one minute.”

Wedge glanced at his comm board. The minute was already counting down—his R5 unit, Gate, had also received the transmission and, on his own initiative, begun a count down. Wedge said, “This is Red Leader. Understood. We launch at arrival plus five seconds. Red Flight, are you good to go?”

“Red Two, ready.” That was Tycho, as economical of words as he was of motion.

“Red Three, four lit and ready to burn.” Janson’s inimitable voice and enthusiasm were evident even across the standard X-wing comm distortion.

“Red Four, nothing’s gone wrong yet.” There was almost a hopeful note to Hobbie’s dour tone.

Wedge felt Allegiance heel to starboard, a maneuver lasting ten seconds, and it ended just as his countdown dropped to zero. “Red Flight, launch.” He suited action to words, bringing his X-wing up on repulsorlifts until it was three meters above the hangar floor, then drifting forward over the main hangar access. Below was a great dark mass featuring occasional sprinkles of light—Adumar’s night side. He angled until his nose was straight down, then smoothly brought up his thrusters and shot toward the planet’s surface. His sensor board and a visual check to either side showed his three companions tucked in close beside and behind him in diamond formation. He oriented toward the planet’s direction of spin; Allegiance’s orbit was above the planet’s equator.

“Leader, Two. We have company.”

Wedge checked his sensor board again. It showed two red blips paralleling their course, about ten klicks from one another and ten klicks above Red Flight’s course. As he watched, another two blips began rising from below on an identical course. The sensors designated them “Unknown Type.” He took a look at them with visual sensors, but could just barely make out a black fuselage and an unusual split to the rear fuselage; the distance, and vibration from the X-wing’s speed, made a better look impossible.

“Presumably an escort,” Wedge said. “Stay loose, Red Flight. Diplomacy first.”

“Leader, Three. Diplomacy means saying something soothing as you squeeze the trigger, right?”

“Quiet, Three.”

In moments, as they held their altitude above Adumar’s surface, he saw the system’s sun rise above the planetary curve ahead of them. Wedge’s viewport automatically polarized, cutting down a bit on its brightness, but his eyes were still dazzled. He brought down his helmet goggles and kept his attention on his instruments.

Seconds later, Red Flight crossed the day/night boundary. Visual sensors showed a tremendous archipelago of islands below them, graduating to a series of larger mountainous islands, and then suddenly they were above an enormous continent, one that had to occupy at least a quarter of the world’s planetary surface. Their course led them northward, over what looked like the continent’s temperate zone. Through breaks in the world’s cloud cover, Wedge saw sprawling cities, deep belts of greenery, and large cultivated fields. The sensor board indicated the continued presence of their escorts, who maintained a ten-kilometer distance.

As their motion carried them around the curve of Adumar, the sun rose over them and then was behind them. When they approached the far day/night boundary, Gate transmitted the next set of course corrections: reduction of speed and descent into the planetary atmosphere.

“Leader, Red Three. Why are we taking the long way around?”

“Three, it’s their course, not ours. I suspect they’re giving us a chance to look at the world.”

“Next time they can send holos.”

Wedge grinned and began the descent into the atmosphere. He brought his shields up and kept his speed fairly high. This would give the population below something to see: The friction of the atmosphere on the shields would make the X-wings look briefly like meteors shooting out of the skies. It would also give him a chance to learn more about their escorts.

The escorts ten klicks below him entered the atmosphere first—and slowed their forward speed to do so. Wedge nodded. That suggested, though it did not prove, that the escorts weren’t able to handle atmospheric reentry as well as an X-wing with shielding. Above him, the high-guard escorts also slowed as they reached the barrier of the atmosphere. Soon Red Flight was far out ahead of the chase vehicles.

They descended toward Adumar’s surface, soon recognizing cities with skyscrapers, cultivated fields, untouched forests, broad lakes and rivers. It was, unlike Coruscant, a pretty world.

Sensors showed more vehicles rising in their path at intervals of fifty and a hundred kilometers, but these vehicles stayed to either side of Red Flight’s course, not pursuing as the X-wings passed. “A gauntlet,” said Red Four.

“Maybe if they were firing,” Wedge said. “Here, they’re more like distance markers.”

“They could keep track of us on sensors,” said Red Three, “and scramble a flight if we veered off our assigned course. I’d like to know what they’re doing. Show of force?”

Wedge shook his head. If this had been a show of force, they would have had a much larger unit of vehicles in the air, and would have been making much closer passes. But Wedge didn’t have the answer, either. “Less chatter, Red Flight.”

One blip rising into their path did so at a halfway point between the “distance marker” vehicles, and its range to Red Flight closed much faster than the rest. It had to be heading toward the X-wings rather than attempting to pace them. As Wedge watched, the sensor board identified the blip as a group of four fighters flying in tight formation. Their course showed them heading straight toward the X-wings. “Heads up, Red Flight,” Wedge said. “This may be trouble.”

His comm unit came alive with transmissions, disjointed phrases crowding one another out. “Rad Flat, tha flightknife approaching your position … Buan ke Shia challenges Waj Antilles! Answer!… Rad Flat authorized to defend … Dyans ke Vasan challenges Was Jansan! Answer!”

“Scramble Red Flight frequency,” Wedge said, and suited actions to words by activating his comm unit scrambler. Now people other than Red Flight listening in on the flight frequency would hear nothing but computer-mangled transmissions. “S-foils to attack position,” he continued. “Two, you’re with me. Three and Four, you’re wingmen.” On the sensor board, four more of the distance-marker aircraft were now breaking from their original courses and looping back toward Red Flight.

“Leader, Three. We can outrun them.”

“No, Three. If this culture really is as pilot-happy as we were told, taking the most sensible course out of here might cost me credibility I need. This could just be a test of nerve.”

“Leader, Four. My nerves are already tested. Can I go home?”

“Quiet down, Four.” Wedge watched the range meter’s numbers roll down. At two kilometers, the approaching fighters would be barely within accurate targeting range … but they were closing so fast that by the time the Red Flight pilots could squeeze the triggers, the computer targeting might have good locks on them. The sensor board was already uttering faint musical tones to indicate that the enemy was attempting targeting locks on them.

At three klicks, Wedge said, “Break by pairs—”

And the enemy fired. Wedge saw eight flares, two from each oncoming fighter, as the enemy launched missiles.

Wedge whipped to starboard and then instantly began to bring himself back in line with his enemies again. The maneuver yanked him out of his approach vector … but missiles accelerated so fast, and the enemy was firing so close, that his sideslip stood an even chance of forcing an overshoot by the missiles. He saw twin burn trails flash back along his port side and knew he was right.

A split second later, his targeting brackets crossed over one of the oncoming aircraft and flickered from yellow to green. Wedge squeezed his yoke trigger and saw his lasers, red pulses, leap out toward the oncoming aircraft—

He had a glimpse of the enemy, black fighter-craft, and then he was past them. Sensors registered an explosion behind him and three targets beyond that, headed away but beginning tight turns back in his direction.

He looped around to port, noted that Tycho was still on his rear starboard quarter. “Leader to Flight. Status?”

“Leader, Two. One vaped, two laser-damaged but apparently still flyable. I have no damage.”

“Three, unhurt.”

“Four, no damage yet.”

Wedge didn’t bother to issue further orders. His pilots knew what they were about. He and Tycho tightened their loop, an effort to come up behind the surviving pair of enemy fighters, while Hobbie and Janson split wide—if the solo enemy turned against one of them for a head-to-head run, the other would have a good shot at a side or rear quarter.

As he came in toward the rear of the enemy wing pair, Wedge got a good look at them. They were large for single-pilot fighters. They were longer than an X-wing by almost half, their bows ending in sharp points. Behind the cockpit, their fuselages split into odd dual-tail assemblies joined by horizontal bars at the rear. The wings, which crossed the fuselage just behind the cockpit, were broad where they joined the fighter-craft but narrowed like a vibroblade to a sharp point at the tips. The craft surfaces were a glossy black.

Wedge switched to the general comm frequency. “Red Flight to enemy fighters. Indicate your surrender now by descending to the planet’s surface.”

“No!” The enemy pilot’s voice was strained, a little high in pitch. “I will have Waj Antilles or die!”

Both enemy craft attempted a hard roll to starboard and down. Wedge and Tycho stayed with them, closing to optimum firing range—two hundred fifty meters. “You’re within our sights and not going anywhere,” Wedge said. “This is your last chance—”

The two craft rapidly decelerated, an attempt to force the X-wings to overshoot. Wedge fired and saw his quad-linked lasers shred the black craft ahead of him, punching through the fuselage directly behind the cockpit; the craft rolled in the air, its structural integrity compromised, and disintegrated into a dozen different pieces.

Tycho’s shot was more surgical. It blew through the cockpit just where the canopy met the fuselage at the rear. The fighter-craft, still intact, rolled lazily to port and began an uncontrolled plummet.

Wedge checked his sensor board. Hobbie and Janson were headed back to rejoin them.

And the other, more distant fighters, those that had turned back toward the altercation, were once again resuming their original courses, setting up the kilometers-wide corridor for Red Flight’s travel.

Wedge brought his group slowly back around on course and watched Tycho’s target until that fighter crashed onto a forested hilltop far below. A fireball bloomed out of the wreckage and began consuming it and the foliage around. “Red Flight to Adumar Central Control, what was that all about?”

“Rad Flat, Rad Flat, this is Cartann Bladedrome. Congratulations on four stops. Ar apologies far the inconvenience. Please resume the original course.”

He switched to Red Flight’s scrambled frequency. “Any of you getting any of that?”

“Leader, Three. It’s Basic, but I don’t want to imagine how they have to twist their faces to pronounce it. They don’t sound as though this was part of the planned celebrations.”

“That’s my read also, Three. Let’s resume our planned course. But keep your eyes open and your sensors optimal.”

Moments later it was before them, the biggest city they’d seen so far, a broad stretch of skyscrapers; even the smallest of buildings, at the city’s periphery, seemed to be six or seven stories in height. The sky above it was alive with small craft. Wedge’s navigation computer indicated that their destination was within the city borders.

As they got closer, they could see that the city was a riot of colors, each building painted differently from the ones next to it, most of them bearing one color for walls and another for roofs and trim such as ledges and window frames. Rust, brown, red, black, and tan seemed to be preeminent.

And then there were the balconies. Every building seemed to have a broad balcony. On most of the worlds Wedge visited, a balcony might extend as far as the edge of the sidewalk, but some of these stretched out over the street, almost meeting balconies from the buildings across the way.

Cables also stretched between buildings, masses of them, but whether they carried power or communications signals, or did nothing more than add structural support or please some aesthetic sense, Wedge couldn’t guess.

Red Flight’s course dictated an altitude and direction that sent the four X-wings straight down the middle of one of the city’s broader avenues, just above the rooftops. Wedge reduced speed for better maneuvering close to structures. As they entered the city Wedge could see people on the streets and especially on the balconies: fair-skinned humans dressed in flowing garments he could only glimpse as they flashed past. The people all seemed to be waving, pointing up at the X-wings. There were vehicles on and above the streets, long, broad transports without seats. Wedge also saw living transportation—reptilian beasts, seven to ten meters long, in colors ranging through browns and greens; the beasts possessed natural armor on flanks and necks, a sort of hard-shell banding, and they carried saddles, some of them built for multiple riders and cargo.

As the pilots got farther into the city, the buildings grew taller, but Wedge’s orders mandated the same height aboveground. Suddenly they could see balconies and residents beside them, then above them, and they had to vary their altitude occasionally to miss banks of the cables stretched between buildings; yet the city builders seemed to have planned to accommodate low-level flying, because the cables were clustered at various altitudes, with gaps between them wide enough to permit easy passage of starfighters.

Sensor signals showed some of those pursuit aircraft catching up from the rear, and then Wedge spotted them visually: They were negotiating one cable-bounded passage below Red Flight, in tight formation, moving like the escorts they were probably intended to be, a score or more of the same craft Red Flight had shot down moments before.

“Not bad-looking.” That was Janson’s voice. “Chiefly atmospheric from the look of them.”

Their path took them abruptly out from between the balconied buildings and over a plaza. It was broad, wide enough for an X-wing to do some maneuvering at reduced speed, and packed with people.

And at the boundaries of the plaza were erected display screens, each showing a different moving two-dimensional image.

They were images of Wedge Antilles and the X-wings under his command, images of battles from throughout his career.

Wedge almost jerked in surprise. On one screen were in-the-trench shots from the original Death Star, from the viewpoint of an X-wing camera mount. On another, the huge naval engagement in space above the sanctuary moon of Endor. On another, a clash between X-wings and the Ssi-ruuk in the Bakura system. All engagements he’d been involved with … all recordings from participating fighters, recordings that had to have been provided to the Adumari by the New Republic. Two sets of panels showed data that did not come from the New Republic, though: They were recordings of Red Flight’s clash moments ago with the Adumari fighters, doubtless recorded by the fighters that had been shadowing them; the poor focus and jerking of the images suggested the recorders had been far away.

“Leader, Three. You set this up yourself, didn’t you?”

“Three, Two. Less chatter.” Wedge thought he detected a trace of amusement in Tycho’s admonition.

The navicomputer indicated that the plaza was the terminus of their trip. He could see one area that had to be their landing zone. At the center of the plaza was a circular fountain, the centerpiece of which seemed to be a statue representing one of those split-tailed fighters aiming straight into the sky; near it was a stage with rails around the edge and a mass of people upon it, and near that was a railed-off area clear of people. Already parked on the landing zone was the shuttle from the Allegiance.

Wedge continued forward until he was not far short of one set of screens—the one before him showed him and Rogue Squadron, in dress uniform, in a celebration of the fall of Coruscant to the New Republic—and arced hard to starboard. He led Red Flight in a full circle around the plaza, then descended to touch down on the landing zone.

When his canopy opened, admitting a wash of heavy, humid air that made him guess this part of Adumar was in its late summer season, he was deafened by the roar from the crowd. He took off his helmet and was rewarded by another roar as his features were revealed. “Gate,” he said, “close it up and run the power-down checklist. Notify me by comm if anyone approaches.”

His R5 unit chirped a confirmation. Wedge suppressed a noise of dissatisfaction. He’d have preferred to have a few minutes to do his routine post-flight check on his vehicle, but the demands of this social situation obviously wouldn’t permit him the luxury.

No flight crew approached with ladders, so he swung expertly over the side of his cockpit, hung off the side of his X-wing for a moment by his hands, and then dropped to the plaza surface below, landing in a crouch. The plaza surface, for all that it looked like well-fitted square stones, gave slightly under the impact of his landing; it seemed to be a prettily decorated sheet of some flexible material.

Tycho, Janson, and Hobbie joined him in moments, and Wedge spotted another individual headed their way from the direction of the stage. This man was about Wedge’s height, with intelligent eyes and features framed by dark hair and a close-cut black beard. He was dressed in New Republic clothing cut similar to a military uniform but without rank or unit designations. He held out a hand to Wedge. “Sir. Delighted to meet you. I’m—”

“Ejector Darpen!” That was Janson, his voice and expression betraying surprise—and the good cheer that meant he now had some new trouble to cause.

The newcomer glanced at Janson and shook his head regretfully. “I should have known. Wes Janson. Now my life can take on the aspect of a personal hell.” He returned his attention to Wedge. “Tomer Darpen. New Republic Diplomatic Corps. I’m your liaison to the people of Adumar.”

“Good to have one,” Wedge said. “This is Colonel Tycho Celchu, Major Hobbie Klivian. Janson you’ve obviously experienced already. Mind telling us what that assault during our arrival was all about? I assume an assassination attempt.”

Tomer winced. “Not precisely. They were probably young, undisciplined pilots trying to achieve some personal honor by killing you in a fair dogfight. I doubt it was anything personal.”

“You do.” Wedge gave him a dark look. “I take it very personally. We just had to vape four pilots in what is theoretically a friendly zone. Is this likely to happen again?”

Tomer shrugged. “Probably not. We’ll adjust security measures to reduce the likelihood.”

Wedge hesitated, not satisfied by Tomer’s explanations; there was obviously a lot more he wasn’t saying. “All right, for now. What’s expected of us here?”

“Not much.” Tomer gestured at the crowd. “A short speech for the assembly. Speaking of which …” He pulled a round silver object, three centimeters across, from a pocket. It had a clip on the back. By use of the clip, without prelude or request for permission, Tomer fixed it to Wedge’s collar. “This is an Adumari comlink. This one is keyed to the speakers on the poles where the flatcams are.”

Wedge raised an eyebrow. “Flatcams? They don’t record in holo?”

“No, but we have some holocams up there, too, for our own records and to keep our documentarian from going mad. Anyway, please don’t do anything too elaborate with the speech until you’re used to the Adumari dialect of Basic; pronunciation is a bit tricky, and the crowd may not understand you. After the speech, we settle you into quarters, give you some orientation, and you can dress for the ball. That’s where all the politicking and introducing really take place.”

Wedge fingered the Adumari comlink. He didn’t care for the familiar way Tomer had placed it on him, but he decided not to pursue the matter at this time. “We don’t meet the planetary president or representative here?”

Tomer shook his head. “No, the, ah, perator of Cartann offers you considerable honor by not showing up here.”

Wedge said, “Perator is what—planetary president?”

“Well, here it’s an inherited rather than elected title,” Tomer said. “But he has the support of the people through demonstrations of his piloting leadership during his youth. And his absence here means, basically, that he doesn’t steal any of the attention the crowd would otherwise pay you.” He gestured toward the edge of the landing area, where steps led up to the stage. “After you. After all of you, actually. Mere civilians, even former pilots, don’t presume to walk beside active pilots unless invited.”

Janson smiled. “I like this place. I’m going to go shopping for land and build myself a retreat.” He fell in step behind Wedge. “Hey, boss, do you have a speech ready?”

“No.”

“So you’re going to sound like a complete idiot, right?”

Wedge turned to offer him a smile that was more malice than cheerfulness. “Once, maybe. But since I made general and have to do this all the time, I’ve developed the Antilles Four-Step Instant Speech.”

Janson gave him a dubious look. “This I have to hear.”

Once on the stage, Wedge headed to its center and raised his hand with a theatricality that wasn’t really part of his nature—just a by-product of the numerous public-relations tours he’d taken after the death of Emperor Palpatine. The crowd roar increased, but he waved it down and the noise dropped again. He thumbed the switch on the Adumari comlink.

Step one: Remind them who everyone is in case they’ve forgotten. “People of Adumar, I am Wedge Antilles, and it’s my pleasure to meet you at last.” His words blasted out from speakers set up on four strategically positioned metal poles around the plaza.

The audience roared again, but the noise quickly modulated into a chant: “Car-tann … Car-tann … Cartann …” Wedge wondered what that was all about, but dismissed it from his mind. That answer would wait.

Step two: Remind them what you’re here for. “And as a representative of the New Republic, I’m pleased to be present at this historic meeting of our great peoples.”

The cheering became more generalized, with the “Car-tann” chants slowly dying out.

Step three: Something personal, so they’ll know you’re paying attention. Wedge gestured out at the flat display panels. “I must admit, I find this display very heartwarming. It’s possibly the best greeting I’ve ever received. I’ll have to find out if I can replicate it on the walls of my quarters back home.” Some laughter mixed in with the shouting and cheering.

Step four: Wrap it up before you make a fool of yourself. “I expect to have more to say once I’ve settled in, but for now, thank you for this warm welcome.” He waved again and took a step back, as if abandoning a lectern, then switched off the comlink. The crowd’s cheers continued.

His pilots advanced to flank him and joined in waving at the crowd. He heard Tomer’s voice from immediately behind him: “This is good. If you can just stand here and wave for a while, that’ll satisfy diplomatic obligations, and then we can get you to your quarters.”

“All right.” Wedge took some time to look at the crowd.

They were men, women, and children, all ages, consistently light-complected, though their hair color ranged throughout the color spectrum—Wedge suspected that many of the colors were artificial in origin. Facial hair was common among the men, especially elaborate mustaches.

There was a wide variance in the color and cut of their clothing, but some consistencies as well. Males and many females wore tights and close-fitting boots in black, with long shirts with flowing sleeves. Other women wore long dresses, tight from the torso down but again with the broad, rippling sleeves. About half of the people wore headgear, some sort of tight-fitting cloth or leather skullcap matching one color from the rest of their attire; many of the skullcaps featured a sort of visor, a curved band of what looked like heavily polarized transparisteel, that fell before the wearer’s eyes or could be raised up to their foreheads.

Belts were common, usually narrow single-color loops with no buckle or attachment showing. Some people wore three or four in different colors; others wore them looping from one hip to the opposite shoulder; others still wore both waist and shoulder belt rigs.

And weapons were everywhere. From most of these belts hung sheathed long blades, short blades, pistols of some variety. Wedge could see few in the audience who were not armed in some way; even the children had knives at their belts.

It occurred to Wedge, belatedly, that he could see no security detail on duty around this stage. He glanced at Tycho; the colonel’s return glance indicated that he, too, noticed the lack.

Wedge said, “Tomer, I suppose I’m not concerned if you’re not, but what are you using for security here?”

Tomer’s answer was tinged with amusement. “Why, the crowd.”

“Ah. And what if they wanted to cause a problem?”

“Others would stop them,” Tomer said. “For instance, let’s say someone jumped on the stage with the intent of killing you. He’d give you fair warning, of course, and choice of weapons.”

“Of course,” Wedge repeated.

“Then you could choose to kill him yourself or refuse him. If you refused, he should withdraw, but might theoretically press the issue, if he was stupid.”

“That’s where security issues become a trifle more important,” Wedge said.

“If he pressed the issue, which is a grave breach of etiquette—”

Wedge heard Janson snort in amusement.

“—then someone in the crowd would probably shoot him dead, just to please you.”

Wedge glanced back at the diplomat. “Just like that.”

“Just like that.”

“Oh, stop worrying, Wedge.” Janson’s grin was infectious. “It’s obvious they adore you. You could throw up all over yourself and they’d love it. By nightfall they’d all be doing it. They’d call it the ‘Wedge Purge.’ They’d be eating different-colored foods just to add variety.”

Wedge felt his stomach lurch. He half turned to glare accusingly at Tycho. “I thought maybe you’d be able to do what I never could. Get Wes up to an emotional age of fourteen, maybe fifteen.”

Tycho gave him a tight little shake of the head. “No power in the universe could do that. Not Darth Vader and the dark side of the Force, not the nuclear devastation of an exploding sun.”

Janson waved at the audience. “They’d be competing for distance and volume.”

“Wes, just shut up. Tomer, how is it that you know this reprobate?”

The diplomat offered a rueful shake of his head. “I was once a pilot. Briefly. Tierfon Yellow Aces. My talents lay elsewhere, though, so I ended up in a less violent service.”

Janson nodded amiably. “His talents certainly did lie elsewhere. They weren’t in landing. Tomer here made the Aces’ list for a landing almost horrible enough to kill him two different ways.”

Tomer sighed and ignored him.

“His Y-wing was shot to pieces and his repulsorlifts were dead,” Janson continued. “Had to land, though, or he’d never get dinner. Luckily we were based on a low-grav moon at the time, big long stretch of duracrete serving as a landing zone. All the other Y-wings clear off the landing zone and he lines up on it, descends toward it like he was landing an atmospheric fighter without repulsorlifts. Drops his skids as he gets close. The skids take the initial impact but he bounces, so he’s like some sort of hop-and-grab insect all down the duracrete. But he’s lucky enough that he stays top side up. Finally he’s bled off a lot of momentum, but he loses control and his Y-wing rolls. Comes to a stop on its belly and he’s safe. Then”—Janson’s face became more merry as he relived the incident—“his ejector seat malfunctions and shoots him off toward space. With grav that low, he achieves escape velocity. We had to send a rescue shuttle up after him or he’d still be sailing through the void, one cold cadaver.”

“I saved the astromech,” Tomer said. “And the Y-wing was repairable.”

“Sure,” Janson said. “But seeing you as that wishbone skidded to a stop, seeing you sag in relief—and then, poof! you’re headed toward the stars—”

Tomer caught Wedge’s eye. “As you can see, I’ve provided amusement for years.”

“Efficient use of effort,” Hobbie said. “When do we eat?”

3

One of those processional vehicles—a giant flatbed that rode the ground on wheels, with a raised front control panel where the driver stood, and with braces for the passengers to lean back against as they rode—conveyed Red Flight, Tomer, and Hallis from the plaza. It wasn’t fast going; the crowd did not want to part to admit them, but preferred to shout and jump and wave to attract the pilots’ attention. Wedge solved that problem by moving to the vehicle’s side and reaching out to shake hands as they passed; suddenly the members of the crowd wanted to be beside the vehicle rather than before it, and the vehicle’s speed increased. The other pilots moved to the sides as well, and within minutes the vehicle was beyond the edges of the crowd and heading out into the city’s avenues.

Wedge saw that the city’s love affair with balconies was not limited to the avenues they’d flown above. Every building on every street facing was thick with balconies. Some had rope bridges hung between adjacent balconies, and a few had such strung across streets. Wherever they drove, people thronged their balcony rails and waved down at them. The building exteriors were also decorated, on the ground floor at eye level, with panels about a meter wide by half a meter high that showed two-dimensional images. Tomer called them flatscreens, and some buildings had continuous banks of them all around their exteriors.

“I am so glad the people of this planet like to wave and shake hands,” Janson said.

Wedge gave him a curious glance. “Why is that?”

“Well, what if their usual greeting for visiting dignitaries was to throw paint?”

“Point taken.”

Their conveyance pulled up before one of the taller and more richly appointed buildings they’d seen, and minutes later Tomer led the four pilots into a suite of rooms on an upper floor; their support crew had already been separated off, installed in rooms lower down in the building. “These are the quarters of a bachelor half squad recently reduced in combat,” Tomer said. “The survivor gladly abandoned it for the duration of your stay, for your comfort.”

Wedge took a look around. The floor, again, looked like stone, this time a green marble thickly decorated with silvery veins, but like the plaza flooring it gave slightly when stepped upon. There was one main room, mostly open, with a few padded chairs around the edges. Several arched exits led to round-topped doors of a silver hue. The walls were hung with light blue draperies; just behind the top of the drapes, banks of lights shone up on the off-white ceiling, offering indirect lighting for the chamber.

Tomer pointed to four of the doorways. “Bedchambers there, there, there, and there.” Two of the building porters, adolescent boys who could not stop grinning, obligingly carried the pilots’ bags to those chambers. Tomer gestured to the bank of drapes opposite the entry into the main chamber: “Your balcony there. It’s a pilot’s balcony, by the way.”

Wedge said, “Which means what?”

“Extra-broad and reinforced, and with nothing, including cables, for a level or two above—so you can land your starfighters on it,” Tomer said. “You can move your X-wings here at your leisure, or I can get a member of the support crew to do it—”

“We’ll move them,” Wedge said. “Speaking of those cables—what are they for?”

Tomer grinned. “Private communications from building to building, informal communications. Say you’re a young lady in one building, and your young man lives in the next—”

“You run a comm cable.” Wedge shook his head wonderingly. “There are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of them out there.”

“None to your quarters, though; we’ve had them removed. You can put some in if you choose.” Tomer gestured again. “Kitchen through there, though I doubt you’ll have the opportunity to feed yourself much while you’re here. If you choose to dine here and you prefer not to cook, the building comlink is behind that drape.” He pointed to one of the main chamber’s long walls, near the center. “Servants are standing by for any of your needs.”

“Any of them?” Janson asked.

“No,” Hobbie said. “Some of your needs stray too far outside human norms.”

“Meaning,” Tomer continued, just a trace of testiness creeping into his voice, “that a cook, a courier, a dresser, and a few others are always standing by. If you want a late-night meal or something, press the button and ask for a cook. That’s all it takes.” He gestured to another door. “The refresher. You’ll be dealing with unfamiliar plumbing, which you’ll probably think of as backworld stuff, so I’ll need to show you how the devices work.”

Hobbie nodded. “A refresher course.”

Janson made a face. “You beat me to it.”

Wedge gestured at the two doors not already identified. “And those?”

“Extra bedchambers. This was essentially a dormitory for six unmarried pilots.”

“Good.” Wedge nodded. “We’ll set up one for workouts, and the other will be our operations center. These quarters have been swept for listening devices?”

“Oh, yes.” Tomer smiled. “And they were, of course, thick with such gadgets. We’ve removed them.”

“It sounds as though we’re set up, then,” Wedge said. “What’s next on our agenda?”

“Get cleaned up and get into your dress uniforms; your court dinner with the perator at his palace is in about two hours.”

“Ugh,” Janson said. Hobbie made an unhappy face.

“They’re not reacting to the idea of meeting the perator,” Tycho was quick to explain. “It’s the dress uniform.”

“I understand.” Tomer nodded, sympathy evident on his face. “I got out of Starfighter Command before the dress uniform was even designed. Umm, if you’re looking for alternatives, I’m certain that the court would consider it a sign of honor if you wore local dress instead of your dress uniforms.”

“Yes,” Hobbie said.

“Yes yes yes,” Janson said.

Wedge repressed a smile. The New Republic pilots’ dress uniform wasn’t too bad, but it had been designed in the depths of some government public relations department, without the input of those who would have to wear it, and many pilots just did not care for it. He cleared his throat. “That’s a possibility. If you’d be so kind as to send up some examples of local dress …?”

Tomer smiled. “One snap of my fingers and you’ll have your very own fashion show. I’ll see right to it.” He gestured for the porter, who had been hovering at the exit, to proceed him, and he left.

Wedge turned to Janson. “How well did you know him? Do you trust him?”

Janson considered. “Let’s just say that he’s cleaned up better than I expected.”

“No, let’s not just say that. Let’s be a little more informative.”

Janson’s gaze wandered back in time. “Well, in the Tierfon Yellow Aces, he always had something going. Floating sabacc games, trade in the newest holodramas and comedies, a locker that always seemed to have some liquor in it no matter how much he sold. I never had the impression that he was a black marketeer, but he was only one notch above that. When he mustered out and no one ever heard from him again, we figured he’d gone smuggler.” He shrugged. “But the diplomatic corps seems ideal for him. He can persuade and convince and scam and manipulate, and yet remain a patriot.”

Hobbie offered up a rare smile. “Not a bad metaphor for the early days of the Rebel Alliance.”

Tycho offered him a mock glower. “Cynic.”

They were four very different men as they walked toward the Outer Court of the Royal Residence, or palace, of Cartann.

Wedge had chosen green for most of his outfit—boots, hose, belt—and had chosen a tunic in a creamy off-white. He chose to remain bareheaded. His service blaster was holstered at his hip; Tomer seemed to think that wearing weapons was more than appropriate in a social situation, though he had said Wedge would have to surrender it when in a chamber occupied by the perator.

Beside it hung a device Tomer had said was commonplace in Cartann, the comfan. It was a small hemisphere with a handle. On the flat side of the hemisphere were numerous little vents; at the bottom of the handle were an on-off switch and an intake vent. When switched on, the device would draw air in through the intake vent, cool it, and expel it through the other vents, making it a handy personal comfort device. Tomer had said that handling the comfan was itself an art form, with every possible gesture assigned a meaning by the Cartann court … but outsiders such as Wedge would be known not to understand the language of comfan manipulation. The warmth of Wedge’s tunic suggested to him that he’d be better off carrying such a thing.

Tycho’s tunic was a material that shimmered and changed color as it moved; depending on the angle at which one viewed it, portions ranged in hue from sky blue to a pearlescent royal blue. Most of his other garments, including a rakish-looking hip cloak, were black, but he also wore a skullcap in the same material as his tunic. The skullcap came forward in a peak over his brow, an extension that looked like the sharp beak of a bird of prey, a comparison Wedge decided was apt, and the semitransparent visor over his eyes lent him a distant, mysterious look.

Hobbie was a riot of lines and angles. His boots, tights, and belt were a basic blue, his tunic a glorious red; but every hem of every garment was decorated with trim of eye-hurting yellow, making it almost a dizzying experience to look at him walk. “There are three types of dress clothing,” Hobbie had said. “The kind that offends the wearer, the kind that offends the viewers, and the kind that offends everybody. I’m going for the third type. Fair is fair.”

Janson had chosen what Wedge had first misunderstood as a minimalist approach. His tights, his tunic, all his accoutrements were black—most of them a matte black, though the tunic offered a little shine. He wore no headgear. But then he capped it off with a hooded cloak that made up for the rest of his outfit’s lack of drama. Nearly floor-length, it was a curtain of nebular red-purple shot through with crystalline stars that blinked on and off with internal light.

He carried his service blaster on his right hip, but also carried a new weapon. On his belt at his left hip was a sheath carrying the Adumari blastsword, “preferred weapon for settling personal disputes in Cartann,” as Tomer had explained. It looked much like a vibroblade the length of a man’s arm, but the hilt was protected by a curved metal guard. The blade was sharp starting a few centimeters above the guard, but the tip of the weapon was not a sharp point; rather, it was a small flared nozzle. When the device was powered up—by turning on a switch at the pommel, the knob at the very base of the hilt—the tip would fire off something like a blaster bolt whenever it contacted a solid object.

“So it’s like a blaster you have to hit someone with,” Janson had said. “I have to have one.”

Tycho had shaken his head, looking as mournful as Hobbie for a moment. “Don’t give him a new kind of weapon,” he had told Wedge. “It would be like giving a lightsaber to a two-year-old.”

But Wedge had allowed it, and now Janson’s customary swagger swung the blastsword’s sheathed blade around behind him, making it precarious to walk close to him.

Accompanied by Tomer, they paused at the arched entryway to a large ballroom designated the Royal Outer Court. Tomer stepped forward to speak to the guards on duty. There were two of them, large men armed with what looked like polearm equivalents of the blastswords. Between them, across the entryway, was stretched a sort of silver mesh material; Wedge could see well-dressed people dancing and socializing, but it was as if viewing them through a warped and mottled piece of unusually reflective transparisteel. He spotted two-headed Hallis in the crowd, her attention turned toward a large knot of men and women.

Tomer returned. “Odd,” he said. “We’re to be admitted, of course—this is your night! But we’re not to be announced.”

“You mean,” Hobbie said, “nobody is going to bellow our names across the crowd, so that everybody turns and stares at us and we have nothing to say, so we stand there like idiots while they wait. That sort of announced?”

“Yes,” Tomer said. “It’s customary. Why the custom was suspended for tonight I don’t know. You’ll have to surrender your sidearms to the guards, of course.”

Tomer stopped Janson’s action of unsheathing his blastsword. “No, you can take that in. Blastswords are fit for polite society. It’s only blasters they object to.”

The semitransparent curtain flicked to one side instantly. Conversation washed out over them, as did a swell of music played on stringed instruments at a fast pace, and a wash of air that assailed Wedge’s nose and informed him that perfuming was another Adumari habit.

Tomer led the pilots into the outer hall. They attracted no immediate notice. The hall itself was a tall two-story chamber, with a balcony all around the second story, thick with onlookers; its walls were draped with tapestries in a shimmering silver hue, and the lights behind the tapestries offered not quite enough illumination. Two tapestries were drawn aside, revealing enormous flatscreens on stony walls; the screens showed, in magnification, whatever stood before them.

Tomer led the pilots straight to the knot of people that held Hallis’s attention. As they approached, Wedge could see that at its center was one man, unusually tall, with a close-trimmed white beard and alert, active eyes. His garments were all a shimmering red-gold; with every motion he looked as though part of his clothing were on fire. As the pilots neared, he looked at Tomer and asked, in a raspy but well-controlled voice, “What have you brought me, O speaker for distant rulers?” He spoke with the same accent Wedge had heard on the pilots who had attacked Red Flight, in which many vowels sounded like short flat “a”s, but Wedge was becoming more accustomed to it, having less difficulty comprehending it.

Tomer offered a smile that, to Wedge, looked a little artificially tolerant. “Pekaelic ke Teldan, perator of Cartann, smiter of the Tetano, hero of Lameril Ridge, master of the Golden Yoke, I beg you allow me to present to you these four pilots: Major Derek Klivian, Major Wes Janson, Colonel Tycho Celchu, and General Wedge Antilles, all of the New Republic Starfighter Command.”

With each recitation of a name, the crowd around the perator offered an “ooh,” especially for Wedge. The perator nodded in slow and stately fashion to each and extended a hand to Wedge. Wedge shook it in standard New Republic fashion, hoping that was the reaction called for, and that he wasn’t precipitating a war by failing to kneel and put the hand on his forehead or some such thing. But the perator merely smiled.

“You are well come to Cartann,” the perator said to Wedge. “I look forward to hearing your words and seeing your displays of skill. But first, I have a present for the four of you.” He waved behind him, beckoning someone forward.

Into the open space surrounding the perator stepped a young woman. Her garments were all white, though festooned with what looked like ribbons and military service decorations, and she carried blastsword, knife, comfan, and pistol at her belt. She was not tall, being a double handspan shorter than Wedge, but walked with the confident gait of someone a head taller than anyone in the crowd, despite the fact that she was a year or two from what Wedge would consider full adulthood. Her freckled features were pretty, open, bearing the expression of a youth rushing recklessly into life. Her black hair was in a long braid drawn over her shoulder, and her eyes were a dark blue that seemed almost purple in the dim light of the chamber.

“This young lady,” the perator said, “is the most recent winner of the Cartann Ground Championship. With that victory comes certain obligations and prerogatives. Pilots, I present you Cheriss ke Hanadi; I know that you have the most informed Tomer Darpen to give you outlook upon Cartann, but Cheriss will serve you as native guide throughout your stay.”

Wedge gave the perator a slight bow. “Thank you, sir.” He spared a glance for Tomer, but the career diplomat did not seem in the least curious or disconcerted; this was obviously not an unusual sort of occurrence.

“I am honored to serve,” Cheriss said. She stared at Wedge with disconcerting intensity, but Wedge could detect no animosity in her expression—just curiosity. “If General Antilles wishes diversion during the evening, I have a show to put on—a non-title from some runny-nosed lordling.”

The perator returned his attention to Wedge. “Tonight,” he said, “is an informal night. Meet the heroes and nobles and celebrities we have assembled. Tomorrow is soon enough to begin the tedious affairs of discussion and negotiations, no?” He offered another smile, then turned his back on the pilots and moved away. His knot of courtiers moved with him like a set of shields moving with a starfighter. Hallis turned between perator and Wedge, indecisive, then stayed behind, her attention and her recording unit’s gaze on the New Republic pilots.

Tomer stood openmouthed, his expression uncomprehending. “After all his curiosity about our pilots, all his arrangements—and he has not even one question for you tonight. I’m baffled.” He gave Cheriss a sharp look. “Cheriss, do you know why he has chosen to conduct tonight the way he has?”

She tore her attention from Wedge to answer. “Oh, certainly.”

“Why?”

She smiled in return. “I can’t answer that. Not yet. I’m forbidden.”

Tomer’s expression turned glum. “I hate secrets,” he said.

Wedge said, “Whitecap, sleep-time.”

The 3PO head on Hallis’s shoulder responded, in the distinctively fussy 3PO voice, “Certainly, sir,” and the lights in its eyes went out.

Hallis made a noise of exasperation.

Wedge ignored her. “Tomer, a couple of questions. If he’s the ruling representative of all of Adumar, why is he simply introduced as the perator of Cartann?”

“He is the heir to the throne of Cartann.” Tomer shrugged. “Cartann is his nation. The concept of a single world government is somewhat new here. It does not invoke the sense of pride that the traditional throne of a nation does.”

“Oh.” Wedge leaned in close and whispered so that only Tomer could hear. “And now he has offered us the services of a guide. Is that some sort of present? Should we have brought a gift to offer him?”

Tomer smiled and whispered back, “Oh, no. Your very presence and what it means to him is present enough.”

Wedge leaned back, not entirely reassured. “Whitecap, wake-time.” He saw the lights reappear in Whitecap’s eyes.

He turned once again into the high-beam intensity of Cheriss’s stare. “Well, what’s the best way to conduct ourselves at this gathering?”

Cheriss smiled and gestured. “There are long tables along those walls where there is food. You can just walk by and take what you choose. The pilots and nobles here would be most happy if you would wander, meet them, tell them of your exploits. There are so many, though, that greeting them and saying you look forward to longer discussions later will be enough. When the perator leaves the hall or drops his visor, this means constraints are off; you can loosen your belt, act with less restraint, issue challenges, even leave if you choose.”

Tomer frowned. “When he lowers his visor? That’s the same as him leaving?”

Cheriss nodded energetically. “Both are signals of distance. When he lowers his visor, he does not see with the king’s eyes—you understand? He wants to stay and enjoy but not affect the behavior of the court.”

Tomer looked distinctly unhappy. “How could I have missed that little detail? Are there parallels in lesser courts—”

Janson interposed his head, glaring at Tomer. “Discuss nuance later. Feed the pilots now.”

Tomer relented with a smile. “Sorry. Of course. I’ve forgotten the role of the stomach in interplanetary relations.”

It took them nearly thirty minutes to cross the thirty meters to the food. In that time, they ran across group after group of admirers, most of them pilots—male pilots, female pilots, pilots still in their teen years, pilots as old as Wedge’s parents would have been if they had survived. Wedge shook hand after hand, smiled at face after face and name after name he knew he would never recall despite his best efforts. By the time they reached the buffet-style tables, all four pilots had an appetite and eagerly went after the foods ready there, despite their unfamiliar appearance. Most of the dishes consisted of bowls of some sort of meat or vegetable simmered in heavy, spicy marinades; Wedge found one he liked, what seemed to be some sort of fowl in a stinging marinade with ground spices clearly visible, and stayed with it even after Cheriss informed him that it was farumme, the same sort of riding reptile Wedge had spotted during his arrival flight.

“So, Cheriss,” Wedge said, “what can you tell us about the Adumari fighters we encountered on our arrival?”

“The pilots or the machines?”

“I meant the machines.”

Her expression became blank. “The Blade-Thirty-two,” she said. “Preeminent atmospheric superiority fighter, though the Thirty-two-alpha is equipped for spaceflight and the Thirty-two-beta also has what you call a hyperdrive.” She sounded as though she were reciting from a specifications chart. “It’s a single-pilot craft in most configurations, with three main weapons systems—”

Someone bumped into Wedge from behind. He glanced over his shoulder; another diner had taken a step backward straight into Wedge. The diner half turned toward him, saying, “My apologies.”

“No offense taken,” Wedge said, and turned back to Cheriss … then froze. The other diner’s accent was clipped, precise … Imperial.

He spun around. The other diner turned to face him, surprise evident on his features as well.

Despite the man’s garments—he was dressed in Cartann splendor, much as Wedge was—Wedge knew he was no Adumari. He was of below average height, with short fair hair that seemed naturally unruly. His lean features were handsome but marred by a livid scar curving across the hollow of his left cheek; his dark eyes suggested cutting intelligence. His face was burned into Wedge’s memory from numerous Rogue Squadron mission briefings. “General Turr Phennir,” Wedge said.

The most famous surviving pilot of the Empire, the man who had inherited command of the 181st Imperial Fighter Group from Baron Fel upon that pilot’s defection to the New Republic, stared at him in disbelief. “Wedge Antilles,” he said, and put his hand on the holster at his belt. But there was nothing in the holster; doubtless Phennir’s blaster pistol was with Wedge’s at the door guard station.

Wedge heard a noise from behind, the quiet rasp of metal on leather, and knew that Janson had drawn his vibroblade. But Phennir’s expression didn’t change. Either he was in extraordinary control of his emotions, or he wasn’t aware of Janson arming himself. Probably the latter; Wedge was directly between the two men. If Phennir attacked, all Wedge had to do was twist aside to expose the enemy pilot to Janson’s counterattack. Wedge nonchalantly kept his grip on his bowl and spoon, affecting unconcern.

Wedge could see calculations going on behind Phennir’s eyes. They probably matched what Wedge himself was thinking. Best-known New Republic pilot; best-known Imperial pilot. We’re here at the same time so Adumar can compare us. Can choose which of two options suits them better.

Phennir appeared to arrive at the same conclusion. He lifted his hand from his belt and extended it to Wedge. “It seems we’re here for the same reason.”

Wedge set his spoon down and shook the man’s hand. “I suspect so.”

“You’ll understand if I don’t wish you luck.”

“Likewise.”

Phennir turned away and raised his hand in a come-along gesture. Three other men in his vicinity followed as he departed.

Wedge turned back to his pilots, saw the last motions of Janson surreptitiously returning his vibroblade to his forearm sheath; the action was concealed from the sides by Janson’s ridiculous cloak, and few, if any, of the celebrants in the chamber could have observed it. Janson’s face, for once, was not merry in the least.

Wedge said, “Hallis, did you get that?”

The documentarian nodded.

“Give us a few moments of peace. Take that time to broadcast what you just recorded to the Allegiance.”

“Yes, General.” She turned and moved into the crowd, for once offering no protest to one of Wedge’s commands.

Wedge turned his attention to his native guide. “Cheriss, did you know that man was here? And who he was?”

She nodded, sober. “I did. My perator instructed me to say nothing until you two encountered one another. They had an arrival ceremony much like yours, at the same time as yours, on the far side of Cartann.”

“Please withdraw a few steps.”

She did, looking more distressed.

Tomer said, “Have you met him before? You acted as though you had.”

Wedge shook his head. “Not in person. We flew against him at Brentaal, years ago. Tycho went one-on-one with him. Which makes you, Tycho, the expert on what we’re facing.”

Tycho shrugged. “He was good. Nearly my equal at the time. But he was no Baron Fel, no Darth Vader.”

“He’s had years to improve.”

Tycho smiled. “So have we.”

“True.” Wedge thought back to his first debriefing of Baron Fel, shortly after the great Imperial ace’s capture by Rogue Squadron. “Fel said Phennir was ambitious, with little loyalty to Sate Pestage, who held the reins of the Empire after the Emperor fell. Phennir wanted Fel to strike out to achieve power on his own, and Phennir would be tucked in right there as his wingman.”

“Which doesn’t mean much to us,” Tycho said, “unless Phennir sees an opportunity for personal gain in this mission—enough gain to make him betray the Empire.” Then he lost his smile. “The Adumari have set us up.”

Wedge nodded. “That’s my guess. They’re going to play us against the Empire to see who can offer the best arrangement.”

Tomer’s face was nearly white with shock. “They’re far sneakier than I imagined. They pulled this off without our Intelligence people even knowing.”

Janson snorted. “How can you be sure? Maybe Intelligence just didn’t tell you.”

Tomer shrugged, unhappy. “Perhaps so. I’ll transmit them a request for further instructions.”

“You do that,” Wedge said. “But until we get further orders, we do just as we intended to—socialize, play the visiting dignitaries, make good impressions.”

“And keep eyes open in all directions,” Janson said.

Hobbie sighed. “Until now, I thought this was a really sweet deal.”

“The Cartann Minister of Notification, Uliaff ke Unthos.”

For the fortieth or eightieth time that night, Wedge offered the minimal bow and handshake required by the situation, and went to the special effort it took to keep from his face the dismay he’d felt ever since he’d recognized Turr Phennir. He also struggled to keep his nose from wrinkling; the minister’s perfume seemed as sweet and strong as an orchard full of rotting fruit. “And what is the role of the Minister of Notification?”

The white-bearded man before him smiled, evidently delighted. “My role is notification of the families. When a pilot falls in combat, in training, in a duel, my office notifies all appropriate parties. I do not create the letters of notification myself, of course. I set policy. Will this week’s notifications bear a tone more of regret or pride? When siblings fall on the same day, does the family receive a joint notification or separate ones? These sorts of matters are very important …”

Wedge kept his smile fixed on his face, but he could tell he was hearing a speech, one that had often been replayed. He did what he could to tune the man’s voice out while still seeming to appear interested, but all the while kept some of his attention on the crowd, making sure he knew where Turr Phennir and entourage were at all times.

Then, over the minister’s shoulder, at a table at the outskirts of the crowd, he saw her.

She was seated alone and dressed in the height of Cartann finery. Her dark blue dress, a sheath from neck to ankle, was fitted to her slender form, except where its sleeves flared out in Adumari fashion, and was sprinkled with gems that glinted white like stars against a backdrop of space. Her hair, a dark blond, was piled high on her head, though some strands had worked loose—or, Wedge suspected, had been left loose and artfully arrayed to look like escapees—to frame her face. She did not wear the decorative skullcap so common in this court; instead, into her hair was worked a headdress that looked like blue contrails rising from above her forehead and curving back around behind her head. She held one of the ubiquitous comfans and was gesturing with it as she spoke to someone at a nearby table; her gestures, Wedge saw, included the subtle motions he was beginning to recognize as Cartann hand-codes.

She was beautiful, but it was not her beauty that jolted Wedge—not her beauty that made him feel as though he’d taken a punch in the gut.

He knew her. He knew her name. He knew the planetary system where she’d been born—the same as his, Corellia.

Yet when she glanced at him, when her gaze stopped upon him and then kept moving, there was no hint of recognition in her eyes.

Wedge forced himself to return his attention to the minister. “Would that we had someone with your skills and dedication in our armed forces,” Wedge said. “I’m sure we have much to learn from your techniques of notification. Could you excuse me a moment? I must speak to my pilots about this.”

The minister nodded, his smile fixed, and turned away, immediately speaking to his own entourage, something about the courtesy and attentiveness of New Republic pilots. Once he was a couple of meters away and still moving, Wedge gestured for his pilots.

They stepped in. So did Cheriss and Tomer.

Wedge looked at the two of them. “Shoo,” he said.

“I thought perhaps you needed some advice,” Tomer said.

“I am here if you need interpretation of some word or action you do not yet understand,” Cheriss said.

“Tell you what,” Wedge said. “From now on, when I gesture with two hands for people to move in, it means everybody. When I gesture with one hand, it means just the pilots. Will that work?”

They nodded.

Wedge gestured with one hand. Reluctance evident on their faces, the two of them backed off and hovered a few meters away at the edges of the crowd.

“What’s up?” Tycho asked.

“I’m going to allow Cheriss to put on whatever show it was she was talking about. I’m going to pay a lot of attention to it.”

Tycho offered a confused frown. “Why?”

“Because the hangers-on seem mostly to be concentrating on me right now. If I do this, it’ll give you some freedom to act.” Wedge turned to Janson. “Wes, at exactly ninety degrees to your right, about twelve meters, there’s a table with a woman at it.”

“Oh, good.”

“I want you to wait until the crowd is on me and Cheriss’s demonstration. Then break free and approach her. Tycho, Hobbie, make sure his actions aren’t being noticed. If they are, give him a double-click on the comlink to warn him off.”

Janson smiled. “Thanks, Wedge, for looking after me. You know, you’re one of the most considerate commanders, not like Tycho here—”

“Wes, she’s Iella Wessiri.”

Janson’s eyes widened. “What?”

Iella Wessiri was a New Republic Intelligence agent, a former partner and long-time friend of Rogue Squadron member Corran Horn. She had been very helpful to the Rogues during the taking of the world Coruscant from the Empire. Her husband Diric, an unwilling traitor brainwashed by Imperial Intelligence head Ysanne Isard, had died during those events. Corran and Wedge had both helped her through the trying times to follow, and Wedge had eventually grown interested in her himself, until things had conspired to separate them for good. His career. Hers. Ultimately, his relationship with Qwi Xux. After that began, he’d almost never run into Iella.

“If it’s really her,” Wedge continued, “she’s probably here on an Intelligence assignment. Don’t do anything to blow her cover—just be your usual obnoxious self and let her shoot you down.”

“I resent the implication that she would. That any woman would.”

“But suggest to her that your commander finds her interesting and would like to see her at some time. I’d like to know what she’s up to. Whether she’s here to support us. Whether we can help her. That sort of thing.”

Janson nodded. “Understood. And if it’s not actually Iella?”

“You’re on your own.”

Janson’s grin returned.

•      •      •

Wedge spoke to Cheriss, and she spoke to some sort of functionary, and moments later that man drew a blastsword. He thumbed it on and waved it in a circle over his head. Wherever the tip moved through the air, it traced a glowing yellow line, so his motion created a shining circle above him. As soon as he ceased his motion, it began to fade.

This attracted the attention of the crowd and conversation quelled. “We have a non-title ground challenge,” he said. “Lord Pilot Depird ke Fanax challenges Cartann Ground Champion Cheriss ke Hanadi, vengeance for her defeat of Jeapird ke Fanax at the last championship.”

There was applause from the crowd, which withdrew from the speaker, forming an open circle in the middle of the chamber.

Wedge turned to Tomer. “Wait, wait. I thought she was going to put on some sort of show or demonstration.”

Tomer’s expression was serious. “She is. To entertain you, she offered to accept a combat challenge. As the ground champion, she receives a lot of them. And you told her to go ahead.”

“I didn’t know that’s what she meant. I’m putting a stop to this.” Wedge took a step forward, but Tomer’s hand fell on his shoulder and restrained him.

“Don’t,” Tomer said. His voice was a plea. “It’s too late. The challenge was accepted. You’re out of the loop. All you can do now is embarrass Cheriss and look like an idiot—you’ll be demonstrating weakness.”

Wedge glared, then fell back. “You could have told me.”

“You spoke with such confidence. I thought you understood.”

Cheriss took off her belt, handing it to the man who’d made the announcement, and drew her blastsword and knife. She held the latter in a reverse grip, the blade laid back along her forearm, and took an experimental thrust or two with the blastsword. It was not powered up and left no glowing lines behind. Her smile was no longer cheerful; hers was the delight of a predator that had run its prey to ground.

Into the circle stepped a young man. He was perhaps a year or two older than Cheriss, lean and graceful, his clothing all in blacks and yellows, his mustache stylishly trim. He whipped his hip cloak from his shoulders and threw it into the crowd, then reached to the belt held by someone at the edge of the crowd and drew a blastsword and knife. He held his knife in a more conventional grip than Cheriss did. “I am here to correct the results of an accident,” he said, his voice light and unconcerned, “and to demonstrate what we all know—that wherever a ground-pounder can merely achieve, a flier can excel.”

There was applause at his words. He thumbed on the power of the blastsword and twirled it before him, leaving a figure-eight pattern that glowed redly in the air.

Wedge saw Hallis trying to move through the crowd to get to the leading edge. Farther around the rim of the crowd, he saw the perator standing, his retinue giving him a little pocket of space.

“To the perator,” the announcer said. Both Cheriss and the challenger, Depird, bowed to the perator and flourished their blades in an identical pattern, a circle bisected by a cross; Cheriss’s blade was now powered up and the symbol of her flourish glowed blue for a moment before fading.

“Honor or death,” the announcer said, and took a step back, putting him at the edge of the open space.

Depird wasted no time. He moved forward, not a rush but a fast stalk, until he was almost within range of a thrust from Cheriss’s long blade, and raised his blastsword to a high guard, well above his head, its point unerringly aimed at Cheriss’s head; as he advanced, Cheriss took a pose with her knife hand forward, her blastsword hand back, her predatory smile still in place.

Depird took a step in and thrust with his dagger, inviting a counterblow from Cheriss’s blastsword, but she swept the attack away, striking the back of his hand with her own dagger hand. Depird followed through with a thrust of the blastsword, which she took on the curved guard of her sword. When his point hit her guard, there was a crack like a blaster rifle firing, and smoke rose from a darkened patch on her guard.

With a flick of arm and wrist, Cheriss disengaged her blastsword from Depird’s, then swung her guard up in a punch that caught Depird full in the jaw. He staggered back, his expression outraged, and Wedge could see that a patch on his jaw was blistered—doubtless from the heat the guard had absorbed from his attack.

The crowd reacted, some members applauding, some murmuring in a disapproving tone. Tomer said, “Cheriss is considered a gutter-fighter, vulgar by the standards of the blastsword art. With this court, the fact that she wins most of the time is her primary saving grace.”

Depird shook his head as though to clear it, then began to circle Cheriss. She waited for only a quarter circuit before attacking, a step forward followed by a thrust from her blastsword—and then it was on in full, Depird catching her assault on his blade and attempting a riposte, Cheriss blocking that move with the guard on her dagger and returning a full-extension thrust that caused Depird to leap back nearly into the leading edge of the crowd. Every motion of the swords was accompanied by an arc of light from their tips; every impact of a sword tip hitting a weapon guard or blade was accompanied by the sharp crack of energy emission.

“It’s a very pretty sort of competition,” Tomer said.

Wedge didn’t bother to glare; Tomer’s attention was fully on the fight. “You mean, it’s a very decorative way to get killed. You’re awfully unconcerned.”

Tomer shrugged. “This is their planet, Wedge. Their way of life. It’s for me to understand it … not to try to change it.”

Cheriss, backing away from an especially aggressive advance, caught Depird’s blastsword blade centimeters below the tip with her dagger. She swung it out of line and brought her own blastsword point to bear in a single, beautifully fluid motion. Depird tried to check his forward motion but couldn’t—his body arched away from her blade but he ran upon it anyway. There was a sharp crack, a shriek of pain from him, and he was thrown to the floor on his back. He lay there writhing, a blackened patch on his tunic at the center of his chest, smoke rising from it.

Cheriss, barely winded, set her dagger on the floor. She turned to smile at Wedge, then extended her hand toward him, palm up; a moment later, she turned it palm down.

“You get to choose,” Tomer whispered. “Palm up means she spares him. Palm down means she kills him. Palm up will suggest excessive sentimentality on your part—not something the Adumari hope to see in a fighter pilot.”

Wedge stared at him. “You think I should let him die?” he whispered.

Tomer shrugged. “I’m not expressing an opinion. Just analyzing actions and consequences.”

Wedge put on his sternest face, his offended officer face, and stepped out into the open ring. He moved to stand over Depird, who writhed in obvious agony. The duelist was unable entirely to keep quiet; each of his breaths emerged as a moan.

Wedge studied him critically for several seconds, then raised his gaze to Cheriss’s. He spoke loudly enough for all to hear. “This boy needs to learn to handle pain, so that when he does die, he does not embarrass his family.” He held out his hand, palm up.

Cheriss shrugged and nodded, not apparently bothered. Some applause broke out from the audience, and some murmuring; but Wedge could see the perator nod agreeably, and suddenly all the courtiers around the ruler were applauding, and the applause spread from there to the rest of the crowd.

Wedge returned to his place in the audience. As he approached, Tomer, too, applauded. “A good solution,” Tomer said, his voice barely audible over the crowd. “Credible.”

“We’re going to talk about this later,” Wedge said. “And you’re not going to enjoy it.” He looked around for his pilots and spotted them, all three together, standing toward the back of the audience ring.

The crowd broke up, its members drifting away, and Wedge saw the perator’s personal retinue move toward a side exit. Two men dressed in the featureless brown livery worn by the door guards collected Depird, hauling him unceremoniously to his feet and helping him toward the main exit. Janson caught his eye and grinned uninformatively.

“Did you like it?”

Wedge turned. Cheriss, her weapons once again sheathed, stood before him. Her smile was, oddly, just a little uncertain.

“He certainly did,” Tomer said.

“I thought it was a very impressive, skillful display,” Wedge said truthfully. “With an interesting aesthetic component. Do I understand right that his objection to you was that you’d beaten his brother in a tournament?”

She nodded. “In the finals of the last Cartann Ground Championship. Depird’s brother, unlike Depird, was one of the few pilots who really knew how to handle a blastsword. Almost a pity that he died of his injuries.”

“Pity. Um, Cheriss, what purpose did the ground championship serve, other than to establish you as the new ground champion?”

She smiled. “Well, none, I suppose.”

“Entertainment,” Tomer said. “And continuation of a tradition dear to the hearts of the people of Cartann.”

“That, too,” Cheriss said.

Janson appeared beside Wedge. “News,” he said.

4

They were on foot in the streets of the city of Cartann, but nearly anonymous—the people on the street accorded them not a second glance. Wedge supposed it was because they were in native dress; had they been in their New Republic flight suits or dress uniforms, he was certain they’d be mobbed. Cheriss moved on ahead of them, politely banished from the current conversation as she led them back to their building.

“You don’t speak for me,” Wedge said. “Ever.”

The words originated in a cold spot deep in Wedge’s gut, but Tomer seemed oblivious to Wedge’s emotion. The diplomat merely shrugged. “I understand. But you have to understand that sometimes I can’t let you say the first thing to pop out of your head. Until you know a lot more about the way things work in Cartann, you’re likely to precipitate an interplanetary crisis with an ill-thought-out remark.”

“Tomer, I direct your attention to the word ‘let.’ You’ve misused it. You don’t ‘let’ me, or ‘not let’ me, anything. Understand?”

“I understand completely. You’re the one who doesn’t understand. You shot your mouth off tonight and precipitated a duel you immediately wanted to stop. Should I step aside, keep quiet, and let you do that again? Or something worse?”

“No.” Wedge fumed for a few moments. “We have to work out a way to do this. To work together. But I’m not going to blindly follow your lead.”

“It would be better for everyone if you did.” Tomer caught sight of Wedge’s expression. “Well, on another matter, what’s this news Janson brings us?”

“Pilot news,” Wedge said. “Results of some Red Flight betting. And rather than compromise myself with the diplomatic corps by letting you know just how badly I lost, I’m going to ask you to go on ahead. We’ll be along to our quarters after a while.”

Tomer frowned, obviously trying to figure out how to phrase a refusal, then shrugged. “Contact me by comlink if you need me.” He increased his pace, said a word or two to Cheriss as he passed her, then disappeared into pedestrian traffic ahead.

“It’s Iella, all right,” Janson said. “She wants to see you. I mean, it didn’t seem to be an urgent thing. I think she was happier to see me, of course. She even asked about Hobbie.”

Hobbie brightened. “She did?”

“Oh, yes. ‘How’s old Bugbite?’ she asked.”

Hobbie’s shoulders slumped. When first he’d met Iella, years ago, on a covert mission to Corellia, he’d been stung in the face by a local insect. Iella’s partner Corran Horn, both of them then investigators with Corellian Security, had shot him down with that nickname. “She did not.”

Janson’s grin deepened, but he returned his attention to Wedge. “And she did want to talk to you. Underneath the shortest of the flat displays around the plaza where we landed, at midnight tomorrow. You have to make sure that you’re not being shadowed. You can’t compromise her cover identity.”

“What is her cover identity?”

“She’s some sort of computer slicer. Hired a while back to develop programs to translate and interface between Cartann computers and New Republic and Imperial computers.”

“Define ‘a while back,’ ” Wedge said.

Janson shrugged. “I’m not sure. At least several weeks, possibly several months.”

Wedge looked between his pilots. “There’s something very odd going on here. I had the impression from General Cracken that a mapping ship accidentally discovered this planet—which had been cut off from the rest of galactic civilization for thousands of years—a short time ago. Immediately afterward, the New Republic was supposed to have dispatched a diplomatic delegation, which immediately discovered that they preferred dealing with pilots, which immediately resulted in our being sent here. Quick, quick, quick.

“But now I find that the Adumari people have hyper-drives; they even have some hyperdrive-equipped fighters. They’ve brought in specialists to link up their computer systems with ours. They’ve contrived to bring in pilots from the Empire at the same time we’re here, and even set things up so that the two opposing groups of pilots wouldn’t know about one another until we bumped into one another tonight. What do you want to bet that we haven’t been brought here chiefly because they love pilots? We’ve been brought here to duel with our opposite numbers.”

“It’s worse than that,” Hobbie said.

The others looked at him. “You know,” Janson said, “whenever the name of Derek ‘Hobbie’ Klivian comes up, the words ‘It’s worse than that’ ring in my ears. Sometimes I hear them when I’m dreaming.”

Hobbie ignored him. “Wedge, while Janson was politely asking Iella about her love life—”

“I wasn’t!”

“—I was talking to people about things. Asking questions instead of answering them. And I found out that Adumar doesn’t even have a world government. The perator of Cartann doesn’t represent the whole world.”

“That would certainly explain why they all seem to identify more with this nation than with their world,” Wedge said. “What do they have?”

“Well, remember that all the answers I got were from Cartann loyalists.” Hobbie shrugged, apologetic. “But if you read past the text stream to the data stream, it looks as though Cartann is the biggest of a large number of nations, and it controls several other nations besides. Through tradition and military. It controls something like more than half the planet. So they could set up trade treaties, that sort of thing, for Cartann, but they couldn’t negotiate to bring all of Adumar into the New Republic.”

“You’re right,” Wedge said. “It was worse than I thought.”

Janson grinned. “Oh, it’s even worse than that.”

Wedge sighed. “Look, this is your last one. The next person after Wes who has bad news, we all just shoot him. Go ahead, Wes.”

“Cheriss is sweet on you.”

Wedge felt his shoulders sag. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

“Sorry, chief. Do you see the way she looks at you? And she gave you the decision on her challenge duel, to kill or not to kill. They say that’s a really big thing here. As subtle as flowers and sweets.”

“Wes, she’s half my age.”

“True.” Janson looked resigned. “I’ll help you, Wedge. I’ll go break the news to her, console her in her time of grief. I’ll—”

Wedge held up a hand. “Never mind what I just said. Let’s just shoot Wes.”

“I’m for that,” Hobbie said.

“What’s our strategy?” Tycho asked.

Hobbie gave him a curious look. “I thought we’d just all draw and fire. But I could count down to zero, and then we could draw and fire.”

Tycho gave him a mock-scowl. “Quiet, you. Wedge, what’s our strategy in dealing with all these serpentine politics?”

“Play dumb for now. Let everyone—Tomer, the rulers of Cartann, our own Intelligence network—think we believe everything they’ve told us so far. Follow Tomer’s plans for use of our time with just enough belligerence to remind them we’re fighter pilots. And find out what we can on our own. I’ll talk to Iella tomorrow. Hobbie, Tomer said that Intelligence certified our quarters as free from Cartann listening devices—but nobody certified them free of New Republic Intelligence listening devices; I want you to screen our quarters and see if our own people are eavesdropping on us. Tycho, Wes, I want you to visit Allegiance tonight; I’ll wager every credit I’m carrying that there’s an Imperial capital ship orbiting Adumar opposite our ship, and I don’t want Allegiance taken off-guard if there’s trouble.”

Janson spoke up, sounding hurt: “Can it be later tonight? I, uh, sort of made an appointment for this evening …”

Wedge just looked at him.

“I suppose not,” Janson said. “Tycho, didn’t anyone ever tell you that when you ask Wedge for strategy, he gives you work to do?”

The next morning, Wedge led Red Flight in a dive toward the trees, keeping a careful eye on the unfamiliar range meter. The cockpit of the Tarrvin-on-Kallik Blade-32 was unfamiliar to him; it wouldn’t do to get himself and his pilots killed because he wasn’t completely at home with the controls.

Or with the speed measurements, for that matter. Adumar didn’t measure things by the old Imperial standards; instead of klicks per Coruscant hour, flight speed was measured in keps, or thousand paces (measured by the stride of some long-dead Cartann perator) per Adumar hour. The Adumari measurement was about eighty percent of the Imperial standard, so Wedge had to do constant conversions in his head.

When the forest below began to turn into individual trees, streams, and riders on those banded-armor farumme reptiles, the control console began to chime insistently at Wedge. He knew that it was the collision alarm of the system’s computer, but it seemed to be set on fairly conservative numbers and distances. Only after several more moments, in which the chime became more loud and insistent, did Wedge haul back on the control yoke, bringing his Blade-32 out of its dive.

As he began to level off above the forest floor, he felt his maneuver pushing him back in the pilot’s seat, felt a slight dizziness as blood began to rush from his head. A moment later, the pressure eased and the dizziness diminished. He shook his head. The Blade-32 had inertial compensators like the New Republic and Imperial fighters he was used to, but their computers weren’t quite up to the task of calculating precise adjustments to keep the pilots from suffering all the ill effects of high-gravity maneuvers.

Still, he was flying again, testing a new fighter, tearing up the sky with gravity and engineering limitations his only enemies.

When he was chained to his desk and his general’s duties for days, weeks at a time, he could pretend that flying was something he had largely set aside, something he returned to occasionally for enjoyment. But at times like this, it was impossible to deny his pure love of flying, his need of it. It was impossible to deny the ache it caused him when he was unable to find cockpit time. Flying was a part of him, had been since his childhood, and he felt a flash of anger at the bureaucrats and deskbound organizers who, since his promotion to the rank of general, had given him assignment after assignment that kept him far from a cockpit most of the time.

Regular fighter missions were a thing of his past, and he missed them terribly. But perhaps they were a thing of his future as well. Perhaps someday he could find himself a post, as General Salm and General Crespin had before him, that would allow him regular command of a fighter wing. That prospect gave him some hope for his military future.

He checked his sensor board, or lightboard—the screen with the green wire-frame grid the Adumari called a “lightbounce system”—and saw that Tycho, Janson, and Hobbie were still tucked in tight. Off in the distance, their escort of four Cartann fighters was still in formation.

But Wedge’s visual check showed that Janson was upside down. “Janson, orient yourself,” he said. “You’re belly to sky.”

“Negative, boss. I’m right side up. You three inverted coming out of that headache maneuver.”

Wedge glanced up, saw only sky and sun above him.

Janson’s voice came again, a taunt this time: “Made you look.” He righted his Blade-32.

The lightboard beeped at him. It showed an incoming flight of a half-dozen Blades, four advanced, two in the rear. Wedge’s communications system buzzed. “Hail General Antilles! The Lords of Dismay Flightknife issues a challenge.”

Wedge sighed. He was already well familiar with some of the Adumari pilot terminology, such as the use of “flightknife” for “squadron.” For the sixth time since Red Flight had commenced this familiarization run, he switched over to general frequency and said, “Antilles here. Denied.”

“Another time, then. Confusion to your enemies! Farewell!” The incoming fighters began a slow loop around to head back the way they’d come.

“They love you, Wedge.” That was Janson’s voice.

“This is the only planet where everyone who loves me also wants to kill me,” Wedge said. “All right. Opinions, people? On the fighters, I mean.”

“A bit like flying wishbones,” Janson said. “These Blades have the kind of mass and solidity I like in the Y-wings. But sluggish.”

“I like the weapons arrangement,” Hobbie said. “Two lasers forward, two lasers back. Two missile ports like the X-wings … but we’re carrying sixteen missiles, not six. More punch against capital ships. If we could swap proton torpedoes for the lower-powered explosives these are carrying, that’d be a lot of bang.”

“I’ve been reviewing engineering records and damage statistics,” Tycho said.

Janson laughed. “While we’ve been maneuvering?”

“Restraining myself so you could keep up with me left me plenty of time for intellectual pursuits,” Tycho said. “I also composed a symphony and drafted a plan to bring peace to the galaxy. Anyway, without shields, these things come apart under any missile hit. But they’re structurally tough, more so than X-wings, so they hang together after taking more collateral damage or laser hits. I’d like to see how much maneuverability they lose with a set of shields, hyperdrive, maybe a gunner’s seat installed. If it’s not too great a loss, we may have a viable fighter-bomber here, something useful in fleet actions against capital ships.”

“Good point,” Wedge said. He rolled his fighter over and up again, decided he didn’t much like the way the atmosphere bit at his flight surfaces. “All right, let’s take them back to the hangar. Wedge Antilles out.”

That was a code signal, the use of his full name. After bringing his fighter around so that it was headed back toward Giltella Air Base, one of two bases close to the city of Cartann, he switched the microphone off his fighter’s comm system, then pulled an elaborate comlink headset out of a flight-suit pocket. Tycho had brought these back from the Allegiance last night, comlinks with scrambler attachments. Wedge set its registers to a previously agreed-upon scramble code.

Hobbie had determined that their clothes were free of listening devices, but he’d found two such objects in their quarters, obviously of New Republic make. Not being Intelligence-trained, he’d said that he wasn’t confident that he could find them all. That meant their quarters were not a safe place to discuss things in confidence. With Cheriss or Tomer with them most of the rest of the time, this left few occasions for private conversation between them.

Wedge dialed the power down on his headset so its signal was unlikely to be intercepted at ranges of more than a few hundred meters. He pulled off his pilot’s helmet, setting it in the little cargo space behind his seat, and put on the headset. “One to Flight. Are you reading? Answer by number.”

“Two, ready.”

“Three, ready to run off at the mouth.”

“Four, I’m a go.”

“All right, gentlemen, what’s news?”

“One, Four. On the lightboard, I keep seeing fighter maneuvers about one hundred fifty Adumar klicks southwest—”

“That’s keps.”

“Thank you, Three. Southwest, and with what I’ve been able to tell from these broken-up signals, they’ve been doing pretty much what we have. My bet is that Turr Phennir and his pilots are also out familiarizing themselves with the Blades.”

“Good to know, Four.”

“One, Three. There’s something I just don’t get.”

“This is news?”

Wedge smiled. “Quiet, Four. Go ahead, Three.”

“Why does the perator of Cartann assume that the Empire just won’t move in here and take over? Why does he think they’ll cooperate in this competition to win their favor and then just go home if they lose?”

Wedge thought about that. “Three, here’s a guess. You’re thinking in terms of the Empire we knew when we joined the Rebellion. Today’s Empire is a fraction of that size, with a heightened sense of economy. To conquer this world, they’d have to commit and probably spend a lot of resources. To do so, they might even have to smash flat the very industry they want to obtain. The Empire would win, no doubt. But they’d lose more than they’d gain. It would probably never be a cost-effective decision.”

“Good point, One. I just can never think of the Empire as anything but this gigantic thing with limitless resources.”

“Back to normal communications,” Wedge said. “The air base is coming up.” Ahead were the familiar colors and shapes of the Cartann air base from which they had taken off—several concentric rings, hangar buildings surrounding central control buildings, all of them with elaborate balconies.

Minutes later, they had landed and returned the Blade-32s back to the flightknife that had loaned them, declined yet another challenge from that flightknife, and been rejoined by Cheriss just outside the hangar. “Did you enjoy them?” she asked, her eyes shining.

“Yes, we did,” Wedge said, and led the way toward the wheeled contrivance that would carry them back into the city. “Very hardy fighter-craft.” The girl’s expression suggested that she awaited further praise for the Blades, so he added, “Obviously a vehicle of conquest.”

She nodded, happy. “There is none better. And it is obvious that you’ve learned to master it very swiftly.”

“Well … we managed not to crash,” Wedge amended. “I wouldn’t say we’ve mastered it.”

“Oh, you were putting them through their paces as though you’d been flying them for years,” she said. “And the Imperial fighters accepted a challenge today and shot down four members of Blood on the Flowers Flightknife.”

“Shot down?” Wedge frowned. “How many survived?”

“One,” she said. “Ejected, badly wounded. He’ll have some scars to brag about.” Her voice became a little more soft, more shy. “Will you be accepting challenges, too? Maybe tomorrow?”

Wedge, out of the corner of his eye, saw Janson grinning at him. Wedge slowed his pace and managed to step on Janson’s foot before the other pilot could adjust. Over Janson’s yelp, he said, “Tell me, are all your challenges live-fire exercises, or do you ever use simulators?”

Her smile faded, replaced by an expression of confusion. “What’s a simulator?”

“A device that simulates what you see and feel when you’re in a fighter’s cockpit. It uses computers, holograms, and inertial compensators to mimic almost exactly the experience of flying, so you can get in a lot of training without risking valuable machinery or even more valuable pilots. You don’t have anything like that?”

“Well … in other countries, pilots sometimes duel with weakened lasers matched with laser receptors, and with missiles that have weakened charges that create a large pigment cloud, so they don’t have to kill one another.”

“In other countries … but in Cartann, all your pilot duels are live-fire?”

Cheriss nodded. “Yes. Oh, not all are fatal. A pilot might eject and the winner might decide not to shoot him on the way to the ground. That’s what happened today with the Imperials. When that happens, both will live. Assuming the crowd on the ground doesn’t beat the loser to death for his defeat.”

“How do you keep from losing pilots at an astounding rate?”

She considered. “Well, that’s why the government instituted the Protocols. Pilots who wish to duel must demonstrate that both will benefit from a duel.”

“For example?”

“If a new pilot wants to duel an older, experienced pilot, that situation probably fails to meet the Protocols. You see, the new pilot would benefit if he won—he would have received training at the hands of a better, and would gain fame for having killed him. But the old pilot would not really benefit. He could mark one more kill on his board, but it would be of no consequence, so he would not benefit. Therefore his commander would not approve the duel.

“But if a new pilot had invented a new maneuver or fighting technique, the older pilot could benefit from facing it. If his commander was impressed enough with the younger pilot’s inventiveness, he might permit the duel.”

“You say other countries perform simulated-weapons duels. Is there a loss of honor in using them?”

“In Cartann, yes. There, I suppose not—they lose enough honor just for belonging to a lesser nation.”

“What would it mean if I agreed to a duel, but insisted on using simulated weapons?”

Her face went slack, the expression Wedge had come to recognize as meaning she was thinking hard. Finally she said, “I’m not sure. Either you would lose honor, or the use of simulated weapons would gain in honor.”

“If I did it again and again, and won every time?”

“I think, I have to think, that simulations would gain in honor.”

“Interesting. Perhaps, tomorrow, when we come out here I’ll ask for Red Flight to be equipped with weakened lasers and paint missiles.”

Tomer had no news for them when they returned to their quarters late that afternoon. No appointment with the perator or his ministers to discuss the possibility of Adumar’s entry into the New Republic. No revised orders from Intelligence.

They accepted a dinner invitation Wedge had received at the previous night’s celebration, at the lavish home of Cartann’s Minister of Trade. Yet the politician, a lean man who hobbled on an artificial leg, the result of ejecting from a disintegrating Blade-28 and being hit by shrapnel from his own fighter, had no interest in discussing trade; he wanted to hear nothing but tales of Wedge’s exploits.

They dined at a long table on the minister’s broad balcony—in order, Wedge suspected, that the owners of the balconies all around might see them and be envious of the minister’s guests. Wedge and his pilots quickly learned to spell one another, each taking up the thread of a story in turn so that the others might eat. Cheriss kept quiet throughout, listening wide-eyed to tales of Endor and Borleias and Coruscant.

Afterward, they took the ascender—the slow-moving, rattling, open-sided Adumari version of the turbolift—down to the third floor aboveground. The building’s first three stories were mostly taken up with a massive lobby, a showcase to impress visitors, and the ascender did not go all the way to the ground; visitors had to descend those three stories by a sweeping staircase, and at the outside door they would reclaim their blasters.

Janson led the way down the stairs at a half trot. “I hope we get to your diplomatic duties soon, Wedge. I really look forward to them.”

Wedge grinned. “As opposed to night after night of dinners with star-struck functionaries?”

“You said it,” Janson said. “I really hate all the adulation.” Then, as he rounded the main curve in the staircase, six Adumari men, climbing the stairs, drew blastswords, the foremost two of them lunging at him.

Time seemed to dilate for Wedge. He saw Janson whip off his preposterous cloak and entangle the two blastswords; the weapons’ points fired off, pumping blaster energy into the garment, setting it afire in two places. The other four men charged around Janson and his two opponents, passing them on the wall side of the stairs.

Wedge leaped forward onto the curved banister—polished hardwood, it did not budge under his weight and offered little friction. He slid down it as if mounted sidesaddle on a riding beast. As he passed Janson, he brought his left leg up and unloaded a kick against one of Janson’s opponents, the maneuver almost pitching Wedge over the side to the floor two stories down. The blow caught the man full in the face, throwing him back and down the stairs, rolling almost as fast as Wedge slid.

Wedge regained his balance and dropped off the banister to land beside the man, who lay faceup sprawled across half a dozen carpeted steps. Wedge snatched up the man’s blastsword and turned back up the stairs.

The last of the men who’d been rushing past Janson had turned again to descend toward Wedge. Janson had his own enemy wrapped up in a wampa-hug and was bending the man back across the banister; the enemy’s face contorted in pain as his spine curved too far in a direction it was not meant to go. Janson’s blastsword was still in its sheath; his burning cloak lay on the step beside his foot, its flames licking higher.

Cheriss had her blastsword out; she nimbly deflected the blades of two of the oncoming men. That left one to edge past her and go after Hobbie and Tycho, but as Wedge watched, the two moved in concert. Hobbie lunged toward the swordsman and jerked back just as suddenly, drawing an ineffectual lunge from the man’s blade, and Tycho took the opportunity to leap full on the man, slamming him down onto the steps. In a moment Tycho was straddling the man, raining punishing blows on his face, as Hobbie retrieved the blastsword.

Wedge backed away from the man descending after him. He cursed the unfamiliar weapon in his grip. Hand to hand, or blaster to blaster, he was confident that he could at least hold his own against an attacker, but not with a weapon as esoteric as the blastsword.

Then Wedge set the point of the blastsword to the carpet at the base of one of the steps. It unloaded its energy into the carpet, emitting a sharp “bang” and a small cloud of red-brown smoke. Wedge dragged the point all the way across the bottom of the stair, sustaining the sword’s blaster emission, sending up a curtain of smoke before him.

He could still see his opponent, and the man—tall, mustached, smiling in anticipation of victory—shook his head as if correcting the actions of a pupil. “You waste all your charge to put smoke between us?” he asked. “That will be your last mistake, Wedge Antilles.”

“Oh, I have plenty more to make.” Wedge grabbed at the flap of carpet he’d cut free and, with all his strength, yanked. The carpet resisted, the adhesive that made it conform to the shape of the stairs holding; then it gave way. The descending assassin’s feet went out from under him; he flailed wildly as he lost his balance, thumped down onto the stairs, and slid down toward Wedge.

Wedge stood his ground and brought the point of his blastsword up into contact with the armpit of his attacker’s sword arm. He heard and felt the impact of blaster tip against skin, smelled the familiar odor of burning flesh. His opponent shrieked and dropped his sword.

Wedge glanced back up at the others. One of Cheriss’s foes was down, a mass of char where his throat should be, and as he watched she disarmed the other with an expert twirl of their locked blades. Hobbie stepped in and hit the man, a punch that seemed to start a kilometer or two behind him, taking the man in the gut and folding him over. Janson gave his own enemy a little shove and that man, already broken like a toy, toppled to crash down onto the tile floor below. Nor did Tycho’s opponent look anxious to continue the fight; his face was a mass of contusions, his eyes closed.

Janson began stomping on his cloak to put out the fire. Wedge heard a smattering of applause and whistling from the ground floor. He spared the floor a glance; men and women, bright in the lavender-and-gold livery of this building’s workers, were merely cheering their efforts.

“Cheriss,” Wedge said. “Who’s the leader?”

“You are, General Antilles.”

“I mean, their leader.”

She gestured with her sword point at the one Wedge had kicked in the face; he lay halfway between Wedge and Hobbie. He did not move, but his eyes were fluttering.

“Hobbie, get building security and see if you can get our blasters back. Wes, Tycho, pick up blastswords and poke the first one of them who offers trouble. Cheriss, help me with this one.” He moved up the stairs, somewhat tentative because the damage he’d done to the carpeting made walking tricky, and stood over the man he’d kicked.

Wedge moved his sword point back and forth over the man’s throat. “What was all this about?”

It took a moment for the man’s eyes to track on the blastsword tip. “What else?” the man said. “Honor. The chance to kill the famous general from the stars. Tomorrow I would kill the Imperial pilot.”

Cheriss gave him a less than respectful smile. “You couldn’t kill a feed-reptile if it spotted you two legs and an eye. He’s lying, General. He’s a paid assassin.”

The man scowled at her and shook his head, a mute protest of innocence.

“Cheriss, how do you know that?”

She gestured at the man, her expression one of contempt. “First, look at his clothes.”

The man, like most of the attackers, was dressed in what Wedge was beginning to recognize as barely acceptable clothing for a building as prosperous as this. His clothes were stylishly black, but on closer examination, the tunic was threadbare in places, the leather of his boots shined but much worn. The blastsword lying beside him had a guard that was much scarred, seldom polished.

“So?” Wedge asked.

“Second,” she said, “this.” She hauled back and kicked the man hard in the side.

He arched his back and groaned. He opened his mouth, doubtless to offer a curse or threat, and then remember Wedge’s sword point hovering centimeters above his face. He remained silent.

Wedge frowned at the girl. “We don’t torture for information, Cheriss. That’s not our way.”

She turned innocent eyes to him. “Torture? Never. This time, General, listen.” She hauled back and kicked the man again, possibly harder than before.

Over the man’s groan, Wedge distinctly heard a clinking noise from beneath the man’s tunic.

Cautious, Wedge pulled the tail of the tunic up through the man’s belt. Beneath, attached to a second, slimmer belt, was a transparent pouch filled with shining golden disks.

“Adumari credcoins?” Wedge asked.

“Perats,” Cheriss said. “Do you see Pekaelic’s face on the obverse? I see at least twenty of them. Not a fortune, but definitely an improvement in his estate.”

Wedge nodded to Tycho, who searched the others. He found pouches of coins, most of them about half as full as this man’s, on each.

“You’re saying that someone with this kind of spending money should have better garments,” Wedge said.

Cheriss nodded.

Wedge returned his attention to his prisoner. “Who paid you?”

“This money is from the last man I killed,” the man said.

“Then you’ve killed a minister or a wealthy merchant,” Cheriss said. “And his family will be wealthy enough to prosecute you all the way to the grave. I’ll tell the Cartann Guard what you’ve just admitted to. Whoever the last important man to be killed was, you’ll take the blame for it.”

The man opened his mouth as if to offer a denial, then shut it stubbornly.

Cheriss caught Wedge’s eye and gave him a tight shake of her head. Her meaning was clear; the man wouldn’t talk.

Hobbie came bounding up the stairs, leading a handful of men and women in the eye-hurting livery of the building. All wore sheathed blastswords but carried some sort of sidearms in their hands. “It’s a no on our blasters,” Hobbie said. “Until we leave the building.”

“Rules,” said the foremost of the liveried men, “are rules, I fear. But you will suffer no more inconveniences while in our building. Are we here to be witnesses to your kill, or do you wish them given over to the Cartann Guard?”

Wedge frowned at the man, who appeared to be about twenty, very fair, very exuberant. “Do you mean it’s legal for me to just kill them?”

“Of course. You beat them fairly. Unconventionally, but fairly. And until you kill them, release them, or hand them over, the duel is not done.”

“It wasn’t a duel. It was an assassination attempt.” Wedge finally remembered to turn the power off on his blastsword. “I turn them over to you for the Cartann Guard. These men were paid to kill us; perhaps the Guard will want to find out by whom.”

“Of course,” the young man said. “We will hold them if you wish to depart.”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Do you wish to take trophies?”

Wedge glanced at Cheriss. She said, “What’s theirs is yours; you have won. What they carry, I mean. You cannot claim what is in their homes, at their moneykeepers’.”

“I see.” Wedge glanced among his pilots. “Red Flight, arm yourselves. Blastswords and sheaths. If we’re going to have this happen again, I don’t want us to have to rely only on fists and vibroblades.”

Cheriss smiled at him. “You did very well with fists and vibroblades. You are brawlers. I like that. Cartann swordsmen are too effete.”

“Thank you, Cheriss.” Once he, Tycho, and Hobbie had their new blades buckled on, Wedge led the way past the helpful building guards and down to the street.

It had grown dark and cool outside in the hours of their dinner appointment, and now the streets were filled with shadowy figures and the occasionally wheeled transport. Even more rarely, a repulsorlift-equipped transport would cruise by a few meters overhead, its complement of five or ten passengers idly watching the pedestrian traffic below. Wedge kept his face down, the better to keep passersby from giving him a closer look and recognizing him.

“Cheriss, you heard his coins clinking over all the noise of the fight?”

She nodded.

“And you took out two of the enemy. That’s very good work.”

“Thank you, General.”

“With all your talents, and your obvious respect for pilots, why aren’t you a pilot yourself?” Wedge asked. He saw a little hesitation in her expression and added, “If it’s personal, just tell me it’s none of my business. I won’t be offended.”

“No,” she said. “It’s just—it’s not something I feel shame over.” Her miserable expression suggested she was lying. “But I can’t learn to fly. Ever. When I go up in aircraft, even when I’m on a high balcony, I become dizzy. I panic. I can’t think.”

“Vertigo,” Wedge said. “So you concentrated on the blastsword instead?”

She nodded. “It is a dying art. Oh, most nobles carry blastswords in public, and many commoners like myself. But the art as they practice it in their schools is stylized. They train with blaster power set to shock instead of burn, and they have rules that make some sorts of blows illegal. I, on the other hand, researched the blastsword art of centuries ago, when it was still very prestigious. I learned about alternative secondary weapons and using the environment against my enemies.” She brightened again. “I can tell that you haven’t trained with the blastsword … but it’s obvious you know how to fight. The maneuver with the banister, Major Janson’s use of the cloak, Colonel Celchu’s skill with his fists—I would love to learn what you know.”

“We’ll trade, then. Teach us what you can, in the time we’re here, of the use of the blastsword, and I’ll let my merry band of reprobates teach you about the back-alley maneuvers they’ve learned.”

He turned to catch the eyes of the other pilots, to make sure none of them had an objection, and saw that Janson was glum. “What’s wrong, Wes?”

Janson sighed. “My cloak is all burned up,” he said. “I liked that cloak.”

“We’ll find you one even more garish,” Wedge promised. “Now, Cheriss, I hope you’ll understand, but I have to be very rude to you for a minute.”

“You want me to walk on ahead again,” she said.

He nodded. She offered him what he took to be an understanding smile, then increased her pace.

“I’m going to leave you now,” Wedge told his pilots. He checked the chrono from his pocket. As with most people who did a lot of travel from planet to planet, his chrono showed both ship’s time and local time, and the local time indicated it was less than a half hour of midnight.

“You can’t see her now,” Hobbie said, his face grave.

“Why not?”

“You’re all sweaty from the fight.”

“He’s right,” Janson said. “You stink of sweat, and smoke, and the wine the minister spilled on you—”

“He missed me.”

“I don’t think so. Anyway, you’re not fit for a liaison tonight.” Janson put on a long-suffering face. “I’ll go in your place. I’m ready for this assignment, sir.” He saluted.

“This isn’t a liai—” Wedge shut up and turned to Tycho. “If he keeps this up, Hobbie gets to choose his clothes for the next three days.”

“Oh, good,” Hobbie said.

Tycho nodded. “Keep your eyes open tonight, Wedge. We can be pretty sure the Imps put those assassins on us … but we can’t be sure there aren’t duelists out there who want to kill you honorably.”

Wedge waited until Cheriss turned a corner ahead. He whipped off his cloak and reversed it so its dark interior color was now on the outside, and turned to join the pedestrian traffic heading the other way.

At this time of night, with no events taking place, the plaza where he’d made first landfall on Adumar was nearly empty. Though not illuminated by artificial lights, it was still bright enough under the shine of two moons, one of them full and quite large in the sky.

The temporary stand where Wedge had made his speech was gone, though the four poles with their speakers were still there. The spot where the X-wings had landed was empty, Wedge and his pilots having transferred their snubfighters to their balcony early that day.

But despite its echoing emptiness compared to the previous day, the plaza was not lifeless. Near where the X-wings had landed, a circle of men and women watched a blastsword duel; even at this distance Wedge could see the lines of green and violet color twirling through the air, hear the snap as a blastsword tip hit a surface. The fight continued for several more seconds, so it must not have found flesh, but moments later he heard a second blast followed by a quick shriek. Then a third blast, and applause.

Another life lost to no good purpose. Wedge shook his head.

Ahead, there was a slender silhouette waiting beneath the shortest of the dark display panels. When he was a dozen meters away, he slowed, sure that he should not call Iella’s true name, but not certain as to what sort of greeting was appropriate. Finally he said, “May I approach?”

“You may.” It was Iella’s voice. She lowered the hood of her cloak as he reached her, and moonlight fell full on her face. She extended her hands.

He took them, then stood at a loss for words.

She laughed. “You were more eloquent yesterday.”

“I do that sort of thing more often.” He caught sight of another silhouette, big, probably male, deep within the shadow cast by the nearest building. “Friend of yours?”

“My bodyguard,” she said. “Here, anyone with a marginally profitable job can afford bodyguards for situations like these. Do you have one?”

“Not with me, no. She’s already killed a man for me tonight.” Wedge shook his head, willing away the distraction of the night’s events.

“Killed—were you attacked?”

“All of us. Tycho, Wes, and Hobbie, too. We came out of it unhurt.” He gestured as if thrusting with a blastsword. “Four visiting blades, cutting down assassins. Something more for the court to talk about.” Iella seemed to have caught her breath and grown paler. Wedge leaned in closer. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I’m not the one in danger, Wedge. You need to be careful. These peoples’ affection for duels, for picking up honor coupons by killing each other, could get you murdered.”

Wedge waved her objections away. “How have you been?”

Her expression remained cheerless. “Well enough. I’ve been working hard. Mixing fieldwork with analysis. It never gets boring.”

“That doesn’t sound as though you’ve found any one thing that you want to devote yourself to.”

She shrugged, and he could sense even more distance between them. “I guess I’m not like you, that way. Listen, Wedge, I can be here, but not forever. What do you need?”

He sighed. “Duty first. I need to know what’s really going on here on Adumar. I’m effectively ambassador here for the time being, and I’m in completely over my head. How long has the New Republic really been aware of Adumar?”

“You don’t know?”

“No. I thought it had been a matter of days or weeks. Your presence, your cover, suggests it’s been longer than that.”

“Five or six months,” she said. “Intelligence discovered that someone was recruiting computer slicers for hire to do interfaces between a new set of computer protocols and New Republic and Imperial standards. Intelligence got interested, put together an identity for me as a Corellian slicer, and dropped me on one of the worlds where they were hiring. It’s the sort of mission we call a blind jump. When I got here, I set things up for the arrival of a team.”

“What’s your name here, by the way?”

She managed a faint smile. “Fiana Novarr.”

“I’m sort of surprised that a hired code-slicer would be invited to an affair like last night’s dinner, with the perator and all.”

“I went in on the arm of a minister. That’s not important, Wedge.”

“I suppose not. So what’s all this about a mapping ship finding Adumar, and suddenly they want our pilots as diplomats?”

“That’s all true, but it’s only part of the story. I was here for a few weeks—a temporary prisoner in theory, since I couldn’t communicate offworld until actual relations were opened with outside worlds, though I did anyway—and figured out that Adumari scout ships had gotten far enough out to discover human-occupied worlds. They’d figured out that there were two big power hubs, the New Republic and the Empire. And they wanted to learn everything they could before getting in contact with either one. They wanted to have the leisure to decide which one, if any, to side with. But the mapping ship incident did happen, and it sort of accelerated their plans.”

“Thus the invitation to me and Turr Phennir.”

She nodded.

“How did they keep you from knowing about the Imperial pilots coming?”

“They’re pretty sneaky people,” she said. “Convoluted politics and secrecy are a way of life for them.”

“Well, here’s an important one. What sort of arrangements am I going to be able to make with them if they’re not a united world? I can’t do much more than open up diplomatic relations and persuade them that the Imps are bad.”

“That’s exactly what you’re supposed to do. Other forces are working on the perator of Cartann to persuade him to enter into a world government.”

“So all the hard mental work is taken care of. I just need to stand around, pose, look pretty for the holocams …”

She managed a brief smile. “That’s it.”

“Ie—Fiana, I’m not sure I like this place. They don’t put a very high value on human life. What do you think?”

“You’re right.” She shrugged, a clear sign that this was something out of her hands. “It’s different in other Adumari nations. Their mania for pilots is not quite as high. Dueling is not the fad it is here. Another reason for Cartann to join in a world government. It might acquire some more civilized characteristics.”

“Who’s your superior?”

“I can’t tell you that. That’s on a need-to-know basis.”

“Well, I’m talking about a need-to-punch basis. Your immediate superior and General Cracken didn’t give me a full briefing before I got here, and consequently I’ve been floundering around like an idiot. I need to know which of them to punch.”

She smiled, got it under control. “Wedge, is that it? I need to get back to my quarters. It would probably do Fiana’s reputation some good for her to be seen with Wedge Antilles … but it would also put me under scrutiny I don’t want.”

“I suppose so.” Then a wave of something like doubt hit him. “No, that’s not it. Listen, I haven’t seen you in months. And now that we’ve talked, I still feel as though I haven’t seen you. What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” She presented him with a serene expression. For all he could read in it, she could have been all the way across the plaza.

“I don’t believe you.”

“I can’t help you with that, Wedge.”

“Iella, have we stopped being friends?”

She was silent a long moment. “I suppose we have.”

Wedge felt his breath catch. It took him a moment to recover it. “When did that happen? How did it happen?”

“It’s not you, Wedge. It’s me.” Her mask of serenity slipped, leaving her expression tired, even dismayed. “I just had another direction to go. You’re not there.”

“That’s not an answer. That’s Intelligence gibberish covering up an answer.” It surprised Wedge, how hurt his tone sounded.

“I have to go.”

“Every time we’ve ever spoken, I’ve been straight with you. I want an answer from you.”

She put her hood up. Suddenly he could no longer see her features. “I have to go,” she said, and turned away.

As she moved off into the darkness, her bodyguard detached himself from the building’s shadow and followed.

Wedge stood there and watched her fade into the darkness of the plaza’s shadowy edges. It occurred to him that this departure was just the image, the reflection of something that must have happened long ago. He just didn’t remember when, and the mystery of it was like a little, stony knot of pain next to his heart.

5

That pain hadn’t subsided by morning. He thought about the situation with Iella, could come to no hypothesis that covered all the facts, and set it aside for the time being. He set aside thinking about it, anyway; the ache stubbornly refused to be set aside.

By the time breakfast was done, his datapad had still received no word from Tomer about appointments with the perator for the purposes of diplomacy. Nor was there news on the men who had attacked them last night. Once again the day was his.

He asked Cheriss to call ahead to the air base and order Red Flight’s Blade-32 aircraft to be loaded with weakened lasers and pigment-cloud missiles … and to spread the word that Wedge Antilles might be accepting challenges this day, but only from fighters similarly equipped.

They were already on the wheeled transport and heading toward the air base when she concluded that call. Out of the corner of his eye, Wedge saw her pocket her comlink, look at him, look toward the transport’s controls, and look at him a second time.

“Is there a problem?” he asked.

“Not a problem, no. Well, maybe.”

He turned toward her, but she looked forward along their travel route, avoiding his eyes. “Last night, when you slipped away … that was dangerous, you know.”

“The Adumari have no respect for someone who can’t confront danger.”

“True. But if you were to die when I was supposed to be acting as guide for you, I would lose considerable honor.”

“If I elude your attention, you have nothing to be ashamed of even if I get myself killed.”

Her expression tightened. “Still. When you left … was it to see a woman?”

The answer “It’s none of your business” rose to the top of his mind, he even heard it in his most snappish tone, but he restrained himself from saying it. He didn’t know how badly such a response might cut her. “Yes, it was.”

“If you slipped away just to avoid exposing me to something—”

“No, it was nothing like that.”

“I’m not as young as I look, you needn’t worry about shocking me—”

“Cheriss.” He sighed and closed his eyes. “Listen. When I was your age, I borrowed a Headhunter, that’s a type of starfighter, from a friend, and used it to kill the men who were responsible for my parents’ deaths. A deliberate act of revenge. The whole universe changed. All the things that had surprised or shocked or offended me just the day before became nothing, instantly.” He opened his eyes, sought out her gaze, and finally was able to hold it. “Like me, you’ve had blood on your hands from an early age. So I know you’re not going to be shocked. I’m not trying to protect you.”

“Was she … a pilot? The woman last night?”

He considered that question, wondered just how far he was willing to answer her curiosity, and said, “No.”

Her face brightened. “No? No. No. I hope you fly well today. I mean, I know you will fly well today, but I hope others see. Remember to specify match numbers when you accept a challenge.”

Wedge nodded. He’d already learned about that protocol. If he didn’t “specify match numbers” when accepting a challenge, such as by saying “we accept four,” the attackers could bring as many pilots as they wanted against him. The usual protocol was to accept as many challengers as he had pilots in his own flight or squadron.

He watched as Cheriss, suddenly, mysteriously transformed into a happy young woman again, trotted up to the front of the transport and leaned over the rail into the wind.

He moved back to his pilots. “Any of you understand that? Her mood swing?”

Tycho said, “I think I’d shoot myself before getting involved in this conversation.”

Hobbie shrugged. “Not one of my languages, Wedge.”

Janson threw up his arms, tossing his cloak back over his shoulders. It was a practice move; he’d already done it forty times this morning. He drew the cloak back around him, where Wedge could see its flexible flatscreen panels in front, the moving images they showed of Janson on the receiving stand the other night, and he nodded. “I understood her, boss. But you don’t want to know. Trust me on this.”

“Anytime Janson says ‘you don’t want to know,’ ” Wedge said, “it’s like juggling thermal detonators. Each time you grab and throw, you know your thumb might hit the trigger …” He sighed and turned to Janson. “I want to know.”

“You asked for it … You told her your lady friend wasn’t a pilot, right? Cheriss also isn’t a pilot. Here, she can’t compete with pilots in prestige. But you saw a lady who wasn’t a pilot. You just told Cheriss, ‘Yes, you too have a chance with me.’ ”

Wedge stood there, contemplating, unconsciously rocking in place to compensate for the transport’s swaying motion across the ground. “Wes, you were right,” he said.

“You didn’t want to know.”

“I didn’t want to know.”

Janson grinned. “Boom.”

Wedge and Tycho flew a head-to-head pass against Janson and Hobbie. As the numbers on their range meters rolled toward zero, he watched the brackets on the lightboard as they surrounded the two “enemy” Blade-32s. At first, the brackets were fuzzy and indistinct; then they grew in solidity as the lightboard sensor technology gradually improved its lock on them. At the same time, his sensor board began emitting a deep, ominous, throbbing noise, warning of the enemy’s improving chance to target him.

The lightboard brackets went to full opacity at the same instant the throbbing warning hit its maximum volume. Wedge immediately rolled to port and dove, losing hundreds of meters of altitude in a matter of seconds, then came nose-up again, seeking Janson and Hobbie, who were similarly energetic in their attempt to elude a laser lock.

Wedge got the Blade-32 oriented toward his two targets, pleased with the way the starfighter increasingly felt natural to him. Visuals and his lightboard showed Janson breaking to starboard, Hobbie to port; he looped after the former and trusted Tycho to complement his action by going after the latter target.

He barely had Janson lined up in his weapon brackets when his target opened fire on him, stitching him with several blue pulses from his vehicle’s rear-firing lasers. Wedge growled at himself; unused to dueling with vehicles with rear weapons, he’d forgotten about them momentarily, while Janson, an experienced rear gunner, had utilized them from the start. But Wedge’s sensor board indicated that the simulated laser damage he’d sustained was not critical. Wedge began bobbing and sideslipping, attempts to keep Janson from achieving another targeting lock, and waited for his opportunity.

It came a moment later. Janson’s Blade began a quick drift to port. Wedge hit the trigger for his vehicle’s missiles, launched one into and slightly left of Janson’s drift, then traversed right and fired again. Janson, quick on the reflex, shied right out of the first missile’s path … and the second missile detonated two meters ahead of his Blade, blanketing the starfighter in a thick cloud of obnoxious orange paint. Janson emerged from the explosion with streaks of orange along his flanks and a large spot of it on his forward viewport.

“I am slain,” Janson said, his tone lofty. “What mischance ever brought me to this dismal world, where bags of paint would spell my doom?”

“You’ve been listening to the Adumari too much,” Wedge said. He checked his lightboard. It showed Tycho and Hobbie, a few kilometers out, heading toward them in formation. “How’d you do, Tycho?”

“A rare one for Hobbie,” Tycho said. “Brought me to one hundred percent damage with laser fire.”

“Tycho’s too used to really maneuverable fighters,” Hobbie said. “TIE fighters, A-wings … the X-wing is the most sluggish thing he’s ever spent a lot of time with. The Blade is just too much like flying a boulder for him.”

The four formed up again, began a long loop around the broad tract of forest that Giltella Air Base had assigned for their training exercises.

“Still no challenges,” Wedge said. “By this time yesterday, we’d had three or four of them at least.”

“I don’t think they’re going to go for simulated weapons,” Tycho said. “They’re so keen to see blood, Wedge. The last group of people I saw with that sort of enthusiasm for killing was Imperial stormtroopers fresh from boot camp. It’s kind of unnerving.”

“I still have to figure out what sort of reason to give them for simulated duels,” Wedge said. “Something they’ll accept within the parameters of their honor code.”

“Oh, that’s simple,” Hobbie said. “Do to them what you do to us at times like that.”

Wedge frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Tell them what you’re doing but not why. Then let them speculate. Listen to them as they speculate. When they come up with an idea you really, really like, tell them ‘You finally guessed right. That was my reasoning all along.’ ”

“I don’t do that,” Wedge said. “Much.”

“All the time, boss.”

Wedge caught a new pattern of motion on his lightboard, six blips incoming. “Heads up. We have something.”

A moment later, a new voice came across the comm board, a brassy one that rang in their ears: “Strike the Moons Flightknife issues greetings to New Republic Red Flight, and a challenge!”

Wedge kept his comm unit tuned to broadcast at low strength and only on Red Flight’s frequency. “Tycho, call Giltella Air Base and make sure these guys are really equipped with sim weapons.” He switched to the general frequency and upped his broadcast power. “Red Flight to Strike the Moons Flightknife, greetings. I will consider your challenge. Please give me the particulars about your pilots.”

“I am Liak ke Mattino, captain, fourteen years’ experience, eighteen war kills, thirty-three duel kills, one ground kill. I bring five pilots before you. In order of precedence, they are …”

Wedge listened to the litany of accomplishments with half his attention. He could have obtained the same information by tapping on the blip representing ke Mattino and the other Blades on the lightboard; the board’s text screen would have then shown the appropriate data from the transponders on their fighters. But demanding an oral recitation was a good way to stall.

Tycho’s reply came a minute later, toward the end of Captain ke Mattino’s inventory: “Giltella confirms Strike the Moons is equipped with sims, General.”

“Thanks, Tycho.” Wedge switched back to general frequency. “Captain, we accept your challenge. We accept four, your choice. Standing by.”

They waited while the Strike the Moons pilots chose among themselves. Two Blade-32’s peeled away from the Cartann half squad and circled out to a much greater distance. Then the other four fighters banked in the direction of Red Flight.

“Break by wings,” Wedge said. “Fire at will.” He banked hard to starboard, Tycho tucked in behind him and to his left, and waited to see how the enemy would react.

All four enemy Blades turned to follow Wedge and Tycho.

Wedge shook his head. That was an odd tactical choice. He heard the first throbbing of targeting locks being brought against him and began evasive maneuvering. For practice’s sake, he opened fire on his pursuers with his lasers, though he had no better laser locks than they did. On his lightboard, he could see Hobbie and Janson pulling into position in pursuit of the four Blades.

The laser locks grew stronger. Wedge said, “Let’s give Wes and Hobbie something to shoot at,” and shoved his control yoke forward, sending his Blade into a steep dive, and rotating so they still only had a side angle on him.

The four pursuers followed but did not rotate. Wedge kept up his laser fire against one of them and grinned. If he understood the simple Adumari lightbounce system correctly, the bigger the metal cross section it saw, the farther away it could get a good laser lock. In exposing their bellies to Janson and Hobbie, the four Blades had substantially increased their cross sections, which the two New Republic pilots should be seeing just about—

He saw missile streaks appear like magic lines between Hobbie’s and Janson’s Blades and two of the enemy craft. Paint clouds erupted, one an appalling pink, one a lavender, and one enemy Blade emerged from each. Both the “kills” broke off from the fight, moving out to meet the two pilots sitting out the conflict.

That left two. No, one. One of the remaining Blades broke away to join the other kills. As it departed, it broadcast, “Ke Mattino congratulates Antilles on a good stop.”

Wedge checked his sensor board. He must have racked up enough hits to put the enemy captain in the kill column. His own Blade showed twenty percent damage; he’d picked up a couple of grazes himself.

The surviving enemy Blade came doggedly on after Wedge and Tycho. Wedge leveled off smoothly and switched his comm system back to Red Flight frequency. “Let’s try a simple one,” he said. “Break to starboard and rejoin Wes and Hobbie. I’ll lead him back for a head-to-head against you.”

“Done, boss.” Tycho broke away sharply. As Wedge expected, the pursuing Blade paid him no heed, continuing on after Wedge.

Wedge juked and jinked, making himself a hard a target to hit, though he saw his simulated laser damage climb to thirty percent, then to thirty five percent. This pilot was a good shot. But his maneuvering pointed him back toward the other three members of Red Flight. As soon as his sensor board indicated that he could get a good shot at his own pilots, the blip that was the last enemy Blade changed to a kill marker and circled off to rejoin its fellows.

“A good exercise, Strike the Moons,” Wedge said. “Care to go again?”

There was a noticeable delay before the enemy captain replied. “Again? The duel is done.”

“Yes, but nobody’s a smoking crater, and we have fuel enough for two or three more at least. Do you want to go again, maybe let the two pilots who didn’t go last time come against us now?”

There was still confusion in the captain’s voice, but he said, “We could do that.” And moments later, four Blades, two that had taken part in the previous exercise and two that had not, broke away from the circling formation and came again against Red Flight.

Captain ke Mattino was a tiny man, lean of form and rising barely to Wedge’s nose, but his long and elaborately curled mustache doubtless helped increase his personal majesty to acceptable levels. He sat opposite Wedge in the Giltella Air Base pilots’ bar and nodded as Wedge spoke, every bob of his head setting his mustache to swaying.

“The problem is not in your skills,” Wedge said. “It’s in your tactics. In every exchange, you kept your whole group together and went with all ferocity after the highest-profile enemy … me. You know what that makes you?”

Ke Mattino looked suspicious. “Dead?”

“Well, I was going to say predictable. But predictability, in this case, meant dead, so you’re right.” Wedge glanced down the table, where his three pilots and ke Mattino’s listened intently.

“But circumstance dictates tactics,” ke Mattino said, his voice a protest. “The greatest honor comes from killing the most prestigious enemy.”

“No,” Tycho said. “That’s the second greatest honor. The greatest honor comes from protecting those who are depending on you. Which you can’t do if you get yourself killed.”

Wedge nodded. “The question is, are you earning honor so that your loved ones can be proud of you as they stand over your grave, or so they can be proud of you when you come home at night?” He raised his brewglass to drain it, but was hit by a hollow feeling as his words came back on him: The question was merely an academic one to him. He had no one to come home to. He even had fewer friends than he’d thought, having somehow lost Iella while he wasn’t looking.

To disguise his sudden feeling of disquiet, he went to the bar to get his brewglass refilled, leaving Tycho to continue in charge of the conversation. Two words were still haunting the back of his mind, intruding when he wasn’t absolutely focused on some other subject: Lost Iella.

By the time he got back to the table, the pilots there were on their feet, shaking hands. “Unfortunately,” ke Mattino was saying, “other duties do demand some small portion of our time. Is there a chance you will be accepting challenges again tomorrow?”

“Until our own duties demand all our time, there’s a high likelihood of it,” Wedge said. “In fact, tomorrow, we may bring the X-wings over and show you how we fight at home.”

“That is something I would wish most fervently to see,” ke Mattino said. He saluted, waving his tight fist a few centimeters before his sternum in an odd pattern. It took Wedge a moment to recognize the motion: It was the same as Cheriss’s salute the night of her duel, but without the blastsword in hand. “I hope to see you on the morrow,” the captain said, then turned away, pulling his hip cloak around him in a dramatic flourish.

•      •      •

Today, the people of Cartann had apparently discovered that Wedge and his pilots were flying at the air base. When they and Cheriss departed the base on their rolling transport, the street was thick with admirers. They clustered up against the rails, offering things to Wedge and the pilots—flowers, Adumari daggers, folded notes scented with a variety of exotic perfumes, necklaces, metal miniatures of the Blade-32 fighter-craft, objects too numerous to catalogue. Wedge accepted none of them, preferring instead to shake hands with as many of his admirers as could reach him, and his pilots followed suit.

Their procession slowed to a halt at a major cross avenue, however, blocked by a similar parade—people thronging around an identical wheeled transport returning from Cartann Bladedrome. Aboard, Turr Phennir and his Imperial pilots accepted the gifts and accolades from the crowd. Phennir gave Wedge a mocking smile as his transport rolled serenely past the stalled New Republic entourage.

“What’s his record for today?” Wedge asked.

“He accepted two challenges, and he and his pilots shot down two half flightknives,” Cheriss said. “Experienced pilots, good ones. He gained considerable honor today.”

“Yes, he’s just rolling in the honor coupons,” Wedge said. He didn’t bother to refrain from glaring at Phennir’s retreating parade. “They stick to the blood all over him.” He caught sight of Cheriss’s confused expression and waved the thought away.

Tycho, at Wedge’s ear, murmured, “Phennir has known for a day or two what we just found out today. That Adumari pilots just aren’t very good.”

“A few of them have decent technical skills,” Wedge said. “But not many. The attrition they experience has to be keeping their level of proficiency pretty low. Add that to their lousy tactical choices …”

“Small wonder they treat us like supermen,” Tycho said. “Us, and that happy band of Imperial murderers over there.”

In the days to come, Wedge’s routine requests for an audience with the perator to discuss diplomatic relations were met with routine refusals and apologies. But Tomer reported that rumor had it that the perator and his ministers were drawing up a proposal for the formation of a world government—a move, Tomer gleefully announced, that benefited the New Republic more than the Empire and therefore had to be interpreted as a slight gain for their side. Wedge, unconvinced, didn’t bother to point out that the Empire would find it easier to rule this world through an existing planetary government.

Each day, Wedge and Red Flight would return to the air base and conduct training exercises with Adumari pilots. Usually Red Flight used Blades, but sometimes they flew their own X-wings, to the astonishment of the Adumari, who were impressed with and appalled by the smaller crafts’ greater speed, maneuverability, and killpower.

In the first couple of days, the challenger pilots were all from Cartann, but soon afterward flightknives began visiting from distant nations with exotic names like Halbegardia, Yedagon, and Thozzelling. In spite of the contempt with which Cartann pilots treated these newcomers, Wedge made sure that Red Flight’s attention was divided equally among all pilots who showed an interest.

Each day, the kill numbers of General Turr Phennir and his 181st Fighter Group pilots climbed. According to Cheriss, Phennir’s popularity also rose above that of Wedge and the New Republic flyers. “The Imperial pilots,” she said, “show more affection for Cartann by doing things the Cartann way; how can the people of Cartann not respond with more affection?”

“By remembering the sons and daughters they’ve lost?” Wedge suggested.

The pilots’ nightly activities usually involved accepting dinner invitations made by prominent politicians and pilots of Cartann. Sometimes these affairs were simple dinners, sometimes lavish spectacles of entertainment, sometimes storytelling competitions among the survivors of aerial campaigns.

Wedge almost never saw Turr Phennir and the Imperial pilots at these dinners. Most were small affairs, orchestrated so that the host could showcase the pilots for a choice number of guests, and even at the larger affairs there seemed to be a growing division among Cartann nobles—on one side, those who preferred the New Republic; on the other, those who preferred the Imperials. Increasingly, the more prestigious nobles seemed to extend their invitations to Turr Phennir rather than Wedge Antilles.

Red Flight and Cheriss spent one afternoon visiting a facility Wedge hoped would one day serve the New Republic. Buried hundreds of feet below the city of Cartann, it was a missile manufacturing plant.

The Challabae Admits-No-Equal Aerial Eruptive Manufacturing Concern was a succession of enormous rectangular chambers separated by tunnels. Portions of the ceiling above each chamber were open to an upper tunnel series, and it was from catwalks along these upper tunnels that the pilots observed the details of the manufacturing process.

Chambers early in the sequence took in raw materials, including metals, man-made materials, and raw chemicals, and began processing them into components such as missile bodies, circuit board frames, wiring, explosives, and fuels. Chambers farther along would test missile body integrity, define and test the functions of circuitry, and test explosives and fuels for purity and reliability. Toward the end of the kilometers-long facility, chambers were used for final assembly and quality checking of finished missiles.

But though each chamber would have a different function from the ones nearest it, all chambers shared characteristics in common. There was a grimness to them all that lowered Wedge’s spirits.

Each chamber was filled with assembly lines, conveyor belts, and other machinery, all painted in the same lifeless tan-brown. Each chamber was occupied by hundreds, sometimes thousands, of workers, men and women, all of whom wore featureless garments in a darker brown. Walls were an eye-deadening off-white; floors were a dirt-colored brown. In chambers where manufacturing processes released smoke or soot, even the air was brown. Regardless of the air color, it was always sweltering.

Wedge saw workers moving and laboring. He saw none smiling. None looked up to see him or his companions on the catwalk far above.

“Where do they all live?” he asked. “I can’t remember seeing masses of people wearing workers’ garments like those. Not anywhere.”

Berandis, the plant’s assistant manager in charge of public concerns, a lean man whose mustache was topped by a series of ridiculous curls held in place by some sort of wax, gave him an easy smile. “Well, they live wherever they want and can afford, of course. Most are in turumme-warrens, above.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

Cheriss said, “Turummes are reptiles, distant relatives of the farummes you’ve seen. They dig elaborate nests in the ground. So large banks of apartment quarters built below the surface are often called turumme-warrens. The warrens above a plant like this are always owned by the plant.”

“Some workers live aboveground, of course,” Berandis said. “There are no laws to keep them in the warrens. But few can afford aboveground housing. Mostly you see it with managers, stewards—”

“Informants,” Cheriss said. “The occasional parasite.”

Berandis’s smile did not waver, but he lowered the tone of his voice. “Manufacturing plants are the same all over Cartann,” he said. “But we do offer a difference. Our missiles are the best, which is why we are the recipient of the government contract for all missiles for Cartann’s Blade-Thirties and Blade-Thirty-twos. A pilot like you can stake your life on a Challabae missile and know that it will serve your purpose faithfully and reliably. This gives our workers something to be proud of.”

Hobbie nodded. “I can tell. You can see the pride on their faces.”

Berandis beamed, oblivious to sarcasm.

On the long walk back to their start point, Cheriss dropped back behind Berandis to march with the pilots. Her voice artificially cheery, she said, “There is another advantage to having worker quarters above plant facilities of course.”

“Which is what?” Wedge asked.

“Well, if some enemy were to fill the skies above Cartann City and drop Broadcap bombs on the plant, the bombs would only penetrate as far as the warrens before exploding. The plant would take little or no damage.” Her tone was light, but Wedge detected something in it—bitterness or sarcasm, or perhaps both. He couldn’t tell.

Tycho said, “You’ve either worked at a plant like this or lived in the turumme-warrens, haven’t you?”

“Both,” she said. “My mother worked at a food-processing plant until brownlung killed her. I worked there for a season before I was well established enough to make my living with my blastsword.”

“How, precisely, do you make your living?” Wedge asked. “By taking trophies from the enemies you defeat?”

“No … though I did that at first. Now I use only blastswords manufactured by Ghephaenne Deeper-Craters Weaponmakers, and they pay me regularly so that they can mention that fact in their flatscreen boasting.”

“Endorsements,” Hobbie said. “I could do that instead of flying. I’ve had offers from bacta makers. Bacta’s a sort of medicine,” he added for Cheriss’s benefit.

She offered a little frown. “You are not a well man?”

“I’m well enough. But the ground and I get along so well we sometimes get together a little too vigorously.”

“So let me be sure I understand this,” Wedge said. “Under Cartann City, there are lots of underground manufacturing concerns, huge ones, where they make missiles and preserved food and Blades and everything Cartann needs, with worker quarters—where most workers have to live because they can’t afford anything else—above them but still underground.”

Cheriss nodded.

“And we don’t see these workers aboveground because?”

“Because they’re too tired at the end of a long day of working to do much but eat and watch the day’s flatscreen broadcasts,” Cheriss said.

“How much of the population lives belowground, compared to what we’ve seen aboveground?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Forty percent, perhaps. But don’t feel that they are trapped, General Antilles. They can always break free of the worker’s existence. They can volunteer for the armed forces. They can take up the life of the free blade, as I’ve done.”

“So the only sure way for them to get out is to risk their lives.”

She nodded.

Wedge exchanged looks with the other pilots, and his appreciation for the world of Adumar dropped another notch.

•      •      •

Later the same day, Tomer Darpen visited the pilots’ quarters with some bad news. After two days of incarceration, the surviving four men of the six who’d tried to assassinate them had escaped. “Definitely with the aid of someone in the Cartann Ministry of Justice,” Tomer said. “Whoever paid them in the first place had enough money or pull to enlist the aid of a whole chain of conspirators.”

“They’ll be coming after us again,” Hobbie said, a mournful note in his voice.

Cheriss shook her head. “They were not just defeated but embarrassed last time. They’ll be instructed to come after you again to regain their honor. But instead they’ll probably run. And so they’ll either vanish from the face of Adumar … or be found dead in an alley, a warning to others who might contemplate failure.”

Still, Wedge was not entirely displeased with the way things were shaping up. His informal flying school at Giltella Air Base was actually proving to be a satisfying experience. Increasingly, pilots both from Cartann and foreign nations were discussing Wedge’s philosophies as much as his tactics and skills, and doing so without contempt. One Cartann pilot, barely out of his teen years, a black-haired youth named Balass ke Rassa, finally summed it up in a way that pleased Wedge: “If I understand, General, you are saying that a pilot’s honor is internal. Between him and his conscience. Not external, for his peers to see.”

“That’s right,” Wedge said. “That’s it exactly.”

“But if you do not externalize it, you cut yourself off from your nation,” Balass said. “When you do wrong, your peers cannot bring you back in line by stripping away your honor, allowing you to regain it when you resume proper behavior.”

“True,” Wedge said. “But by the same token, a group of people you respect, even though they don’t deserve it, can’t redefine honor for their own benefit, or to achieve some private agenda, and then use it to control your actions.”

Troubled, the youth withdrew from the post-duel conversation and sat alone, considering Wedge’s words, and Wedge felt that he had at last achieved a dueling victory.

6

The night of the discussion with Balass ke Rassa was one of the few in which the pilots had declined all dinner invitations, giving them a chance to dine in their quarters and get away from the pressure of being on display before the people of Cartann.

As the ascender brought them up to their floor, Janson said, “They’re calling me ‘the darling one.’ ”

“Who is?” Wedge asked.

“The court, the crowds. They have tags for us all now, and I’m the darling one. Tycho is ‘the doleful one.’ ”

Tycho frowned. “I’m not sad.”

“No, but you look sad. Makes the ladies of Cartann’s court want to comfort you. They’re so sad about wanting to comfort you that you could comfort them.”

Hobbie snorted. “And Tycho the only one of us with a successful relationship with a woman. Missed opportunities, Tycho.”

They paused before the door to give its security flatcams—primitive devices by New Republic standards, but still capable of facial recognition—time to analyze their features. Janson continued, “Hobbie is ‘the dour one.’ Not too much romance in that, Hobbie. And Wedge is ‘the diligent one.’ That may not sound too romantic, Wedge, but ‘diligent’ has a couple of colloquial meanings here that add to your luster—”

“I don’t want to know,” Wedge said. The doors opened. “Say, look who’s here.”

Hallis sat on the monstrously overinflated chair situated in one corner, her legs up over one of the chair arms. She waved. Her recording unit, Whitecap, said, “Say, look who’s here” in inimitable 3PO unit tones.

Wedge led his pilots in. “What’s with Whitecap?” he asked.

“What’s with Whitecap?” Whitecap asked.

Hallis made a cross face. “Oh, something’s gone wrong in his hardware.”

“Oh, something’s gone …”

“I was recording some of General Phennir’s challenge matches out at the Cartann Bladedrome. When the pilots were leaving, the crowd got a bit unruly and I was knocked down. Since then, Whitecap repeats back everything anyone says within earshot. I can’t get him to stop.”

“… get him to stop.”

Janson grinned at her. “Some days make you just want to beat your heads against a wall, don’t they?”

Hobbie said, “Maybe not. The young lady might not have her heads on straight, after all.”

Tycho said, “Still, I think she ought to get her heads examined.”

Wedge looked at them, appalled.

“Pilots,” Hallis said. “How did I ever get this assignment? Who did I offend?”

“… did I offend?”

“Still,” she said, “you’d better be nice to me. I know you don’t take me seriously, but you ought to.” Her expression was unusually earnest.

“… you ought to.”

Wedge sprawled on a sofalike piece of furniture large enough to accommodate three full-sized people comfortably. “Hallis, it would be easier if you didn’t look like something out of a tale to frighten children.”

“… to frighten children.”

“All right,” she said.

“All right.”

She pulled her goggles off and set them aside. Then she reached up to press a control on Whitecap’s clamp; with a hissing noise, it relaxed and the recording unit began tilting from her shoulder. She caught it as it pitched forward, then moved across the room to set it within a cabinet. She closed the cabinet door with an irritated thump; from inside, Whitecap did a credible job of imitating the noise. “Better?”

Wedge tried to make his tone neutral, nonjudgmental. “What is it, Hallis?”

She straightened from the cabinet and gave him a serious look. “Someone rappelled down to your balcony today from an upper story. I think he was doing something to your X-wings. Just scawling something on them, I think.”

In moments, they were out on the balcony, looking over their snubfighters. Hallis followed and slid the main door to the balcony shut behind her. People on balconies all around and across the street called out to them, waving.

Wedge waved back distractedly. He saw nothing changed on his X-wing’s exterior, and there was certainly nothing new written on it. He addressed his astromech, which was still set up behind the cockpit. “Gate, report on any interference with this snubfighter.” He brought out his datapad so the R5 unit could transmit its response to him.

Its screen came up with the words NO INTERFERENCE NOTED.

“There wasn’t any that I know of,” Hallis said. “I lied about that.”

Wedge gave her a curious look. “Maybe you’d better explain that.”

“I wanted to get you out on the balcony. There aren’t any listening devices out here.”

“We know there are listening devices inside,” Wedge said. “We don’t say anything there we can’t afford to have overheard.”

“That’s good,” Hallis said. “I came by here this morning to let you know I’d be recording the Imperial pilots, to ask if you wanted me to look out for anything in particular. But when I got here, you’d already gone. As I was leaving, I saw someone headed toward your door. And your door admitted him.”

“Saves wear and tear,” Janson said. “When the thieves can just walk in instead of having to break the door down.”

“Did you get a good look at him?” Wedge asked.

“Better than that, I got some recordings of him. I followed him in, got in just before the door closed. Hid behind tapestries and furniture while he went from room to room. The one time I got a good look at what he was doing in the rooms, he seemed to be checking up on emplaced items—almost certainly transmitters. Then, when I left, I followed him to where he was going.”

Wedge exchanged glances with the other pilots. Suddenly Hallis didn’t seem so ridiculous a figure after all. Wedge had underestimated her ability, mistaking eccentricity for a basic lack of competence. He wouldn’t do that a second time.

Janson frowned. “I hope you’ll excuse a silly question—but how does a lady with two heads follow anyone?”

Hallis gave him an indulgent smile. “I took Whitecap off while I was tailing him, Major. I’m fully aware of the sort of commotion he causes when I wear him. But what I know—and what you don’t know—is that people, when they look at me, only see the two-headed lady. They don’t give me a close look, they don’t register my features. Meaning that I can tuck Whitecap under my cloak and take off my goggles, and nobody recognizes me. I doubt even you would.”

Janson opened his mouth as if to protest and then shut it again, his expression thoughtful.

“Hallis, are you Intelligence-trained?” Wedge asked.

She shook her head. “Sludgenews-trained. Are you familiar with sludgenews?”

Tycho made a face. “A minor evil found in many heavily populated worlds, especially in the Corporate Sector. News on which celebrities are in love this week, complete with holos recorded by someone who sneaked onto their private estates and then escaped again. Revelations on how the shapes of nebulae determine your fate. Stories about women who claim to have borne a son to Emperor Palpatine. Stores that there never was a New Republic/Imperial war, that it was all cooked up to foster wartime productivity and profit the starfighter manufacturers. Stories claiming that Darth Vader is still alive, about to lead a revolt to reinstitute the Empire. That sort of thing.”

Hallis nodded. “It’s a very competitive field. You learn to hustle, to bribe, to sneak, to plant transmitters, to read past the text stream to the data stream … or you fail and get out. I learned it all, and then I got out anyway. It’s a brand of newsmaking that doesn’t exactly make the galaxy a better place.”

“So you followed our intruder out of here,” Wedge said.

“Yes. He didn’t even leave the building. He went into a room on the third floor. Third Alabaster it’s called. I don’t know whether it was his room or not; its door admitted him, but then so did yours. I waited around for a while to see who else might go in or come out, but its corridor is just a little too public, so I left.”

“That’s good work,” Wedge said. “I assume that he’s probably New Republic Intelligence, keeping up on us … but it’s not safe to assume anything for too long. We’ll have to find out whose quarters those are and start tracing some connections. Thank you, Hallis.”

She offered him a nod.

From the corner of his eye, Wedge saw Cheriss appear at the transparent door into the pilots’ quarters. She waved but didn’t come through the door—sensitive, doubtless, to the fact that she might not yet be welcome. But a second later, Tomer Darpen brushed past her, slid the door open, and emerged onto the balcony, his expression dark. “I need to speak with General Antilles,” he said. “Everyone else please leave.”

No one budged. Wedge could feel their eyes upon him, but he gave them no signal. Wedge spoke, his tone artificially mild: “People I haven’t invited over don’t get to tell my guests to leave. Try again.”

Tomer said nothing for a few seconds, during which time Wedge supposed he was trying to compose himself, and then said, “This is an official exchange between the diplomatic delegation to Adumar, that’s me, and the point diplomat, that’s you. It’s not going to be entirely friendly. It may include things you don’t want your pilots to hear, but obviously you can insist they stay if you must. But I’m going to have to ask this young lady to leave, if only to the next room—”

“My pilots have heard lots of grown-up words,” Wedge said. “Even Janson. And this young lady is Hallis.”

Tomer looked at her, confused. “Where’s your other head?”

She gave him a sorrowful look. “When I was walking around today, I met a young man who had no head. Just a stump that suggested he had a long, sad story to tell. But of course he couldn’t, because he had no head. So I gave Whitecap to him. The man now has the voice and mannerisms of a 3PO unit, but they’re better than nothing.”

Tomer’s mouth worked for a moment or two. Then he turned his glare back on Wedge. “There. Now you’ve corrupted her, too. That’s what I came over to talk to you about. This has to stop.”

“What has to stop?”

“All this business with your duels. What is this nonsense with simulated weapons?”

“A simple way to give the Adumari the encounters they obviously want so very much, without getting them killed. Or me, or my pilots.”

Tomer rolled exasperated eyes toward the floor of the balcony above. “General Antilles, you’re changing things. There are now Adumari pilots, famous pilots, talking about doing more sim-weapon exercises.”

“Good.”

“You’re not here to change things! You’re here to gain their respect, according to their culture, and to demonstrate that they should throw in with the New Republic.”

“Meaning what? Meaning that I should stop doing duels—”

“No, that would cost you the respect you’ve earned in their eyes.”

“—or start doing live-weapon duels?”

Tomer was silent.

“That’s it, isn’t it? You think I should go up in the skies day after day and shoot down eager Adumari pilots.”

“That’s what Turr Phennir and his men are doing.”

Wedge felt cold anger creep through his guts. When he spoke again, his voice was very quiet. “So you’re saying that I should win playing by the Empire’s rules.”

Tomer hesitated. “In this case, yes.”

“Never.”

“If you don’t, we lose Adumar to the Empire. And there go the proton torpedo supplies you were hoping for. And more of your pilots die, and the Empire gains new ground. All because you’re too squeamish to do what common sense demands of you.”

Wedge took an involuntary step toward Tomer. The diplomat jolted backward. “Listen,” Wedge said, “and try to understand. This isn’t some civil trial where all positions, all propositions, are equally valid until the judge decides which one is right. If we act like the Empire, we become the Empire. And then, even if we defeat the Empire, we’ve still lost—because the Empire is once again in control. Just with a new name and with new faces printed on the crednotes.”

Tomer shook his head. “No. Chief of State Leia Organa Solo is in charge. It doesn’t matter what we do here. Her opinions, her ethics, still define what the New Republic is.”

“You’re deluded.”

“And you’re a naive fool, and you’re going to lose Adumar for us with your naivete.”

Wedge offered him a tight, unfriendly smile. “Would you like this diplomatic mission to use a different approach? Turr Phennir’s approach?”

“I hate to say it, but yes.”

“Then get a different diplomat.”

Tomer hesitated again. “Not feasible. You’re just going to have to fall in line.” He heaved a regretful sigh. “General Antilles, that constitutes an order.”

“You don’t give me orders, Darpen.”

“No, of course not.” Tomer shrugged, apology on his face. “These are orders from the regional director of Intelligence, and since Intelligence was actually the first division to institute activity in this system, all New Republic activities currently ongoing, including diplomatic, fall under its authority. The director has issued orders that you cease these simulated training missions.”

“Who is the regional director of Intelligence?”

Tomer shook his head. “I can’t tell you that. He or she likes to maintain anonymity.”

Wedge offered him a frosty smile. “Well, I can tell you who the local director isn’t.”

“Who’s that?”

“General Cracken. I received my initial orders from Cracken, and they didn’t say anything about being answerable to one of his subordinates. When I get a message from Cracken telling me to do what you’ve just said, I will, of course, comply. Until then—not a chance.”

“But—”

“And now it’s time for you to go.”

“No, we need to talk this through.”

“You can leave through the door or go flying over the rail, Tomer.”

Tomer read his eyes, then shook his head angrily and turned away.

Only when the door had slid in place behind Tomer did Wedge relax again. He took a long breath. “Hallis, are you recording? In any way?”

She shook her head. “General, I’m an ethical documentarian. One reason why I’m no longer in sludge.”

“Good.” Wedge wrestled a moment with the words he was about to say. “Are any of you wondering whether Adumar is worth bringing into the New Republic?”

Hobbie, his expression regretful, nodded. Janson followed suit. Tycho didn’t respond, and Hallis merely looked between them, her body completely still, only her eyes moving.

Janson said, “All that stuff about them being pilot-happy … it’s wrong. The only things they seem to want are honor and death. I would not want to fly with an Adumari pilot in my squadron.”

“I can’t entirely agree,” said Tycho. “We’ve already had luck in bringing some of them around. Our training exercises have been successes. If they hadn’t been, Tomer wouldn’t have blasted in here, spitting smoke and aiming lasers. And I think Cheriss, in the other room, is another good indicator. She’s as devoted to this whole death-and-honor thing as any Adumari I’ve met, but I don’t think it would take too much to turn her around to a more civilized way of thinking. I think a better question is this: What effect will it have on the New Republic if we bring Adumar in the way it is now?”

“There’s no telling,” Wedge said. “But it’s something I need to think about. I think I need a drink.”

“Oh, good,” Janson said.

“Alone.”

Inside, Cheriss had advice to offer—rather too much of it, until it became clear to her that Wedge really meant that he wanted some time alone. Then she settled down and merely asked, “Do you want a brewtap where you will be recognized and mobbed, one where you will be unrecognized, or one where you will be recognized but ignored? And do you want one with entertainments or shadowy corners?”

“Unrecognized,” he told her. “Shadows.”

“Garham’s-on-the-Downstream,” she said. “Hold on.”

She went to the closet off the main room, the one where enormous quantities of clothing had been delivered their first day in Cartann. Clothes remained there until selected by one of the pilots, at which time they would end up in that pilot’s armoire. But this closet was still mostly full, Tomer’s people keeping it well stocked from day to day. Cheriss reached in and brought something over to Wedge: a face mask, made to cover its wearer from upper lip to forehead, in a lavender material with the appearance of suede but the weight of foamed plastic.

Wedge looked at it. “Lavender. I have bad memories of lavender clothing. I don’t think it’s me,” he said.

“Precisely my point.”

“Ah. A good point, too.” He put it on, put up the hood of his cloak, and turned to his pilots. “Well?”

Janson affected surprise. “Who are you? What have you done with Wedge?”

Wedge sighed. “Always good to have a pal in the audience.”

Garham’s-on-the-Downstream was not quite what Wedge expected. It was no dive. Less than two city blocks from his quarters, it boasted expensive columns of stone, curtained booths, excellent service, and decent drinks—though most of them were variations on two types of drink, an ale (“brew”) and a liquor (“hard”) derived from Adumar’s most common grain, chartash.

It was, however, set up for privacy. It had an entrance off a darkened side street, the low-yield lighting cast shadows in every corner, and the booths all offered privacy. Unfortunately, the booths were all full at this hour, so Wedge took a chair at the bar, in the most shadowy corner.

He nursed a brew and watched the people of Cartann. He pondered their fates and his own.

It was a simple question, really. If Adumar were magically to pull a world government from its sleeve, and all Wedge had to do to entice that government to join the New Republic was fight a few pilots who were anxious to duel him to the death, could he refuse?

No, there was a second question. If Adumar joined the New Republic, who would be the better for it?

First things first. On the occasions he bothered to think about it, Wedge considered himself a soldier. He had joined a cause, the Rebel Alliance, that was aligned with his particular set of ethics and beliefs. He obeyed orders and risked his life in order to achieve a set of ends he believed in. He issued orders and risked the lives of others likewise.

But the pilots who wanted to come against him here were not enemies. They were potential allies … ones who wanted to kill him, or die at his hands, in order to profit from the so-called honor to be had from such a fate.

The others in the brewtap were men, mostly, though one in ten or so was a woman. Wedge assumed from the posture and conversation of these women that they were like the men here—pilots or minor nobles out for a night of drinks and anonymous trouble. The fact that none had sidled up to him with a glib offer told him that there were no professional companions here.

The people at the bar exchanged smiles and bitter comments, wove their hands around in the air to illustrate some piloting maneuver, argued at first quietly and then with increasing heat and volume about some common acquaintance or romantic rivalry. It was just the same as almost any bar Wedge had visited. With one difference: One of the arguers extended a fist, the knuckle of his middle finger protruding, and lightly rapped the chin of the other. The second man stiffened and nodded. The two of them tossed coins on the bar top and rapidly departed, their hands already on the hilts of their blastswords.

Wedge shook his head. There it was again, the dueling, the almost maniacal disregard for the value of life. Would it harm the New Republic to have such a vital culture—one so inexplicably devoted to the futile snuffing out of lives—join it?

If he was to be honest with himself, Wedge had to admit that it would probably do the New Republic no harm. Visitors from other worlds to Adumar would probably not get caught up in the dueling mania, while Adumari pilots joining the New Republic military were very likely to have their perspectives broadened by what they experienced out in the galaxy. Wedge could already see this happening with the pilots he flew simulated duels against.

So that answered the second question. Bringing Adumar into the New Republic would do no harm, and would offer the potential for increased proton torpedo production.

Which left the first question. If the way to bring Adumar in involved some of these duels—live-fire, not simulated—could Wedge do it?

Wedge wrestled with that one. He decided that other questions remained unanswered, questions critical to this whole mission: What were the conditions of victory? What exactly needed to be done to convince the perator of Cartann to side with the New Republic?

Tomer had hinted that it was a popularity contest. Wedge and Turr Phennir were struggling to achieve as much popularity with the people of Adumar as they could. Whenever the perator got around to making his decision, whichever pilot was most popular would give his side an edge—perhaps the decisive edge.

But agreeing to those terms, implicitly or explicitly, made all eight pilots, New Republic and Empire, toys of these death-loving Adumari. They had to keep killing—and, perhaps, dying—until the Adumari tired of the game and got around to their decision.

If Wedge could bring it down to a specific duel or event, for example a one-on-one with Turr Phennir, whose outcome unquestionably determined Adumar’s choice, then he’d participate. That would be a military action against a clear enemy, with a clear result. It was this preposterous notion of building public acclaim until someone arbitrarily decided that the contest was done that galled him.

Final question: If General Cracken supported the local Intelligence head’s orders, mandating that Wedge begin the slaughter of Adumari pilot-duelists, what would he do?

No matter how he thought his way around the problem, the answer always came back: To do this would be to dishonor myself and my uniform. I would refuse those orders.

With that finally came another thought: Which means I would have to face court-martial or resign my commission.

Wedge suddenly found himself short of breath.

It wasn’t the thought of losing his rank that hit him; it was the realization that leaving the military would be the same as abandoning what little remained of his life.

His home system, Corellia, was closed to him; joining the Rebel Alliance had put him on the enemies list of the Corellian Diktat, the ruler. His family was gone, parents dead and sister missing for long years. Almost everyone he knew was associated with the New Republic military, and the few long-time friends who weren’t, such as Mirax Terrik, had busy lives that intersected his only infrequently. If he resigned, most of these people would disappear completely from his life, leaving him as alone as a pilot who ejected into space with no hope of rescue.

The bleakness of that vision settled as a chill upon him. It was all the more frightening because he knew that even in the face of what it would cost him, he would have to refuse orders insisting that he do things Tomer’s way. If he didn’t, he might as well be Turr Phennir, flying for the Empire.

Had a decision like that cost him the friendship of Iella Wessiri? Had the moment come and gone without him noticing? He didn’t know. But on the eve of perhaps losing what was left of his life, he resolved to see her and find out.

“Yes, another. And this time, a bit stronger.”

It wasn’t the words that attracted Wedge’s attention, but the accent: the clipped, precise tones of Coruscant, or of a dozen worlds that emulated the former Imperial throne world.

Within a nearby booth, its flap held open for the moment by a bartender, was a man in dark, somber Adumari dress. His body could not be seen within the folds of his voluminous black cloak, but he was of only average height, and his face suggested that he was lean. His hair was gray, his features sharp and suggesting intelligence.

Wedge knew that face. When the bartender hurried off to fetch the man’s drink and let the flap fall back into place, Wedge rose and set a few coins on the bar top. He parted the flap covering the booth and slid into the seat opposite the man.

The gray-headed man offered him a cool smile. “I have a blaster trained on you,” he said. “Perhaps you’d better leave.”

“You’d do the Empire a big favor by pulling the trigger,” Wedge said. “Admiral Rogriss.”

The man frowned. The gesture was a bit exaggerated, as though he were more drunk than he looked. “I know that voice, don’t I? I certainly know the accent. Is it you, Antilles?”

Wedge raised his mask.

Rogriss brought his pistol up and then set it on the tabletop. “I’d never shoot you,” he said, “not even for the bounty on your head. I want to see how you get out of this mess you’re in. Or, more likely, how you fail.”

At close range, Wedge could offer the man a closer inspection.

They’d never met in person, but Wedge had seen his face on recorded transmissions. Five years ago, Admiral Teren Rogriss had surreptitiously aided the Han Solo task force pursuing the Warlord Zsinj. As Han Solo’s opposite number, chief of the Imperial task force hunting Zsinj, Rogriss had risked charges of treason by cooperating with the New Republic, commanding an Interdictor-class cruiser in collaboration with Solo’s task force. Later, he’d led the Imperial effort to to win back territories left disorganized by Zsinj’s death.

Today, Rogriss seemed little changed, though a bit of the fire and animation Wedge remembered from the recordings seemed to be gone. Perhaps it was the effect of alcohol. “What’s a much-decorated fleet commander doing on a backwater mission like this?” Wedge asked.

Rogriss offered him a half smile. “Fleet commander no more, General. Battling with Warlord Teradoc and your Admiral Ackbar for Zsinj’s leavings, I fared rather poorly. I’m sure you heard.”

“I did. But that happens a lot to Ackbar’s opponents.”

Rogriss shrugged. “I cost your New Republic a lot in that struggle. I’ve nothing to be ashamed of. And I remain an admiral, but with just one ship under my command, the Agonizer.”

“An Imperial Star Destroyer,” Wedge said. So Rogriss’s ship had to be the counterpart of the Allegiance, orbiting Adumar opposite the New Republic ship. “That’s still prestigious.”

“Says the man who normally conducts business from the bridge of a Super Star Destroyer.”

“Admiral, have you ever wondered why the Emperor gave such nasty names to his Star Destroyers? Executor, Agonizer, Iron Fist, Venom?”

“I’ve heard every schoolboy theory ever proposed on that matter.”

“This one comes from Luke Skywalker—”

“Having exhausted the schoolboys, we now turn to the farmboys? How charming.”

“—who has a certain perspective on the matter the rest of us don’t. He thinks it all has to do with corruption, with the seduction of the not-too-unwilling.”

Rogriss gestured for him to keep speaking, but his expression suggested that he’d heard it all before. The bartender brought Rogriss his drink, and Wedge waited until the man departed before continuing.

“Put a man or woman in a situation where the actions he’s obliged to take, such as serving Emperor Palpatine, are a certain path to personal corruption. Fill his ears with words saying that his actions are honorable ones. But surround him with constant reminders of the wrongness of what he’s doing. Our victim will cling to the words but will, at some level, always be aware of the wrongness—he can’t escape it. The symbols, such as the names of ships he commands, won’t let him forget. He’s always aware of his descent, of his slow transference to the dark side. Skywalker thinks the Emperor found this knowing acceptance of corruption, this half-accepting, half-struggling process, particularly delicious.”

Rogriss pointed his finger at Wedge as though it were a loaded blaster. “You Rebels remain so very self-righteous,” he said. “Always speaking of honor, as though you invented the concept. I’ve spent my whole life in honorable conflict. I’ve conquered worlds to bring civilization to them—literacy and medicine and sanitation and discipline. I’ve fought the forces of chaos to keep galactic civilization from flying apart. I’ve had only a few weeks of each year to spend with my own children. I’ve made all these sacrifices … only to be lectured about honor by someone a generation younger than I am. That’s reward for you.”

“You’re not drinking here, alone, anonymous, because you like the company. Or because you like the local brew, I’ll bet. You’re here wrestling with a question of honor, aren’t you?” Wedge was speculating madly, but the fact that honor seemed to be such a sore point with Rogriss made his wild shot more likely to strike home.

“What about you?”

“I was,” Wedge admitted. “I solved it. And you?”

Rogriss drew himself up stiffly. The action, made a little unsteady by the amount of alcohol he’d had to drink, was perhaps not as dignified as he’d hoped. “Where duty is clear, there is no question about honor.”

Wedge laughed. “I wish that were so. Well, I’ll leave you to keep wrestling. Best of luck, Admiral.” he rose and departed.

Out on the street, he went to considerable effort to make sure that no one followed him—that no aide of Rogriss’s meant to do him harm. But he saw no shadows pacing his and could finally relax on his way to his quarters.

7

An hour later, Wedge and Janson were in their flight suits, sitting in a small conference office on the Allegiance, with steaming cups of caf on the table beside them, datapads open, and scrolling data before them. “So my question is,” Janson said, “why me? Why didn’t you bring Tycho up with you? He’s your wingman. And he’s better with records.”

“I need someone to be in charge on the ground when I’m up here. For example, if there’s a diplomatic emergency.”

“I can be in charge on the ground.”

“Oh, that’d be good. You and Hobbie running through the streets of Cartann, leaving destruction in your wake, taking charge when a delicate political disaster strikes. Here’s an example. A noble of Cartann comes to you and says, ‘I know we have no diplomatic relations yet, but I’m here to request asylum in the New Republic.’ What do you say?”

“Is she good-looking?”

“Thanks for making my point.” Wedge gestured at Janson’s datapad. “What have you got on Rogriss?”

Janson sighed and returned his attention to the screen. “Wife dead. Two children surviving. Daughter Asori, twenty-eight, status unknown, which could mean anything. Son Terek, twenty-four, in the Imperial Navy.” He shrugged. “Nothing helpful. You?”

“Maybe.” Wedge shook his head over Admiral Rogriss’s career record—what of it was known to the New Republic, anyway. “His postings—after he was of sufficient rank to have an influence on them—seem to be awfully unambiguous.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning most of them have been duties where he fights the New Republic. What’s interesting is where his name doesn’t show up. There’s no known association with any operations like the Death Star, or governorship of nonhuman-populated worlds, or projects we later found out are associated with Imperial Intelligence, anything like that.”

“You’re talking about Rogriss?” That was Captain Salaban, entering the conference room with a tray of pastries. He set it down in the center of the table and took the third chair, then put his booted feet up on the tabletop.

“That’s right,” Wedge said. “What’s the opinion of him in Fleet?”

“Wily old so-and-so,” Salaban said. “Loves strategy and tactics for their own sake. An intellectual. Doesn’t much like to stick around for a slugging match.”

“We noticed that in the Zsinj hunt,” Wedge said. “We’re trying to figure out what his commanders might have recently called on him to do that it would send him to some shadowy bar to get seriously drunk. To get belligerent on the subject of honor.”

Salaban, chewing on a pastry, shrugged. “Coo bee anyfing,” he said, then swallowed. “ ’Scuse me. Pound the surface of Adumar flat if they don’t side with the Empire? If the Allegiance weren’t here to keep him in check, he could do that. Eventually and with tremendous losses.”

Janson shook his head. “That’d be a fair fight. He’d enjoy preparing for that, coming up with tactics to swing the battle his way. That wouldn’t offend his sense of honor.”

Salaban nodded. “Well, he is coming up with some sort of tactics, just as I am. There’s going to be a fight here. Allegiance against Agonizer.”

Wedge gave him a curious look. “How do you figure?”

“Well, it’s like this. The Empire can’t afford for Adumar to fall into New Republic hands. They know as well as we do what it means to us to have that explosives production. So if we, I mean you, win over the Adumari and they decide to sign on with us, it’s a certainty that the Imps will break their word. They’ll call in additional ships and attack both the Adumari and the Allegiance, and we are in for one serious furball.”

Wedge and Janson exchanged a glance. Wedge said, “Wait, scan backward a little bit. What ‘word’ will the Imps break?”

“That was—oh, that’s right, you were already on the ground for that little ceremony, weren’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

Salaban put on an expression of annoyance. “Shortly after our arrival in-system—after you notified us that the Imps were here and we confirmed Agonizer’s presence—a representative of the Cartann government visited. He said that in order to ensure the honorable continuance of these negotiations, the government would have to offer its words of honor that if Adumar decided for the Empire, we’d leave system within the hour and not return except under ‘formal banners of truce or war.’ ”

“And did they get these assurances?”

Salaban nodded and speculatively eyed another pastry. “Took a day or so, but they got a formal transmission from the Chief of State’s office. Not from Organa Solo herself; scuttlebutt has it she’s on a diplomatic mission too, to the Meridian sector. Anyway, the Adumari were supposed to notify us if they failed to get the equivalent word from the Empire, and they haven’t notified us, so I assume it’s two-way. I just expect the Empire not to honor their agreement.”

“That’s it,” Wedge said. “Probably. Like you, Rogriss is at the center of that word of honor. And he expects the Empire not to stand by it. But his personal impulse is to do what he’s sworn to do, or at least what he’s had to maintain to Adumar that the Empire has sworn to do.”

“Well, it begs a question.” Salaban stared at a second pastry, sighed to indicate his surrender, and picked it up. “Which is this: So what? We have one more promise about to be broken. If my opposite number is honorable enough to feel some shreds of guilt as he breaks it, so what?” He bit into the pastry as fiercely as if taking a chunk out of his Imperial counterpart.

“It’s a fluctuation gap in their shields,” Wedge said. “A weakness the Imps may not be aware of in their plan to take Adumar. It’s not even relevant if the Adumari side with the Empire in the first place. But if they don’t, it’s something I might be able to use. I also ought to forward these little notions to General Cracken, and some questions I have about how much the Chief of State knows about policy on this operation. Set me up for a holocomm transmission, would you?”

Salaban shook his head. “Caw bappoug. Awm assageg—”

“Chew your food, Captain.”

Janson grinned. “These kids.”

Salaban swallow his mouthful. “We’re in a comm blackout. All messages have to be cleared through the local Intelligence head before being sent on. Record what you want and I’ll put it through his office for review.”

Wedge kept his smile on his face, though his mood had just gone dark again. “Never mind. Some other time.” He rose. “Come on, Wes, back to Cartann. Thanks, Captain.”

“Anytime.”

Janson snagged a handful of pastries. “Can’t let Salaban have all these. They’ll kill him.”

In the corridor, Wedge said, “When you found out Iella’s Cartann identity, did you get her address?”

Janson nodded. “Her name, address, everything.”

“I need to see her. Tonight. As soon as we get back to our quarters and change into native dress.”

Janson winced. “Am I going to get any sleep tonight?”

“Sleep when you usually do. During pilot briefings. During missions.”

“Oh, that’s right.”

The quarters of Iella Wessiri—or Fiana Novarr—were some distance from Wedge’s quarters, in a part of Cartann where buildings seldom rose over six stories, where balconies sometimes sagged in the middle, where the glow bulbs illuminating the streets and flatscreens mounted on building exteriors were often burned out or flickering their way to uselessness. Still, the clothing on pedestrians—showy and colorful, if often a trifle worn—indicated that the residents of this area were far better off, financially, than the drones and drudges Wedge had seen in the missile manufacturing facility.

Iella’s building was a shadowy five-story rectangle situated between two taller constructions, with a single entrance leading to the ground-floor foyer. There was no security station, no building guards, not even an ascender. They took four flights of steps up to Iella’s floor, Janson switching off power to the flatscreen panels on his cloak in order that he not glow at an inopportune moment.

There was no answer to their knock at her door. Wedge waited half a minute, knocked again, waited a while more, and shrugged. “We wait,” he said. He surveyed the hallway they were in. Iella’s door was near to the stairwell; on the far side of the railings that guarded the stairwell was a corridor leading into blackness. “There,” Wedge said.

They were in luck. The corridor led to no more rooms, but to a curtained-off window overlooking the street. They could wait just around the corner, keeping an eye on Iella’s door, exposing themselves to very little danger of being seen while they watched.

“I know a game to help us while away the time,” Janson said.

“Sure.”

“First, let’s go back out and meet a couple of women.”

“Wes.”

“Well, it was a thought.”

Minutes later, a silhouette, a cloaked figure, approached Iella’s doorway … and then bypassed it, moving on to the next door. It knocked quietly, waited, determined that the door was locked, and then looked around. Finally, it came creeping in the direction of Wedge and Janson.

When it was a few meters away, the figure apparently realized that two men already waited in that shadowy nook; it stopped and put its hand on its belt. Even in the dimness Wedge could see the handle of an Adumari pistol. Wedge drew, but heard the rasp of metal on leather from beside him and was not surprised to see Janson’s blaster leveled first.

The newcomer, his pistol in hand but not aimed, leaned forward. Wedge saw glints of his eyes beneath the hood of his cloak. “You are not here for me, Irasal ke Voltin?”

Wedge shook his head, slowly, not taking his attention from the man’s pistol.

With his blaster, the newcomer pointed toward the doorway whose knob he had tried. “You wait for him?”

Wedge again shook his head. Wedge pointed to Iella’s door, the only other doorway visible from their position. He dared not speak; his accent would give him away as a non-Adumari.

“Ah. She of the glorious hair. Are you here from rage—” he touched his fingers, still wrapped around the pistol butt, to his heart—“or from love?” He touched them to his lips.

Wedge touched his own fist to his lips.

“Ah. Then we do not conflict. Frothing disease to your foes, then.” He turned his back on the two pilots and stalked away. Wedge and Janson watched him ascend to the floor above, and occasional creakings from that floor suggested that the man had taken up position at the stairs’ edge, where he could look down upon the doorway of his target.

“You know,” Janson said, “how I really sort of liked this place when we got here?”

Wedge nodded.

“Well, it’s worn off.”

Wedge grinned. “I thought you liked high romance and skulking and impossibly shallow love affairs and everything they have here in such abundance.”

“I do. I just don’t like all the competition. Really, Wedge, when you can’t even do a stakeout without bumping into six or eight other guys in the same corridor, on the same mission—”

“Hold it.”

Another figure climbed the dimly lit stairwell, emerging onto their floor, heading unerringly toward Iella’s door. It was another silhouette, but Wedge estimated that it could correspond to someone of Iella’s build wrapped in a bulky hooded cloak. Again he cursed the Adumari fashion sense.

Signaling for Janson to remain where he was, Wedge moved quietly forward along the railing. The person had paused at Iella’s door, and Wedge could now hear a series of low musical notes emanate from the door or nearby—possibly a sonic cue for a lock, he concluded.

He was only a couple of meters away when the person at the door shoved it open and triggered a switch within, blinding Wedge with unaccustomed light. He blinked against the glare, raising one hand to shield his eyes from it—and discovered that the person at the door was now facing him, blaster pistol in hand, held in a very professional-looking grip.

“State your business,” Iella said. “Or keep quiet and I’ll just shoot you.”

Wedge pulled the preposterous lavender mask away from his face.

He still couldn’t see Iella’s face, but her voice certainly didn’t soften. “Oh. You. Once and for all, I’m not going to tell you any more offworld stories. Go home.” She put away her blaster and beckoned him forward. Once he was close enough, she whispered, “Don’t say a word.” Then she grabbed him by his tunic’s ornate collar and dragged him into her quarters.

Inside, he had an impression of a small outer room lined with shelves loaded with electronic equipment; beyond was a larger, darkened chamber, the air within it warm and musty.

After closing the door and resetting her lock, Iella reached up to the top of one of the shelves, reaching over a decorative rim well above eye level, and drew down a device that looked like a datapad but with a series of sensor inputs at one end. She waved this slowly along all four sides of the door, and various digital notations appeared on the screen. Then she pointed it into the darkened portion of her quarters and hit a button; the screen filled with data. She nodded, cleared the screen, and set the device back up where she found it.

“All clear,” she said. “No new listening devices. Wedge, you can’t be here. You’ll compromise my identity.” Her tone was pleading, not angry.

“I need your help,” Wedge said. “Help I can’t get from channels. Help I can get only from you.”

She led him into the next chamber and triggered the light switch. This was some sort of receiving room. The floor, ceiling, and walls were all brown wood, perhaps comforting and warm at some time in the past, now slightly warped and occasionally stained. A woven circle lay on the floor as a rug; the room’s other furniture consisted of a flatscreen on the wall, a sofalike object that seemed to have been fashioned like the wing of an old model of Blade aircraft, and what Wedge recognized as an inexpensive computer terminal desk of Corellian make.

Iella slid out of her cloak. Today, she was not dressed in garments suited to social affairs; she wore trousers and boots in brown and the standard Adumari flare-sleeved tunic in a subdued rust-red. She sat at one end of the sofa. “All right, Wedge.”

He remained standing. “You told me earlier that when you got here, you weren’t supposed to send messages offworld—your employers wouldn’t let you—but that you did anyway. I inferred from your words that you were able to smuggle in or get access to a holocomm unit for your reports to your superiors.”

She nodded.

“I need access to it.”

“I can’t give it to you. Orders.”

“Yes, I know. You’re under direct orders from your superior not to permit any communications with the New Republic without his review. I’m asking you to break those orders.”

A touch of distress worked through the armor she wore instead of expression. She quickly got herself back under control. “Maybe you’d better explain that.”

“All right. First, I know that your boss, the regional head of New Republic Intelligence, is Tomer Darpen.”

This time her expression didn’t change. “I can’t confirm or deny that.”

“I don’t want you to. I’m not trying to wring some sort of admission out of you, Iella. This is just something I figured out … eventually. Darpen kept speaking on behalf of the local Intelligence head, as if he were privy to his thoughts. He kept issuing me orders and expecting me to follow them, meaning that he’s either very stupid or very used to having his orders obeyed, both out of keeping with the sort of role he was playing. So I conclude that Darpen is not just a diplomat, but also a major player with Intelligence.

“Anyway, he came to me today and ordered me to stop doing my sim-weapons training with Adumari pilots. Some of them are picking up the habit, which means we aren’t playing this diplomatic game by their rules, and he thinks that’s a very bad thing.”

Iella managed a soft smile. “He ordered you.”

“I’m usually pretty good about taking orders—”

“If occasionally reinterpreting them rather thoroughly—”

“But only when there’s a clear chain of command. Tomer Darpen isn’t in it. My fear is that he’s going to get in touch with General Cracken and get the confirmation of his orders that he needs … but in such a way that Cracken is still not aware of what it means. The live-weapons dueling, me and my pilots having to kill a lot of eager flyers who just want to achieve a little personal honor …”

Iella nodded. “So you want to give Cracken the whole story, so he can issue orders, or refuse them, based on the complete picture.”

“Yes.”

She sighed. “Wedge, I can’t help you. My chain of command is very clear, and so are my orders. What you’re doing now, provoking the regional Intelligence head, is a sort of contrariness that Admiral Ackbar or the Chief of State will excuse you for. What you’re asking me to do is deliberate disobedience of direct orders. I can’t.”

“Oh.” Suddenly deflated, Wedge sat on the opposite end of the couch. “Well, then. I’ll find a new plan. Perhaps I’ll send Janson and Hobbie back in their X-wings to deliver my message. It will just take longer. Maybe too long.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Me, too.”

“Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“Yes.” Stirring from his momentary depression, Wedge faced her. “Admiral Rogriss is in command of the Agonizer. I need a way to get in touch with him without alerting his subordinates … or our people.”

Her eyebrows went up. “Better not let my superior hear about that. He’ll think you’re conspiring with the enemy.”

“I hope very much to conspire with the enemy. Can you do it?”

“I think so. It may take some time. Anything else?”

“No.” He sighed. “Wait. Yes, there is.”

She waited.

“Iella, if General Cracken orders me to play Turr Phennir’s game with the aerial duels, I’ll refuse. I’ll resign my commission.” He saw her jaw drop. “When I do that, that’s my whole life, packaged up and fired out a missile port. I have to start over from the ground up: new career, new friends, new world, maybe even a new name.

“Since I’m on the verge of losing everything I have left, I need, I really need, to find out how I lost something earlier. So I don’t do it again with anyone else. I need to know how I lost your regard.”

She stared at him as if stupefied for long moments. Finally she shook her head and said, “Wedge, you never lost my regard. You never lost my respect.”

“Then how did I lose your friendship? Where did it go, how did I chase it off?” He felt a hard knot forming in his throat, and it made his voice raspy.

“It’s not like that. It’s nothing you did. It’s something I did.” Her expression lost all self-assurance. “Wedge, let’s not do this now.”

“When? Iella, we can’t do it when I’m a civilian, being shipped back to Coruscant in disgrace for a mission I never wanted in the first place. Now’s the time.” He slid toward her, the knot in his throat threatening to cut off his speech altogether. “Please, because we were friends. Tell me how we stopped. Was it my relationship with Qwi?”

A flicker of pain crossed her face. “No. Yes. It’s related to that.”

“Well, that certainly clarifies matters.”

She lashed out, striking his shoulder with her open palm. The blow nearly shoved him off the sofa. “Don’t make light of it. This is very hard for me.”

“I’m sorry.” Wedge rubbed the stinging from his shoulder and resumed his seat. “I’ll just listen.”

Her words were a long time in coming. He saw her struggle with them, as if trying to find the perfect angle of approach on a target that had none. Then tears came, just two of them. She brushed them away and finally spoke. “When Diric died … the way he died, still struggling with his brainwashing, still a tool of the Empire, and I had not just his loss to deal with but all that shame, you and Corran were there for me. Making things better. Whenever I flailed out, looking for support, my hand would fall into one of yours. That made all the difference. And when I gradually got better, when I eventually figured out that the galaxy was just going to keep spinning and I could keep functioning within it, you didn’t wander away. It wasn’t a ‘You’re all better now, so it’s back to work for me.’ I can’t tell you what that meant to me.

“And gradually, I began to wonder …” She was silent for long moments. “To wonder if maybe there was a chance for you and me.”

He gave her a nod. “I had those same thoughts.”

“But I told myself, ‘It’s too soon to be thinking about that.’ I told myself that for a long time. I just accepted the time we had together, like after the whole Lusankya affair. I coasted.”

“I didn’t want to put pressure on you,” Wedge said. “Any pressure. That would have been …”

“Morbid?”

“Opportunistic? Crude? Janson-like?”

She managed a little smile. “Looking back on it, after a while, I don’t suppose you could have thought I was still interested in you. We became just pals, like Corran and I are, while I waited for, I don’t know, that final signal from somewhere deep in my mind that I was all ready to start my life up again. That signal never came, or I missed it, and we were apart so much of the time … and one day there she was, Qwi Xux, the neediest little thing in the galaxy, hanging off your arm …”

Wedge cleared his throat. “Um, I’m not sure—”

“And I realized I’d waited too long. It was my mistake. I hadn’t told you the truth about the way I felt, I’d waited for you to make a first move you were too ethical to make, and all these expectations I’d made in my mind blew apart like the Death Star. One second, solid and permanent, the next second, countless millions of little white specks of nothingness.”

“So, ultimately, I lost your friendship by getting involved with another woman.”

Iella shook her head. “Not exactly, Wedge. It wasn’t what you did. It was because, after you did it, I couldn’t stand seeing you. It hurt every time I saw you, knowing that I’d thrown away my own opportunity. And you can’t be friends with someone who cuts out your heart, even unintentionally, every time you run into him.”

“You know we’re not together anymore. Qwi and I.”

She nodded, but her expression did not lighten. “Wes Janson told me the first night he ran into me, at the perator’s court.”

“And?”

“And what? And she’s gone, and so maybe we can start all over again?”

Surprised by the heat and anger in her voice, Wedge drew back. “Something like that.”

“Wedge Antilles, I don’t care how much it hurts. I will not be number two to some feather-brained—”

A small explosion next door vibrated the wall and burned a hole, the diameter of a finger, in it. Wedge grabbed Iella’s sleeve and pulled her down to the rug with him. He drew his own blaster.

Iella grabbed the barrel, kept him from swinging it into line. “Don’t,” she said. “It’s—”

Another shot penetrated the wall at about eye level. From the other quarters Wedge could hear shouting, the sound of pottery shattering.

“—just my neighbor, Garatty ke Kith—”

There was the familiar crack of a blastsword going off, and a yelp of pain.

“—and his feud with—”

“Irasai ke Voltin,” Wedge said.

“You know him?”

“You meet a lot of people when you’re an ambassador.”

There was one final crash, something like a hundred kilos of meat being violently slammed the floor, and quiet fell again.

“That will probably end the feud,” Iella said.

Wedge rose and offered her a hand up. He holstered his sidearm. He was surprised at how much energy the motion took. Suddenly his endurance seemed to have abandoned him. “Back to the subject. So what you’re saying is that I hurt you so badly that we can never be anything to one another again.”

Iella looked as though she were reviewing something—the last several things she’d said, perhaps the last several years of her life. Finally she said, “I suppose that is what I’m saying.” She looked on the verge of tears again. “I’m sorry, Wedge. I am. But I think you’d better leave.”

“It’s not leaving that’s hard anymore,” he said, scarcely recognizing his own voice. “It’s finding somewhere to go.” He turned toward the door.

Adrenaline jolted through him. The shock that hit him was that of a man realizing that he was about to step into a trap or a firefight, something that could end his life in a second.

It couldn’t be a precognitive warning. Outside of a cockpit, his pattern recognition skills didn’t afford him warnings like that … and besides, had there been danger beyond the door, Janson would have communicated with him.

No, the danger was more personal. It was indeed a matter of Step through that door and your life is over, but in a very different way. “Just how stupid do you think I am?” he asked.

“What?”

He turned to face her again. His energy was back. He felt it burning within him. And he now knew the nature of the one last barrier standing between the two of them: Her injured pride, shielding her from further harm … but also shielding her from him. “How big an idiot would I have to be to walk out that door?”

“I don’t understand, Wedge. I just wish you’d go.”

“Yes, it would be easier that way. Less risk of humiliation.” He moved to stand before her again. “Now, listen. For years, even when we didn’t see one another for ages, I knew that you were a part of my life. Until a few nights ago, when you said we weren’t friends anymore. Since then, I’ve been in mourning. Not just missing a friend, but grieving for a lost part of my life.

“It took me a while to figure that out, and to understand just how much I need you to be in my life. As my friend, and more than my friend, for good. Now you tell me it can’t happen. Because of mistakes. I made some, you made some, and now our chances are all behind us?” He shook his head vehemently. “No, Iella. That would be another mistake, and the older we get, the less time we have to bounce back from them. I’m tired of making mistakes.”

He put one hand behind her neck, the other around her waist, and drew her to him. She looked at him, surprise in her eyes.

“You’re a grown woman and in training,” he said. “If you want me out of your room, it’ll take you just one knee and a little leverage to put me out. But you can’t just tell me to go, not this time. I love you. I’m not going to meekly walk away.” He pulled her face to his and kissed her.

He had a glimpse of her widening eyes. Then he was lost in the sweetness of her lips.

He could have tensed against the impact he was sure would follow, but did not. If this was to be the last kiss he was ever to have from her, he wanted to enjoy every millisecond of it.

And the milliseconds stretched into full seconds, and her arms snaked around his neck and held him tight. Finally, it was a need for oxygen that forced him to break their kiss. He held her tight, looking into eyes that were wide but not alarmed, lips that were curved ever so slightly into an enigmatic smile. “If I’m lying in a ball in the corridor,” he said, “I’m doing a tremendous job of hallucinating that I’m not.”

“Now’s not the time to joke,” she said.

“Very well.”

She put her fingers up in his hair, turned his head this way and that, and looked at him as though seeing him for the first time. “So this is the cockpit Wedge,” she said. “The one the enemy has boxed in, and suddenly he snaps and goes off in an unanticipated direction, changing all the rules.”

“That’s me.”

“It’s very becoming. I wish you’d shown him to me before. Why aren’t you like this on the ground?”

He shrugged. “I’ve never been all that comfortable on the ground. But I’m learning.”

“I’d say you were.” She kissed him.

When they broke for air a second time, Wedge noted, without surprise, that they were seated on her sofa again. He hadn’t remembered getting there, but supposed that the sofa legs were not as close to buckling as his were.

“What you said before,” Iella said, a whisper against his mouth, “about being in your life for good, sounded a lot like a proposal.”

“Let me make it formal.” Wedge pulled back, to stand, to adopt a traditional pose, but Iella didn’t release him.

“Later,” she said. “After Adumar. Let’s just say for now that I’m willing to stop making mistakes if you are.”

“It’s a deal.” He supposed she wanted to hear the words in surroundings less alien, in times less stressful.

“But you need to understand something. No matter what a great leader you may be, Intelligence doesn’t take orders from Starfighter Command.”

“Or the other way around.”

“Right. Or the other way around.”

“I can live with that.”

Her expression became worried. “Can you live with this? Wedge, I’m an Intelligence officer. If my superior tells me to, I may end up on the opposite side from you.”

“Just until this Adumar mess is over,” he reminded her.

She nodded. “But will you be able to forgive me? If I have to throw a net over you and ship you offworld because of your damned fool cockpit-jockey antics?”

“I’d forgive you. Though I won’t have to.” He gave her a confident grin. “You wouldn’t be able to catch me.”

Her return smile was that of a well-fed predator. “I have the feeling I can catch you anytime I want.” She kissed him again.

When Wedge finally left Iella’s quarters, Janson moved out from his hiding position to join him. Janson was not graceful going down the stairs; one of his knees tended to pop, and his posture was stiff.

“You’re getting old, Wes.”

“I am not old. I’m stiff from waiting for hours in that stupid corner. With just three pastries off the Allegiance to sustain me. Hiding out from all the other skulker traffic. Did you get what you wanted from Iella?”

Wedge turned a surprised face toward Janson. “What?”

“The holocomm access to General Cracken? Did she say you could?”

“Oh, that. No.” He felt his smile return. Wes was merely baiting him, as usual. “Say, what happened next door, anyway?”

They reached the bottom of the stairs and marched, Janson hobbling, through the foyer toward the street. “The guy we met hit the guy who lived there just as he was going in. They fought for few seconds, and then there was a lot of quiet, and then the guy we talked to came staggering out of there with the other guy across his shoulders. Dead, I think. And me without anyone to bet with.”

They reached the street. Wedge was struck sideways by a blast of intense light; he stumbled, threw up his sleeve to block the glare. “Sithspit! What’s that?”

“That’s the sun, Wedge. It’s after dawn.”

“Well, it offends me. Turn it off.”

“It’s a hundred thirty, hundred forty million klicks from here.”

“Go up in your X-wing and shoot it down for me.”

“You’re acting very strangely, chief. Come on, this way.” Janson tugged Wedge in the direction of their quarters. “Something else odd happened during the night.”

“What?”

“In the darkest, quietest hours—you hardly ever even heard someone swinging on a cable from balcony to balcony, and there were barely two knife fights out there to keep me awake—I thought I heard breathing.”

Wedge afforded him an amused glance. “You breathe, don’t you? In between fits of bragging, that is.”

Janson shook his head, for once completely serious. “When I was just sitting there with my back to the wall, I thought I heard the creak of someone on the stairs. Coming up, I think. I turned to look around the corner and there was no one to be seen … though the entire stairwell wasn’t lit, of course. Someone could have been standing in the deepest shadows, the way I was in that hallway. I waited and didn’t hear anything more, and then I held my breath and listened. I thought I heard someone breathing over there, but eventually there was a roaring in my ears—”

“That old lack of oxygen thing will get you every time. How much brain damage did you suffer?”

“Wedge …”

“And, more importantly, was it to any of the parts of your brain that you use, or was it in the majority portion?”

“Wedge … I really think someone was spying.”

“Well, you should have introduced yourself.” Wedge moved over to the street curb and walked along its very edge, balancing like a high-wire walker.

“Wedge, stop acting like a kid. You’re embarrassing me.”

•      •      •

Wedge had been asleep in his quarters for five minutes when he became aware of a noise from the main room: shouting, crashing of furniture. Sleepily, he pulled on a robe and stumbled over to open his door.

Tomer Darpen was in the main room, walking in circles around the main table. Tycho stood slumped, yawning, in the doorway to his room. Hobbie was sprawled on the main room floor, immediately behind him a tipped-over chair showing how he’d come to end up prone, and was carefully aiming a comlink at Tomer and thumbing its on-off switch as though firing a blaster at the diplomat; his expression was groggy enough to suggest that’s exactly what he thought he was doing. Janson emerged in his own doorway, his robe askew, and if glares were lasers Tomer would have been the victim of a dual-linked direct strike.

Tomer was speaking in a voice loud enough to awaken sleepers on the floors immediately above and below: “—very promising indeed, but we need to be there with our best faces on …” Making the turn at the end of the table, he caught sight of Wedge. “General! Excellent news.”

“Excellent enough to persuade Hobbie to spare your life, I hope,” Wedge said.

Tomer glanced at the semiconscious pilot. “Maybe even that good. As you know, the perator of Cartann, two days ago, flew in representatives of all of Adumar’s nations for purposes of discussing the foundation of a world government.”

“I didn’t know,” Wedge said. “Did you include that in a briefing you sent us?”

“I—uh, oh.” Tomer looked abashed, gave Wedge an apologetic look. “My mistake. I thought we’d done so. At any rate, we’ve received word from the perator’s palace that they’ll be making an announcement on that subject this morning.”

“… ths mrnng,” said the cabinet beside him, its words muffled.

Tomer glanced at it. “What’s this?”

“Wt’s ths?” said the cabinet.

“Cabinet,” Wedge said.

“I know it’s a cabinet, but it’s talking.”

“… ts tlkng,” said the cabinet.

“Oh, that,” said Janson. “It’s the Cartann Minister of Crawling Into Very Small Spaces.”

Tycho nodded. “He bet Wedge that he could fold himself into that cabinet, around the shelves and all.”

Hobbie finally found his voice, though it was gravelly from lost sleep. “Never bet against Wedge,” he said. “The minister gets to stay there until he admits that it was a stupid bet and Wedge doesn’t owe him anything.”

Tomer looked among them, his expression making it clear that he knew they were kidding … and yet there was still a trace of uncertainty to it. “Anyway,” he said, “be ready and at the perator’s palace in an hour, please.”

“… hr, pls,” said the cabinet.

“We’ll be ready,” Wedge said.

When Tomer was gone, Wedge opened the cabinet. Whitecap was still there, but less of him; the back of his head was open, and it was evident that hardware once mounted within him was missing.

“Looks like Hallis did some scavenging,” Tycho said.

“Looks like Hallis—”

Wedge shut the cabinet against further words. “Where is she, anyway? Haven’t seen her recently.”

Tycho shrugged. “Haven’t seen Cheriss either, not since some time last night. I think we’re being abandoned by our retinue.”

Janson moved to the closet of not-yet-claimed Adumari garments. “What to wear, what to wear …”

“Dress uniforms, please,” Wedge said.

The others groaned.

“No, this is an official diplomatic function. From now on, at all such functions, it’s dress uniforms. Issue blasters and vibroblades, but no blastswords. We’re not Adumari, and it’s time to stop legitimizing their bad behavior; we won’t emulate them in any way.” Wedge clapped his hands together. “Let’s go, people.”

“Great,” Hobbie said. “Who brought the old Wedge out of retirement?”

8

The New Republic officers’ dress uniform—designed in committee long ago, implemented months or years before Wedge was even aware of its existence—was not the fashion disaster its wearers made it out to be.

It started with a black sleeveless turtleneck body stocking and boots. Over it went a white jacket, a V-necked garment that fastened at about navel level and below. A broad red band ran along the left hem of the garment, up over the shoulder and at an angle down the back, with a rank designation in gold on the red band above the wearer’s left breast. A gray belt over the jacket completed the outfit.

There were variations to the uniform, with Starfighter Command utilizing black body stockings and Fleet Command preferring gray, for instance. Higher-ranking officers often preferred instead, and were allowed, to wear somewhat costlier and better-kept versions of their day uniforms in formal circumstances.

It was, Wedge thought, the body stocking that most wearers objected to. Flight suits and pilot day uniforms were baggy things festooned with pockets. They were comfortable. The wearer could carry his datapad, plus amusements and weapons for a half squad, in those pockets. The dress uniform body stocking had no pockets, and the jacket had only a couple of small ones—barely large enough for datacards. Too, the body stocking revealed any extra weight its wearer might be carrying, a fact not at all appreciated by image-conscious officers … and pilots were often the most image-conscious of all.

But the uniforms tended to have an effect on their audience. When Wedge and his pilots strode into the Outer Court of the Royal Residence, where they’d had their reception the first night, the crowd assembled there voiced an appreciative “ooh” that was music to Wedge’s ears. He raised a hand to wave jauntily to the crowd, his smile projecting confidence, not betraying the slight queasiness he felt as the court’s miasma of perfumes began to assault him.

“I feel fat,” Hobbie said.

“You’re not fat,” Janson said. “Except—never mind.”

“What?” Hobbie said.

“Nothing.”

“No, tell me. I’ve been working out. I’ve been good. You just can’t work on everything.”

“That’s right,” Janson said. “It’s scarcely noticeable.”

“Where?”

A woman—already tall, her height amplified by the way her brown hair was piled atop her head—moved up beside Wedge. “I found out who that other room belongs to,” she said.

Wedge looked at her, then peered closer. “Hallis?”

She looked exasperated. “Yes, Hallis.”

“Sorry, you still look different with only one head.”

“Men always tell me that …”

“What other room?”

“The one where the man went after he’d been through your quarters.”

“Ah, that one.” Wedge nodded. “It belongs to Tomer Darpen.”

She looked crestfallen. “You already knew.”

“No, I guessed, based on some other evidence I’ve picked up. It’s very valuable to me to have your confirmation. Your work wasn’t wasted. Where is your recording unit?”

She pointed to her hair. The elaborate combs holding her hairstyle in place each featured several crystals, plus smaller stones, some of which seemed to be glowing. “The lenses and microphones are up here, and I have cables down to the processor and storage memory, which are on the small of my back. I can even zoom with sight and sound.”

“Less menacing that way. I think you’ll get further with children with a rig like this.”

“I suspect you’re right.” Clusters of Adumari began to converge on the pilots. “Time for me to leave. I’ll talk to you later.” She moved off into the crowd, drawing her cloak around her, effortlessly becoming an anonymous Adumari woman.

Wedge steeled himself for another endless round of handshaking and introductions. But the diplomatic ritual was to have an unexpected benefit: The fifth introduction he received was from the Cartann Minister of Cognitive Machinery, and on his arm was Iella Wessiri. Today she was in another sheath dress, this one ranging from red to yellow-gold depending on the angle from which one viewed the material, and how it hung upon her; when she was in motion, it was like watching fire walk. “This young lady,” the wispy-bearded minister said, “is, like yourself, an otherworlder, and has expressed an interest in meeting the famous pilot. I plucked her from work today so that she might do so.”

“I’m delighted to oblige,” Wedge said. When he took her hand, he felt something crinkle in his palm. Iella withdrew her hand and departed with her minister, leaving Wedge with a scrap of flimsi in his hand and a happy memory of her dazzling smile.

As inconspicuously as he could, he glanced at the flimsi. On it was written a note—the name “Rogriss,” followed by a series of numbers, recognizable as a specific communications frequency.

Wedge nodded. That would be the frequency the admiral kept one personal comm unit tuned to—something only his executive officer and one or two others aboard Agonizer should have known. Wedge couldn’t begin to guess how Iella had come by the knowledge; he was just glad she had. He pocketed the scrap.

As the introductions and handshakes continued, he scanned the assembly. He caught sight of Turr Phennir and pilots, standing in a tight little quartet, all in Adumari dress. Phennir was scowling, definitely unhappy, and Wedge grinned at him. It was possibly the most minor of victories—Wedge and pilots had upstaged the Imperial flyers with their distinctive uniforms and entrance—but Wedge was happy to accept any victory he could get.

More invitees crowded into the hall and began to segregate themselves into large groups. Wedge tried to puzzle out what the divisions meant.

The perator, once again in gold, was surrounded chiefly by ministers and other courtiers; that group was easy to define. Tomer Darpen hovered at its edges, prevented by his alien status from moving closer to the center and hearing what the perator was saying, prevented by his own nature from moving farther away.

Wedge saw in two other groups pilots he’d flown against in simulations training. Most seemed to be on the periphery of one group of thirty or so well-dressed nobles, while a couple were with a different group of similar size. Wedge noted that the garments of these groups tended to be slightly different in cut and style than those he was used to, and realized that the pilots he recognized were all from nations other than Cartann. That was it, then; these were delegations from other nations.

Another group was of Cartann nobles—Wedge saw Iella and her minister among them. Iella noticed his attention, gave him a smile; then she was back in character and responding to something said by one of the men in her vicinity. Most of that crowd constituted men and women dressed in similar stuffy fashion, which suggested that this was a crowd of ministers, but the fact that they were well away from the perator said that they were a group the ruler had no particular need to consult—minor functionaries.

Turr Phennir and his pilots were at the center of their own knot of people. One of Phennir’s pilots, a tall redheaded man, had his hand out before him as if grasping a TIE fighter’s yoke; his hand shook as though he were firing on a target, and his eyes were wide, animated. The group around him made noises of admiration. Phennir was not paying attention; his gaze was on Wedge.

“Before the day’s events begin,” called a courtier, “a diversion. Ground Champion Cheriss ke Hanadi accepts a title challenge from Lord Pilot Eneboros ke Shalapan.”

“That explains where Cheriss is,” Tycho said, and craned his head for a better look.

The crowd in the vicinity of the perator moved back to make an open circle; Wedge headed that way.

Cheriss was already in the center of the circle, stretching, going through a few practice thrusts and lunges with her blastsword’s power off. Her appearance was different from the way it had been in the previous blastsword match; her intensity was there, but she wore no predatory smile. She also looked tired, a little disheveled, not her meticulously neat self.

Into Wedge’s ear, Hobbie said, “She’s wearing the same clothes from yesterday.”

Beside him, Janson nodded. “Not like her. Such a clean girl. Even when she’s stabbing people.”

“Quiet,” Wedge said. “There’s something wrong here.”

Her opponent, at the edge of the crowd, was very tall and lean, with an elaborately curled brown mustache and a goatee that tended more toward blond. Friends or assistants to either side of him were binding up his flowing sleeves so they would not interfere with his motions. When he was ready, he nodded to the speaker, who in turn caught Cheriss’s eye. She thumbed on the power of her blastsword and its tip began leaving blue trails through the air. Her challenger also flourished with his blade, its tip leaving traces of a more purple-blue behind.

The announcer called for salutes to the perator, then signaled for the fight to begin.

It didn’t take long. The challenger moved in with a thrust that was little more than an initial probe. Cheriss swept it aside and, in the same motion, threw herself forward, a daring counterstrike that left her exposed … but caught her enemy in the rib cage. There was a crack and a flash of blue light, and with a cry her challenger went down.

Cheriss looked to the perator.

The ruler of Cartann shrugged and put his hand out, palm down—the signal that the defeated man should die.

Cheriss slowly shook her head and turned her back on the defeated man and the perator. She moved into the crowd, leaving the fight behind. The audience parted for her, many of its members offering a low noise of surprise.

“Did she just do what I thought she did?” Wedge asked. “Give the perator the choice on what happened to her opponent, and then defy him?”

“That’s what I got out of it, boss,” Hobbie said.

The perator was scowling now, but lost the expression when a minister stepped up to him and began talking. In moments, the ruler had apparently forgotten the fight, and friends of the challenger picked the injured man up to carry him from the hall.

Wedge moved through the crowd in pursuit of Cheriss. When he caught up to her, she was speaking to the man who had announced her fight. “… standard acceptance for ke Seiufere,” she said. The man nodded.

“Cheriss, a moment of your time?”

She glanced at Wedge, and he was taken aback by what he saw in her expression. Before she had always been so animated, so full of energy and cheer; now her eyes seemed dull, lacking passion or interest. “A moment, yes,” she said.

“What are you doing?”

She offered an indifferent shrug. “While I have been acting as your guide, I have let other duties pile up. Such as attending to the many challenges I receive. I am merely clearing some of those away now.” She suppressed a yawn.

“You haven’t changed since yesterday. Have you slept?”

She shook her head. “I don’t need sleep to deal with these pretenders.” She looked over Wedge’s shoulder and her expression became even more mournful. “You’d best go. Someone might grow suspicious … for no good reason at all.” She turned her back on him and moved into the crowd.

Wedge turned to look. Immediately behind him was Tycho, alert and intent as ever. That didn’t make sense; why would Tycho “grow suspicious”?

But over his shoulder, a few meters back, doing a very good job of looking innocuous, stood Iella.

Wedge froze and continued to scan the crowd in that direction. Who else could have provoked such a response from Cheriss? He noted and dismissed a double dozen faces. No, she had to have been referring to Iella.

But she shouldn’t have known Iella’s face. To know it, she had to have … Wedge calculated the times any of the New Republic pilots had been in contact with Iella. No, Cheriss had to have seen it last night. She had to have been the quiet stalker Janson had heard. She must have been outside Wedge’s quarters when he and Janson returned from the Allegiance last night, must have followed them to their meeting with Iella, must have later gotten a look at Iella’s face by some means.

And now she was—

“We are doubly blessed,” called the announcer. “Ground Champion Cheriss ke Hanadi, not content with a single victory this day, accepts a title challenge from Lord Pilot Phalle ke Seiufere.”

The crowd moved out to open another circle, and there stood Cheriss, this time opposite a squat plug of a man who looked as though he had tremendous upper body strength. Blond, with shoulder-length yellow hair and a mustache that trailed and swayed limply, the new challenger stared at Cheriss with real anger in his sea-green eyes.

Wedge swore to himself. The fight was already under way by the time he was able to maneuver himself to the front of the crowd. Nor was this a quick and easy battle like the last one; Wedge saw Cheriss and her opponent exchange assault after assault, each time deflecting blastsword blows with deft parries or by the more punishing method of catching the explosive blows on the guards of their swords. Within moments the air was thick with the delicate, colorful traceries of the movements of blastsword tips and with the acrid smell of blaster impacts, which became almost strong enough to overpower the perfumes.

Cheriss’s opponent, strong and fast, seemed to have no problem swatting aside Cheriss’s assaults before her blade point endangered him. Some of her thrusts, breathtaking in their speed and intricacy, snaked around the guard on his left-hand dagger, but these he took with equal skill on his blastsword guard, always disengaging immediately and moving forward in aggressive attack, driving Cheriss into retreat. Soon both Cheriss and her opponent were breathing heavily, sweat running from beneath their heavy and elaborate clothing.

Cheriss, slowing, swept her opponent’s point aside with the knife she still held in her distinctive reverse grip and leaped forward into a lunge. Her opponent riposted, his blastsword moving her tip out of line while his remained in line—but her lunge took her body lower than it customarily did, and suddenly she was skidding past him on her knees. Cheriss struck backward without looking and her blastsword point took her opponent behind the left knee. He yelped loud enough to drown out the blaster sound of impact, and collapsed onto one leg; before he could begin to recover, before he could force his body to work through the pain and shock of blast impact, Cheriss rose, spun, and tapped him once on each arm. He shrieked once more and slammed to the floor. Smoke rose from his wounds and the air filled with the smell of burned flesh.

The audience applauded. Cheriss, looking far more tired and shaky than Wedge had ever seen her, bowed her head to the crowd, then looked to the perator.

This time the ruler did not bother to give her a cue. He turned his back on Cheriss and her downed opponent. The crowd uttered a rippling noise of surprise. Cheriss turned her back on her opponent and moved into the crowd.

Wedge headed for her. But before he could take half a dozen steps through the milling crowd, the announcer called out, “Attend! Before this day is given over entirely to demonstrations of the blastsword art, the perator wishes to address us, and all the world, on the matter of today’s gathering.”

The crowd went into motion again, its elements dividing by what looked like random motion into its earlier groupings. Wedge lost track of Cheriss and sighed. He returned to his pilots. Tomer and Hallis joined them a moment later.

“Nice timing with the New Republic uniforms,” Tomer said. “It turns out the perator’s going to broadcast worldwide. And the Imp pilots, in local dress, don’t even stand out in the crowd. You couldn’t have done better.”

“Nice to know I’ve accomplished something on a diplomatic level,” Wedge said.

Tapestries high up on two of the walls drew aside, revealing the flatscreens Wedge had seen on the night of his arrival on-planet. The screens showed confused, wavering visions of a crowd—this crowd—and then settled in on the face of the perator, who was smiling, golden, looking as perfect and imperishable as a statue. The perator was looking off to the side, talking to someone; he received some sort of cue, for he turned directly into the flatcam view and his smile broadened, became dazzling.

“On this historic day,” the perator said, “I address all of Adumar—something I find I will be doing often.

“We have now had time to see that Adumar does not exist in a void. Rather, we share the universe with other worlds, and collectives of worlds. Hidden for centuries by distance and forgetfulness, we find ourselves now within easy reach of new friends who would embrace us as equals—except for one important manner in which we are not their equals.”

A murmur rose in the ranks of the audience, and many of its members looked at Wedge and his pilots, at Turr Phennir and the Imperial flyers. The expressions of some were curious; those of others graduated toward resentment or suspicion.

“I find,” the perator said, “that we lag behind these united worlds in only one characteristic—one which is easily corrected. We are a world divided by ancient borders, national identities that serve only to keep us apart and to fragment our ability to make wise decisions affecting all Adumar. I am grateful to our visitors from other worlds and their gentle manner of demonstrating this to us.”

“We haven’t demonstrated anything,” Wedge whispered. “We haven’t been able to talk to him.”

“True,” Tomer said, also in hushed tones. “But he’s been absorbing information we’ve passed on to him. Records, histories, encyclopedias.”

“In consultation with the rulers and representatives of other nations,” the perator said, “we have come to an agreement that the establishment of a unified world government for Adumar will allow us to interact with outside worlds more effectively, permitting the establishment of trade and exchange of knowledge.”

“This is good,” Tomer whispered. “This is excellent.”

The perator drew himself more upright, and his expression turned from cheerful benevolence to a leader’s awareness of history and import. “So,” he said, “on this memorable day, I hereby establish the government of the world of Adumar. With both humility and trepidation I take the reins of command of a united world.” There was a stirring, a growing murmur, from one portion of the audience, but he continued, “This new government will be structured as an outgrowth of the government of Cartann, and will be centered in the city of Cartann to allow for an instantaneous and effective implementation of rule.” He bowed his head in humility.

Portions of the audience applauded. But a riot of noise erupted from one large cluster of the audience—the one, Wedge saw, that was dominated by foreign dignitaries. “Wait!” cried one dignitary. He surged ahead, out of his cluster of crowd and toward the perator’s waving his hands, his flared sleeves rippling with all the colors of the rainbow. “There has been no vote—”

“Liar!” That was a shout from a deep-voiced representative wearing muted greens; even his hair and beard were green. “You cannot unilaterally—” The rest of his shout was drowned out by the rising volume of applause and shouts from elsewhere in the audience.

Not one of these angry declamations was broadcast over the flatscreens on the walls. Wedge supposed that a directional voice pickup was being used so that the perator’s words, and only his words, would be broadcast.

Wedge glanced at Tomer. “Is what I think is happening actually taking place here?”

Tomer, confusion on his face, kept his attention on the perator and shrugged.

“You know what they call it when one ruler declares a world government and the rest don’t agree?” Wedge asked. He could recognize the anger, the taunting quality, in his own voice. “We get a war of conquest. Lasers and missiles fired on civilian populations.”

“Shut up,” Tomer said.

The perator finally raised his eyes to look out over his worldwide audience again, and a gentle smile returned to his lips. “Today is the last day of the old Adumar,” he said. “Prepare yourselves and prepare your children for a new age, a golden age, to follow. Tomorrow we will all be citizens of a new and greater world.” He nodded, and the flatscreens on the wall faded to a neutral gray.

Most of the audience burst out in wild applause. The foreign section did not. Some of its members were now at the edges of the perator’s retinue and being restrained by liveried guards.

The perator addressed them. “You must decide what is best for your own nations, of course,” he said. His voice was artificially amplified and carried over the shouts of objection and cheers of approval. “Return to your delegations. Call your homelands. Do what you feel you must. But trust me, simple acquiescence will be best. Tomorrow all nations will be one, and governed from this palace. You want to be governed as friends and allies—not enemies of the state.” His pose dignified, he turned and headed toward one of the side exits, a portion of his retinue accompanying him.

Wedge glared at Tomer.

But the diplomat did not look at all abashed. “You can’t blame this on me,” he said. “He’s taken our suggestions about a world government and simply sliced them into his own ambitions for rule.”

Wedge’s anger didn’t waver. “But are you going to press him to abandon this plan if it leads to war?”

Tomer shook his head. “This is a strictly internal affair, General. The perator might be using our presence, our organizational needs, as a rationalization for this move. But we’re not involved, and we can’t become involved.”

“Cartann and its satellite nations, if I read things right, are powerful enough to conquer the nations most likely to resist,” Wedge said. “So they form a world government, and it’s what you’ve seen. A state where human life is only valuable when it’s harvested for personal honor. You think the New Republic will want it? You think it will have anything in common with the New Republic?”

Tomer nodded, his expression confident. “We’ll be able to work it out. Speaking of which—”

“More diversion for the attendees,” cried the announcer. “Cheriss ke Hanadi accepts a ground title challenge from Lord Pilot Thanaer ke Sekae.”

Wedge growled out something inarticulate. To Tomer, he said, “Later.” Then he turned and plunged into the crowd, heading toward the open area already forming.

He spotted and reached Cheriss before she entered the circle. If anything, she looked more tired, more lifeless than before. He glowered at the men and women surrounding her until they retreated a step or two. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked her.

She looked at him, a sidelong glance without emotion. “I told you already.”

“You lied,” he said. “I’ll tell you. You’re committing suicide.”

“No. I can beat him.” Yet there was no anger in her voice, no emotion of any kind.

“Probably. If you do, will you accept another challenge?”

“Yes.”

“And another?”

“Yes.”

“Until what?”

“Until there are no challenges left.”

“Or you’re defeated.” He leaned in closer. “You spurned the perator earlier today. You offered him the fate of your foe and then you chose the other way. Now, to avenge the insult and please the perator, anyone who defeats you will kill you. No one will offer you mercy ever again. Correct?”

She looked past him to where her opponent waited. Wedge caught a glimpse of him, a man of medium height, his dark tunic and beard tricked out with fringes of flowing red ribbons. “My opponent is waiting,” she said.

“He can wait.” Wedge drew a deep breath and tried to settle his thoughts. “Cheriss, I’m going to say some things to you now. They’re going to sound egotistical. You’re probably going to deny them. I don’t really care. I know I’m right.

“You care about me, and you know I care about someone else, and you’ve decided to die rather than live with that.”

She just looked at him.

“I’m waiting.” That was Cheriss’s opponent, standing alone in the ring.

Wedge didn’t even look at him. “You’ve waited this long,” he called out. “Another few minutes won’t make you any homelier.”

Members of the audience tittered. Wedge recognized Janson’s laugh among the others.

He returned his attention to Cheriss. “I just wish,” he said, “that in addition to caring about me, you had some respect for me.”

“How can you say that?” At last there was emotion in her voice, unrestrained anger. “If I did not respect—”

“You wouldn’t be pointlessly throwing your life away, in direct contradiction to everything I believe?” People surrounding them looked at him, and he struggled to lower his tone. “Cheriss, this is an act of dishonor.”

Her tone turned contemptuous. “You really believe that.”

“I can prove it to you. At least, I can prove to you that everything you think about me is wrong. What is it about me that you, and the other Adumari, think is so honorable?”

“Your success in killing the enemy—”

“No. That’s dishonorable.” He waited until her eyes widened, then he continued, “Or it would be, without the right intent. Why do I kill the enemy, Cheriss?”

“For—for the honor—”

“Circular thinking. I’m honorable because I kill the enemy, and I kill the enemy for the honor. There’s nothing there, Cheriss. Here’s the truth: I kill the enemy so someone, somewhere—probably someone I’ve never met and never will meet—will be happy.”

She looked confused. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Yes, it does. I told you how I lost my parents. Nothing I ever do can make up for that loss. But if I put myself in the way of people just as bad as the ones who killed my family, if I burn them down, then someone else they would have hurt gets to stay happy. That’s the only honorable thing about my profession. It’s not the killing. It’s making the galaxy a little better.”

She shook her head, unbelieving.

“And now you’re here, thinking like an immature girl instead of a woman, anxious to throw away your life because you’re unhappy now. And because you’ve been told all your life that there’s honor in doing something like this. Tell me, where’s the honor? Are you making Adumar a better place? Are you giving anyone a better life? Are you weeding bad men out of the court of Cartann, or are you just cutting them down randomly?”

“I … I …”

“Just stop doing this, Cheriss. Figure out how you’re going to live and be happy, not why you can’t. We’ll talk. You’ll learn how.”

Something settled in Cheriss’s expression, some pain behind her eyes. “Very well,” she said. “After this fight.”

“Refuse this challenge. It’s meaningless.”

“It’s meaningless … but I’ve already accepted it.” She drew her blastsword and examined the blade from guard to point. “I can’t withdraw my acceptance now. I’d be shamed forever.”

“Cheriss—”

“I can’t, General.” She moved past him to stand at the edge of the circle.

Wedge’s pilots and Tomer moved in beside him as the announcer went through the usual ritual commencing a duel.

“No good, huh?” Janson asked.

“Some good,” Wedge said. “If she survives.” He looked around, caught sight of Iella. She was standing once more beside her minister escort, her expression mimicking the appreciation of blood sports Wedge could see on countless faces around her … but she saw Wedge looking, and he glimpsed worry behind her act.

Then Cheriss and Thanaer moved against one another.

Their duel was much like the last one, for Thanaer’s blows were strong and lightning-fast … and it seemed to Wedge that Cheriss had slowed further. Nor had she the physical strength to beat her way past Thanaer’s defense; with dagger and blastsword he swept each of her thrusts aside. They drove against one another in a clinch, each blastsword locked at its hilt against the other’s knife, and when they parted, she managed to blood his sword arm’s wrist with a sudden slash of her knife, but the wound did not slow him.

Then they came together, another furious exchange of thrusts and parries, and one of Thanaer’s blows, almost too fast to trace, flicked past her defense to strike her in the chest. There was a crack of released energy. Cheriss was thrown back and down to the floor by the blow.

She lay unmoving, her eyes closed, her breath coming fast and shallow. Moving with exaggerated slowness and care, Thanaer sheathed his dagger, reached down to switch off the power to Cheriss’s blastsword, and nudged that weapon away with the toe of his boot. Then he looked out into the crowd.

A lady at the edge of the crowd—blond, appealing, dressed in alternating shades of blue and violet, her features innocent and carefree—smiled at him and held out her hand. Palm down.

“So it is,” Thanaer said, and raised the point of his blastsword.

Wedge took a step forward, opened his mouth to speak—but he was a half second behind Janson, who shouted, a bellow that filled the chamber, “Challenge!”

Thanaer and the crowd turned to look. Janson stood, one hand in the air and feet apart in a mockery of a heroic pose, his expression merry. “That’s right, Ribbon-Beard. I challenge you.”

Thanaer blinked at him. “Title or non-title?”

“Oh, non-title, I think. I don’t want your title. Just some of that thin stuff you use for blood.”

The Cartann pilot smiled at him. “Very well. As soon as I dispose of this ground-bound rubbish, we can begin.”

Janson’s tone became mocking. “No, no, no. You kill her and I withdraw the challenge.”

A murmur rose in the crowd, a sound of surprise. Thanaer’s face darkened. “You insult me, Major.”

Tomer, behind Wedge and Janson, whispered, “You can’t do that. If you put conditions on the offering of challenge, it suggests that you have no interest in dueling him. Only in the conditions.”

Janson whispered back, “Thank you, Tomer. Now I understand.” He raised his voice. “Yes, Thanaer, I insult you.” The murmurs in the crowd grew louder. “You see, you’re just not good enough to face me in the air or on the ground. I have no interest in dueling you. I’ll do it for the girl’s sake. Spare her, I’ll give you this once-in-a-lifetime chance. Kill her and I’ll treat you like the nobody you are, and you’ll never get to face me. Is that simple enough for you to understand?” With his last few words, he took on the tone of a school lecturer who had neither affection nor respect for his students.

There were gasps from the crowd at his words. Thanaer straightened, stiffening, and looked down at Cheriss. His thinking was very clear to Wedge: Kill the girl, not just for the honor, but to offend Janson, or accept the challenge and gobble up all the honor he could.

He sheathed his sword. “I accept,” he said. “I will put your words on the tip of my blastsword and reinsert them in you.” He moved away from Cheriss to stand at the edge of the crowd.

Wedge and his pilots moved to kneel beside Cheriss. Her face was covered in a sheen of sweat, and there was a grayness, a pallor to it. Steam rose from her wound.

“Upper left pectoral,” Tycho said. “Not too deep. Survivable. But she’s in shock. That can kill her.”

Wedge swore to himself. The dress uniforms they wore didn’t allow them to carry their headsets; the comlinks they carried were very small, short-range only. He said, “Tycho, get her to the plaza. Don’t waste time. Don’t let anybody stop you. Hobbie, relay a message via the X-wings to Allegiance. Have them scramble a medical team down to our arrival plaza in the shuttle. Then catch up to Tycho. Act as his wingman to the plaza.”

Tycho nodded and gathered Cheriss up in his arms. In seconds both pilots were gone.

Wedge and Janson straightened and turned to look at Thanaer. The Cartann pilot was executing the same lunge over and over again for the enjoyment of the crowd.

“You jumped out ahead of me,” Wedge said. “This was my fight.”

Janson smiled. “Notice that, did you?”

“You don’t think I can take him?”

“I know you can.” Janson’s smile changed from simple merriment to the cold, reptilian satisfaction he sometimes demonstrated when he finally got a target lock on a difficult opponent who richly deserved to become one with deep-space vacuum. “But there are three important reasons why I should take this fight and you shouldn’t.”

“Such as.”

“First, the professional reason. You’re the diplomat, the focus of what’s going on. Should something go wrong, you’re not expendable. I am. Second, a personal reason. You’d do this out of duty. Me, I’m going to enjoy it.” He took off his belt and shrugged his way out of the jacket, exposing bare arms and the vibroblade sheath strapped to his left forearm. He handed both garments to Wedge and picked up Cheriss’s blastsword.

“Third reason?”

“Also personal.” He glanced past Wedge into the crowd. “I’m not sure what all went on last night … but you can consider this an engagement present. Or whatever.” He turned from Wedge and stepped out into the circle, raising the blastsword high.

The audience roared.

“Before you die,” Thanaer said, “I’m going to teach you the consequences of insulting your betters.”

Janson smiled back at him. He gestured toward the woman who had pronounced the palm-down death sentence on Cheriss. “Thanaer, I have to admit, your widow sure is pretty.”

The announcer interrupted their exchange. “We have a non-title ground challenge. Our new ground champion, Lord Pilot Thanaer ke Sekae, accepts the challenge of Major Wes Janson of the New Republic diplomatic envoy.”

There was little applause from the crowd this time. Wedge sensed a breathlessness to their expectation. He shared it.

He didn’t realize Tomer had joined him until the diplomat spoke. “Something of a no-win situation,” Tomer said.

“Explain that.”

“If Janson loses, obviously, your diplomatic party is reduced. Fewer pilots, fewer objects of admiration for the Adumari. The Imperials aren’t obliged to reduce the size of their party. If Janson wins, well, Thanaer is very well respected here. Very much beloved of the court of Cartann and the perator.”

Wedge shook his head. “Recalculate that, Tomer. If Janson loses, a man who does good things dies. If Thanaer loses, a man willing to gain some points at the cost of the life of a young woman dies. Are you capable of seeing the difference?”

Tomer sighed. “I think you and I speak very different dialects of Basic.”

“For once we agree.”

“To the perator,” the announcer said. Thanaer turned toward the exit by which the perator departed and saluted in the ritual circle-and-cross pattern. Janson followed suit, his salute a sloppy one.

“Honor or death,” the announcer said, and retreated into the crowd.

Thanaer assumed an on-guard pose.

Janson switched Cheriss’s blastsword to his left hand. “Wait! Look at this.” He waved it furiously in the air before him. “Look! A bantha!”

The glowing trail left in the air by the tip of his blastsword did, in fact, resemble a child’s scrawled impression of a bantha.

Wedge frowned. Janson wasn’t left-handed. It wasn’t a good idea to leave himself exposed this way—his sole ready weapon in his off hand.

Thanaer just stared, his expression confused.

“Not familiar with banthas?” Janson shrugged. “Try this.” He waved again, creating an unrecognizable snarl of glowing blue lines in another volume of air. “An Adumari farumme! Here’s another one.” He waved again, and the result, had it been processed through a computer and extensively repaired, could have resembled one of the local fighter-craft. “A Blade-Thirty-two!”

Thanaer just waited. “Are you ready to die yet?”

“One more.” Where the bantha scribble had faded, Janson traced another design. It was a stick figure of a man with a ridiculously tiny circle for a head. “It’s Thanaer ke Sekae!”

Thanaer’s jaw tightened, the only change to his expression Wedge could see through the beard and ridiculous ribbons. Thanaer, all business, lunged.

Janson twisted toward the attack and brought Thanaer’s blade out of line with his own. Thanaer’s forward momentum brought them together, their hilt guards crashing into one another.

Janson brought his right forearm up in a blow that snapped Thanaer’s head back and smashed the man’s nose flat. With his right hand, Janson seized Thanaer’s sword hand and slammed it down across his upraised knee. Thanaer’s sword point hit the floor with a loud blaster pop and the hilt followed, dropping from Thanaer’s nerveless fingers.

Janson gave Thanaer a shove and the Cartann pilot staggered backward, suddenly disarmed and disoriented. Janson brought his boot heel down on the other man’s sword blade, just above the guard. The blade parted with a metallic sound and its point ceased hissing, ceased drawing glowing lines in the air.

Janson smiled at the man. “Your orders are simple.” He switched off the power to Cheriss’s blastsword and tossed the weapon, with feigned negligence, back in the direction he had come from. Wedge caught it out of the air. “I punch. You suffer. Got it?”

Thanaer responded by reaching for his dagger. Janson let him get it into his hand, then spun into a kick that further punished Thanaer’s sword hand and sent the dagger flying. It clattered to the ground near the edge of the crowd and skidded past the feet of the foremost observers.

“Forgot to mention,” Janson said, “on some worlds people fight with their feet, too. Feet, hands, rocks, pure cussed willpower—they’re warriors. You, you’re just a dilettante.” He brought his hands up in a standard unarmed combat pose, left arm and left side leading.

Confused and uncertain, blood streaming from his nose, Thanaer brought up his own hands in an imitation of Janson’s posture.

Janson smiled and waded in.

Wedge struggled to keep a wince from his face. It was a massacre. Janson fired off blows into Thanaer’s midsection. When the Adumari pilot tried to block those shots, Janson concentrated on his ribs, and Wedge could hear occasional cracks as bones gave way under his blows. When Thanaer tried to strike, Janson took the blows on his forearms or shoulders, or, in the case of especially clumsy shots, withdrew a handspan or two and let Thanaer unload his blows into empty air.

And always Janson returned to pounding, to beating, his blows sounding like someone using a hardwood club on a side of hanging bantha meat.

He didn’t hit Thanaer in the face again. Wedge knew this wasn’t mercy, but common sense—jawbones being more likely to break fingers than the other way around.

Thanaer’s final few blows made it clear that he could barely see and wasn’t thinking at all; he lashed out against empty air half a meter to the left of Janson’s position, then stared around, looking randomly for a foe in clear view a meter before him.

“At least you could say you were knocked out by a well-struck blow of the fist,” Janson said. “If I were going to be nice to you, that is.” He held up his open hand, palm toward his opponent, until Thanaer’s bleary gaze fixed on it. Then he stretched his hand full out to his side—and slapped Thanaer, a blow that sounded like the crack of an energy whip.

He drew his hand back again.

But Thanaer’s eyes rolled up in his head as a red mark the approximate shape of Janson’s hand appeared on his cheek, and his knees collapsed under him. He hit the floor with a grunt and his eyes fluttered shut.

Janson waved jauntily at the crowd and returned to Wedge’s side, whistling something Wedge recognized as a Taanabian dancing melody.

Applause broke out in the crowd, but it was not universal—exclamations and murmurs competed with it in volume.

Wedge helped him put his jacket back on. “That was it?” he asked. “You staked the entire fight on the assumption that you could block his first shot at you?”

Janson nodded. “Pretty much. I just couldn’t see him throwing his best attack on the very first attack of the match. That gave me one crack at him, maybe two.” He tied his belt back around him.

“You shouldn’t have humiliated him,” Tomer said.

Janson peered at him. “This whole world is full of ‘shouldn’t haves,’ Tomer. Without that humiliation, there was no chance he’d learn anything. With it, I figure he has about a five percent chance of realizing that he’s a big bag of Hutt droppings. Which is five percent more than he had a few minutes ago.” He shrugged. “Who’s hungry?”

Wedge grinned. “Let’s get out of here. I’m buying.”

9

The rest of the day offered hopeful news, and more than once.

By the time Wedge and Janson, joined by Hobbie, found a dining establishment where a small private room would afford them a certain amount of peace, the verdict was in on Cheriss. “She’ll make it,” Tycho explained via comlink. “She’s responding well to the bacta and should be released in a day, maybe less.”

“Good,” Wedge said. “Make sure the medical staff knows to notify me when they’re to release her. I want to be there as a friendly face when they cut her loose.”

“Will do.”

“And get down here. We have plenty to do today.”

“Have you ever thought about sleeping, boss?”

Wedge grinned. “Which is, exactly, what?”

“Sort of like being shot until you’re unconscious, except there’s no bacta, and you often end up feeling better than when you started.”

“Sounds good. I’ll give it a try someday. Call in when you reach groundside. Out.” Wedge folded up his headset and returned his attention to the menu, a flexible flatscreen that showed the evening’s available dishes as a series of animations running around the screen engaged in blastsword duels with one another. “I don’t think I want to eat anything that looks like it wants to cut its way back out of me.”

Hobbie gave him a dubious look. “Did you say we had plenty to do still?”

Wedge nodded.

“What, exactly?”

“We’re going to try to subvert an Imperial admiral.”

“Oh,” Hobbie said. “Something easy. While you’re doing that, why don’t Wes and I smuggle ourselves aboard Agonizer and destroy her with thrown rocks?”

Wedge gave him a grin. “With the right tools—say, a hundred thousand Ewoks and a month to prepare—you could probably do that. In the meantime, we have the right tools to subvert our Imperial admiral.”

“What tools?”

“Oh, Wes’s maturity, your optimism, and my diplomatic skills.”

Hobbie buried his face in his hands. “We’re doomed.”

Though he picked up a more powerful comlink from his quarters, Wedge kept its power output turned low, so that his signal could not possibly carry as far as Agonizer or even the nearest Cartann city. And every half hour, he or one of his pilots put in a call for Admiral Rogriss.

Shortly after Adumar’s sun sank and the first of her two moons rose, he got an answer and arranged an appointment.

An hour later, he stood alone at the periphery of a Cartann plaza—not the one where he and his pilots had landed, days ago, but another of the same size some distance away. Its central feature was a large fountain; at its center was a round island of something like duracrete supporting a sculpture made of some brassy metal. The sculpture showed the perator in his younger days, wearing a Blade fighter-craft pilot’s suit, waving to a crowd that was not present at this hour; behind him was a semicircle of seven fungus-shaped explosion clouds, representing, Wedge assumed, seven military campaigns or bombing runs.

Admiral Rogriss was not too long in coming. Wedge saw two silhouettes approaching from the opposite side of the plaza; one, larger, stayed back in the vicinity of the fountains, while the other moved unsteadily forward toward Wedge. Soon enough, moonlight illuminated his features, revealing him to be the admiral.

Wedge bit back a comment. Rogriss had deteriorated in the short time since Wedge had seen him last. Though the man’s expression was cheerful and carefree, his posture and movements made it clear that he was as drunk as a new soldier on his first leave. In addition, something had changed in the man’s face. Wedge had seen the expression before, the change that takes place when a cocky young pilot loses a battle but survives to realize that he isn’t immortal, that he can be beaten.

Wedge nodded toward the figure who had hung back. “Your bodyguard? A local or an Imperial?”

“A faithful son of the Empire,” Rogriss said, his tone jovial. “Come to protect me and to witness from afar your bribe attempt.”

Wedge smiled and shook his head. “Bribe attempt? I’m afraid I’m here empty-handed.”

“Ah. As skillful a spy as you are a diplomat, I see. You’re not here to offer me a command, a salary, the gratitude of the Rebel Alliance if I’d only just betray those I’ve served faithfully for longer than you’ve been alive? I must say, my boy, I’m disappointed.”

“No, that sort of thing is for the real spies. I’m just a pilot.” Wedge lost his smile. “But I do have something to offer you. A way out.”

Rogriss laughed. “A way out of what? My pension?”

“Out of your dilemma. Just listen for a minute, Admiral. I don’t expect you to admit to anything I’m saying; you won’t offer up any information, and that’s fine. But I want you to hear what I have to say.”

Rogriss considered, then nodded.

“It’s obviously in your best interest if the Adumari choose to side with the Empire,” Wedge said.

Rogriss laughed again. “Thank you for pointing that out. You really are adapting to life as a diplomat.”

“Not because it’s your mission, but because the alternative will mean your ruin. Probably your death. A suicide, I expect.”

Rogriss didn’t answer. He just cocked an eyebrow, his expression dubious, and waited.

“Because if Adumar sides with the New Republic, you’re obliged to contact your superiors, in spite of the oath you swore on their behalf, and they send in an invasion force. The invasion force hammers Adumar so badly that it’s shattered, probably not worth sweeping up the pieces. A metaphor, I suppose, for your word of honor, which will be just as ruined. Just as irreparable.”

“See here, Antilles—”

“No, just listen, Rogriss. We’re in kind of the same position here. Play by the rules, do as we’re told, keep our careers—and lose everything. Or risk, and probably lose, everything—except our word. The thing is, our word is the one thing no one can take from us unless we leave it vulnerable. All I’m saying to you—if I’m right about what you’re being called on to do—is that you shouldn’t offer up your honor like that. You should refuse to break your word. And if your world suddenly becomes hostile to you because you choose to preserve your honor, you can come to us instead of going home and facing execution.”

“You’re absurd.”

“I’ve been told that before.”

Rogriss turned away … but did not move. After a moment he turned back. “Speaking hypothetically, if what you said were true, and I did what you recommended, my children could never be made to understand what I’d done.”

“Have you raised them to be like you? Analytical, intelligent, suspicious, mean?”

Rogriss smiled again, this time showing teeth. “I’d express it a different way. But yes.”

“Then they won’t believe what they’re told just because someone in authority told them. And you’ve got it backward. If my suspicions about your orders are correct, and you disobeyed them and went home, you’d be executed and might never even have last words to say to your children. If you come over, our Intelligence division can get messages to them, and I’ll guarantee they’ll do so … or I’ll arrange to do it personally. You’ll have your chance to make your reasons known to your daughter and son. Even a chance to offer them passage to the New Republic, if that’s something they want.”

“Ah.” Rogriss shrugged. “You spin interesting fictions, Antilles.”

Wedge held out a datacard to him. “On this is my emergency contact frequency. You should be able to reach me this way at any time. If you want to accept my offer. Even if you just want to gloat.”

Rogriss took it. “I can’t pass up an opportunity to gloat.”

“What Imperial admiral could?”

“Good-bye, General.”

“Good evening, Admiral.”

Rogriss’s walk, as he left, was slower than before, but more sure. Was he weighed down by Wedge’s offer, or by being reminded of the dilemma before him? Or had he simply sobered up a bit? Wedge didn’t know.

Before the pilots turned in for the evening, their datapads received a transmission from Tomer. The perator had called another gathering on the world government question for his palace the following evening.

Wedge and Red Flight spent the next morning and afternoon at their usual pursuit, what they were now calling “flight school”—accepting challenges from Adumari pilots and demonstrating to them the New Republic way of doing things. There were fewer challenges today, giving them some long, peaceful stretches when they could just fly for the joy of it.

Today, after the flying, there was no parade lining of well-wishers accompanying them on their way back to their quarters, just a few admirers crowded at the air base gates. There was no Cheriss to tell them how the Imperial flyers had done with their day’s challenges. The ride back to their building was quiet and uneventful.

“No friends left,” Janson said, leaning against the rail. “We’ve managed to make everyone hate us.”

Tycho offered him a half smile. “I thought that’s what you’d been trying to achieve your whole life.”

“Good point.” Janson straightened. “What am I complaining about? No, wait, I know—they haven’t yet erected statues of us to throw rotten fruit at.”

“Give us another day,” Hobbie said.

They again wore their New Republic dress uniforms for the night’s event. This time, entering the Royal Outer Court ballroom, they had no problem spotting the Imperial pilots—they, too, were in dress uniforms, the spotless grays that spoke of decades of the Empire’s rule. Dull by the standards of Adumari dress, they still stood out in the crowd.

“They followed our lead,” Janson said. His grin was infectious. “I bet they had to be ordered to. Stings a bit, doesn’t it, General Phennir?” He was more than a dozen meters from the Imperial officer, who could not have heard his words, but Phennir still glowered at him.

Tomer joined them. “It’s going to be war,” he said, his tone regretful. “There’s no stopping it now.”

“Do me a favor and kill power to this performance,” Wedge said. “Maybe you are a little sad that a war is resulting … but the rest of it is all according to your plan.”

Tomer looked confused. “My plan? I think you’re more than a little mixed up, General.”

“No. It’s pretty much cut and dried. Let’s go back in time a little bit. You’re assigned here as regional head of Intelligence with the task of bringing Adumar into the New Republic.”

“I’m just a diplomat—”

“Shut up. But they need a world government to make the task a simpler one and you get to work persuading the rulers of Adumar’s nations to consider such a change. All very well and good so far.”

Tomer shook his head, a denial, but his attention was fully on Wedge.

“Now, it gets sticky. They want to talk to famous pilots, so you send for me, intending to keep me around as entertainment for the Cartann court, since I have no diplomatic skills to speak of. As soon as I arrive, you discover that the Empire is also here, which drastically moves up the time frame you’re working in. The longer the Empire has to work on it, the more they can appeal to the Adumari love of blood sports and death in combat, so you have to act fast. That means creating a world government by the fastest means possible—by persuading the perator of Cartann to implement one through leverage and conquest, something that appeals to him anyway. We fly fighters for the public’s amusement while you arrange to sacrifice hundreds, maybe thousands, of innocents in a war that will accomplish your mission.”

“You’re interpreting everything in the most negative possible way.”

Wedge felt a surge of triumph; Tomer was no longer denying his role in the Intelligence side of these affairs. “And the thing is, you have to win. Bringing this off successfully is the only thing that will save you. You know that you can’t explain your whole revised plan to General Cracken; he’d never go for it. Which is why you could never come up with an order from Cracken for me to play along with you. You had to implement a communications blackout to keep word of any kind, other than your own reports, from reaching him. It’s success on Adumar or the end of your career, isn’t it, Tomer? Your career might not even survive if you’re successful. Chief of State Organa Solo, when she reviews these events, might just decide that you’re a war criminal, not a successful diplomat.”

Tomer glared for a long moment. “You could have helped. Things would have been better.”

“I might have been able to help … if you’d been straight with me from the start. If you hadn’t settled on Cartann running everything, through a war of conquest, as the only way to get your job done.”

“You use the tools available to you—here’s the perator.”

The ruler of Cartann emerged from his doorway, his retinue of guards and advisors around him like a set of living shields. Wedge saw Hallis, this time wearing subdued sea-green and her hair arrayed as it had been yesterday; she maneuvered to be as close as she could to the ruler, which was still outside the boundaries suggested by the placement of his outermost guards.

The perator offered up his charismatic smile for the assembly. This time, there were to be no flatscreens broadcasting his words, though once again they were amplified so all would hear. “It is with deep sorrow that I must announce that certain elements have chosen not to enter into our plans for the future. In specific, the seditious forces ruling the nation of Halbegardia and the Yedagon Confederacy have decided to issue statements of defiance. Their actions are clearly intended to endanger our future relations with other worlds and could leave Adumar a weak, disorganized planet, ripe for conquest from outside. So for the sake of the security of all Adumari everywhere, I declare Halbegardia and Yedagon to be outside our protection … and the targets of efforts of pacification to begin very soon.”

He paused, and applause broke out among his courtiers. This day, Wedge saw smaller clusters of foreign dignitaries in the hall. He suspected that the ones present yesterday but not today were either under arrest or en route back to their native lands.

The perator raised hands against the applause and it died away. “Will the pilot-heroes of the Empire and the New Republic please approach?”

Wedge put on his business face and led Tycho, Janson, and Hobbie forward. To his right, the Imperial pilots had formed up in similar military precision. The crowd parted before them, and the two groups of pilots came to a halt at almost exactly the same moment, three meters from the perator.

The ruler beamed at them. “You eight pilots have brought considerable delight and knowledge to Adumar, but it has all been in circumstances somewhat different than those that brought you fame. I would now like to rectify that. Would you—and it would please us greatly if you would—lead units of the Cartann armed forces in action against our enemies, so that we might grasp the full measure of your skill and honor?”

Turr Phennir was first to speak, his voice nearly as rich and warm as the perator’s. “It would be my tremendous honor to demonstrate what we have to offer the people of Cartann and Adumar.”

The perator smiled upon him, then turned to Wedge. “And our representatives of the New Republic?”

Wedge cleared his throat. This was not going to be good. “We must decline.”

The ruler’s expression became one of sorrow, regret. “But why? Can it be that you care for us less than your Imperial counterparts?”

Wedge considered his words for a split second. “No, I suspect we care more. But we must demonstrate it differently. In this case, with a refusal.”

“I see.” The perator nodded, his expression suggesting that he would remain reasonable in the face of hurtful treachery. “Please withdraw.”

Wedge and his pilots about-faced and made their retreat.

They passed Tomer going the other way. “That was your last chance to do anything positive,” Tomer said. “Now it’s up to me to undo the damage you’ve done.” The diplomat hurried on to join the perator’s retinue.

“So,” Janson said. “What’s it like to be an ex-diplomat?”

Wedge grinned. “I’ve been better.”

“Think they’ll escort us up to Allegiance, or just put us on the business end of a planetary defense laser cannon and blast us up there?”

Tomer had made it to the perator’s side. His eyes, his hand gestures, all said that he was pleading with the ruler. The perator shook his head again and again, then stopped to listen. But when Tomer finally turned away and left the ruler’s retinue, his expression was downcast.

“General Antilles!” the perator called. “No, do not step forward. I do not wish you to be any closer to me than you already are.”

Wedge stood, waiting, ignoring the rebuke implicit in the ruler’s tone.

“I declare you to be an enemy of the state of Cartann,” the perator said. “But I am told by Lord Tomer Darpen that it might cost Cartann friendships to have you executed as you deserve.”

Hobbie murmured, “This has just gotten a lot worse.”

“So I declare you and your pilots exiles. Remove yourself from Cartann, by gauntlet to Giltella Air Base, and never show yourselves before me again.”

Wordlessly, Wedge turned away from the perator and headed toward the chamber’s exit. He felt blood draining from his head. The weight of his failure as a diplomat, anticipated for so long, was finally on him. The moment of failure did not feel good. In fact, he couldn’t remember feeling worse in recent times.

Yes he could. It was worse when he became certain, for those brief moments, that he had lost Iella forever. He’d survived that and overcome it. He’d get through this.

Tomer, walking quickly, reached his side. “You’re in trouble.”

“I thought my troubles were over.”

“No. You’ll probably be dead before you get to your Blades.”

Wedge stopped. “Blades? We’re returning to our X-wings.”

Tomer shook his head. “They’re being impounded.”

“Impound—”

“Even as we speak. They’ll be gone from your balcony before you can get back, hauled off like cargo. You need to be thinking about the gauntlet if you’re to survive.”

Wedge took a look around. No members of the crowd stood nearer than half a dozen meters. Most regarded him with expressions of sympathy—or sudden revulsion. It matched what he was feeling at the thought of the Adumari touching his X-wings, at the realization that he needed answers from this man he wanted so desperately to punch. “All right. What does ‘gauntlet to the air base’ mean?”

“It means you have to get to Giltella Air Base by whatever means you can manage. They’ll have four spaceworthy Blades ready for you. If you can get up to the Allegiance in them, past the Blades that are sure to be gunning for you up in the air, you get to live. But—” Tomer shrugged, helpless—“anyone can kill you, Wedge. It’s legal. From the door out of the perator’s palace to the Allegiance, you’re all fair game.”

“Which means,” Hobbie said, “the longer we wait, the more forces they can organize to bring to bear against us.”

Tomer nodded. “Yes. In theory, you could also use the time to communicate with your friends and array them against your enemies. But you have no friends on-planet to aid you.” He looked apologetic. “I’m sorry. The perator was in such a towering rage. He would have had you killed outright if I hadn’t—”

“We’ll discuss your contribution to this whole mess later,” Wedge said. He felt very cold inside, cold with anger at Tomer and the perator and Adumar in general, cold with the realization that the gauntlet he was about to face was likely to kill him long before he was able to employ his most useful skills.

He turned back to the crowd and raised his voice. “Who’ll offer blastswords to four doomed men?”

For long moments, no one moved.

Then a dignitary from a nation that had fallen in line with Cartann came forward, a slender man in a gold tunic, and wordlessly offered his sword belt and sheathed blastsword to Wedge. A pilot Red Flight had flown against came to put another in Tycho’s hands. A woman, a minister by her age and dress, demanded the swords of her two guards and brought them forward to offer them to Hobbie and Janson. Wedge thanked each of them.

He saw Iella approaching, a surreptitious route that kept her toward the back of the crowd; he caught her eye and gave her a little shake of the head. She understood and stopped where she was. Nothing she could give him here would do him much good … and she could blow her cover, doing herself considerable harm. Wedge merely hoped Tomer hadn’t caught their little exchange.

At the doorway, they reclaimed their blaster pistols. Moments later, they stood arrayed at the exit from the perator’s palace, steps down to the courtyard and main gates beyond, while an expectant crowd gathered behind them … and another crowd, expectant for another reason, gathered out in the courtyard. Seeing the distinctive New Republic uniforms waiting within the doorway, the courtyard crowd shouted for the pilots to come out.

“We have to get clear of pursuit and out of sight for a few minutes,” Wedge said. “But we’re not going to play their game.” He pulled out his comlink and activated it. “Gate, relay this message up to Allegiance.” He heard his astromech’s answering whistle, and continued, “General Antilles to Allegiance. Requesting emergency evacuation from planetary surface.”

There was no answer.

“Antilles to Allegiance, come in.”

Nothing.

Wedge turned worried eyes to the other pilots. “All right. So I was wrong. We’ve somehow been countered. We’re going to do it their way.” He checked the charge on his blaster and the others followed suit with theirs. “Your orders,” he said.

“Ready,” Tycho said.

“Whatever they expect us to do, we don’t do. Four, what do they expect us to do?”

Hobbie said, “Run out toward the gate and get shot.”

“Correct. So we don’t.” Wedge scanned the courtyard. He saw gathered men and women, three dozen or more of them, waiting for them to emerge. He saw parked wheeled transports—and one repulsorlift transport against the wall, scores of meters to the left of the gate. He nodded in its direction. “That one’s our target,” he said. “Go.”

They moved out and onto the stairs at a trot. As soon as men and women in the crowd raised blasters, Wedge and company opened fire and broke left, circling around the edge of the waiting crowd.

Incoming fire looked like stormtrooper new-recruit target practice, filling the air, inaccurate, but promising eventual deadly hits through sheer volume.

That wasn’t to be. Janson lagged behind and shot precisely, using his sights and the native skill with blasters that had been his since childhood.

When the leading edge of shooters began collapsing, firer after firer taking Janson’s blaster shots in face and chest and gut, the line wavered. Some of the shooters dove for cover—the only cover being provided by the bodies of their fellows. Others redoubled their efforts, firing faster and with even less accuracy.

Wedge, halfway across the courtyard, felt heat against the back of his neck and tensed himself against pain to follow—but there was no pain, just the sensation of superheated air from a near miss by a blaster bolt. He fired as he ran, his shots nowhere near as accurate as Janson’s, but just as intimidating; the line of shooters did not surge toward him.

And then the repulsorlift transport was before him, hanging in the air. He hurtled over the rear, skidding forward toward the control mechanism, and leaned over the front to shoot the line tethering the craft to the wall. He felt the impact of Tycho landing in the bed behind him, more impacts of blaster shots hitting the vehicle’s side.

Kneeling behind the control board to get as much cover as possible from the low lip at the edges of the vehicle, Wedge powered up its steering mechanism. “Call ’em as they come aboard,” he said.

Tycho lay on his stomach at the transport’s starboard side, his pistol braced against the lip. He fired once, twice, three times, and Wedge heard a shriek from the crowd of shooters. There was another thump, and Tycho said, “Four’s aboard.”

“Where’s Three?”

“Thirty meters back.”

“We’ll pick him up.” Wedge put the ungainly vehicle in reverse. It glided backward with frustrating slowness. Wedge reduced the repulsorlift power on the port side, increased it on starboard, so it tilted to port; this made it harder to control, but the vehicle’s underside offered him and his pilots a little additional cover.

The vehicle shook again, harder than before, and Tycho announced, “Three’s aboard.”

Wedge glanced at his men. “Anyone hit?”

They shook their heads, not looking at him, concentrating on pouring blaster fire off the starboard side.

Wedge increased all repulsorlifts to full power. The transport soared upward—

To an altitude of four meters. Half the height of the walls of the perator’s complex. There was no way he could fly over the walls.

“We’re going out by the gate,” he announced. “Brace yourselves, pilots.” He put the transport into forward motion, steering straight toward the crowd of shooters and the gate beyond.

The air was thick with the smell of blaster bolts, and thick with the bolts themselves. Only the shooters at the farthest edges of the crowd could get a good look at any of the men on the transport, and therefore get a decent shot at them; the others could see only the transport’s underside.

Tycho uttered a yelp and stood as the metal under his stomach superheated. All over the transport, the flooring began to glow. In two spots, it gave way entirely and blaster bolts shot through, toward the sky. Wedge shifted his body as the flooring beneath him began to glow.

But meter by meter they approached the gates and began outrunning the shooters in the courtyard. A thin screen of attackers with blasters was lined up at the gate, and they poured fire up at the bottom of the transport as Wedge crossed overhead; he saw one blaster shot, reduced in strength, emerge to slice across Hobbie’s hip. He hissed, leaned over the rail, took three quick shots in the direction of the screen of attackers.

Then they were past, floating at a good clip above a street heavy with pedestrian and transport traffic, pursuers trailing out behind them and losing ground—

The repulsorlift transport’s engine coughed and the vehicle immediately lost speed. The pursuers began to gain ground on them, even while rushing across lanes of heavy traffic.

Hobbie, stanching his hip wound with a pocket torn from his jacket, offered up a bitter smile. “It just doesn’t get better, does it?”

Tycho popped the metal plate over the transport’s engine. “Shot,” he announced. “Both ways. Blaster fire has ruined it.”

“Right,” Wedge said. “Janson, what do they expect us to do?”

“Set down and run on foot, or hop another transport. A wheeled one, since there are no floaters in sight.” Janson, keeping low, leaned over the rear of the transport and fired off several shots at their pursuers. Wedge saw two men fall. One of them was immediately run over by a wheeled transport, its driver unable to swerve far enough aside in time.

“So we do something else,” Wedge said. He aimed the dying transport toward the building opposite the palace gates—a tall residential building, its balconies deep, many furnished with elaborate tables or reclining furniture.

As they neared the building, Wedge could see the flatscreens on its exterior at ground level. All showed an identical image—the rear of Wedge’s transport, from a distance of forty or fifty meters, on its approach toward the building. He offered up a growl. A flatcam was broadcasting their escape and it was probably up on walls and personal flatscreens all over Cartann. People at the base of the building he approached recognized the scene, turned, pointed up at their transport—and some unsheathed blaster pistols and began firing.

“Hobbie, suppression fire to starboard. Tycho, to port. Janson, keep it up off the stern.” Then Wedge saw that their transport, even at maximum altitude, would not be high enough to climb over the rail of even the lowest balcony before them. It would probably slide in just beneath the balcony. “On my mark, prepare to abandon your posts, come forward, and jump.”

“Got it, boss,” Tycho said. He traversed to the port side of the transport and began unloading fire on the new enemies there.

In moments the balcony was mere meters ahead. On it were numerous ornate recliners—and several startled-looking Adumari nobles, brewglasses in hand. Wedge saw no flatscreens in their vicinity and supposed they were unaware of what was going on.

“Come forward!” Wedge shouted. And as his pilots abandoned their positions and moved to join him, he locked the controls down and moved up to the transport’s forward rail. As it came within two meters of the balcony, he stepped up on it and launched himself upward, grabbing the balcony rail, swinging himself over onto the balcony floor. His pilots landed beside him, one, two, three.

He had his blaster pistol out before the balcony residents quite reached their feet. He waited a moment as the slow-moving transport crashed into the side of the building below, and said, “Don’t move, we’re just passing through.”

He led his pilots through the sliding transparent door and into the nobles’ main room. More people were here, adults, children, liveried servants. Wedge gestured with his pistol and they raised their hands.

“Jackets and belts off,” he said. “Too distinctive. You people get to keep them as souvenirs. You.” He gestured at one of the servants. “Where’s your cloakroom?”

The man, his expression wavering somewhere between delight and alarm, pointed.

Janson kept the occupants under guard while Wedge slid the cloakroom door opened. He grabbed four dark cloaks, handed them out as Hobbie and Tycho took up positions on either side of the double doors out into what should have been the building’s main hall.

Behind him, he could hear snatches of conversation from the nobles: “That one’s the diligent one.” “Why, they’re no taller than our pilots. I thought they would be giants.” “Is this a custom from their world? I rather like it. I think we’ll visit the ke Oleans this way.”

Wedge draped a cloak around Janson’s shoulders and the last around his own, then the two of them also set up beside the doors. “Ready,” he said, “go.”

Janson pulled the door open, peered both ways. “Clear. Where to?”

“Straight across,” Wedge said. “Now.”

“Thank you for honoring our home,” called one of the nobles.

“Happy to oblige,” Wedge said, and followed his pilots across the hall.

He could hear shouting from the nearest stairwell, could even make out the words: “We must be allowed entry with our weapons. You have intruders on the first floor up—”

Wedge grinned. For once he was benefiting from, rather than being inconvenienced by, the local security measures.

Opposite was a big set of double doors, the main entrance into some other noble family’s quarters. “The lock,” Wedge said. “Fire.”

“Wait,” Hobbie said. He reached for the door handle, twisted it, gave it a pull. The door swung open toward him. He shrugged, gave Wedge an apologetic look. “Worth trying,” he said.

They charged into that set of quarters, surprising a trio of servants setting places at a long dinner table, and raced past them to the doors onto the balcony. It was unoccupied, though brewglasses were arrayed on the long bar to one side.

Wedge peered over the rail. Below was ordinary street traffic, mostly pedestrian, with two wheeled transports in view. In the distance to his left he saw a rarity for a downtown Cartann avenue—a pair of Adumari riding lizards and riders marching in stately fashion toward them. There were no maniacs waving blaster pistols to be seen.

Moments later, all four pilots dropped to the street and merged into the pedestrian traffic. At the intersection, they ducked faces and pulled up cloak hoods as survivors of the shooters’ crowd turned the corner and raced toward the part of the building from which they had dropped, their attention high, blasters at the ready.

Wedge and his pilots passed through that crowd of amateur assassins and continued onward, forcing themselves to walk at a measured pace. “So far, so good,” Wedge said, his voice low. “Keep your eyes on the flatscreens on the buildings. If we see ourselves on them in real-time, we know we’re in trouble.”

“What’s the plan?” Tycho asked.

“They know where we’re going. And we do have to go there if we’re going to get off-planet. I suppose we could try to find enough privately owned Blades on balconies … but then we’d be stuck there, trying to get through security measures we’re not used to, while they have time to recognize us and come after us again.” Wedge shook his head. “No, we’ve got to get to the air base.”

“They’ll have people on the most obvious routes to the base, and probably a whole congregation at the base’s main gates. So we go by side streets and back routes until we’re near the base …” Wedge stopped, considering.

“Getting into the base is the hard part,” Janson said. “It has transparisteel walls eight meters high, higher than those blasted reduced-power repulsorlift transports can go. Easily guarded gates are our only entry points. Wish we had Page’s commandos or the Wraiths and a couple of days to prepare.”

“We improvise,” Wedge said. “We need a wheeled transport, one of the flatcam units our pursuers are carrying, and four sets of women’s clothing.”

Hobbie looked crestfallen. “Boss, please tell me you’re not putting us in women’s clothing.”

“Very well,” Wedge said. “I’m not putting us in women’s clothing.”

10

Half an hour later, the four of them sat, wearing Adumari women’s clothing taken from a middle-class family’s apartment, in a wheeled transport two blocks from the gates into Giltella Air Base. Hobbie stared with a hurt expression at Wedge, who ignored him.

On this ill-lit section of street, running between warehouses serving the air base, the pilots were well concealed by darkness. This was not to be the case when they neared the air base’s front gates, which were brilliantly illuminated by glow lamps atop tall poles. Even at this distance, the pilots could clearly see the crowd that awaited them at the gates.

“You lied to me,” Hobbie said.

“I did,” Wedge said. “With my brilliant achievements in the diplomatic profession has come the realization that lies can be powerful motivators.”

“My faith is shattered.”

“You knew, when I said we needed four sets of women’s clothing, that we were going to end up in them. You knew. So any hopes you had to the contrary were just self-delusion.”

“I understand that. But I’d rather blame you than me.”

Wedge grinned. “Tycho, what are we facing?”

“A hundred fifty, more like two hundred, easy,” Tycho said. “So, fifty to one odds.”

“Not too bad,” Janson said, and cracked his knuckles. “So. Who’s best-looking in women’s dress? I vote for myself.”

“Quiet,” Wedge said. “Tycho, do you have the broadcast figured out?”

Tycho nodded. “I think so. But we’re going to have to rely some on luck.”

“We are doomed,” Hobbie said.

Tycho gestured at the flatcam unit they’d taken from a man who now slept, with a bump the size of a comlink on his forehead, behind a stairwell in a residential building a few blocks from here. “I can’t override the local flatcams,” he said. “There’s no equipment for that, no procedure. Just a specific broadcast protocol. My guess is that when we broadcast the recording, some manager at the local information distributor will decide whether or not to put it up on the flatscreens citywide.”

“Which they will,” Wedge said. “Considering the subject matter. All right, start broadcasting.” He set the wheeled transport into motion, heading straight toward the two hundred eager killers awaiting them at the airfield’s gates. Tycho hit a set of buttons on the flatcam’s side and then carefully placed the device out on the street. Within moments it was lost to sight behind them.

The flatscreens on the buildings they passed—screens not so numerous as on the buildings in the richer quadrants of the city—showed edited scenes from their escape from the perator’s palace, and occasional glimpses of them in their stolen cloaks during their flight toward Giltella Air Base. They’d managed to avoid direct confrontations with the extraordinary numbers of shooters and flatcam wielders between there and here, even when breaking into a home to steal the women’s clothing, though they’d had to lay down some long-distance suppression fire when eluding pursuit a time or two.

And now they were headed straight toward an enemy that was numerically superior and anxiously awaiting their arrival.

Each time they passed a flatscreen, Hobbie said, “Still the old stuff.” Then they were a block closer, just coming into visual range of the crowd at the gate, and men and women there began to notice their approach, to point.

Wedge felt his stomach tighten. “Come on, come on …”

“Maybe we did something wrong,” Hobbie said. “We might not have encoded the right security protocols or something. We probably failed to—oh, there it is.”

On the flatscreen of the next building before them appeared new images. Four human silhouettes were suddenly illuminated against the side of a building. Two threw back cloak hoods, revealing their faces—Wedge Antilles and Wes Janson, their expressions at first startled, then vengeful.

On the flatscreen view, Wes Janson threw back his cloak and then drew his blastsword. The view wavered as if the flatcam holder was trembling, and then the distance to the pilots increased as though the holder was backing quickly away.

But Janson ran forward, lunging with his blastsword, its tip leaving a light blue trace in the air. There was a blue flash offscreen to the left, then the world spun as the flatcam holder flailed around and crashed to the ground.

In a moment, the view settled on the front of the building—with its distinctive red riding-farumme above the main entryway—and became still. The pilots, still barely visible at the left edge of the flatscreen, rushed out of view.

Wedge nodded. It was a crude attempt, but if the people of Cartann didn’t take too much time to analyze it, it would withstand inspection—long enough to serve Wedge’s purposes.

The pilots had made the recording minutes go, standing before a very distinctive building a short distance from the air base. Hobbie had held the flatcam in one hand, a piece of brick-colored street cover in his other. The fourth silhouette in the flatcam view was actually Hobbie’s cloak, held up on the point of Tycho’s blastsword. When Janson had lunged, his blastsword had hit the street cover, resulting in the flash of light suggesting the flatcam holder had taken the blow instead.

Ahead, the crowd must be seeing the recording. A roar of anger and expectation rose from the men and women there. Within moments, most were in motion, heading straight toward the pilots’ transport—and beyond, Wedge hoped, to the building that had been their backdrop. “Get ready,” he said, and drew the shawllike garment closer about his face.

In seconds, the leading edges of the crowd reached them. Most ran past. One man, chest heaving from his exertions, pointed with his blastsword toward the building of the red farumme. “Did you see them?”

Wedge nodded and pointed the same direction.

Behind him arose a terrified, high-pitched wail. Wedge jerked around to look, but it was Hobbie, uttering a noise of panic and suffering toward the sky, tearing at the clothes over his chest as though he were in mortal dread. Wedge blinked at the display and turned around again to steer.

“Never fear,” panted the man who’d addressed them. “We will capture them, and rend them, and make them suffer for every—” Then the still-rolling transport was too far beyond him for his words to carry.

Moments later, the pilots were beyond the main body of vengeful Adumari. “Good screaming, Hobbie,” Wedge said.

“I practice a lot,” Hobbie said, his voice hoarse. “Anytime Wes makes plans for the squadron, for example. Anytime a Corellian cooks for us.”

Janson and Wedge both turned to glare at him.

Ahead, perhaps thirty men and women remained before the gates. Many appeared to be watching the flatcams posted on the transparisteel walls to either side of the gates themselves, but quite a few still had their attention on the approaching transport. Beyond the gates, themselves transparisteel, were two guards in the black-and-gold livery of the air base.

“On the command ‘One,’ ” Wedge said, “fire on the gate locks. When I see them give, I’ll issue the command ‘Two.’ That means spray suppression fire toward the crowd. Over their heads unless return fire starts coming in. Understood?”

He heard three affirmatives.

As they neared, the closest members of the crowd began shouting: “Did you see them?” “Did they kill the camwielder?”

As if in answer, Wedge shouted, “One.” Then he drew and poured blaster fire into the locks on the gates.

Fire from the other three pilots joined his. One succession of blasts, probably Janson’s, chewed away with extraordinary accuracy at the mechanisms. The guards behind the gates threw themselves away and down.

In his peripheral vision, Wedge saw members of the crowd flinch away, then realize they weren’t being fired on. They began bringing blasters already in their hands to bear—

The locks weren’t yet clearly destroyed, but Wedge shouted, “Two!” He leaned to port and fired repeatedly, blowing holes in street cover, firing once, with reluctance, at a young man too daring or stupid to demonstrate any self-preservative instincts; that man drew a careful bead on the transport and Wedge’s shot took him clean in the gut, folding him over, depositing him with a fatal wound on the street cover.

The transport crashed into the gates, shuddering from the impact—and the gates flew open. The transport rolled through. Janson, Hobbie, and Tycho continued pouring suppression fire out the back.

One of the guards stood, hands up, and ran after the transport. “Wait, wait!”

“Another madman,” Janson said. “Think I should shoot him?”

“If we shot every Adumari who was crazy, there’d be no one left,” Wedge said. “Let’s hear what he has to say.” He slowed the transport’s speed fractionally, allowing the guard to catch up.

“Cease fire, lord pilots,” said the man, “please. You’re upon air base grounds. You’re safe until you take off again.”

In fact, the crowd at the gate was no longer firing at the pilots. Nor were they entering the air base. Some were kicking the walls in frustration, shouting after the pilots.

An eerie wail bit into the air, rising and falling, its pitch and volume cutting at Wedge’s ears. He resisted the urge to clap his hands over his ears. “What’s that?”

The guard said, “Notification that you’re on base. Now the street hunters will go home and the air hunters will know it’s time to meet you. Your Blades are in the Lovely Carrion Flightknife hangar.”

“That’s somehow fitting.” Wedge patted the rail. “Come aboard and guide us to our starfighters.”

Liveried base personnel stood by at the hangar, ready with pilot’s suits, helmets, personal gear. The four Blade-32s standing ready were colored a glossy red rather than black. “Seized from the pilots of the nation of Yedagon,” one of the hangar mechanics said, a touch of apology to his voice. “The palace wanted declared enemies to look like enemies.”

“Live weapons,” Wedge said, “instead of paint, this time, I trust.”

The mechanic nodded. Though he was a small man, his spadelike black beard made his face appear larger. “To sabotage your craft would be to sabotage your killers’ honor—and our own. Your vehicles are in exquisite condition.”

While Wedge and pilots ran through an abbreviated checklist, flight after flight of Blade-32s flew by the open hangar doors, close enough in to be seen easily. Declaring their presence, announcing challenges we can’t refuse this time, Wedge decided. “Keep personal comlinks on Red Flight frequencies,” Wedge said. “Tune Blade comm system defaults to the following frequencies: Allegiance, Rogue Squadron, Red Flight.”

He got four acknowledgments. He switched to Allegiance’s frequency. “Red Flight to Allegiance, come in. This is General Antilles, and this is a direct order. Allegiance, come in. Acknowledge our transmission.”

There was no answer. He hadn’t expected any. The pilots of Red Flight were on their own. He switched back to Red Flight frequency. “Announce readiness. Leader had two lit and in the green.”

“Two standing by, one hundred percent.”

“Three, ready for a furball.”

“Four is green-lighted.”

“Up on repulsors.” Wedge suited action to words by bringing his Blade-32 straight up two meters. Ahead of him, at the hangar exits, mechanics’ crews cheered, but whether it was for Red Flight’s success or merely for the fight to come, Wedge didn’t know.

“What’s our first order?” Wedge asked.

Tycho’s voice came back immediately: “ ‘Whatever they expect us to do, we don’t do.’ ”

“Correct, Two. Red Flight, come around one-eighty degrees.” He swung the nose of his Blade around until it was pointed directly toward the thin sheet-metal rear of the hangar. “Arm missile systems. On my command, fire your missiles and all speed forward. Ready—fire.”

Four missiles flashed instantaneously to the rear of the hangar and blew the sheet-metal panel into oblivion.

Wedge kicked his Blade-32 forward and began climbing as soon as he emerged through the hole.

His lightboard sensor data was confused, made erratic by the tremendous smoke cloud he was climbing through, but it clearly showed a half-dozen Blades hovering over the hangar, noses depressed, pointed toward the exit. Had Red Flight emerged the way they were supposed to, they would have done so right under the guns of this ambush party.

Wedge switched his weapons control to rear lasers—then switched them back again. “Red Flight, hold your fire until we’re clear.” He put his attention into climbing as fast as he could.

Had he fired and missed, had an ambusher Blade been hit and exploded, collateral damage would have punched through into the hangar, toward the front, just where the Lovely Carrion Flightknife mechanics waited.

His lightboard showed his pilots tucked in so close that he couldn’t detect them as individual signals. Below, the ambushers above the Lovely Carrion Flightknife hangar were breaking up, beginning their climb in Red Flight’s wake.

Other groups of flyers, circling at some distance, were turning in toward Red Flight. Two high-altitude formations began descents. Altogether, Wedge counted at least thirty enemy aircraft arrayed against Red Flight.

Thirty against four. In the past, he’d bullied his way through such impossible odds, usually through use of stratagems set up well in advance. Here he had nothing like that working in his favor.

Red Flight was barely a thousand meters up when the first enemies, two separate half flightknives, neared attack range from overhead. “Loosen up the formation,” Wedge said. “Remember it’s me they’re likely to concentrate on. Tycho, stand off, we’re not in a normal wingman situation here. Fire at will.”

The dozen enemies screamed down at them with lasers blazing—eight or nine of them concentrating fire on Wedge. Wedge returned fire with his lasers but mostly concentrated on evasive maneuvering. He juked and jinked from side to side, set his Blade into an axial rotation to constantly change the image he offered to enemy lightboards, and fired by reflex as targets presented themselves.

He saw his lasers shear through one incoming Blade and stitch scoring marks on the fuselage of a second. He felt his own craft shudder as lasers hammered at his fuselage. Then he was past the diving wave of enemies, seeing them—seven, not twelve—turn in his wake and follow. Behind him, Reds Two, Three, and Four followed in very loose formation.

Ahead of his flight path at several thousand meters was another blip, diffusing into a new squad of foes. Below, the fighters who had intended to ambush Red Flight at the hangar were now joining the Blades who had just exchanged shots with them.

“I have an idea,” Wedge said. “Two, Three, Four, pull back and climb. Stay within a half kilometer of me. Set one missile each to detonate at a proximity of two hundred fifty meters. On my command, fire at me, then be prepared to prey on targets of opportunity.”

“Leader, this is Three. Are you crazy? Acknowledge.”

“Three, Leader. That’s affirmative.” Wedge put most of his attention on heading toward the new incoming enemies, but kept track of two sets of range-to-target numbers: those for the Blades ahead and the ones for those behind.

When the two sets of numbers were approximately equal, and just out of standard weapons-lock range, Wedge fired one missile at the targets ahead and then pulled a tight vector to port. In doing so, he rotated axially to expose his belly to the enemies ahead, his top hull to the enemies coming on from behind.

He saw puffs of smoke, the beginnings of missile trails, from the enemies ahead. “Fire,” he said. He rotated again to narrow his cross section and climbed.

And his own pilots fired on him, as he’d instructed.

He felt a momentary chill of fear. What if the missiles malfunctioned? What if their proximity fuses ignited at a much closer distance than the quarter kilometer he’d dictated? He’d be dead before he felt the impact.

But three missiles detonated into huge clouds of opaque fire directly above and ahead of him. His Blade-32 rocked and shuddered as it met the overlapping shock waves from the explosions, and he heard countless metallic pings and clanks as shrapnel hit his hull.

A moment later, he was enveloped in fire and smoke. In his mind was a picture of the three explosions, placing him toward the westmost edge of one of the blasts; he snap-rolled, emerging belly-up from the cloud, then dove into it again. There was a moment of clear air as he crossed the open space between explosion clouds, then he was in fire and darkness again.

There was another detonation nearby, close enough to rattle his fighter and hurt his teeth. He heard equipment shattering within his Blade. Then he was in open air again. He glanced left and right, then at his lightboard, which now featured a crack across its crystal surface.

A moment ago, twenty-three Blades had been aimed at him. Now, only thirteen remained, their formations scattering, and the other members of Red Flight were now diving upon them, loosing lasers and missiles as fast as fingers could pull triggers.

Wedge could see it in his mind’s eye, the way the opportunistic fighters had seen his lightbounce image improve to offer a target lock, the way they’d armed missiles and lasers and opened fire. He’d risen into friendly smoke clouds and the incoming missiles, deprived for a crucial second of their original target, sought out new ones … and found them in the oncoming friendly Blades. He looped after Tycho, dropping two missiles into the enemy formation before switching to lasers as he closed.

“One, Two. You all right?”

“I’m unhurt, Two.” He glanced at the board that was supposed to display damage diagnostics. Text scrolled across it at a rate too fast for him to read, and he wished fervently that the Blades offered a diagrammatic display of damage the way New Republic fighters did. “Some damage to my Blade.” He cocked his head as he realized he was hearing a new, persistent noise.

His stomach sank as he recognized it. Whistling. Air was passing through his cockpit making a constant, unmusical sound as it did so. “I’ve experienced a hull breach,” he said, keeping his voice unemotional.

If he couldn’t patch the breach, he couldn’t reach space. Couldn’t make the Allegiance.

Now was not the time to worry about it. Ten enemies still remained, and his Blade shuddered as he suffered a hit from the rear lasers of the fighter he was pursuing. He put more of his personal attention to evasive maneuvering and continued stitching his target with linked laser blasts.

Fire and smoke erupted from its cockpit and it began a slow descent toward distant grain fields. Nine enemies to go. No, eight. The fighter in Hobbie’s sights exploded spectacularly, turning into a ball of black and red and gold that would have been beautiful if it had not been fueled by a human life.

Hobbie’s Blade was now trailing smoke, a thin stream of it emerging from beneath his cockpit. “Four—”

“I see it, boss. Still functional.”

Tycho pulled into wingman position behind and to the starboard of Wedge’s Blade. Through his viewport, Wedge could see that Tycho’s canopy was cracked and starred, with char marks indicating laser hits.

Wedge swore to himself. Tycho couldn’t make space either; a canopy damaged that way would blow out under the pressure of its internal atmosphere. And these pilot suits weren’t self-contained environment suits the way TIE fighter rigs were.

That left Janson the only one of them with a spaceworthy Blade, the only one who could reach Allegiance and tell the story of what had happened to them on Adumar.

Then Janson’s Blade was enveloped in an explosion cloud.

He emerged from the far side of the cloud intact, or so Wedge thought at first; then his Blade began rolling to port and Wedge could see that the starboard wing was completely gone. “Punch out, Three,” he said. “Janson, come in.”

An enemy Blade diving in from directly above tore his attention away from Janson. He looped to starboard, causing the incoming Blade to alter his dive angle to follow. Tycho decelerated, slowing to the Blade’s rated stall speed, and stitched the enemy with lasers from below. Wedge felt a tremendous bang to his rear quarters but watched, through his rear viewport and on the lightboard, as his attacker exploded. “Good shot, Tycho.”

He heeled over until he could see Janson again. Janson’s Blade was now sideways, its lone wing pointed toward the ground, and was beginning a looping descent to the ground.

But Janson was free of it. The pilot was in open air, a meter-square flat device above him; he hung by straps from it. Wedge nodded; this had to be the Blade’s pilot-descent mechanism, a primitive repulsorlift device that lowered the pilot at a safe speed.

Safe, that is, unless someone was still shooting at the pilot. Wedge saw a Blade diving toward the defenseless pilot. He saw Janson pulling out his blaster pistol, as though a weapon that small could do any significant damage to a fighter, and open fire.

The incoming fighter exploded. Wedge resolved to find out just what sort of pistol Janson was carrying—and then saw Hobbie’s Blade whip through the new debris cloud, lasers still flashing.

That left six enemies against three damaged Red Flight Blades.

“Stay with Three, Four,” Wedge said. “When he reaches ground, land, join him, and tell him to take you to that club where he ate pastries the other night.”

“Acknowledged, Lead.”

“Two, you and I are going to finish this.”

“I’m your wing.”

“No, drift out in case they keep up the same tactics.”

The six enemy Blades had gathered into formation, two triangles, and were on an approach vector. Wedge saw the two formations drift apart, each triangle heading toward one of the Red Flight fliers. He nodded; they’d finally learned something about not just mindlessly prosecuting the most prestigious enemy. That was too bad; now was not the time for them to get smart.

In these slow-maneuvering Blades, missiles gave his opponents a serious edge. He had to take that edge away.

He slammed his control yoke forward, diving straight toward the Cartann streets beneath him. He thought he detected a moment of hesitation in his enemies before they dove to follow.

It was a gambit he was reluctant to take. Back at the air base, he’d taken steps not to endanger civilians. He could afford to do so then; that choice did not have a direct bearing on his continued survival. But now it did, and he had to make use of available cover … or die.

Below, he could see only traces of lights indicating the outlines of streets.

But those streets were often blanketed by wires and cables at all altitudes, impediments that, even if they didn’t tear his fighter’s wings off, would throw him into a building side …

He nodded, remembering. They didn’t have all those cross wires at street intersections. He made for the square light pattern of an intersection.

Columns of light poured past him toward the ground, his pursuers’ lasers. He felt his stern rock from a graze impact. He returned fire with his rear lasers, was satisfied to see one shot punch through a canopy. It didn’t kill the pilot, at least not immediately; that Blade turned clumsily away, heading off toward the air base or the forests beyond.

Wedge put his repulsorlifts on at full power and pulled back on his yoke, a full-strength effort to pull out of his dive. He angled to slide in under the unseen canopy of wires and cables, hoping he’d correctly calculated their height aboveground, and a moment later found himself roaring down a mere three meters above street level. Ahead, a repulsorlift transport clumsily turned out of his path.

Behind him, his two pursuers imitated his maneuver. The first one came in too high; Wedge saw it shudder, then saw its port wing disintegrate from an impact with one or more of the cables. The Blade spun, its other wing crumpling under multiple successive impacts, then crashed down onto the street, skidding forward almost as fast as Wedge was flying. In his rear viewport Wedge saw pedestrians dive out of the way of the flaming thing, saw it brush aside an abandoned wheeled transport as though the thing were a millimeter-thin flatscreen.

The other Blade continued relentlessly onward.

As he reached the next intersection, Wedge yanked the controls hard to port, turning into the new lane … and reduced strength to his repulsorlifts. His Blade dropped nearly to the street’s surface and continued its spin until it was pointed back the way it had come. He brought strength up to the forward repulsorlifts, canting his bow upward, and slammed his thrusters forward as hard as he could.

His pursuer whipped around the corner, making better time than Wedge, coming so close to the building face on the outside of his turn that only his repulsors kept him from grazing the building. His nose was elevated far above Wedge’s position, the pilot obviously expecting to catch Wedge in his sights farther down the street.

Wedge fired, his lasers raking the Blade from bow to stern at close range. He saw the underside of the Blade open up like a seam bursting under pressure. The Blade wobbled, roared past over Wedge’s head, and slammed down into the street, skidding for a block in the direction it had been going, knocking wheeled transports aside like toys.

Wedge’s lightboard showed only buildings all around him. “Red Two, report status.”

“All clear,” Tycho said.

“Let’s see how clear we can get. Coming up to join you.” Wedge sent his Blade forward to the intersection, then rose on repulsorlifts until he was well clear of the ubiquitous cabling. He pointed his nose up and climbed.

In seconds, Tycho joined him from points east. If anything, he looked worse than before, with laser scoring all along the starboard side of his fuselage. His cockpit was now shattered; his Blade couldn’t hit very high speeds without wind hammering Tycho. “We’re not going to make space, boss,” he said.

“If I recall the maps right, Cartann’s border to Halbegardia isn’t outside our flight range,” Wedge said. “We’ll use terrain-following flying to stay below their lightbounce sensors, and—”

His lightboard suddenly showed two fuzzy blips moving toward them, one from Giltella Air Base, one from Cartann Bladedrome. Within moments they resolved themselves into clouds of smaller blips, two entire flightknives. In the distance, Wedge could see the running lights of the incoming Blades; they were closer to one another than they were to Wedge and Tycho, but they would be on the New Republic pilots within seconds.

The tactical part of Wedge’s mind, the one that was often at odds with the Corellian part, calculated odds and strategy. The answer wasn’t good. Even if they could have ordinarily managed twelve-to-one odds, their equipment was too badly damaged to let them compete at full strength. Nor did they have time to land and get into hiding. Even if they punched out, experience had shown that the enemy pilots could spot them and were willing to shoot them out of the air as they descended.

Wedge suppressed a pang of regret. Not fair of him to offer a future to Iella and then rush off and get killed this way. He turned toward the incoming flightknives. He said, “Guess we’re just going to have to rack up some numbers, Tycho.” Despite his best effort, his voice was heavy.

“Understood, boss.” Tycho stayed tight to him.

Then, on his lightboard, one of the two clouds of Blades looped toward the other, and the comm board was suddenly active with traffic: “Strike the Moons Flightknife issues a challenge to Lords of Dismay Flightknife!” “Ke Mattino, you madman, now is not the time—” “There is always time to crush incompetence and cowardice. Fire!”

The sky between the two flightknives, not so distant now, was suddenly lit up by lasers and ball-shaped explosions. A moment later there was no way to distinguish between the flightknives on the lightboard; they had merged into a single firefight.

“Red Two, we’re going to ground,” Wedge said. He switched to the standard Cartann military frequency. “Red Flight to Strike the Moons. Is that you, Captain ke Mattino?”

“It is I.”

“Thanks, Captain.”

“You have won your departure. I will not let some honor-grubber deprive you of it in this fashion. Confusion to your enemies.”

“And frothing disease to yours. Antilles out.” He pointed his nose toward the ground, toward the section of Cartann not so brightly lit by street illuminators.

It was hours later, the darkest and quietest hours of the night, when Wedge and Tycho arrived at the door of Iella’s quarters. Wedge could not remember ever having been so tired. But when the door opened to his knock and he saw her there before him, his exhaustion evaporated in an instant. He took her in his arms and she dragged him inside. He heard Tycho follow and close the door behind them.

“You almost killed me,” Iella said. Worry blunted the accusation in her tone. “Having to wait hour after hour to find out if you’d survived or not.”

“I’m sorry.” Wedge offered her a look of apology. “We needed to maintain comm silence as much as possible. To travel back streets and alleys and sometimes roofs and balconies to make sure we weren’t spotted, weren’t followed. Have you heard—”

The light in the apartment’s main room clicked on and Wedge discovered he had an audience.

Janson and Hobbie were lounging on the sofa, Janson with his feet up on a small table, a brightly colored datapad, of the sort usually optimized for children’s games, on his lap. His slicked-back hair suggested he’d recently had a bath, and his fresh clothes made Wedge long to be rid of the sweat-drenched garments he was wearing. Hobbie was similarly scrubbed, though his tunic was off to show a half-dozen places where his torso and arms were bandaged.

Cheriss stood at the wall, near the light control, and Hallis sat on another chair.

Wedge blinked at them. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I seem to have interrupted a party.”

Iella smiled at him. “More like a conspiracy.” She led him and Tycho to additional chairs.

The room was crowded with more furniture than the last time Wedge had seen it; he supposed that she’d dragged it in off the balcony and out of other rooms. Wedge sat wearily and looked among the others. “You’ll excuse me, I hope, if I look a little confused. Cheriss, how do you come to be here? And how are you?”

Cheriss, in dark blastsword-fighter’s clothing, raised and lowered her left shoulder a couple of times, experimentally. “Better,” she said. Her voice was low, her tone somber. “I need some more time before I can fight again. But I was out of danger, and they brought me down to Cartann, where I learned of the air duel you’d had. I went to your quarters, where I found Hallis but not you or your X-wings. I knew if you were to go anywhere, you would come here, so I did.” When she finished, her expression suggested that she had more to say, but she bit back on it.

Wedge struggled with a way to suggest that bringing Hallis here was not a good idea, as it could compromise her identity, but Iella seemed to read his thoughts. She said, “After Cheriss came here and told me what she’d done and who she’d seen, I suggested she bring Hallis. It’s all right, Wedge.”

He nodded and sat back in his chair. “Hallis?”

She shrugged. “I robbed your quarters.”

“Ah.”

“Actually, when they said they’d taken your X-wings, I knew they’d ransack your quarters eventually. I went there intending to get Whitecap’s remaining parts. But I overheard the two men who were packing up your belongings; they were stealing things like they were in a contest, laughing about the four of you like it was good entertainment that you’d been shot down, so I got mad. When they were apart, I hit them both with a hydrospanner and took all the stuff they’d gathered up.”

Wedge couldn’t help but laugh. “I was always under the impression that a documentarian shouldn’t get so close to her subjects.”

“Well … well … I was angry.”

“What did you get?”

“Your civilian clothes, pilot’s suits, Janson’s fancy cloak, helmets, datapads, some datacards, four comlink headsets, your blastswords—one of them belonged to Cheriss so I gave it back to her—a whole pile of love notes Janson had been collecting …”

Janson looked up, his expression outraged. “Hey! You didn’t look at any of them.”

“No, certainly not.”

He relaxed, a little mollified.

“Except for the ones that had been opened, that is. The one from Lady Marri was very poetic, I think.”

Janson stood, his face flushing red. “I can’t believe you—” Then his expression changed. “I don’t recall any note from a Lady Marri.”

Hallis grinned at him.

Janson sat again. “I’ve been had. General, I request permission to jump from an upper-story balcony, to ease my shame.”

“Granted,” Wedge said. “Now, Iella. You’re the one in the most tricky situation here. I hate to be a demanding houseguest—but what can you give us without ruining your life?”

She gave him a wan smile. “Good question. I’m still bound by my orders and my duties, so the answer is ‘not much.’ But since my superior doesn’t know of any direct connection between us, I have some latitude … for the time being. I can put you up, unless my superior asks a direct question whether I’ve seen you. And until the searches going on for you turn into door-to-door searches. You’re going to have to get out of Cartann. I can get you Adumari money, some comm and computer equipment. Unfortunately, I don’t have many contacts; the team that followed me here was responsible for setting up that sort of thing.”

“How about a holocomm transmission back to the New Republic?”

She shook her head. “The holocomm unit was eventually moved to a site set up by my superior. I don’t know where it is.”

Wedge considered. “Still, the rest is very helpful. Is there any way you can find out what the status is of Allegiance? We need to know that before the next time we try to get up there.”

Iella glanced over at one of her cabinets. “My comm gear picked up and recorded your open transmissions to Allegiance.” Her expression grew bleak. “And their lack of a reply. But I know they’re still up there. My comm unit has picked up coded transmissions from them continuously since before you went on your gauntlet run. There’s been no irregularity to their comm traffic. No sort of activity to suggest they were captured, for instance.”

Hallis said, “Iella, I need to talk to you. Privately.”

Iella gave her a quizzical look.

“I’m going to persuade you to abandon your mission, to go with Wedge and the others. And to shoot your superior right in the guts if you ever happen to see him again.”

“That’ll take a lot of persuading.” Iella gestured toward one of the side doors. “But I’ll give you the chance. After you.”

They were gone only a couple of minutes, long enough for Wedge and Tycho to wearily drag their boots off and accept cups of water from Cheriss. Then Iella came slamming back through that side door, her face pale, her expression set and angry.

“Change of plans,” Iella said. “I’m abandoning my post and my mission. I’ll figure some way to get you out of Cartann. And if I see Tomer Darpen, I’m going to burn him down where he stands.”

Wedge stared at her in shocked silence for a moment. Then he turned to Hallis. “How did you do that?”

Hallis shrugged.

“No, really, please. I have to know. It normally takes a vote of the Senate or a planetary collision to get Iella to change her mind. I need to learn how to do whatever you did.”

Iella colored nicely. “Wedge.”

“I’ll show you.” From beneath her sleeve, Hallis pulled out a standard datapad. With her other hand, she reached behind her and dragged a wire with a standard datapad coupler at the end of it. She jacked it into the pad and powered the unit up, then held the screen so Wedge could see. “You’re not going to like this.”

Tycho leaned in to see. Janson, Hobbie, and Cheriss also crowded in behind him to get a look. Iella turned away, perhaps unwilling to see this a second time.

The datapad view wavered across a sea of faces and the backs of heads. Wedge recognized the surroundings as the Outer Court chamber of the perator’s palace.

Finally the view stabilized. Wedge recognized the perator standing at the heart of his knot of advisors. The clothes worn by his advisors defined the scene—this was the last gathering Wedge had attended, the one where he and his pilots had been exiled and effectively sentenced to death.

The recording’s sound kicked in, a meaningless babble of voices. Then the voices dropped out one by one; Wedge presumed that the recorder had to have been using a directional sound recorder to home in on a very few voices.

On the perator’s voice. He was saying, in hushed tones, “… pity they couldn’t have been persuaded to lend us their arts. That would have been spectacular, and Antilles’s name alone would have been enough to cow some of the enemy forces …”

Then Tomer Darpen was at his elbow. “A moment of your time, my lord.”

“Only a moment. Time is pressing.”

“I wish to extend my personal apologies, and General Antilles’s apologies, for what he has just been obliged to do.”

Even in the somewhat blurry recording, the perator looked surprised. “Obliged?”

Tomer nodded. “The general is pinned down between opposing forces. His natural desire is to aid you, of course; he knows it is the only honorable option. But ambiguous orders handed down by his diplomatic corps superiors, orders intended to keep him alive so that he remain valuable to them, prevent him from fighting. The situation has crushed him, has robbed him of all will to live.”

The perator shook his head, his expression shocked. “I cannot believe it.”

Tomer lowered his eyes, his expression sad. “It’s true. He longs for death to burn away his shame. And so General Antilles begs a favor of you.”

“Speak.”

“He begs you to set your forces on him, assaults that he cannot decline … and cannot survive. So that he can die honorably and never again be used as a tool by the diplomatic corps. Do this, and not only will his memory be cherished, but you can be sure that the next pilot-representatives sent here will be unfettered by ridiculous orders restraining them from behaving as true pilots should.”

The perator nodded, his expression sympathetic. “At last I understand. The poor man.”

“It must look like an act of justice on your part. But he will thank you with his dying breath.”

“I understand.”

“Thank you, perator.”

Hallis’s recording view followed Tomer as he left the ruler’s side and moved toward Wedge and his pilots. Her audio lock remained with him, and though his next few words were muffled—doubtless by him holding a comlink up to his face and speaking quietly—Wedge could make out his words. “En-Are-Eye-One to Allegiance, acknowledge. New orders, Allegiance. Do not accept, record, or acknowledge any transmissions from Adumar’s surface or from vehicles not belonging to the New Republic until I rescind this order. Repeat it back to me to indicate you’ve understood … Correct, Allegiance. En-Are-Eye-One out.”

Hallis switched the datapad screen off.

They were all silent for a long moment. Finally Wedge looked at the documentarian. “Thanks, Hallis. But I have to ask—why didn’t you tell me some of this before we left the perator’s palace?”

“The first part, knowing that Tomer had set you up, couldn’t help you. The second part, knowing that the Allegiance was off the comm waves—I was just getting up to you to tell you that when I heard you figuring it out for yourselves.”

“Makes sense,” Wedge said. He turned to Iella. “You know that you’re next.”

She nodded.

“I don’t understand,” Janson said.

“Tomer set things up to kill us,” Wedge said. “Accomplishing a lot of things. It scored points with the perator by making him think that we pilots had been with him all along, just thwarted by bureaucratic orders, so the perator doesn’t think we opposed him. And it scrapes us out of the way so I can’t file my report, my conclusions on the way he set up this whole diplomatic mission—conclusions I now have to assume were largely correct. He wants everyone who can offer up a comprehensive report to the Chief of State to be dead. That means that Tomer’s subordinates here, including Iella, will eventually end up facedown in an alley.”

“It’ll take me just minutes to pack,” Iella said. “Which begs the question: Where do we go? I wasn’t in charge of setting up safe houses.”

“I know where,” Cheriss said. “General Antilles—”

“It’s about time you called me Wedge.”

She didn’t smile, but she did offer him a little nod of acknowledgment. “Wedge, there are some men and women who want to meet you. When I returned earlier tonight and made myself known at the perator’s palace, they tracked me down and told me so.”

Wedge frowned. “What sort of men and women?”

“Political leaders. From nations not controlled by Cartann. From nations soon to be smashed by Cartann.”

“Do you think they’d be willing to offer us use of a spaceworthy craft to get us to Allegiance?”

She nodded. “I think they would. But I don’t think that is what is foremost on their minds. I think they want to ask a favor of you.”

“I’d be happy to listen. All right, everybody. Tycho and I need to get cleaned up, and everybody is to get dressed up—nicely as we can. They’re scouring the streets looking for four downed pilots hiding from their eyes, not seven upstanding citizens out for a late night of carousing.”

“You’re issuing orders to Intelligence,” Iella said, her voice mild.

“Just to my pilots—and making some assumptions. Care to come along?”

“Anywhere,” she said.

11

By dawn, Wedge and the other six refugees were in the passenger/cargo compartment of a Farumme-class hauler, an aircraft Wedge suspected was constructed about the time he was being born. Air whistled through holes in the hull. Rings were imbedded in the compartment’s framework, the better to allow for cargo to be lashed down securely, but the only thing being transported now was Wedge’s party, seated on padded benches that ran the length of the compartment. The Yedagon Confederacy agent who had met them, a lean, very fair man of few words, rode with the pilots in their control compartment.

Wedge glanced around the compartment. Janson, Tycho, and Hobbie were all asleep. He was as tired as they were, in as great a need of sleep, but he had things to think about.

Cheriss sat alone on a bench on the other side of the craft. She had seldom looked at Wedge since their departure from Iella’s quarters, and seemed lost in her thoughts.

Hallis was on the same side of the craft, alone, all the New Republic personnel’s datapads piled up beside her. She had, at Wedge’s request, copied the recording of Tomer Darpen’s treachery to each datapad. Now she was struggling with the most sophisticated of the datapads available to her, Iella’s, to edit that and some other recordings into a portion of her documentary. Her occasional bouts of muttering and swearing suggested that it wasn’t going well.

And Iella—Iella was tucked under Wedge’s arm, her eyes closed, her expression serene.

Wedge smiled, knowing his was probably an idiot’s grin but not caring. He was on the run, a death sentence on his head, on a world where his enemies and admirers alike would be happy to kill him, unable to get in touch with his superiors. But for this moment he was carefree, happy in a way he hadn’t been in years.

Iella’s eyes opened. She looked at him a little fuzzily, then smiled and burrowed her face into his neck. “Haven’t you had any sleep?”

“I’ve been thinking. Putting things in order.”

“Marshaling your troops, General?”

“Only when I could force myself to stop thinking about you.”

Her shoulders shook a little and he realized she was laughing silently. “You know what’s so wonderful about compliments from you?” she asked.

“What?”

“I know you always mean them. You have no skill at flattery.”

Cheriss unstrapped herself and rose. She walked over to Wedge and Iella, her steps unsteady because of the craft’s rocking motions and occasional battles with turbulence. Her expression was as serious as it had been back in Iella’s quarters. “General … Wedge … may I speak to you for a moment? Privately?” She turned a look of apology toward Iella.

“Sure.” Wedge looked down into Iella’s eyes, tried to gauge her reaction. But her expression offered little but sleepy contentment. There was no concern, no jealousy to be seen in them.

Wedge joined Cheriss toward the front of the compartment. They held on to the rings in the framework to steady themselves against the craft’s motion.

When Cheriss spoke, her voice was barely loud enough for him to hear over the engine’s roar and the whistling of wind through rivet holes. “I just wanted to say … you were right and I was wrong.”

“That’s a hard admission,” Wedge said. “It tries to stick in my throat whenever I’m obliged to offer it.”

She managed a faint smile. “I didn’t really understand it after I woke up on your big ship. My injury was almost healed and I knew I had nothing left to me—my title lost, the perator’s regard for me lost, your regard for me probably lost—”

“No.”

“Let me talk. But I couldn’t concentrate on all that because the medics kept asking me questions. How my wound felt. What I might be allergic to. Other conditions I had that were medical in nature. I told them of my dizziness with heights …”

Wedge was surprised to see tears form in her eyes. She wiped them away and continued, “They scanned my head and took my blood to look for chemicals in it, and decided that it was a chemical imbalance. They gave me a drug. Half an hour later I stood on the top walkway of your starfighter landing bay, over the great distance to the floor where the starfighters landed, even over the gap they flew out of—I could see all the way down to the clouds of Adumar’s skies, and I felt not even a twinge. All I have to do is take a chemical once every few days. I can learn to fly.”

“That’s wonderful news.”

“Yes … though I could not even make the medics understand that. To them, it was such a little thing. A diagnosis, a chemical, and their patient could be set aside and a new one brought in. For me, it was years of knowing I could never be anything in Cartann, suddenly swept away … and to those who helped me, it was nothing more than a minor task, successfully accomplished. I was almost angry with them for not understanding.

“And that’s when I knew. If I had died the other day at the perator’s court, I could not even be resentful. I could never enjoy this thing, which is a few grains of chemicals to your medics and a miracle to me. So I understood that you were right. To throw away my life would have been dishonorable. It was the choice of a stupid girl. Someone I hope I no longer am.”

“Having seen this, you have only one choice.”

“Which is what?”

“To live your life well. To find a purpose and pursue it.”

“I want to be a pilot,” she said. “Not for Cartann. Not for Adumar. For your New Republic.”

“If I’m still alive in a few days, I’ll see what I can do to help you.”

“I also wanted to say …” Her glance flicked to Iella and back to Wedge. “I wanted to wish you and your lady every happiness.”

“Thank you.”

“I—I don’t know what else to say.”

“Let me say something, then. One last piece of advice. Cheriss, you’re always going to be too young for something important to you, too old for something else, and the timing is just not going to be right for a third set of things. That’s life, and you can make yourself crazy by dwelling on that. Or you can figure out what you are the right age for, and what the timing is right for, and celebrate those things. Where do you suppose happiness lies?”

“I understand.”

“Good.”

He rejoined Iella and strapped himself back in, then wrapped his arm around her.

“All settled?” she asked.

He nodded.

“If I can ask, what was it all about?”

“She’s just growing up. She’s come along two, maybe three years since the other night.”

“That’s good.”

“Maybe we can figure out how to build a weapon out of the process and shoot Wes a few times.”

His eyes still closed, Janson said, “I heard that.”

The briefing room where Wedge and company met the rulers of the Yedagon Confederacy was unlike anything they had seen in the city of Cartann. It was a circular chamber, half bounded by curving wall, half by a succession of ornate columns beyond which were close-cut grasses and artistically spaced trees. The portion of the room bounded by columns was open to the sky, though Wedge could see a panel at the edge of the ceiling of the room’s other half that suggested some sort of light cover could be mechanically extended as a roof.

The floor and tables in the chamber were of a marblelike stone, the floor textured so that feet did not slip upon it; Wedge prodded at it with his toe to find that it was indeed solid, not the sort of cushiony cover that seemed to decorate every surface in Cartann.

Light winds stirred in the chamber. The place was airy and well lit, with no corners for skulking, no shadows to hide within. A vast improvement over what we’ve been enjoying, Wedge decided as he seated himself.

On the other side of the central table from him, Escalion, the perator of the Confederacy, settled into position. “I will be brief,” he said. “You are a military man and doubtless have no taste for roundabout talk or circuitous approaches to the subject.”

“Thank you,” Wedge said, and studied the man. Yedagon’s perator was also in contrast to Cartann’s. Of average height, he was dark of hair and beard but pale of skin. The contrast gave his features the appearance of intensity even when he was at ease. He was a few years older than Wedge, and his physical condition seemed to be as good as Wedge’s; the musculature of his upper body suggested regular exercise or workouts and his waist was flat. His uniform was a spotless white, reminiscent of an Imperial Grand Admiral’s uniform except for the elaborate purple scrollery traced down the outside of his sleeves and trouser legs and the bank of medals and campaign markers on his chest—each a different size, shape, and color, decorations that the orderly Imperials would find offensive in the extreme.

“If it is your wish,” Escalion said, “we would be happy to provide you transport to your orbital vessel. Your public refusal to fall in with Cartann’s military aggression indebts us to you that far, and more. But we would like to present you with another alternative. A request.”

“You want me to fly with your forces against Cartann.”

“No,” Escalion said. “To lead them. All of them.”

Wedge leaned back. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to put an entire nation’s military force in the hands of a man who has only the vaguest familiarity with it.”

“You misunderstand me,” Escalion said. “I’m not talking about one nation. I’m in constant communication with the ruler of Halbegardia, and she is in agreement. We wish you to lead the united forces of all nations arrayed against Cartann.”

“Why?”

“Because you have done things on Adumar that are unprecedented. You have demonstrated piloting skills that surpass our best—your four-pilot unit shot down thirty opponents last night, lest we forget. You have sought to teach rather than accumulate honor at a cost of blood and lives. You have defied the most powerful man on Adumar and survived his wrath. All of which is only part of the answer.” He leaned forward over the table, his expression genuinely intent. “It is my belief, and the belief of my advisors and Halbegardia’s, that if it is known that you lead our combined forces against Cartann, many other nations will join us. Nations currently neutral, or siding with Cartann because they know they cannot withstand a direct attack by that nation, will join us, giving us a chance to win. Or at least be defeated in an honorable struggle rather than a massacre.”

Wedge glanced among the others arrayed around his table. The members of his own party wore carefully neutral expressions. The six advisors Escalion had brought—men and women in uniforms similar to his—were more demonstrative, nodding as he made his points, turning eager and expectant eyes to Wedge.

“From what I’ve learned,” Wedge said, “if I calculate things correctly, if every nation not under Cartann’s direct control were to join us, we’d still have a united force about two-thirds the size of Cartann’s.”

Escalion nodded “Though even that number is optimistically misleading. Cartann’s equipment is better than ours. For our fighter corps, we have fewer Blade-Thirty-twos than they do. Less than half our fighter fleet, in fact; we rely largely on older models.”

“So, optimistically, we would, under the best of circumstances, have half their strength or less.”

“Correct.”

“I’ll need a few minutes to think about this.”

Escalion nodded and rose. “We will leave you this chamber and all the time you wish. Summon a servant when you have an answer for us. In the meantime, we will have food and drink sent.”

“Thank you.”

When the Yedagonians had withdrawn, Wedge said, “Pilots, Cheriss, Hallis, please give me a little space.”

“Our proximity is interfering with his brain waves,” Hobbie said as he stood. “We’re jamming them.”

“Something to be proud of,” Janson said. “Anyone for a little sabacc?”

That left Wedge alone at the central table with Iella. She said, “Do you want to be alone to think?”

“What, send you away? I just got you.”

She arched an eyebrow at him. “You make me sound like a marketplace purchase.” But her voice sounded pleased.

“Never.”

“I would have thought you’d have an answer ready for Escalion. Even before we reached here.”

“I did. I was going to turn him down.” Wedge sighed. “But then he threw a skifter into the deck. Flying with the Yedagon Confederacy is not the same thing as leading a union of nations against Cartann. One would be pointless. The other could actually accomplish some, or even all, of what I was sent here to do.”

“How do you figure that? Wedge, you’re no longer in the loop. Anything you do here constitutes rogue actions. Though I suppose that’s appropriate for an ex-Rogue.”

He smiled. “But that’s where you’re wrong. My duties and responsibilities and powers didn’t remain in Cartann when we fled. I still have them here.”

“I’m not sure I understand. Until Tomer Darpen is brought down—”

“He’s not even relevant. It’s obvious that the New Republic set this whole operation up under the control of the local Intelligence division, yes. And it hurts us that Allegiance is under his direct control. But, Iella, my orders don’t even refer to Intelligence. I’m here to try to bring Adumar into the New Republic. I’m empowered to enter into negotiations and conduct treaties. I’m still the chief New Republic diplomat on this world—and I can choose to deal with this assembly of nations instead of Cartann.”

“I hadn’t considered it that way. So what’s standing between you and making a decision?”

“One simple fact. Leading the non-Cartann forces is more than writing a treaty. It’s deciding the fates of whole nations. Possibly of Adumar itself.”

“Wedge, if you choose not to lead them, you’re still deciding their fate.”

“I—you’re right.”

“Get used to it. I usually am.”

He grinned at her, a cocky grin that he knew other Corellians like Han Solo wore far more often than he. “We’ll see about that.” He stood. “Major Janson!”

Janson shot upright, military straight, then glared at Wedge. “I hope this is more important than my card game, young man.”

“Inform Yedagon’s perator that I have come to a decision.”

“Yes, sir. Which is?”

“We’re going to drop the heavy end of the hammer on Cartann.”

Janson uttered a noise that was half cheer, half animal wail, and trotted to the door. He returned a moment later. “They’re sending for Escalion.”

“Good.” Wedge looked among his pilots. “For me, this is technically a diplomatic matter and not a military one. I can’t ask you to be part of it.”

“You can’t keep us out,” Janson said. “We’ll just overpower you. Two majors plus one colonel equals one general at least.”

“I’m part of it, too,” Iella said.

Wedge gave her a mock scowl. “You can overpower me?”

“I tickle.”

“Maybe you can.” Wedge stretched and yawned. “We’ll begin strategic planning immediately. I’ll need data on all available military resources—continuously updated if, as Escalion suggests, we’ll be able to swing more nations over to our side. I need data and advisors on Cartann’s forces and standard tactics. I want—”

“No,” Tycho said.

Wedge stared at him. “What?”

“Go to bed, Wedge.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We don’t have a lot of time, and—”

“And you’ve had less sleep than any of us.” Tycho approached to loom over Wedge where he sat. “Meaning that you’ll do all your planning, then we’ll hop into our fighters and roar off to meet the Cartann forces. And because you’re exhausted, your reflexes are shot and your thinking processes crawl along like a dying Hutt, and some twenty-year-old twit will flame you down and be able to brag about it for the rest of his life. No, Wedge. Get some sleep.”

“But who’ll—”

“I will. I’ve plotted a few missions, you might remember. I also know how you think. No, you go get some sleep. You’ll wake up fresh, you’ll examine my plans, you’ll fiddle with them to your satisfaction.”

Janson and Hobbie flanked Tycho and stared down at Wedge with identical expressions of obstinacy.

“Mutiny,” Wedge said.

Iella smiled at him. “I think it’s time you learned how to do something.”

“Which is what?”

“Delegate authority.”

“You may be right.” Wedge rose. It made him feel light-headed. His pilots were correct; if he did manage to force himself to endure several hours of planning and organizing, he’d be no good for anything else. “All right, mutineers, you win.”

•      •      •

Eleven Coruscant hours later, freshly bathed and shaved, Wedge joined his party and the military leaders of the Yedagon Confederacy in their planning chamber. Like the meeting room where he’d met Escalion, this room was circular, but it was deep beneath the ground under Escalion’s palace. The chamber was dominated by a table shaped as a broken ring; men and women could stand around its exterior and within the open space at its center. Its surface was dominated by flatscreen displays that glowed in the chamber’s dim light.

Tycho waved him over to the portion of table surrounded by the New Republic representatives and several uniformed Yedagonians. “The nations of Thozzelling and Tetanne have come on board,” Tycho said. “And a half-dozen smaller nations. Escalion was right—your name is like a bank full of credits here, especially after that four versus thirty fight.”

Wedge smiled at Iella and got a smile in return. Then he turned his attention to the flatscreen on the table. It was a map showing an area reaching from the heart of Cartann to all of Yedagon. Military units of both sides were indicated with blinking colored dots. Wedge supposed that tapping on a dot would bring up information about it, as was the case with the lightboards on Blade-32s.

Tycho gestured at various units as he spoke. “Squadrons of Blades. Scythe-class bombers. Meteor-class Aerial Forts. Cutting Lens-class reconnaissance/intelligence craft. Farumme-class haulers configured as troop transports. The numbers are continuously updating on the main board as we get word of new units being added to our resources. Cartann’s forces are similar to ours in composition—just superior in numbers and age.

“Here’s Yedagon City.” Tycho gestured at the grayish blob on the map indicating their current location. “If history is any judge, the forces of Cartann will be heading here and to the capitals and other major cities of all ‘rebellious’ nations. The perator of Cartann has demonstrated that he has a pretty limited agenda and consistent deployment tactics. A screen of fighters to engage enemy fighters, plus fighters acting as support for his bombers. The fighter engagements are the ones that get all the attention, but it’s the bomber usage that does the real damage. He starts by bombing military bases and any area that has demonstrated high comm traffic within the most recent observation period. Then he graduates to government buildings and the homes of higher-ranking nobles.”

“What sort of bombs?”

“They’re officially named Broadcaps, for the shape of the cloud that results, but they’re commonly called Punch-and-Pops. They hit the ground and penetrate several meters—the idea being that they can get into underground chambers like this one—before detonating. A single one can level several city blocks.”

“Charming,” Wedge said. “All right. What’s your plan?”

“The perator of Cartann likes noontime assaults. They look very nice on the recordings, and a lot of his pilots enjoy diving down at their targets with the sun at their backs. We can expect his attack on Yedagon City perhaps as early as noon tomorrow … so we’re not going to give him the opportunity. We’ll be launching before dawn to be in Cartann airspace at sunrise.”

Wedge nodded. Getting the hard-living, hard-drinking Cartann pilots out of their bunks a mere handful of hours after they reached them would provide the allied forces with one more desperately needed advantage. “Go on.”

“From there, our first tactic is to deny them their strength by busting up their chain of command wherever possible. The standard assault group of several fighter squadrons and associated bombers and fortresses will analyze the approach of Cartann forces. When they know which portion of the formation is the Cartann target—the ‘center’—that portion will slow its approach and mill. The outer edges will swing out farther and increase speed, forming horns to either side of the Cartann formation and at a lower altitude, at distances that put our horns out of range of one another’s weapons—but keep the Cartann forces within range of both sets of weapons. Since our firing plane is below the target plane, misses by missiles will not endanger our own forces—they’ll just reach their programmed range limits and detonate themselves. Meanwhile, the Cartann forces will have to suffer an initial barrage in which we can concentrate fire and they have to diffuse theirs, and then will have to choose to maintain their original plan or break up to assault the diverse elements of our formation. Once they’ve committed themselves, we can choose whether to collapse our formation and pin them there, or send the horns—with their bombers—on to their primary objectives, the air bases and communications centers.”

“Good,” Wedge said. “Let me ask a few questions. On Adumari lightboards, a squadron tends to be a single signal until it’s close enough to be perceived as individual fighter-craft. How many Blades return the same-sized signal, at distance, as Scythe-class and Meteor-class vehicles?”

Tycho looked up at one of the uniformed officers standing by. “General ya Sethes?”

The officer, a gray-haired woman built like a champion wrestler, answered without hesitation. “Four for Scythes, six for Meteors. Unless the squadron is Blade-Twenty-eights or earlier, in which case five and eight.”

“I want every bomber and aerial fortress transponder programmed to issue a false response,” Wedge said. “When queried by a lightbounce signal, instead of responding with its true name and other information, it sends back that it’s one Blade in a squadron. Three Scythes end up looking like one squadron, and two Meteors likewise, until they’re close enough.”

“So their projections on our composition are thrown off just when it’s time to mix it up,” Tycho said. “I like that.”

“That’s not all. I want us to assemble a list of, oh, the thirty most prestigious pilots flying in our united force. I want the transponders of at least two Blades in each fighter squadron to be able to toggle between returning their correct data and the data for one of those pilots. Likewise, I want the real pilots on that list to be able to toggle to return the data for a novice pilot. Nobody’s to switch to deceptive transponder data until the furball is under way, and only when they’re not under weapons lock by an enemy.”

General ya Sethes looked dubious. “If we wait until the fighters are all engaged, yes, then the deception will be harder to recognize. But what’s the point?”

Wedge smiled at her. “The point is, within a single squadron’s engagement, the pilots can tend to affect which of them is to be the focus of enemy assaults. Put someone who has good evasive skills up under the name of, say, Major Janson. The enemies will flock to him, possibly allowing the best shooters in his squadron an unanswered salvo or two. Then, if our ersatz Janson gets clear of weapons locks for a moment, he can take off his mask—switch his transponder back to his real identity—and confuse participants scanning for him. Any confusion we can sow in the enemy helps us, hurts them.”

The general still looked unconvinced, but said, “If nothing else, this should be simple to program. I’ll see to it.”

“Thank you.” Wedge turned back to the map. “Are Cartann’s military responses predictable enough that we can map out where our forces will engage theirs?”

“Only if their squadron response drills are good indications.” Tycho shrugged. “Hard to say, since those drills are non-weapon exercises and the Cartann flyers hate that. But my guess is, yes.”

“So we send out one squadron an hour or two ahead of each major formation. Pilots skilled at terrain-following flying. They fly beneath the altitude at which lightbounce sensors start to be active and set up in deep cover beneath the projected engagement zone. Because, until they break up to pursue enemies, Cartann squadrons tend to fly in pretty close formations—”

“So our advance units can fire their missiles up at their squadrons passing overhead,” Janson said. “Perhaps taking out multiple fighters per missile in those first few seconds.”

“Ooh,” Hobbie said. “I volunteer. I want that. Let me do that. Please.” Though his expression was, as usual, somber, he was practically hopping from foot to foot in his excitement.

Wedge and Tycho looked at one another. Wedge asked, “Have you ever seen behavior like this?”

Tycho shook his head. “Only when he really, really needs to run to the refresher. Hobbie, why?”

“Because I am sick of it,” Hobbie said. “I’m sick to death of ‘Hello, I’m so-and-so and I’ve killed this many enemies, and I challenge you, and we bow and go by the rules and say cute things to one another, and isn’t it nice that we’re all dead now?’ Tycho, I want to shoot something. I want to blow something up. No apologies. No advance warning. Just lethal efficiency. Before frustration kills me.”

“More words that he’s strung together at once since I’ve known him,” Tycho said. “All right, Hobbie. You’ll be in charge of the advance squadron for lead group.”

“I don’t think he’s entirely sane right now,” Janson said. “I’d better stay with him.”

“Good idea,” Wedge said. “Anyway, Tycho, that’s all the modifications I had to recommend for your plan. I do want to address the pilots, either directly or by recording, and lay down some rules. I want them flying New Republic-style. I see a pilot flying for glory instead of victory, I’ll be happy to shoot him down myself.”

“Done,” said General ya Sethes.

Wedge caught Cheriss’s eye. “Cheriss, will you be staying here?”

She shook her head. “I’m being flown in hours early, with a special ground unit. I could not bring myself to fire upon my city, or tell others where to drop the bombs … but I can help find your X-wings.”

“I appreciate that. It might prove to be vital if Turr Phennir and his pilots are in their TIE Interceptors. Thanks.” He turned to Hallis. “What about you? Staying here, I hope?”

“Are you crazy?” She frowned. “Let me rephrase that. Haven’t you been paying attention? I’m a documentarian. They’ve granted me a place on one of the Meteors. I’ll be recording all the way in, all the way out.”

Wedge considered his responses, but knew he had no way to persuade her not to come. He could issue orders preventing her … but to do so would suggest, accurately, that he had no respect for her right to choose her own destiny. “Good luck,” he said, and turned to Iella. “If you haven’t already chosen something suicidal, I have a mission for you.”

“Name it.”

“I want you to go up to Allegiance, and beg, bribe, and bully your way aboard, and get a copy of our Tomer Darpen recording into their hands.”

“Did that already.”

“What?”

Heads raised all across the room at Wedge’s shout. He waved people’s attention away, then took Iella’s arm and led her a few steps from the table. “How is that again?”

She smiled at him, her enjoyment at his discomposure very evident. “While you were sleeping. I asked Escalion for a spaceworthy Blade and a pilot. She flew me up to Allegiance.”

“I wish you’d waited.”

“For you to ask me to do exactly what I was going to do? What I was obliged by my duties as an Intelligence officer to do?”

“That’s right.” He grinned. “All right, so it’s illogical. How did it go?”

“Strange,” she said. “Allegiance’s officers, I found out later, were not happy with the no-communications order from Tomer. All we knew is that the ship wouldn’t respond to our hails. So, very carefully and slowly, we flew up to her and into the main starfighter bay. There were a lot of soldiers there, a lot of blaster rifles there pointed at us … but things relaxed a lot when I identified myself, and I spoke with Captain Salaban. He’s as frantic and resentful as a fighter pilot in a tractor beam with the orders he’s under.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Well, it was obvious that he intended to obey his orders no matter how hateful they were to him. Which is nothing more than what I expected. And even if I’d told him the whole story, it would have been my word—and a juicy bit of corroborating recorded evidence—against anything Tomer Darpen told him, just enough to cause Salaban distress but not enough to cause him to violate his orders, in my opinion. So I decided not to hang him on the hook of that dilemma. I told him about the war that was brewing, and how it came about—not including Tomer Darpen’s role in it. I gave him a copy of the recording with a request that he forward it to General Cracken’s office at the point the communications blackout was lifted. I also left a copy mislabeled as my will, and broadcast encrypted copies with a time-based decryption order to the R5 and R2 units of the X-wing squadron aboard.”

“I would say you’ve done more than I could ask you to.” He added, a growl to his voice, “Other than helpfully being out of harm’s way when the shooting starts.”

“I’m going to be in one of their reconnaissance craft,” she said. “Doing unit coordination. Well away from the battlefront.”

“Battlefronts tend not to have fixed lines, and missiles don’t acknowledge what lines there are.”

“That’s the best you’re going to get, Wedge. Don’t push.”

He sighed, exasperated. “Were you always this way?”

“No,” she said. “I was pretty stubborn when I was younger.”

“Just don’t feel you have to stay close if things go bad,” he said. “Our chances are still pretty low, even with all those new people and resources flooding in …” His voice trailed off as a new thought occurred to him.

“What is it?”

“I’ve commanded large forces before. The Lusankya has more combined firepower than the entire force I’ll be leading today. But until now all the forces I’ve led have been assigned to me, routine unit assignments, with a healthy dose of volunteers. This is the first time that such a large group, so many recruits, have come in just on the strength of my name. It’s disconcerting.”

“Don’t let it go to your head, Wedge. You won’t be able to fit into your helmet.”

“Thanks for the reassurance.” He swung her back toward the planning table. “Back to work.”

In the hours before dawn, Wedge stood on the ladder to his Blade’s cockpit, a spotlight on him, a comlink on his collar to broadcast his words, and prepared to address the troops.

He’d never really understood the pre-mission pep talk—or, rather, had never shared the psychology of the pilots and soldiers who needed and expected one. He never flew a mission without becoming, at some point before the first laser was fired, completely committed to it; that was the only way to achieve the objective and maybe stay alive while doing it.

But since inheriting command of Rogue Squadron from Luke Skywalker a decade ago, he’d learned the hard fact that he often saved lives with the right words. He wondered if he had the right words with him now. He thumbed on the comlink and looked out over the vista before him—what seemed like an endless stretch of duracrete thick with fighter-craft, pilots, crewmen, mechanics. Most common were the dark red jumpsuits worn by Yedagon Confederacy pilots and workers; each person’s was decorated by scarves, medals, piping, or other expressions of individuality. Jumpsuits of other colors, representing other nations, were in evidence. Wedge himself wore the garish orange of the New Republic starfighter pilot; Hallis had told the Yedagonians what to look for and they had obligingly equipped Red Flight with the familiar colors.

“People of Adumar,” he said. “That’s the phrase I have to use to address you, because it’s not appropriate to refer to you by the nations of your birth. Today you’re flying as pilots of your world, with the goal of keeping personal greed and ambition from ruining your world.

“Today, from this base and countless others, we’re going to lift off and form the greatest air force your world has ever seen—except one. The forces of Cartann are greater. They’re bigger. So to defeat them, we’re going to have to be better. Here’s how we’re going to do that.

“Every pilot you line up in your weapon brackets is someone concerned with what he’s going to get out of this conflict. How he’s going to profit. Most plan to profit in the accumulation of honor. Honor bought with your blood.

“That pilot is thinking about himself. You’re not going to do that. You’re going to stay focused on your objective. Don’t permit yourself to think about personal duels, about the accolades you’re going to receive. Don’t respond to challenges or personal remarks from the enemy; they don’t deserve your answer. Don’t worry about becoming heroes. The moment you committed yourself to defeating your enemy, at the possible cost of your own lives, you became heroes. That part is done. Now we move on to something more important.

“Focus on your enemy. How he moves. How he fires. What he must be thinking. Where his thoughts will take him. Shoot both at him and at where he’s going. Fight now and a few moments in the future. That gives you the chance to kill him twice. That gives you twice as many guns as he has. And that’s the only way you’re going to win.

“If you let your thoughts stray from your enemy, focus them on what’s waiting for you at home. Not the adulation. The wives, the husbands, the children, the parents. If we fail, they will be defenseless before the forces of Cartann. That should be enough to put your concentration back where it belongs … on the enemy.

“It’s time to go. I salute you, Adumar.” He paused, then said it again: “Adumar.”

A moment later, the nearest fringe of people, including Tycho and Iella, took it up as a chant: “Adumar. Adumar. Adumar.” It rolled across the assembled air armada, gaining in strength and volume.

Wedge let it go only for a few moments, only long enough for every one present to be caught up in it. Then he nodded to Tycho. Tycho thumbed his own comlink, and suddenly the air was split with the sound of a keening siren.

Like an insect mound suddenly disturbed by a giant intruder, the air base abruptly became a sea of running bodies as pilots returned to their fighters, mechanics scrambled to get last-second details in order, flight workers rushed to get late-arriving missiles loaded into aircraft.

Wedge stepped down to the duracrete. Iella came up to him. “You understand,” she said, “if you let yourself get hurt, it’s going to go very badly for you. I’ll make you regret it.”

“I had that figured out,” he said.

She waited as if hoping for him to say something more. The smile she gave him was an uncertain one. “That’s Wedge. So honest he can’t even reassure me.”

He looked around to make sure no one was close enough to hear. “Here’s some reassurance,” he told her. “Two reasons why I’m not going to let anything happen to me. One: I’m the best there is. Two: I finally have someone to come back to.”

She wrapped herself around him. “Don’t forget that.”

“I won’t.”

“I have to get to my station.”

He kissed her, then watched her run—or perhaps flee—toward the large aircraft that was her assignment for the mission. It was built like a spoke-and-wheel space station whose every joining of spoke and wheel was a spherical sensor array.

He climbed back up to his cockpit. His mechanic, a middle-aged woman whose face was striped, tattoolike, with Blade-32 greases, was astride the fuselage, just behind the cockpit, dogging down the rear of the canopy with a hydrospanner. “How’s it look, Grembae?” he asked.

“They gave you the best,” she said. “And it’s in as fine a shape as I can make it.”

His helmet lay in the pilot’s seat. He picked it up to put it on, then noticed the decorations upon it. Recently dried paint in gold on the dark red surface showed up as a succession of delta-shaped wedges, the decorative motif Wedge had added to most of the helmets he’d worn throughout his career. “Who did this?” he asked.

“My son,” she said. “A mechanic on my team. Your lady said you’d like it.”

“My lady.” He put the helmet on, cinched it under his chin. “My lady.” The words weren’t new to him, but they were in a new combination, a configuration that had never meant anything to him before. He decided he liked them.

He levered himself into the pilot’s chair. “She was right. Thanks, Grembae.”

12

They rose from the Yedagon City air base, hundreds strong, fighters and bombers and fortresses and aircraft of all colors and description, and they were only one group of several involved in this all-out assault on Cartann and her satellite nations. One of the Blade units moving ahead of the group as a skirmish line was Running Crimson Flightknife, now being led by Wedge and Tycho.

This was a much faster flight than Wedge’s departure from Cartann, and much more agreeable—it had just felt wrong to be in a vehicle he wasn’t piloting. He watched moonlit forest tops and cultivated fields flash by beneath him. It was oddly peaceful, despite the fact that he was at the spearpoint position of hundreds of engines of war, for there was no comm chatter.

A few klicks from the Cartann border, the lightboard offered up a throbbing noise, indicating that he’d been hit by a lightbounce from ahead. Wedge nodded. That would be a border sensor installation. As the noise continued, Wedge got a fix on it with his lightboard. He looped away from the Running Crimson formation with Tycho tucked in beside him and headed straight for the source of the lightbounce signals.

The enemy sensor operators tried to save their installation: The lightbounce signals cut off. But the installation’s coordinates were already locked into the Blade-32’s computers. Wedge brought it up on his sensor board and designated those coordinates as the sole target. He armed his lasers, and as soon as the sensor board solidified the lasers’ targeting brackets, he fired. He saw his lasers and Tycho’s flash down into the forest below, and some hard target erupted into flaming explosion.

On the way back, they took a closer look. They’d hit a squarish bunker, perhaps fifteen meters on a side, and it was burning fiercely. Elaborate sensor gear on top was now char and slag. Satisfied, Wedge headed back to rejoin Running Crimson Flightknife.

All down the line, other members of the advance screen of Blades would be doing the same thing. They couldn’t conceal their own approach to Cartann, but they could—if they hit enough sensor stations, and hit them early enough—conceal the size of the force approaching the enemy nation. The military forces of Cartann would have to go to an extra effort to get an idea of what was assaulting them.

Ahead, the sky was growing lighter. Wedge checked his chrono. The operation was still on schedule. And it was midday on the Allegiance; he supposed that the Star Destroyer’s sensor crews would be having an interesting day of observation.

Minutes later, with the lightness in the east broadening and climbing, comm silence was finally broken. “Group One Leader, this is Eye Three.” It was Iella’s voice. “Electrocution Death Flightknife, at the extreme north edge of the group, reports an assault by a squad of Cartannese Blades. The furball’s still continuing, but a unit of Scythe-class bombers tracked the enemy back to their base, a previously unknown one, and are pounding it flat. They say they caught another squadron on the ground.”

Wedge looked northward. He could see distant, tiny flashes, and he wished luck to the members of Electrocution Death. “Thanks, Eye Three.”

Minutes later, his lightboard lit up with signs of incoming squadrons—lots of them. They approached from north and south, from the major Cartannese cities in those directions.

Standard Cartannese tactics, had this just been a fighter raid, would have been to veer toward one or the other force, whichever seemed more prestigious, and engage it, with the hope of dispatching it before the other caught up … but Group One continued straight on its course, which led straight to the great city of Cartann. In minutes, those two Cartann units’ lightboards would detect Groups Five and Twelve headed straight for their respective cities, and would be torn between the need to pursue Group One and to defend their cities. Wedge grinned. Cartannese society seemed to be tooled to keeping its people from having to address difficult questions. He planned to present them with quite a few more before this day was done.

“Eye Three to Red Leader. Main force detected from Cartann City air bases. Forming up and heading this way. Estimated strength twenty squadrons and growing.”

“Thanks, Eye.” That meant the enemy strength in fighters was already equal to Wedge’s. “How’s our pursuit?”

“Still pursuing. Groups Five and Twelve should just now be reaching their respective cities’ lightbounce range.”

“Acknowledged. Red Leader out.”

The enemy would appear on the lightboard, Wedge knew, as a ragged line of tiny bright blips, each representing an enemy formation. As they neared, the blips would grow, gradually breaking down into clouds of dots representing individual fighters. And that’s exactly how it happened, moments later. That’s all Wedge would see until they were much closer; the enemy would be flying at them out of the rising sun, which was already peeking above the horizon.

Wedge lowered the goggles on his helmet. Yes, it was a disadvantage to fly into the sunlight. But it was a momentary disadvantage; as soon as the two forces broke up into individual dogfights, everybody would be at equal disadvantage. And the Cartann pilots’ disadvantage, being too quickly roused after too short a night of sleep, would linger.

When the enemy force was about sixty seconds from distant firing range, when enemy squadrons were beginning to diffuse into individual enemy fighters, Wedge switched his comm board over to group frequency. “Red Leader to Group. Forward screen, slow to one-third to allow main body to catch up. North Horn, South Horn, begin your move into position. All other flightknives, slow to one-half standard cruise velocity and maintain formation.”

He heard acknowledgments from the two horn formation leaders. On his lightboard, he saw the group’s formation change shape. The leading edge, a thin line of fighters, dropped back until it was absorbed into the leading edge of the main body, an inverted triangle. The two leading corners of the triangle stretched forward, suggesting a pair of horns. Ahead, the roughly oval formation of Cartannese fliers continued toward them, not yet adjusting for the appearance of the horns, which would be to either side of them within seconds.

By squinting, and with polarization increased as high as it would go on his goggles, he could see traces of the oncoming force, little black dots at the heads of needle-thin white contrails.

Then specks of fire rose with blinding speed from the forest. As they reached the heart of the Cartann force, they expanded out into ball-shaped clouds of fire.

Wedge jolted. That was Hobbie and Janson’s force, Blastpike Flightknife, sent on ahead to do just this thing—and Wedge, nearly overwhelmed by other planning details, had all but forgotten about them. He saw the Cartann force begin to mill, with whole squadrons spiraling down toward the source of the missiles … missiles that kept rising into the group.

Wedge said, “North Horn, South Horn, that’s your cue. Close and fire. Main group, advance. As you close, break by flightknives and fire at will.” He accelerated back to cruise speed as, ahead, the first laser and missile crossfire by the two horn formations began.

He switched his targeting system back on and it immediately began howling at him, a wavering cry as distant targets flashed into and out of his brackets. He switched to missiles and fired every time the musical tone suggested a clean lock. Ahead, the Cartann force looked like the intersection of four sets of target practice, but lasers and missiles were now pouring back out of the cloud of enemy fighters. Wedge was rocked when a Blade to his port, Running Crimson-3, detonated; the blast buffeted Wedge and drove him meters to starboard before he recovered.

Then the two forces met, blurred into one wide-ranging engagement, clear distinctions no longer possible between them.

Wedge caught sight of an incoming Blade-32, on what looked like a collision course with him. He switched to lasers, fired, then looped to port, diving to get out of the madman’s flight path. His sensor board howled that he was in an enemy’s targeting brackets; he continued the dive, flashing between two enemy Blades, and the howl cut off. He began to pull up. Behind him, the sensors showed one of the two Blades he’d passed between now stitched with laser fire, its port side opened by a blast; the Blade was shaking violently as air hammered its way into the now-unaerodynamic vehicle.

His wingman was no longer beside him. “Tych?”

“Busy, boss.”

Wedge said “Tycho” into the microphone of his targeting board. One blip on the lightboard began to blink. It was half a kilometer above him, directly between two enemy Blades. Wedge climbed.

He could pick out Tycho and the man’s enemies, even against the dark sky, by the flashes of light between them. Tycho was in pursuit of a Blade, being pursued by another, and was sending laser fire in both directions, meanwhile slewing about in evasive action.

Wedge rose, caught the lead Blade in his targeting brackets, ignored it. He let his brackets flash back across Tycho and to the pursuit Blade. He opened fire, his first barrage of lasers missing the vehicle, his second chewing through its stern fuselage.

The tough Blade-32 did not explode, but its stern dropped away. The vehicle rolled, out of control. Wedge saw the canopy tear free and the pilot punch out a moment later. Wedge grinned; he must also have wiped out the repulsorlift system, else that pilot could have brought the Blade down to a safe landing.

No longer forced to divide his concentration, Tycho poured laser fire into the Blade ahead of him. Though the Blade returned fire, singeing the nose of Tycho’s craft, Tycho’s attacks relentlessly chewed away at its rear fuselage, riddling it with char and holes.

The Blade didn’t look badly hurt, but abruptly it rose straight skyward, then heeled over in what looked like an uncontrolled dive. The pilot had to have been hit, a typically surgical Tycho kill.

Wedge continued his climb. At the upper altitude indicated for the engagement, he pulled back on the stick and rolled over to continue toward Cartann, though he was belly to sky, giving him a good look at the fight as it continued. Tycho pulled alongside.

It wasn’t bad, Wedge decided. The united Adumari force was continuing to move toward Cartann, and Cartann’s defenders were forced to keep with them. In minutes, if this continued, they’d be over the city itself. “Red Leader to Eye Three, report if you can.”

“Eye Three to Red Leader. Red Three and Red Four report in unhurt, though their squadron took heavy losses. The pursuit forces have broken off and are returning to their cities to deal with Groups Five and Twelve. The Scythes from North Horn and South Horn have broken away from the horn formations and are now over Cartann, heading for the air bases. We have reports of ground-based defensive batteries firing.”

Wedge looked toward the city. Yes, yellow-white streaks of laser light, four to a group, were flashing into the sky. Tiny as they seemed at this distance, each column of light would have to be half the diameter of a Blade or more.

“Sensors show another dozen or so squads rising from the air bases and Cartann proper,” Iella continued.

“Any of Group One’s units not yet engaged?”

“The six Meteors and their screens.”

Wedge breathed a sigh of thanks that he’d assigned most squadrons and major aircraft numerical references in addition to their normal names—it was a choice that would allow him to address them even when he couldn’t recall their normal designations. He switched to group frequency. “Meteors One and Two and screen flightknives, join the Scythes from North Horn. Meteors Three and Four and screen flightknives, join the Scythes from South Horn. Meteors Five and Six and screens, I want you to plow right into the middle of this furball. Give the enemy something new to think about.” He switched back to command frequency. “Thanks, Eye Three.” He pulled back on the stick and he and Tycho dove into the main engagement again.

He’d just taken a long-distance shot at a pair of Blades when a vehicle, unbelievably fast, cut across his flight path, leaving a blurry afterimage on his vision. It was a TIE Interceptor, flying an impossible-to-predict course full of sudden bends and course changes.

His lasers pointed at empty forest floor, he opened fire again. And as another three TIE Interceptors crossed his path, he had the pleasure of seeing his sustained laser fire clip the solar wing array of one of them. The shot didn’t destroy the TIE, but he did see it roll out of formation and have to struggle to get back in position, and the spot where he’d grazed it was black with char. He turned in the TIE Interceptors’ wake and was rapidly outdistanced.

“Good shot, Lead.”

“Not good enough, Two. We’ve got no chance against Interceptors in these.”

“Who are you now, Lead?”

Wedge tapped the centerpoint of his lightboard. The data sent by his transponder came up; it was his alternate identity, a Yedagon pilot with no kills to his name. “I’m not-Wedge.”

“Good. Recommend you stay that way until and unless we get back to our snubfighters.”

“I’ll take it under consideration.”

He could track the TIEs on the lightboard without consulting transponder data. They were the only craft in this engagement that moved at such high speed. He saw them streak to the edge of the engagement zone, reverse, then begin to shoot back through the thickest portion of the zone. All along the line of their passage, the blips representing Blades on the lightboard began blinking or vanished altogether. All along their flight paths, as Wedge checked visually, burning fighters began their final descents to the forest floor.

Two dark red Blades rose up to join Wedge and Tycho. “Red Three and Four reporting in,” Janson said, his voice cheery.

“Good timing,” Wedge said. “Come about with me to one-eighty degrees.” He began a hard loop around. “We’re putting ourselves in the way of trouble.”

On his lightboard, the four streaks representing the TIEs reached the edge of the engagement zone and looped around once more for another pass. Wedge calculated their likely path, just an estimate, and climbed higher to be in that path. “Here’s the rules. This is not a one-on-one, not a duel. When the TIEs come in range, everyone hit the lead TIE. If you can, as soon as they flash past, switch to rear lasers and target the rear TIE. We’ll see how much damage we can do them.”

“Good.” That was Hobbie’s voice, more intent than usual. “Damage.”

“Three, is Four all right?”

“He’s fine, chief. Still deliriously happy from his missile barrage, I think.”

The path of the oncoming TIEs changed slightly, continuing from what must have been an evasive move. Wedge sent his Blade into a hard vector to starboard. Now there was no way to get in the path of TIEs, but they could still fire upon them—

And there they were, two wing pairs streaking in from port. Wedge opened fire with his lasers, concentrating on the lead TIE, and was gratified to see three other pairs of lasers joining his.

The Interceptor exploded as if hit by a missile, leaving only an orange-and-yellow fireball and a spray of shrapnel behind. Wedge’s Blade shook as he crossed in the wake of the TIEs and was hit by the explosion shock wave.

But because of their changed flight plan they hadn’t concluded the exchange with their rear lasers pointed toward the TIEs. Wedge saw the three remaining enemy fighters split off, two one direction and one another, and begin to loop around at impossible speeds toward his Blades. “Whoops,” Wedge said. “Red Flight, scatter.” He rose and vectored to starboard, toward what looked like an incoming wing pair of friendly Blades.

A TIE Interceptor rose in his wake. He fired upon it, but the nimbler craft juked and jinked far too quickly for him to get a fix on it. It responded with lasers that hammered away at his rear fuselage; he felt his Blade shudder and text suddenly started scrawling across his diagnostics board.

“Red One, come to one-six-five.” That was Iella’s voice. He complied, as hard a turn as he could manage, the TIE adhering to his tail as if glued there.

As Wedge completed his maneuver, he found himself heading almost due west and into the path of something huge.

Shaped like a single curved wing, with a dozen laser cupolas atop the wing and a dozen below, the Meteor-class Aerial Fort was the largest flying vehicle the Adumari made, and among the most punishing. Each cupola held paired lasers the equal of the ones on the Blades and could turn 360 degrees around and depress to cover an entire hemisphere.

As Wedge turned into the craft’s path, a half dozen of its gunners opened up on him—or so it looked, for their laser fire flashed all around him, above and below.

The TIE on his tail broke off with an almost ninety-degree turn and flashed out to the side faster than the Meteor’s gunners could turn their weapons. In a second he was out of sight.

“Thanks—” Wedge tapped the lightboard—“Meteor Six. Much appreciated.”

“Our pleasure, Red Leader.”

The Cartann Blades were not yet approaching the Meteor. Wedge saw some forming up into half squads, presumably for strafing runs at the enormous aircraft, but they weren’t ready yet. He took the opportunity to catch up on his breathing. He also checked visually for the other members of his flight, couldn’t spot them immediately. Into the lightboard microphone, he said, “Red Flight.”

Three blips lit up.

Three.

He tapped each one in turn. Red Leader. Red Four. Red Three.

“Red Two, come in. Tycho, where are you?”

Janson’s voice came back, strained. “I think he’s gone, Lead. I saw him hammered by a TIE’s laser fire, really bad. He banked away from me, not maneuvering well, and then a Blade’s missile took him.”

“Four to Red Flight, negative, negative. I was just queried by a Yedagon Blade-28, Sandstorm Six, who’s following him down. Tycho punched out. No serious damage.”

Wedge nearly slumped. Fear for Tycho had tightened every muscle in his body like they were an instrument’s strings being tuned. “Red Leader to Eye Three.”

“Eye Three.”

“Please track Sandstorm Six. He’s following Red Two down; Two is extravehicular. Send whatever you can to pick him up. We want him back in the air and with us, whatever it takes.”

“Understood. And we have good news on another front. Cheriss with Holdout reports that her group has found your X-wings.”

“That was fast.”

“She said it was simple. They picked up your astromech’s broadcasts.”

“Tell her group to stand by. That just doesn’t make any sense.” The first thing an enemy would have done would be to disable the astromechs with restraining bolts and then go to work cracking the security measures limiting cockpit access only to authorized personnel. The astromechs would never be allowed to continue transmitting.

No, wait—that was the first thing an Imperial enemy would have done. It was the people of Cartann who’d seized the X-wings.

He tried to think like his enemy, and the answer was there almost immediately.

The perator ruled Cartann, not some diplomatic council. He could hand the X-wings over to the military, certainly, but as an ex-pilot himself—and an autocratic ruler—he might well have decided to keep them for himself.

But he didn’t have time to investigate them. He was planning a war against those arrayed against Cartann. So he’d put them somewhere secure and worry about them when the war was done, or at least offered him some recreation time. He might not even be aware of the astromechs’ capacity for self-motivation and action.

He switched to Red Flight frequency. “Red Leader to Gate, do you read?”

His communications board’s text screen lit up with words, I READ YOU.

“Report your situation, please.”

I AM IN A HANGAR SUITED FOR TWO OR MORE SQUADRONS OF STARFIGHTERS. RED FLIGHT’S X-WINGS AND FOUR BLADES, VARIOUS TYPES, ARE HERE. THE OTHER SNUBFIGHTERS’ ASTROMECHS ARE HERE. WE ARE GUARDED BY SIX GUARDS WITH BLASTER RIFLES. THEY ARE TALKING, AND LISTENING TO DISTANT EXPLOSIONS AND THE SOUNDS OF LASER BATTERIES. WE HAVE NOT BEEN INTERFERED WITH AND THE X-WINGS HAVE NOT BEEN OPENED. WE AND THE X-WINGS HAVE SUFFERED ONLY COSMETIC DAMAGE.

“Cosmetic damage?”

THEY PUT STRAPS ON THE X-WINGS TO WINCH US OFF THE BALCONY AND TAKE US TO THE HANGAR. THE STRAPS RUBBED PAINT OFF ON BOTH THE SNUBFIGHTERS AND US.

“Stand by, Gate. We’ll get someone to you soon.”

The Cartann half squadrons preparing their runs on the Meteor banked and headed toward the gigantic aircraft. Wedge vectored to be away from the Meteor when it happened—not that the enemy odds worried him, but so that the Meteor’s gunners would not have to worry about hitting him.

“Eye Three, when Red Two is picked up, assign the rescue craft to Red Flight. Red Flight, as soon as Tycho rejoins us, we’re heading into Cartann to pick up our snubfighters.”

He heard a wild, undisciplined cheer that had to be Janson’s. Then Iella’s voice came back: “Red Leader, if you head out in advance of the group, you’ll be flying into antiaircraft laser barrages. They don’t have to cut back on those until their own forces drift out over the city.”

“Understood, Eye Three, but that’s the plan. Red Leader out.”

Wedge switched frequencies to that used by the insertion team in charge of finding the X-wings. “Red Leader to Holdout.”

The response was immediate, but hard to hear; the voice was Cheriss’s, and she was whispering. “Holdout to Red Leader.”

“By any chance, did you end up with one of the New Republic datapads from our quarters?”

“No, Red Leader. All I have is standard Adumari gear.”

“Including a flatscreen?”

“Yes.”

Wedge pondered that. Gate could be told to transmit to a flatscreen, but anything he broadcast to Cheriss could be picked up by other flatscreens in the area. Unless …

“Can you adjust the frequency it receives on?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Good. Set it to the most unusual or ill-used frequency you can think of and tell me what it is. Then, in a few minutes, your team is going to receive some very helpful visual images from within your target area.”

“Understood.” A moment later, she responded with a numeric sequence corresponding to one of the standard flatscreen reception frequencies.

“Acknowledged. Red Leader out.” He sat back. He’d have to get Iella, who knew more than anyone else on all Adumar about translating between New Republic and Adumari systems, to get in communication with Gate to instruct the R5 unit in interfacing with the Adumar flatscreens. Then Gate and the other astromechs in the X-wings’ hangar could broadcast 360-degree views of the hangar interior, with the holocam data reinterpreted to two dimensions and translated to the format understood by the flatcams.

It would be another desperately needed edge for his people. If only they would survive long enough to employ it.

In five minutes, the aerial situation had changed, though not in unexpected ways.

Cartann’s fleet of Meteors and most of her Scythes had been caught on the ground and largely destroyed—the larger craft, requiring numerous crewmen, were not in a position to lift off by the time the united Adumari craft roared across the sky above them. Even at this distance, Wedge could see the columns of flame that marked where Cartann Bladedrome and Giltella Air Base had been. The united Adumari force’s Meteors were doing substantial damage in the air, their lasers actually optimized to shoot down incoming missiles and used only when the opportunity arose to fire upon enemy fighters.

But that was almost the only good news. As the leading edge of the engagement zone began to drift over the western edges of Cartann, attrition was beginning to swing the tide of battle in Cartann’s favor. Despite the fact that Wedge’s tactics seemed to be keeping the united Adumari force focused, despite the fact that Adumari pilots and gunners were outfighting their enemies, the greatly superior numbers of Cartann defenders were taking their toll. Squadrons and partial squadrons were still lifting off from the city, doubtless composed of retired pilots and the aircraft they personally owned, and the Adumari force was growing low on fuel, owing to the hundreds of kilometers they’d had to cross before firing their first shots. Too, the three remaining TIE Interceptors were racking up a gruesome kill score, and had adjusted their strategy to head off the sort of mass-fire tactics Red Flight had employed against them. Any formation moving against them caused them to flash off at a new and unpredictable angle, making the TIEs impossible for the Blades to target and hit. It wouldn’t be too much longer before the attrition from the TIEs made the Adumari force too weak to have any chance at victory.

A two-seater Blade-30, the canopy over its rear gunnery position shattered and its fuselage patched from numerous previous military engagements, rose to join Red Flight. The gunner wore New Republic orange and gestured at Wedge, a thumbs-up.

“Welcoming Blastpike Ten to Red Flight,” Wedge said. “Pilot, be ready to fly low and evasive. We’re entering Cartann.”

“Understood, Red Flight.”

The four Blades broke away from the engagement zone and headed east over Cartann City … and the sky lit up like a celebration for them, as countless ground laser batteries unloaded their energy into the sky. Wedge and his pilots dove almost to rooftop level to give the enemy gunners less time to spot and track them. “Red Leader to Holdout.”

“Holdout here.”

“We’re inbound.” A bank of lasers cut in just to starboard of Wedge’s Blade. He felt heat from the flash of light, then his Blade rocked as the minor shock wave from expansion of superheated air hit him. The shock wave nearly slid him into Blastpike Ten, flying to his port; he corrected hastily.

“I’ll transmit your destination.” A moment later, a map of a portion of central Cartann City appeared on Wedge’s main display. He gave it a quick look. Their destination, marked by a blinking X, was only a block from the perator’s palace. He whistled.

Before he could comment, Cheriss continued, “The area is very heavily defended. You can see why. And we need you to do something. To arrive at a particular time … and shoot something.”

“Happy to oblige, Holdout.” Red Flight flashed over a street; below, he could see a standard repulsorlift transport, this one with a small laser battery permanently mounted in the bed. The operator pointed up at him but had no time to fire before Red Flight was safely over the rooftop. Wedge glanced at his main board; the map graphic now included a countdown.

The permanent and mobile laser batteries were becoming more numerous, and were better-advised of Red Flight’s course. Twice Wedge reacted to the body language of people on balconies, sending Red Flight into a sudden veer in a new direction, barely eluding a laser emplacement’s sudden fire from street level. He sent Red Flight on a more unpredictable and dangerous course, dipping down to street level and flying just above the mostly empty avenues, risking the cables but making it that much harder for laser batteries to get word of their path.

Only once were they threatened by fighters. A pair of older Blade-28s, classic machines lovingly maintained by their owners, dropped down behind Red Flight and opened up with lasers. Hobbie and Janson destroyed them with sustained rear laser fire. The ruins of their Blade-28s, burning, arced down to crash into the streets. They slid to smash into building fronts. “Old men,” Janson reported, a catch in his voice. “Old men wearing big smiles.”

As they reached the royal and governmental quadrant of Cartann City, the defenses become more capable and more numerous. Laser batteries arose from pods within building tops and could swivel to target enemies from the skies to the streets below. Reluctantly, Wedge rose to rooftop level again so as to see the pop-up batteries before they could target him. Red Flight fired upon and were fired upon by twenty of the installations before he lost count, and Wedge’s Blade, though not even grazed, was so badly rocked by shock waves from laser blasts that he could hear mechanisms shattering within the craft.

Then it was before him, the gray, innocuous building beyond which was the perator’s palace. Laser batteries atop the palace tried to target him, but on this final portion of the run Wedge stayed down at street level, allowing the target building to shield him. Ahead, he saw hangar-style doors grinding open on the gray building, saw flashes of laser fire as men and women in dark, innocuous garments were fired upon by defenders within it.

A pair of laser batteries rose with breathtaking speed from within the gray building, turned to target Red Flight. All four Blades fired, three at the battery to port, Hobbie at the battery to starboard. The port battery exploded in a shower of sparks and fire. The starboard battery, though chewed and blackened by Hobbie’s lasers, continued to sweep around and orient toward them; Hobbie launched a missile instead and the installation detonated, leaving behind only rubble and smoke.

Now they only had small-arms fire to contend with; shooters atop the gray building and clustered on balconies all around poured blaster fire into the four Blades. The impacts rang like off-key musical notes; Wedge felt as though a brigade of mechanics were hammering on his hull with hydrospanners, but the armored fuselage held up against the barrage. Still, there was an ominous new signal on the lightboard, a swarm of fighters and a pair of larger vehicles following them.

He descended on repulsorlifts to the duracrete just outside the hangar doors, intending to whirl around and present his missiles to their pursuers, but his comm unit kicked in with Cheriss’s voice. “Holdout to Red Flight, please come into the hangar.”

“We have incoming—”

“They’re ours. We need you in here.”

Wedge glided forward. As he crossed into the comparative darkness of the hangar, his goggles depolarized and he could see the building’s contents.

It was a spacious hangar, the duracrete floor meticulously clean, completely absent of the sort of lubricant spills he associated with a hangar that saw real use. He would have rated it as being spacious enough for two and a half to three squadrons of Blades, but there were only eight vehicles present: the four X-wings clustered against the back wall, toward the center, three Blade-32s lined up for quick departure to the left, and a brilliant gold Blade-28 all alone to the right.

The hangar’s living occupants included at least a dozen men and women in unmemorable dark clothing. There were dead occupants, too, six guards in the livery of the perator’s palace, lying motionless on the duracrete. The members of the Holdout invasion force clustered near the hangar doors, returning blaster fire against the balcony snipers across the avenue.

Cheriss stood near the fabulous gold Blade-28. She held a comlink in one hand and a blaster pistol in the other. “We need you to hit that with missiles before you go.” She pointed with the pistol to a bunkerlike cube of duracrete in the right rear of the hangar, then fired on it to illuminate it better. Her blaster shot did no perceptible harm to the hardened metal door at the front of the bunker.

“Will do,” Wedge said. He gained a little altitude, putting his Blade halfway between floor and ceiling, and said, “Take cover.” He waited until Cheriss ran to what he estimated to be a safe distance, then targeted the bunker and let fly with a missile.

The shock wave rocked his Blade-32, but when the smoke cleared, the bunker was merely singed.

“That’s really reinforced, Cheriss.” Wedge armed both missile ports and carefully targeted the front of the metal door. “What’s behind it?”

“A tunnel … we think.”

He glided backward on his repulsorlifts until he was nearly at the exit once more, and incoming sniper fire hammered away at his rear fuselage. Red Three, Red Four, and Blastpike Ten set down on the far side of the hangar, near Cheriss.

Wedge fired again. The shock wave actually pushed him halfway out into daylight. But when the smoke cleared, the metal door was gone and the bunker’s ceiling was blown out. Wedge saw the roof lying atop one of the Cartann Blade-32s, which was now crushed.

Wedge’s sensors showed that pursuit flight arriving. He turned around to see them: A half-dozen Blades in Yedagon red, most of them thickly decorated with burn marks, several of them trailing smoke, came across the near rooftops and set down on the duracrete outside, spinning on their repulsors to land with their missiles faced outward.

“Gate, begin power-on sequence and run through the portions of the start-up checklist you can handle. Instruct the other astromechs to do likewise.” He waited for the astromech’s confirmation, then shut down most power systems to his Blade-32. He raised his canopy manually and levered himself out to drop to the duracrete. The other members of Red Flight hurried to join him, but Cheriss reached him first. “What is all this?” he asked, and gestured at the destroyed bunker.

“When Gate broadcast the image of the inside of this hangar to us, we saw that.” She pointed to the gold Blade-28. “There’s only one Blade like it in existence. The Golden Yoke, Perator Pekaelic’s own Blade, in which he won his greatest military victories. If it’s here, this is the perator’s personal hangar … and you can be sure the perator is not going to be crossing the street and waving traffic to stop whenever he wishes to visit his favorite fighter.”

“Meaning that tunnel has to be a direct access …”

“To the palace itself. If we act fast enough, perhaps they won’t be able to array defenses against us like they have on the surface.”

Outside, a Farumme-class transport in Halbegardian blue settled down to the duracrete. Its front portions were afire. Side hatches opened and ground troops wearing the uniforms of Halbegardian elites poured out, streaming into the hangar in spite of the small-arms fire from the distant balconies. Ricochets flashed through the hangar sounding like bad musical notes when they hit metal, like meat sizzling when they hit duracrete.

“Good luck,” Wedge said. There wasn’t time for more. He hurried to his X-wing and its canopy rose for him.

It took moments to strap on the flak vest, systems controls, helmet and gloves, a ritual he could undertake in his sleep … and then he was behind the controls of his X-wing once more. “No time for full prep,” he said. “Be prepared to go unless you spot a critical failure. Red Leader has four lit and looking optimal.”

“Red Two. Four on-line, ready to fly.”

“Red Three. Anxious to show ’em what we can do.”

“Red Four. Four lit and in the green.”

Wedge’s sensor board howled, announcing an enemy target lock. He could see two black Blade-32s just coming over the horizon of buildings ahead of him. “Launch, S-foils to attack position, fire at will!” He rose on his repulsorlift, too fast and jerky, and saw incoming laser fire flash beneath him to strike the hangar wall. Flame erupted behind him. He couldn’t tell whether Cheriss or any of the troops there had gotten clear, and there was no time to wait and find out.

He kicked the X-wing forward, firing as his strike foils locked in attack formation and his targeting brackets flickered from yellow to green. He saw the red pulses of his quad-linked weapons flash toward the incoming Blades, hammering through the bow of one of them, chewing mercilessly through its contents. That Blade banked to starboard and disappeared once more behind the line of buildings; even at this distance Wedge heard a tremendous impact, saw the fireball erupt from the crash site.

He was first out of the hangar, with none of the other members of his flight firing—they were too close in behind him. The lasers of the surviving incoming Blade hit his front shields. Reduced to negligible power, the laser strike played across the fuselage just in front of his canopy, doing nothing more than burning away at paint. He replied with another linked laser blast, a miss as the incoming pilot veered … then a laser shot from behind him caught the Blade-32, shredding the port wing. Wedge saw the pilot punch out. The Blade seemed to aim straight in toward the hangar, a ballistic course, and flashed by over Wedge’s head, over the hangar roof, straight toward the perator’s palace. In his rear viewport, Wedge saw the bank of palace guns swing toward the out-of-control vehicle and burn it from the sky.

Wedge added power to acceleration. “Good shooting, Red Three. Now let’s see what we can show General Phennir.”

After so much work with the Blades, flying the X-wing again was more than mere improvement—it was a delight. He sent it up in an ascent that no Adumari vehicle could match, jinking and juking to give the laser battery gunners fits, and did a roll just for the sheer joy of it. This wasn’t just flying; it was dancing in the air.

“Red Two, this is Three. Am I crazy, or is the general doing what he tells us never to do?”

“Three, Two. Yes you are, and yes he is. Pay no attention.”

“Understood.”

Wedge grinned and set his course due west.

In the time it had taken Red Flight to retrieve its X-wings, the engagement zone had drifted over the western portions of Cartann City. There, the laser batteries were silent, but they were the only thing that was. The sky was rocked from second to second by missile detonations, the ripping noise of Blades crossing the sky at full speed, the deadly scream of doomed fighters making their final, uncontrolled descents.

Red Flight came at the engagement zone from a higher altitude, the sun at their backs, and Wedge’s sensors were quick to spot the three remaining TIE Interceptors, now making another lethal run through the thickest part of the zone. He plotted their likely return course and transmitted a simple intercept course to his pilots. “Between here and there,” he said, “shoot anything in Cartann colors.”

His X-wing flashed through the engagement zone. He fired when his brackets went live around an enemy, went evasive when his sensor board told him an enemy was seeking him with a target lock. Seconds later, he could visually spot the TIEs, approaching and heading across his path. He got the green of a laser lock on his targeting brackets and opened fire.

The three TIEs reacted almost instantly. The solo pilot returned fire while going evasive in a corkscrew maneuver, a dazzling demonstration of evasive flying. The leader of the remaining wing turned straight toward Red Flight, a head-to-head that lasted fractions of a second; it fired, green lasers trying to find a target among the members of Red Flight, and then had flashed by and was behind them in an instant.

The third Interceptor, Wedge’s target, detonated in a brilliant flash. He saw Tycho fly through the debris cloud. “Two, you all right?”

“Unhurt.”

“I’m not.” That was Hobbie’s voice. “Took a couple of shots from the head-to-head. Power down to fifty-eight percent. Starboard lasers gone.”

On the sensor board, the two Interceptors had joined up and were looping around to come in behind the X-wings.

“Four, full speed ahead, whatever you can manage,” Wedge said. “Three, stay with him. Two, you and I play crippled.” He reduced speed and began slewing back and forth in a manner that suggested damaged air surfaces and malfunctioning controls. “Gate, can you give me some smoke, sparks, anything to suggest I’m hit?”

I WILL APPLY A LASER TORCH TO THE SURFACE OF THE REAR HULL. THE PAINT WILL IGNITE AND CAUSE SMOKE. THE DAMAGE WILL BE COSMETIC ONLY.

“Do it.” This was a gamble, drawing the Interceptors to him and Tycho, but if the enemy pursued Hobbie instead, they were more than likely to shoot down the damaged X-wing.

The enemy took the bait. The two Interceptors stayed together and arced to follow Wedge and Tycho.

Wedge switched to proton torpedoes and reduced forward speed, hard, a gambit normally used to force a novice or inattentive pursuer to overshoot. It didn’t; the TIE pilot on his tail was too experienced, and fired off a laser salvo that hammered at the tail of Wedge’s X-wing.

But Tycho shot on ahead, his pursuer staying tight behind him, and that pursuer crossed, in a smooth and predictable arc, into Wedge’s brackets. The brackets flickered to red and he fired.

The Interceptor in his sights became a sky full of smoke and debris. Wedge headed straight into the destruction cloud. As soon as it surrounded him, he banked down and to port, hoping the Interceptor would lose him for a critical second or two.

It did; Wedge saw it shoot through the cloud, waver for a second, and then loop around in pursuit of him.

Then, as Tycho, at the end of his own loop, appeared in Wedge’s forward viewport, the TIE pilot stood the Interceptor on its tail and rose skyward at a rate no vehicle on Adumari could match.

Wedge rose in its wake and fired after it, one laser barrage … but his targeting computer couldn’t get a lock on the fast-moving, extraordinarily maneuverable Interceptor. “Phennir?” he asked.

There was no reply from the Interceptor, but Tycho said, “I think so. And I’ll give you odds that he’s about to tell his commanding officer that things aren’t going so well down here, and it’s time to bring in the rest of the Imperial fleet.”

“If he is, you’d better pray that I’ve accomplished one thing with diplomacy while I’ve been here.” He turned back toward the heart of the engagement zone. “Form up on me. We’re going to give the pilots of Cartann what they’ve been asking for for so long.”

The loss of the Interceptors did have an effect on the forces of Cartann. They flew against the united Adumari forces with increasing desperation and diminishing confidence. As their flying became more conservative, the Adumari forces’ focus began to take a greater and greater toll on them.

And then there were the X-wings, roaring among the Blades at speeds none of them could match, dancing in and out of engagements almost effortlessly, sending enemy pilot after pilot down in flames, doing exactly what the Interceptors had been doing to Cartann’s enemies moments before. Even Hobbie’s crippled snubfighter could match a Blade’s speed, and was superior to it in defenses, maneuverability, and firepower; Janson and Hobbie acted as a two-fighter screen for the surviving Meteor as the giant wing-shaped craft picked off Cartann’s fliers with its long-distance lasers.

Wedge set his course for a half squadron of Blades now forming up at high altitude; doubtless they meant to dive into a strafing run on fighters at lower altitudes. But as soon as he had his nose pointed up toward them, one of his targets spoke up: “Hold your fire. Skull-Biters surrender.”

Wedge rose toward them, his finger still on the trigger. “Say that again.”

“Skull-Biters Flightknife surrenders to Red Flight. Our weapons are powered down.”

Another voice cut in: “Lords of Dismay Flightknife, two reporting, surrenders to General Wedge Antilles.”

Wedge switched hastily to command frequency. “Eye Three, what’s going on?”

“Not sure, Red Leader. A lot of traffic from the perator’s palace. Now surrendering—wait.” She was off the comm waves a few seconds. In that time, Wedge and Tycho surpassed the waiting Blades’ altitude and looped over lazily for a return descent. Then Iella was back. “Surrenders confirmed. The palace is commanding air forces to surrender. And they’re surrendering to you. Less honor lost than giving up to the ‘lesser nations.’ ”

“Understood.”

“Holdout requests your immediate presence at the perator’s palace.”

Wedge growled to himself and switched back to the general frequency. “This is Antilles. I accept the surrender of Skull-Biters and Lords of Dismay. Red Three and Red Four now authorized to accept surrenders in my name, during my absence.” He switched back to squadron frequency. “Come on, Tycho. We have a royal appointment.”

13

No laser installations fired on them as they crossed the city again. Small-arms fire from balconies all around struck the X-wings as they descended toward the perator’s palace outer yard, but that stopped as soon as the snubfighters were below the level of the walls.

In the outer courtyard, laser battery crews stood beside their pop-up emplacements with their hands up and behind their heads. Soldiers stood in similar positions. There were Blades, many of them damaged, on the grounds; their pilots stood by in attitudes of surrender. Wedge saw two men he thought were members of the elite Halbegardian invasion force keeping at least two hundred men and women under cover with nothing but their blaster rifles. And those two Halbegardians took the time to salute him as he slid out of his cockpit and dropped to the courtyard surface. A woman in the same uniform beckoned them from the steps up into the palace.

The Outer Court of the palace was not the place of festivities, or even gentility, it had been during previous visits. The air was thick with the smell of burned flesh, and the bodies of liveried guards still lay where they’d fallen. Courtiers were packed against one wall, held at bay by the blasters of invaders—members of the Holdout team and Halbegardian elites.

The perator, stripped of his retinue, stood with captors around him. Wedge saw, with relief, Cheriss among them. The flatscreens on the walls were bared and active; one showed Escalion, the perator of the Yedagon Confederacy, surrounded by advisors in the planning room at Yedagon City, while the other was broken into numerous smaller squares, some of which were blank and some of which showed scenes similar to the broadcast from Yedagon; the only difference was in the furnishings and the people staring out from the screen.

As he approached with Tycho, Wedge heard running feet approaching from behind. He turned to look, alert against some new attack, but it was Hallis who rounded the doorway and ran into the room; she skidded awkwardly to a halt, looked around, and then moved off to stand before a column from which she could record with the ordinary holocam she held in her hands.

“So you’ve brought the alien general,” the perator said. There was mockery to his tone. “Why bother? It doesn’t take a famous pilot to pull the trigger on me. Any of you could do it as well.”

“That’s not what we want to do.” That was Tomer Darpen, standing among the captors present. “We’d really prefer—”

“I wasn’t aware,” Wedge said, “that you held a post with the united Adumari forces involved in this operation.”

Tomer blinked. “Well, that’s not relevant. We have to—”

“Be quiet, Tomer. Or I’ll authorize Colonel Celchu to shoot you.” Wedge approached Cheriss. “What’s the situation?”

Her expression was an interesting study, a mix of exultation and guilt. “We hold the planning chambers and have compelled his senior officers to surrender—and to signal surrender to the flightknives.”

“That’s done.”

“But the perator won’t surrender.”

The perator, clad in spotless white as if to suggest he had never taken an action to mar his reputation, moved forward, ignoring the blasters aimed at him, until he stood before Wedge. “Not honorable,” he explained. His voice was weary but calm. “Surrender requires cooperation. I would rather die than cooperate.”

“So we kill him,” said one of the Halbegardian elites, but others turned to look at the flatscreens showing multiple images. It was evident to Wedge, from the way those shown in the flatscreens were intensely watching, that the images of the events taking place in this chamber were being broadcast to them.

One of the figures in one of the smaller flatscreen squares, a gray-haired woman with broad shoulders and an authoritarian bearing, spoke; her voice emerged from the flatscreen speakers. “No. Pekaelic can only be condemned by a council of his peers, and that is not the problem before us now.”

Wedge leaned over to whisper in Cheriss’s ear. “What happens if Pekaelic dies?”

“He has not named a successor. The council of nobles of Cartann would choose his successor. Some of the nations held in Cartann’s grip would probably take the opportunity to break away. There would be much confusion …”

“I see.” Wedge raised his voice. “Perator, let’s speak simply. No diplomatic nonsense. If you persist in this posture and get yourself killed, your enemies will celebrate, but Cartann and its holdings become disorganized for a while. Long enough for the Empire to see that you’re not going to be joining them willingly. Long enough for the Empire to send a fleet large enough to blow the Allegiance out of space and then pound your whole planet flat. In a week, you’ll all be slaves, or worse. And where’s the honor in that?”

“There is none,” the perator said. “But I will still not surrender. I have never surrendered. It is not within me.”

Wedge sighed, exasperated. Then a new thought occurred to him. “Could you retire?”

“What?”

“Retire. Without shame. Not surrender, not bow to your enemies. Just … quit.”

“Abdicate.” The perator considered. “I could honorably grant the throne to one of my sons. But my sons are pilots.” His expression turned bleak. “After today, I don’t even know if they are still alive.”

“I suggest you find out.” Wedge took a step back to give the perator space.

A minister was allowed to join the perator, then to go, with Halbegardian guards, to one of the palace’s comm centers.

“Royal heirs are always in danger,” Cheriss told Wedge. “At least in Cartann. They are usually raised away from their true parents, under assumed names, to keep them safe.”

Wedge grimaced. “So they can’t even be children to their living parents. Cheriss—”

“Don’t say it. I can see that it is bad.”

He pulled out his comlink and activated it. “Red Leader to Eye Three. Update, please.” He turned the volume down and held it between his ear and his cupped hand.

“Except for a couple of minor skirmishes, the air battle is done,” Iella said. “Cartann Blades are landing in fields all over the place under the lasers of the united force. But, more important, the Cutting Lens-class sensor ships showed one of the Star Destroyers, presumably Agonizer, leaving orbit. It left behind a small vehicle, which I’m tentatively identifying from a visual scan as a Standard Imperial shuttle. It’s descending toward Cartann City.”

Wedge felt a surge of triumph. “Have a couple of Blades escort it in, all the way to the palace. I’m pretty sure it’s a friendly.”

“Will confirm and do so.”

“Thanks. Red Leader out.”

Minutes later, the minister returned and hurried to the perator’s side. The words he whispered to his ruler were good ones; the perator sagged for a moment, in what was obviously relief, then straightened. He beckoned Wedge to him, ignoring all others in the chamber.

“My sons survive,” he said. “My oldest is being brought here now.”

“Congratulations,” Wedge said.

The perator gave him a close look. “Well done. I couldn’t even detect the mockery.”

“I didn’t offer you any, perator. I think you should be punished for what you’ve done … but I’d never wish on anyone a punishment as severe as the loss of his children.”

“Ah.” Though he did not step back, the perator retreated, his thoughts and concerns suddenly light-years away.

Minutes later, a quartet of Halbegardian elites marched into the chamber, a pilot in Cartann black between them. The pilot was a young man with an earnest expression and thick black hair.

With a start, Wedge realized that he knew the young man. He was Balass ke Rassa, a pilot who’d flown against Wedge in simulated combat.

Balass did not acknowledge Wedge or any of the others near the perator; he marched up to his father and halted military style before him.

The perator looked upon him, searching his features. Wedge wondered how long it had been since he’d seen his son—months? Years?

“You know why I’ve had you brought here,” the perator said.

Balass nodded.

“Will you accept?”

“If honor allows.” Balass turned to one of his guards. “But I cannot in my present state. My pistol.” He held out his hand and snapped his fingers, imperious.

The guard looked around, confused, then his gaze fell on Wedge.

Wedge nodded.

The guard pulled a small Adumari blaster pistol from beneath his coat and handed it to Balass. But the prince was not done; after he holstered the weapon, he said, “Blastsword.”

Wedge nodded again. But when the guard reached for the weapon at his side, Balass said, “And not one of your Halbegardian toys. A proper Cartann blastsword.”

Cheriss unbuckled the belt from her waist and put it around the prince. It barely fit, on the last notch, but he did not object. Cheriss stood back and away from him, her face solemn.

Balass turned again to his father. “Now I will accept.”

The perator nodded. “I, Pekaelic ke Teldan, renounce my claim to the throne of Cartann and all titles pertaining thereto, in favor of my eldest son, Balass ke Teldan, known these last two-and-twenty years as Balass ke Rassa.”

His son waited a beat, then said, “I, Balass ke Teldan, accept these rights and duties, and, though the circumstances be rushed and ceremony entirely absent, proclaim myself perator of Cartann.”

There was no applause; there were no cheers to mark the sudden transfer of power from one set of shoulders to another.

Escalion, from the flatscreen, said, “I congratulate you on your poise, Perator Balass. Now, can you do what your father could not? Can you end this conflict by honorable surrender?”

Balass turned to the screen and shook his head. “No,” he said. “We remain at war.”

Wedge heard startled exclamations from the people in the hall and from both flatscreens. The Halbegardian guards in the chamber trained their weapons on the new ruler. Balass seemed unaffected by all this; he just stared into Escalion’s flatscreen, or rather to the point at the top of the screen where its flatcam was installed, and kept a slight smile, possibly a mocking one, on his face.

“You understand,” Escalion said, “you doom your nation to further punishment if you persist in this arrogance.”

“I was about to say the same thing to you,” Balass said. “Only substituting ‘our world’ for ‘your nation.’ Now be quiet a bit while I talk. I’ll try to make you understand.”

Balass paced, talking as he did so, turning from time to time so that he divided his attention between the dignitaries on the two flatscreens and those standing before him. “You lot seem to have concentrated so hard on the tactical situation before you that you have forgotten the strategic. Whether I surrender or not, the Empire knows Adumar will not be allying itself with them willingly. Indeed, I’m told that their giant ship has already left orbit … not a good sign for us.

“If I surrender, the New Republic cannot bring in ships to aid us in the conflict yet to come. Well, they can eventually. But they can bring in no more ships except under flags of truce with us or flags of war against us. And we cannot offer flags of truce as a united world until all ramifications of Cartann’s surrender are explored. Which of Cartann’s protectorates will splinter away and declare independence? Which will cling to Cartann and transfer loyalty to the united Adumari force you represent? These questions will take time to resolve.”

Men and women, a few of them, were now nodding on the flatscreen that was broken into multiple images.

Balass continued, “But if I do not surrender—if you, the united Adumari coalition, accept at this moment my offer of truce without repercussion for our recent battles—then Cartann can join your union as an equal partner. Now, instantly, with terms to follow when we have time for negotiations. I can cast the votes of Cartann’s protectorates, then free those nations when we have the luxury of time. Lords and ladies, if you abandon your grudge against Cartann, if you consider the old Cartann to have departed with my father’s abdication and a new one to stand before you, we can forge a world union, in tentative form at least, in minutes. Or you can have your revenge and watch our world fall.

“Now, it is time for you to decide.” He turned to face the many-faceted flatscreen, his hands on his hips, his expression imperious.

Wedge suppressed a whistle. If Balass pulled this off, he’d save his nation any number of troubles—years or decades of reparation payments, the perceived dishonor of wartime surrender, and much more. Wedge had seldom seen a leader take such a hurdle within seconds of accepting his position.

The figures on the flatscreens began talking with one another, their voices not broadcast over the speakers. One by one, the images of distant courtrooms and planning chambers winked down to neutral gray.

“We’re going to do it,” Tomer said. “He has them by the power cables. They have to accept. We’re going to win.”

“Yes, we are.” Wedge smiled at him. It was easy to do so. All he had to do was imagine the man’s fate.

“I was delighted when I heard that you and your pilots had survived the gauntlet, and then the rumors that you’d made it outside Cartann …”

“I imagine you were.”

“And this raid!” Tomer gestured expansively. “More successful than you imagined, I’ll bet.”

“No, it’s right on the money so far. But give it time. I predict that it will get even better.”

Tomer’s expression lost some of its glee, becoming more uncertain. “How so?”

The two flatscreens flashed back into activity. As before, Escalion of Yedagon dominated one of them, and it was he who spoke. “Perator Balass, much as we think Cartann should shoulder the major share of loss for the brief war we have suffered, you are correct. Everyone’s circumstances have changed, and no one has time for even the most honorable prosecution. We offer Cartann a seat, a full vote, a full voice in what we now call the Adumari Union.”

“I accept.” Balass bowed to Escalion, then turned and bowed to the viewers on the other flatscreen. “Who will speak for us to the New Republic?”

Escalion said, “I think we would accept none other than General Antilles.”

Wedge cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. I can’t. Your elected speaker will be talking with me. I still have my duties as ambassador of the New Republic.”

“Then we will choose from among ourselves,” Escalion said.

As the perators and their advisors from around Adumar began a spirited—and, Wedge hoped, brief—discussion, Wedge turned to Tomer. “Tycho?”

Wedge drew his blaster, put its point up under Tomer’s chin. Tycho drew in the same moment, putting his barrel to Tomer’s left eye; the diplomat had to close his eye to keep it from being hurt.

“What is this?” Tomer asked. His tone was calm, even unconcerned. Wedge was impressed with his poise.

“It’s time for you to call Allegiance and tell them to acknowledge and accept transmissions from all New Republic personnel and citizens on the ground,” Wedge said.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“And if you don’t do it, we’re going to hand you over to these Halbegardian guards. They’ll conduct you back to Halbegardia or the Yedagon Confederacy. They’ll put you on trial as a war criminal based on what I have to tell them about your interaction with Pekaelic. I doubt you can expect much mercy at their hands. On the other hand, comply and I’ll turn you over to the New Republic for prosecution. Assuming neither Tycho nor I has a spasm and blows your head off.”

Tomer heaved a sigh. “I admit nothing,” he said. But he drew out a comlink. “Tomer Darpen to Allegiance, come in.”

There was no answer. Tomer shrugged, an “I told you so” expression.

Wedge smiled at him. “Repeat after me. ‘En-Are-Eye-One to Allegiance. Over.’ ”

Tomer looked at him, expressionless, his one open eye flickering as if reading through a list of hints to find the one that would get him out of this situation. Finally he said, “En-Are-Eye-One to Allegiance. Over.”

“Allegiance to En-Are-Eye-One, we read you.”

Wedge just stared.

“I rescind the order concerning communications from the ground. You are authorized to respond to transmissions from Adumar.”

“Rescind the comm blackout as well,” Wedge said.

Tomer sighed. “Likewise, I rescind Allegiance’s hypercomm restrictions.” He covered the microphone with his hand. “Is that all? Or should I have them send down a meal?”

“That’s all.”

Tomer removed his hand. “Acknowledge, please.”

The distant comm officer said, “Allegiance acknowledges. Captain Salaban would like to talk to you.”

Wedge took the comlink from Tomer’s hand and gave it to Tycho. “Colonel Celchu, do me a favor and arrange for this prisoner to be transported to Allegiance. Inform the Allegiance of our situation and have Salaban stand by to communicate by hypercomm with the Fleet Command and General Cracken. Then give those two parties a quick report.”

“Will do. What are you up to?”

“I’m going for a walk.” Wedge gestured all around. “I’m sick of this place.” He gave Tomer one last look. “You should have taken your chances with Adumari justice.”

Tomer just stared, impassive.

On the palace steps, Wedge found Admiral Rogriss being escorted between two Halbegardian guards. Sniper fire from the near balconies was all but over.

Wedge dismissed the guards and gave the older man a salute. “Admiral. Good to see you. How are you?”

Rogriss gave him a slow shake of the head. “How can anyone be when his career has just been vaporized?”

“Meaning that Agonizer has left system without sending its holocomm message.”

Rogriss nodded. “The holocomm is shut down and sealed tight. It can only be opened by my voice … or by the security codes of a superior officer. Which it won’t reach for another three days or so.”

“Will that matter? I mean, Imperial Intelligence could have a team on-planet, with its own holocomm unit …”

Rogriss shook his head. “Intelligence does have a team here. Good luck finding them; I won’t tell you how. But they don’t have a holocomm. You have the time you wanted … at the expense of my career.”

Wedge offered his hand. “For what it’s worth, you have my respect.”

Rogriss took it. “You’ll still get word to my children?”

“Yes.”

“Even if General Phennir shoots you down when the Imperial forces return?”

“So he did survive … Yes, even then. First thing, I’ll put together some orders concerning you that will be carried out in case of my death.”

“And even if I don’t come over to the New Republic?”

“Where would you go instead?”

Rogriss looked around. “I’ve spent considerable time lately planning how I was going to exploit the Adumari military weaknesses. Perhaps I can now show the Adumari where those weaknesses are, how to put armor over them. Perhaps they’d offer me a position here where I could do so.”

“I imagine they would. Either way, I’ll arrange to get word to your children.”

“Thank you.”

14

Wedge stood at the edge of the magcon field separating the atmosphere of Allegiance’s main starfighter bay from the vacuum of space beyond. Below, he could see Mon Casima, the Mon Calamari cruiser now assigned to the Adumar operation, less than two kilometers below. Other New Republic ships were out there, not visible to him but on-station—frigates, corvettes, aging cruisers that had once served the Empire or even the old Republic before it, as big a fleet as the New Republic could spare and assemble on such short notice. Not even Lusankya, the flagship—and sometimes only ship—of the task force Wedge normally commanded, would be present; in his absence, it had been dispatched on other duties.

The air was cold, as was common with starfighter bays in space; magcon fields were not good at retaining heat. The piercing noises of repulsorlifts being brought on-line cut through him, and the sound of engines being tested vibrated him to the bone.

To Wedge, it was almost like being at home.

Almost. From now on, he knew, home would be where he and Iella chose to be together—quarters on Coruscant with its overwhelming press of population, a small house on some grassy patch on an insignificant colony world, even Corellia, someday, if things changed in the way that system was governed.

But that was a problem to solve tomorrow or the day after that. For now, there was Adumar.

Cartann City and a number of smaller metropolises had been seriously damaged during the Adumari Union raid. Hundreds of Blades and other vehicles on both sides had been lost, and many brave pilots. Wedge had been sorry to hear that Liak ke Mattino, captain of Strike the Moons Flightknife, who had risked his perator’s displeasure to give Red Flight a chance at escape, was among the dead, as were many of the pilots Wedge had trained against in the days before the outbreak of war.

The former perator was now hidden away on an estate somewhere within Cartann’s borders, formally protected by his son from prosecution at the hands of the Adumari Union Council. Many of the world’s other perators had protested, but Balass ke Teldan had stood fast by the terms he demanded for Cartann’s peaceful and quick admission into the union, so it appeared that Pekaelic would avoid prosecution for his poor judgment and autocratic politics.

That would not be the case with Tomer Darpen. The onetime regional head of New Republic Intelligence was safely locked away in prison quarters, plotting his trial defense, blissfully unaware of the recording Hallis had made of the conversation that would doom him.

Tomer’s temporary replacement would not be the detriment Tomer had been. Appointed by General Cracken, Iella Wessiri was now managing the New Republic’s Intelligence matters on Adumar with her usual efficiency.

“Are you sure you don’t want to direct your forces from Allegiance’s bridge?” Iella asked.

Wedge looked up, startled. Iella had appeared beside him, in deceptive clothing, a naval lieutenant’s uniform, and had joined Wedge in studying the skies beneath them.

Wedge looked around, saw that no one was near them, and affected surprise. “I’d swear you were talking to me. What an odd question to put to a pilot.”

Iella managed a little smile. “Sorry. Lost my head for a moment. You can’t blame me for trying.”

“No, I can’t.”

She put an arm around his waist, rested her head on his shoulder. “I’m proud of you,” she said.

“We haven’t won, yet.”

“Not for winning. For being willing to lose. For standing by your guns when the whole galaxy seemed to be arrayed against your decision.”

“That wasn’t fun. But when I was sure I was about to lose everything, and I discovered that I hadn’t lost you after all … that made it all livable.”

“But that leaves me with one big worry about the future.”

“That I’m still flying?”

He felt her shake her head. She said, “No, that you’re almost as stubborn as I am. I—”

Whatever her next words might have been, they were cut short by the single blare of an alarm, followed by words that echoed throughout the bay and, Wedge knew, throughout the ship: “Reconnaissance unit High Flight Three Beta reports arrival of Imperial vessels in Adumari space. Three repeat three Imperial-class Star Destroyers and numerous secondary vessels inbound. All personnel to battle stations. All pilots to muster stations.”

Wedge sighed. “That’s it.” He pulled her to him for a quick kiss.

“I can’t ask you to be safe,” she said.

He shook his head.

“So shoot straight. And faster than they do.”

“Count on it. I love you.”

“I love you.” She broke from him and hurried off to her station, casting one last look over her shoulder at him before she joined the personnel streaming out the exit and was gone.

They formed up a kilometer off Allegiance’s bow, an impressive fighter group: Wedge’s Red Flight, two shield-equipped TIE fighter squadrons, one slightly understrength A-wing squadron, a unit of B-wings, a Y-wing squadron, the High Flight X-wing unit off Allegiance, and three space-equipped Blade-32 flightknives from the planet’s surface—two from Yedagon and one from Cartann. They were 106 fighters in strength.

“Allegiance’s sensors show the enemy TIE squadrons issuing from the Star Destroyers,” Wedge said. “Fighters escorting bombers—a lot of bombers. They expect us to try to intercept with our fighters. Here’s how we’re going to play it instead.

“Our advance screen is Red Flight, High Flight Squadron, Lightflash Squad, and Contender and Skylight Squadrons.” That put the X-wings, A-wings, and TIE fighters at the fore of Wedge’s group. “The rest of you hang back in formation until we’re fully engaged and you can calculate where the action is thickest—and where the enemy is less likely to be able to break away to engage you. Approach by those vectors and unload everything you have on Agonizer.” That put the B-wings of Solar Wind Squadron, Y-wings of Remember Derra Squadron, and Blades of the Ice Edge, Frozen Death, and Sunwhip Flightknives behind on missiling duty. “You Blades remember to fire on the command of your flightknife commanders, in unison; your missiles lack the punch of proton torpedoes, so you’re going to have to land precisely timed mass fire if you’re going to do any harm to a Star Destroyer. Understood?”

He was answered by confirmations from each of the squadron commanders.

“All right. Let’s go.” He transmitted the intercept course to the group and vectored to lead the way to the enemy.

As his group formed up on him, he switched the comm board over to the main Adumari broadcast frequency. The two-dimensional image that was the continuous flatscreen broadcast filled his main screen. It showed an older man, a patch over one eye not quite concealing the scar that both rose and descended from his eye socket, addressing the flatcam.

“… continues to hold out against Adumari Union forces,” the man said. “Despite reports that Pekaelic’s forces decline in number every day, assaults by units of his informal force continue to occupy Union attention and slow the Union efforts to bring peace to Adumar. At sunrise, Yedagon time, this morning, units of the Cartannese Lords of Dismay Flightknife, now allied with the former perator, escorted a bombing raid that destroyed six residential blocks in Yedagon’s prestigious Accolux Township …”

Wedge switched it off. This was the third day of broadcasts that were, in essence, all lies. Scripted by Hallis Saper with the input of the Adumari Union’s military advisors, the broadcasts told the tale of the former perator, Pekaelic ke Teldan, still mounting a mighty struggle against the conquering Adumari Union, keeping war raging across all the civilized nations of Adumar. The public followed the news accounts keenly. The guerrilla warfare always took place in communities that could be, and were, shut off from the outer world by military occupation … meaning that Imperial Intelligence agents on the ground would have a hard time disproving them.

Meanwhile, the true Pekaelic rested in the Cartannese township his son had chosen for his exile, barely aware of the events that were being attributed to him. All he knew was that he had a broadcast to make and a script to follow when instructed to do so.

If all went as it was supposed to, the Empire’s Intelligence team or Adumar would have been recording all these transmissions for the last three days, analyzing them and interpreting them, but not discovering that they were all lies. Even now, they’d be transmitting their findings to the Imperial task force headed toward the planet. With luck, the task force would believe the accounts of a world still at war, its military might scattered.

Well before Wedge’s group spotted the enemy Star Destroyers, Allegiance reported that elements of the 181st Imperial Fighter Group, escorting numerous squadrons of TIE bombers, was descending into Cartann airspace. Blips representing other Imperial fighter units were also detected in descent.

And then the Star Destroyer formation came into view, Agonizer at the point, Retaliator and Master Stroke well behind, other, smaller vessels throughout the convoy. Wedge set his course straight for the flagship. “Pilots, arm your weapons. X-wings, S-foils to attack position. Squadron commanders, you are free for individual deployment.” He was not surprised to see the speed-happy A-wing pilots jump out ahead almost instantly. He switched to squadron frequency. “Red Flight, High Flight Squadron, call ’em as you see ’em.”

“Red One, High Flight Twelve. I detect incoming TIE fighters and Interceptors … and two wing pairs of TIE Defenders. They’ve left behind a pretty ferocious screen.”

Wedge grimaced. The TIE Defender was one of the best starfighters known. Equipped with three sets of solar wing arrays, equally spaced around the spherical fuselage, instead of two, and outfitted with shields equal to an X-wing’s and weapons and speed superior to the X-wing, it was an extraordinary—and extraordinarily costly—starfighter. “Red Leader to Solar Wind Squadron. Solar Wind Seven through Twelve, move up to join the screen. We’re going to need your help with the TIE Defenders.”

“Acknowledged, Red Leader.”

Space ahead lit up like interplanetary fireworks as Agonizer’s turbolasers and ion cannons went active. That meant the A-wings had come within range. Seconds later, he spotted the first of the incoming TIE fighters—mere blips on his sensor board that materialized into fast-moving blurs in his forward viewport.

He linked his lasers for quad fire, giving them a harder punch but a slower cycle rate. “Break by pairs and fire at will,” he said.

The X-wings around him spread out, maintaining their course straight toward the incoming enemies. Head-to-head combat approaches were among the most dangerous tactics for starfighters, but they favored the shielded X-wings slightly over the unshielded TIEs.

On the heads-up display projected onto his forward viewport, Wedge’s yellow targeting brackets tracked an incoming TIE Interceptor, the brackets trailing slightly behind the vehicle’s lateral evasive movements. He sent his X-wing into the juking and jinking maneuvers that made it a more difficult target and manually swept his targeting brackets across the path he suspected the TIE would take next. His suspicion was right; the TIE dove straight through the path his brackets were tracing and the brackets went green. Wedge fired. He was rewarded only with a graze as one of his lasers charred the Interceptor’s starboard solar wing black. The TIE veered off its intended course, away from Wedge and the X-wings.

Incoming green lasers matched outgoing red ones in number and intensity, and Wedge saw, in his peripheral vision, one of the High Flight X-wings explode, leaving only burning gas and rapidly cooking shrapnel behind.

Then the lines of TIEs and New Republic fighters met, merged, and separated again, the TIE squadrons flashing past. In a second the TIEs were behind him but coming around in their impossibly tight loops to come up behind the slower New Republic craft.

“Red Leader, got an eyeball,” Tycho said.

Wedge checked by sensors and visually. A TIE fighter, or eyeball in pilot’s parlance, had come up behind Tycho and was unloading a continuous stream of laser fire at him, though Tycho’s erratic side-to-side motions had kept him from sustaining any but the most grazing of laser impacts.

“Read you, Two. I’m your wing.” Wedge turned in Tycho’s wake.

Tycho dove—“downward” being the direction of Adumar’s orbital plane—in a shallow arc the most inexperienced of pilots could have followed. Less easy to follow would have been his extraordinary evasive maneuvering within the simple arc. The TIE fighter followed, keeping up his laser fire, and Wedge came up behind.

He fired once, his four lasers flashing through empty space where, a quarter second before, the TIE had been. The nimble eyeball flashed off to port, breaking away from its pursuit of Tycho.

“You’d think he wanted to stay alive or something, Lead.”

“Let’s disabuse him of the notion. Back to the furball.” Wedge turned toward the most active portion of the engagement zone.

He could see on his sensor board the second wave of fighters, the missile-bearing craft, heading in two columns around the engagement zone toward Agonizer. And what he could see, the enemy could see. It would be best not to give the TIE Defenders a crack at those columns; Defenders would tear the slow-moving Y-wings and Blades to pieces. He identified the nearest Defender on his sensor board and headed straight for it.

It was engaged with two Allegiance TIE fighters and a B-wing operating in concert. As Wedge approached, the Defender’s lasers chewed through one of the TIE fighters; the eyeball vented the gases in its cockpit and went dark. A linked ion-cannon blast from the B-wing missed the Defender by thirty meters or more, and the Defender’s return ion blast eliminated the other TIE fighter, filling its cockpit with sparks before the vehicle went dark.

“Red Two, go wide. Let’s give him nothing but guns to run toward.” Wedge looped to starboard, away from his wingman, and Tycho looped to port; they arced toward the B-wing and Defender from opposite directions.

The Defender, itself looping around for a run at the B-wing, instead swung wide to keep clear of its original target and accelerated toward Tycho.

Wedge’s targeting brackets flickered green across the Defender. He fired, but his lasers were meters off the mark.

Tycho and the Defender, skittering around like drops of ale on a cooking surface, came toward one another, Tycho unloading lasers, the Defender firing ion cannons. They passed one another seemingly undamaged … until Wedge noticed that Tycho was no longer maneuvering. Red Two’s X-wing was dark, headed out to space like a missile with no guidance control.

Wedge bit back a curse. He didn’t bother trying to raise Tycho on the comlink. Ion cannons tended to wipe out all a vehicle’s electronics. Tycho was out of the game unless he could manage a cold start on his engines, an unlikely eventuality.

Instead, Wedge turned in the Defender’s wake. He’d have only a shot or two before the other vehicle’s superior speed and maneuverability would take it out of Wedge’s range.

As his targeting brackets edged toward the Defender, its pilot detected the attempted targeting lock and went evasive, executing the kind of side-to-side maneuvers that only a TIE-style vehicle could manage. He also put on a burst of acceleration, drawing away from the X-wing at a prodigious rate, and began a tight loop upward that would inevitably put him at Wedge’s stern.

Wedge shook his head and held his fire. Instead, he maneuvered his brackets around and across his target, seeing which way the Defender jumped whenever threatened with an imminent hit. The Defender’s response was always a spiraling loop down and to starboard, a fatal predictability … Wedge ran his brackets toward the Defender one last time, then, not waiting for the Defender’s response, sent his X-wing into a loop down and to starboard.

The Defender rolled right into his targeting brackets. The pilot saw his mistake, began a reverse, but Wedge fired, quad-linked lasers punching through the vehicle’s engines and into the cockpit. Fire flared through the hole he’d made, then the vehicle detonated.

Wedge found the B-wing on his sensors. “Red Leader to Solar Wind Eight. Tag Red Two, calculate his course and velocity, and transmit that data to Allegiance with a request for rescue.”

“Will do, Red Leader.”

Wedge turned back toward the heart of the engagement.

He could see, in the distance—not so great a distance as before—the B-wings, Y-wings, and Blades beginning their attack run on Agonizer. A little flare of light within the Y-wing formation had to be one of the wishbones intercepting a turbolaser blast, with fatal results.

Then bright lights began erupting on Agonizer’s hull, proton torpedo and Adumari missile impacts. A moment later the first barrage was done and Wedge could see char marks and buckled hull plates where the attack had hit.

No substantial penetration. “Red Leader to all Blade-Thirty-twos. Concentrate your fire or you’ll never get penetration. Flightknife leaders, pick a target and transmit its location to your pilots for your next barrage or you might as well be throwing spitwads.”

He heard the trio of acknowledgments, barely registering them, the Blades’ problem already washed from his mental processes. Ahead, another TIE Defender, this one with red paint on its solar wing arrays, was turning into his path and accelerating toward him.

Red paint—that probably meant red horizontal stripes on the solar wings, and that meant it was piloted by a member of the 181st. Not many pilots of any unit, no matter how prestigious, rated a Defender. Turr Phennir was the logical candidate.

Wedge set logic aside. He needed his experience and his instincts now.

The Defender came straight at him, accelerating at full. Wedge bared a carnivore’s grin. If he survived the head-to-head run, he’d have more time to turn about and confront the Defender again—the Defender’s high rate of speed would make him overshoot Wedge and take his time turning around.

As he tried to target the madly maneuvering Defender, his brackets flickered from yellow to green and back again at a rate too quick for him to respond to—by the time he saw green and pulled his trigger, the brackets would have cycled through colors two or three more times. As the Defender came into optimal range, he fired anyway, saw his lasers flash through the gap between his target’s solar wing arrays, felt an impact, and then he was past and looping around toward the Defender once more.

Diagnostics said his forward landing strut actuator was gone and indicated progressive problems with the launch mechanism for his proton torpedoes. He didn’t need the diagnostics to see the black hole that had appeared in his X-wing’s nose. For the laser shot to have pierced the top side of his fuselage and hit both proton torpedo launchers and landing strut, it would have had to have been a hard and accurate hit.

Not his problem now. He got turned around and headed toward the Defender again. He was aware of familiar voices over the comlink, but his call sign was not being used and he ignored them.

This time, he ignored the color changes on his brackets. He settled into his pilot’s couch, felt its familiar contours around him, allowed his senses to spread out through his X-wing and ahead to—and into—the Defender rushing at him.

This wasn’t use of the Force; to Wedge, the Force was as incomprehensible as astronavigation was to a bantha. But his long experience allowed him focus and responses that others sometimes considered mystical. He knew the change in engine pitch that said one of his generators was malfunctioning, the flash of light from his lasers that said one had drifted out of alignment, the subtle variations in acceleration that said his power was surging erratically.

He thought past the armor of the Defender, past the TIE pilot’s suit, to the human beyond. He felt the pilot’s twitch of response when he sent his X-wing swerving out of the pilot’s own targeting brackets.

He felt his laser’s aim rest on the pilot and he fired.

Then he was past, and looping around for another run.

The Defender, in the distance, wasn’t looping back toward him. In fact, it wasn’t quite a TIE Defender, anymore. The top solar wing array was gone, its pylon destroyed where it met the hull, and the Defender was venting atmosphere into space.

But it was still under control. The Defender picked up speed, heading out of the engagement zone at full acceleration. The pilot was supplied breathing air by his flight suit, but the loss of his cockpit atmosphere to space meant he was getting cold, and fast; he had only a few minutes before he’d freeze to death. He was out of the combat.

“Good shot, boss.”

Wedge checked his sensor board, then looked to either side. “When did you get here?”

Red Three flew to his port side, Red Four to his starboard.

“Just now,” Janson said. “You had a couple of opportunistic squints headed toward you. We scraped ’em off.”

“Thanks.” Wedge shook his head, trying to force himself out of the flow state he’d entered. “Was that Phennir?”

“According to our sensors, probably so.”

“Tycho?”

“There’s a damaged A-wing pacing him. The rescue shuttle has him on its list.”

They were out of the main fight area and not engaged with enemies. Wedge turned back toward Agonizer just in time to see a brilliant fire flare up from its surface—the result of multiple missile hits breaching the shields and then the hull. The impact area, far starboard of the ship’s center line, suggested that the damage would not be fatal to the Star Destroyer … but loss of atmosphere, structural integrity, and human life would be considerable. If the commander had any sense, the vessel would pull out of the engagement.

If.

“Red Leader to Allegiance. Give me a conflict status update, please.”

“Allegiance here.” It was, as he’d hoped, Iella’s voice. “Imperial forces assaulting Aduma’s surface are suffering heavy losses. They appear to have been anticipating a disorganized response and have been taken off-guard by the Adumari Union counterattacks. The TIE bombers have been especially hard-hit. The Imps also appear to have mounted a rescue operation to retrieve the perator of Cartann and, presumably, install him as a puppet ruler … but two transports full of stormtrooper elites are in Union hands now.”

“Good to hear.”

“In your group, the Blade squadrons were particularly hard-hit, with over thirty percent casualties and fatalities, but your group has inflicted heavy damage to Agonizer.” Indeed, as Wedge watched, the prow of the Star Destroyer slowly began to come about, away from Adumar’s sun and the system’s inner planets. In the distance, a point on the bow of the Star Destroyer Master Stroke flared into incandescence, sign of a serious detonation.

Wedge breathed a sigh of relief. This battle wasn’t done, but the Imperials, calculating that the New Republic would be the only organized forces defending Adumar, had had the heavy end of the hammer dropped on them by united Adumari forces. When the spasms of pain from devastated TIE squadrons and damaged Star Destroyers finally hit the mission commanders—which appeared to be happening now—the Imperial forces would withdraw.

They’d be back someday. But before then, Wedge hoped, the New Republic would have taught Adumar more about defending itself.

“Thanks, Allegiance. Out.” He switched back to squadron frequency. “Red Flight, let’s do some hitting while we still have the chance.”

15

He’d already made his good-byes to Adumar, another speech from the plaza receiving stand in Cartann City before a crowd.

The crowd wasn’t quite so mindlessly enthusiastic this time. Some of its members chose to recall that Wedge had flown against them just days before. But others, still caught up in the worship of pilot excellence, or appreciative of the new configuration of Adumar’s government, still cheered.

And now he stood as the centerpiece of the farewell party for Wedge Antilles, Ambassador. He was back in his Cartann quarters, once again in New Republic dress uniform, among a crowd made up of New Republic pilots and Adumari nobles—including pilots, ministers, and the perators of Cartann and the Yedagon Confederacy. And he had signs of progress to cheer him—such as Cartann’s recent request for a set of flight simulators.

Iella took his arm. She was dressed once more in the moving-fire dress; he’d told her he liked it. “I know Intelligence has tried to recruit you once or twice,” she said. “But I have a feeling that the diplomatic corps just isn’t going to.”

Wedge smiled. “Good. I’d be obliged to shoot whoever came to me with the offer. Saves me a murder trial.”

Balass ke Teldan, Cartann’s new perator, approached. “I am so sorry,” he said.

“For what?”

“Your last flight in Adumar space and it gives you only a single kill.”

Wedge shrugged away that concern. “That kill was a TIE Defender. Very prestigious. If prestige is your aim.”

“Which, I know, is not one of your worries.” The perator lost his slight smile. “My father’s ways are old-fashioned. Not suited even to the world he wanted to build. But he is an honorable man, within the code he embraces, and wishes to offer you an apology. He is furious that Tomer Darpen was able to convince him that you sought death when you did not, and deeply saddened that he offered it. I think he does not care for your forms of honor … but he recognizes them.”

Wedge lowered his gaze for a moment. He had no doubt that the perator best served now by remaining in exile, with little or no influence on Cartann. Wedge had imagined that the former ruler would while away his remaining years, doing little but polishing his memories of the successes of his youth, offering others little but bad advice and a growing dissatisfaction with what his world would become. But that was, perhaps, doing Pekaelic a disservice. The old man might change, might adapt. He might even lead again, by example, someday.

Wedge returned his gaze to Balass’s. “Please tell him I accept.”

“I shall. For now, though, I offer my last farewell. Duty calls.” He offered a minimal bow, shook Wedge’s hand, and was gone.

Iella said, “Poor boy.”

“How do you mean?”

“He’s a perator now. He can’t lavish praise upon you and beg you to teach him all you know.”

“As if he would.”

“He would. Our profile on him says he’s one of your biggest admirers. But now he’s locked behind the ruler’s mask and can never admit it.”

“That’s politics for you.” Wedge looked around the chamber.

Janson and a crowd of admirers occupied a corner. Janson was in his dress uniform, but, in violation of regulations, had his favorite cloak on over it. The flatscreen panels on the cloak showed a line of Jansons, arms linked, doing high kicks like a dancing chorus. Wedge wondered where he’d gotten the image. He also wondered if there was any way to space that cloak, once they were headed back to Coruscant, without Janson knowing.

Tycho and Hobbie stood in a cluster of pilots, their hands moving, showing the respective positions of starfighters from some past dogfight.

Hallis was at the counter that served as the party’s bar, her expression perplexed, as it had been for the last few days. The recordings she had made ever since Red Flight had been condemned to run its gauntlet had been increasingly inappropriate for the documentary she’d hoped to assemble. Some were now even classified. Yet the Adumari Union had settled a small fortune on her for her hard work in scripting the broadcasts that had successfully misled the Imperial invaders, and Wedge suspected, though Iella would not confirm it, that New Republic Intelligence had made an offer for her future services in the field of propaganda and deception. She looked like a woman with too many choices to make and not enough time to make them.

He turned, looking for Cheriss, and there she was beside him. “Ah. Cheriss. I wanted you to know that I’ve transmitted your application to the academy, along with my recommendation.”

“Thank you. May I ask another favor?”

“Certainly.”

“May I leave Adumar with your ship?”

Wedge hesitated. The last thing he needed was for her crush on him to interfere with his time with Iella …

“You see,” she continued, “the new perator is obliged to dislike me. I was a member, the chief guide actually, of the party that captured his father. My—what did Hobbie call it?—endorsement arrangement has already been canceled, and the owner of the building where I keep my quarters has issued a decree of eviction. If I’m to move, I might as well move all at once. Even if your academy does not accept me—”

“You’ll find work teaching the art of the sword, believe me. Of course, Cheriss. I’ll arrange it with Captain Salaban.”

“Thank you.” With a smile, she returned to the group Hobbie and Tycho were entertaining.

Wedge couldn’t quite suppress a rueful grin, and Iella saw it. “What?”

“I was in the process of flattering myself,” Wedge said, “and I got caught doing it.”

“You just flatter yourself anytime you want. I’ll always be here to bring you back to ground.”

He drew her hands up around his neck, took her about the waist, and began a slow dance of Corellia.

“Wedge, there’s no music.”

“Well, for the next few hours anyway, until we pack up and jump out of system, I can snap my fingers and have anything I want. One of the rewards of fame. You want music?”

“No.” She rested her head on his shoulder. “This is perfect.”

He nodded, feeling her hair soft beneath his chin.

Perfect it was.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks go to:

My Eagle-Eyes (Kali Hale, Beth Loubet, Bob Quinlan, Roxanne Quinlan, Luray Richmond, and Sean Summers), who protect me from the worst of my mistakes;

The many Star Wars fiction authors who have added depth and detail to the galaxy far far away, most especially Michael A. Stackpole and Timothy Zahn;

Drew Campbell, Troy Denning, Shane Johnson, Paul Murphy, Stephen J. Sansweet, Peter Schweighofer, Jen Seiden, Bill Slavicsek, Bill Smith, Curtis Smith, Eric S. Trautmann, and Dan Wallace, for the resources they have contributed;

Pat LoBrutto and Evelyn Cainto of Bantam Spectra, for all their help;

Sue Rostoni and Lucy Autrey Wilson of Lucas Licensing, for the invaluable coordination they provide; and

Denis Loubet, Mark and Luray Richmond, my roommates, for keeping my head on straight even when it insists on unscrewing itself.

Star Wars: X-Wing: Mercy Kill is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2012 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & ® or ™ where indicated.

All Rights Reserved. Used Under Authorization.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-345-53480-4
www.starwars.com
www.delreybooks.com
Facebook.com/starwarsbooks

Cover art: Mike Bryan
Cover design: Scott Biel
v3.1_r4

Contents

Master - Table of Contents

Mercy Kill

Title Page

Copyright

The Star Wars Legends Novels Timeline

Author’s Note

Dramatis Personae

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38

Acknowledgments

Longtime readers of the X-Wing series have persisted for years in asking me, Del Rey, Lucasfilm, and possibly passing strangers, “When will there be another X-Wing novel?”

The answer is “now,” and I suspect that a lot of the credit for Mercy Kill goes to your dogged and tireless insistence that this project should happen.

Thanks, guys.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Bhindi Drayson; retired intelligence officer (human female)

Garik “Face” Loran; retired intelligence officer (human male)

Jesmin Tainer; Antarian Ranger (human female)

Myri Antilles; gambler (human female)

Stavin Thaal; general (human male)

Trey Courser; mechanical engineer (human male)

Turman Durra; actor (Clawdite male)

Viull “Scut” Gorsat; biofabricator (Yuuzhan Vong male)

Voort “Piggy” saBinring; mathematics professor (Gamorrean male)

Wedge Antilles; retired pilot (human male)

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.…

1

RYVESTER, MERIDIAN SECTOR
13 ABY (31 Years Ago)

Imperial Admiral Kosh Teradoc paused, irritated and self-conscious, just outside the entryway into the club. His garment, a trades-being’s jumpsuit, was authentic, bought at a used-clothes stall in a poverty-stricken neighborhood. And the wig that covered his military-cut blond hair with a mop of lank, disarrayed brown hair was perfect. But his posture—he couldn’t seem to shake off his upright military bearing, no matter how hard he tried. Loosening his shoulders, slumping, slouching … nothing worked for more than a few seconds.

“You’re doing fine, Admiral.” That was one of his bodyguards, whispering. “Try … try smiling.”

Teradoc forced his mouth into a smile and held it that way. He took the final step up to the doors. They slid aside, emitting a wash of warmer air and the sounds of voices, music, and clinking glasses.

He and his guards moved into the club’s waiting area. Its dark walls were decorated with holos advertising various brands of drinks; the moving images promised romance, social success, and wealth to patrons wise enough to choose the correct beverage. And they promised these things to nonhumans as well as humans.

One of Teradoc’s guards, taller and fitter than he was and dressed like him, kept close. The other three held back as though they constituted a different party of patrons.

The seater approached. A brown Chadra-Fan woman who stood only as tall as Teradoc’s waist, she wore a gold hostess gown, floor-length but exposing quite a lot of glossy fur.

Teradoc held up three fingers. He enunciated slowly so she would understand. “Another will be coming. Another man, joining us. You understand?”

Her mouth turned up in the faintest of smiles. “I do.” Her voice was light, sweet, and perhaps just a touch mocking. “Are you the party joining Captain Hachat?”

“Um … yes.”

“He’s already here. This way, please.” She turned and led them through broad, open double doors into the main room.

Teradoc followed. He felt heat in his cheeks. The little Chadra-Fan—had she actually condescended to him? He wondered if he should arrange an appropriate punishment.

The main room was cavernous, most of its innumerable tables occupied even at this late hour. The music and the din of conversation grew louder. And the smells—less than a quarter of the patrons were human. Teradoc saw horned Devaronians, furry Bothans, diminutive Sullustans, enormous, green-skinned Gamorreans, and more, and he fancied he could smell every one of them. And their alcohol.

“You’re upright again, sir. You might try slouching.”

Teradoc growled at his guard but complied.

There was one last blast of music from the upraised stage, and then the band, most of the players nonhuman, rose to the crowd’s applause. They retreated behind the stage curtain.

Moments later the noise of the audience, hundreds of voices, changed—lowered, became expectant in tone. A new act filed out onstage. Six Gamorrean males, dressed in nothing but loincloths, their skin oiled and gleaming, moved out and arrayed themselves in a chevron-shaped formation. Recorded dance music, heavy on drums and woodwinds, blasted out from the stage’s sound system.

The Gamorreans began moving to the music. They flexed, shimmied, strutted in unison. A shrill cry of appreciation rose from Gamorrean women in the audience, and from others as well.

Teradoc shuddered and vowed to sit with his back to the dancers.

The Chadra-Fan led him to a table only a few meters from the stage. A human man sat there already. Of medium height and muscular, he was young, with waist-length red hair in a braid. Costume jewelry, polished copper inset with black stones, was woven into the braid. He wore a long-sleeved tunic decorated with blobs of color of every hue, mismatched and discordant; it clashed with his military-style black pants and boots. He stood as Teradoc and his guard arrived.

“Captain Hachat?”

“The one and only.” Hachat sat again and indicated the guard. “Who’s your friend? He looks like a hundred kilos of preserved meat.”

The Chadra-Fan seater, satisfied that she had discharged her duty, offered a little bow. “Your server will be here in a few moments.” She turned and headed back to her station.

Teradoc glared after her and seated himself, facing away from the stage. He waited until his guard was in a chair before continuing. “Your messenger hinted at names. I want to hear them now … and to see proof.”

Hachat nodded. “Of course. But first—would it help you to stop smiling? It looks like it’s hurting your face.”

“Um … yes.” Teradoc relaxed, realized that his cheek muscles were indeed aching. He glanced around, noted the postures of many of the patrons around him, and slid down a little in his chair to match their slouches.

“Much better.” Hachat sipped his drink, a poisonous-looking yellow concoction that glowed from within. There were two glasses, mostly empty but with a similar-looking residue at the bottom, beside it. “All right. I run a private space naval operation specializing in covert operations, especially retrievals.”

Teradoc suppressed a sigh. Why can’t they ever just say, “I’m a pirate, a smuggler, a low-life piece of scum with something to sell”? Honesty would be so refreshing.

“We recently found a prize vessel … one whose value could enable us to retire in luxury.”

Teradoc shrugged. “Go on.”

“The Palace of Piethet Brighteyes.”

“I thought that was what your messenger was hinting at. But it’s preposterous. In the centuries since it disappeared, the Palace has never been sighted, never reported. It will never be found.”

Hachat grinned at him. “But it has been. Abandoned, intact, unplundered, in an area of your sector well away from settlements or trade routes.”

“If you’d found it, you’d be selling off its jewels, its furnishings, all those paintings. Through a fence. Yet you come to me. You’re lying.”

“Here’s the truth, Admiral. The vessel’s antipersonnel defenses are still active. I lost a dozen men just getting into a secondary vehicle bay, where I retrieved one artifact and some lesser gems. Oh, yes, I could fire missiles at the palace until it cracked … but I would prefer to lose half its contents to a worthwhile partner than to explosions and hard vacuum. At least I’d get a partner and some goodwill out of it.”

Teradoc rubbed at his temple. The boom-boom-boom from the sound system onstage behind him was giving him a headache. He returned his attention to Hachat. “Don’t use my rank. Don’t speak my name here.”

“Whatever you want.” Hachat took another sip of his drink. “You have access to Imperial Intelligence resources, the best slicers and intrusion experts in the galaxy. They could get past those defenses … and make us both rich.”

“You mentioned an artifact.”

“I have it with me. A show of faith, just as you proposed.”

“Show me.”

“Tell your bruiser not to panic; I’m only reaching for a comlink.”

Teradoc glanced at his guard, gave a slight nod.

Hachat pulled free a small device clipped to his shirt collar and pressed a button on the side. “All right. It’s coming.”

They didn’t have to wait long. A meter-tall Sullustan male in the blue-and-cream livery of the club’s servers approached, awkwardly carrying a gray flimsiplast box nearly as tall as himself and half as wide and deep. He set it on the table beside Hachat’s empty glasses. Hachat tipped him with a credcoin, and the Sullustan withdrew.

Teradoc glanced at his guard. The man stood, pulled open the box’s top flaps, and reached in. He lifted out a glittering, gleaming, translucent statuette, nearly the full height of the box, and set it down in the center of the table. Hachat took the empty box and set it on the floor behind his chair.

The statuette was in the form of a human male standing atop a short pedestal. He was young, with aristocratic features, wearing a knee-length robe of classical design. And it was all made of gemstones cunningly fitted together like jigsaw puzzle pieces, the joins so artful that Teradoc could barely detect them.

All the color in the piece came from the stones used to make it. Cloudy diamondlike gems provided the white skin of the face, neck, arms, and legs. Rubylike stones gave the eyes a red gleam. The robe was sapphire blue, and the man’s golden-yellow hair, unless Teradoc guessed incorrectly, was lab-grown, gold-infused crystals. The pedestal was the only portion not translucent; it was made up of glossy black stones.

The piece was exquisite. Teradoc felt his heart begin to race.

There were oohs and aahs from surrounding tables. Teradoc noted belatedly that he and Hachat were now the object of much attention from patrons around them.

Hachat grinned at the onlookers and raised his voice to be heard over the music. “I have a cargo bay full of these. They go on sale tomorrow in Statz Market. Twelve Imperial credits for a little one, thirty for a big one like this. Stop by tomorrow.” Then he turned his attention back to Teradoc.

The admiral gave him a little smile, a real one. “Thus you convince them that this piece is valueless, so no one will attack us outside in an attempt to steal it.”

“Thus I do. Now, are you convinced?”

“Almost.” Teradoc reached up for his own comlink, activated it, and spoke into it. “Send Cheems.”

Hachat frowned at him. “Who’s Cheems?”

“Someone who can make this arrangement come true. Without him, there is no deal.”

A moment later two men approached. One was another of Teradoc’s artificially scruffy guards. The other was human, his skin fair, his hair and beard dark with some signs of graying. He was lean, well dressed in a suit. Despite the formality of his garments, the man seemed far more comfortable in this environment than Teradoc or the guards.

His duty done, the escort turned and removed himself to a distant table. At Teradoc’s gesture, the man in the suit seated himself between the admiral and Hachat.

A server arrived. She was a dark-skinned human woman, dressed, like the Sullustan man had been, in a loose-fitting pantsuit of blue and cream. Her fitness and her broad smile were very much to Teradoc’s taste.

She played that smile across each of them in turn. “Drinks, gentlemen?”

Hachat shook his head. The man in the suit and the guard did likewise. But Teradoc gave the server a smile in return. “A salty gaffer, please.”

“You want a real bug in that or a candy bug?”

“Candy, please.”

Once the server was gone, Hachat gave the new arrival a look. “Who is this?”

The man spoke, his voice dry and thin. “I am Mulus Cheems. I am a scientist specializing in crystalline materials … and a historian in the field of jewelry.”

Teradoc cleared his throat. “Less talk, more action.”

Cheems sighed. Then, from a coat pocket, he retrieved a small device. It was a gray square, six centimeters on a side, one centimeter thick. He pressed a small button on one side.

A square lens popped out from within the device. A bright light shone from the base of the lens. Words began scrolling in red across a small black screen inset just above the button.

Cheems leaned over to peer at the statuette, holding the lens before his right eye. He spoke as if to an apprentice. “The jewels used to fabricate this piece are valuable but not unusual. These could have been acquired on a variety of worlds at any time in the last several centuries. But the technique … definitely Vilivian. His workshop, maybe his own hand.”

Teradoc frowned. “Who?”

“Vilivian. A Hapan gemwright whose intricately fitted gems enjoyed a brief but influential vogue a few centuries back. His financial records indicated several sales to Piethet Brighteyes.” Cheems moved the lens up from the statuette’s chest to his face. “Interesting. Adegan crystals for the red eyes. And the coating that maintains the piece’s structural integrity … not a polymer. Micro-fused diamond dust. No longer employed because of costs compared with polymers. Beautiful, absolutely beautiful.” He sat back and, with a press of the button, snapped the lens back into its casing.

Teradoc felt a flash of impatience. “Well?”

“Well? Oh—is it authentic? Yes. Absolutely. I believe it’s the piece titled Light and Dark. Worth a Moff’s ransom.”

Teradoc sat back and stared at the statuette. The Palace of Piethet Brighteyes—with that fortune in hand, he could resign his commission, buy an entire planetary system, and settle into a life of luxury, far away from the struggles between the Empire and the New Republic. A warmth began to suffuse his body, a realization that his future had just become very, very pleasant.

The dark-skinned server returned and set Teradoc’s drink before him. He smiled at her and paid with a credcoin worth twenty times the cost of the drink. He could afford to be generous. “Keep it.”

“Thank you, sir.” She swept the coin away to some unknown pocket and withdrew—but not too far. It was clear to Teradoc that she was hovering in case he needed special attention.

Teradoc glanced back at Hachat. “I’m convinced.”

“Excellent.” Hachat extended a hand. “Partners.”

“Well … we need to negotiate our percentages. I was thinking that I’d take a hundred percent.”

Hachat withdrew his hand. Far from looking surprised or offended, he smiled. “Do you Imperial officer types study the same How to Backstab manual? You are definitely doing it by the book.”

“Captain, you’re going to experience quite a lot of enhanced interrogation in the near future. You’ll endure a lot of pain before cracking and telling me where the Palace is. If you choose to antagonize me, I might just double that pain.”

Hachat shook his head wonderingly. “What I don’t get is this whole Grand Admiral Thrawn thing. Every hopped-up junior naval officer tries to be like him. Elegant, inscrutable … and an art lover. Being an art lover doesn’t make you a genius, you know.”

“That’s an extra week of torture right there.”

“Plus, unlike Thrawn, you’re about as impressive as a Gungan with his underwear full of stinging insects.”

“Three weeks. And at this moment, my guard has a blaster leveled at your gut under the table.”

“Oh, my.” Hachat glanced at the guard. He raised his hands to either side of his face, indicating surrender. “Pleeeeease don’t shoot me, foul-smelling man. Please, oh please, oh pleasepleaseplease.”

Teradoc stared at him, perplexed.

Onstage the porcine Gamorrean dancers moved through a new rotation, which brought the slenderest of them up to the forward position. He was slender only by Gamorrean standards, weighing in at a touch under 150 kilos, but he moved well and there were good muscles to be glimpsed under his body fat.

With the rest of the troupe, he executed a half turn, which left them facing the rear of the stage, and followed up with a series of fanny-shakes, each accompanied by a lateral hop. Then they began a slow turn back toward the crowd, the movement accentuated by a series of belly-rolls that had the Gamorrean women in the crowd yelling.

Just as, with a final belly-roll, he once again faced forward, the slenderest dancer could see Hachat’s table … and Hachat with his hands up.

He felt a touch of light-headedness as adrenaline hit his system. Things were a go.

Near Hachat’s table, the dark-skinned server moved unobtrusively toward Teradoc.

The Gamorrean dancer, whose name was Piggy, stopped his dance, threw back his head, and shrilled a few words in the Gamorrean tongue: “It’s a raid! Run!”

From elsewhere in the room, the cry was repeated in Basic and other languages. Piggy noted approvingly that the fidelity of those shouts was so good that few people, if any, would realize they were recordings.

Alarm rippled in an instant through the crowd, through the dancers.

Suddenly all the Gamorreans in the place were heaving themselves to their feet, sometimes knocking their table over in panicky haste, and the non-Gamorrean patrons followed suit. Confused, Teradoc took his attention from Hachat for a moment and turned to look across the sea of tables.

There were booms from the room’s two side exits. Both doors blew in, blasted off their rails by what had to have been shaped charges. Tall men in Imperial Navy Special Forces armor charged in through those doors.

A flash of motion to Teradoc’s right drew his attention. He saw the dark-skinned server approach and lash out in a perfectly executed side kick. Her sandaled foot snaked in just beneath the tabletop. Even over the tumult in the room, Teradoc heard the crack that had to be his guard’s hand or wrist breaking. The guard’s blaster pistol flew from his hand, thumped into Teradoc’s side, and fell to the floor.

The server stayed balanced on her planted foot, cocked her kicking leg again, and lashed out once more, this time connecting with the guard’s jaw as he turned to look at her. The guard wobbled and slid from his chair.

Then the server dived in the opposite direction, rolling as she hit the floor, vanishing out of Teradoc’s sight under the next table.

Teradoc grabbed for the blaster on the floor. He got it in his hand.

Hachat hadn’t lost his smile. He turned to face the glasses on the table and shouted directly at them: “Boom boy!”

One of the drink glasses, mostly empty, erupted in thick yellow smoke. Teradoc, as he straightened and brought the blaster up, found himself engulfed in a haze that smelled of alcohol and more bitter chemicals. It stung his eyes. Now he could not see as far as the other side of the table.

He stood and warily circled the table … and, by touch, found only empty chairs. Hachat was gone. Cheems was gone.

The statuette was still there. Teradoc grabbed it, then stumbled away from the table, out from within the choking smoke.

While the dancers and patrons ran, Piggy stood motionless onstage and narrated. He subvocalized into his throat implant, which rendered his squealy, grunty Gamorrean pronunciation into comprehensible Basic. The implant also transmitted his words over a specific comm frequency. “Guards at Tables Twelve and Forty maintaining discipline and scanning for targets. But they’ve got none. Shalla, stay low, Table Forty’s looking in your direction.”

Small voices buzzed in the tiny comm receiver in his ear. “Heard that, Piggy.” “Got Twelve, Twelve is down.” “Forty’s in my sights.”

Now the guard who had brought Cheems to Teradoc approached that table once more. This time he had a blaster pistol in one hand. With his free hand, he shoved patrons out of his way. He reached the verge of the yellow smoke, then began circling it, looking for targets.

He found some. His head snapped over to the right. Piggy glanced in that direction and saw Hachat and Cheems almost at the ruined doorway in the wall. The guard raised his pistol, waiting for a clear shot.

Well, it was time to go anyway. Piggy ran the three steps to the stage’s edge and hurled himself forward. He cleared the nearest table and came down on Teradoc’s guard, smashing him to the floor, breaking the man’s bones. The guard’s blaster skidded across the floor and was lost, masked by yellow smoke and patrons’ fast-moving legs.

Piggy stood. He’d felt the impact, too, but had been prepared for it; and he was well padded by muscle and fat. Nothing in him had broken. He looked at the guard and was satisfied that the unconscious man posed no more danger.

Now he heard Hachat’s voice across the comm. “We have the package. Extract. Call in when you get to the exit.”

Most of the bar patrons, those who weren’t running in blind panic, were surging toward and through the bar’s main entrance, which inexplicably had no Imperial Navy troopers near it. Piggy turned toward the exit Hachat and Cheems had used. That doorway did have a forbidding-looking Imperial trooper standing beside it. Heedless of the danger posed by the soldier, Piggy shoved his way through toppled furniture and scrambling patrons. He made it to the door.

The armored trooper merely nodded at him. “Nice moves, Dancer Boy.”

Piggy growled at him, then passed through the door, which still smoked from the charge that had breached it.

Once in the dimly lit service corridor beyond, Piggy headed toward the building’s rear service exit. “Piggy exiting.” He reached the door at the end of the corridor. It slid open for him, and he stepped outside into cooler night air.

“Freeze or I’ll shoot!” The bellow came from just beside his right ear. It was deep, male, ferocious.

Piggy winced, held up his hands. Unarmed and nearly naked, his eyes not yet adjusted to the nighttime darkness, he didn’t stand a chance.

Then his assailant chuckled. “Got you again.”

Piggy turned, glaring.

Situated by the door, armed not with a blaster but with a bandolier of grenades, stood a humanoid, tall as but not nearly as hairy as a Wookiee. The individual was lean for his two-meter-plus height, brown-furred, his face long, his big square teeth bared in a triumphant smile. He wore a black traveler’s robe; it gapped to show the brown jumpsuit and bandolier beneath.

Piggy reached up to grab and tug at the speaker’s whiskers. “Not funny, Runt.”

“Plenty funny.”

“I’ll get you for that.”

“You keep saying that. It never happens.”

Piggy sighed and released his friend. His eyes were now more adjusted. In the gloom, decorated with distant lights like a continuation of the starfield above, he could make out the start of the marina’s dock, the glow rods outlining old-fashioned watercraft in their berths, not far away.

Much nearer was the team’s extraction vehicle, an old airspeeder—a flatbed model with oversized repulsors and motivators. It was active, floating a meter above the ground on motivator thrust. Signs on the sides of its cab proclaimed it to be a tug, the sort sent out to rescue the watercraft of the rich and hapless when their own motivators conked out. There were sturdy winches affixed in the bed.

In the cab, a Devaronian man sat at the pilot’s controls. He turned his horned head and flashed Piggy a sharp-toothed smile through the rear viewport. Cheems and Hachat were already situated in the cab beside him.

Piggy moved up to the speeder and clambered into the cargo bed. The vehicle rocked a little under his weight. He looked around for the bundle that should have been waiting for him, but it was nowhere to be seen. He sighed and sat facing the rear, his back to the cab. Then he stared at the club’s back door, at Runt situated beside it. “Come on, come on.”

The door slid open long enough to admit the dark-skinned server. Unmolested by Runt, she ran to the airspeeder, vaulted into the bed, and settled down beside Piggy. “Shalla exited.” She glanced at Piggy. “Weren’t you supposed to have a robe here?”

He knew his reply sounded long suffering. “Yes. And who took it? Who decided to leave me almost naked here as I wait? I’m betting I’ll never know.”

Shalla nodded, clearly used to the ways of her comrades. “You made yourself a lot of fans tonight. Those Gamorrean ladies were screaming their brains out. And not just the Gamorreans. You could have had so much action this evening …”

Piggy rolled his eyes. As far as he was concerned, those Gamorrean women had no brains to scream out. Augmented by biological experiments when he was a child, Piggy was the only genius of his kind. And unlike some, he could not bear the thought of pairing up with someone whose intelligence was far, far below his.

So he was alone.

Hachat turned to glare back through the cab’s rear viewport. “Kell …”

Piggy heard the man’s response in his ear. “Busy, Boss.”

“Kell, do I have to come in there after you?”

“Busy.” Then the door slid open for Kell, the armored trooper who had let Piggy pass. He fell through the doorway, slamming to the ground on his back, one of Teradoc’s guards on top of him.

Runt reached down, grabbed the guard by the shoulder and neck, and pulled, peeling the man off as though he were the unresisting rind of a fruit. Runt shook the guard, and kept shaking him as Kell rose and trotted to the speeder.

By the time Kell was settling in beside Shalla, the guard was completely limp. Runt dropped him and regarded him quizzically for a second. Then he pulled two grenades free from his bandolier. He twisted a dial on each and stepped over to stand in front of the door. When it slid open for him, he lobbed them through the doorway. He waited there as they detonated, making little noise but filling the corridor entirely with thick black smoke. Then he joined the others, settling in at the rear of the speeder bed, facing Piggy. “Runt exited. Team One complete.”

Cheems expected them to blast their way as far as possible from the Imperial Navy base and the city that surrounded it. But they flew only a few hundred meters along the marina boundary. Then they abandoned their speeder in a dark, grassy field just outside the marina gates and hurried on foot along old-fashioned wooden docks. Soon afterward, they boarded a long, elegant yacht in gleaming Imperial-style white.

Within a few minutes, they had backed the yacht out of its berth, maneuvered it into the broad waters of the bay, and set a course for the open sea beyond.

Eight in all, they assembled on the stern deck, which was decorated with comfortable, weather-resistant furnishings, a bar, and a grill. Cheems sat on a puffy chair and watched, bewildered, as his rescuers continued their high-energy preparations.

The Devaronian, whom the others called Elassar, broke topgrade bantha steaks out of a cold locker and began arraying them on the grill. Piggy the Gamorrean located and donned a white robe, then began mixing drinks. Kell shed his armor, dumping it and his Imperial weapons over the side. Hachat disappeared belowdecks for two minutes and reemerged, his hair now short and brown, his clothes innocuous. Runt shed his traveler’s robe and set up a small but expensive-looking portable computer array on an end table. A yellow-skinned human man who had not been on the speeder joined Kell and stripped off his own Imperial armor, throwing it overboard. Shalla merely stretched out on a lounge chair and smiled as she watched the men work.

Cheems finally worked up the courage to speak. “Um … excuse me … not that I’m complaining … but could I get some sort of summary on what just happened?”

Hachat grinned and settled onto a couch beside Cheems’s chair. “My name isn’t Hachat. It’s Garik Loran. Captain Loran, New Republic Intelligence. Runt, do you have the tracker signal yet?”

“Working on it.”

“Put it up on the main monitor, superimpose the local map.”

No less confused, Cheems interrupted. “Garik Loran? Face Loran, the boy actor?”

Face did not quite suppress a wince. “That was a long time ago. But yes.”

“I love The Lifeday Murders. I have a copy on my datapad.”

“Yeah … Anyway, what do you think this was all about?”

“Getting me out of the admiral’s hands, I suppose.” Cheems frowned, reconstructing the sequence of events in his mind. “Two days ago, as I was being led from my laboratory to my prison quarters, I felt a nasty sting in my back. I assume you shot me with some sort of communications device. Little buzzy voices vibrating in my shoulder blade.”

Face nodded. He gestured toward the man with yellow skin. “That’s Bettin. He’s our sniper and exotic-weapons expert. He tagged you from a distance of nearly a kilometer, which was as close as we could get to you.”

Bettin waved, cheerful. “Kriffing hard shot, too. Crosswind, low-mass package. Piggy was my spotter. I had to rely pretty heavily on his skills at calculation.”

“Yes, yes.” Face sounded impatient. “So, anyway, that was step one. Getting in contact with you.”

Cheems considered. “And step two was telling me that I was going to be called on to authenticate an artifact, and that I absolutely had to do that, regardless of what I was looking at. You told me that doing this was the only way I’d ever get off that naval base alive.”

Face nodded.

“What was I looking at? The material had a crystalline structure, definitely, but it wasn’t diamond or any other precious stone. In fact, it looked a bit like crystallized anthracite.”

Kell, standing at the bar, grinned at Cheems. No longer concealed by his helmet, his features were fair, very handsome. His brown hair was worn in a buzz cut, retreating from a widow’s peak. “Very good. It’s a modified form of anthracite in a crystallized form.”

“So I was within centimeters of ten kilos of high explosive?” Cheems thought he could feel the blood draining from his head.

“Nearer fifteen. Plus a transceiver, power unit, and some control chips in the base.” Kell shrugged, accepted a drink from Piggy.

Cheems shook his head. “And I was passing it off as a work of art!”

Kell stared at him, clearly miffed. “It was a work of art.”

Face caught Cheems’s attention again. “Teradoc’s habits and methods are well known to Intelligence. We had to have bait that required a gem expert to authenticate; we had to have a sneaky profit motive so Teradoc would bring you off base to do the authentication; and we had to have the bait be very valuable so when trouble erupted he’d grab it and run.”

“Back to his base.” Cheems felt a chill grip him. “Back to his most secure area, where his treasures are stored. His personal vault.”

Face gave him a now you get it smile. “Which is where, exactly?”

“Directly beneath his secure research-and-development laboratories.”

“Where, if Intelligence is right, his people are experimenting with plague viruses, self-replicating nonbiological toxins, and the project for which Teradoc kidnapped you, Dr. Cheems.”

“A sonic device. The idea was that sound waves pitched and cycling correctly could resonate with lightsaber crystals, shattering them.”

For once, Face looked concerned. “Could it actually work?”

Cheems shook his head. “Not in a practical way. Against exposed crystals, yes. But lightsaber hilts insulate the crystals too effectively. I couldn’t tell the admiral that, though. To tell him This can’t work would basically be to say, Kill me now, please, I’m of no more use to you.” Belatedly Cheems realized that he’d said too much. If this miracle rescue was itself a scam, if he was currently surrounded by Imperial Intelligence operatives, he’d just signed his own execution order. He gulped.

Runt turned to Face. “I have it.” He repositioned the main monitor at his table so others could see.

The monitor showed an overhead map view of the planet’s capital city, its Imperial Navy base, the huge bay that bordered both to the east. A blinking yellow light was stationary deep within the base. Then, as they watched, the light faded to nothingness.

Cheems glanced at Face. “Did your device just fail?”

Face shook his head. “No. It was taken into a secure area where comm signals can’t penetrate. Its internal circuitry, some of which is a planetary positioning system, knows where it is—the research-and-development labs. Atmospheric pressure meters are telling it how deep in the ground it is. At the depth of Teradoc’s personal vault, well …”

There was a distant rumble from the west, not even a boom. Everyone looked in that direction. There was nothing to see other than the city lights for a moment; then spotlights sprang to life all across the naval base, sweeping across the nighttime sky.

Faraway alarms began to howl.

Face settled back into the couch, comfortable. “Right now, the lower portions of the labs have been vaporized. Pathogen vaults and viral reactors have been breached. Sensors are detecting dangerous pathogens escaping into the air. Vents are slamming shut and sealing, automated decontamination measures are activating. Before the decontamination safety measures are done, everything in that site will be burned to ash and chemically sterilized. Sadly, I suspect Teradoc isn’t experiencing any of that, as he was doubtless admiring his new prize when it went off. But we owe him a debt of gratitude. He saved us months’ worth of work by smuggling our bomb past his own base security all by himself.”

Cheems looked at Piggy. “I could use something very tall and very potent to drink.”

Piggy flashed his tusks in a Gamorrean smile. “Coming up.”

Face turned to Piggy. “I’ll have a salty gaffer. In Teradoc’s honor. Candy bug, please.” He returned his attention to Cheems. “We’d like you to do one more thing before we get you offworld and into New Republic space. I’d appreciate it if you’d go below and appraise any gemstone items you find. We’ll be turning this yacht and everything on it over to a resistance cell; I’d like to be able to point them at the more valuable items.”

Cheems frowned. “This isn’t your yacht?”

“Oh, no. It’s Teradoc’s. We stole it.”

2

AYCEEZEE, KANZ SECTOR
44 ABY (Today)

It was only two kilometers from his office to his home, but on nights like this, when he was weary, Professor Voort saBinring chose not to make the walk. This affluent university town was blessed with rolling walkways, locally known as rumblers, and tonight Voort chose just to stand and let the campus buildings, houses, and apartment blocks roll serenely past. Many of these homes were dark at this hour, but he could see through the windows of others, into lit interiors where families dined, talked, watched holodramas.

He wasn’t physically tired, not really. And it wasn’t that he was old. He was middle-aged, yes, but he exercised and saw the medics at regular intervals. Yes, by human standards, he was overweight, but he was actually a touch lean for a Gamorrean.

No, the weariness came from within him. Internal and eternal. There was nothing at either end of his two-kilometer daily commute to beckon him, to invigorate him. His students seemed to be blocks of permacrete, immobile and emotionless, enduring his courses as though to do so were a condition of parole. His home was a place where he could sleep, nothing more.

The rolling walkway was elevated, situated above and beside the stationary walkway he usually took. Glow rods on the rumbler’s underside illuminated pedestrians on the stationary walk. As he reached the halfway point on his trip home, Voort saw a pedestrian standing at ground level on the other side of the street, beneath the rumbler headed back toward campus. The figure, a shadow in a wide-brimmed hat and a traveler’s overcoat, looked up as Voort passed and stepped forward to cross the street. The shadow moved to the near walk, stepped on an open-air lift plate, and rose to the level of Voort’s rumbler. He stepped off onto the moving walkway and turned in Voort’s direction. Hands in his coat pockets, he began walking toward Voort.

Voort felt a mixture of curiosity and alarm. It had been five standard years since he’d experienced that mixture of emotions: the day a high-strung immigrant from nearby Lorrd had come flying across his office desk at him in a genuine effort to murder him. Alarm had faded once Voort had knocked the wind from the boy and returned him to his chair, and curiosity had faded once Voort learned the boy felt that perfect scores were his birthright.

Perhaps this stalker would assault him for the doggedness with which Voort taught Lulagg’s Third Theorem. Or perhaps a coalition of students had pooled their allowances and food servers’ wages to buy a hit on their professor. If so, the assault would be an interesting side item in tomorrow’s news briefs.

Voort tallied his resources: one gray suit, dull both in cut and color; one datapad; identicard, credcards, credcoins; fists and tusks. He waited.

The shadowy man drew to a stop a couple of meters from him and spoke, his voice rich and deep. “Hello, Piggy.” He tilted his head up so that his hat brim no longer cast his face into shadow.

His dark, trim beard and mustache, his features, timeless and handsome—Voort had learned long ago what types of appearance humans found pleasing in one another—were instantly familiar. Voort brightened “Face! I feel let down. I was looking forward to being assaulted.”

Face shook it. “Well, if you like, I can try to wrestle you off this walkway. That’s a good three-meter drop.”

“Perhaps later.” Voort let a number of possibilities run like columns of numbers through his head. “No.”

Face’s eyebrows shot up. “No, what?”

“In the last fifteen years, we’ve only encountered each other by appointment. Such as your wedding. This is an ambush. So you’re up to something. No, I will not work for you. And, by the way, you know it’s not Piggy anymore. Call me Voort.”

“Voort, then. I want you to come work for me.”

Voort slumped. “What did I just tell you?”

“I’ve been working myself up just to say those words for thousands of light-years. You can’t deny me the right to say them. So, how about it?”

“I just said no.”

“Refusals offered before the offer is made don’t count.”

Voort sighed. “We’re only a few hundred meters from my quarters. Let’s talk there.” He stepped off the walk onto the next lift plate.

Face stepped off with him. “There’s less buzz to your voice these days. Is that a new implant?”

“Upgraded, yes. The dean of the School of Mathematics insisted. Less buzz means less menacing, or something.”

At ground level they stepped off. Face looked around, taking in the gently aging neighborhood, the cheerful-looking monitor droid, round and immobile as a bronze snow figure, on the street corner. “You enjoying the work?”

Voort took a moment to answer. “Sometimes.”

“Ah.”

“What about you? You enjoying retirement?”

Face smiled. The expression was more sinister than happy. “When Jacen Solo’s war ended, pretty much every officer who’d failed to denounce him starting when he was a teenager was booted. I really don’t call that retirement.”

“Well, what’s the word for being purged but not killed or arrested, then?”

“Retirement.”

“Ah. What about your family?”

“Dia’s doing great. She’s now chief trainer and a full partner in the transport company she bought into. She was on HoloNet News a lot a while back, offering perspectives on the slave uprisings popping off all over the galaxy. I did adopt Adra; she’s my daughter now, too. She’s sixteen and dating, and if I had any hair left, it would all be white. But she’s a good kid.”

Voort grunted an acknowledgment of Face’s words. He hadn’t really been interested in all those details. But the social contract that existed between old friends, however distant they might now be, insisted that one ask such things.

They walked in silence until Voort gestured to indicate the building where he lived, a square, four-story greenstone. Entering, he took the stairs rather than the turbolift to the second story, then led Face into his quarters. Face shed his overcoat and hat, revealing his head to be as shiny-bald as Voort remembered. His clothes were his favorite sort, black and expensive but of an unobtrusive cut.

Voort gave Face the brief tour of sleeping quarters, office, kitchen, and social room. Face made dutifully appreciative noises at the home’s utilitarian, undecorated simplicity, then spent a few minutes doing a sweep for listening devices and micro-holocams. When he was done, the two of them returned to the social room.

Face sat on the couch and arrayed himself as if posing to advertise the clothes he wore. “I’m getting the band back together.”

Voort lowered himself into his easy chair more quickly and awkwardly than he had intended to. “The Wraiths?” He gave Face an incredulous look. “When Bhindi Drayson told me they’d been decommissioned, she made it sound like it had been a personal mission of Chief of State Daala to scrub them out of existence.”

Face nodded. “It was. Not only was it part of the same purge that got me, Daala took a special delight in getting rid of rogue operatives who play by their own rules. Not that we actually ever had rules.”

“So how, in just three years, have you and the Wraiths been redeemed so that you can put the unit back together?”

Face turned a conspiratorial smile on his old friend. “We haven’t. I’m putting the Wraiths back together again … and the government doesn’t know a thing about it.”

Voort narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “I’m having a hard time decrypting that. You’re putting the Wraiths back together without government permission or oversight? Are you going pirate?”

Face grinned. “Not … exactly. What do you know about Borath Maddeus?”

“The head of Galactic Alliance Security, including Intelligence, for the last three years. He replaced Belindi Kalenda when she was swept off by the same purge.”

“I barely know him. A very competent organizer, that’s his reputation. And a team player, perfect for the new regime. Got along very well with Daala during her tenure, gets along great with Chief of State Dorvan now.” Face put his hands together and looked at Voort over the steeple formed by his fingers. “He arranged to see me—away from his offices, away from his handlers and subordinates—a while back.”

“To ask you to put the Wraiths back together.”

“Yes. But not as an official Intelligence unit. You’re aware of the Lecersen Conspiracy?”

Voort snorted. “Who isn’t?” In the most recent set of crises facing the Galactic Alliance government, a combination of slave uprisings and government coups, it had been revealed that one of the major influences unbalancing the government was a conspiracy among Moff Drikl Lecersen of the Imperial Remnant, Senator Fost Bramsin, Senator Haydnat Treen, Admiral Sallinor Parova, General Merratt Jaxton, and others, who were maneuvering to assume control of the Alliance and then merge it into the Imperial Remnant, subordinating all the Alliance’s objectives to the Empire’s.

“General Maddeus has heard some disquieting rumors that General Stavin Thaal, head of the Alliance Army, might have been part of that same conspiracy.” Face shrugged. “Nothing more than rumors, though.”

“Still, Thaal’s one of the most powerful individuals in the Alliance.” Feeling unsettled, Voort stood. He moved to the undecorated wall and pressed a code sequence on the keypad there. The large window beside it slid open, revealing a view of the nighttime street outside. The rumble of the distant rolling walkways was audible again. Cool air washed over him, which was the effect he wanted.

He turned back to Face. “Maddeus doesn’t trust his own people to determine whether there’s any truth to the rumors?”

“No, he doesn’t. He didn’t select most of them, remember. Some he inherited from his predecessor, and the majority of the rest were appointed by the same committees and political factions that appointed him.”

“Huh. Well, good luck.”

“Come on, Piggy—Voort. Don’t be that way.”

“Face, I’m a professor of mathematics. All that Wraith Squadron craziness ended for me fifteen years ago.”

Face nodded, his expression sympathetic. “The Yuuzhan Vong War ended a lot of things for a lot of people. But people have bounced back from what they’ve lost. They’ve started over.”

“As I have.”

“No, you haven’t.” Face gestured, a sweeping, circular move that took in Voort’s quarters plus the community outside the window. “You’ve gone to ground; you’ve hidden. You’ve licked your wounds, and I know how deep they were. But Voort, you either need to rejoin the ranks of the living … or acknowledge to yourself that you’re actually dead.”

Voort broke out in the grunting, wheezing noises that were Gamorrean laughter. “Master motivator. When did you write that little speech? On the shuttle trip in to Ayceezee?”

“No shuttle. Maddeus provided me with a hyperdrive-equipped space yacht, Quarren Eye, just about the only resource he could give me. But yes, I wrote that line on the trip here. What do you think of it?”

“It would play well on a holodrama. But in real life, no.”

Face sighed. “Speech or not, it’s the truth, Voort.”

“I’m a math instructor now. I take mathematical concepts, I shape them into spikes, and I spend months hammering them into the heads of students who’d much rather be involved in amorous pursuits or playing games, and all because they need it, even if their heads are as hard as durasteel.”

“And that little speech might have impressed me … except that when I asked you if you were enjoying your work, your answer sounded like, It’s slightly better than being tortured by pirates.”

Voort was quiet for a moment, then answered. “Toward the end, being a Wraith was considerably worse than being tortured by pirates.”

“That was then. Look, Voort, I’m going to stop wasting both our time and jump straight to my final argument.”

“Also pre-scripted?”

“In part. I’d like to be able to convince you with the fact that you’re wasting your time here, but you already know that. You’re a mathematical genius, capable of doing hyperspace navigation calculations in your head, a strategist capable of factoring in more variables than anyone I’ve met, a capable starfighter pilot, and an organizer second to none, and here you are convincing undergraduates that dabbling with calculus won’t cause them to lose the will to live. But again, you know that. What you don’t apparently understand is that they actually don’t need you. A teacher droid can do everything you’re doing for your students, except maybe burp.”

“A droid can’t instill into them a love of mathematics.”

“Neither can you, not anymore. Those students don’t need you … and I do.” Face shrugged. “I’m not even asking as an old friend. We could be strangers, and I’d still need you.

“And Voort, now you’re thinking that it could be Chashima all over again, that no matter how much you’re needed, you can fail. But you didn’t fail on Chashima. What you did was lose everything that was important to you.” His gesture again took in Voort’s quarters. “This is the result. It’s time to come where you’re needed. So, what’s it going to be?”

3

CORUSCANT

They moved along the corridor that connected the spaceport’s arrivals-and-inspections facilities to the spaceport exits. In front walked a redheaded businessman wearing a tired, droopy suit. Beside and a step behind walked a jumpsuited Gamorrean porter pushing his hover-rack of luggage.

Voort sighed. “Years of laying down the law on human and other students has caused me to forget that the Gamorrean in disguise is always going to be a menial laborer.” He didn’t bother to activate his voice implant; Face knew enough Gamorrean to understand.

Face nodded, scratching at an itchy spot on his forehead where his red wig met his scalp. “We could dress you up as a master chef or a fleet admiral … but then people would remember you.”

“They should. Have you ever tasted my bantha cutlet with spicefruit reduction? And speaking of my skills—are we being compensated for any of this?”

Face grinned. “You know it’s not about the money. The new Wraiths all signed on to prove themselves. Or because they had a grudge.”

“It’s not about the money for me, either. It’s about not being exploited. About a free economy. About being able to negotiate your own worth—”

“We’ll find some compensation when the assignment’s all done. If the general’s crooked, we’ll steal his favorite vessel and sell it. If he isn’t … we’ll find a crooked general, steal his favorite vessel, and sell that.”

Voort nodded. “Just so long as we’re clear on that.”

They came to the spaceport’s main exit lobby, a cavernous space with a lofty ceiling. The chamber was decorated with monitors and midair holograms showing ever-changing views of distant vacation worlds and spectacular starfields. Opposite were the banks of doors leading out into daylight. The brilliance beyond the doors threatened to dazzle Voort’s eyes.

But Face gestured and the two of them stopped where they were, along the wall just where the corridor tunnel emptied into the lobby. Men and women of every imaginable species moved past on their way to or from commercial spaceflights.

A young human woman in clothes styled to resemble a starfighter pilot’s jumpsuit and jacket but made of crinkly gold cloth, her hair a more striking and unnatural red than Face’s, bumped into Face, made a vague noise of apology, and hurried past, continuing onward toward the exit.

Voort scowled at Face. “I saw that.”

“Of course you did.”

“What did she slip you?”

Face reached into a suit coat pocket and drew out a datapad. It was small, its once-gleaming surface scratched and dull. “This. It’s wired to overheat and ignite in about three minutes.”

“Well, then, don’t hold it in your mouth.”

Face grinned again. He loosened a seal on one of the bags on the rolling rack and slipped the datapad inside, then resealed the bag. “By the way, that girl was Myri Antilles.”

Voort felt his knees wobble. He held up his hand, palm down, at about waist level. “Wedge’s daughter? Little Myri?”

“They grow up fast, don’t they? Don’t ever get in a sabacc game with her: she’ll end up owning everything you possess.”

Voort looked after the young woman. She was still in sight, her gold outfit and mane of poisonous red hair making her easy to pick out of the crowd. “She’s a Wraith?”

“Wraith Three. You’re Wraith Seven, by the way. You need to go catch up with her.”

“You’re staying here?”

Face nodded. “In two and a half minutes, this bag will ignite. Safety workers will put out the fire. Soon after, they’ll examine the burned bags, finding evidence that will tie in to a munitions heist that’s happening in a few minutes, and they’ll review the holocam images of who was with these bags, so they’ll see you and me. Remember not to scrub off your makeup and appliances until after you’re through with the heist.”

“Wait. Heist—now?”

“Go catch Three, she’ll fill you in.”

“Right.” Voort extracted his travel bag from the pile of containers on the hover-rack and dashed off in Myri’s direction.

Face turned and headed back along the spaceport tunnel, leaving the rack hovering where it was.

Voort caught up to Myri at the pickup lane where arriving travelers could arrange airspeeder trips to homes and hostels. She was in the act of waving down an oncoming speeder, an enormous blue thing so scratched and dented that no other traveler seemed to want to engage it. She smiled up at Voort. “Hello, Seven. No need to trigger your speaker. I understand Gamorrean.”

Voort stared at her. The face under that preposterous wig was faintly familiar, despite the effects of too-thick green makeup surrounding her eyes and making them look like hieroglyphs rendered by a child—Voort could see traces of Wedge and Iella, her parents, in her fine-boned features. But he shook his head. “I did not give you permission to become an adult.”

“Silly. If I’d grown up, would I be doing this?”

“You make a good point.”

The battered blue speeder descended to curb level and slowed to a halt before them. Voort opened the door for Myri like any dutiful porter, then tossed his bag into the baggage compartment at the rear. He clambered into the rear seat and slid the door shut. The speeder slid smoothly away from the spaceport crowd and rose into a traffic lane.

The pilot was a human man. From behind, Voort could see that he had fair skin, short brown hair that clearly lightened toward yellow in sunlight, and a tanned neck. And he had shoulders so broad and muscular that Voort had only ever seen their like in holoventure actors, muscle models, and hardworking narcissists. Voort glanced at Myri, an interrogation—One of us or a civilian?

She grinned at him. “Voort saBinring, Seven, this is Trey Courser, Wraith Four.”

Trey glanced over his shoulder and offered a brief wave. His features suggested he was younger than Voort would have guessed—barely out of his teens. “Heard a lot of stories about you, Seven.” His voice was light, pleasant.

Voort snorted and activated his throat implant. “Either you’ve already swept this vehicle for listening devices or we’re already in trouble.”

Trey returned his attention to the traffic lane. “Both, probably. But I rebuilt this junker from bow to stern and I sweep it regularly. We’re good.”

Myri rested her chin on her seat back. “Four’s our machine and droid fabricator. Light-duty computer slicer. Come to think of it, most of us are light-duty computer slicers. And he’d be our trainer, if any of the rest of us ever exercised.”

The words unit strongman crossed Voort’s mind, but he didn’t speak them. “Where are we going and what are we doing?”

“We’re not going, we’re there.” Trey slid the airspeeder sideways until it was out of the traffic lane. Moving in beside a low permacrete wall, he cycled the speeder’s repulsors and thrusters, causing the vehicle to buck, nose down, and descend awkwardly. He set the speeder down and killed the motivators. Landspeeders and airspeeders swung wide of it as they passed.

“… and what are we doing?”

Myri pulled a chrono out of a pocket and checked it. “Four’s about to hide under a blanket. You and I are going to exit this vehicle, not allowing ourselves to be smashed flat by other pilots, and stand at its back. You’re wearing something on your palms and fingers to prevent prints, yes?”

“As per instructions.”

“Good. C’mon.” She exited the speeder on the side away from traffic, leaving her door open, and dashed to the rear of the vehicle.

Sighing, Voort followed. “Face sort of left out until the last moment the fact that I’d be arriving in the middle of an operation in progress.”

Myri gave him a blank look. “Face? Face who?”

“The man you slipped the overheating datapad to. Face Loran.”

Her eyes got wide. “That was Face Loran? He’s in on this?”

“Don’t you know?”

“No. Now I need you to menace me. Loom over me. Give me some good Gamorrean insults.” As if he’d already begun, she leaned away from him, bending backward over the tail of the speeder, and assumed a frightened expression, her hands near her face as if anticipating a blow.

Voort was startled into silence for a moment, then struggled to comply. He switched off his translator implant and began bellowing in Gamorrean. “You have the color sense of a monkey-lizard and I suspect you pour sugar on your meat loaf.”

Myri giggled. “Insults are not your field of expertise, are they?” Then she schooled her expression back into a frightened look. She raised her head a bit to peek over his shoulder, then slumped backward again. “Ten more seconds. Wave your fists.”

Voort felt a prickling sensation in the small of his back. He was sure trouble had to be arriving from behind, but he couldn’t break character to look. He merely raised two meaty fists and waved them as if deciding where to punch Myri first. “Your scores in calculus are an atrocity, and you think square roots refer to artificial hair!” Actually, there was no Gamorrean word for “calculus,” but he made do with an expression meaning “big nasty math.”

Through gritted teeth, Myri told him, “Don’t make me laugh …”

Voort heard a set of repulsors approach from behind. Instead of gaining altitude or sideslipping to the left to pass, these roared with the application of retrothrust; then the vehicle, a big one by the sound of it, set down heavily on the permacrete lane behind Voort. Boots clattered on the permacrete and a loud, resonant voice sounded: “Is this man troubling you?”

Finally Voort did turn.

A few meters behind Trey’s speeder, a military hauler-speeder had set down, its doors lifting to admit three men and one woman, all human and all wearing the uniform of the Army of the Galactic Alliance. The speaker, who’d been piloting, was already approaching; he was a big human male, and his right hand rested meaningfully on the holster on his right hip.

Voort suppressed a rueful sigh. He’d been on Coruscant for less than half an hour and already he was about to be beaten to a pulp.

“Save me!” Myri’s voice was an uncharacteristically high squeak. She maneuvered past Voort and ran to stand behind the tall trooper.

The trooper and two of his comrades advanced on Voort. The fourth put his arms around Myri, a gesture that was half false comfort, half self-gratification.

The soldiers advanced on Voort. Voort glanced at Myri, his eyes asking the question: Do I give them a beating, or take one?

Then the troopers stopped where they were, their eyes growing wide as they looked past Voort.

Myri put her elbow into the solar plexus of her would-be comforter. As he sagged away, gasping, she gestured at Voort—a lowering-hand get down motion.

Voort got down. He hit the permacrete lane so fast and so hard that it knocked the wind from him. He wondered if the appliance he was wearing to change the look of his snout might have been jarred loose by the impact.

The lead trooper took a rifle-intensity stun bolt, fired from Trey’s speeder, in the chest. He went down as hard as Voort had—harder, since he made no effort to diminish the impact.

Myri’s comforter tried ineffectually to grab a holstered blaster pistol. Myri smoothly drew a hold-out blaster from her jacket pocket and shot him, a stun bolt that took him right where her elbow had landed a moment before. He staggered back into the side of the military hauler and collapsed.

The female trooper charged toward Trey’s speeder, while her companion dived back to seek shelter in the hauler. A second rifle stun bolt took the woman in the gut, dropping her. Myri vaulted into the open front door on her side of the hauler, firing as she leapt, and the last trooper fell back out of the vehicle, his eyes closed.

Trey, a blaster rifle in his hands, raced past Voort and slid into the front passenger seat of the hauler. He shot a glance back at Voort. “Get your bag!” The speeders roaring by in the lanes beside and above the stopped vehicles swung even farther to the side.

Voort growled. He heaved himself upright, retrieved his bag from the blue speeder, and trotted back to the military hauler. Only the door beside the pilot’s seat was still open. Voort climbed in, tossing his bag to Trey, and reactivated his implant. “My—Three, your briefing skills are inadequate.”

Myri, in the rear seat, modulated her voice, making it sound like that of a holodocumentary narrator. “Seven, you’ll become pilot at this stage of the operation.”

“Thank you.” Voort slammed his door shut, sealed it, and activated the hauler’s repulsors. The hauler lifted into the air.

Trey tossed his blaster rifle and Voort’s bag into the backseat with Myri. Then he inverted himself, ending up head-down in the passenger-side foot well, and began reaching into and tearing things out of the instrumentation wiring behind Voort’s controls.

Voort kicked in the thrusters, slowly bringing the ungainly hauler up to speed. “Where to?”

“Your next step will be to ascend two traffic lanes, to the western exit traffic lane. In a few moments, if our distractions don’t all work, you’ll be pursued and threatened by all the military police vehicles within thirty kilometers.”

Voort felt his shoulders begin to relax. “Better.”

Trey jammed his hand into the wiring and chips that governed the proper operation of a high-tech, mil-spec speeder. His body spasmed as his hand contacted something it probably shouldn’t have. “Ow.”

Voort glanced at him. “Should you be doing that?” There was no sign of pursuit yet on the sensors, and most pilots in the lane into which he’d merged were apparently unaware of the violence of a moment earlier; they did not shy away from the military hauler.

“Unless you want to broadcast our position to the army, yes.”

“As you were.” Voort experienced an unsettling feeling of familiarity. This was a lot like the old days. Face Loran had operated on the principle that no one should be told anything he didn’t need to know. The result had been improved security and a lot of temporarily confused Wraiths. “What distractions?”

“Well, the overheating datapad and luggage fire was one. The whole spaceport will be shut down and in confusion for an hour or so. As for the other distraction …” Myri began counting off on her fingers. “Three, two, one, zero …”

In the rearview holocam monitor, Voort saw Trey’s battered blue speeder disappear in a vast cloud of gray-black smoke. There was no sound of an explosion—the cloud had to be from a smoke bomb, not an explosive charge designed to destroy.

“There are going to be some minor wrecks as a result of that.” Myri sounded matter-of-fact. “One fire, spaceport shutdown, hauler theft, four troopers knocked unconscious … they could sue us for so much. Let’s not get caught.”

Voort joined the westbound flow of airspeeder traffic leaving the spaceport surroundings. He snorted, amused. “Let’s not get caught. Replacing What do we blow up first? as the Wraith motto for a gentler era.”

“No, I like the blowing up one better.” Trey tugged, and all of Voort’s gauges flickered. Then Trey’s hands came up, cupping a small, gleaming blue cube with wires trailing from it. “Military transponder. Catch.” He tossed it up and back.

Myri caught it. She hit a button on her door. When the viewport there slid down, filling the hauler’s cab with fast-moving air that beat at Voort’s eardrums, Myri tossed the box out, then sealed the viewport shut. “Oops.” She looked around, gauging their current location; the speeder was entering a deep skytower zone, mostly commercial, its skies thickly populated with airspeeder traffic lanes, self-motivated flying advertisement banners, floating traffic-monitor droids, and rigid pedestrian walkways that crossed the gaps between buildings at intervals. “Seven, go one block south, turn west again, ascend to the middle westbound traffic lane.”

Obligingly, Voort banked into a leftward turn, joined a southbound lane for one long block, banked rightward, and climbed to the designated lane. He performed all these maneuvers with brisk, starfighter precision.

Meaning that Myri had to hold on to the seat back with both hands to avoid being tossed around. Trey, in the act of climbing up into a normal seated position, didn’t grab a stable surface in time. He bounced into the cab’s ceiling and ended up in the backseat.

Myri cleared her throat and leaned forward. “What, exactly, was that?”

Voort shrugged. “A Wraith from long ago, Sharr, would have called it a passive-aggressive response.”

“Ah. I get it. I’ll play nice. Up ahead two blocks, between this lane and the next one above, there will be a banner stretched between buildings. A yellow banner advertising nothing. Fly directly into it.”

“Center?”

“Center.”

“I feel we’re communicating better already.”

There it was, a broad stretch of what looked like yellow flexiplast fluttering in the wind at about the one-hundred-story level. Voort waited until the last moment, then rose out of his lane, sideslipped into the middle of the gap between business towers, and hit the banner straight-on.

The flexiplast stretched and then, as the tension became too great, snapped free of the cords holding it to the buildings. It collapsed around the military hauler, fitting as snugly as if vacuum-sealed.

Voort felt his heart lurch, then checked his gauges. “We’re not dropping … It’s vulnerable to thruster and repulsor wash?”

Myri nodded. “Melted away from the thrusters and repulsors, not impeding them. So we’re now a yellow civilian hauler.”

“That’s new. And clever.” Voort gestured at the viewports all around, which were coated in a yellow surface that was translucent but not transparent. “But I can’t see.”

“Fly on sensors.” Myri scrambled over the seat back and dropped into the front passenger seat. She withdrew a datacard from a jacket breast pocket and slid it into the hauler’s onboard computer.

Voort put the sensors on the vehicle’s main display. It showed other airspeeders all around as wire-frame images. As soon as the computer read Myri’s card, the sensors also showed a dotted yellow line in the air, a line not corresponding to any airborne objects.

Voort returned to his westbound lane, where the dotted line hovered. “That’s our path?”

“It takes us right to the unsafe house.”

“… Maybe a safe house instead?”

“That’s for later.”

4

Ten minutes later and thirty stories down in the twilight cast by permacrete canyons between long stands of office and industrial complexes, a wire-frame grid representing a warehouse door slid up and open ahead of the hauler. Voort slowed and turned into the opening. Beyond was a medium-large warehouse chamber, virtually empty but for two wire-frame blobs, their exact shape and function unclear. One was bipedal and moving—an organic being or a droid.

Voort set the hauler down in the center of the open space. Hearing the main door grinding down into place, he opened his door, tearing the yellow material clinging to it, and could finally see the warehouse interior.

The moving blob was indeed a person—a human male with pale skin. He was big, his head bald, his ears a trifle large and protruding, and he wore a baggy gray jumpsuit and an incongruous smile. Another blob turned out to be a hover cart, bigger than but otherwise similar in function to the one Voort had been pushing in the spaceport. The bald man pushed the hover cart up to the rear of the hauler, then began ripping yellow material off the hauler’s rear.

Metal sections had been pulled off the left warehouse wall to reveal an old-fashioned incinerator unit. Voort could feel the heat radiating from the thing the moment he pushed his way out of the hauler.

“Don’t forget your bag.” Trey climbed from the rear seat and ran back to join the bald man.

Myri exited and stretched. Then she cupped her hands around her mouth and raised her voice. “Phase Three! Open up!”

A durasteel panel on the wall not far from the incinerator swung open. Its seams and hinges had not been visible to Voort. Three people emerged, two females and a male, all humanoids. Voort recognized their baggy gray jumpsuits as breakaway garments. Made of flash-cloth, the clothes would burn away in an instant if exposed to fire; they were a danger to their wearers in any environment that included sparks or flames but an invaluable tool to an Intelligence unit that needed to perform quick changes.

The man was an exotic—humanoid but not human. His rough-textured skin was a light green. His eyes, with narrow, slitted pupils, were blue. He was hairless, with a skin crease running from the center of his forehead to the top portion of his narrow nose. His mouth was small, a narrow horizontal line in his face. Voort’s hairless eyebrows rose toward his horns; he hadn’t seen many Clawdites in his day. But the man’s role with the Wraiths was instantly obvious. Clawdites could exert great control over their skin, its color, texture, and features, and thus could appear to be any of many humanoid races. A chameleon like that would be a valuable spy. Watching the Clawdite run over to join Trey and the bald human, Voort barely registered the approach of the two women.

Then one of them spoke, her voice familiar. “I think I’m being insulted.”

Voort turned to look. Two fair-skinned human women, a generation apart in age, stood there. The older one was lean, her face angular. She had dark hair cut short and dark eyes that he knew looked judgmental even when she was thinking of nothing more profound than what to order for dinner. Her features, by human standards, would be classed as striking, perhaps even unlovely, features suited to a senior military officer or a captain of industry. But she wore a smile for Voort.

The younger woman was taller, with an athlete’s build and long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. Over her jumpsuit she wore a plain black worker’s belt with numerous snap hooks and attachment points on it; incongruously, a lightsaber dangled from one of them, its hilt plain and unadorned. Voort suspected that the woman’s features did constitute beauty to other humans, but, curiously, she wore no makeup and her hairstyle seemed to be chosen for ease of maintenance rather than its ability to draw the eye. Her features were oddly familiar to him.

He returned his attention to the older woman. “Bhindi! And your friend is …” Voort glanced at the younger woman again. “Is it Jesmin? Jesmin Tainer?”

Bhindi stood taller to kiss Voort on the cheek. “I’m One, or Leader, until we’re at the safe house. And it is so good to see you, Seven.”

The younger woman offered him an uncertain smile. “Good to see you again. I’m surprised you remember me.”

“You look more like your mother than yourself now.” Once more Voort held his hand up at waist level, indicating the woman’s height when he’d last seen her.

“Reunions will have to wait.” Bhindi’s voice was friendly but brisk. “Five, I need you at your station. Seven, join Three at the furnace. Good job on the heist.” She moved past Voort to join Trey and the others at the back of the hauler.

Jesmin’s smile became apologetic. She turned to dash back the way she’d come.

Voort moved to stand near the furnace—not too near: it really was putting out an uncomfortable level of heat. The furnace was a sturdy-looking durasteel column stretching from floor to ceiling, its black, grimy exterior marred by various analog readouts and a large hatch at waist level. The hatch was open, revealing a wall of yellow-red flame beyond. Voort knew that the column extension up to the ceiling was part of the conveyor setup; on floors above this one, residents of the skytower would drop waste into destruction hampers, which would then funnel the waste into this shaft and drop it straight into the incinerator.

Back at the hauler, the Wraiths had the cargo bed unsealed and open. They were in the process of removing its contents, a large number of blue-black duraplast cases one and a half meters long, and half a meter wide and deep. From their evident weight and their origin, Voort suspected they held blaster rifles.

Myri, carrying a cloth bag, joined him. She jerked the red wig from her head and tossed it into the furnace’s open hatch. Her real hair, apparently short and black, was held down tightly by a mesh cap. “You’ll want to burn your clothes, anything that might have picked up chemical or material traces from the speeder.” She reached into her bag, retrieved a red wig that looked identical to the first, and dropped it on the floor in front of the furnace. “I’ve got a new jumpsuit, just as awful as the one you’re wearing, in here for you.”

“I find myself thrilled.” Voort glanced at the red wig. “Full of forensic evidence for the army investigators to find, I assume?”

She smiled at him. “Oh, you know that one.”

“A scam as old as the stars. But if you’re meticulous enough, it works wonders.” Voort bent over to unseal his boots. He pulled them off, then straightened to unseal the jumpsuit he was wearing.

Back at the hauler, an assembly line of sorts was in full operation. The bald human was unloading the blaster rifle cases, piling them on the floor. Bhindi picked up each one in turn to set it at one end of the hover cart, which was now switched off, resting on the floor. Trey, with a set of tools, meticulously unlocked the seals holding each case closed. The Clawdite removed one blaster battery pack from the case and replaced it with an identical-looking pack from a pile on the floor. Then Trey resealed the case and Bhindi stacked it on the far end of the hover cart. The Clawdite took the discarded military battery pack and placed it in a large flexiplast bag at his feet.

“Guess.” Myri sounded amused.

Voort glanced at her. She’d removed the crinkly gold costume and shoved it into the furnace; she wore only gray shorts and a sleeveless gray undershirt. An identical costume to her original one lay on the floor atop the wig. She held out a mass of cloth to him, another jumpsuit.

He took it, then looked away, returning his attention to the assembly line. In his experience, actors, dancers, and spies were not self-conscious while dressing or undressing in the presence of others, but he still preferred to give her the pretense of privacy. He stared at the batteries. “You have transceivers in those new battery packs so you can track their movements.”

“Far too simple. Those new battery packs are actually droids with some movement and manipulation functions … plus they’re functional battery packs, though they don’t contain as many shots as their displays claim.”

“Ah.” Voort kicked off his boots and peeled off his jumpsuit. “The ‘King of the Droids’ ploy.”

“You’re familiar with it?”

“It was invented by a teammate of mine and her astromech a long, long time ago. Before you gave your father his first gray hair. Each of your battery droids can reprogram and subvert simple droids, like housekeeping droids. Correct?”

“Aww.” Even over the sound of rustling clothes, Myri’s voice sounded disappointed. “I thought we’d invented that.”

Voort struggled into his new jumpsuit, then slipped on and sealed his boots. “So, for this ploy to work, you have to let those rifles be recaptured, correct? Or will you be selling them to a criminal cartel?”

“Recaptured.”

“Where?”

“Here. In a few minutes.”

Startled, he looked at her again. She was fully dressed. Her hair, a new wig, was a metallic silver bob. Her makeup was scrubbed away and replaced by a visor that looked opaque from the outside, and she was in a jumpsuit that matched those of the others. The replacements for her incinerated previous costume lay on the floor at her feet.

She took his used jumpsuit and tossed it into the furnace. “All done? Go around the corner where Jezzie went. The grenades there are yours, the blaster’s mine.”

“Jezzie?”

“I mean Five. I’ve known her since we were kids. Old nicknames are hard to forget.”

Together they exited the furnace nook and moved into the cooler, quieter gap in the wall from which Bhindi, Jesmin, and the Clawdite had emerged. Voort took a look around. It looked as though the Wraiths had broken their way into a sealed-off corridor, possibly a maintenance access or just space that had been sealed off during a renovation, and installed doors indistinguishable from wall panels at both ends. He could peer down the unpainted corridor they had made, which appeared to open, a few meters away, into another warehouse space. He could hear repulsors and thrusters being revved in what had to be a motivator test.

Closer at hand, there were two grenades and a blaster rifle on the floor against the wall. He picked up the grenades. They were of types familiar to him—one smoker and one dazzler, preset to detonate on impact once the activator buttons were pressed. He hefted them, familiarizing himself with their weight. “How are your parents?” He felt awkward asking it, but he wanted to introduce the subject of Wedge and Iella so he could ease the conversation around to what he really wanted to ask.

Myri picked up the blaster rifle, ejected the battery pack to check its contacts, and reinserted it. She flipped the switch on the side to its stun setting. “Daddy’s great. Did you read his memoirs?”

“Ace in the Hole: A Cockpit’s-Eye View of Turbulent Times. Oh, yes. Sad that he had to leave out far more than he could write about.”

“More volumes for later, when things are declassified. Anyway, he’s having a great time doing speaking tours, doing consulting work for Incom, things like that. Mom, though—she hates retirement. I think she’s going to start a revolution somewhere to cope with the boredom.”

“Myri, I thought you were making your living gambling. Nice and safe on the Errant Venture. Making a fortune, from what I heard.”

She nodded, her attention on her rifle.

“So? Why this?”

She smiled. “You must be so proud.”

“What? Of whom?”

“That’s what they tell me. Mostly about Daddy. ‘Wedge Antilles’s daughter? You must be so proud.’ And I am. Some people know about Mom’s career. ‘You must be so proud.’ And I am. Some people know about my sister’s record in the last war. ‘You must be so proud.’ Yes, yes, I am. But maybe it’s time for someone to be proud of what I do. Maybe even me.”

“Most of the people I’m proud to have known died making me proud, Myri.”

She shot him a reproving glance. “Your heart’s really not in this, is it?”

“No. And the thought of what your parents would do if—”

A speaker popped into life. Bhindi’s voice came over the system: “Take your number two positions, please. We’ll be attacked within three minutes.”

Myri positioned herself so that her back was to the corridor wall. She could not be seen by anyone entering the warehouse through the main doors. “You want a briefing?”

“It would be nice.”

“A unit of army specialists are going to blow their way in here. You and I open up on them to give the others time to get here and past us to where the extraction vehicle is. Jez—Five’s piloting. When the other Wraiths are past, we bring up the rear and everybody gets away.”

Voort nodded. “I like that part.”

In the main room, Trey, Bhindi, and the Clawdite arrayed themselves between the stolen hauler and the exit corridor. The bald human remained at the rear of the hauler and powered up the hover cart. It rose twenty centimeters, humming, and blaster rifle cases atop it vibrated. The bald man flexed as if stretching in anticipation of an athletic contest. The Clawdite, nearest the exit corridor, held the bag of discarded battery packs.

Bhindi was nearest the hauler. She paid close attention to an open datapad in her hands, and Voort could see the image on its small screen. It switched between holocam views of the warehouse exterior. There, blue-uniformed Galactic Alliance Army troopers, special forces by the unit markings on their uniforms and the way they moved, were getting into position on the surrounding walkways, ushering pedestrians back and sending scouts forward.

Voort gulped. Confronting special forces was an easy way to get seriously killed. He took up position beside Myri.

Myri glanced around the corner, took in the scene, and drew back. “Scut drew the low card, then. Well, he’s a fast runner.”

“The bald human, he’s Scut?”

“Human?” Myri sounded confused. “Oh. The bald man with the ears like solar arrays. That’s him. Wraith Six.”

The main door into the warehouse, the same portal Voort had flown through just minutes before, blew in, propelled by the concussive boom of a shaped charge. In the same instant the warehouse lights went out; suddenly the only light sources were the hole in the door and the fiery glow from the incinerator.

Uniformed men and women poured in through the hole, already picking out targets with their blaster rifles.

If they were attacking in darkness, they’d be using light-amplification visors, Voort thought. He stepped into the corridor opening, blocking Myri, pressed home the button on the dazzle-grenade, and hurled it.

It wasn’t his best throw. The dazzler had been in his left hand, and he was right-handed. But it flew fifteen meters and landed five meters in front of the hole in the door. It detonated on impact, filling the entire chamber with a brief, brilliant glow.

Not that Voort saw it. He had his eyes closed, and he waited until the glow died before opening them. There were cries of outrage and surprise from the invading troopers. He pressed the button on his other grenade, threw, and stepped back. Myri moved up in front of him, took aim, and began squeezing off shots. Voort watched over her head.

The dazzler had done a good job. Some of the invaders were firing, but it seemed to be defensive sprays of blaster bolts, un-aimed. Myri’s shots were far more accurate—methodically, she picked off one, two, three, four troopers.

And she traversed rightward, aiming away from her comrades, giving them a safer approach. The Clawdite made it to the corridor, ran past Voort.

Trey was next, his run lumbering as he brushed past Voort on his way to safety.

Despite the way Myri had reduced their numbers, the troopers began to return fire with more discipline. Bhindi, narrowly missed by a pair of shots, hit the ground and scrambled on all fours with startling speed, her datapad still in hand. She got past Voort and rose, resuming a full run.

Scut was now in motion, pushing the hover cart at a dead run as if intending to escape with its cargo—despite the fact that the exit corridor was too narrow to admit it. A few crates of blasters, jostled by his motion, slid off the cart and clattered to the floor, leaving a trail behind him.

And then a blaster bolt at full lethal strength hit Scut in the center of the back.

The bald man went down on his face, sliding forward a couple of meters. The hover cart, uncontrolled, slid into the wall a few meters from the exit panel. The impact scattered most of the crates on it; they slid into the metal wall, then off the cart and onto the floor.

Myri said something that, to Voort, sounded both Rodian and very unpleasant. She concentrated her fire on the source of the blaster bolt that had hit Scut, a trooper wreathed in smoke from Voort’s grenade.

Voort crouched, preparing for the last thing on Coruscant he had any desire to do: a run back into the chamber to grab Scut. But then the bald man was on his feet and running again. Voort ducked aside. Scut, still grinning, his jumpsuit on fire and burning away to ash all across his body, ran past Voort as if out on a daily jog. Voort stared after him, baffled.

Myri grabbed Voort’s arm, spun him toward the far warehouse, and pushed. She raised her voice to be heard over the tumult from the chamber they’d just left. “Extracting!”

The near doorway swung shut with a clang. Voort belatedly began running, the floor plates booming under his boots, and emerged into a smaller but similar warehouse chamber. That chamber’s main door was grinding open. The only thing in the chamber was an airspeeder, a bulky orange delivery vehicle, the lettering on its side reading FOOD THE COLOR YOU ENJOY MOST.

Jesmin, at the pilot’s controls, was visible through the forward port viewport, and the vehicle was already floating on its repulsors. Scut half ran, half dived through the side door into the main compartment.

Myri overtook Voort and was next in. Voort followed, slapping the door controls. The compartment door slid shut. He was taken off his feet by the vehicle’s sudden acceleration. He landed in a forward-facing seat beside Myri. Directly ahead of him, strapping himself into a rear-facing seat, sat Scut. Bhindi was beside him, in the center seat opposite. The Clawdite had the rear-facing seat on the starboard side, Trey the forward-facing seat opposite him.

Bhindi breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, that was closer than I like.”

Voort stared at her, eyes wide. “It’s not over yet. It’ll take them about thirty seconds to spot a vehicle this distinctive and you have a critically wounded Wraith. Who’s our medic?”

Bhindi shook her head. “Still trying to recruit one. We’ve been pressed for time.”

Scut stared at Voort, his eyes serene, that ridiculous smile still on his lips. “A mild burn, of no consequence. There is no need to worry.” His voice was curiously rough and did not at all match his demeanor.

“No need—Bhindi, he’s in shock and he’s going to die if we don’t get medical care for him right now. You can smell the wound!”

Bhindi waved his objection away. “As for our color scheme, in a couple of turns, Five will hit a console button. Our exterior will turn black and the lettering will fall off. We’re fine.”

Voort opened his mouth for another protest, but Scut raised a hand to forestall him. “Here. I will show you how it is. I’m wearing a body pad of living tissue similar in composition to my mask.” He reached up as if to scratch his neck, but then he gripped rather than scratched, and pulled.

He pulled his face off.

It came away in a single piece, not just the face but every bit of his scalp and neck. The tissue made a repellent sucking noise as it came free.

Beneath it were not denuded bone and muscle, but another face, this one thinner, a light gray in color. It had lean, angular features and black eyes that stared with an alien intensity. A sloping forehead and a heavy supraorbital ridge did nothing to soften his fierce aspect. This man had hair, thin and black, worn short.

Voort felt himself grow faint, and the hair-bristles all over his body seemed to stand up. “You’re Yuuzhan Vong.”

5

“I am called Viull Gorsat.” The Yuuzhan Vong dropped the false face onto the floorboards between him and Voort. Next, he reached under the cuffs of his sleeves and peeled the skin of his hands away—clinging gloves of the same material as his false face. His true hands, underneath, were as gray as his true face. “My body pad was intended to give me dimensions suited to my face, not to act as armor. But it was a durable organism and gave its life to save mine.”

Voort stared at Bhindi. “You’re working with a Yuuzhan Vong.”

Bhindi nodded, placid, as if she’d just been informed that the atmosphere was breathable. “And a Clawdite and a Gamorrean and several humans, and, worst of all, a Corellian.”

Myri shot her a dirty look from underneath her mop of silvery hair. “Cheap shot.”

Bhindi returned her attention to Voort. “Voort, Scut is one of the Extolled—the caste they used to call the Shamed Ones. He suffered more at the hands of their military and ruling classes than you have.”

“The Extolled are just as crazy as all the rest of them.” Voort stared at Bhindi, stunned that, with all her experience, she didn’t grasp this simple fact.

Scut’s brow seemed to deepen as he frowned. “As a child, at the height of the war, I was on a work crew. The warriors left us behind as a diversion. Most of us died in a New Republic counterattack. I was captured. Given to a human couple. So I have Yuuzhan Vong parents who rejected me as my body rejected Yuuzhan Vong implants, and human parents who raised me. I am of two people. As you are.”

Voort gave him a look he hoped the Yuuzhan Vong understood, a look that said, Come one centimeter closer and I’ll kill you. “You’re nothing like me.”

“Voort.” Bhindi’s voice was suddenly chilly. “Are you questioning my judgment?”

Yes, I am. Yes, yes, yes. Voort wanted nothing so much as to leave right now, even if that meant jumping from the side door and hoping he’d find a speeder underneath while falling.

But he kept that thought to himself. He knew Bhindi. She would not respond well to having her decisions challenged.

Of course, Voort could leave, immediately return home and get back to teaching. But that would leave Bhindi, someone he cared about, and Myri and Jesmin, children of people he cared about, associating with this Yuuzhan Vong.

So he composed himself and shook his head. “No.”

“Good. Scut’s a biofabricator. He made the mask and gloves you saw—”

“Ooglith masquers.” It took an effort on Voort’s part not to spit out those words. During the Yuuzhan Vong War, alien Vong wearing ooglith masquers to pass as member species of the New Republic had infiltrated, sabotaged, assassinated.

Scut’s voice remained neutral. “Neoglith masquers. The concept is similar. But I use tissues of species native to this galaxy. Nor are they complete organisms unto themselves, as ooglith masquers were. They have no brains, they do not suffer. When the nutrients suffusing their tissues are absorbed, they die—they do not propagate as species.”

Voort suppressed a shudder. “Perhaps we should talk about our objectives. I’m … behind.”

“Soon.” Bhindi glanced through the small forward viewport into the cockpit. “When we’re at our safe house.”

It was the sort of safe house Voort was used to from his years with the Wraiths, a small tapcaf whose operators, already struggling on the edge of insolvency, had been financially ruined by a fire. The fire had damaged the tapcaf interior, blistering one duraplast wall with signs of char, embedding a sharp smoke odor in all the cheap furnishings, but it had not affected the structural integrity of the midlevel skytower floor where the business had been housed. Bhindi, posing as a repair crew operator, had offered a low, low bid on repairs. Now the Wraiths were free to move in and out of the tapcaf’s vicinity, using its loading dock, arriving and departing with all variety of vehicles, and the owners of surrounding businesses paid them no mind so long as they wore workers’ garments.

Nor were they entirely abusing the business owners with this deception. While Voort moved from booth to booth, wiping down sparkly purple flexiplast tabletops with a cloth dipped in a fluid that smelled like flowers—chemicals that would remove the stink of smoke now embedded in the flexiplast—other Wraiths also moved around the main room, working as they talked. Trey removed and replaced wall sensors, chronos, attachment points for powered advertisements. Scut, now somewhat leaner with the padding portions of his disguise discarded, was visible on the other side of the midsection-high barrier separating main room from kitchen, mopping. Turman Durra—that was how the Clawdite had been introduced, and Voort had heard his name in the past, the name of a well-regarded stage actor—methodically removed smoke-discolored sound-absorbing tiles from the ceiling and tossed them into a waste receptacle. Jesmin and Myri sat at a booth, a datapad before them, scanning HoloNet News and other news streams for reports on the spaceport shutdown and the army hauler hijack.

Bhindi, sitting opposite Voort at another booth, kept her voice pitched very low. “Piggy, is this going to be a problem?”

“The only problem will be if you keep calling me Piggy. You know better. You were there.”

“Don’t deflect my question.”

He met her gaze square-on. “No. If you’re certain he’s not an insane genocidal freak who belongs in another galaxy altogether, I’ll take your word for it.”

“That’s not very reassuring.”

“Then I’ll spell it out for you. This will not be a problem. You just surprised me, that’s all. Imagine that we held a celebration for you, we wheeled in a giant pastry, and Emperor Palpatine popped out of it. That kind of surprise. But it’s not a problem.”

Bhindi took a deep breath, then apparently chose to let the matter pass for the time being. She turned her attention to the others and cleared her throat. The Wraiths gathered around, Myri sliding into the booth beside Voort and Turman beside Bhindi. The rest pulled up chairs in a semicircle beside the booth.

Bhindi indicated her own datapad on the tabletop before her. “The recordings burst-fired to us by the holocams we left behind outside the engagement zone show the army hauling off the blasters and bringing in a forensics team. Everything there seems to be going as planned, assuming we didn’t mess up on any of the evidence we planted. So let’s turn our attention back to the next stage: determining General Thaal’s guilt or innocence. Voort, what does the old school have to say about this?”

Voort switched his implant to a normal conversational volume. “Assuming he’s guilty, we don’t know his precise motivation. So in the old days, what we’d do is set up a series of baits for him, each designed to appeal to one of his most likely motivations, and see which, if any, he bites on. In other words, we run a series of confidence games until we see which one he wants to play.” He saw some nods from the others.

Bhindi nodded, too. “Good. So what are his likely motives for joining the Lecersen Conspiracy, what is he likely to be doing now, and what sorts of bait will draw him out?”

Jesmin was first. “Wealth. He might want to be made an Imperial Moff or just given a payoff from the Empire. Either way, he would become a very, very rich man.”

Bhindi gave her a little smile of sympathy. “You really have been scarred by dealing with the black market, haven’t you?”

Jesmin ignored the comment. “So we set up a bogus big-credit score, something that would require him to betray the Alliance.”

“Good. Next?”

Turman sat up a little straighter. “Reestablishment of the Empire as it was at the height of its powers.” His voice, like Face Loran’s, was indeed that of an actor—controlled and vibrant. “If he’s an Imperial patriot, he may have no profit motive to speak of. He’s in a position to betray army secrets, maybe even the security of the entire Alliance, to the Empire … but he’s not going to do that until the Empire has settled down under a stable leadership. We might have to convince him that this stable leadership is actually already in place or waiting for him to assume that throne.”

Bhindi gave him an approving look. “So all we’d have to do is simulate the wealth and grandeur of a resurgent Empire on our available budget of pocket change and lint.”

“That’s about the size of it, yes.”

“Next?”

Scut spoke next, the harsh tones of his voice at odds with what seemed to be well-considered words. “Many Alliance veterans carry grudges against the instigators of wars they fought. Deep down, Thaal may want to destroy the Yuuzhan Vong … or the Jedi who once supported Jacen Solo. Politics will not let him do that now. But given an opportunity to strike such a blow, to end a perceived menace once and for all …”

Bhindi winced. “But that calls for running at least two confidence schemes, one for each major likely target.”

Scut shrugged. “Or determining what it is he truly hates before launching the confidence game.”

Myri shook her head. “If it’s one of those two, it’s the Yuuzhan Vong. No offense.”

Scut blinked. “I take no offense. But why the Yuuzhan Vong above the Jedi?”

“It’s in his history. Thaal was an army colonel stationed here on Coruscant when the Yuuzhan Vong invasion came. Instead of evacuating, he volunteered to lead a unit of elites to set up on Vandor-Three.”

Scut frowned. “Where?”

“It’s actually here in the Coruscant system. The next planet sunward. Lightly populated by Coruscant standards. It has old links to the armed forces—back in the Clone Wars, there were clone trooper training grounds near Vangard, the capital. But now it’s mostly agricultural, with a petroleum industry. It supplies Coruscant with a lot of its food and raw material for plastic products. Most people here consider Vandor-Three to be beyond the borders of civilization and culture. Like an uneducated cousin who doesn’t bathe.” She shrugged. “Anyway, he and his unit hid in a base built years earlier by the Tech Raiders, a crime organization.

“Thaal’s group reported on the Yuuzhan Vong occupation of the system, data vital to the New Republic. They launched raids. They called themselves the Pop-Dogs, after a burrowing rodent from Carida—pop-dogs pop up out of their burrows, run over, grab their prey or food that’s been left unguarded for just a second, and scurry back to their burrows. The Pop-Dog unit was very brave and very useful, and when that war was over, Thaal was promoted to the rank of general. And he built up elite army units nicknamed the Pop-Dogs. My guess is that he still hates the Yuuzhan Vong for all the suffering he saw.”

Jesmin looked unhappy. “That’s logical, but it doesn’t clear up the situation for us at all. The same logic would make him hate the Jedi more.”

Myri looked at her, clearly confused. “How?”

“A little detail buried in his career history. You mentioned that the pop-dogs, the rodents rather than the military unit, were from Carida. So was Thaal. He was an Imperial officer, a small-unit tactics instructor at the Imperial Academy there.”

Myri grimaced. “That does make a difference.”

Jesmin nodded. “He was on Carida when Kyp Durron destroyed the system. He was on one of the last shuttles to evacuate successfully before the Sun Crusher hit. He defected to the New Republic during all that chaos, and his record suggests he’s been a loyal officer ever since. But when you’ve been through that kind of horror … Who knows what it does to your mind?”

Voort frowned, thoughtful. That did complicate the picture. Kyp Durron, at the time only a Jedi trainee but a very powerful Force-user, had performed a horrifying act of vengeance. He had used an experimental superweapon to destroy the star of Carida, a world where an Imperial military academy was situated, and the star’s destruction had obliterated Carida itself. Evacuation efforts saved a portion of Carida’s population. Though many people believed then and still believed today that Durron should have been tried and punished for the action, the destruction had been a boon for the New Republic, still at war at the time with the Empire; that, and support for Durron from Luke Skywalker, who testified to Durron’s redemption, secured Durron’s freedom.

Bhindi sighed. “All right. Any other likely motivations?”

There was a general shaking of heads.

“So Thaal’s motivation is still unclear.” Bhindi pulled a datachip from her breast pocket and handed it to Myri. “I want you, Voort, and Trey to take charge of the droid subversion effort on Vandor-Three. The rest of us will begin putting together operations to expose Thaal’s motivation. Break and scatter, people.”

On the trip back to the spaceport, Voort, up in the delivery speeder’s cockpit, glowered over at Myri in the center seat. “I don’t want to complain.”

She grinned at him. “You know what people do, one hundred percent of the time, immediately after saying they don’t want to complain? They complain.”

“I got to Coruscant this morning. I’m leaving in the afternoon. Who comes to Coruscant for a few hours? Does that make any sense?”

“I suppose not.”

“I just wanted to point that out.”

“You might as well stop frowning. For good.”

Voort stared at her, confused. “Why?”

“Almost nobody but another Gamorrean can tell when you’re frowning. I can because I learned the expressions, the body language, and especially the species tells of lots and lots of races when I was gambling for my living. But—Trey, can you tell when he’s frowning?”

Trey, at the pilot’s controls, shook his head.

“See?” She fell silent for a second and just watched the skytowers sweep by on either side. “You could smile once in a while. You never smile.”

“Give me something to smile about.”

“I’ll have to work on that.”

6

ACKBAR CITY, VANDOR-3

The shuttle flight from Coruscant to Vandor-3 had been brief, but that was the last thing Voort found favorable about this phase of their mission.

The civilian spaceport lay halfway between Fey’lya Army Base to the north and Ackbar City to the southwest, about twenty kilometers in either case. It actually was a massive spaceport for a world with a population so small, and most of its traffic came in the form of container ships hauling grain, other produce, and meats offworld. The terminal building for visitor and other noncargo traffic was actually quite small, a two-story gray truncated pyramid with two associated landing pads.

The three Wraiths were delayed nearly an hour in that terminal while a small landspeeder rental booth struggled to find them a vehicle. Voort spent that time staring balefully at the hologram projected overhead, a tourism program extolling the virtues of the planet, especially the army base and the nearby city.

The hologram program, on infinite loop, confirmed again and again that there hadn’t been an army base on Vandor-3 prior to the Galactic Alliance regaining control of the Coruscant system at the end of the Yuuzhan Vong War. But when General Thaal decided to make Vandor-3 the system’s new base of army operations, the base—named for Borsk Fey’lya, Chief of State of the New Republic at the time of Coruscant’s fall—had sprung up and flourished rapidly.

Finally the attendant brought the Wraiths outside and presented them with their speeder, a huge, clanking, deep-bedded hauler, its cab spacious enough for the three of them. Finally they could escape. With Myri at the controls and Trey in the middle, they flew out of the spaceport, following the route map displayed on Trey’s datapad.

They all kept silent, Voort in irritation and the others sensing his mood, until they reached the first large sign leading from the spaceport, pointing in one direction toward Fey’lya Army Base and the other toward Ackbar City. Myri followed the second arrow. Voort offered the sign a rubbery noise of contempt.

“What is it with you?” Myri glowered across Trey at Voort. “You’ve been on the verge of a killing spree since we got here.”

“Fey’lya Army Base. Newest, best-funded army base out there.” Voort shook his head. “Named for Borsk Fey’lya, a conniving, self-centered son of a wampa if ever there was one. The fact that he should be honored like that …”

Myri shrugged. “So?” She returned her attention to the treetop-level signs that marked the airspeeder lane to their destination. The signs paralleled a paved ground-vehicle roadway beneath. All around them were grain fields being worked by humans, Gamorreans, droids, and self-guided farm machinery. Close to harvesttime, the fields reflected a brilliant yellow-white in the sunlight. “I was pretty young when it happened, but didn’t he die, you know, heroically? Blowing himself up with a bunch of Yuuzhan Vong warriors?”

“Some people live and die heroically and are never honored for it. Fey’lya managed one act of contrition, of redemption, at the end of a life of scheming. Myri, he made decisions that affected people in the field. Soldiers, spacers, spies. He would make choices based on self-interest and get people killed.”

“Oh.” She kept her voice mild. “Well, people remember what they choose to remember. I guess they choose to remember him blowing up the enemy as the capital fell.”

“I’m just saying …” Voort tamped down his irritation. He didn’t need to be venting it against someone who hadn’t earned his anger. It wasn’t as though Myri were one of his students, after all. “I met Admiral Ackbar several times. I worked with his niece Jesmin. She was one of the first Wraiths, and died in combat.”

“I know; Jesmin Tainer is named for him.”

“I’m just saying that if they’re going to name a huge, over-funded, state-of-the-art army base for Fey’lya, the city named for Admiral Ackbar had better be glorious.”

They spotted the city from a couple of kilometers off. A broad brown patch in the midst of glowing white-and-yellow fields, it was heralded by a sign reading ACKBAR CITY. MAXIMUM AIRSPEEDER ALTITUDE SIX METERS.

“You have got to be kidding.” Grudgingly, Myri brought the speeder’s altitude down to the legal limit.

Then they reached the outskirts, a strip of dusty ground bordering a haphazard accumulation of buildings, mostly sheet durasteel bolted onto metal frames, set into permacrete foundations, and painted in a variety of dull colors. Some of those coatings of paint, beaten upon by a few years of summertime sun, were beginning to crack and peel. Some streets were paved, others covered in a rough coating of gravel, others hard-packed soil.

Myri scanned their surroundings as she piloted. When she spoke, her voice was glum. “There’s nothing else flying even at this altitude. Going to landspeeder mode.” She dropped altitude to a mere meter off the ground. When they passed dirt-topped cross-streets and alleys, their repulsors kicked up great clouds of brown dust. Civilians on the pedestrian walkways shouted and made rude gestures at them. “You win, Voort. I’m prepared to hate this place.”

“Maybe it gets better farther in.” Trey’s tone was mild, more conciliatory. “Hey, that’s better.” He pointed through the forward viewscreen.

Myri and Voort looked in that direction. All Voort could see was a business, perhaps more gaudily painted than the others, a two-story dome whose marquee sign announced it as EAT’S.

Voort glowered. “Unless the owner is named Eat, the apostrophe is superfluous. I’m inclined to beat up the owner for bad grammar. Why, Trey, is that better?”

“It was a prefab! Built in the factory to be exactly that way. Not assembled here. Costs more. Better, right?”

Myri sighed. “At least there are signs for some gambling halls. I can earn some spare credits here.”

The population was mostly human, but a variety of nonhumans were scattered throughout. Most seemed to be civilians, dressed in casual or work clothes, but Voort saw occasional groups of soldiers as well.

Trey had apparently done his research on the distinctions among local soldiery. He pointed to one pair of troopers standing on a street corner, their uniforms brown, their rank insignia indicating they were privates. “Off-duty troops. The city’s economy runs on catering to off-duty soldiers.”

Voort crossed his arms. “So we can expect most of the businesses hereabouts to be—what’s the word in Basic?—sleazy.”

“Maybe not.” Myri sounded hopeful.

Voort snorted. “I’ll bet you ten credits Ackbar City doesn’t even have an orchestra.”

“You’re on.”

“An orchestra of living musicians. Not a droid orchestra.”

Myri made an unhappy face. “Bet’s off.”

Trey pointed out another group of soldiers, a quartet. They were in brown uniforms as well, but carried blaster rifles and wore torso armor and helmets in black. “Guard patrols. The city gets its city guard services from the army base.” The four troopers were in fact keeping a close eye on passing landspeeder and pedestrian traffic.

“Interesting.” Voort filed that fact away. Any deviation from normal social or governmental structure was a potential weakness or wrinkle to exploit.

Trey pointed ahead and to the right. “Pop-Dog.”

Voort peered in that direction, curious about General Thaal’s favorite brand of elite troopers.

The woman Trey had indicated was of average height and fit. Her uniform was similar to those of the on-duty guards, but with some embellishments. Sewn along the collar of her brown tunic was a pattern of white triangles—Voort took a moment to recognize them as stylized teeth. There were single tooth insignia on either side of her helmet. Ruddy of complexion and stern-faced, she stood listening to the words, apparently pleas, of a tan-skinned Bith shop owner. They stood outside the door of a bakery; across the door was a strip of broad red tape reading CONDEMNED. The Bith, the dome of his hairless head and his black eyes gleaming in the morning sun, gestured persuasively as the Pop-Dog shook her head. Then that scene, too, was past.

Voort kept his eye on the Pop-Dog as long as he could. “If General Thaal is the enemy, that, too, is our enemy. And if he’s not corrupt, the Pop-Dogs are still elite soldiers whose backyard we are rooting around in uninvited. So keep alert.”

“Yes, Dad.” Trey consulted his datapad. “Myri, next left.”

Two minutes later they pulled into their destination, the parking area of a small collection of corrugated durasteel buildings, all uniformly gray and weathered. The faded sign on the largest roof advertised the place as TOOZLER’S SPEEDER REPAIR AND MAINTENANCE. Weeds had broken through the lot’s pavement in several places, indicating that the establishment had been abandoned for some time.

The main building of the little business was a long two-story structure, enclosing the bays for vehicle repairs, now stripped of lifts and hoists and tools. To its left was an office building with a waiting area and a refresher downstairs and a small apartment upstairs. To its right, a storage building, now empty but for the smell of chemicals and plastic parts. The three buildings were joined by short duraplast-walled passages no more than a meter in length. The unlined walls of the main building rippled and rattled when the wind blew.

Voort, Myri, and Trey spent a few minutes sweeping the place for transmitters; finding none, they spent a few more minutes planting some of their own, tiny listening devices and holocams that would show them movement on the traffic lanes outside and alert them to stealthy visitors. They taped lengths of opaque black flimsiplast over all the windows. Trey went up on the roof to add a banner proclaiming COMING SOON—BINI’S SPEEDERIUM to the sign there.

They parked the speeder in the main building. Their bags went into the office building, where Trey set up, on what had been the business counter, the communications and computer gear they had brought. He glanced over the monitor and shook his head. “No burst traffic yet from the blaster battery droids.”

Voort peered over Trey’s shoulder but could make no sense of the numbers and flashing updates on the screen. “What does that mean? Have they been discovered? Maybe the army will keep them for months as evidence on Coruscant.”

Trey shook his head. “Noooo … They were bound for Fey’lya Base, so they’ll get there soon enough. But if the base has all the blasters it needs for the time being, it might be days or weeks before they get uncrated and issued.”

Voort grunted. “Well, let’s hurry things along.”

Myri and Trey stared blankly at him.

He stared back, slowly shaking his head. “You don’t have the faintest idea of what I’m talking about, do you?”

“No.” Myri sounded confused. “We’re supposed to wait until some of the droids are activated, then begin collating the data they send …”

“Which, as Trey said, could be days or weeks.” Voort tried not to let impatience creep into his voice. “But what if, say, several base troopers have an encounter here, planetside, that puts their blaster rifles out of commission?”

“They’d be assigned new ones.” Trey brightened. “And the new ones they’re assigned might be ours, or ours might just move up the queue, have to be checked out, allowing the droids to become active …”

Voort gave him an approving nod. “You don’t wait for things to happen in this business, son. You make things happen.”

Myri grinned, obviously relishing the lesson in old-school Wraith techniques that was to come. “Tell us.”

“This scam relies on the fact that Ackbar City does not have its own police or guard force.” Voort pondered for a moment. “We’ll need … one smallish hydraulic metal press, not traceable to us, transportable in our speeder. Six or eight addresses of abandoned homes in low-rent districts. Six to eight comlinks with unregistered ownership, disposable, to make calls to the military police on. A second pseudo-safe house a lot like this one, again not traceable to us. Spray paints in assorted colors. Disguises for you and Trey. And, if we can, sound recordings of Kowakian monkey-lizards in a state of rage.”

Trey grinned. “I think I’m going to like this job.”

Hours later, two army troopers, one male, one female, both human, paused at the front door of the small dwelling. It wasn’t much of a home, a prefab that looked as though it had begun its existence as a section of durasteel pipe some three meters in diameter and fifteen in length. Saw the pipe in half lengthwise, set it cut-edges down on a permacrete foundation, cap it at both ends with walls with doors in them, and paint the whole thing an unappealing dirt color, and there it was, a dwelling fit for people with no money, no taste, or both. The dwelling matched the low-income neighborhood that surrounded it.

The female trooper, whose name tag read SGT. DOBI, pressed the signal button beside the door. “I hate domestic disturbance calls. The people get into knock-down drag-outs with one another, then we show up to restore order and they come after us with vibroblades.”

The male, whose badge read CPL. VITKINS, shook his head. “This one had animal noises. How many of them include animal noises?”

“Well, all right, maybe they’ll end up throwing sand panthers at us instead.”

“You’re a pessimist.”

The light above the doorway came on and the door slid aside. Just inside stood a human man—tall, strongly built, dressed in a worker’s gray clothes. It was impossible to make out much of his features, for half his face was swathed in white bandage and the other marked with livid bruises. His right arm was supported in a forearm-to-elbow sling that looked as though it had been improvised from torn bedsheets.

He peered out at them from under a mop of black hair, his eyes miserable. “Cah I hep you?”

Sergeant Dobi suppressed a wince of sympathy. “A pedestrian commed the local guard station with complaints of a disturbance. We need to speak to you. Inside.”

“Ob courfe.” The resident stepped aside to let them enter.

Inside, they looked around. The room was almost bare—two folding durasteel chairs and a rickety table of local wood, a monitor atop it, constituted all the furniture.

The resident began explaining before the front door had quite slid shut. “Mah houfemate and I had ad argoomenf.”

Sergeant Dobi nodded. “It looks like you got the worst part of it.”

“Ah ahwayf do.”

“Always do—this is a regular occurrence?”

“Efery time he getf Cowellian applef.”

The troopers looked at each other. Corporal Vitkins pulled out his datapad. “What sort of species gets violent after eating Corellian apples?”

“One ob a kind. Genetically augmented Kowakiad monkeylifard.”

Sergeant Dobi checked her blaster rifle, made sure it was set on stun and at full power. “Tell me you’re joking. Genetically augmented?”

“Oh, he’f huge. A metew an a haff tall.”

Corporal Vitkins gave the resident an appalled look, then ran a couple of quick searches on his datapad. “Look, I’m not seeing a rental or purchase contract on this dwelling, nor any record that there’s a modified Kowakian monkey-lizard anywhere on Vandor-Three.”

“We juff moved in yefterday. And he’f not on the record. I … fmuggled him onplanet.”

Vitkins hurriedly tucked away his datapad and checked his rifle. “A dangerous animal—”

“He’f not dangewouf! The applef have wown off. You want to fpeak wif him? He’s in the neft woom, napping.”

Dobi nodded. “Yes. Call him out here.”

“Palpy? C’mere, Palpy.”

Noises sounded from the door into the next room, a heavy thump followed by a shambling, scraping sound that caused Dobi’s hair to rise.

That door slid aside, revealing darkness beyond.

And the resident, behind the troopers, spoke again, his voice no longer pained or slurred. “Don’t move. I have blaster pistols aimed at your backs, and you’re also being covered from the other room. Troopers, you are now prisoners of the Quad-Linked Militant Pacifists.”

Dobi heaved a heartfelt sigh. “I hate domestic disturbance calls.”

It wasn’t until a fourth set of troopers responded to a fourth domestic disturbance call and took a suspiciously long time in reporting completion of the assignment that the night-shift officer on duty at the local military police guardhouse noticed the discrepancy. He dispatched a follow-up unit to the first address. They found Dobi and Vitkins, expertly tied and furious, in the abandoned dwelling. The bound troopers’ blasters, both rifle and pistol, were gone. Units dispatched to each of the other disappearance sites found the same thing—bound and disarmed troopers with stories of an unseen genetically augmented monkey-lizard. The officer of the day issued an advisory mandating that all domestic disturbance calls be approached with maximum caution and that units of no fewer than four troopers do the responding.

There were no more false disturbance calls that night. By dawn, army investigators had found the local headquarters of the hitherto-unknown Quad-Linked Militant Pacifists—a small metal shack with an aging hydraulic press in it. Crumpled rubbish that had once been the blasters of eight troopers littered the floor. Fresh graffiti decorated the shack’s inner walls—slogans denouncing all acts of violence. All except those of the Quad-Linked Militant Pacifists.

The army issued orders for the arrest of two suspects, a heavily bandaged human man and a heavily robed woman of indeterminate species, but the trail of the pacifist terrorists seemed to have completely dried up.

Voort sat watching the monitor of Trey’s computer, which received a visual feed from the holocam on the roof. The holocam was trained a few blocks away on the metal shack, where the hydraulic press had been set up. Even now there were army airspeeders parked in front, and forensics personnel moving in and out of the building. “Anyway … That’s how Wraiths spend their first day in a new town.”

Myri, stretched out on a cot at the back of the office but not sleeping, yawned. “Tiring. But fun.”

Voort nodded. “With an extra day or two, we could have come up with a giant monkey-lizard costume for me. But you have to work within your operational limitations.”

“I’m going to tell Bhindi she ought to blame the original blaster heist on Coruscant on the Quad-Links.” Myri yawned again. “After I get some sleep. You know, to make the Quad-Links sound more widespread. More formidable.”

Trey, slumped in a chair, popped awake for a brief moment. “Good idea.” Then he focused on the monitor and frowned. “Hey. We’ve received a burst message from one of the droids.” He reached up to brush at the monitor screen, sweeping away the image of the distant shack, replacing it with a screen of data fields. The contents of some of the fields blinked.

Trey blinked, too. “Battery Droid Twelve has just signaled itself active.”

Voort permitted himself a satisfied look he knew Trey couldn’t interpret. “Might have nothing to do with what we did last night. But—”

Trey scanned the screen of data. “But it’s always better to be active than reactive. Lesson learned.”

7

Over the next two days, the trio of Wraiths spent considerable time in front of that monitor, watching footage and interpreting data sent by the battery-pack parasite droid—and then by Droid 12 and Droid 38.

Droid 12 waited nearly a day in its blaster rifle before the conditions surrounding it were such that it could begin activity. When nothing larger than an insect had moved in its vicinity for a couple of hours, it ejected itself and fell to the permacrete floor of a trooper ready room, recognizable on the recording by its weapons racks, equipment lockers, and benches.

On the floor, Droid 12 extruded miniature treads and crawled at a torturously slow pace to conceal itself beneath the bottom shelf of a wall-mounted weapons rack. There it waited for hours, motionless and undetected, its holocam watching ankles and feet during a trooper shift change.

After an hour of stillness and darkness in the room, a tan-colored, dome-shaped floor-cleaning droid rolled into the chamber, and Droid 12 got to work. It crawled out from beneath the weapons rack and transmitted a brief command to the cleaning droid, identifying itself as a floor stain and instructing the droid to scour it up. The cleaning droid obligingly rolled over and atop Droid 12.

“At this point, magnets activate, clamping Droid Twelve to the underside of the cleaning droid.” Trey indicated the screen, which showed only Droid 12’s fisheye point of view experiencing a slight change of altitude as it rose a majestic two or three centimeters off the floor to adhere to the cleaning droid’s underside. “Now Droid Twelve will extend leads to plug into the cleaning droid’s primary communications jack. It’ll begin reprogramming it soon.”

Voort nodded and stretched. “I’m assuming Droid Twelve will detach and subvert more base droids, then find a good place to hide. All the droids it has subverted will transmit their recordings to Droid Twelve at irregular intervals. Droid Twelve will send all that data to us in burst-transmission packets. You’ll integrate and collate the data. Correct?”

Trey gave him a dirty look. “You take all the fun out of it by knowing everything.”

By nightfall, they had portions of the buildings Droids 12 and 38 were in mapped and had their locations superimposed on a satellite map of Fey’lya Army Base. Droid 38 seemed to be locked in a high-security chamber in a storage building where weapons and munitions were kept before being deployed, but Droid 12 was loose in the base’s southern operations center. As the hours passed, Trey began building a three-dimensional walkthrough of that ops center and then surrounding buildings as more and more domestic droids fell under its sway.

Trey left off maneuvering a virtual point of view around the portions of the base they had mapped. He tapped to activate a persistent blinking light in the upper right-hand corner of his screen. A series of password and security queries popped up. Once he’d typed in a succession of correct answers, the computer opened a screen of text for him.

He glanced at the others. “Orders from Leader.”

Voort and Myri looked up from their sabacc game—Voort with relief, for Myri was annihilating him.

Trey ran through the message’s contents. “Congratulations from Bhindi on the activation of the parasite droids. She says the Wraiths on Coruscant sabotaged a turbolaser assembly line in the name of the Quad-Linkers to lend even more authenticity to the name.”

Myri smiled. “Nice of them.”

“This cell, though. Here on Vandor-Three, we’re to go into maintenance mode and just acquire data until otherwise notified. Voort and I are supposed to rendezvous with the others at Gagrew Station, Si’klaata Cluster. Myri, you remain in charge here.”

“Alone?” Voort frowned.

Myri gave him a suspicious look. “What, you don’t think I’m old enough?”

“That’s not it.” Blast it, that was it, part of the problem. “I just have a … dislike of leaving a team member alone, without support. It’s bad tactics.” But more than that, the thought of leaving Myri behind, of something happening to her, of having to look Wedge in the eyes afterward … Voort tried to force himself to think of her as an adult colleague, someone who’d signed on knowing all the risks of the trade.

He failed. “Trey, send a reply. Ask if we can leave someone behind in addition. To back up Myri.”

Trey shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. If Bhindi thinks she needs both of us, she needs both of us.”

“Stang.”

“Besides …” Myri suddenly sounded cheerful. “Did you hear what Trey said? You’re going to Si’klaata Cluster. That’s Hutt space. I can stay here, wallow in the mud, and eat worms all day, and I’ll still be in a cleaner, nicer place than you two will.”

“Point taken.”

ABOARD THE RINKIN IV, CORELLIAN RUN HYPERSPACE ROUTE

“You know you don’t sing well.” The pilot, an Ortolan, old enough that his trunk was graying, sounded resigned. He sat in the doublewide pilot’s seat, which was reinforced against his great weight, and leaned away from the navigator as though those extra centimeters might save him from a few sour notes.

The navigator, a young human ensign in the blue of the Alliance Navy, smiled and replied in song, his voice cracking and off key. “I know I don’t, but the more I sing—”

“The more I suffer.”

“—the better I get.”

“That remains to be proven.”

The navigator smiled and stretched. Things were looser in the support-and-supply division of the navy. Its personnel were almost irregulars, expected to observe all naval regulations when planetside in uniform or on regular navy ships, but more like civilians the rest of the time. The bridge of this cargo vessel was spacious, the captain was tolerant, the crew was loose, and the pilot was a good sport despite his grumbling.

And the view out the forward viewports was gorgeous. The ship was now in hyperspace, somehow sideways from realspace, and abstract lights that might be glimpses of stars in realspace twisted and flowed past in a dazzling stream.

The navigator sang again: “Comin’ out of the Deep Core, headin’ for home. Gettin’ leave in Corellia, gonna put on my dance shoes. Gonna find me a lady—”

“Gonna sing to her, at which point she will shoot you. You’re making my tusks crack.”

“Gonna—hey!” A light on the main control board blinked, then went out.

The streams of colors outside suddenly stopped their movement, contracting into single points of light.

There was no sensation of deceleration, not like in an atmospheric craft, but the navigator felt as though he should have been thrown out of his seat by the sudden departure from hyperspace. He turned to the pilot. “What the hell—”

“Our escorts are not on the sensor screen. What’s our position?”

The navigator checked his star map, did a quick calculation. “Two hours out of Corellia. Empty space.”

The comm board clicked and a woman’s voice sounded over it. “Bridge, Captain. What’s going on?”

“Captain,” the pilot reported, his voice beginning to climb in pitch. “We had a sudden unexpected departure from hyperspace. We’re showing no damage. Our escorts did not drop with us. Correction, there’s one—wait a second, that’s not ours. We’re being approached by a capital ship, unknown type. It’s not signaling.”

“Sound alert, all hands to battle stations. Send an emergency signal to the nearest naval base. I’ll be right up.” The comm board clicked again.

The navigator felt himself break out in a sweat. He looked at the pilot. “Should I—”

“Is the hyperdrive functional?”

“Negative.”

“Then handle the comm. Don’t need a navigator to point away from the enemy and hit all thrusters.”

As the navigator flipped through the unfamiliar maze of communications screens, he felt himself being pressed back in his seat, just a little, as the ship’s inertial compensators did not quite keep up with the pilot’s acceleration. Finally he found the screen to activate the ship’s hypercomm on an emergency naval frequency. “This is Galactic Alliance Ship Rinkin Four, inbound to Corellia. We have an emergency. Please reply. Over.”

The door into the bridge slid open. The captain, a middle-aged woman with posture as straight as a spear, strode in. “Situation?”

Something clattered on the deck behind her. Out of the corner of his eye, the navigator saw it—a silvery ovoid some seventy-five centimeters long, with a small dial and a tiny screen on one side.

Something in the navigator’s memory whispered, Grenade.

He acted without thinking, acted with the decisiveness and honor that others had once seen in him, that would have eventually force him to become a fine officer. He threw himself atop the grenade. “Get—”

Curiously, the detonation did not lift him off the deck plates, did not hurl his burning body to one side. It didn’t even really make a boom, just a pop noise. Then there was a hiss and the navigator saw opaque white smoke flow out from underneath him, flooding the bridge.

It numbed his skin where it touched him. He breathed it in before he could check himself and abruptly felt dizzy, listless.

There was an impact as the captain fell atop him. He could not turn his head to see if she was faceup or facedown.

There were footsteps on the deck plates in the corridor outside, and the navigator saw a pair of feet and lower legs. They were garbed in a civilian environment suit, something that would protect its wearer from toxic environments.

Like this one.

The navigator’s eyes closed and he knew only blackness.

8

GAGREW STATION, SI’KLAATA CLUSTER

“I’m going to throw up.” Trey sounded like he meant it, too. The walls of the passageway he and Voort walked along seemed clean enough, free of debris. The walkway was spacious, occasionally punctuated by transparisteel viewports showing the starfield outside.

But Voort knew what Trey was complaining about. The smell … It was partly loamy, partly sweet, slightly rotted, slightly chemical-sharp. It was the smell of too many passengers who’d been cooped up on small ships and then suddenly released into this space station environment. It was the smell of Hutts especially, and of the vendors scattered throughout the station, most of whom sold, as a primary or secondary product, food that appealed to Hutts. Exotic meats. Decayed fats. Live insects and rodents. Poisonous tubers.

And then, of course, there were the slime trails. Up ahead thirty meters, a Hutt, meters long, dark and sluglike, his spindly arms gesturing as he talked to the Rodian female walking beside him, left a new layer of slime as he moved. Even at this distance, Voort could occasionally hear noises emerge from beneath the Hutt, flatulent brapps and blerts as portions of the creature’s underside lost or regained adhesion with the metal floor. Pushing the rolling rack on which his and Trey’s luggage rested, Voort ably maneuvered the thing so that its wheels avoided the slime trail as much as possible.

Voort heaved a sigh. “We’re in public.” But he spoke in Gamorrean, and his throat implant was switched off, so his words emerged as a series of grunts and squeals most humans didn’t understand.

“I don’t get you—oh. Right.” Trey mimed a smack to the side of his own head. “Sorry. One-sided conversations from now on.” He glanced at the blinking sign situated at ceiling level where a cross-passageway intersected theirs at a right angle. Words flashed on the sign in a variety of languages, Basic among them. Trey read aloud. “Blueshift Passage. That’s ours.”

Their destination was only a hundred meters along Blueshift Passage, an innocuous double door. The sign above it blinked through a succession of languages, words reading SWEET SPOT LODGING—CORE WORLDS STYLING AT OUTER RIM RATES. Beyond the doors was a small hostel lobby, its floor being constantly trafficked by ankle-high, disk-shaped scrubbing droids.

Three minutes later, down a narrower hall lined with doors, Trey spoke his name to a door and it slid open for him.

Beyond was a tall, aristocratic-looking human man. His immaculately coiffed white hair seemed perfectly in sync with his gray Imperial Navy uniform. “You are under arrest.”

“Nice.” Trey grabbed his bags from the rolling rack and entered.

“No, really. Put up your hands.”

Voort took his own bags, leaving the rack in the corridor, and followed. The door slid shut behind him. He activated his throat implant. “Turman?”

The Imperial officer rolled his eyes. “Yessss.”

“Good disguise.” Voort dropped his bags on the floor beside Trey’s and took a look around. This was a suite’s main chamber, large by the standards of space station hostels but not commodious enough for a good-sized party, and it was blessedly free of Hutt smell. The walls, off-white, were decorated with holos of mountain and jungle nature scenes, and the floor, tiled in a similar color, was slime-free and spotless.

“If it’s so good, why didn’t you pause even for an instant? You’re bad for my morale.” If anything, the disguised Turman’s posture improved even more with his indignation.

Trey moved up to him, peered close. “Are those your actual features when you take on human appearance?”

“No, I’m wearing a neoglith masquer.” Turman reached up to tug at his nose, which stretched a full three centimeters longer before he released it and it snapped back into place. “My human features are rather bland.”

Voort glanced around again. There were several piles of baggage in the chamber, but no additional people. “Where are the others?”

“Finalizing our passage. You made it just in time. We launch pretty soon.”

Voort sighed. “Tell me … and my life may depend on your answer … do I have time for a sanisteam? We were on that blasted shuttle for longer than I want to think about. I don’t dare sit down. I might stick.”

“You have time. Make it fast.”

By the time Voort emerged from his sanisteam, his green skin gleaming, the others had returned; Voort heard their voices from the refresher. He donned a fresh porter’s jumpsuit and moved out to join them.

Turman’s Imperial naval officer getup was gone, along with his aristocratic face and white hair. Now, though he still appeared to be human, he was younger and dark-haired, his features inoffensive and unmemorable. Bhindi, atypically, wore a sparkly silver party frock and black leggings. She was the very image of a vacuum-brained heiress out for a good time. Jesmin, her hair red and styled in a severe bun, wore a dark visor and a sober black jumpsuit that suggested she belonged to a security detail; Trey had changed into a matching outfit. Scut wore the same round-faced human disguise he’d had on when Voort first met him; his clothes were leathery black pants, matching boots and vest, and a frilly blue shirt, suggesting that he wanted to be a smuggler but had never quite seen the real thing.

Voort gave Bhindi a look and ignored her bubble-headed mannerisms. “Do Trey and I get any sort of briefing? Mission objectives, who not to kill, that sort of thing?”

Wide-eyed, she nodded. “Uh-huh.” She managed to turn that affirmative into a cute squeak.

“Stop that.”

“Oh, all right.” She dropped the party heiress mannerisms and bent to finish packing a last few items into her smallest bag. “Short form?”

“That’ll do.”

“In fifteen minutes we board the Bastion Princess, a cruise liner. It makes regular runs from Bastion, capital of the Imperial Remnant, to here and back, visiting several worlds along the way. Its passengers are mostly rich Imperial folk who want to experience some safe danger and noninfectious sleaze in Hutt space. We board, Trey does a little sabotage of ship’s sensors and hyperdrive, we board an escape pod and launch undetected at a spot where Imperial vessels are known to patrol—but a comparatively remote spot so we’re less likely to encounter a large vessel. Then we wait.”

Voort felt the bristles on the back of his neck rise. “To be rescued by the Imperial Navy.”

“Right.”

“What if they don’t show up?”

Bhindi straightened and slung the strap of her bag over her shoulder. “I’ve transmitted additional orders to Myri. If we don’t report in, she finds a way to come get us.”

“A way. Can’t she just borrow the Quarren Eye from Face and come for us?”

Bhindi’s expression went blank, and this time it was no act. “What’s the Quarren Eye?”

“It’s a long-range shuttle with a hypercomm. On loan to Face. It’s one of our resources.”

“Well, I haven’t heard of it. So Myri will just have to improvise.” Bhindi made an impatient gesture as if imploring the ceiling to support her argument. “And that’s only if we fail. If we don’t, an Imperial vessel picks us up, we thank everybody sweetly, and then we seize the thing.”

Voort tried to pat down his bristles. “Just like that.”

“Without ambition, a Wraith should take up, I don’t know, teaching math. Everyone ready to go?”

Scut hefted his bags, immediately handed them to Voort, and was first out the door.

Despite himself, Voort was impressed by Bastion Princess. Though not a Star Destroyer, the ship had styling reminiscent of those vast and destructive capital ships—diamond-shaped, it looked vaguely like two Star Destroyers attached to each other, stern to stern. Bastion Princess, nearly a kilometer long, was painted in deep blue, its surface decorated with thousands of exterior viewports and running lights shining in all the colors of the spectrum, making it look like its own self-contained starfield.

The Wraiths presented their false identicards to cruise line officers, boarded via a shuttle running from the station to the cruise liner’s belly bay, and were conducted by a spotless white protocol droid to their cabins, a row of compartments deep within the ship and well away from the outer hull.

The cabins, though small, were not claustrophobic. In place of viewports, each was equipped with four monitors—one on each wall—showing holocam views from the ship’s sensors. By default, they were tuned to exterior sensors, showing the forward starfield on the forward monitor, aft starfield on the aft monitor, a distant red sun on the port monitor, and the vast, skeletal Gagrew Station on the starboard. But each could be tuned to any of scores of sensor views, including casino areas, dining halls, the viewing deck, the swimming tank with its connecting tubes to the aquatic passenger deck, and a shipboard park with grass, flowers, and trees. Turman, sharing a cabin with Voort, used the bedside controls to flip through all the views.

Then they joined the others on the viewing deck, situated topside in the ship’s bow. A vast chamber fifteen meters high at its apex, it offered a view of the forward and overhead starfield through its bulkhead, an enormous curved sheet of transparisteel. Hundreds of passengers, mostly human or near-human, crowded there to watch as Gagrew Station drifted away to starboard. Then the Bastion Princess was under way, its acceleration so gentle that Voort could barely feel it.

“I hate to say it.” Trey’s voice had a grudging note to it. “It’s not spectacular, but it’s pretty luxurious. I could get used to this.”

“Try not to show any human emotions.” Jesmin herself was expressionless, but there was a note of amusement to her voice. “You’re supposed to be a security man, remember?”

“Right.” Trey schooled his features to absolute stillness.

Jesmin offered a brisk nod in response to his transformation. “And don’t praise this ship anytime you’re near Myri. She’ll give you half an hour of talk about how great the Errant Venture is.”

“Noted.”

Bhindi settled on a lounging chair and stared with blank delight at the starfield above, but her words and tone were not those of a flighty heiress. “All right, we’re on the chrono, and we don’t have much time. Four, find the accesses to Engineering and the communications center and scope out their security. Five, you’re with him—try not to kill anybody.”

Scut pointed a finger at Voort. “Old School there needs to hide in his cabin or find another kind of uniform. Note that he’s the only Gamorrean here, and the only porter. A butler’s outfit might work.”

“True.” Bhindi glanced at Turman. “Two, go with Seven. See if you can buy something appropriate for a butler or valet in one of the shops. If not, I’m relying on your costuming skills.”

“Done.” Turman glanced at Voort. He jerked his head for the Gamorrean to follow, and headed for the nearest turbolift.

Voort followed, feeling his temperature rise. Turman’s brusqueness was only playacting, of course. But Scut … the Yuuzhan Vong had taken less than five minutes to find a way to exile Voort, and had worked in Voort’s age and inappropriateness as he had done so.

Casually. Even elegantly.

When the turbolift doors closed, sealing him and Turman away from the Wraiths and other passengers, Voort let out a rumbling growl. “I’m going to put him through a hand-cranked meat grinder.”

“You should have brought one from Vandor-Three. I don’t think they have any on board. Shopping deck, please.” The turbolift car plunged. “Seven, he was right. You were conspicuous.”

“It was the way he phrased it. He’s trying to irk me.”

“Clearly, he’s succeeding.”

“Clearly.” Now he wanted to shake Turman, to add a new argument. Don’t you understand? He’s Yuuzhan Vong. They came here to destroy everything we know, everything we are. Obviously some of them aren’t ready to give that up.

But the lift car stopped. Its door snapped up, revealing a broad, low chamber lined with shops. Voort tamped down his anger and switched off his throat implant, then gestured, in a polite and servile fashion, for Turman to precede him.

And he vowed to keep his eyes open for a meat grinder.

9

“It turns out to be four jobs.” Trey paused to stuff a pastry, slathered in blue butter, into his mouth. He chewed briskly while the others settled in around the meal table.

It was the morning—ship’s time—after the Wraiths boarded, and they were in Bhindi’s cabin. Jesmin, the cabin’s other occupant, had persuaded a member of the ship’s crew to remove the living area furniture and substitute a large circular card table, now capped by a sheet of transparent duraplast, and six upright chairs.

Voort didn’t trust the spindly-looking things. He remained standing and began to make inroads into the pastry and egg selections while the others sat.

Done chewing, Trey continued. “Job One: Selectively disengaging and reengaging passageway sensors, looping their sensor feeds so they get static images while we’re doing the things we shouldn’t be doing. And that means getting into the security center without being noticed, slicing into the computer there, and introducing some code that will receive a comlink-transmitted command and temporarily subvert the passageway sensors nearest the comlink’s transmission point. The code’s actually the hardest part. I’m only a slicer by necessity. You need to recruit us a top-notch computer slicer.”

Bhindi sighed. “It’s on my list. Keep going.”

“Well, when Step One is done, that makes all the other steps a little easier. With our master comlink active, we can walk anywhere on the vessel and know that the security holocams and other sensors aren’t picking us up. But it’s still chancy because, for instance, two holocams with slightly overlapping fields of vision could end up showing very different views at the point of overlap.”

Bhindi nodded. Clearly she’d heard this sort of thing many, many times before. Voort certainly had, but he listened closely anyway. He found his appreciation for and trust in Trey’s abilities increasing, despite the man’s too-youthful mannerisms.

Trey paused to gobble down some small, globular winefruits. “Job Two, then. Sabotaging the hyperdrive. It’s not as safe to just try to inject new code there. One mistake and I could screw things up, sending us into hyperspace forever on our next jump.”

Turman, relaxing in his true Clawdite form, remained deadpan. “Let’s not do that.”

“What we do instead is install what I call a disintegrating tripper at a crucial connection in the hyperdrive itself. It’s an electricity-conducting form of duraplast that breaks down, basically detonates, under enough heat. And there’s a tiny amount of explosive there, too. Run a microfilament wire of the same stuff off into the wall with a comlink receiver and a timer. Later, whenever you want, you issue the signal, the comlink triggers the timer, the timer activates the little explosive charge, the tripper mechanism explodes with just enough force to knock the wiring connection free. Maybe does so without damaging it, maybe does a little damage, an easy fix in any case. And there’s no forensic evidence left behind except for a little powder that used to be the tripper.”

Bhindi sounded uncertain. “And the comlink in the wall.”

“I’m pretty good at hiding those. And the repair crew sent down to investigate why the hyperdrive isn’t working have a number one priority of getting it working before the captain reams them. If they do discover the timer or other evidence, it’ll be a day or days later. When it will be too late to be relevant.”

“All right, I’m convinced.” Bhindi snatched up the last of the blue butter pastries just before Trey managed to get his hand on it.

“Trey, I didn’t ask you yesterday.” Jesmin’s voice was suddenly very serious. “This hyperdrive-sabotaging technique. Is it something you learned somewhere, some trick widely known in the profession?”

Trey paused, confused. “No … I came up with this method myself. Yesterday. Why?”

“Some of you know I spent years investigating rumors of a very big, very sophisticated black-market ring.” Jesmin looked decidedly unhappy. “Of course, anywhere you have a flow of supplies, there may be crews working to divert part of it for profit. But a while back, a good friend of mine, a fellow Antarian Ranger, was murdered on Toprawa, and the evidence I found pointed toward a major black-market ring. I took a long-term leave of absence from the Rangers to look into it. Spent a couple of years under the name of Zilaash Kuh, Force-using bounty hunter and criminal for hire, trying to crack it. And failed. One of the things I kept running across was reports of Alliance naval cargo vessels being hijacked, whisked away, no sign ever emerging of their cargoes or crews, and there was a lot of speculation about Interdictor cruisers or pinpoint hyperdrive sabotage. So I was curious.”

“Oh.” Trey shook his head. “No, I didn’t practice for my Wraith Squadron audition by pirating naval cargo vessels. Sorry.”

Bhindi cleared her throat. “One of those hijackings happened just the other day. So Five’s question was relevant. But we need to focus on the task at hand. Job Three?”

“Right.” Soulful-eyed, Trey stared at the still-uneaten pastry in Bhindi’s hand.

She glared. “I’m your commanding officer.”

“I’m a growing boy.”

With an exasperated noise, she handed it over. “Job Three?”

“Job Three is choosing the lifeboat escape pod we want to use for the mission, then assembling data on every ship’s sensor that could possibly detect it, and setting up a onetime sensor loop at each of those sensors to keep them from detecting its launch. Not to mention disabling that lifeboat’s own alert notifications. With those three jobs done, we’re good to go.”

Bhindi fixed him with a stern eye. “So you’ll be getting to work immediately?”

Trey froze in mid-nibble. “I was going to get some sleep. Ten or twelve hours.”

“Time is wasting, Trey. There are only two really good spots along this cruise route to do this.”

Trey shook his head. “I think I misspoke. With those three jobs done, we’re good to go. Those three jobs are done. Five and I were up all day and night yesterday doing them.”

“What?” For once, Bhindi looked as though she’d been taken completely off guard.

Jesmin cracked up, buried her face in her hands. “It’s true, One. He’s very … energetic.”

Trey shrugged. “We’re good to go. Now can I sleep?”

Bhindi stared at him, stunned. Finally she found her voice. “Four, I apologize for being cross with you earlier. Will you marry me?”

“Uh …” He checked his chrono. “Sure, why not?”

“Don’t do it, One.” Turman’s voice was low, somber. “He wakes up before dawn every day. He exercises constantly. He’s healthy and pure.”

“Sorry, engagement’s off.” Bhindi stood. “Our first opportunity to do this is about fifteen hours from now. Convene here in twelve hours, rested and ready. Until then, enjoy yourselves, and don’t make anybody suspicious.”

Pastry still in hand, Trey joined the other men heading toward the door. “Did I do something wrong?”

Voort shook his head. “In just a few hours you impressed your boss and teammates, had a very brief affair of the heart, and emerged with your heart unbroken. I’d say you did quite well.”

In fifteen years, Voort had forgotten just how tense even the most placid and error-free Wraith activities could be.

This one took place with the same efficiency Trey had shown in setting up the event. The Wraiths began by wiping down each of their cabins with bleach and other ordinary chemicals that would destroy genetic evidence and other forensic details pointing to their true identities. Most of their baggage and clothes ended up in a waste chute destined for the burners deep within the ship.

Finally the Wraiths gathered in Bhindi’s cabin, carrying one small bag each. All wore the disguises and personae in which they had boarded, including Scut in his smiling neoglith masquer.

Silent, casual, and unmemorable, they walked in pairs to the turbolift and took it down to a deck devoted to function rooms and seminar chambers. Only the ship’s library was occupied, and they tiptoed past it, past the few ship’s passengers who preferred the lure of texts and educational programs to drinks, formal dinner wear, bathing suits, and the company of the idle rich.

At the end of the corridor was the irising door to an emergency bay holding an escape pod. Trey checked his comlink-equipped datapad, entered a few commands, and then nodded at the others. Voort and Turman quickly disengaged all the nearby overhead glow rod assemblies, plunging that end of the corridor into near darkness.

Bhindi slapped the red panel beside the door. There was no sudden shrill of ship’s alarms, no voice from a nearby speaker demanding answers. The round door simply irised open, revealing a two-step antechamber and a similarly open door into a spherical golden escape pod.

They boarded in silence. Trey, the last one in, broadcast more commands from his datapad, and both the bay door and the pod door irised closed.

Trey went through a quick, silent checklist on his datapad. Then he relaxed and leaned back. “Safe to talk. Two minutes until the hyperdrive fails.”

Bhindi buckled her restraining straps. “Everybody comfortable with zero gravity?”

“Usually.” Voort grimaced. “But I’m feeling a little queasy. Anybody have something to settle my stomach?”

The Wraiths looked blankly at one another as they strapped themselves in.

Voort extended his straps to their maximum length and was finally able to get them around him and buckle in. “One, we really do need a team medic.”

“I know.” Bhindi shrugged. “I was pressed for time, trying to put together a team as fast as Face wanted. I had a really good sniper and close combat specialist all lined up, but I couldn’t track him down—too busy recruiting Scut. I had to ask Face to go after you.”

“Your loss. If we go into zero gravity and I begin throwing up …” Voort patted his belly. “I carry a lot of ammunition.”

Turman, directly opposite Voort, turned to Bhindi. “Can I trade places with you?”

“No. Seven, throw up in your bag.”

More seconds passed, until there was a beep from Trey’s datapad. He glanced at it and smiled. “We are out of hyperspace. Right on schedule, and ship’s computers tell me we’re at the right spot. You may all kiss my hand.” He tapped a button. “Sequence activated.”

The bay and escape pod interior lights dimmed to blackness. A blank durasteel wall centimeters beyond the rear viewport slid aside, revealing starfield. There was a lurch, like a recreation park ride first going into motion … and moments later the irised bay door visible through the front viewport retreated, becoming a circle of diminishing size within a dark square bay of diminishing size, itself surrounded by dark blue hull and gleaming running lights.

Voort suddenly felt a touch dizzy, off balance from the abrupt cessation of artificial gravity. But his nausea did not worsen. He focused on the Bastion Princess drifting away from him at the slow rate of a few meters a second.

“Why do I feel like we need to whisper?” That was Turman, whispering.

Voort glanced at him. “Because you’re bad at science. Or perhaps you’re just overwhelmed by the psychological effect of a kilometer-long vessel so close, our lives possibly forfeit if someone catches a glimpse of us through a viewport, our lives possibly forfeit if no naval vessel spots us and Myri cannot get to us …”

Turman glared at him.

Voort warmed to the torturous subject. His nausea continued to diminish. “In fact, we could scream our throats hoarse, and of course no sound would cross the vacuum between here and there, no one aboard would notice …”

“Not quite true.” Jesmin’s attention was on the view of the cruise liner. “If we were screaming, genuinely upset, a Forcesensitive aboard might feel it. Might even flash on a mental image of us in the escape pod. If there was a trained Jedi or Sith aboard, it would actually be pretty likely. So let’s stay calm.”

They did, across ten long minutes, during which they drifted nearly two kilometers away from Bastion Princess by Voort’s calculation. Then the cruise liner surged ahead. For an instant it seemed to stretch, and then it was gone.

“Perfect.” Bhindi sounded jubilant. “Well done, Trey. Well done, Jesmin.”

Trey perked up. “Do I get somebody to do my laundry for a couple of weeks?”

“No.”

“You said something about rewards when you recruited me.”

“You got my last butter pastry, and had a one-minute window in which you could have married me. So far, you’re doing great, reward-wise.” Bhindi sighed. “But now we restore lights, falsify a ship’s identity for this pod, turn on the emergency beacon … and wait.”

Bhindi extended her hand and accepted the grip and the unneeded aid of the Imperial Navy lieutenant, junior grade, who stood just outside the escape pod’s door.

The lieutenant was dark-skinned, doubly handsome in his gray officer’s uniform, and had courtly old-fashioned manners. He had a voice to match, deep and resonant and mature beyond his evident years. “Welcome aboard the Concussor, Lady Sadra.”

Bhindi made her voice breathless. “Oh, my.” She allowed the lieutenant to draw her out into the vessel’s belly bay, a chamber barely large enough to hold the boxy military-grade rescue shuttle, two ball-cockpit TIE/In interceptors, and lifeboat escape pod currently occupying it.

As the other Wraiths emerged, feigning weariness by blinking, yawning, and stretching, Bhindi introduced them. “My yacht crew. Fili and Dili, my security—Fili’s the he one and Dili’s the she one. Murt, my soon-to-be-former pilot—he’s the bland one in black. The one who’s all smiles is Voozy, in charge of entertainments. And the porter is Gronk.”

“I am Lieutenant Phison. And I apologize for my haste, but I have to get some information and comm it to the bridge before we get you settled into quarters. Your emergency comm mentioned pirates.”

Bhindi nodded, eyes opening as if she were bewildered. “We weren’t yet out of the gravity field of the asteroid belt we were admiring when there they were, half a dozen starfighters that looked like they’d been slapped together from scraps and spit.”

“Yes, ma’am. Uglies, in fighter pilot parlance. Did they mention their names?”

“Not individually; they didn’t introduce themselves. But they called themselves … Dinner Squadron.” She heard a grunt, as if caused by a minor pain spasm, from Voort. “My yacht was unarmed, unarmored. What choice did we have? We surrendered. They were actually sort of nice to us. No killing, no abusing, they took us out to a trade route and let us eject in my pod. That’s sort of polite, isn’t it?”

Lieutenant Phison nodded. “Very, by some standards. Now I have to ask, is your yacht in Imperial registry, and are you Imperial citizens?”

Bhindi let an expression of disappointment cross her features. “Well, I’d say so. I’m from Coruscant, from when the Emperor ruled. But my family fled when those ghastly Rebels took over. We’ve never been back. Is that Imperial enough?”

“I certainly hope so. I’ll get that information to the captain. Please come this way.” He gestured toward the exit blast door.

Unbidden, Bhindi linked her arm through his and walked with him. “How many men are aboard a boat this size?”

“We’re a Burst Fire–class Deep-Space Patrol Vessel—what we like to call a pocket corvette. We have a crew of thirty.”

“Perfect! But I don’t mean crew, silly. I mean men. Human men.”

The blast doors opened for them. “I’m, uh, not sure. Sixteen? Eighteen?”

“Oh, how wonderful.”

10

Voort kept up a litany of grunting, squealing, petty complaints in Gamorrean while Trey meticulously searched and scanned every surface, nook, niche, shelf, drawer, and furniture underside in the junior officer’s cabin that had been assigned to Bhindi. It wasn’t that Voort was genuinely unhappy; the noise he made would divert anybody listening in by eavesdropping device.

Finally Trey returned to the gleaming white datapad that rested on the cabin’s tiny fold-down desktop. He picked the datapad up, switched it off, and snapped it shut. “That’s it. No mikes in the walls or possessions. Just one innocuous datapad left behind on a shelf, set to record.”

Bhindi, who’d been stretched out on the lower bunk ever since Trey had finished searching it, offered him an expression of disappointment. “The good old Empire would have had every one of their officers under surveillance. That’s what the old-timers say, anyway. I feel let down. Call the others in, Seven.”

Voort rapped three times on the aft bulkhead wall, and then moved over to repeat the knock on the forward bulkhead.

In moments the other three Wraiths entered, filling the small cabin past comfortable capacity. Trey swung himself into the upper bunk, giving himself and the others more room. “I’ve reassembled the component parts. We have three ugly, sort of recognizable blasters that the Imps don’t know about … in theory. But we can’t test them without making a lot of noise.”

Bhindi stretched as if indifferent. “We’ll just have to trust you, then. With all our lives …”

Trey flinched. “Stop it.”

As soon as the passageway door was shut, Turman turned toward Bhindi. “That was an awful performance.”

She shot him a hurt look. “I thought I did rather well.”

“Oh, vocal inflections, mannerisms, your commitment to the character, they were fine. Amateur, but fine. But the character herself—stomach-turning. One-dimensional. Nothing there for an audience to connect with.”

“I’ll have you know that Imperial military males have a history of appreciating breathless women with the brains of a bantha.” Bhindi sighed. “Everyone, listen up. The captain will have already transmitted his preliminary report on us, his new rescues, and will be awaiting orders. If my experience with the New Republic Navy is any guide, those orders will be to keep us aboard and continue with his patrol until his course takes him near a place where he can drop us off with minimal loss of time or use of resources. Which gives us maybe a day. With luck, two.”

Jesmin sat at the foot of Bhindi’s bunk. “We’ve been pretty lucky so far.”

Bhindi nodded in agreement. “We’ve been terrifically lucky so far. Down to the craft that picked us up. We should be able to crew it long enough to limp somewhere we can pick up additional spacers.”

“We should not have brought Piggy.” That was Scut, his tone flat, a curious contrast with his smiling expression. “All the reports of insurgency … someone will notice that there’s always a ‘Gamorrean porter.’ His presence endangers us.”

“Maybe.” Bhindi sounded bored. “But Seven is a seasoned enough veteran not to speak someone’s name when we’re behind enemy lines. Which you, Six, and even you, Five, are not. Not yet. Not to mention, Six, that you forgot and used a name he doesn’t wear anymore. And here’s another reason he’s along with us. Let’s say the next phase of this operation goes perfectly and leaves us in possession of the Concussor. What’s next?”

Scut shook his head. The motion made the too-large ears of his neoglith masquer wobble. “You haven’t told us.”

“Bad answer. Maybe a fatal answer.” Now Bhindi’s voice was harsh. “Let’s say that in the taking of the Concussor, I drop dead of a heart attack. I haven’t told you the rest of the plan, but you know our objectives. Six, what do we do?”

“We … set course for a safe port, I suppose.”

Bhindi sighed. “Fail. Two?”

Turman frowned. “We do set course for a port where we can get what we need. Say, Parabaw Station, a smugglers’ haven here in the Outer Rim.”

“Fail. A slightly better fail. Four?” She reached up with her foot and prodded the bunk above with her toe.

Trey shrugged. “I’m just here to flex, fix your comlinks when they break, and look pretty.”

“You’re unhelpful, but correct. Five?”

Jesmin grinned over at her. “I know where this is going, so I’ll pass.”

“Five, you’re cowardly and wise at the same time. Seven?”

“Immediate task is division of labor.” Voort was surprised at how easily the planning task came back to him. “We have a military mini corvette designed for a crew of thirty now in the hands of a crew of six, so we’re all going to be awake and alert around the chrono, working like Jawas high on caf, until we’re fully crewed again. Four, you’re Engineering, and you’re going to have a hell of a time of keeping everything functioning until we make port. One, you’re dead of a heart attack, so the task of crewing the bridge falls to me. Two, you’re communications officer, since if we have to communicate we can’t show a Gamorrean in the captain’s chair. Sensors, too. Five and Six, we don’t kill prisoners and we can’t afford to lose a resource like that shuttle by tamping the prisoners into it, disabling its hyperdrive, and sending it away, so you two are in charge of the prisoners until we can drop them. Since they’ll eventually be reporting on us, we maintain code names and false identity mannerisms until every one of them is gone. We find a drop point somewhere between here and Parabaw Station, a habitat or colony too poor to have a hypercomm and too obscure to get frequent ship visits, and drop the prisoners there. We make the shuttle dirtier and uglier because we’ll be using it for the initial approach to Parabaw Station—if we show up in a gleaming new Imperial warship, they’ll have abandoned the place before we can say, No, no, we’re crooks, too. We have little operating capital, so we’ll sell one of the interceptors for enough credits to hire a crew. During all this, Two will dress up as his fictitious Imperial Special Forces officer and make the recording intended to flush the general. We transmit it to Three for mysterious delivery to the general’s desk. Then—”

“I think you proved my point.” Bhindi glanced back at Scut. “So, Six, do we drag him along, or what?”

Scut’s answer was slow in coming. “Yes, we do … One.”

“Good boy.” She swung her legs off the bunk and heaved herself to her feet. “Time for me to talk a walk around, charm the crew, and learn the geography of this place.” She glanced at Jesmin. “I’ll need a guard. Come along, Fili.”

Jesmin stood, too. “I’m Dili.”

“Oops. Clearly, I’m out of practice.”

Turman sniffed. “The line is, I’m getting too old for this.”

When Bhindi and Jesmin were gone, Voort fixed Scut with a hard stare. “Six, why did you make a face that can’t stop smiling?”

“I can stop.” Scut sat on the bunk where Bhindi had lain. The corners of his mouth drooped and his expression became serious. “But it requires an effort. Its natural expression is happy.” The smile returned. Yet his eyes remained neutral, emotionless.

“Why make it that way?”

“Because I am happy. Almost always happy.”

“Even when you’re trying to poison my relationship with this unit?”

“Especially then. Because I know I’m doing my best to save the lives of the others. From the danger you pose.”

“I’m not a danger to them. You are.”

“I will prove otherwise. And I hope I can prove it to you first. So you will do the honorable thing and resign.”

“Yeah. Good luck with that.” Voort slammed his way out of Bhindi’s temporary cabin and returned to his own.

Bhindi, dressed for bed in a fluttery, gauzy pink nightgown purchased in one of the Bastion Princess’s shops, stepped out from her cabin into the passageway. Yawning, she stretched as though there hadn’t been enough room in her borrowed cabin for such an action. Then she leaned against the far wall of the passageway and arched her back, stretching those muscles, as well.

As she leaned against the wall, her left palm covered the small, almost invisible holocam lens embedded there at just above human head height.

Jesmin, watching from inside the cabin, rolled out of the top bunk and dropped to the deck, making almost no noise as she landed in a crouch. She kept her hand on the lightsaber hilt dangling from her belt, ensuring that it did not clatter against the bunk or bulkhead. She was clad head to foot in black stretch fabric, only her eyes exposed. She knew she would be virtually invisible in darkness and no more than a black silhouette in the light. Even her lightsaber hilt was now wrapped in black space tape.

She rapped on the aft bulkhead, then moved out into the passageway behind Bhindi. She turned right, toward the stern, and trotted the few steps to the next compartment door.

Not all doors in this passageway were under the scrutiny of holocams, and this was one that wasn’t. Bhindi had spotted that little fact during her tours of the patrol vessel.

Jesmin waited for only a moment before that door slid open. Another black silhouette emerged—obvious as Trey only because of his distinctive musculature. The door shut.

Trey reached up to press a button on the spindly black headset fitted over his stretch hood. “Four up and running.”

Jesmin did so with hers, as well. “Five here. Cam and comm check.”

“Sight and sound good on both of you.” It was Voort’s voice.

Jesmin led the way aft.

It was the wee hours of the night, ship’s time. Lieutenant Phison, giving Bhindi her first tour of the vessel, had provided a lot of information, too much for his own well-being. Such as the fact that the quietest time of the daily cycle was about two hours after midnight, when a slightly higher percentage of the crew than at other hours was getting some fitful sleep. Such as the fact that the unmarked armored door near the Engineering compartment was “the auxiliary bridge”—but the lack of a discernible Security station elsewhere on the craft marked the auxiliary bridge as probably handling that function, too.

Jesmin dropped to the deck plates and crawled a few meters, keeping beneath the eye line of another wall holocam. Trey did likewise. He made a bit more noise than she, and Jesmin winced. Bhindi had insisted that she not go on this task alone, despite Jesmin’s protests.

On the far side of the holocam view, both rose.

At an intersection with a cross-passageway, Jesmin paused as she heard oncoming footsteps from around the corner to the left. She stopped, holding up a hand to warn Trey. Then she cocked that hand back to throw a blow, a breath-expelling, pain-inducing blow, if the Imperial spaceman should turn her way.

It was a woman, enlisted personnel, and she didn’t spot Jesmin out of the corner of her eye. She continued along her original path, her mind clearly on other matters.

Jesmin turned to glance at Trey. His gaze snapped upward to meet hers. His eyes, the only detail of his face to be seen in all the blackness, looked guilty.

She frowned. “Were you just looking at my rear end?”

“Um … I’m not the actor Two is, so I’ll just say … yes.”

“Now’s not the time.” She turned forward again and glided across the intersection.

She barely heard his whispered reply: “So, theoretically, there would be a time.”

“Quiet.”

Two intersections later, as she paused at the corner, she heard voices approaching—two, male. She alerted Trey.

The voices belonged to two uniformed officers, and they both turned forward, directly toward Jesmin and Trey.

They were abreast of Jesmin before the nearest one noticed her silhouette in the dim passageway. He turned toward her, instinctively opening his mouth to speak.

Jesmin’s spear-hand strike took him in the solar plexus. Only a muffled “Uhhnn” emerged from his mouth.

Trey was not quite so silent. He stepped forward and his fist cracked into the jaw of the second officer. The man’s head snapped toward Jesmin, and he swayed backward.

Jesmin hit the first officer again, a palm strike to the temple. In the same moment, Trey lunged forward and caught his out-on-his-feet victim before the man crashed to the deck plates.

Jesmin grabbed her own target, making his collapse as silent as possible. Then she glanced over at Trey.

They couldn’t just leave these victims here. Even in the middle of a dull watch like this, a naval vessel’s passageways were frequently trafficked. Nor could they just look for a convenient hiding hole in their vicinity. Bhindi had plotted out some supply cabinets and ship’s system accesses, but they were few, and none was nearby.

With a sigh, Trey stooped, pulled his victim over his shoulder, and straightened. He turned toward Jesmin, stooped again as she pulled her victim as far up as she could, and then Trey straightened with the second man over his other shoulder.

They continued aft. Now they moved much more slowly and Trey made more noise than before, puffing a bit, the deck plates creaking more often under his feet. Still, Jesmin thought he was doing remarkably well for a man with nearly two hundred kilos of unconscious meat hanging from his body. They made it undetected to the first of Bhindi’s hiding holes, a laundry supplies storage compartment, and deposited their prisoners there. Trey bound both men with strips of cloth torn from soiled laundry while Jesmin waited with her eye at the slightly open compartment door. That task done, they continued.

They reached the aft terminus of the passageway. Behind them, just a few meters, was the last of the cross-passageways on this level. Directly ahead was a blast door marked engineering. And to their left was another blast door, this one unmarked.

Jesmin flattened herself against the wall beside the unmarked blast door. “I think this calls for a Force technique.”

Trey’s eyes widened. “Are you going to cut your way in with your lightsaber?”

“What are you, six years old? No, I’m not. Is there any way you can tell if there’s a refresher in there?”

The stretch cloth of his hood crinkled at forehead level as he frowned. “You need to go? Now? Didn’t you think about that before—”

“Can you or can’t you?”

“I can put a mike to the wall and listen. I might hear a sink running or the refresher flushing.”

“Do it.”

Once Trey had the mike, a medical device, against the wall and its output leads plugged into his headset, Jesmin closed her eyes and began concentrating.

After a minute, Trey whispered again. “No water noises so far. But now I’m starting to need to go.”

Jesmin nodded, kept her eyes closed, kept concentrating.

“Hey. Are you doing that? What are you doing?”

“Thinking of waterfalls, wine bottles pouring, faucets gushing, fountains flowing … and I’m putting that out through the Force.”

“You monster. I’m … I’m …”

“Keep it together, Four. Any noises?”

“Conversation; I can’t make out the words, but it’s getting more urgent.” A moment later: “I understand that urgency.”

“It’ll pass as soon as the door opens.”

“Or as soon as I disgrace myself.”

“First one out of the room is yours.”

It was only a few seconds later that Jesmin heard the blast door whoosh open. She opened her eyes in time to see Trey, now standing just in front of the door, launch a terrific kick to the groin of the man in the officer’s uniform standing there.

Foot met target and deformed it before the victim could even make a surprised face. The victim was in mid-convulsion and mid-moan when Trey grabbed him and yanked him out through the doorway.

Jesmin spun, put on a burst of Force-boosted speed, and hurtled into the chamber. It was a long, narrow room, the forward wall a blur of monitors and projected holograms, the aft wall a series of racks holding dark blobs Jesmin couldn’t make out at this speed. Ahead was a semicircular desk with two chairs, one of them occupied. Jesmin hurtled to the second chair, where a fair-skinned woman in officer’s uniform was in the act of reaching for a desktop button. Jesmin collided with her, knocking her hand away from the desktop. The chair had glide-plates beneath it and the two rode it, propelled by Jesmin’s impact, to slam into the far wall, the undecorated starboard bulkhead.

Fetched up against the wall, Jesmin twisted, put her elbow into the officer’s stomach. As the woman gagged, Jesmin caught her in a choke hold and held on.

It didn’t take long. The woman flailed for a few moments, then slumped. Jesmin maintained her grip for a few moments longer, in case the woman was faking, then released her and laid her out on the floor. The woman drew in wheezing breaths but remained unconscious.

Jesmin looked up. The outer door was already closed. Trey’s victim was stretched out on the deck plates and Trey stood over the desk, scanning the controls and sensors displayed there.

The blobs Jesmin had glimpsed on the back wall were trooper gear—blaster rifles, belts with blaster pistols, body armor, helmets, at least four full sets. Jesmin smiled. “Good.”

Trey glanced her way. “You were right. I no longer have to pee.”

“I’ll notify HoloNet News.” Jesmin got to her feet. “Alert the others. Tell them I’m bringing them blaster pistols. Patch any of those holocam feeds Seven wants to him. He can act as controller for the others. You’ll be my controller.”

“Oh, if only.”

With holocam feeds piped to him by Trey, Voort monitored the movements of the now black-clad Scut, Turman, and Bhindi.

He kept an especially close eye on Scut’s vicinity. If the Yuuzhan Vong was going to take an opportunity to betray or harm the other Wraiths, to get a message off to some Yuuzhan Vong ally, this would be a good time for it. But Scut, weird and angular in his black body stocking and hood, no longer padded out by his neoglith masquer and other disguise elements, did exactly as he was supposed to. He moved methodically up his assigned corridor, stood outside cabin doors until Voort opened them remotely, and stepped in. An instant after the door closed Scut fired off a few stun blasts with his reassembled blaster.

As Jesmin began to intersect the paths of the other Wraiths, she distributed the blasters she had taken. The others no longer had to rely just on Trey’s reassembled blasters. Jesmin didn’t keep one herself; she resumed stalking the passageways, using her bare hands to deal with personnel as she met them.

All the while, Trey kept up a running narrative audible over the headsets. “Ten crewmates down and counting. Zap zap, two more for Wraith Four, the galley is ours. Twelve and counting. Uh, I’m seeing here that there are thirty-eight sapients aboard, not thirty. Double uh, sorry, that’s the six of us and thirty-two, I say again thirty-two crew—the lieutenant evidently wasn’t counting the captain or ex oh. Thirteen down, Wraith Five delivers another headache.”

Ten minutes later, Concussor was theirs.

11

CORUSCANT

Face brought his airspeeder in for a landing on the hundredth-floor visitor parking level of the Cloud Paradise residential building.

Actually, building was too modest a word, even by the gargantuan standards of many Coruscant constructions. Face had marveled at the Cloud Paradise edifice as soon as his closed-top black speeder had come within sight of it. Technically, it boasted only as many stories as other skytowers in this high-income residential district, but each of this building’s stories was a minimum of four meters in height, allowing the ziggurat-shaped structure to tower over everything around it. Built of black granite mined from Coruscant’s depths even after the world had been completely covered in city, its exterior was brightened by railings, window frames, piping, and other fixtures plated in simulated gold. No advertising marquees adorned the building’s exterior, only flowing plates reading CLOUD PARADISE every fifty stories on every facing.

Even in the parking levels, the opulence continued. None of the unoccupied resident and visitor landing slots Face could see was stained with lubricants or hydraulic fluids—the building custodial staff had to be cleaning each airspeeder level regularly. The turbolifts from the parking level were enclosed in a secure area with a guard behind a desk keeping an eye on matters; the uniformed Devaronian male, all horns and teeth and bright eyes, waved a hand scanner over Face’s identicard and read every word of data that popped up on his monitor before he summoned the lift.

The hallway of the floor he entered was lined with cream-colored marble and reproductions of famous statues from Alderaanian classical antiquity, their hues as vibrant as if they were touched up every morning.

Still, Face had confronted excessive wealth before, many times. He kept his expression alert, pleasant, but not suggesting that there was anything unusual about his surroundings. Stopping at a door, he pressed the visitor button and announced himself: “Garik Loran to see Zehrinne Thaal.”

There was no vocal answer, but thirty seconds later the double doors slid open. Beyond was a dim waiting room, red velvet couches to either side, and a woman.

She was no servant. Tall, nearing middle age, lean as a fashion model, her black hair in twin braids, she wore a midlength green dress that looked as though it belonged at an outdoor summertime roof party. On her feet were sandals in a matching color.

She glared at him. “You didn’t tell me you were famous.” Her voice was exactly the controlled alto Face had expected, low and rich.

He shrugged. “I’m not, anymore. I was famous when I was a boy.”

“So the encyclopedias tell me. Come in.” She gestured, then preceded him into the apartment.

Face took a look around, without seeming to, as they moved along a broad hall, lined in what smelled like real wood, with a dozen or more doors leading to one side or the other at intervals. There were blank spots on the walls where frames or monitors had once hung—someone had removed a lot of artwork from this place recently. A fine, nearly uniform layer of dust on horizontal surfaces said it had been some time since the place had been tended. At last, Zehrinne led him through a door into a broad chamber lit by natural sunlight pouring in through an oversized window; the view showed skytowers and the ceaseless airspeeder traffic of Coruscant outside. The room itself was almost devoid of furniture; there were two stuffed chairs and a low table between them, an adjustable upright chair that looked as though it normally held dental patients, an easel and canvas in front of it. That was all.

Zehrinne took one of the stuffed chairs, gestured to the other. “It’s the housekeeper’s day off. Her lifetime off, actually. I fired her. And the rest of the staff. Can I offer you something to drink?”

“Oh, no, thank you.” Face took the other chair and looked at the canvas. It was a painting in traditional materials, a nearly holorealistic portrait of a female Naboo cliff diver, her arms spread as if in flight, in mid-plummet. It was not quite done; details of the bay in the background were vague around the painting’s edges, and the woman’s face, other than her black eyes, had not yet been detailed. The almost-featureless face was somehow a bit unsettling.

“Well, I’m having something. Oh, Vacuum …” Zehrinne stared at a side door leading from the chamber.

That door slid aside, revealing a protocol droid. He had once, perhaps even recently, been shiny gold, but his metal skin was now decorated with specks and blobs and swirls of color—paint, Face assumed, from the old-fashioned palette and brushes resting on the small table.

The protocol droid said nothing.

Zehrinne smiled. “Wine. Red. Something common.” She glanced back at Face. “Nothing? Are you sure?”

“Thank you, I’ve just had lunch.”

“Oh, well.” She waved, and the droid withdrew.

Face gave her a curious look. “Vacuum is his name?”

“Sound doesn’t carry in a vacuum … and the first thing I did with him a week ago when I bought him was disconnect his vocal synthesizers. He has to write notes or send visual messages. Oh, there’s an emergency override, of course … but for now, blessed, blessed silence.”

Face thought about it. “You know, I bet you could sell a million of those units, even aftermarket, to customers who’ve had long experience with protocol droids.”

“I’ll have to look into that. I’ll need a career. I own these quarters outright … but I can’t afford the property taxes on them.”

“You were … unexpectedly candid about your domestic situation when we commed you. But even then it was clear that there were some things you’d only say in person.” Face gave her a sympathetic look.

“I’m not paranoid … but he is a powerful man with his fingers in everything. I don’t think he intends me any specific harm, but I’m definitely going to give him a beating, and I see no reason for him to anticipate any of it.”

Face nodded.

Zehrinne burst out into laughter. “You are an actor.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your face, your expression. It said, Please go on, and I’m not surprised that you’re going to give him a beating, he deserves it, and You’re very attractive, but for whatever reason I’m not going to make a move at this time, and about a dozen other things. All without words.”

Face felt himself redden. “I’m not really trying to play you. It’s just—”

“A lifetime of habit?”

“Something like that. Please, continue what you were telling me over the comm, and I’ll try to be less …”

“Manipulative. Don’t bother trying. You probably can’t help yourself.”

They were delayed by the return of Vacuum, who, silently and with a resentful stiffness unusual even for a protocol droid, placed her glass of wine on the table beside her, then withdrew.

Zehrinne sipped it while she considered her words. “Stavin and I met about thirty years ago. The New Republic had taken Coruscant five years earlier. I remember the Death Seed stories were almost all you ran across on the holonews. I was eighteen, and making my living as a model. He was thirty, a captain in the army. Not handsome exactly, but he looked great in a uniform, and he was ambitious and smart. Old-fashioned and courtly and persistent, and for whatever reason he decided he was going to make me fall in love with him and marry him, not necessarily in that order. And he did.”

“So far, so good.”

“And it was good for years. He didn’t make me stop modeling, didn’t ask me to, but to me it was a job, not a calling. And being the spouse of an ambitious military officer can be a job, too, and if you’re good at it, you can help him do a lot better than he would do by himself. Being social, making connections, urging promotions … And I did get good at my job.”

Face frowned. “And no trouble in all that time?”

“Plenty of trouble. But the usual husband–wife trouble. Things like, we weren’t entirely compatible genetically, so we couldn’t have children without major medical involvement, and he wasn’t willing to do that. Or adopt.” She sipped at her wine and looked out through the window. “Next week, I think I’m going to go out and adopt. Just me. No other voices in the decision.”

“When you can’t afford taxes on your home?” Face regretted the words as soon as he spoke them. It wasn’t any of his business. But the compulsive planner in his makeup couldn’t quite be silenced.

She gave him an unfriendly smile. “See, you just became a voice.”

“Sorry. I’m clearly a hypocrite. I adopted my wife’s daughter. So I clearly don’t even know what side of your argument I’m taking.”

“That’s better. Where was I?”

“Mostly good years.”

“Right. That brings us up to our twelve-year mark. He was Colonel Thaal then, a general’s right-hand man, being groomed for promotion as much as you can be in what was mostly a peacetime army. And the best possible thing happened, from the perspective of an officer looking for advancement. The Yuuzhan Vong invaded and started killing everybody.” She gave Face a carefree look.

“Now who’s being manipulative?”

She raised her eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?”

“You throw out a line like that, suggesting that the most devastating war in civilized history was something to be celebrated, and give me a coy look to see how I react to it …”

She smiled. “I can’t help it. I was born to cause trouble. For thirty years of marriage, I had to suppress that instinct. Now I’m free. Anyway … Stavin was his usual efficient, dependable, slightly dull self through the first half of the war … and then the Yuuzhan Vong started getting closer and closer to Coruscant. He packed me off to safety on Denon. When the final assault came here on Coruscant, he somehow persuaded his superiors to let him go to Vandor-Three and build a resistance cell there. Which he did pretty well. Those were his original Pop-Dogs, and he became a hero.”

“Still so far so good.”

“No, that was when our relationship died. I just didn’t know it at the time. The war ended, Coruscant was Vongformed to more of the wilderness it used to be, evacuees started moving home, Stavin returned … and we weren’t a couple anymore. I mean, we talked about it. He laid out his position clearly. He said he owed me a lot of his career advancement, he’d stay married to me, half of what was his was mine, he wouldn’t do anything to embarrass me publicly … but we were done. He said it was all his fault, but he didn’t want to try to fix things between us.”

Face leaned forward, certain that he was getting near an answer that might be useful to him. “He never discussed the reason?”

“No. But I figured it out over time. I was still connected to his entire social life, after all.” She shrugged. “He liked younger women.”

“As … ordinary a reason as that?”

“Yes. After our unofficial split, he found a mistress, barely twenty years old. He was with her for about ten years, then set her up with a nice little home, a nice little business, a threat to take them away from her if she caused trouble, and he took a new mistress, age nineteen. That was five years ago. The way I figure it, she has maybe five years to go before he drops her, too.”

Face blinked, considering. “Maybe less.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Just a feeling I have.” Face tried to sell that lie with an earnest expression. “But something has changed between you and the general more recently, correct? Which is why you’re facing tax payments, why you fired his household staff?”

“He began divorce proceedings. And all his assets are frozen, unavailable to me, until the proceedings are resolved.” She waved a hand at her surroundings. “Fortunately, title in this place came to me years ago, after he moved out. If I have to, I can sell it, get a less expensive place, live on the difference. But I’d hate to do that. I love this place.”

“Did he say why he was divorcing you?”

“He hinted that it was so he could marry his current girl. But I don’t believe that. I think she’s a short-timer just like all the women in his life are. I think it’s …” She paused to consider her words. “One of the reasons he’s such a good organizer is that he has a horror of unfinished business. Loose ends. It preys on him, makes it hard for him to sleep. I think that suddenly I became unfinished business.”

“So he had to get his domestic life straightened out before … before what?”

“I don’t know.”

Face suppressed a smile. Their entire conversation had told him almost nothing—just that Stavin Thaal liked younger women and that something big would be happening soon, something that made the compulsive organizer desperate to tie off loose ends.

It wasn’t a big fact, it wasn’t anything that would convince a jury of anything. But it convinced Face. The something big could be anything, but it probably had to do with career-changing plans … plans that might involve an act of treason against the Alliance.

No, the conversation had told him something else, too, something he had to check into. “Can you tell me the names of his mistresses?”

“Of course. In fact …” She slid open a small drawer on the table’s underside and withdrew a datapad. She flipped it open, typed and scrolled for a few moments, then snapped it shut again. “You’ll be getting full contact information for them any second now.”

“Much appreciated.” He stood. “If it’s any consolation, I think you’re being quite generous with the general. If I had treated Dia like the general treated you, she’d borrow an X-wing, take to the skies, and burn me to a cinder.”

“Tell her I like her style. Vacuum will show you out.”

Back in his home, also a high-rise apartment but far more modest—and cheerful—than Zehrinne’s, he sat in his study and began looking for information on the HoloNet.

Information on Cadrin Awel, now age thirty-five, originally from Vandor-3. As a teenager, she’d been a singer, winner of local talent contests, unable to make herself noticed in the much vaster market of nearby Coruscant. She and several family members and friends had camped out for two years in an unoccupied region of Vandor-3 and had eluded notice by the Yuuzhan Vong. For ten years after the war, her movements were largely unrecorded. A few years ago, just prior to the start of the Second Galactic Civil War, she had bought a large rural property on her homeworld and had set up a sort of boot camp where city folk, mostly from Coruscant, could learn nature skills. The advertising and promotional materials for Cadrin’s Sanctuary mentioned her years of living off the land during the Yuuzhan Vong War but not her relationship with General Thaal. A brief news entry from two years ago indicated that she had married one of her fellow wartime survivors. Holos and stills of Cadrin showed a pretty, fair-skinned, fair-haired woman with an athlete’s build.

Information on Keura Fallatte, now age twenty-four. Born on Tatooine, she excelled at engineering and mechanical work and, according to records, left home at age sixteen to live the life of a spacer. Three years later, she left her employer and moved into a trendy Coruscant hostel. After the end of the Second Galactic Civil War—and, Face noted after a cross-check, within a week of Thaal’s promotion to head of the army—she relocated to the best hostel in Ackbar City, Vandor-3. But another check indicated that she was no longer there. She had left the hostel mere weeks ago, checking out and leaving no forwarding information. A concierge Face spoke to, and who was more than willing to accept a HoloNettransmitted tip, said she was happy and excited during her departure … but closemouthed. Face could find no trace of her current whereabouts.

Face wrote a brief account of Zehrinne’s information and his preliminary investigation into the fates of the two mistresses for the Wraiths. He included no orders. The Wraiths would know what to do with the facts. He encrypted the report, installed and concealed it within a datapad game, and transmitted it.

Then he wrote another report, encrypted it, and transmitted it to the Quarren Eye, the yacht Borath Maddeus had supplied him with, for retransmission elsewhere.

Finally, his day’s work done, he quit the study and moved out to the tiled dining area of his living chamber. His wife, Dia, and her daughter Adra were there already, chatting, paying occasional attention to news feeds scrolling across their datapad screens. They were so alike: green Twi’lek women, below average height but muscled like sand panthers. Dia was still in the snug blue civilian pilot’s uniform of the commercial air-and-space service where she was a partner; Adra wore a jumpsuit that was a riot of green and orange stripes and zigzags.

Face’s approach was so silent that neither noticed until he was almost at the table. Both turned to look at him and, seeing the expression on his face, fell silent.

He turned to Dia. “I promise I will never make you so mad that you borrow an X-wing, take it up, and use it to burn me to a cinder.”

“Smart of you.” She gestured at the third chair. “Whose turn is it to cook?”

“Yours.”

“We’ll order something.”

He sat and turned to his daughter. “And you, young lady … Beware of older military officers who chase you when you’re a teenager. They’ll just dump you when you turn thirty.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Dad, I hate it when you bring work home.”

12

MULVAR SENSOR STATION, IMPERIAL-CONTROLLED SPACE, OUTER RIM
19 ABY (25 Years Ago)

“You. Stupid.”

Piggy looked up from his task, mopping the last portion of this corner of the station’s main yard. He was surrounded by wire-mesh chairs and tables, as well as now spotless flooring of white sheet duraplast decorated at intervals with the gearlike symbol of the Empire. At this late hour the area was almost deserted. Other than Piggy, only one man was present. He was an officer, crisp and neat in his gray uniform, nursing a last cup of caf at one table.

Using his mop for leverage, Piggy scooted his bucket to within two meters of the speaker, a leathery, gray-haired man of advancing years. Piggy grunted a nonverbal interrogative.

The officer glanced at him and sighed as if despairing of being able to accomplish anything. “You understand Basic?”

Piggy nodded, grunted.

“Good. New task.” The man pointed up—not at the star-filled sky, but at the top rim of wall surrounding the base. The wall was a monolithic run of permacrete, topped by an irregular layer of what looked like white gravel and powder.

But where the officer pointed, below the layer of white, a pool of darkness had oozed two meters down the wall, marring the surface’s otherwise perfect cleanliness. “See that? I want that cleaned. Right now.”

Piggy allowed himself a tremble. He gestured imploringly at the officer, then gestured more wildly, hands down and then rising abruptly, spreading apart, miming some great upheaval. He punctuated his move with shrill grunts.

The officer shook his head with forced patience. “No. We turn off the mines and their sensor triggers while you’re up there. You climb Tower Three, show the guard there that you’re going out on the wall. He knows what you’ll be there for. He’ll switch things off while you work and on again when you return.”

Piggy offered up a few more mock-whimpers. Then, under the unrelenting stare of the officer, he allowed his shoulders to slump. He picked up his bucket, not allowing it or the mop to drip on his perfect floor, and walked to the door at the base of Guard Tower Three.

The officer was as true as his word. The enlisted man on duty at the tower’s summit barely looked up from his bank of infrared-equipped holocam monitors when Piggy arrived. Nor did the first meter of wall explode under Piggy’s feet when he stepped out on it.

Piggy situated himself above the stain and lay down on his belly, feet stretching out over the jungle beyond the walls and head protruding over the close-cropped grass within them. He got to work with his mop.

It had taken a couple of days to work out the base’s security routine and come up with this approach. A frail duraplast egg and a ridiculously oversized slingshot, built and mounted on a stand in his tiny worker’s quarters, had allowed him to launch a payload of fast-growing but harmless fungus against the wall top the previous evening. Now that fungus, touched by the chemicals running from Piggy’s mop, sizzled, died, and dropped almost instantly off the wall, raining in sheets onto the ground.

Below and off to the left, the leathery officer appeared to be satisfied with Piggy’s progress. He drained the last of his caf, stood, and began his walk back to the officers’ quarters.

Piggy spent a moment fishing several items of gear from the murky fluid in his bucket. He left mop and bucket behind and headed back to the tower.

The guard on duty didn’t look up as Piggy entered. “You done?”

“No, you idiot, I’m just getting started.”

The guard looked at him, astonished to hear a humanlike voice emerging from a Gamorrean mouth. He still wore that surprised expression when Piggy raised his compact blaster pistol and put a stun bolt into his chest.

It took only a couple of minutes to make the walk, balancing precariously, from Tower Three to Tower Two and repeat the process with the guard there.

Back at his bucket, he tore open the container that kept his rope dry. At one end was a container of quick-acting adhesive. He pressed a length of rope to the wall top and, with a small vibroblade, cut the bag. Adhesive ran down across rope and wall. The stuff began to heat up as it made contact with the oxygen in the air, cooking into a hard surface.

Piggy counted off three minutes, keeping his eyes open for anyone returning to the tables or the towers. No one did. He tossed the remainder of the length of rope down the outside of the wall. Within seconds it went taut.

A furry hand crested the wall top, then Runt pulled himself up. “You took long enough.”

“The martinet with the cleanliness fetish didn’t take his break until late.”

Next up was Shalla, grinning with good cheer. Like Runt, she was mostly garbed in clingy black material. Piggy gave her a hand up to the top of the wall.

Runt took the rope in both hands and began hauling. It was obvious he was pulling up a tremendous weight, and Piggy winced as he heard the load occasionally rub against the wall exterior. Then a large woven basket filled with durable cloth bags came into view. He helped Shalla maneuver it as Runt pulled it the rest of the way up.

In minutes they were down at ground level, inside the base of Tower Three, each laden with a cloth bag. Runt’s was largest.

While Runt peered out the window in the armored door, Shalla leaned over to whisper in Piggy’s ear. “I took the promotion.”

“Oh, no.” Piggy let his shoulders sag. “I thought you were going to be with us forever.”

“It has been forever. Twelve years. Next week, I become an investigative officer. No more beating people up.”

“But you’re so good at it.”

“Aww.” She gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Empire’s on the verge of surrendering, Piggy. Everything’s going to change anyway. I might as well take the opportunity. Start a new stage in my life.”

“It won’t be as much fun.”

Runt glared back over his shoulder. “Will you two be quiet? This is still a mission. Oh, and there’s somebody coming.”

“Mine.” Shalla shook as if seized in the grip of a massive shiver, but Piggy knew she was merely loosening up. Runt withdrew up the metal stairs. Piggy took a couple of steps back to the foot of the stairs and raised his hands as if surrendering.

When the door slid open, the trooper who’d activated it—dressed in an enlisted man’s uniform identical to those of the guards Piggy had shot and holding a tray with half a dozen cups of steaming caf on it—stared blankly at Piggy. “Hey. What are you up to?”

Shalla stepped out of the shadows and hit him low.

Piggy didn’t even bother to try to save the caf. He lunged and hit the door-closing button. The door snapped shut before the cups hit, clattering all across the floor.

By that point Shalla had thrown her second blow, unnecessary as it might have been. Runt descended, hefted the unconscious man, and carried him upstairs to deposit him beside the first.

The three Wraiths crept around the bottom of the wall and entered the scientific section. Shalla, a dozen meters in front of the others, overpowered a pair of civilian scientists, one-punched an on-duty guard at the next hallway intersection, kicked a naval captain in the throat just outside the main computer laboratory.

Piggy shook his head, baffled. “How can she give this up? She enjoys her work so.” He watched as Shalla slid silently into the computer lab.

Runt nodded. “My spy agrees with you. But my family man says, how can I have a family this way? Perhaps she has a family woman in her. My pacifist says, for all the good I’m accomplishing, all I do is hurt people. Perhaps she has a pacifist in her. The self in you who is used most gets tired, Piggy. The selves of you who are used least get restless.”

Shalla stuck her head out the doorway and waved them forward.

In the computer center, Piggy sat at the main console and began entering the code and command sequences Face had given him. The console obligingly transmitted them to faraway sensor facilities.

Soon enough, each of them—orbital deep-space scanners, stellar light harvesters and interpreters, comm-frequency listening posts—would begin to experience malfunctions. Some would transmit disinformation to the naval High Command Center, under Admiral Pellaeon’s indirect control. Some would initiate self-destruct sequences. Some would shut down all transmissions and reposition themselves, burning all their fuel in ultimately successful efforts to fly into the nearest sun.

Yes, the war was all but over. But until it was completely over, the armed forces and New Republic Intelligence had their jobs to do.

Runt headed downstairs with his huge payload of explosives.

Piggy turned to Shalla again. “It won’t be the same without you.”

She gave him a sad smile. “Every time someone leaves, you say it won’t be the same. But it might be if you’d figure out how to get close to the new Wraiths. Piggy, will anyone be there with you at the end?”

From a kilometer away, they watched Mulvar Sensor Station go up.

The entire station didn’t blow. Runt had placed his explosives very precisely, just as Kell had taught him to. The detonation rose from meters deep in the ground, obliterated the laboratory building, collapsed one section of outer wall, and damaged the motor pool. There were probably some deaths, but as few as possible.

Shalla turned to Piggy. “Voort. Voort.”

“Since when am I Voort to you?”

She reached over to shake him. “Voort.”

ABOARD THE CONCUSSOR, OUTER RIM TERRITORIES
44 ABY (Today)

Voort came awake gradually, realizing that he’d fallen asleep in the navigator’s chair, that Bhindi was shaking him.

It was her voice, not Shalla’s. “Voort.”

“Sorry.” He blinked at her. “I fell asleep.”

“Turn on your implant—I can barely understand you.”

He did. “I regret to confess that I fell asleep at my station. It is your duty to relieve me of duty and confine me to quarters.”

She laughed. “You wish.” She sat in the captain’s chair. “What were you dreaming? You were twitching like a battle dog.”

He looked out the forward viewport. It showed starfield rather than the blur of hyperspace. They waited, light-years from any sun, for Turman, Scut, and Jesmin to return from the smugglers’ station. The captured Concussor crew were already cooling their heels on the habitable moon of a distant gas giant. Most of the ship’s food and water stores were there with them.

Voort took a few moments to answer. “It doesn’t matter what I was dreaming. It just makes me understand, the roles are always the same. Only the faces get replaced.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“The strongman. The actor. The technician. The hand-to-hand combat expert. The explosives expert. Sometimes the roles get broken into pieces, recombined, handed off, inherited. But they’re always there, surviving the departure or disappearance or death of whoever embodied them.”

“It’s clear that it’s a bad idea for you to stay awake for sixty hours straight. It turns you into a melancholy philosopher.”

A blinking light on the control board drew Voort’s eye. “The shuttle’s transponder signal just popped up. They’re back.”

13

ACKBAR CITY, VANDOR-3

Myri nursed her first drink, a weak fizz-and-brandy, and looked around the chamber from her perch at the bar.

Things weren’t really under way yet. Troopers at the army base were just now changing shift, and those with leave to go into Ackbar City were heading for the sanisteams, putting on fresh clothes, plotting their strategies for the evening. So the bar was comparatively quiet, expectant.

Here at Jokko Haning’s Emporium, a grandiose name for a decidedly plain drinking and dancing establishment, the locals were planning their own strategies. Myri counted twenty locals who clearly intended to attract the eyes of troopers for the eventual purpose of marriage and escape from Vandor-3—nesters, they were called in the local parlance. Six were men, fourteen women, and Myri was dressed and in character as woman number fifteen.

Nesters were not the only locals in the taproom with predatory ambitions. Myri spotted a handful of men and women whose body language suggested they had less binding affections available for rent. A spindly droid—a converted medical droid painted the exact hue of a good dark beer—stood behind the bar washing tumblers and transparent mugs. Two cocktail servers in minimal-coverage garments—one was a Wookiee female who, Myri thought, looked decidedly odd in her serving outfit—were not yet hurrying or working hard as they kept the early-evening crowd supplied with drinks. A four-armed green-furred musician from who-knew-where, a tip jar prominently displayed atop his upright keyboard rig, cracked four sets of knuckles simultaneously. An overweight, gray-haired human man at a table by himself straightened and re-straightened a short stack of colorful flimsi printouts; Myri could see the text and graphics on the top page showing lush green countryside properties.

She snorted. A land agent, anxious to sell cheap acreage to troopers foolish enough to consider staying on this planet. Perhaps he’d have some success here for the sheer audacity of offering a product so very different from the others.

A man, human, settled onto the stool next to Myri’s and turned toward her. “I’ve seen you before.” He was lean, in shape, his features almost pretty, his head capped by black curls that stirred under the flow of cool air from the vent overhead. He wore good attract-the-eye dancing clothes, black pants and a V-necked tunic that glittered with tiny white speckles, like a monochromatic starfield. He looked to be in his twenties, like most of the other nesters in the bar.

“Really?” Myri sipped her drink. She knew the answer was no, that this was just a conversational ploy. Each time she’d gone out to gather intelligence, especially to a crowded nester bar, she’d been someone different. Tonight her hair was pure white, obviously a dyed affectation, and her skin as dark as ebony.

The man nodded. “Sure. But two nights ago you had red hair and amazing freckles.”

Fierfek. He had seen her before, and somehow he had recognized her despite her new disguise. But she affected disinterest. “I like different looks. Why are you talking to me? Nesters don’t congregate. Except when it’s girls looking out for one another.”

He lowered his voice, tried to sound more dramatic. “Maybe I’m not a nester. Maybe I’m with Galactic Alliance Security, tracking down the Quad-Linked Militant Pacifists.”

Suddenly Myri was glad for her temporary dark coloration. She was certain that she was successfully keeping surprise—and alarm—off her face. But her face felt warm.

She was blushing, blast it, reacting emotionally to an unexpected confrontation.

She giggled as if he’d said something silly. That gave her a second to run through a mental checklist. Hold-out blaster in its waistband holster, right at her spine under the frilly white top she wore. Vibroknife against her left calf under matching pants and white boots. The tumbler in her hand was thin transparisteel, not glass, so she couldn’t shatter it and drive it into the man’s neck if she needed to.

Backup … she had none.

She grinned conspiratorially at the man. “I’m not with them,” she told him, keeping all worry from her voice. “I’m a freelancer. I lure men to their doom and leave their bodies in ridiculous poses.”

“I thought that was you.” He saw that the bartender was momentarily unoccupied and waved. “Sledgehammer, please.” He turned back, extended a hand. “Kirdoff.”

She shook it. His hand was soft, uncallused. Not common for a nester male, most of whom made their livings as industrial laborers or farmers. “Rima.”

“Is red and freckles your real look?”

“Nature hasn’t touched my hair since I was sixteen. And my complexion is flawless. Sorry.”

“Well, the Fey’lya Base boys love that. You’ll do great.” He received his drink, rolling a credcoin to the droid in return. He raised his glass to Myri in a salute. “Good luck, Rima.”

“You, too.”

She watched him cross the room and slide into a dimly lit booth. She tried not to show on her face the fact that her stomach was suddenly churning.

If he actually was some sort of investigator, leaving now was the absolute worst thing she could do. In fact, if she was suspected of something, she might be under surveillance by multiple agents, and they could trade off in shadowing her, making it fiendishly difficult to spot them.

No, she had to stay here for the evening and go through the routine of flirting, drinking, dancing, teasing, talking about army life in the hope that some useful fact would spill out during an unguarded moment … and then letting the dirty-minded, clean-skinned trooper boy know that she had marriage on her mind. Marriage above everything.

Then there would be a reaction. Disappointment, reinvigorated attempts at persuasion, anger, maybe even assault. The reaction she dreaded most was eager acceptance. We can get married tonight. I know a place.

And all this, with her stomach roiling because of what might have been nothing but a polite inquiry by a slightly atypical nester boy.

She sighed, waved down the bartender, and ordered a stomach-settling powder.

She accepted a drink invitation from the first soldier who asked her, a lean sergeant with creases at the corners of his eyes. She got him talking about his work as a drill instructor and his home on Commenor. At a crucial moment in the conversation, she asked a leading question and listened to his first couple of wistful comments about his wife and kids.

Then he realized what he’d done and looked up guiltily.

She gave him a not-unsympathetic smile. “I think we’re here for different things.”

He shrugged. “Same thing, I guess. I want something from you. You want something from me. So we try to get the other to offer it. We leave out facts to accomplish that. Have you told me all the strikes against you?”

“There are too many to list.” She raised her glass to him, a toast. “Here’s to being goal-oriented. Good night, Sergeant.”

There. Anyone watching her would see that she’d been through the nester’s routine of flirting, conversing, and deciding. She could leave now and not be conspicuous. She used the trooper’s departure as excuse enough to escape the possible scrutiny of Kirdoff and unseen observers. But another trooper followed her out the front doors—a human man, younger and taller than the sergeant, with the Pop-Dog tooth design on his collar. His tone was matter-of-fact. “I’ll walk you home.” He fell in step beside her.

“I actually know the way. Forget what you’ve heard about local girls—some of us have more than two brain cells to rub together.”

He laughed. It was a strange, artificial noise, like something just learned by a nonhuman who’d only ever heard laughter on a holodrama. “You don’t understand. I wasn’t asking.” Now there was an undertone of menace to his voice.

“Ah.” She forced her voice to remain steady. “Do you know who I am?”

“Not yet.”

“So, as a prelude to an assault, this is basically a random one. A privileged-class serviceman who imagines that he’s an alpha male seizing what he wants, preying on a local population that’s been conditioned to accept this behavior.”

“A university girl. I hate university girls.” The dark tone in his voice grew more intense. “I think it’s time for you to shut up.”

Myri took her bearings. The walkway they were on was clear of other pedestrians for twenty meters ahead and behind.

She stopped at the opening to a dark, narrow gap between buildings and pointed up the walkway. “You’re going that way—” She pointed into the gap. “I’m going this way. Good night, Poop-Dog.” She immediately walked into the darkness.

He caught up with her after three steps, seized her arm, and swung her around to slam her into the side of a building. She couldn’t see his features in the deep shadow, but his voice was suddenly full of anger. He jabbed a forefinger at her. “You do not insult the—”

She put one hand on the back of his and seized his index finger with her other hand. She bent his finger up, a sudden, all-out effort, and bones snapped.

He started to look at his stricken hand, started to make a pained noise, but she immediately drew her blaster, thumbed its side switch to make sure it was still set on stun, and fired into his stomach. The stun bolt briefly illuminated the alley and his shocked expression. Then he fell.

She looked down at him and holstered her weapon. “Sorry, Army. My heart belongs to Starfighter Command.” Then she stepped over him and returned to the street.

It took her quite a while to get home. She took a circuitous route, making sure she was not being followed. In another dark alley, sure she was not being watched, she discarded her wig and outer garments, shoving them deep into a waste bin. She broke the seal on a packet, half the size of a deck of cards, that was always to be found in her footwear, and unfolded its brown polyfilm contents out into a voluminous hooded robe. She left the alley a different woman—hair black, garment brown, feet bare.

There were more trooper patrols out on the streets, joined by Pop-Dog patrols, as she traveled the rest of the way to the Wraiths’ rented shop. Several of them looked at her as she passed, but none spoke to or followed her. She entered the office building sure she was in the clear.

After a quick sanisteam to remove the last traces of her disguise, she checked her datapad for messages and found one—a large file, encrypted, from Bhindi.

The text portion merely said, “This needs to get on the general’s desk fast. Mysteriously.”

The video file attached to it showed an elegant Imperial Navy commander, as white-haired as Myri had been an hour earlier. He looked straight into the holocam and spoke, his voice cultured, confident, and cool. “General, in the recent past you have done some excellent work in the support of certain parties. I am the new intermediary on these issues. My name is Commander Avvan Hocroft. We need to speak face-to-face. The embedded time and location coordinates are where you can find me. I’ll be there with a small patrol vessel. Please try not to awe me with matériel superiority. This is a friendly conversation.” Hocroft offered a smile that was not entirely friendly, and the message ended.

Myri pondered the message. That had to have been Turman on the recording, but she could see no sign of the Clawdite she knew in the commander, which was a good thing.

Getting the message onto Thaal’s desk would not be difficult. She’d transmit instructions to the growing legion of housekeeping droids now serving the Wraiths. Then all she had to do was get close enough to the army base’s outer perimeter to throw or launch a datacard past those defenses so that one of the droids could pick it up and transport it.

Wouldn’t Thaal research the Commander Hocroft name? Well, Bhindi had to have thought of that. If she, Myri, wasn’t supposed to address that issue, perhaps Face was.

GALACTIC ALLIANCE NAVY COMMAND COMPLEX, CORUSCANT

The naval lieutenant was a Bothan. He had nearly pure-white fur, rare for his kind; that and his build, lean and muscular, had to have made him very popular on the social scene, Face thought.

But now, if Bothans could sweat, he’d be sweating. He glanced up and down the corridor, lightly trafficked by other uniformed naval personnel. “If I get caught …”

Face grinned at him. “You’re twenty times as likely to get caught because you look like you’re going to be caught than you would be if you looked like you had nothing to be caught about.”

The Bothan paused before a closed door; its sign read archive routing. He frowned. “I have no idea what you just said.”

“Davian, forget it. If they catch us, you tell them that I’ve volunteered to give you an application that scans unclassified reports for embedded language used to convey secret information to enemy spies.”

“But you haven’t.”

“It’s on my datapad. It’s twenty years old … but the navy doesn’t have it, so they won’t know that.”

Davian frowned, considering that, and pressed his palm to the biometrics plate beside the door. A moment later he put his left eye up to the tiny red peephole at the top of the plate. The door slid open, and both men went through. Beyond was a brightly lit, shiny-clean, impersonal office—one desk, two chairs, wall-mounted shelves sagging under the weight of stacks of flimsi.

When the door slid shut, Face sat at the computer monitor. “You have the records handy?”

“Queued up in the search box labeled TUBER SPOILAGE.”

Face snorted. “Good choice. Not many people are going to be curious enough to give that a close look.”

“Right. But first … your datapad. The application.”

“Oh.” Face drew the device from his breast pocket and slid it across the desktop. “Top menu, JABBEER SIX.”

“Thanks.” Davian sat at the opposite chair and fumbled in his own breast pocket for a datacard, which he slid into the appropriate slot on the datapad. He selected functions to transfer the application to his card. “We have only until my captain gets back. Less than an hour.”

“I’m not going to get you in trouble.” Face began flipping through onscreen records—cargo manifests from the naval cargo vessels that had disappeared during the last few years.

“I can take trouble if I have to. Thirty years back, you did my parents a big favor, and I’m happy to pay it back. I just want to keep my commission, too, if at all possible.”

“Fair enough.” Face reached the last manifest. “Fewer than I’d thought. Eighteen.”

“Eighteen in three years, Alliance vessels. That’s a fivefold increase from the three years before CivWar Two.” Davian ejected his datacard and pocketed it. He shut Face’s datapad. “But the cargoes themselves were pretty valuable. These pirates weren’t stealing canned bantha-meat hash.”

Face flipped back through the manifests more slowly, giving each a closer look. “Can I get printouts of these?”

“No, sorry.”

“No matter. Your people haven’t found any connections among the missing ships or their cargoes?”

“Plenty of connections. All Alliance cargo vessels. All of ship classes that require small crews for their tonnage. All traveling solo or with escort vessels only, not as part of a matériel convoy. There’s always some real value in the cargo.”

“But no type of matériel, or manufacturer, or receiving base common to all of them? Not every crew has a Hutt navigator from the Backstabbo family?”

Davian snorted. “No.”

Face remained silent for several minutes. Then a manifest entry he didn’t understand fell under his eye. “What’s a secure privacy type?”

Davian shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“One secure privacy type, origin Badfellow Station, destination Coruscant naval yards. Manufacturer, Sub-Capital Division.” Face frowned. “I don’t recognize that manufacturer. And isn’t Badfellow Station just a cargo-routing hub?”

Davian nodded. “A civilian routing yard that does some contract warehousing and redistribution for the navy.” He stood and moved to stand behind Face, staring over his shoulder. “It shouldn’t be the origin of anything. Oh, look.” He pointed at the on-screen field that read BADFELLOW STATION. “You see the little number one at the upper right corner of the field? That’s a subfield reference number. Tap that.”

Face did, and the field changed, the words in it being replaced with a new one: KUAT.

Davian smiled with the pride of a middle manager who had solved a problem no lesser person could unravel. “That happens sometimes. The idiot who put together this manifest typed the secondary data in the primary field and vice versa. The item, whatever a secure privacy type is, originated on Kuat and was routed through Badfellow Station, not the other way around.” He returned to his chair.

Face stared at him, silent, for a few seconds. Then, troubled, he began tapping other fields on the screen. “Seems to have happened a few times here. Secure privacy type—aha. It’s a ship’s hypercomm system. Secure privacy type now makes sense. It has to be a one-person enclosed model, so the ship’s captain or comm officer can enter it and not be observed by the rest of the bridge crew.”

“That does make sense.”

“And the manufacturer, Sub-Capital Division—again aha. The subfield says HyperTech Industries. Look that up for me, would you?”

Davian patted himself down, scowled, and, realizing that Face’s datapad was still on the desk before him, opened it. He tapped his way through a quick search. “An Alliance military contractor based out of Kuat.”

“Can you run a search on all these manifests and include all the subfields?”

“Of course.”

“Can you first swap the data between the primary fields and the subfields?”

“I am the living master of the database, Face. Trade places with me.”

Five minutes later they had their answer. Every Galactic Alliance Navy cargo vessel that had disappeared in the last three years had in its cargo manifest a HyperTech Industries device of one sort or another, usually a hypercomm unit, sometimes a hyperdrive or a power booster.

The two men stared at each other.

Davian no longer looked nervous. Now he looked regretful. “I have to tell my superiors.”

“Yes, you do. But not yet. I have friends in the field looking into this issue.” Face pitched his voice to its most persuasive tones. “If you tell your superiors, and an investigation starts, the people my friends are looking at will get nervous. They’ll cover their tracks. They may even turn lethal.”

“But—”

“I’m not saying you have to bury this information. You just have to sit on it for a while. Until I give you the go-ahead. Then you ‘discover’ it and hand it over to your superiors. All credit goes to you, the investigation starts, the piracy ends, and the naval brass knows who to reward for it. But not yet.”

Davian winced. “How long are we talking about? A few days?”

“A few days.” Six months at most. Face didn’t add that qualifier. Davian would have to accept his restraints a bit at a time, leading him down a slippery slope of cooperation with Wraith Squadron.

“Well … all right. Done here?”

“I’m done here.” Face pocketed his datapad. “Thanks for everything.”

“I’ll walk you out.”

As they left the archive room, Face, last out and unseen, slipped another device from his trouser pocket—Davian’s missing datapad. He left it on a shelf.

14

Face’s stylish black airspeeder, its viewports tinted almost to opacity, at least as seen from the outside, rose from the naval command center’s landing area. It glided slowly above the field of parked speeders until it entered a traffic lane, then accelerated.

A few hundred meters away, an innocuous blue speeder, also closed-top, rose from a landing area atop a shops-and-restaurants building and entered the same traffic stream from above.

The pilot, an adult human, blond and boyish-looking, kept his eye on the black speeder ahead. “I say a kilometer.”

The individual in the passenger seat beside him, a squat Sullustan, his face looking even more like sagging, melted layers of a dark dessert than was usual for his species, frowned. “Wait, wait. How soon do you sample after it goes off? Time plays a role here.” He spoke in his own language. To most ears it would have been mere musical jabber, but the pilot understood and shook his head.

“Assume optimal time for maximum expansion.”

“No wind?”

“For this hypothetical example, no wind.”

The passenger in the rear seat, a large Aqualish covered in a cumbersome brown robe, leaned forward, thrusting his head between those of the two speakers. His tusks, his insectile eyes, and the scales of his body, which were waxed and buffed to a high sheen, gave him a ferocious aspect. He, too, spoke in his own language. “What’s the bet?”

The pilot smiled. “Sit an Ortolan on top of a thermal detonator—standard yield—and set it off. How high up in the atmosphere will you then be able to detect traces of the Ortolan?”

The Aqualish turned toward him. “Traces? You mean pieces? There would be no pieces left.”

“No, no. I mean chemical traces.”

The Aqualish growled, a deep rumble in its chest. “Chemicals are a myth.”

The pilot paused, considering how best to offer a negative reply to that assertion.

The Sullustan saved him from the awkwardness of his situation. “Tell him you mean dust.”

The pilot nodded. “I mean dust.”

The Aqualish seemed to accept that answer. “No wind?”

“No wind.”

The Aqualish pondered. “Betting is stupid. Only way to find out for sure: get me an Ortolan and a thermal detonator.”

“Well …”

“We do it right after we kill Face Loran.”

The pilot nodded. “Good idea. I’ll find us an Ortolan. You find us the thermal detonator.”

“All right.” The Aqualish settled back in his seat.

Face glanced at his control console, at the small monitor showing the rear holocam view, and continued dictating. “I pulled the old Here, hold my recorder and speak clearly scam. With a twist—I’d palmed his datapad, so when he needed to look something up he used mine, entering passcodes that gave my application access to the computer system. Which put me past most levels of security right there. So the Commander Hocroft references are planted and propagating. What’s funny is that my cover story may have yielded useful results, too. I actually found a link between the cargoes of all Alliance Navy vessels hijacked since the end of the war. Each was carrying a large, expensive electronic component, usually a hypercomm unit, manufactured by HyperTech Industries of Kuat. Since Jesmin has been looking into that issue, you might pass that fact on to her.” Face changed his voice from a narrative tone to a conversational. “Got all that?”

“Transcribed.” It was a female protocol droid’s voice, affected and precise.

“Good. Where was I? Oh, that was the end. No, add this.” He changed back to a narrative tone. “My asset tells me that HyperTech landed its military contract well before the exposure of the Lecersen Conspiracy, so it’s unlikely that this has anything to do with the general. Still, one member of the conspiracy, Haydnat Treen, was the Senator from Kuat and had a lot of influence there. She could have helped the company land that contract, so there may be some connection of some sort. I just don’t know why she’d do that if all the conspirators wanted the company for was to commit acts of piracy.” He paused, deciding whether he needed to add anything, and chose not to. He switched back to conversational tone. “End message. Standard closures. Encrypt and transmit it immediately.”

“Yes, sir. Encrypted. Transmitted.”

“How’d I do?”

“Three you knows, four where was I’s, and not a single um or uh.”

“Better than usual, then. You know, the other day I met a protocol droid who wasn’t allowed to talk.”

“Terrible. That would be like an astromech with its mathematical functions disabled.”

“Wouldn’t it? So there’s a protocol droid who can’t talk, and I have a speeder with the brain of a droid who can. I think I like my way better.”

“You say that, but you don’t let me follow you around in your quarters.”

“True. Bad for the furniture. You understand.” Face cast another look at his rear holocam view. The blue speeder was still tailing him, not closing, far enough back that even some practiced eyes would miss it. “Tell me, have I backed you up lately?”

“Not in eight days.”

“Commence remote backup immediately. Also, run a search and tell me the nearest high-density pedestrian zone—a walkway market, a music festival in a plaza, anything crowded and confusing.”

“Which has priority?”

“The search.”

“Hey.” The blond human pilot frowned as the black airspeeder dropped out of its traffic lane, banked, and descended into a lane headed to the right. “Wonder if he’s made us.”

“Hunh.” The Aqualish’s noise was a grunt of disagreement. “You’re too good.”

“But it’s clear he’s not headed for home any longer.”

“I don’t like that.” The Aqualish sounded even more disagreeable. “I want to kill the wife and daughter, too.”

The pilot chose another speeder taking Face’s route. He moved up close behind the vehicle, using it to obscure Face Loran’s view of him until he entered the new traffic lane. “Why?”

“Those tail-things on their heads.”

“Brain-tails. Or lekku, in the Twi’lek language. What about them?”

“I always wonder, if you pull on them hard enough, will they rip right off? Arms and legs do.”

“Well, I tell you what. Kill Face Loran nice and neat, and you can kill one of the Twi’leks, too. Find us a thermal detonator for our experiment and you can kill both.”

“You are a good man. I like working with you.”

“Thank you.”

“But I want more money.”

The pilot sighed.

Face’s speeder banked again, darting between two widely spaced apartment blocks. The blond pilot saw a bright patch ahead, what had to be a comparatively open area. He followed Face’s speeder and emerged from between the buildings onto the edge of a vast plaza. The plaza’s rim was gridded off into landing areas and loading zones for speeders, while the center was crammed with portable durasteel-and-duraplast stalls, brightly decorated with flashing signs and colorful banners. At this midday hour it was thick with shoppers on foot. The pilot considered what he was seeing. “A pedestrian market,” the pilot said.

“I expected a market like that to be bigger on Coruscant. It should be kilometers long!” There was a note of contempt in the Aqualish’s voice. “I’ve seen bigger on itty-bitty worlds.”

“I think you mean low-population worlds. Itty-bitty worlds don’t have enough gravity to hold an atmosphere. And without an atmosphere, you can’t have an open-air market.”

“Gravity is a myth.”

The pilot saw Face’s speeder slow, then descend vertically on repulsors to occupy a landing square. He looked around, found another one, not far from Face’s, and settled into place there.

Together, the three watched as the pilot’s door of the black speeder rose, wing-style. Face Loran emerged, a distracted look on his face. He had a comlink pressed to his ear and was clearly having trouble hearing over the roar of voices from the marketplace and whine of airspeeders overhead. He shouted, loud enough that the occupants of the blue speeder could hear him: “No, you idiot. Earrings. Anniversary present. Which booth are you?” He hurried in the direction of the nearest row of booths, his body language indicating impatience.

The blond pilot smiled. Face Loran would be comparatively easy to follow in the crowds. His clothes—black, fitted, stylish, and pretentious, matching his trim little beard and mustache—and his bald scalp made him stand out.

“It’s a trick.” The Sullustan’s musical voice made the words sound more friendly than suspicious.

“What’s the Jawa say?” the Aqualish asked.

“He says it’s a trick.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What’s the Aqualish say?”

The pilot grinned. “He says you’re a Jawa.”

“I’m not a Jawa, and it’s a trick. He spotted you, and he’s lured us to this crowded, confusing place so he can lose us.”

“What’s the Jawa say?” the Aqualish asked.

“He says he’s not a Jawa, and that you’re wrong.”

“He’s a Jawa. An ugly Jawa. If you were as ugly as he is, you’d pretend to belong to a made-up species, too. Sullustans are a myth.”

“What’s he say?” the Sullustan asked.

The pilot heaved a sigh. “He says you and he should chase after Face Loran and kill him while I wait here in case it is a trick and he doubles back and tries to escape you. And I agree. Get going.”

The Aqualish slammed his door open and exited. “I will also keep my eyes open for a stand selling thermal detonators.”

By the time the Aqualish and the Sullustan reached the first row of stalls, Face Loran was nowhere to be seen.

Standing between a booth selling toy lightsabers that made realistic sounds and extended harmless shafts of colored light, and another where the most popular candies were Corellian-brandy-flavored, the Aqualish and the Sullustan turned back and forth with the rhythm of droid gun emplacements scanning for targets.

“Don’t see him.” The Aqualish’s voice was a grumble. He stared down at his companion. “You see his knees anywhere?”

The Sullustan spoke to him, musical words the Aqualish didn’t understand.

“Hey, short stuff, I have a great idea.” The Aqualish bent over, caught the Sullustan under his arms, and lifted. The Sullustan squalled and flailed as if afraid the Aqualish was going to drop him into the tentacled maw of a sarlacc. Then the Aqualish settled his short companion astride his shoulders. “Now you can see more than his knees.” The Aqualish pointed at his own eyes, then at the Sullustan’s eyes, then at the crowd.

The Sullustan seemed to get it. He nodded and resumed his scanning. The Aqualish set off into the crowd.

The Aqualish had spoken disparagingly of this market, but it really was his kind of environment. A buyer could see beings of every known species and find goods from all over Coruscant and around the galaxy—cheap junk, entertainments, exotic foods, sometimes good weapons. A Rodian male sidled up to the Aqualish, offering glitterstim bites—tiny quantities of the psychotropic chemical encased in lightproof, sweet carbohydrate shells—for sale. The Aqualish handed him a few credcoins for a small packet, but leaned over the seller with some advice: “If this isn’t the real thing, I come back and kill you good.”

“It’s real, it’s real.” Unbidden, the seller pressed an extra bag into the Aqualish’s finned hand and fled.

The Aqualish stared at the two bags, then glanced up at his rider. “Means it’s real, but weak. We see how weak. Maybe I don’t kill him.”

The Sullustan jabbered in reply.

“Shut up. You know I don’t speak Jawa.” He handed the Sullustan the second bag of spice candy.

A minute later, the Sullustan straightened, sitting higher, and pointed off into the crowd. The Aqualish stared that way.

Thirty meters ahead along the row of stalls, Face Loran stood, retrieving a credcard from a vendor. Of all things, he had an entire mannequin under his arm. It was built along the lines of a human woman but was headless. It wore garments suited to an exotic dancer, all abbreviated bands, strips, and scarves in filmy red and pink material. Face Loran had other purchases tucked under his arm as well: folded masses of brown cloth. As the Aqualish watched, Face Loran turned away with his new prizes and moved briskly off in the other direction.

The two exchanged a look. The Sullustan jabbered something.

The Aqualish shrugged. “I bet that means the earrings were no good.”

The Sullustan looked blankly at him.

The Aqualish took off after their target, his rider holding firmly on to his shoulders and head.

By the time they caught sight of Face Loran again, he was down a side row, his mannequin still clutched under his arm, but now he was towing a small cloud of large pink balloons on a string behind him.

From that point, it was comparatively easy to find him. All they had to do was watch for the cluster of pink balloons. The problem was that Face Loran kept in constant motion, trotting from one booth to the next, taking a zigzag course through the market. Sometimes their view of the balloons was blocked for long moments by a tall booth or banner.

Then, at the far edge of the market, they cornered their quarry. He was not at a booth but in a tent, the sign above it flashing with an ever-changing litany of entreaties: HOLOSTILLS! PUT YOUR FACE ON AN ATHLETE’S BODY! EMBRACE HEVANUS DREED OR KOY’TIFFIN! STAND BESIDE THE GLORIOUS CANYON OF NO RETURN! Face’s string trailed out through the tent flap, the balloons wavering a few meters overhead.

The Aqualish set down the Sullustan. He gestured in accompaniment to his words. “I go in and kill him. Stab-stab-stab, understand? You wait here. Here.”

The Sullustan scowled and jabbered at him but moved to stand against the row of tents and booths opposite, watching the front of Face’s tent.

The Aqualish slid a fin under his robe and wrapped it around the hilt of the sheathed vibroblade there. This was a knife job—quiet was better, even in this loud environment. Cautiously, he moved up to the tent, parted its flap with his free fin, and entered.

It was dark within. Directly before him was a screen, taller than a human, of flexible material stretched to tautness by a segmented duraplast frame. It was actually a flexible monitor, glowing with internal light, showing an image from nature. Even from the rear, the Aqualish could recognize a famous image, an iconic waterfall from the destroyed world of Alderaan.

Small pinpoint lights from the far side of the tent shone on the screen, and they silhouetted the Aqualish’s prey. A human shape stood just on the far side of the screen, his head moving back and forth as if he were keeping time to slow music the Aqualish couldn’t hear.

The Aqualish drew his vibroblade, thumbed it into humming life. Then he stabbed, his blade shearing through the screen and plunging into the back of his target’s head.

It popped with a mild bang and disappeared.

The Aqualish stepped around the screen to look.

His victim had been the mannequin. A brown robe hung across it, concealing the flimsy dancer’s garments. The remains of a pink balloon lay across one shoulder. It had been tied to the top of the mannequin, a scarf wrapped around its base to suggest a neck. Before the Aqualish popped it, it had been bobbing in a breeze flowing through the tent.

The tent was otherwise empty. A slit in the far side showed where Face Loran had gone.

This was not good. The Aqualish spun, making sure he was indeed alone, then switched off and sheathed his vibroblade. He moved back through the entry flap, alert to the possibility of attack.

The Sullustan was where the Aqualish had left him, but now he was seated on a fruit crate, leaning back against a stall’s support pole, relaxed as if asleep. There was a dark stain, small but spreading, on his tunic.

The Aqualish did not move over to investigate. The Sullustan was dead, and Face Loran was doubtless nearby, prepared to launch a fatal ambush if the Aqualish moved to bend over his slain partner.

But if the Aqualish merely walked away, Face Loran would stalk him, waiting for an ideal time to strike, and then kill him.

The Aqualish chose to outsmart his enemy. He tore off his robe, revealing belt-holstered blaster pistols and sheathed vibroblades, a grenade on a baldric strap, and more buffed, shiny body scales, and charged back toward his boss’s airspeeder.

He slammed vendors and shoppers out of the way with little regard for their mass, species, gender, or age. A crowd of Bothan children flew away from impacts with his knees, shrieking in hurt and surprise. He crashed, unharmed, through a pane of clear duraplast, a replacement window, being carried by two human workers. He slammed a Gamorrean woman clear over the merchandise counter of a stall, leaving her upside down, her legs flailing, her upper body stuck in a barrel of Coruscanti subterranean whitefish.

Though shouts, curses, and calls for security followed him, in moments he could see the far row of the plaza booths just ahead. There was a gap between two of them through which he could escape.

Into the gap stepped a Jedi, a fair-skinned, robed man whose neatly trimmed mustache and beard were darker than his long, loose mane of brown hair. The Jedi’s attention immediately fixed on the Aqualish and he raised his lightsaber, already in hand, thumbing it to life. Its green blade emerged with a deep, vibrating snap-hiss.

The Aqualish slowed his charge and grabbed for his blaster pistol.

But the Jedi, instead of charging, threw his lightsaber. It flew in a spin toward the Aqualish.

If he’d had the time, the Aqualish would have laughed. Instead, he tracked the incoming weapon. He reached for it … and nimbly caught the hilt in his fin.

Now the Jedi charged forward. He ran like a normal man in good shape, not like a superhuman. The Aqualish swung the lightsaber. Its glowing blade plowed across the Jedi’s neck.

The Jedi’s body thumped into that of the Aqualish, and his head—

Stayed right where it was. There was no mark across his neck. There was no smell of burned flesh.

There was a pain in the Aqualish’s own neck, and the Aqualish belatedly became aware that the Jedi’s right arm was raised, his hand near the point where the pain began.

The Jedi, unhurt, stared into the Aqualish’s face with the eyes of Face Loran. His expression was cold and implacable.

The Aqualish fell, feeling the tug as his neck slid off the vibroblade in Face Loran’s hand, seeing the blade grow still as his enemy switched it off. Then blackness descended over his sight.

Just a few dozen meters away, the blond pilot witnessed the collision between Jedi and Aqualish. He saw the Aqualish collapse, the toy lightsaber in his hand falling to the ground, its harmless green beam playing across the pavestones.

He saw the Jedi turn away before any of the witnesses began to react. The Jedi moved out past the line of stalls, made an immediate right turn to be out of the sight of the shoppers in the marketplace, and whipped the hair from his head, revealing the bald scalp of Face Loran. Loran tossed the wig into the mouth of a droid trash-masher. He shed his costume cloak and robe, hurling them in with the wig. Then he made an abrupt left turn and began walking among the landed speeders.

The blond pilot shook his head in grudging admiration. In two seconds, a mysterious Jedi Knight, menace evident in his posture, had become a bald, black-clad passerby whose body language suggested ease and good cheer. Meanwhile, witnesses to the Aqualish’s death surrounded the body. A couple who cautiously stepped out beyond the row of stalls looked around, saw no sign of the Jedi, and returned to stare at the body.

The pilot paid them no mind. He did watch as a security trooper ran up to take charge of the situation while Face Loran walked, unnoticed by the crowd, to his airspeeder. Loran entered his vehicle.

Well, the pilot had learned something. It appeared that Face Loran was genuinely retired or even exiled from the Intelligence community—he had summoned no backup to deal with this situation. And he clearly had some field experience.

The pilot couldn’t see through the dark viewport of the airspeeder. Loran waited in his vehicle for several minutes, probably watching events unfold around the body. But finally the black airspeeder rumbled into life and rose three meters into the air.

And exploded.

Pieces of the vehicle, twisted and burning, flew in all directions, propelled by a cloud of red and orange and black. The people gathered around the Aqualish screamed. Some were knocked down by the force of the explosion. Parked speeders all around Loran’s rocked and were pelted by debris. The main body of Loran’s speeder dropped, only one landing space over from where it had been, onto a big, red, open-top speeder. They burned together.

The blond pilot blew out a sigh of relief. The Sullustan and the Aqualish had served their purpose—bait, distraction—and so had his explosives package. The job was done.

Well, one job, anyway. He started up his speeder and took it skyward. Now he just needed to kill two Twi’lek women.

Maybe he could find a disgruntled Wookiee who was curious about whether those brain-tails would rip right off.

15

ABOARD CONCUSSOR, OUTER RIM

The new cook, a scarred, tattooed Corellian man who wore a long ponytail and no other hair—but who, Voort had to admit, could cook a fine bantha-topato stew—distributed the last cup of caf to Turman, who sat at the navigator’s console.

On his way off the bridge, the cook stopped and gave Voort a perturbed look. “Will you, ah, require anything special for dinner?”

Voort also had to admit to himself that he warranted a perturbed look or two. He was dressed in the remnants of the gray uniform once owned by Concussor’s captain. Their seams had burst rather than let out, so the garments hung in tatters on him, held in place only by the elaborate array of gun belts and weapons bandoliers with which Voort had draped himself.

Too, across the last couple of days the other Wraiths, in their various disguises, had told many stories about “Gronk.” How his favorite meals involved human meat. How one should never gamble with him, because he couldn’t read cards and always lost … which inevitably meant death for the other players. How the ends of his tusks and fingernails were coated with invisible slow-acting poison—it was death just to scrap with him. Even for smugglers and pirates anxious to earn a credit by any means possible, the sheer volume of the stories was alarming.

A pity the other Wraiths hadn’t told Voort they were telling these stories. He only discovered the fact after all the new crew members began shying away from him.

He was pondering his answer—the cook understood Gamorrean—when Jesmin, at the sensor officer’s console, still in her security operative identity’s wig and makeup but wearing an Imperial lieutenant’s uniform and insignia, looked up. “Contact. At the limits of sensor range. They’re transmitting … It’s the priority code we’ve been waiting for.”

Bhindi, now in an Imperial uniform, slouching in the captain’s chair, snapped upright. “Command crew only. Everyone else clear the bridge.”

The cook dashed out. As soon as the door was shut and sealed behind him, Voort activated his throat implant. “It’s about time.” He strode to the navigator’s station as Turman abandoned it.

Bhindi stood up from the captain’s chair but hit the intercom button on its arm. “Four, Six, we’re on. Report readiness.”

Voices spoke from the chair arm, Trey’s first: “Four here. Engineering clear except for me, and sealed. All power and engines are optimal.” Then Scut responded: “Six in security. Ready.”

Voort shed a belt and a bandolier; they made it hard to sit. He took Turman’s seat and bent over the navigation controls. “Transferring pilot controls to my station. Complete.”

“Transferring communications controls to my station.” Jesmin sounded as cool and unworried as Bhindi and Voort had. “Complete. Sensors now indicate the contact is a small warship, probably corvette, probably twice our mass and weaponry. But not huge. They’re approaching at cruise speed.”

From the corner of his eye, Voort glimpsed Turman performing a high-speed identity change. The man threw his tunic into a corner; from an emergency equipment locker in the bulkhead, he pulled the white-haired, aristocratic-featured neoglith masquer Scut had made for him. He donned it in seconds, then slipped into clothes from the same locker, a tidy gray uniform with a lieutenant commander’s rank insignia on the breast.

Voort nodded, satisfied. In years past, he’d seen Face do it faster, but Face had never had to deal with a neoglith masquer. Voort rated Turman’s effort as a tie with Face’s.

Turman, now Lieutenant Commander Hocroft, took the captain’s chair. “Ready.” His voice bore the clipped accent that was natural to upper-class Coruscant citizens and affected by many Imperial officers.

Bhindi moved to sit at the station between Jesmin and Voort. “Weapons and deflectors down but ready to raise. Comm, are they hailing?”

Jesmin nodded. “Just now. Alliance corvette Starhook, Captain Evlen commanding.”

Bhindi considered. “Voyce Evlen. Just promoted to captain. This is her first command. I’m sorry to hear she might be mixed up with Thaal. I know her family. Her mother is Admiral Biana Drayce.”

Turman cleared his throat. “Go?”

“One second. Sensors, make sure Voort’s not in the holocam view.”

Jesmin clicked a couple of switches and looked at one of her auxiliary monitors. “All clear.”

“Go.”

Turman faced the center of the viewport directly ahead. “Put her on, Lieutenant.”

The forward viewport darkened to opacity, and a new image glowed into life there. It was another ship’s bridge, its furnishings and consoles showing more blue than white, its captain in the background and a trio of bridge officers in the foreground, a virtual double of the arrangement Bhindi had set up. The officers wore Galactic Alliance naval blues. The captain was a human woman, her brown hair in a bun, her skin a reddish tan.

Turman gave the other officer a pleasant nod. “Captain Evlen. Congratulations on your recent promotion. Your mother must be quite proud.”

Evlen raised an eyebrow. “You know my mother?”

“I’ve met her. But I was not in this uniform at the time. Or in any uniform. She probably wouldn’t remember me.”

While Turman spoke, Bhindi began typing, innocuously, at her console. The forward port-side viewport blanked, and then text began to appear on it. BIANA HIDES RECURRENT TACYODERMITIS FROM COMMAND.

Turman continued without a break, “I hope her twitching has finally cleared up.”

Evlen paused, then offered a chilly smile. “Certainly. It was mysterious, but at least it was brief. And how is your knee? Better, I hope?”

Voort almost cheered. Not only had Face gotten to the naval archives, but someone had accessed them in a search for Hocroft’s name. The searchers would have found only one report, an addendum to an operation by Alliance commandos during the Second Galactic Civil War, mentioning their encounter with an Avvan Hocroft and his recent knee injury.

The last exchange between Evlen and Turman would cement in the captain’s mind the notion that Hocroft was a black-ops Imperial operative with extensive connections in and knowledge of the Alliance military.

Voort returned his attention to the navigation board and his elation evaporated.

Unpleasantries concluded, Turman got to the subject. “By the way—I was expecting the general.”

Evlen nodded. “He’s been notified. We made good time by taking a couple of cross-jumps off the major routes, so our arrival caught him a little off guard. He’ll be here momentarily.”

Voort began typing, and his words appeared beneath Bhindi’s. ONCOMING CORVETTE HAS SIDESLIPPED IN APPROACH. DIRECTLY AHEAD. IF WE NEED TO GO TO HYPERSPACE, MUST MANEUVER AND EXPOSE FLANK. He saw the gaze of the others flick over to that screen and take in its message.

Bhindi typed back, STAY CHILLY.

Turman offered a slight shrug. “While we wait, care for a game of virtual sabacc?”

Evlen frowned. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s also called Excess. I shuffle a deck of cards in my mind, as you do in yours. We each deal a hand. Of course, since it’s a mental exercise, we have the ultimate power to cheat, as if we had decks entirely composed of skifters. Since we could each choose the most valuable hand possible, the first trick each of us faces is to choose a hand that will win but not be absolutely unbeatable. That wins the hand, but the real trick, the one that wins the entire game, is to lose by the narrowest cumulative margin across the entire series of hands.”

“That’s preposterous.”

“It’s all the rage. Experience shows us that losing by the narrowest possible margin until almost the end is often the way to win a lengthy war.”

“And when have you ever done that?”

Jesmin began typing. PASSING OUT OF EXTREME WEAPONS RANGE INTO EFFECTIVE WEAPONS RANGE. JUST SAYING.

Evlen glanced off to her right as if she, too, were reading something outside the holocam view. She returned her attention to Turman. “Well, I suspect we’ll have plenty of time to discuss our respective philosophies of war.”

“How so?”

“Because—”

Jesmin hit a button on her console. “Deflectors!” Her bellow was loud enough to startle Voort.

Bhindi reflexively brought up the ship’s deflectors.

On-screen, Evlen did not immediately react to what was going on aboard Concussor. “—seizing your vessel. Heave to and prepare—” Then alarm notes began blaring on the corvette’s bridge and Evlen’s words cut off. The screen blanked and became a starfield again. In the distance, the glow of Starhook’s deflectors going live made the ship suddenly visible.

Yet Bhindi’s voice remained cool. “Sound general quarters. Two, trade with me.” While swapping chairs with the ersatz Imperial officer, she glanced at Jesmin. “You felt something in the Force?”

Jesmin nodded, most of her attention on her console. “Four new contacts. They’ve dropped out of hyperspace at Starhook’s original distance. They’re coming on at flank speed.”

“Seven, bring us about, then all ahead full, then plot us a hyperspace jump out of here.”

“Coming about.” Voort sent Concussor into a spin rather than a bank—he fired forward starboard maneuvering thrusters and the stern port maneuvering thrusters. The vessel began to spin in place. “Exit jump already plotted.”

“You love math.”

“I love math.”

Impatient, Turman, now at the weapons console, looked back at Bhindi. “Orders?”

“Stand by. We don’t want to provoke them.”

“They’re already provoked, One.”

She glowered at him. “Don’t worry about weapons. Put all discretionary power into whatever deflectors are facing the enemy; constantly update as we turn.”

“Already being done—” Turman’s acknowledgment was cut off as the Concussor shuddered and the ship’s lights dimmed for a moment.

Not everything dimmed. New lights began blinking or glowing steadily on Jesmin’s console.

She glanced at Bhindi. “Engines damaged. Losing power. We’re at seventy percent. Hyperdrive appears to be reinitializing.”

Turman interrupted. “Permission to return fire.”

“Denied.” Bhindi hit her intercom. “Four, report.”

There was no answer.

“Four, report.”

“Sorry, Leader.” Trey’s voice sounded harried. “Engines damaged, but I’m holding them together. Brief air-pressure drop here, but I got a plate of durasteel over the leak.”

Bhindi breathed a sigh of relief.

Trey’s voice came back: “Orders, Leader?”

“Stand by, Four.” Bhindi leaned back. “Six?”

“Here.”

“Execute command Pollinate. It’s on your top menu.”

“Yes, Leader.” Scut sounded confused.

Voort kept his eye on his controls. He discontinued the maneuvering thrusters. But as he prepared to fire their opposite numbers, which would decelerate Concussor from its spin, Bhindi interrupted. “Don’t complete the maneuver, Seven. Leave us spinning.”

“What? I mean, yes, One.”

Bhindi glanced at Jesmin. “Signal to the crew Abandon ship.”

16

“Very surgical, Lieutenant.” Captain Evlen studied the image on the screen ahead. Magnified so that it appeared much closer than it was, the enemy patrol vessel, an Imperial-styled triangle narrowed at the base to the proportions of an ancient arrowhead, slowly spun in place. Sheets of sparks resembling flame jetted from its stern section. In mid-spin, its thrusters still on full, the vessel was maneuvering in an ever-widening spiral pattern, clearly out of control. Its shields were still up, but it offered no return fire. “I think they’re helpless.”

The communications officer, a gray-skinned Duros with large, emotionless eyes, turned her way. “They’re hailing us.”

“Put him on.”

The image that replaced the view of the vessel suggested that things were at least as bad as Evlen had anticipated. The other vessel’s bridge was dim with smoke. No bridge crew members remained other than Hocroft, who stood at the communications officer’s station. He had sustained a minor injury; a rivulet of blood trickled down from his scalp at his hairline and smeared his right cheek.

His voice was icy. “Well, that was unpleasant.”

“As I was saying, heave to and prepare to be boarded.”

“I can’t, you karking idiot. My engines were hit. They’re on runaway. My engineering crew is all dead. I can’t stop. Which, I take it, will be justification enough for you to continue firing until we’re all dead.” His voice turned bitter. “All those boys and girls … was this really necessary?”

“Drop your deflectors and I’ll hold my fire until you figure out a way to heave to … or we decide to shut down your runaway engines by destroying them completely. But if your deflectors come up, if just one of your weapons systems begins to track us, if you resume a level course without immediately coming to a full stop, there won’t be enough of your craft left to fill a refresher stall.”

“Understood.” Hocroft stepped to the center console and hit a couple of buttons.

Evlen’s sensor officer nodded at her and made a lowering-hand gesture, indicating that the enemy’s deflectors were down.

“I’m going aft.” Hocroft blotted his scalp wound with his sleeve. “I can initiate a compartmental self-destruct that will destroy the engines safely. Then I’ll be back here to use the maneuvering thrusters to stop us. Give me ten minutes.”

“Five.”

Hocroft glared. Without bothering to shut off the holocam view, he turned and strode from the bridge. The bridge doors snapped open for him, snapped closed behind him, leaving Evlen with her view of the smoke-filled bridge.

Evlen glanced at her communications officer. “Instruct the others to hold back. We’ll pace the target and stay close. We’ll signal when we want the others to close. Tell Shieldbreaker to stand by to pick up prisoners. And tell our boarding shuttle to stand by to launch.”

“Aye aye.”

Evlen paused. “Have any of you ever heard of a compartmental self-destruct?”

She got only silence and the shaking of heads in reply.

Heading aft to Concussor’s belly bay, Bhindi answered Turman’s latest question. “The Pollinate command did a bunch of things. Locked down the shuttle bay so crewmates couldn’t enter. Slaved the escape pods’ launch ability to our comlinks. Disabled their comm systems.” She, Turman, Jesmin, and Voort passed one emergency pod bay. Its exterior door and the pod door within were both closed, sealed. The Wraiths could see crew members within pounding frantically on the doors and viewport. As the Wraiths passed, the crew redoubled their efforts and shouted words the Wraiths could not hear.

Bhindi went on. “So when Five issued the Abandon ship order, the crewmates packed into the pods, which sealed them in tight, trapping them inside pending our issuing the launch command.”

Jesmin sounded suspicious. “Which we are going to do, yes?”

“Yes.”

“They think they’re about to die.” Turman’s voice held a note of sympathy. It was at odds with his Commander Hocroft disguise.

“They’re not.”

The Wraiths reached the shuttle bay doors, which stood open. Trey was visible through the shuttle’s forward viewports, clearly going through a preflight checklist.

Bhindi ran up the shuttle’s boarding ramp, the footsteps of the other Wraiths clanging up behind her. Scut was not in the passenger compartment. Bhindi went forward to the cockpit. “Where’s Six?”

Trey glanced at her. “Fuel at max. Um, he’s staying in the aux bridge until the last possible second. He says that if he patches everything through to our cockpit, he can’t be sure it will all work.”

Bhindi sat in the copilot’s seat and strapped herself in. “Two, we need you to come up and pretend to fly this thing in case they get a holocam image of the bridge.”

Movement on the other side of the bay drew her eye. Voort, awkward, had climbed on top of the one remaining interceptor and raised its topside boarding hatch. He was now clambering down into the cockpit. “What’s he doing?”

Trey shrugged. “Saving us a resource? Checklist complete, by the way.”

Turman came forward and took the pilot’s chair. “Saving us a resource and providing us cover.”

Bhindi reached for her comlink, then thought better of it. Any commed message at this point might be overheard by the Starhook. She couldn’t order Voort to the shuttle, so she’d have to trust his judgment.

Blast it.

Trey went aft into the nearly empty trooper compartment. “Hey, lady. Mind if I sit here?”

Bhindi opened the ship’s intercom to the auxiliary bridge. Since it was not a broadcast link, it could not be overheard by Starhook. “Six, execute these actions. Activate self-destruct, five-minute timer. Shut down engines. Set a one-minute timer to re-enable all escape pod functions and execute all commands that their occupants have entered since boarding. Transfer all bay controls to me. Also, kill the artificial gravity. Then—one guess what your last order is.”

“On my way.”

“Their engines have shut down. Still no sign of activity from their weapons or deflectors.”

“Good.” Her attention mostly on the view of the crippled enemy, Evlen nodded.

Then her eyes grew wide as gouts of thruster fire heralded multiple small-craft launches from the patrol vessel’s hull.

Her sensor officer was quick. “I mark five, six, seven launches. Ball-shaped craft, they look like escape pods. Something else—thrust emissions from the underside, some other type of craft launching, but we don’t have a visual.”

“Incoming signal!”

“Put it on, Comm.”

The view of the distant ship didn’t change; this signal was voice only. Hocroft’s voice: “Rather bad news, Captain. There was damage to the computer. Turns out there’s no such thing as a compartmental self-destruct, so I had to activate the usual sort.”

“I knew it.” Evlen’s angry words were spoken in a low tone, one the bridge mike would not pick up.

“Looks like we’re done for. I’ve ordered abandon ship, as you can see.”

Evlen caught her communications officer’s eye, then made a throat-cutting gesture that meant Cease transmission. When he nodded, she spoke aloud. “Launch boarding shuttle.”

“Aye aye. Launching.”

“Tell them to steer well clear of the patrol vessel and be ready to engage a fleeing shuttle.”

With minute adjustments of his maneuvering thrusters and repulsors, Voort kept his interceptor close to the Concussor’s underside. The shuttle, ahead of him, was coming up to speed on its outbound course, keeping the Concussor directly between it and the Starhook.

Voort kept another part of his attention on his console timer. The Wraiths were now two and a half minutes into the self-destruct sequence. It would be very nice to be clear of the ball of explosive force the ship was about to become. Voort’s hands twitched on the interceptor’s yoke.

There was movement on his sensor board. Something was launching from Starhook’s underside. The signal suggested a shuttle similar in size to the one Bhindi was piloting.

The enemy shuttle vectored to pass the Concussor from a safe distance to port. Starhook was accelerating now, vectoring to pass from a safe distance starboard. The corvette would accelerate more slowly than the pursuing shuttle.

Delicately, Voort rotated his interceptor’s nose toward port and kept his eye on the sensors.

And the chrono continued its countdown. Two minutes fifteen left. Two minutes. One minute forty-five.

As the pursuit shuttle came into view a bare two kilometers off to port, Voort lined up his shot at first by sight alone—weapons sensors would alert the target. He tracked his target, made sure his lasers were at full power.

The shuttle’s deflectors were up … all energy forward, toward the Wraiths’ shuttle. Voort almost smiled. He clicked his weapons sensors on, paused only the split second it took to adjust his aim to the center of the new bracket that had appeared as a heads-up display on his forward viewport, and fired.

Green bolts leapt from the leading edges of his solar collection wings and converged on the shuttle’s stern. They chewed their way across its hindquarters, blackening its gray paint, carving metal debris free.

The shuttle’s deflectors readjusted, strengthening at the stern. The shuttle veered away from Voort, sparks erupting from its aft thrusters.

A stern shot for a stern shot, thrusters for thrusters. Voort didn’t bother with a taunt over the comm board. He just brought his own deflectors up to full power. He hit his thrusters and vectored in the direction of the Wraiths’ shuttle, putting his interceptor through a series of tiny, erratically timed maneuvers designed to make life hard for the gunnery officers back on Starhook.

Parallel rows of light flashed past his interceptor, bright enough to be alarming, not close enough to interact with his deflectors.

The chrono clicked down to one minute.

The Starhook shuttle stayed on its escape vector. The crew had to be evaluating the damage Voort had done, deciding whether to resume pursuing and reengage. Every second they delayed took that decision further out of their hands. The Wraiths’ shuttle was now up to speed and might have its hyperspace jump plotted. Voort began to overtake it. It grew large enough that he could distinguish it by eye, not just on his sensors. Starhook’s laser pulses flashed near it, too, but at this distance the gunners’ chances of success were poor.

Voort received a low-strength transmission on the Wraiths’ frequency—voice and data, encrypted and compressed. He decrypted it.

Bhindi’s voice: “Our new course. Check my math, would you?”

He snorted, amused, then ran numbers through his head while absently juking and jinking to keep the distant lasers from making too easy a target of him. Then he replied: “My numbers agree with yours to three significant digits. Discrepancies my fault, rounding errors. Have a safe jump.”

The shuttle ahead seemed to stretch and then was gone.

Voort activated his own hyperdrive and leapt into hyperspace after it.

Captain Evlen watched the distant targets vanish. She sighed and looked to her navigator. “Plot likely destinations along their course. Prioritize for planets and stations with strong Imperial Remnant sympathies. Communications, signal for a pickup of the escape pods. And somebody tell me what the hell this actually was all about.”

17

CHASHIMA
29 ABY (15 Years Ago)

Piggy sat on a hilltop, watched over the vista of forest patches and fields of green ankle-high drymoss, felt cool breezes from the north as they tickled his cheek and caused the scrub bushes around him to sway.

And he clamped down on his rebelling gut. Absently, he glanced over the readouts on his blaster rifle—a bulky model with a scope and a built-in underbarrel grenade launcher—for the sixtieth time since setting up his observation nest.

The natural beauty down below was doomed. The Yuuzhan Vong held this world, and when they chose to devote the resources, they’d Vongform this lovely planet, transforming it into a likeness of their long-lost homeworld. Then it would be a vista of eerie, menacing plants and animals and who-knew-whats. The communities here would be destroyed, their populations penned, brutalized, taught the ways of the Yuuzhan Vong until their past was a dim and meaningless memory.

Perhaps he, Piggy, was doomed as well. Perhaps the other Wraiths on this operation, somewhere between his position and the Yuuzhan Vong shapers’ nest set up a dozen kilometers to the south, were doomed.

Perhaps everything he knew was doomed.

Piggy caught sight of motion a few hundred meters to the south. Colors so like those everywhere in the landscape, but not part of it, moved over the rolling terrain.

Piggy crawled forward across an angled flat rock at the hill’s summit. It supported his weight; he’d tested it earlier. His head protruding over empty air, he brought his macrobinoculars to his eyes.

This was a highly computerized set of macrobinoculars. They stabilized his view, compensating for slight motions of his hands, compensating for his breathing. They subtracted the least movement, such as plant stalks bending in the wind, from his vision. What was left was what was really moving.

In moments he had it. Two figures covered neck to feet in camouflage-pattern clothing and gear.

Estoric Sandskimmer and Runt Ekwesh. The sandy-haired human carried a gray, conical cylinder, dull and featureless. He cradled it in his arms as he ran. There was a dark spot on Estoric’s side, not a part of the camouflage pattern—blood. Runt seemed unhurt. Both were traveling fast, straight for Piggy’s position.

It took Piggy a moment to realize what was missing from the picture. Neither Estoric nor Runt carried a pack or blaster rifle. They must have been forced to abandon that gear in order to increase their speed.

Missing gear, blood on Estoric—the two had encountered Yuuzhan Vong warriors. But they had the cylinder. They’d succeeded in their mission, at least so far.

Piggy set the macrobinoculars aside and brought up his blaster rifle. He trained it on his friends, focused through the scope, and tracked south from where Estoric and Runt were.

Yes, only about fifty meters behind, three Yuuzhan Vong warriors came at a full run, not slowed by the organic vonduun crab armor they wore. The armor, glistening like the inside lining of some seashells, covered their torsos. Accessory pieces acted as helmets, greaves, bracers. They were living things, those pieces, no two identical, and were so durable that a breastplate could deflect a badly struck blow from a lightsaber or an angled shot from a blaster rifle.

Piggy froze for a moment. He was a good shot, but not good enough to take out fast-moving targets at this range. If he waited until the warriors caught up with his friends, they’d be too close to Estoric and Runt for Piggy to snipe safely. And he couldn’t open up a comm channel to Bhindi in the gunship, not if what New Republic Intelligence believed about the shapers’ nest on this world was true.

There was no good answer. There was no mathematically perfect response.

The three warriors held amphistaffs, deadly serpentlike life-forms that could be stiff blunt-force weapons one moment, pliant whiplike entanglers with poisonous heads the next. But now they transferred the amphistaffs to their off-hands. Each reached into a pouch, withdrew something, and threw.

Piggy winced. Thud bugs, it had to be. Flying insects that distorted gravity, they could become far heavier just at the moment of impact, unloading lethal amounts of kinetic energy against whatever they hit.

At this range, Piggy couldn’t see the thud bugs themselves. He saw Runt’s stride continue unbroken. That meant Runt’s jammer had to be functioning—a late development from Intelligence’s research-and-development department, the jammers confounded thud bug senses in a limited area, making them less accurate.

But Estoric arched forward as if he’d been hit by a catapult stone at waist level. He went down hard, tumbling, the gray cylinder rolling away from him.

Coldness gripped Piggy’s insides. He heard himself murmuring, “No, no, no,” as if the words might somehow convince the impending tragedy to seek other victims.

He flipped the selector on his blaster over to grenades. He sighted in on Estoric and marked the range to the man. It was 153 meters. Piggy knew Runt would not abandon Estoric, and that meant the fight would take place right there.

The three warriors slowed in their approach. The biggest one had the most ornate, most gleaming armor, and his helmet made him seem as tall as Runt. The next largest was the size of an average human man, the smallest slightly shorter. The smallest also had the least impressive armor—he was probably a juvenile.

Runt stopped beside Estoric. He turned toward the warrior, a vibroblade, long and wicked, in his right hand. His left fist was closed around something Piggy couldn’t see. Estoric, clearly in pain, clawed for his own blaster pistol, struggling to get it free of its holster.

Then the warriors reached them.

The biggest one held back, standing atop a small rise, directing the smallest forward.

Piggy ground his teeth. The Yuuzhan Vong leader was making this a training exercise. But the biggest warrior was now stationary. Piggy sighted in on him, did not bother reading the numbers on his scope display. Mentally he calculated the warrior’s distance from Estoric: 10.3 meters. There was a two-meter difference in Estoric’s and the warrior’s respective altitudes. Winds from the north-northwest, eight knots. No heat shimmer to factor in. Piggy elevated his barrel to the correct angle for the grenade launch and squeezed the trigger. With the blast, the weapon’s stock thumped back into his shoulder. He would have a second before the grenade hit.

Piggy sighted in on the second largest warrior.

That one charged at Runt, swinging his amphistaff. The smallest charged Estoric.

Runt’s arm came up—his left arm. His hand opened. A cloud of glittering dust erupted from it, blanketing the smallest warrior, enveloping his head.

“No, no, no …” Piggy knew it was a tactical mistake. Runt was trying to protect Estoric.

The second warrior’s amphistaff cracked across Runt’s midsection, hurtling him to the green-covered ground.

The biggest warrior was abruptly replaced by a cloud of black and red smoke. Piggy forced himself not to look at the explosion. But the second warrior did. The smallest warrior staggered back from Estoric, flailing to clear the dust from his face.

The sound of the grenade explosion reached Piggy, a distant crack-boom. Piggy’s sighting brackets settled on the second warrior’s back; he elevated his aim a touch, finding the bottom of the back of the warrior’s helmet.

The warrior turned to look for the source of the grenade. The movement brought his neck into view in the scope brackets. Piggy squeezed the trigger. The scope view flared with light from his blaster bolt, and the pale Yuuzhan Vong skin blackened. The warrior staggered back and fell.

Piggy reoriented, took in the whole situation.

The biggest warrior was on his back, his upper body scorched. His entire head was gone.

The second warrior was down, not moving. Piggy was sure of the kill.

The smallest warrior stood over Estoric. The tail end of his amphistaff was a third of a meter deep in Estoric’s chest, right where the heart was. Estoric’s body was in mid-convulsion, stiffening. The warrior’s head was turning as though he was scanning for sound. Runt’s dust had to have blinded him, and yet he’d found and killed Estoric.

Runt, up on his feet, slammed into the last Yuuzhan Vong warrior. They went to the ground together. Runt’s right hand came up and down, stabbing again and again with the vibroblade. The blade ran black with the alien warrior’s blood.

And suddenly nobody down there was moving.

Though he seemed to have no breath, Piggy ran, his blaster rifle in his hands, down his hill slope and then up the slight rise to where the fight had taken place.

In moments he reached the five combatants. Four lay still. Runt was alive, his chest heaving, his features twisted in pain. His movements were weak.

Runt looked up as Piggy reached him. His jaw worked. “Am … phi—”

Only then did Piggy hear it, the rustle slightly louder than the wind, from just a couple of steps to his right. He spun, aimed.

One of the amphistaffs, now mobile, glided toward him through the moss with a sidewinder motion. Piggy fired. The heavy rifle blast caught the amphistaff, picked it up, hurtled it meters away. Even that didn’t kill the beast. The amphistaff landed, charred along the midsection, and slithered away.

Piggy looked around. The smallest warrior’s staff was also in retreat, and the biggest warrior’s staff was not in evidence.

He knelt beside Runt and slung his rifle on its strap. “Hold on. I’ll get you out of here.”

“Ampi … staff … hits. I’m bitten, Piggy.” Runt’s lips, where his fur did not cover them, and his upper palate inside his mouth were already pale. Runt panted as if superheating from the inside.

Piggy shook his head, denying the evidence of his eyes. “Your metabolism’s not like ours. You’re fighting it, Runt.” He pulled Runt up to a sitting position and then partly across one shoulder. He prepared to stand.

Runt tapped Piggy’s sides, his touch barely strong enough to be felt. “Let me down.”

Piggy hesitated. He felt his face twist against the fact he had to face. Gently, he lowered Runt back to the moss.

His old friend looked up at him, sympathy mixing with the pain he clearly was experiencing. “More … warriors. One, two kilo … meters back. The grenade … will bring them. You can get away with the … commbuzzer. Or you can die with me.”

“I’ll stay. I can’t leave you like this.”

“No. Nothing would be worse … than if they had an … antidote.”

Piggy looked at his friend’s face, saw the thoughts that were crossing behind Runt’s eyes. An antidote to the amphistaff’s venom, even a temporary one, meant minutes, maybe hours of suffering. Suffering, interrogation, horror.

Now there was only one escape for Runt.

Piggy felt tears flood his eyes, but he drew his blaster pistol. “Forgive me.”

“I … forgive …”

Piggy put the barrel beneath his friend’s chin and pulled the trigger. Runt’s body jerked and the smell of burned hair mixed with the odors of smoke and burned Yuuzhan Vong skin.

Piggy rose, shaking, and holstered his pistol. He gave his friend one last look.

Hohass “Runt” Ekwesh, poisoned and burned in death. His body would not be sent back to his homeworld for proper rituals. This was … wrong.

Piggy caught up the gray cylinder. Its contents buzzed, angry.

Commbuzzers. New Republic Intelligence had heard rumors of a new insect species created by the shapers of the Yuuzhan Vong. It was said these insects sensed comm traffic. They were infuriated by it. They would track it to its source. If the source was intermittent, they would fly while it was active, swarm when it ceased, resume their search when it became active again. With enough time, even a comm unit sending brief-burst data packets at intervals could be traced.

Chashima was the planet where they were being developed.

If Runt and Estoric had done their work right, the tremendous load of explosives Runt had carried would now be situated in, under, and around the shapers’ nest where the commbuzzers were being developed. The prototype insects, their creators, everything related to that project except the living examples in this cylinder would—

There was a distant rumble, followed by a succession of additional rumbles, and a pillar of black smoke rose into the sky to the south.

Piggy turned with his box full of bugs and ran.

“I know you don’t want to hear this.” Face’s manner and voice both demonstrated his sympathy, the sense of loss he himself must be feeling. “Despite our losses, you did something important down there.”

Piggy slammed his large hand down on his superior’s desk. In the tiny office cabin aboard the frigate that was the Wraiths’ temporary headquarters, the noise was especially loud. “This was a nothing assignment. Two good men died for nothing.”

“Yes, the war’s almost done. We have the Yuuzhan Vong on the ropes. But they’re so inventive.”

“Those bugs wouldn’t have turned the tide of the war.”

“Maybe not. But they could have led to the discovery and elimination of countless resistance and insurgency cells, countless commando and intelligence units. How many men and women would have died? A thousand? Just two hundred? Piggy, tell me that Runt or Estoric would stand in front of me and say, I won’t die for just a hundred men, I don’t want to go.”

Piggy sagged back in his chair. “Face … I don’t care. I’m done.”

“You weren’t done yesterday. Get some rest, take some leave, say your good-byes. You’ll come back in a few days ready for another fight.”

Piggy shook his head. “I don’t have another fight in me.”

“Piggy—”

“And don’t call me Piggy. I’m Voort. I left Piggy back with Runt.”

18

ACKBAR CITY, VANDOR-3
44 ABY (Today)

They filed into the office building of Toozler’s Speeder Repair and Maintenance, six bone-weary Wraiths.

Myri breathed a sigh of relief, holstered her blaster, and stepped out from the shadowy nook behind the stairs where she’d taken cover. “You didn’t comm me from the spaceport.”

“Refresher’s mine.” Jesmin dropped her bag against a wall. She stopped to give Myri a quick hug, then trotted upstairs.

“Blasted Jedi-like reflexes.” Trey put on an expression of irritation. “I thought for sure, this time the refresher would be mine.” He and the others set down their bags.

Myri gave them all a second look. “And you’re all sunburned.” It was true. Jesmin had borne the patchy redness of a new sunburn on fair skin, and everyone else showed signs of time spent outdoors under a hot sun—even the neoglith masquer Scut wore.

Bhindi fluttered her hands as though suddenly transformed into a dewy-eyed lady whose brain waves didn’t quite budge the needle. “Tatooine is so lovely this time of year.” Her voice and manner turned back to normal. “On the other hand, we got a good sale price on the second interceptor—we now have a budget for ongoing operations—and we have a hastily redecorated military shuttle in a hangar at the spaceport. As for not comming you, we didn’t know how long it would take us to scan and secure the hangar. How long you’d have to wait. So we just hired someone to speed us out here.” She took the chair behind the computer setup. “I’m starting to hate travel.”

Myri leaned over the counter toward her. “Your message didn’t tell me much. I take it the rendezvous was … unproductive.”

Bhindi snorted in wry amusement. “Turns out the general did the full-blown innocent thing and sent someone to capture us.”

Turman took a chair, stretched out his legs before it. “If Thaal turns out to be innocent, I’ll never forgive him.”

“So.” Bhindi put on a bright, cheerful face. “What’s your good news?”

Myri tried to decelerate from the sinking feeling she’d been experiencing for the days the other Wraiths had been incommunicado, in transit. “Face Loran is missing and presumed dead. So is his family.”

“What?”

“His airspeeder was blown up at an open-air market on Coruscant. A market where, at about the same time, two mercenaries—and suspected assassins—were found dead. Face’s body wasn’t found, but security detected genetic material, confirmed as his, in the wreckage. His wife and daughter are just missing. No trace. He hasn’t responded to messages sent to any of the back routes I know. Jezzie’s folks and other friends of the family can’t reach him.”

All the air seemed to go out of the other Wraiths. They stood in silence and stared at Myri.

Voort leaned heavily against a wall. When he spoke, his true voice was raspy and somber, at odds with the pleasant tone of the Basic words rising above it. “I hope it’s a ploy on Face’s part. I hope he’s in hiding somewhere, hunkered down. But we can’t deal with his disappearance right now. We have an objective, and it just got harder because we no longer have Face Loran as a resource. We can no longer ask him to swoop in and prove we’ve been doing things at the request of the head of Galactic Alliance Security. Face insulated us from him, which means we’re on our own at this point.”

“Agreed.” Bhindi sounded as weary as Voort did.

Voort looked at Bhindi before continuing. “Before I get to what’s really been occupying my mind, I want to say, one veteran to another, that I didn’t like what happened on the Concussor. Not so much the outcome as the fact that we didn’t have a plan to fight Thaal’s representative if we had needed to. It’s clear your plan was to break and run if anything went sour. We had no tricks up our sleeve to deal with them in an aggressive fashion if we’d needed to, no combat option.”

“That’s correct. We didn’t.”

“Why?”

“My decision, Voort.” Bhindi turned a hard stare on him. “You can ask me my reasoning if I retire and you take over as commander of the unit. Not before.”

“That’s not a good answer.”

“It’s all you’re getting. Now, you said something about what’s really been bothering you.”

Voort turned his head to stare at the blank wall opposite him. “I’ve been thinking about the Starhook and the other ships showing up with nothing but capturing us on their mind. I’ve been thinking about it during our whole time on Tatooine and the trip back. We’ve been talking as if Thaal’s decision to send that command to get us was the action of an innocent man, or at least had that appearance. Now I say it didn’t. Thaal’s decision was that of a guilty man trying to appear incompetent. It means he’s guilty. And I hope he puts up a fight when we come for him, so I can vape him myself.”

Bhindi seemed to welcome this chance not to think about Face. “What’s your reasoning? I don’t follow.”

They were interrupted by a metallic screech from overhead—the distinctive sound of their sanisteam stall’s malfunctioning compressor being activated.

Voort waited a few moments until the sound subsided. He scratched his cheek and his tone turned thoughtful. “Thaal did not act as a good senior officer should unless there are some odd influences at work. An offer made by an officer of a distant power to a major political force of the Alliance should pique the interest of anyone whose job is rooting out enemy spies. Meaning Galactic Alliance Security. If Thaal had reported the attempt to suborn him along official channels, it would have gone straight to General Maddeus. And I have a hard time imagining that Maddeus wouldn’t have put Thaal on a ship, sent him out to meet Hocroft, and had him play along. To give security more information about the effort to flip him. So Maddeus wasn’t notified. What happened instead was the most awkward and ineffective ‘innocent’ response possible. For it to have happened, Thaal had to have bypassed security completely. He had to have gone to an ambitious friend or acquaintance in another service and said, ‘You want to stay on the fast track to promotion? Here’s a spymaster you can catch.’ ”

Scut’s smiling human face frowned, an odd study in contrasts. “Which he would do only if he is stupid, or a really bad tactician—”

Bhindi nodded. “Which we know he isn’t.”

“—or because he wanted to make a big public show of being innocent, and is not worried about the harm the stupid tag might do to his reputation.” Scut looked thoughtful.

“It’s the last part that I find especially unlikely. If Thaal doesn’t mind people thinking he’s stupid—especially with a new Chief of State in office!—then he doesn’t care if he remains Chief of the Army. An ambitious officer who gets to the very top rung of his profession and then doesn’t care if he stays there.”

Bhindi caught the eye of each of the others in turn, Voort excepted. “That’s today’s lesson, children, except it’s from Math Boy instead of me. Be sure how smart your mark is. Be sure what his tactics should be. Then, when he deviates from them, you know you’re on to something.”

Scut reached up to pull off his neoglith masquer. “Sorry. I have to scratch.” He did, furiously scratching behind one ear. “But I see. The general does not care about being thought stupid, does not care about offending Maddeus of security by bypassing him, because he has no interest in protecting his current position. Because he knows he is leaving it. Leaving it for his new identity.”

“Thank you, Voort.” Bhindi sounded thoughtful. “This makes me feel a lot better. We didn’t lose the Concussor for nothing. We lost it to confirm, in a way that is inadmissible in court but I’m happy with, that Thaal is guilty. He’s our man.”

“I have some good news, too.” Myri tried to put on a hopeful expression. “It came up while you were in transit.”

Bhindi brightened. “Show me.”

Myri sat down beside Bhindi at the computer, brought up a planetary map, and began scrolling westward from Ackbar City.

Trey moved around behind her. “We really need a holoprojector. One, can I buy one?”

“Yes.”

“Great! Ummm … we need a mansion?”

“No.”

Myri’s scrolling and zooming filled the monitor screen with an ever-closer satellite map view of foothills graduating to mountains at the bottom of the screen, a village in the lower right corner, an irregular oval-shaped patch of what looked like indigenous scrub foliage dominating the left side, and grain fields everywhere else. “I also have a lot more information about procedures and schedules at the army base. And by the way, Pop-Dogs are much more grabby than normal soldiers, and I suspect there’s a warrant out for my arrest—well, me with white hair and dark skin—but none of that may be relevant anymore. The good news is that two more of Trey’s battery droids went active … and one of them is nowhere near Fey’lya Army Base.” She pointed at the monitor screen, toward the top of the natural-landscape oval. Under her fingernail was a small black square. “Last night, the new droid started transmitting from here. Right at that square.”

Bhindi leaned closer to peer. “What’s there?”

“The Javat Caridan Environment and the Javat Caridan Children’s Animal Habitat. It’s a preserve for endangered animal species—endangered because they’re from Carida and most were wiped out when that system was destroyed. Just after the Yuuzhan Vong War, one of the original Pop-Dogs, Captain Jam Javat, bought this property and turned it into a preserve. He retired a major a few years back and moved out of the Coruscant system. The property operates under a trust now. No business relationship at all to General Thaal, in theory. Anyway, over the years Javat assembled breeding populations of several Caridan species, including real pop-dogs, and let them adapt.”

Voort moved to stand by Trey. “No business relation to Thaal.”

“None. So it doesn’t show up on any searches of Thaal’s business connections anywhere. He’s never even contributed to the charity fund that operates it.” Myri hit a few keys. Abruptly there was a design superimposed on the map, a wire frame representing some sort of structure, narrow, a few hundred meters in length. “Parasite Droid Twelve sent us a few floor-level views of a dark bunk room with army-style beds and no occupants. Apparently the only droid it’s managed to subvert runs on nonvisual sensors, so I don’t have any pictures from it to offer you. Just distance measurements from its movements, which I’ve turned into this schematic. This is a subterranean complex, ranging from one to four vertical levels depending on where you are, with working turbolifts, including one to the surface. Right where that black square is. At maximum magnification, the square looks like an old equipment barn, a good-sized one.” She pointed to a white square at the top of the property. “That’s the children’s habitat. Not that they keep children there. Children visit to pet the pop-dogs and the dwarf banthas, and to learn about the bluehair spiders and walking cephalopods.”

Bhindi stared off into the distance, past the walls. “Fruit crates.”

Turman glanced at Scut. “I’ll admit it: I did not know she was going to say that.”

“I, either.”

Bhindi snapped back to reality. “Trey, new shopping list.”

Trey scrambled to bring out his datapad and opened it. “Recording.”

“We need a big load, several bushels, of fruit in crates. Local produce. Some carpentry tools and some heavy-duty flexiplast sheeting. Rope. Small winches capable of hauling any of us up or down. Ambience suits for all of us, but don’t be surprised if you can’t get one for Voort, even from Coruscant. An ambience shroud. Make sure everyone has a blaster pistol and a vibroblade. Macro-binoculars or goggles with night-sight functions. Packs and gear belts in black.” She thought it over. “Various types of detonators, and lots and lots of explosives. Estimates?”

Trey thought it over. “Two days.”

“Get started. Take all the boys with you. You can sanisteam when you get back.” She gave them a little shooing gesture.

Scut pulled his mask back on, and the men left.

Overhead, the sanisteam screeched as it was shut off.

Bhindi returned her attention to Myri. “I don’t know how close they actually are, but Jesmin’s known Face all her life.”

Myri nodded. “He’s basically an uncle to her. Not so much to her brother Doran. Jezzie and Doran weren’t raised that much together.”

“And Jesmin’s known you a long time. I don’t normally ask this sort of thing … but would you tell her? About Face?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Suddenly Myri began experiencing that sinking feeling again, worse than before.

It was not a thing of beauty, the wooden framework Trey and Turman built atop the cargo bed of their landspeeder, but it would do the job.

It started with Vandor-3 yellow spotmelons. The spotmelons filled numerous wooden crates, which the carpenters fitted to a wooden rack affixed with quick-release bolts to the upper rim of the speeder bed. The crates covered the rack’s top so that it looked as though the bed was loaded with them, but the space beneath the rack was open, with a layer of insulating foam laid in place for the comfort of passengers there. When it was done, the landspeeder looked like many such vehicles destined for a growers’ market. But the space beneath the rack was large enough to comfortably hold four normal-sized humans.

Voort studied the design, then went inside to talk to Bhindi. “Three in the cab and four in the bed, then.”

She sat in the midst of a riot of purchases, doing a quick check on the battery packs supplied with the ambience suits. She smiled up at him. “Yes.”

“We’re taking all seven of us on this operation.”

“Again, yes.”

“Shouldn’t this be a one-or-two-Wraith job? Minimum presence, maximum speed?”

She shook her head. “Maximum mutual support.”

“Which makes sense if we know the environment we’re going into, or know that it’s going to be a firefight. If we take seven operatives in, we’re more likely to be detected.”

Her expression became thoughtful, as if Voort were imparting wisdom. “In which case we know there’s going to be a firefight.”

“Bhindi—”

“That was a joke, Voort. But you’re partly right. You’ll remain with the speeder. You’ll be the armored cavalry if things go bad. Scut will stay topside, too, since he has no insertion skills to speak of.”

“Leaving five going in. Still twice as many as we want for an initial reconnaissance.”

“I know it’s not the way we used to do it.” She returned her attention to the power packs. “Things change, Voort.”

The next afternoon, they loaded up—Bhindi, Turman, and Voort in the pilot’s compartment, the rest reclining in the bed—and the Wraiths began the long haul to the village of Kreedle, the community nearest the mystery installation. They arrived just before nightfall, Vandor’s setting sun casting and then lengthening the shadows of the mountain foothills south of them. In the landing area of a wooden general store shaped like a truncated cone, Voort and Bhindi stretched their legs while Turman went in to shop for refreshments and snoop for information.

A crate of spotmelons spoke up. “Leader, I need to go to the refresher.” The crate had Trey’s voice.

Bhindi grinned. “Not here. We’ll be back in the air in a few minutes and we’ll find you a tree. Are you finding anything in local news or tourism archives?”

The spotmelon’s voice became deeper, smoother—Turman’s announcer voice. “ ‘The most famous sites in Kreedle Precinct are Sachet Springs, a popular water park known for its natural beauty, water-sport facilities, and campsites; the Javat Caridan Environment and the Javat Caridan Children’s Animal Habitat, a preserve for endangered Caridan species, with a petting area for children’—it says something here about not petting the bluehair spiders, because though they are not aggressive their hair-bristles conduct a rash-inducing toxin—and ‘Mount Lyss Meteorological Station, a long-abandoned government facility used during the Yuuzhan Vong War as a hideout by freedom fighters.’ Tours apparently not available, as the place was abandoned again after the war and is in an ongoing state of decay.”

Another crate of melons, this one with Myri’s voice, spoke up. “I say we bag the mission and go to the water park.” There was a general murmur of agreement from the rest of the crates.

“Good try, Three, you almost convinced me.” Then Bhindi frowned. “How do they keep the toxic spiders from spreading all over Vandor-Three?”

Voort heard key clicks from under the crates, and then Trey answered. “A series of three one-meter-high perimeter barriers that transmit low-intensity tones, supersonic and subsonic, that send the spiders and other nonindigenous species into retreat.”

Bhindi laughed. “That’ll be where their perimeter sensors will be, as well.”

Turman returned, with no new information except that the locals seemed to be suspicious only of people who spent no money at the store. He carried two bags of refreshments, one for the passengers in the pilot’s compartment and one for those in the bed. Then the Wraiths boarded the speeder once again and lifted off.

The route to the Javat Caridan habitat was marked by a paved ground-vehicle road used by heavy haulers taking crops to processor plants or market. Trey’s downloaded data showed that the road went all the way to the children’s animal habitat and beyond. When the Wraiths, traveling just above that road, came within a few kilometers of the preserve, sturdy, low Vandor-3 scrub trees bordered the road, blocking ground-level views of the preserve all the way to the children’s habitat building.

Darkness had fallen by the time they reached the preserve. Two hundred meters from the children’s animal habitat, Voort could still not see it ahead; the road curved, blocking his view.

At the speeder’s controls, Turman brought the vehicle to a slow landing off the pavement, as close to the scrub trees as was feasible. Voort, out first, retrieved the ambience shroud from the very back of the speeder bed.

The shroud looked like a green awning of thick flexible material, a telescoping pole at each of its four corners. Hastily, Voort situated each pole just beyond a corner of the speeder and triggered a button at the pole’s bottom. Each trigger deployed a spike that punched its way into the ground, giving it an instant, firm foundation in the soil. In moments the awning’s cloth top was taut, waving slightly in the mild summer breeze.

Voort activated the power pack nestled against the awning’s underside. In moments it would compensate for heat rising from organisms and vehicle engines beneath it, making it difficult for infrared sensors in satellites and airspeeders to detect the speeder.

Voort wrote a note in big letters on a sheet of flimsi—REPULSORS FAILED, RETURNING ON FOOT TO KREEDLE, PLEASE DON’T STEAL OUR MELONS—and affixed it to the front window. Meanwhile, the other Wraiths struggled into their ambience suits. Made of black elastic cloth a centimeter thick, the suits operated on the same principle as the ambience shroud. A web of temperature sensors throughout the suits sent data on interior and exterior temperatures to a tiny processor. The processor adjusted the power sent to thousands of fluid-filled capillaries embedded in the material, cooling or heating different areas in turn. The result was a material that cooled its wearer’s skin and maintained its own external surface at the temperature of the surrounding air—again, making the wearer almost invisible to infrared holocams. The suits included long-sleeved body stockings stretching from neck to ankle, gloves, shoes, and hoods that bared only the wearer’s eyes.

In minutes they stood ready as a unit. Scut carried a blaster rifle; the others wore holstered blaster pistols. All had black packs. Others had tools of individual preference clipped to belts: glow rods, pouches, vibroblades, comlinks.

Bhindi turned back to Voort. “If you hear alarms go off, don’t wait for us to signal. Come roaring in, purge anyone shooting at us, and get us out of the danger zone.”

Voort nodded. “Sure you don’t want to reconsider?”

“I’m sure.”

Once the black-clad Wraiths had vanished into the line of scrub trees, Voort took his blaster rifle and walked a few dozen meters into the trees. He sat down to wait.

19

The Wraiths waited in a little hollow, a depression in the ground twenty meters from the outermost sensor ring.

A few hundred meters north, by the ground-vehicle road, was the children’s building, a low, long yellow structure with glow rods up on poles all around it. A paved landing zone surrounded the building, with a few landspeeders parked on it. Lights glowed behind curtains in the viewports, but there were no people to be seen around the building. The Wraiths had looked over the building from a distance for a few minutes, then had moved on to this location.

A few hundred meters to the south lay the building that was supposed to be the surface access for the mystery installation below. Myri stayed at the depression’s upper rim, her macro-binoculars trained on the building. She had a good view of it. Square-shaped, it was constructed along the lines of corrugated sheet-metal businesses in Ackbar City. In her macrobinoculars’ infrared filter, the building was a sieve for internal heat. Warm air poured out of a number of gaps and seams all along the angled metal roof, from a tall rolling door on the east face, from various vents, and from what looked like popped rivets along the north and east facings.

Myri set down her macrobinoculars and slid a couple of meters down into the depression, joining Scut, Turman, and Bhindi. “It doesn’t match the satellite view.”

Bhindi pulled at the eye opening of her hood and peeled the hood off her face, exposing her features and giving herself some fresh air. “What do you mean?”

“The whole place is bigger than that image shows, at least thirty meters on a side and ten high. And it’s surrounded by a permacrete lot. None of that’s on the satellite image.”

“Meaning …” Bhindi pondered that. “Meaning they have to have sliced a constant image into what the satellites see—either an old scan or a computer-generated image. I’ll bet Four would call that some tricky coding. Speaking of Four …”

Myri shrugged. “He’s up at the sensor wall, checking it out. I lost track of Five when she got about a third of the way around the perimeter.”

There was a faint scrabbling sound from above, then Trey’s head crested the rim of the depression from above. He elbow-crawled over the lip and slid down to the bottom. He, too, pulled his hood’s eye-gap so his head could emerge. “Good news and bad news.”

Bhindi gave him a chilly isn’t it always that way? smile. “Start with the bad.”

“That sensor wall is a continuous belt that broadcasts supersonic and subsonic audio tones, just like the tourist notes said. It also has continuous belts of listening sensors and short-range motion detectors—by short-range I mean a meter or less. It’s going to be difficult to get over without an airspeeder. And I’m detecting sensors from the building that become viable at an altitude of about three meters.”

Bhindi sighed. “And the good news?”

“Well, we were presuming sound imaging, too, and there isn’t any. And it looks to me like the two inner-perimeter fences are set up identically.”

Bhindi, judging by what could be seen of her face in the moonlight, didn’t look happy. “Well, maybe Five will have better news for us.”

Five did. Half an hour later, Jesmin slithered over the lip of the depression and down to join the others. She didn’t bare her face.

She sketched out a diagram by dragging a finger through the soil. Under Trey’s glow rod, switched to minimum power, it showed the square building, three concentric sensor rings, the distant children’s animal habitat, and a straight line from the square building to the children’s habitat. “This line is a rut in the soil. The local grasses and shrubs don’t grow there. The rut looks like it was blown, abraded, by the constant passage of heavy-duty airspeeders. Cargo speeders. The repulsor wash has undermined the soil at the base of the sensor fence, at least on the outermost ring. It looks to me like someone has replaced the dirt there, packed it in, but they haven’t done anything to address the problem, like pouring a permacrete base for the fence.”

Scut frowned. Myri felt a twinge of sympathy for him. He was wearing his neoglith masquer face and gloves with the ambience suit over them; perhaps he wasn’t overheating, but Myri decided she’d be on the verge of claustrophobic panic in such a rig.

Scut touched the points where the line representing the rut crossed the curves representing the sensor fences. “Can we dig through deep enough to crawl under?”

“I think so. And quietly. Deep enough for me, One, Two, and Three certainly. I don’t know about you and Four. You’re kind of thick-chested.”

Trey snorted. “Thank you for not saying thickheaded.”

“I thought about it.”

Bhindi began to tug her hood back into place. “Let’s do it. Hands only for the digging, no tools. And no talking. That means you, Two. Let’s go.”

Turman sniffed as if offended, but he did not reply.

They set their blasters and other hard equipment aside and dug as quietly as they could, slowly, painstakingly deepening and widening the loose soil packed around the fence base. They did not worry about being seen by unaugmented eyes. In deep shadow in their black ambience suits, against a black permacrete wall with a black metal mesh sensor layer on top, they were invisible to anything short of special light-gathering sensors.

Jesmin was quietest, as befitted an Antarian Ranger with extensive wilderness experience. Turman remembered not to practice soliloquies. The task seemed to take forever; the stars wheeled by overhead as the Wraiths dug. Myri could see artificial objects up there with them—capital ships, illuminated by the system’s sun, approaching or departing the atmosphere, space stations in their orbits, all of them tiny shapes.

Eventually the gap under the meter-high sensor fence became large enough for even Trey to slither through. Permitting themselves no noise-increasing haste, they crawled under, transferred their bags and blaster rifles across, and moved on.

They elbow-crawled along the repulsor rut, taking advantage of the slight visual cover it offered, until they were at the second sensor wall. This time things went a bit faster; their experience with the first wall had developed their stealthy digging technique. This wall took only half an hour to dig beneath.

They were halfway between it and the inner wall when the landspeeder appeared.

Scut, in the rear, was first to notice. He rapped on Myri’s leg and pointed back. Just turning off the ground-vehicle road into the landing area of the children’s habitat was a long, sturdy landspeeder, one optimized for cargo hauling. Its running lights were not on; it became visible only when it passed under the pole-top glow rods around the long yellow building. Myri could now hear its repulsors humming.

The Wraiths froze where they were.

Bhindi kept her voice a whisper. “I’ll bet Four’s left arm they’re running with infrared sensors on, and that they’re coming this way—yes.” The landspeeder floated across the landing lot and then onto the rut. “Everyone do exactly as I do.” She resumed her elbows-and-knees crawl toward the inner fence, moving faster now.

By the time the landspeeder floated over the middle fence, the Wraiths were beside the innermost fence. They lay motionless in the rut, arrayed in two ranks of three. Myri, on the left of the front rank, kept her attention on Bhindi in the middle. Jesmin, on the other side, did the same.

The hum of the oncoming landspeeder grew into a low roar—and then Myri felt sudden pressure from the repulsors passing above her. It started at her feet and ankles, moved quickly up her body. She imagined the sensation to be like having a rancor-sized baker try to flatten her with a giant rolling pin.

Then it was past, just barely past, and Bhindi sprang to her feet only centimeters behind the landspeeder’s rear panel. Myri and Jesmin scrambled up. Together the three women leapt over the sensor wall, hit the ground in a roll, and then went flat again. There were more impacts as Trey, Turman, and Scut hit the ground behind them, and one of them—Myri thought it was Turman—went flat with half his body weight across Myri’s legs.

They lay still and silent while the landspeeder continued on toward the square building. Myri heard a metallic rolling and scraping noise from the east face of the building, probably the door being opened. The landspeeder made the turn to the east wall of the building and floated out of Myri’s sight.

The repulsor noise began to echo and diminish. The scraping-rolling noise resumed and continued for quite a while. Then, finally, all became silent.

Myri turned her head to see who had fallen on her. But half a meter away was a spider. A ten-legged arachnid, it was as large in diameter as a Wookiee’s open hand and almost as hairy. As Myri stared, wide-eyed, it raised its front four legs skyward in a threat display.

Myri cringed and didn’t move.

The spider’s forelegs wavered, but otherwise the creature remained still.

Myri tugged her face mask away from her mouth and blew, a steady stream of breath that flowed across the arachnid, causing its hair to stir. Myri hoped the action would be a deterrent, not an invitation to leap on her face.

It was. The arachnid’s forelegs wavered again, and then the creature turned around and ran away from the rut.

The Wraiths waited a dozen meters away while Jesmin finished her reconnaissance around the square building’s exterior. Then she appeared at the northwest corner and waved them forward. Myri and the others joined her at the west—back—wall. They huddled midway along the wall, where Jesmin showed them a sheet of wall metal with most of the rivets torn out, probably from years of being flexed by winds. Jesmin pulled the metal sheet a few centimeters to one side, and light streamed out.

Through the gap they could see that the interior was a single chamber, thirty meters on a side, dominated in the center by the darkened top of a cargo lift shaft, itself twenty meters on a side.

Jesmin pointed at a spot directly above the east-side door, and at locations about six meters up on the north and south walls as well. In each place, a bracket bolted to the wall held a good-sized holocam unit, its lens pointed out through a round hole cut in the sheet metal of the wall, aimed outside. She kept her voice so low that Myri could barely hear her. “I think there’s one overhead, too.”

Trey eased her out of the way and trained his macrobinoculars at each of the three holocams in turn, flipping between several filters and enhancement options as he did so. Then he lowered the device. “Infrared. We’re covered. And I don’t see any cams monitoring the interior.”

There were no people, either military or civilian, to be seen. Bhindi nodded. “Six, pull back twenty meters and prepare to offer us warning or covering fire. And you don’t need tissue samples from the spiders. Everyone else, we’re going in.”

Inside, the chamber was eerily silent. Only a few metallic clanks and the waver of distant voices, too faint to be understood, floated up from the lift shaft. Myri crept up to its edge. The permacrete all around was curiously clean and was marked with holes, two to three centimeters in diameter, whose edges were even cleaner—almost white.

Trey edged up beside her, looking at the same holes. “Something was bolted down all over the floor until recently. I’m guessing it was flooring, maybe concealing the lift. The holes are deep for strength.”

Jesmin leaned over the shaft. From her pack she withdrew one of the winches Trey had bought. About the size and shape of a human shoe, it consisted of a coil of industrial-strength cord a hundred meters long, high-torque gripping rollers, and a power pack, with simple controls on one surface. The trailing end of the black cord had a black grappling hook attached. She leaned over the shaft edge with the hook in hand, attached it to something underneath, and clipped the winch to her belt. “Ready.”

In moments all five of them, one by one swung themselves over the edge, into the darkness. Far below a square of light showed them their destination.

As she descended, Myri decided that it would have been a serious misstatement to refer to the shaft as part of a turbolift. Turbo did not enter its description at any point. Myri had occasionally seen lifts like this, on backrocket worlds and in industrial complexes. At the four corners of the square shaft were durasteel tracks, something like gigantic chains with regular sprocket holes. Presumably, far below, there would be a large, square lift car, probably open-top, with motors at each corner driving gears that spun slowly and engaged the sprockets. Ascending or descending might take one minute or several, but the lift could haul tremendous weights.

As the square of light below grew larger, what lay within it resolved into objects Myri could recognize. The lift car had reached bottom and the late-arriving landspeeder was still upon it. Men and women in brown moved on the lift-car floor, hauling cylinders—half a meter high, perhaps the same in diameter, black at the ends and pink in the middle—and stacked them in the landspeeder’s lengthy bed. Myri saw a total of six workers doing the loading. None of them looked up. When she drew closer, she could see the stylized tooth design of the Pop-Dogs on the workers’ collars.

When Myri was about twenty-five meters above the landspeeder, Jesmin, five meters below her, stopped her descent. Myri could only see her eyes as Jesmin looked up at the other Wraiths. Moments later Myri reached her level and switched off her winch. As they arrived, the other three Wraiths did likewise.

Jesmin pointed toward the side of the shaft directly ahead. Peering, squinting, Myri could barely see that there was some sort of horizontal gap there. She drew out her macrobinoculars and looked through them, cycling through different light-amplification modes.

Ahead was a railed metal balcony. It would be beyond the edge of the lift car when it rose or descended. On the other side of the balcony were doors at intervals—open doors with blackness beyond. Myri put her macrobinoculars away.

Jesmin reached for her, and Myri caught her hand. Awkward, unable to brace herself, Myri swung Jesmin forward. Jesmin swung free and came within a couple of hand spans of the metal rail. When she swung back, Myri pushed her again, and this time Jesmin caught the rail.

In two minutes, all five Wraiths were at and over the rail. Jesmin and Trey disappeared through the nearest door. Myri and the others waited at the rail, watching below.

It looked as though the lift car was at the floor of a chamber much larger than the lift shaft; sturdy square durasteel columns took the lift’s tracks all the way to the floor, but Myri could see open space beyond them in all four directions. Open space, and the noses or tails of vehicles. Some were very large; others seemed to be ordinary airspeeders. It looked as though a metal trench, deeper than the floor by at least a meter, ran north and south from the lift shaft. Myri thought that the trench might meet in the middle, directly beneath the lift car. When Myri spotted the rails along either side of the trench, she knew what it was for, had seen its like in some old cities: it was a slot to guide vehicles that traveled laterally along it, probably also hauling cargo.

The stacks of pink-and-black cylinders grew higher. When the first of them protruded well above the landspeeder’s cargo bed, the Pop-Dogs threw a blanket across it, then tied the stack firmly in place.

Jesmin and Trey returned from their scouting run. Jesmin leaned close to Bhindi to whisper in her ear. Trey did the same with Myri. “It’s a residential floor. Empty. Stripped of furnishings. Air ducts closed down and power off.”

“How long ago?”

“Some dust on the floor, but not thick. A few weeks?”

Bhindi drew another twenty meters of cord from her winch, then clipped the end of the cord. She tied it off to the metal rail so it would be loose but not dangle into the shaft. She gestured for the others to do as she did.

Finally the loading of the landspeeder was done; blankets secured and concealed four stacks of cylinders. The Pop-Dogs talked among themselves until a seventh individual, a human man in civilian dress, stepped onto the lift car from a spot out of the Wraiths’ view. He spoke briefly to one of the Pop-Dogs and climbed into the cockpit of the speeder. The Pop-Dogs stepped off the lift car and moved to the side, out of Myri’s view.

Bhindi waved the Wraiths back through the doors. Before they were quite through the doors, the lift was in motion, rising slowly and noisily.

In the darkness of the abandoned residential level, Myri breathed a little more easily. “This is some sort of distribution center.”

“The cylinders are military casks for bacta.” Jesmin sounded grim. “A hot commodity on the black market.”

“I think this will be the proof we need.” Bhindi sounded happy. “If we prove that Thaal is in an operation trading military bacta to the black market, he’ll be ruined, dishonorably discharged, imprisoned, and investigated from his scalp to his soles. It’ll be so thorough that there’s no way he’ll be able to keep an association with the Lecersen Conspiracy secret. Record everything you see here … and I think we’ve won.”

The lift car rose clanking past their level. The noise gradually declined as the car climbed.

20

Two minutes later, the Wraiths rode their winches down their lines to the floor, landing silently at the edge of the loading area. Jesmin was first, landing in the shadow of one of the track columns, and she took a few moments to scan her surroundings before waving the others down. Coming to rest on the permacrete floor, Myri also scanned their surroundings.

It was a large chamber, a motor pool by the looks of it. Most of it was a broad permacrete shelf with that gash of a metal trench running down its middle, dividing it in half. The trench continued north and south along the center of a broad, high, arch-topped corridor lit by ancient glow rod fixtures, many of them flickering with age and lack of maintenance. The corridor extended to the limits of Myri’s vision in this gloom, and she could see doors, some human-scale and some six or seven meters high and wide, dotting the walls every twenty to thirty meters. She also thought she glimpsed cross-corridors in either direction.

The vehicles around her—she saw full-sized plasma artillery batteries, modern units that rode easily on repulsorlifts. There were hauler landspeeders, expensive personal airspeeders, speeder bikes, and armored personnel speeders.

There were no people to be seen, and the place was eerily quiet. The only noise came from the lift car now reaching the top of the shaft.

The Wraiths tied their cords off to metal rings at the base of one of the columns, then gathered in the deepest shadows, which were on the wall beneath the abandoned residential level.

Bhindi looked around at the bounty of the motor pool and shrugged. “We’ve won.”

“We’re not out of here yet.” Myri didn’t know whether or not to be appalled at Bhindi’s assumption of victory.

“True. But look. Artillery units. I’ll give you hundred-to-one odds that they were reported destroyed in field exercises. Now they’re going to the black market. All that bacta.”

“Why is it so empty?” Though his whisper could not carry much emotion, Trey sounded distracted, bothered. “Why was the top-side floor pulled out?”

“We’ll find out. Orders.” She pointed to Turman. “He gets all the explosives with comm-based detonators. The simple ones. Four, check him out on them to make sure he knows how not to blow himself up. Two, you’ll stay here in this chamber and put charges beneath the repulsor motivators on as many of these vehicles as you can—military vehicles first. As we leave, we’ll set them off so they can’t fly the evidence away on short notice. Then, Four, you and Three check out everything interesting to the south while Five and I do the same to the north. Record everything. Don’t get caught. We’ll muster back here in an hour. Clear?”

Myri nodded. “Clear.” But her confirmation did nothing to diminish the unease she felt.

Myri crept with Trey a few dozen meters down the south corridor. They peered into the first doorway, an open rectangle of black, and within it saw only a storeroom whose shelves held crates of food—cereal products, dried fruits, sweeteners, powders meant to be mixed with drinks.

“I need to check this out.” Trey turned his back on the storage room and moved in a crouch over to the trench. He slipped down into it, disappearing from Myri’s view.

She followed, landing beside him in the shadowy gap. “I told you, I know what it’s for.”

“Yes, you did, and you were right.” Trey gave her an enigmatic look—enigmatic only because she couldn’t see his face and interpret his whole expression. “But do you know everything it’s for?”

He pointed to the trench side, which was beneath an overhang perhaps ten centimeters deep. He flicked on the glow rod in his hand, illuminating a section of metal trench wall. “See those bolts? They’re securing a panel a meter wide, a meter tall.”

Myri nodded. “Sure.”

“A panel to an access tunnel. Under the permacrete floor. Probably a lot of them. Some will handle drainage, some will give access to infrastructure machinery. As empty as this place is, I bet many of them aren’t ever looked in. When we pull out, we ought to leave one of us behind to continue surveillance. Our evidence will be a lot stronger if we do.”

“Tell Leader.”

“I will.” He crawled southward, keeping well below the trench lip above.

Myri followed, occasionally peeking up above the rim to see her surroundings. “My father was on the Death Star Trench Run. You know, the famous one. Me, I get the General’s Basement Trench Crawl.”

Myri couldn’t see his face, but Trey’s shoulders seemed to stiffen. “I know who your father is. Everyone knows who your father is.”

“I beg your pardon?” She looked at him, startled.

“Some of us don’t have famous relatives to admire. Or nonfamous relatives to admire.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. It was a joke.”

“All right.”

Jesmin and Bhindi kept to the shadows along the wall when they were deep enough, switching to the trench when they were not. The two worked their way northward. In short order, they passed a succession of doors into darkened areas on either wall.

“So quiet.” Bhindi raised her head a little from the trench and looked around before ducking again. “I hear distant voices and music. Recorded music, I think. Echoing.”

Jesmin peered under the lip of the trench edge. With one gloved hand, she reached for the lump she saw adhering there and tugged at it, levering it free of the metal above. It came loose with a faint ripping noise, and she presented it to Bhindi.

It was an irregular mass, centimeters thick, of some material Bhindi obviously couldn’t at first make out—layers of different colors, white and tan and gray and black. Bhindi peered more closely at it.

“Paint.” Jesmin squeezed it in her hand, causing the edges to buckle, warp, and peel away. “Scores or hundreds of layers.” She sniffed at it, detected the dim smell of solvents and durasteel treatments. “This complex is very old.”

Bhindi’s eyebrows rose, disappearing under her hood. “I know what this place is.”

“Enlighten me.”

“A Tech Raiders base. The black marketeers from long ago. Thaal and his original Pop-Dogs hid out in one of their bases near the city of Vangard to do their guerrilla activities against the Yuuzhan Vong. While I was flitting all over the galaxy with your dad and Piggy and the other Wraiths, Thaal was squatting in a place like this and harming the enemy his own way. But not from this base. This one doesn’t appear in his history anywhere.” Bhindi blinked, considering. “That would explain why he had Fey’lya Base built so far from Vangard and the old clone trooper facilities. He wanted to be conveniently near here—his own black-market staging area.”

Jesmin offered her a nearly silent whistle. “He found more than one base and never reported it. He’s been corrupt ever since the end of the Yuuzhan Vong War.”

“At least. I wonder …” Bhindi shifted as she thought. “Maybe there were still some old Tech Raiders here when he arrived. They might have helped him learn the lay of the land, taught him smuggler stealth techniques … and convinced him to become one of them. Maybe his Pop-Dogs are the Tech Raiders of a new generation.”

Jesmin nodded. “And maybe Thaal is just the man to put them through a massive expansion. Make them a galactic-class crime syndicate.”

The first two chambers Jesmin and Bhindi examined turned out to be dormitories, each occupied by a dozen bunk beds now shrouded in transparent flexiplast. Dust collected in a thin layer on all surfaces.

The third chamber, on the far side of the trench, was free of dust. Bhindi slid the corridor door shut behind her and switched the door-side control panel so that the glow rods overhead would stay shut off even though there were people in the room. Then the two women moved from shelving rack to shelving rack, navigating by the light from their glow rods, looking at what was warehoused there.

High-grade, military-specification electronics parts, repair and replacement components for comm systems, sensor systems, and power generators. Opaque black transport cases marked only with the dates they were sealed; the planet of origin on each was shown as Kessel. Bhindi actually seemed to pale in the light from Jesmin’s glow rod. “Glitterstim cases,” she told Jesmin.

Several shelves held bacta—lots of bacta, black-and-pink cylinders identical to those loaded on the airspeeder. Each cask of the miracle healing drug was clearly marked with the name of a military base. Most numerous were those marked FEY’LYA ARMY BASE, VANDOR-3. And on nearby shelves were crimson casks marked VRADIUM and AMBORI.

Suddenly tired, Jesmin rested her forehead against one shelf.

Bhindi moved closer. “Five, you look like you want to cry.”

“I do.” Jesmin drew a couple of ragged breaths, trying to get control of herself.

Bhindi frowned. “I’m not familiar with—what are they? Vradium and ambori.”

“Mix them together and they offer up the chemical cues that tests use to determine if a fluid contains bacta. Mix them with an inert pink fluid medium, and they look just like bacta. And so those two drugs are part of what is referred to as the Bacta Three-Way, or the Bacta Triangle Scam.”

Bhindi shook her head. “I haven’t heard of that one.”

“Pretty much confined to the black market. It’s a triangle because it’s a three-component scam. You need new bacta, and bacta nearing the end of its useful life, and quantities of these two chemicals. Say you’re the receiving officer for supplies at a hospital or military base. New bacta comes in. You take the new bacta and pour it all into containers marked as something else. Then you sneak them out of storage and sell them on the black market. You take the old bacta and put it in the new bacta containers. And you put the vradium-ambori-inert-compound mix in the containers that are supposed to hold old bacta. When those containers go through their periodic tests, one test confirms that they’re bacta, but a second test indicates that they’re past their effectiveness and should be destroyed.”

“Oh.”

“And it’s worse even than just stealing a hospital’s bacta. Because anywhere this scam is run, the medics requisition a cask of new bacta. It’s sent up, used on a patient—or, in a crisis, like the aftermath of a battle, a bunch of patients—and the patient sickens or dies, because in the meantime that batch, which is actually old bacta, has gone bad. People die.” Jesmin turned away for a moment so Bhindi would not see her face. “My fi … friend … was murdered while looking into an instance of that exact scam. During the last war.”

“I’m sorry.”

The door slid open. Jesmin looked in that direction. A Pop-Dog, a datapad in his hand, walked in.

The man, a Twi’lek, his skin blue and his brain-tails hanging loose, approached the aisle where the Wraiths stood. He did not look their way at first.

Then the door slid shut, plunging the chamber into blackness.

“Stang.” There was a clank as the Pop-Dog, probably turning back toward the door, hit a metal shelf. A duraplast object clattered on the floor.

Jesmin fixed the scene, everything she had seen just before the room went black, in her mind. She darted up the aisle, brushing past Bhindi, and turned where she thought the intersection to the Twi’lek’s aisle was.

She was right. She dashed forward, unimpeded.

Then she ran into him. He seemed to have grown shorter in three seconds—he barely came up to her waist and she tripped over him, crashing headfirst down on the hard floor. The thick ambience suit hood cushioned the impact, but she still saw little pinpoints of light dance around in the darkness like embers drifting up off a fire.

“Who’s that? Who’s there?” The Twi’lek moved forward, stumbled across Jesmin in turn, and slammed down on top of her.

She grabbed at him, found his neck, tried to catch him in a choke hold. But one of his brain-tails impeded her.

A shaft of light blinded Jesmin. Then there was a familiar sound, a blaster being fired. The entire chamber illuminated for a moment, blue light flickering across the Twi’lek’s chest, Bhindi silhouetted by light from her own shot. Then the Twi’lek went limp and the chamber went dark again.

Jesmin froze, listening.

All she heard was Bhindi’s breathing. Then, Bhindi’s voice: “Five?”

“Here.” She rolled the Twi’lek off her and rose. By memory, she moved to the door. It opened at her approach, allowing light to pour in; cautious, she leaned out, looked both ways.

There was no one in sight.

She withdrew, and when the door closed, she adjusted the wall switch to disable the door’s proximity sensor.

She turned back toward Bhindi, who now stood in the light cast by her own glow rod. “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

“Yes, it was. I got emotional. Clouded my ability to sense others. My fault.” She moved to grab the unconscious Pop-Dog and drag him to the back of the chamber. “I’ll tie him up. You record everything.”

In a darkened warehouse chamber toward the southern end of the installation, Myri stared at the shelves full of blaster rifle cases, power pack cases, grenade crates. For someone like Myri, who liked her mayhem occasional but loud, the chamber was a playroom of unrealized promise.

Then she noticed that Trey had stopped talking. Instead, he was leaning forward, his forehead pressed against a heavy-duty, locking transparisteel cabinet.

Myri moved until she could see his face. “Four? You suddenly look like you want to cry.”

“I do.” He stepped back from the cabinet and shone his glow rod on its contents.

The cabinet had two shelves, themselves transparisteel. On the top shelf were two silvery bowl-like stands, and in each rested a globe larger than a balled human fist—a globe with dials and a depressible button.

Myri stared at them for a moment, then clamped her hand over her mouth to suppress a gasp. “Thermal detonators.”

“Two of them.” Trey’s voice was almost rapturous. “Two, I have to steal these.”

“Is there security on that cabinet?”

“It looks like … Yes. Really good security, too.” Trey peered at the locking mechanism, which was made of durasteel and not transparent. He crouched to give it a good look.

“You just want them for yourself.”

He stood up, put a finger to his lips, and walked as quietly as possible to join her. He turned her toward the exit door and preceded her there. He slid the door open manually—they’d taken a moment to disengage its proximity sensor—scanned the main corridor beyond, and led her out. Only when the door was shut again did he speak. “There was a listening device in the case’s security system.”

Myri felt a chill pass through her. “So base security is already on to us—”

“I don’t think so. That type of device isn’t very sophisticated. I bet it just noted that someone was talking in the vicinity of the case and broadcast that fact to the central security computer. It dropped a flag saying, That was a little odd.”

Myri blew out a breath of relief. “But not until enough flags are dropped around the base—”

“—does the computer say, Things are getting stranger. I’d better wake everybody up.”

“Let’s not drop any more flags.”

“Good idea, Three.”

Continuing on, they found more warehouses, both of them empty and dusty, and a dormitory block—two large chambers for men, one for women, both dark but sparsely occupied. Myri could hear the regular breathing of sleepers within. One door farther on led to a communal refresher. Myri could hear the hiss and feel the flow of moist air from an old-fashioned water sprayer; the old base had nothing so modern as a sanisteam. She and Trey crept past, not alerting whatever soldier was within.

In the last cross-corridor before the main hall ended, they discovered the cell block.

It wasn’t a big tunnel, only three meters wide and three tall, lined with metal doors. Each door had a metal crossbeam at waist height and a metal mesh grate, through which some air and light could pass, at head height. Only one door, the one farthest from the main corridor, was lit from within.

Trey checked his chrono. “Almost time to rendezvous. And we have the proof we need. Private ownership of thermal detonators is kind of illegal. Suggests terroristic impulses.”

“Look, all our recordings can’t explain why we’ve only had to duck two Pop-Dogs while exploring this whole wing. Why we keep finding sealed-off, empty dormitories and officers’ quarters. The farther we get away from the central shaft, the emptier the place is. Why?”

“Because nobody wants to live close to a pair of thermal detonators?”

“Nice answer, but I want some confirmation. The kind of confirmation only a willing witness can give us. Like a prisoner.”

Trey sighed. “Let’s make this fast.”

They moved silently up the corridor and paused outside the door that showed light from the room beyond. Both took long moments examining the door exterior, the surrounding walls for holocams and audio pickups, but there were none. In fact, the entire arrangement here looked primitive—doorway carved by long-ago lasers out of living stone, doors and fittings made from heavy, armor-quality durasteel.

While Trey looked over the door’s locking mechanism—a large metal lock, crude but effective, it clamped down over the center of the metal crossbar that held the door in place—Myri stood on tiptoes to peer through the metal grate. Yes, the chamber was lit inside, and Myri could see two stuffed chairs, a low table between them, a gridded game board on the table. In each chair sat a man, both Duros males with large black eyes and gray features.

One of them glanced up to look at the door just as Myri caught sight of him.

She ducked down again.

A voice, thin but musical, floated out through the grate. “Who’s out there?”

Trey glared up at Myri. “Stealth not being one of your skills.”

“Four, I notice you never go on intrusions with the same member of the team twice. Diplomacy not being one of your skills.” Myri stretched on tiptoes again and brought her mouth close to the grate. Her reply was a whisper: “Be quiet if you want to live.”

“Very well.”

Trey made a faint noise of disgust. “These guys make me sick. The jailers, I mean. This is a low-tech nightmare. No electronic security on it at all. The lock and the end caps keep the bar from being moved. The keyhole is for a huge, simple metal key. Ordinary lock picks won’t budge the mechanism. And if I can get it unlocked, the bar’s got to weigh a hundred and fifty kilos. The Pop-Dogs must use a lifter droid to move it.”

Myri put some sweet-sounding mockery into her voice. “Big, strong man like you, you can clean-and-jerk a hundred and fifty.”

“Of course I can. But I was thinking about someone of more average abilities. You, for instance.”

“Ooh, you’ll pay for that.”

“If I had Five’s lightsaber, I could cut through this in sixty seconds.”

“Just unlock the door, Four.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Trey thought about it for a moment, then pulled his vibroblade out of a waist sheath. “Give me your blade.”

“You’ve got yours.”

“I need both. To disassemble.”

“Oh.” She drew her weapon from its sheath and handed it to him.

While Myri watched both him and the surrounding corridor, Trey took apart the vibroblades, separating the metal blade components, which could still stab and cut with reduced efficiency even if the weapon’s ultrasonic augmenter or battery failed, from the electronics. He slid both blades into the key aperture and began prying and twisting with them.

Two minutes later there was a clunk, too loud by far for Myri’s taste, and Trey withdrew the blades, which were now bent and scarred, their edges ruined. He dropped them into his pack and flipped up the main body of the lock so that it no longer held the bar.

He stood and bent to grip the metal bar, both his hands cupped along its underside. He straightened with a grunt, heaving the bar clear of its brackets, and carried it a few meters along the wall. With similar care, he set it down again, making less noise than the lock had.

Myri drew her blaster. She waited until Trey had done the same. Then, cautious, she pulled the cell door open.

Bright glow rod light poured out. Her quick glimpse showed social room furnishings, side tables loaded with computer equipment. The chairs, their occupants, and the game table had not changed. The Duros men stared at Myri with their big, dark, alien eyes, their faces schooled into expressionlessness.

Myri entered the chamber. From her new vantage point, she could see side doors that probably led to auxiliary chambers.

Trey entered behind her, pulled the door shut, and pressed his face against the grate to keep an eye on the exterior.

Myri lowered her blaster just enough that she was not pointing directly at either Duros. The men wore orange-and-yellow-striped jumpsuits, easy to see in any environment, suitable for prisoners.

Myri knew a little about Duros physiology, enough at least to distinguish age. She turned to the older man, recognizable as such by the extra wrinkling of his face, his slightly more sallow complexion. “Who are you?”

“My name is Usan Joyl. Who are you?”

Myri felt her jaw drop. “Usan Joyl?”

The Duros shook his head. “No, that’s me.”

Trey glanced back in their direction. “Who’s Usan Joyl?”

“I am.”

“He’s … He’s …” Myri felt herself on the verge of stammering. She tried to clamp down on her emotions. She’d grown up surrounded by famous people, but most of them weren’t artists. “He’s a master of false identity preparation. Maybe the most famous one alive. Though we didn’t know for sure that he was alive. He disappeared years ago. We assumed he’d made himself a new identity and retired.”

The Duros kept his voice pleasant. “I’ll never retire. I’ll die before I retire. But I’m only famous within certain societies. Who are you?”

“I’m … I’m a protégée of Booster Terrik. I was named for his daughter. I own six fleecing records on the Errant Venture.”

“Ah.” Usan Joyl at last sounded satisfied. He stood, bowed, sat again. “Allow me to present my grandson, Dashan. He is as adept as I was when I was four.”

The younger Duros snapped his head around to stare at the older. Myri thought he was glaring. But he merely said, “You’d been to jail twice by the time you were my age. My record is clean.”

“Things were different then, child.” Usan turned back to Myri. “Can we offer you some caf?”

“No. I assume you’re a prisoner of General Thaal. Can I offer you some escape?”

21

Flanked by two clusters of patchy, waist-high grasses, Scut sat staring at the square building thirty meters away. He kept very still, blaster rifle across his lap, macrobinoculars to his eyes, moving only to sweep his field of enhanced vision across the terrain before him.

Wheet.

That was a whistling noise, not the wind, not human, coming from well past the building.

A response came from the north: Whooo.

Wheet.

Whooo.

Scut frowned. He hadn’t heard these noises before. He slowly scanned leftward, looking for their source.

Wheet.

Whooo.

He didn’t worry about the bluehair spiders creeping up on him while he was concentrating on events farther away. They already had. Twice now while he was aware of it, perhaps more times when he wasn’t, spiders had walked cautiously up to him, had begun to step up on him … and then had apparently decided they didn’t like the feel of the ambience suit cloth. They had turned and wandered away at an unconcerned pace.

Wheet.

Whooo.

There, motion—something had moved, closer than his depth of field. Scut adjusted his optics, bringing his point of focus back toward him twenty meters. But there was nothing to be seen on that patch of ground, though Scut was sure he’d found the correct place.

He remained motionless.

From a dark spot on the ground, right at the center of his macrobinocular view, a creature rose into place. It was furred, rodentlike, with long incisors and stubby arms that ended in paws like spindly hands. It was perhaps thirty centimeters long, and it sat up out of a hole in the ground as though it had been raised by a tiny turbolift.

It opened its mouth, and that noise emerged: Wheet.

A call came in response from off to the south: Whooo.

Scut grinned. It had to be a pop-dog, the original variety. Was that a mating call, an all-clear, a We’re fine here, how are you cry to a distant nest? And could he, Scut, get a tissue sample before they left?

The pop-dog lowered itself into its hole.

From behind, a huge, heavy hand came down and clamped onto Scut’s right shoulder.

Myri, Trey, and the Joyls kept to the rail trench all the way back to the motor pool chamber. It was slow going—Usan Joyl was not a young man, and his knees did not permit fast passage—but they moved steadily.

When the motor pool chamber was visible ahead, Trey, in front, waved to stop the others. He peered at the trench ahead, clearly troubled.

Myri, in back, scooted up to join him. “What is it?”

He pointed to a spot on the trench’s right side. There, a circular metal hole a centimeter in diameter could be seen. He tugged his right glove down and held his bared wrist over the hole. Then he withdrew and gestured for Myri to do the same.

When she did, she felt cool air on her skin.

Trey groped around on the floor. “All four bolts holding that panel to the trench side are gone. I swear, there was no panel undogged like that when we came this way.”

“Are you sure?”

“Not absolutely sure, no.” Trey drew his blaster pistol from its holster.

Myri did likewise, and moved a few meters back to have a better angle on Trey and the panel.

With his free hand, Trey gripped the top of the panel and tugged. The panel leaned open, revealing a black, open space beyond.

Trey aimed, clearly saw nothing, and relaxed. He carefully pushed the metal panel until it fit snugly where it had been before.

Troubled, he holstered his weapon. “Sorry.” He resumed his crawl, leading the others on toward the motor pool.

They reached the near edge of that chamber without incident. Myri glimpsed movement in the trench ahead, though it was hard to make out because of the dimness of the glow rods. Two figures, nearly flat against the trench floor, worked their way toward Myri and Trey. After a moment she recognized them: Jesmin and Bhindi.

Myri raised her head to look beneath the parked landspeeders and other vehicles nearby. She saw no sign of Turman. Perhaps he’d finished and concealed himself.

Jesmin and Bhindi crawled the last few meters to reach them. They stared past Trey at the Duros men. Bhindi glanced at Myri. “Report?”

“Leader, meet the witnesses. Witnesses, meet Leader.”

The Joyls offered low-energy waves of their hands.

Bhindi nodded. “Good. We have some, too. Not living. We’re going to cook the general in his own juices. Where’s Two?”

Myri shrugged. “Unknown.”

“If that long-winded attention magnet delays our extraction—”

“See, here’s another one.” Trey sounded irked. He pointed to the side panel to Bhindi’s left. “I know there were dog-bolts in that one before.”

Jesmin disappeared. Myri saw the blur of motion suggesting that the woman had leapt straight up from a crawling position, but she vanished so suddenly she could have been a hologram image suddenly terminated.

The same instant, the panel Trey was pointing at fell over, slamming into Bhindi, knocking her sideways. It clanked to the permacrete floor; the noise echoed off distant walls. Two black-clad human men rolled out from the tunnel it had concealed.

One was lean, angular, and fair-haired; he covered Bhindi with his blaster pistol. The other was more muscular and lithe, his hair dark and curly; he covered Myri with his own weapon.

The fair-haired man glowered but kept his voice low. “Don’t move!” He whispered the words, but it was a high-volume whisper, like steam escaping from a faulty caf brewer.

Then Jesmin leaned down from overhead and pressed her own pistol barrel to the top of the fair-haired man’s skull. “You, either.”

Bhindi stared at the man. Her eyes widened. “Sharr?”

The fair-haired man stared back at her. “Bhindi?”

Myri looked at the man covering her. “Kirdoff!”

He peered back at her, just as bewildered. “Rima? Is this your natural color?”

“Blasters down, everybody, before somebody fouls up irretrievably.” Bhindi glared in all directions.

The man she’d called Sharr nodded. “Do it.” Everyone holstered blaster pistols.

“Five, incoming?” Bhindi asked.

Jesmin rolled back over the lip and dropped silently into the trench. “No one coming yet. But that clank …”

Sharr glared at Bhindi. “This is a Wraith operation.”

Bhindi nodded. “You guessed right. So you and your little friend—”

“Guessed, hell. This is a Wraith operation, and you’re about to foul it up.”

Irritated, Bhindi gestured at Trey, Myri, and Jesmin. “It’s a Wraith operation, and here are the Wraiths. You need to get your—”

Sharr’s glare was no less forbidding than hers. “No, we’re the Wraiths, and you—”

“Both of you, shut up.” Myri didn’t raise her voice, but she put a threat into her tone. She pointed at Sharr. “Who recruited you for this?”

He paused, considering his answer.

Myri felt herself getting more annoyed. “Now’s not the time to give me the silent treatment. If you’re Sharr, you’re Sharr Latt, and you used to be a Wraith. I’m Myri Antilles, and my father founded the Wraiths. So answer me. Who recruited you?”

Sharr’s eyebrows rose. “Myri Antilles. I met you when you were a little girl. You probably don’t remember—”

“Who?”

“Face Loran.”

Myri turned to look at Bhindi. “We’ve got two teams here. Both being played.”

Bhindi looked baffled. “But why?”

Myri turned toward Trey. “You said you thought we were good on flags. But what if there are two teams here dropping them?”

He shrugged and looked apologetic. “We could be in trouble.”

A noise, a combination of clanging and keening wail, filled the air.

Bhindi glared at Sharr. “Do you have our Clawdite?” She had to raise her voice to be heard over the alarm. She straightened so that her eyes were above the lip of the trench. She looked northward, then southward.

“Oh, he’s yours. That explains the ambience suit.” Sharr maneuvered himself into a crouch and took a topside look as well. “My medic darted him. Would have used a different drug if he’d known it was a Clawdite. As it is, your guy has just become dopey and amiable instead of unconscious.” He turned toward the tunnel he’d rolled out of. “Everyone out, we’re extracting!”

“Was it before or after he sabotaged all these vehicles?” Bhindi growled.

“His explosives bag was pretty full.”

Bhindi clawed at the air above as if trying to punish some greater power for letting her down.

Now there were shouts from north and south, but no Pop-Dogs came immediately into view. A great creaking and rumbling sounded from overhead as the lift began a slow descent.

A third person rolled out of the trench tunnel. A dark-skinned human male, probably in his twenties, he was clad, like Sharr, top to bottom in black, but he also wore a black hip-cloak that would have looked good on any fashion icon. He held a long rifle, almost spindly compared to a mil-spec blaster rifle, in both hands. From his prone position he flexed his back and was suddenly on his feet, crouching beside Bhindi.

Bhindi looked at him. “That’s Wran Narcassan. Sharr, you stole my sniper.”

“He’s my sniper.”

Narcassan didn’t look at either of them. “I’m open to offers. But let’s leave first.” His voice was mellow and unperturbed.

“We all need to be at the balcony one floor up before the lift gets to it.” Jesmin glanced at Bhindi for confirmation. “Otherwise we won’t be able to winch all the way up.”

Bhindi nodded. “Go.”

Jesmin led the way, leaping effortlessly up to floor level and darting between landspeeders as she raced to the column where they’d tied off their cords.

Sharr added, “Two, back her up.”

“Two’s our Clawdite.” Myri gave Sharr a confused look, but it was Wran who leapt up to floor level. “Oh, your Two, not our Two.”

Bhindi raised her voice almost to a shriek. “This is not going to end well, this is not going to end well, this is not going to end well.”

A blaster bolt from the south plowed into the metal of the trench lip a meter from Bhindi’s head. She flinched, then returned fire. Myri thought it was more suppression fire than an attempt to hit the enemy; the enemy was not in sight. The Joyls flattened themselves on the trench floor.

To the north, a figure in the distance moved from left to right, crossing from one side of the main corridor to the other, leaping the trench. Sharr took a shot at the figure, missed him by several meters.

Now another man crawled out of the access tunnel. He was a Devaronian, red-skinned and bald, with horns protruding from his brow and sharp, sharp teeth in his mouth. He got to his knees, spun, reached back in the hole, and dragged out yet another man—Turman, bound hand and foot, his hood off, an improvised cloth gag holding wadded cloth in his mouth. He was now in Clawdite form, his human appearance abandoned or unavailable to him.

Bhindi yanked the gag down off his mouth and pulled the wadding out. “Two, did you plant the charges?”

Turman looked blearily at her and cleared his throat. “So it has come to this. Perhaps a Rodian and a Bothan should never have wed, and yet we did. And now our union is as dead as Shacobi there. Yet can we not preserve one last happy memory of our years together?”

Bhindi paused, studying him. Then she shoved the wadding back in place and yanked the gag back up.

Myri chanced a look southward. Figures were moving there, too, Pop-Dogs in uniform, no armor, but rifles in their hands. One of them, too, darted toward the far wall, preparing to leap the trench.

Myri aimed straight along and above the trench and fired. Her shot took the Pop-Dog as he jumped. He fell, limp, smacking into the permacrete on the far side of the trench with a bone-breaking impact. Myri frowned. “Leader, in a minute they’ll figure out they can jump into the trench and shoot at us, and the trench walls will channel the bolts right into our bodies. Now that we’re all together—”

“Yes, Three. Let’s go.” Bhindi scrambled up out of the trench and ducked behind a red, open-top landspeeder.

In moments they were all up and charging toward the column with the tied-off cords. Trey had Turman over his shoulder. Sharr and Bhindi held back, moving up more slowly, providing covering fire, Bhindi north and Sharr south.

Myri saw Jesmin and Wran begin their ascent, both on the same rope, Wran holding on to Jesmin. She guessed that the second team of Wraiths didn’t have winches of their own.

Reaching the column, Myri untied the next cord. “Kirdoff, with me. Four, our Four I mean, carry Usan.” In seconds, she hooked up her winch to her belt and the cord.

“I’ll get the other Duros topside.” The Devaronian slapped Dashan’s arm, gestured toward a far corner of the back wall where the Wraiths had convened earlier, and went running.

“Where’s he going?” Myri gestured for the curly-haired man to wrap his arms around her neck.

He did. “Emergency-escape stairwell. Standard on underground bases that might be damaged by bombing. Except our bomb’s in there now, and Drikall will set it off when they’re past it.”

Myri entangled their legs, then hit the winch button.

“By the way, it’s not actually Kirdoff. Fodrick, Thaymes Fodrick. Nice to meet you.”

“I’m Four. Just Four.”

“Awww. You can trust me. I’m a Wraith.”

“A Wraith in an enemy facility, vacuum-brain.”

She and Thaymes reached the rail of the darkened residential level. Jesmin, standing there, tossed the trailing end of her ascent cord and Thaymes caught it. Jesmin hauled them in. Wran now stood against the side wall and was methodically firing into the thrusters of all the airspeeders within line of sight, crippling them. His laser rifle was eerily silent compared with blasters.

Thaymes kept talking as they climbed over the rail. “One of the leaders should really be up here, directing. I mean, the orders you were barking out were fine, but—”

“I think they have unresolved issues.” Myri glanced overhead. The lift car was halfway down. “If the Pop-Dogs had any sense, they’d lock that car down where it is right now and trap us here.”

Thaymes trained his blaster pistol at the scene below. Sharr and Bhindi were now in sight, backing the last few meters toward the column. Trey began his ascent, slow because of his and Usan’s combined weight. No Pop-Dogs were yet in sight below, but a constant rain of blaster bolts slammed into parked speeders all around the Wraiths. Myri estimated that at least eight Pop-Dogs were firing, and their numbers seemed to be growing.

Thaymes grinned. It was a charming expression, completely out of place in this environment. “They can’t lock the lift. I can take control of it at any time. When it gets right below this level, I’ll lock it. Which will last a minute or two, until they figure out how we did it.”

“Well, that’s … clever, I guess. But there may be forces on the lift car itself when it passes us.”

Down below, Bhindi and Sharr were both in the process of hooking up winches. Myri guessed that Sharr was using Turman’s; the actor, now unbound and ungagged, sat with his back to the column, apparently singing to himself.

A Pop-Dog, a female trooper, appeared, creeping out from under cover just beyond the lift shaft’s northwest support column. She drew a bead on Bhindi or Sharr. Wran didn’t have line of sight on her, but the others did. Thaymes got off a quick shot, missing the woman but causing her to flinch. Stun bolts from Myri and Jesmin struck her, sending her unconscious to the floor.

And Thaymes kept talking throughout. “No. Our Wookiee has taken care of all the Pop-Dogs at the big building.”

“You have a Wookiee? We don’t have a Wookiee.” Myri knew she sounded hurt.

“We don’t have a Clawdite.”

Below, more Pop-Dogs were creeping in toward the leaders and Turman. The Wraiths at the rail stepped up their fire, forcing the Pop-Dogs to keep down and behind cover.

Sharr picked up Turman, a strain for him, and started his ascent. Bhindi unloaded blasterfire, ill aimed but furious, at the enemy.

“Wait a second. Your Wookiee. Female? Cream-brown fur?”

“Yes.”

“I think she served me a fizz-and-brandy the other night.” Myri crouched, taking better cover behind the rail, as the Pop-Dogs below began returning fire.

Wran, his shoulder braced against the wall to the right, fired. His rifle discharged with a quiet hum. The bright bolt that emerged hit just below the visor of a helmeted Pop-Dog. He fell.

Myri winced.

Trey and Usan reached the residential deck level and stopped his ascent, hanging a few meters ahead. Myri flipped him the trailing end of her cord. Usan flailed but caught it. Myri hauled them in and helped them over the rail.

Thaymes left off his semi-inaccurate covering fire. From a waist pocket he drew a comlink, pressed a button. The lift, now just a few meters overhead, ground to a halt.

All the Wraiths poured covering fire down on the Pop-Dogs, keeping them from targeting Bhindi as she ascended. The Wraith leader made a bad target anyway, a black shape rising on a black cord into a black shaft, but the blaster bolts themselves provided some illumination.

Bhindi reached the rail at the same time as Sharr and Turman. None of them had taken a hit. Myri helped them over. Thaymes started the lift car down again. It passed them, empty but for an unconscious Pop-Dog. Once it was at their level, the sound of alarms from below muted.

Thaymes stopped the car right there. He hopped the rail and dashed over to take possession of the Pop-Dog’s blaster rifle and gear while the others began their staged ascent up the shaft, Trey and Usan first.

Bhindi brought out her comlink. “Sharr, what’s your extraction vehicle?”

Ruefully, Sharr pointed downward. “We came in earlier this evening on a ground transport we’d boarded. We were going to take it out, too. Until someone triggered the alarms.”

“You, probably. I guess you’ll want a lift, then.”

“If it wouldn’t be inconvenient.”

She activated her comlink. “Seven, come get us. Prepare for seven additional passengers.”

22

Voort scrambled to the fruit-laden landspeeder. He undogged the bolts holding the wooden rack to the bed and gave the whole rig a tremendous shove. The rack with all the crates of spotmelons slid backward until almost half of it was out over empty air.

He got behind the pilot’s controls and had the vehicle in the air before its console diagnostics even admitted that the vehicle was awake. He roared out from under the ambience shroud awning and accelerated all the way to the turnoff onto the children’s habitat landing lot. He slewed leftward across the lot.

There were people in the way.

There were at least a dozen men and women in the lot, most wearing sleepwear but carrying blaster rifles or pistols. Some were on foot, running toward the building that had been Bhindi’s target. Others were climbing onto speeder bikes or into airspeeders.

Voort triggered his running lights, shining brightness into the eyes of the enemy, and cranked his repulsorlifts to maximum. The hauler seemed to bounce as it gained another meter of altitude—Trey had done quite a job in rebuilding the old machinery. Voort shoved the thrusters up to full power and headed straight for the line of speeders now being boarded.

The pilots tried to scatter. Some got clear. Most did not. Voort roared over the line of vehicles, his repulsors hammering them down, knocking the speeder bikes flat, slamming pilots down into their seats or onto the pavement.

Some of the men and women on foot hit the ground. Others turned and fired. Voort heard and felt an impact as one rifle shot struck home.

He slewed a little to the left so that he would not hit the shooters full-on. Instead he grazed them, slamming them into the side of the children’s habitat building as he passed.

Seconds later he reached the building. He made the turn onto its eastern facing, decelerating and dropping to boarding altitude in just a few meters. Now he could hear, muffled and distant, a sound of alarms. The building’s sliding door was shut.

Somewhere, during all that maneuvering, he had lost the rack of fruit crates. He hoped it had landed on some of the enemy speeders.

He picked up his blaster rifle and hit the control to open the passenger-side door. He tried to keep his attention simultaneously on the console’s holocam monitors and on the viewports all around him.

The building’s main door slammed open, not a normal thing for a door of those dimensions to do, and dropped off its metal railings. It fell to the ground, barely missing the speeder’s rear panel. The individual who had slammed it open from within—a Wookiee, fur a light brown in the overhead light, wearing a weapons bandolier with a bowcaster hung from it, glowered at Voort.

Voort kept his grip on the rifle, ready to aim.

But then Scut ran out of the building, past the Wookiee, and hurtled into the landspeeder’s bed. Neither he nor the Wookiee reacted to the other.

Voort slid open the rear viewport of the pilot’s compartment. “Be ready to return fire from the other building.”

Scut nodded, scrambled to the rear of the bed, and readied his rifle.

Jesmin, emerging from the building, trotted past the Wookiee as though she hadn’t seen it. She leapt onto the speeder bed and took up position beside Scut.

Wraiths and strangers began cresting the lip of a square gap that dominated the building’s floor. They ran to the speeder, most of them piling into the bed. Trey carried Turman, whose hand motions suggested he thought he was directing an orchestra. Trey saw the blaster damage to the speeder’s front panel; he shot Voort a hurt look before boarding. Voort saw a curly-haired human man, a dark-skinned man with a late-model sniper rifle and a hip-cloak, a male Duros he did not know. All boarded the speeder.

Bhindi and an angular, light-haired man emerged. They clambered into the pilot’s compartment, the man in the center seat, Bhindi on the far side. She shut the boarding door. And still the Wookiee waited where it stood.

Voort looked at Bhindi. “Go?”

“Not yet.”

“Piggy!” That was the angular man. He sounded surprised.

Voort stared at him. “Sharr?”

His onetime teammate smiled. “How did she recruit you? I thought you’d never come back. I didn’t even think to try.”

“It’s Voort now, not Piggy.”

“Right now it’s Seven,” Bhindi spoke through clenched teeth as she stared back past the Wookiee into the building’s interior. “Come on, come on.… ”

Behind Voort, someone opened fire with a rifle. Obviously targets were in range and in view.

Finally, out from the doorway came two more men, a Devaronian and a Duros. They were drenched with sweat and staggering from exhaustion. The Wookiee went into action, helping them to the speeder, lifting them into the bed. Then the Wookiee jumped on just behind the cab, facing forward.

Bhindi nodded, satisfied. “Now.” Her head snapped back as Voort hit the thrusters. There was no tremendous thump from behind; the Wookiee must have known to hang on tight.

Voort steered them out over scrubby terrain, not yet heading back toward the road. “Where to, Leader?” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the sound of the suddenly straining thrusters and repulsors.

Bhindi and Sharr both started talking at once, then glowered at each other.

Voort tried again. “Bhindi? Destination? There will be pursuit from the other building. I can’t have wrecked all the speeders there.”

“And from below when they get the lift topside with vehicles we didn’t wreck.” Bhindi sounded disgusted. “I’m thinking, I’m thinking. We’re probably under satellite observation now. We need to get somewhere we can mix with crowds and traffic … really fast.”

“Really fast.” Voort glanced at his sensor board. It didn’t show any pursuit yet. “You’re talking about over a hundred kilometers. We’re in the boondocks, Bhindi.”

“What’s the next broken terrain?”

“Foothills start nearby. Real mountains a little farther on.”

Bhindi made an unhappy face. “That might work, but we don’t know those mountains. Unless”—she fixed Sharr with a stare—“you do.”

He shook his head. “We haven’t had time to scope them out.”

There was a beep from the sensor console. Voort saw two blips, then a third, back near the roadside building. There was another blip far ahead, from the vicinity of the village. “We have pursuit and one incoming from ahead.”

“All right. Mission objective first. We get the data to the authorities now. If Thaal knows it’s all over for him, he may decide not to add killing us to the list of charges.” She craned her neck to look back through the viewport. “Four! Transmit all our recorded data. All comm channels, maximum strength, so they can’t possibly contain it.”

Sharr added, shouting, “Three—my Three—do the same. In fact, you two patch your files together. Give them a big data dump.”

Bhindi, still looking backward, craned her neck. “I see them. The pursuit. Two airspeeders, one swoop. We can take them.”

Voort shook his head. “See how they’re hanging back? Their job is to pace us, not let us out of their sight. So we can’t duck into a ravine somewhere and be gone by the time the real pursuit arrives. Which it will.”

Sharr kept his eye on the sensor board. “Bhindi, we need to set down, scatter, and hide out until the broadcast brings the authorities in.”

“Comm frequencies are being jammed!” That was someone in the bed. Voort didn’t recognize his voice. He thought it was the young man with curly hair.

Sharr gritted his teeth. “Never mind.”

Now the distant pursuers began shooting—blasterfire flashed across night-black fields and stands of trees, hitting soil or plant life near the landspeeder. The shooters seemed to have little accuracy, but Voort began a series of minor course corrections to throw them off.

Nor were the Wraiths and passengers having much more luck returning fire. They were obviously being bounced around too much to get an accurate aim on any of the pursuers.

Bhindi looked back. “Four! What was that historical site again?”

Trey left off firing, turned to shout forward. “Mount Lyss Meteorological Station.”

“Defensible?”

“Deep under stone at the mountain’s summit. I’m guessing it’s defensible for a while. Maybe.”

Myri left off firing, too. She pivoted and clambered her way forward. She gripped the viewport’s rim with both hands to stabilize herself and leaned in past the Wookiee’s furry legs. “If things are hopeless, I have an idea.”

Sharr nodded. “Definitely hopeless.”

Bhindi glared at him but answered Myri. “That’s more than I have! What is it?”

“Get us behind cover and slow down just for a second. I’ll drop off and hide. If I can get clear of the jamming, I can transmit a call for help from one of my personal assets. I’m talking about a full-strength extraction force. I think it’ll get here pretty fast—a few hours at most.”

“We’ll do it. You get clear and send your message. If your asset can’t help or doesn’t reply, then transmit all our evidence data instead and we’ll hope that it does some good.”

“Done.”

Bhindi pulled out her datapad, opened it, brought up a map. “Here’s where we are. Here’s Mount Lyss. Let me switch to topological view … there.” She pondered for a few moments. “All right, Voort. Up ahead is a drop-off. Make for it. Once we get on the other side, we’ll be out of their direct sight for a few seconds. Slow down so we can drop off a unit. As soon as they’ve deployed, turn to course three-one-five and make for Mount Lyss.”

“Understood.”

Bhindi turned to Myri. “You take Five. She’ll get you through. Sharr, on your team, who’s best with rough terrain?”

“Huhunna. That’s our Wookiee. Kinetic artist with first-rate wilderness skills. Who’s going with her?”

“I am.”

“The hell you are.”

“I have a plan, so shut up. Give Huhunna the order.”

Sharr scowled, then stuck his head out the viewport. “Huhunna! Prepare to jump when we slow down. You’re Bhindi’s wingmate.”

Voort heard an answering rumble. The Wookiee didn’t sound happy.

Voort wasn’t happy, either. “Bhindi, you’re a planner. A trainer. You need an infantryman for this. I’ve done it before; I should go.”

“No back talk, Voort. This is woman’s work. Time?”

“Thirty seconds until the ridge. This is not a good plan.”

She merely looked back through the viewport. “Somebody pass me a rifle!”

One came forward. Myri handed it to her.

“Ten seconds.” Voort kept his eyes on the sensors, saw the ground ahead simply end. He raised his voice in a bellow: “Hang on!” Then they crested the ridge.

The landspeeder was canted downward. It was a steep slope, forty or forty-five degrees off horizontal. Voort let off the thrusters. He disengaged the automatic levelers on the repulsors, revving the port-side repulsors and reducing power to those on the starboard. As the landspeeder began to tilt to starboard, he slewed into a rightward turn. The repulsor thrust kicked up a tremendous cloud of loose stones and dirt, driving it before them as if the speeder were a giant broom. The landspeeder half flew, half skidded down the slope, its left side now its leading edge as it slid. The speeder’s bed remained almost perfectly horizontal.

They hit the bottom of the slope and slid leftward another few dozen meters, but had no forward thrust left. Voort adjusted the repulsors, brought them level again.

The rear thrusters began to put the speeder in forward motion again.

Voort’s second bellow was as loud as the first: “Jump, jump, jump!”

Bhindi went out the starboard passenger door and was lost to sight in the darkness. Voort felt the speeder’s load lighten as three in the back also bailed. Then the vehicle began to get up to speed again.

Sharr scooted rightward, grabbed the door, and yanked it shut. Then he grinned over at Voort. “You’re still pretty deft at the controls, aren’t you?”

Voort glanced at his sensor board. “More contacts. Some big ones, from the installation. What did they have down there?”

“Artillery.”

“Stang. Navigate us to this meteorological station, would you?”

As the landspeeder roared off to the southeast, Bhindi sprinted southwest along the ridgeline, Huhunna lumbering along behind. Bhindi could hear the footsteps, punctuated by clattering rocks, of Jesmin and Myri running northeast along the ridgeline, directly away from them.

Bhindi could also hear oncoming speeder thrusters. She didn’t turn to look—a single misstep on this rough terrain could leave her with a broken leg. She simply shouted. “As soon as they crest the ridge, we separate. When they spot our speeder, they’ll turn to follow, and will present their flanks to us.”

Bhindi’s command of the Wookiee language was not impressive, but she understood Huhunna’s rumble of agreement.

It took only thirty seconds. Then the roar of pursuit became very loud. Bhindi took up position behind a line of knee-high stones. Huhunna, faster when not hampered by a human, got up to full running speed and was thirty meters ahead, behind an outcropping of boulders, when the first pursuing landspeeder crested the ridge.

Bhindi braced her rifle on the rock before her and tracked the speeder, a white closed-top model with at least two rifle bearers inside. It roared down the slope, kicking up its own cloud of dust and pebbles. Just before the ground leveled off, it began a rightward turn in pursuit of the Wraiths. Its maneuver had none of the grace of Voort’s, but the speeder remained upright through its turn. Behind it, a red speeder bike piloted by a stocky blond man in rumpled white clothes topped the slope and roared down in the speeder’s wake.

Bhindi switched her aim to target the speeder bike, leaving the landspeeder to Huhunna. She tracked the speeder bike, led it, and squeezed the trigger.

Her bright blaster bolt hit the vehicle’s rear thruster array. Bhindi saw the speeder bike’s tail end slew toward the left; then the pilot lost control. The speeder rolled down the slope, its front strut hitting stone, and the vehicle began to come apart while still moving at better than two hundred klicks an hour.

There was a loud report behind Bhindi. She turned in time to see the lead landspeeder slew to the left, a gaping hole spilling black smoke low on the vehicle’s right side. Huhunna had made her bowcaster shot count; the landspeeder did not crash, but it was definitely down for the count. Bhindi watched as its pilot managed to slow it expertly and bring it in for a skidding, slewing, yet successful landing.

There was still more noise coming. Bhindi swung around and aimed at the spot on the ridge where the previous two vehicles had crossed.

The next speeder, a silver-gray open-air model, crested the ridge about thirty meters north of that spot. Bhindi lowered her rifle’s aim to compensate and fired, but her shot plowed into the stone of the ridge. Then she tracked the speeder as it descended and began a gentle arc to the right. She glimpsed three humans in it, two in the front, one in the rear, and saw the rear passenger turn his own rifle barrel toward Bhindi. He fired. His bolt went high, flashing over the ridge crest.

As the speeder reached the bottom of the slope and banked rightward, both passengers began to fire at Bhindi, rapid and badly aimed shots that still converged on her position. Closer, closer, too close—she went flat. Sharp stones dug into her chest and ribs, and she was grateful for the padding offered by the ambience suit. Two shots flashed over her body and hit the slope just above her.

There was a minor explosion from that vehicle. Daring, Bhindi raised her head to look. The gray speeder was slowing to land, a hole suited to a bowcaster in the right flank. Its pilot and passengers, two men and a woman in civilian dress, rolled out over its top edge, landing on the ground on the vehicle’s far side. They took shelter behind it and continued returning fire.

Bhindi hissed to herself. It was good news, bad news—the constant state of life in Wraith Squadron. Her plan had succeeded brilliantly so far. All three vehicles were stopped and the other Wraiths should make it to Mount Lyss. But there were now five—no, six: she now saw that there had been three people in the white speeder—Pop-Dogs arrayed against two Wraiths, and more were on the way.

There—a man from the gray speeder sprinting north, toward the slope to Bhindi’s left. It was the enemy’s first attempt to flank the Wraiths.

Bhindi shot him. She wasn’t sure where her bolt took him—in the ribs, she thought. She was sure that the runner fell and stayed down. Five Pop-Dogs to go.

There was a scream from the white speeder. Bhindi glanced that way, saw that the speeder was smaller than it had been before. Huhunna appeared to be taking it apart with methodical bowcaster fire. A man sprawled behind, on his back, smoke rising from his chest. Four to go.

But now more roaring was audible, both from the west and the northeast. In the latter direction, in the distance ahead, Bhindi could see a brown airspeeder cruising at an altitude of about two hundred meters. It wasn’t headed her way, but off at an angle toward the right … toward Voort’s even more distant speeder. And the noises from the west were mixed, shrill speeder repulsors and a deeper rumble. Something big was approaching.

Another shooter behind the gray speeder opened up on Bhindi, firing rapidly, carelessly. Bhindi crawled a few meters to her left, and the shots did not track her; they continued hammering on the stones near her original position. She peered through a gap in the stones. The female trooper from the same vehicle ran in the direction the first had taken.

Bhindi fired at the runner, once, twice. Her second shot took the runner in the thigh, throwing the woman to the ground. Three to go—fewer, if Huhunna had managed to tag any of the other Pop-Dogs behind the white speeder.

Bhindi ducked as the sniper offering covering fire from the gray speeder targeted her new position. His shots slapped into stones, superheating them, only centimeters from where she lay.

Then the enemy fire stopped. Things fell almost silent as Huhunna stopped shooting, too. Now there were only the repulsor whines and rumbles from oncoming vehicles.

Bhindi raised her head to peer over the stones. She could hear little gasps of breath from the woman she’d shot. But nothing moved.

Nothing but a pebble, clattering down toward her from above.

Bhindi rolled onto her back, brought up her rifle. Meters above her, at the top of the ridge, stood the silhouette of a man with a rifle.

He fired.

She fired. Simultaneous with the kick of the rifle against her shoulder was a kick to her gut.

She saw her enemy fold up around his rifle. He collapsed and fell, rolling down the slope. He fetched up against stones only two meters away from her.

Bhindi looked down at herself. Steam rose from a hole in her midriff. Funny that it wouldn’t hurt.… and then it did. Pain shoved its way through her like a hydraulic ram, forcing a moan from her throat.

She tried to call Huhunna’s name, but all that emerged was a low wail.

23

Voort’s sensor board showed a growing number of probable enemies. Two blips now sped toward them from Kreedle, one close. Two big blips and four small ones were en route from the underground installation. All the small blips were significantly faster than Voort’s speeder. And Trey reported that the comm jamming was as strong as before.

Voort glanced at Sharr. “Sixty seconds to Mount Lyss.”

Sharr nodded. He turned to face back into the bed. “You, uh, Four. Where’s the station access?”

Trey didn’t consult his datapad. He answered instantly. “Cable car. Northeast at plains level. Or stairs if you want the exercise. North face.”

Sharr turned forward again. “Another joker.”

“Tell me you don’t have a single joker on your team and I’ll buy you a bottle of sixty-year-old Corellian brandy.”

“I don’t have a joker on my team.”

“But it has to be the truth.”

Sharr offered an annoyed sigh and said nothing more.

When they reached the site—not truly a mountain, despite its name, it was a hill a couple of hundred meters high protruding from comparatively level ground surrounded by grain fields—what must have been the cable car building was a decades-old ruin, no cabling still strung from it. Voort swung around westward. In moments, Sharr, with his macrobinoculars up, pointed to the spot where permacrete stairs and tube-metal rails led from ground level to the summit.

Voort set the speeder down near the base of the stairs. The Wraiths scattered from the speeder and started up.

The Devaronian peered up the slope. His words came out as a moan. “Not.… more … stairs. Kill me now.” Then he began climbing.

Voort, who’d chosen the role of rear guard, stayed behind for a moment. So did Wran, the man in the hip-cloak, who braced himself against an outcropping one step from the stairs and sighted in with his rifle scope on a distant target Voort could barely see, a set of tiny running lights well off the ground.

Voort squinted at the target. “Speeder from the village?”

“Uh-huh. And they’ll get here before we’re halfway up the slope.”

Voort took up position behind another slab of stone. He switched his rifle over to grenade mode. “I’m your wingmate.”

“Thanks. But they’re running in a straight line. Morons …” Still as a rusted droid with only one digit still functioning, Wran squeezed the trigger.

The bright light from the rifle dazzled Voort’s eyes. When they cleared, he saw the distant target coming to ground at a steep angle.

It didn’t level off. It hit the grain field. Moments later, Voort heard the crump of its impact. “You shot out the repulsors?”

“I killed the pilot.” Wran turned and began the climb.

Puffing, his chest heaving, Voort reach the top of the stairs. The landing at the top led through a gap in a waist-high wall partly cut from natural stone and partly made of textured permacrete. Behind it was a walkway, twenty meters long and four meters deep, with a natural stone overhang three meters above. The walkway fronted the north wall of the station, also cut from living stone; one doorway and two broad windows, empty of glass or transparisteel, led into a dark chamber beyond.

As Voort reached the walkway, the first four speeders were reaching the hill. One landed three hundred meters away. The others split up, circling the hill.

The Wraiths and the two Duros stood on the walkway, Sharr issuing orders. “We are now the distraction for Myri and the others down there. Our job is to prevent the Pop-Dogs from killing us while the ladies do their business. I want three teams. Shooters on the wall here.” He pointed at Voort, Trey, Wran, and Scut. “Explorers, you scope out every centimeter of this base and report resources, weak spots, possible escape routes to me.” He pointed to Thaymes and the Devaronian. “Civilians and the … injured.” He pointed at the Joyls and Turman. The Clawdite, whom Trey had set down on the walkway, seemed to be fast asleep. “And dispense with the number designations, they’ll drive us crazy until we get the two teams sorted out. Break. Go.” He clapped his hands.

The Wraiths scattered. Voort picked a spot on the wall and peered out into the night.

Trey had his macrobinoculars up and was surveying the situation. “Two big things, I won’t call them speeders, just crossed the ridge. Artillery of some sort. The Pop-Dogs down in the fields are spreading out, but they’re not aiming their rifles.”

“Containing us.” Voort peered through his scope. He could see one landspeeder, a small sporty model, with one human woman, hard and military by the look of her, in its main compartment.

Wran sat down, his back to the wall. He glanced at Voort. “Wran Narcassan.”

“Voort saBinring. Narcassan—are you any relation to a woman named Shalla?”

“My aunt. Her sister, Vula, is my mother. But my father was kind of a waste of breathable air, so I took my grandfather’s family name. You’re the math-genius pilot guy, aren’t you?”

“That’s me.” Voort glanced at him. Wran was relaxing, not bothering to sight in on any enemies. “You could probably pick off one or two before they catch on to you.”

“I could! But I don’t think they realize we have a long-range weapon yet. I brought down that speeder, but I don’t think its crew survived or that anyone else was close enough to see that a laser did it.”

“Ah … so you’re saving up for a valuable target.”

Wran smiled, showing lots of white teeth. “You guessed it.”

Trey lowered his optics and knelt behind the wall. “By the way, this is the Weather Walk. That’s what the diagram in the tourist information said. The Weather Walk on Apex Level. The room through there is the Observatory, which was actually not an observatory but a lounge. Stairs go down into the equipment and computer chambers, the quarters, the top of the cable car run, and so on.”

Sharr sat on the wall top as if daring distant snipers to fire on him. “The artillery won’t stay.”

Voort frowned. “How do you mean?”

“They’re stolen. We ran their identifier numbers while we were down there. Reported destroyed in military exercises. Thaal probably uses the same wreckage over and over again, across a span of years, setting the junk out for the inspectors to see while hiding and selling the stolen ones. There were four down there, though.” Sharr frowned, too. “That’s a lot.”

“He’s stepping up his black-market activities.” Trey sounded sure of his statement. “He’s stolen thermal detonators. He must know thefts like that, as bold as that, have to be detected soon. It can’t be long before he bolts.”

“About that …” Voort looked at Sharr. “By the way, what the hell?”

Sharr smiled. “You mean, why are there two Wraith teams, both investigating General Stavin Thaal?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“I have no idea. Bhindi and I exchanged short forms of our mission objectives. Our stories were almost identical. Face recruited us, told neither one of us about the other. I think we almost met a few days ago—my comm and computer guy Thaymes spotted Myri a couple of times, flirted with her in a bar, but thought she was just an unusually adventuresome nester.”

A blaster bolt hit the exterior surface of the overhang. Two meters lower and it would have hit Sharr instead. Pretending not to notice, he slid off the wall top and sat behind it. “I’m sorry we screwed up each other’s insertions. But Voort, it’s good to see you.”

“Likewise.”

Across the next hour, Voort met the other strangers as they came up to report to Sharr.

There was the Devaronian medic Drikall Bessarah, who had darted Turman. “Don’t call me Doctor. You only get that honorific if you’re licensed to practice medicine.”

The curly-haired man was Thaymes Fodrick, a Corellian who said he’d decided not to follow the family tradition of becoming a perpetual student. “I got well known for slicing into secure computer systems for fun. Got caught by a security consultant named Garik Loran, who shook a finger at me and let me go. Two years later, Sharr recruits me.”

Huhunna, the Wookiee, wasn’t on hand to introduce herself. Sharr told Voort, “I heard about this Wookiee aerialist who’d been on Kashyyyk when Jacen Solo tried to burn the planet up. Since then, just as a civilian, she’s brought down a couple of military officers who abuse their privileges, which makes her very unpopular in certain circles. But when Face told me about Thaal, I thought she’d be … motivated.”

In that same hour, a total of four blaster artillery units arrived, setting up at four cardinal points around the hill. Numerous airspeeders and landspeeders joined them, all bearing Pop-Dogs. None approached closer than two hundred meters, but now they set up a slow, steady barrage of blasterfire.

And more than that. From two kilometers out, the artillery units began beating on the hilltop and slopes. Every few minutes, a plasma pulse, large enough to look fiery rather than like a bolt of coherent light, would launch from one of the units. It would make a noise as if it were ripping the sky open as it flew, then would crash onto nearby stone, detonating. The impacts shook the hilltop, causing stone chips, tiles, and pieces of plaster to break off ancient, decaying walls and ceilings.

The Observatory chamber was shaped like an X—two long, relatively narrow chambers that intersected in the middle. The north, south, east, and west extensions ended in balconies with windows looking out over plains, with the north extension connecting with the Weather Walk. The tiled floor was littered with years of debris and even rodent nests, and stairs led down from the intersection. But there were no furnishings, no water fixtures. There was no power, and Usan thoughtfully lit the chamber intersection with Turman’s glow rod.

And all the while, the comm jamming continued.

Voort switched off his comlink and the hiss that was the only noise it offered. “Let’s assume that not every Pop-Dog is in on Thaal’s secrets. They may all be arrogant bullies with a sense of entitlement, but a secret spread too far never stays a secret, so we can assume there’s an inner core of trusted Pop-Dogs. They operate places like that installation, which Thaal uses as staging areas for black-market operations.”

Sharr nodded. “Reasonable.”

“What we’re facing right now is that inner core. They’re as treasonable as Thaal is, just not as powerful or important. I have no sympathy for them. But Thaal using them here works in our favor. He can’t have an infinite number of them, and he won’t bring them all to bear against us. He’ll be calling in more to that installation to empty it. Clear out all evidence that it was a black-market warehouse. Thaal will do that so if there is any investigation for any reason, there’s no proof of his activities at that site. At this point, he can’t absolutely count on no evidence getting out.”

Sharr thought that over. “I really envy you getting rescue vehicle duty last night. It means you got to wear comfortable clothes. These stretch things my team has on are uncomfortable and make me self-conscious. Those ambience suits your guys have—when the power packs run out, they’ll be in hell.”

“Tell me you’re not drifting off into dementia.”

“No. That came up by way of association. Intrusion. The installation. Mostly empty. It’ll be fast to empty, because Thaal was almost there anyway. Your man Trey thinks they even removed a false floor topside to make moving goods faster. He’ll get it done by morning, I’m sure.”

Wran looked over at them, frowning. “So it’s important to them to get those artillery units away from here—so they won’t be found and identified as stolen.”

Voort nodded. “Yes. Why?”

“Thinking. Thinking.”

Sharr leaned over to Voort, and his voice became a conversational whisper. “Wran’s a deep thinker. And even better with hands and feet than with that rifle.”

“I’m not surprised. I remember Shalla in the field. And she said her sister—Wran’s mother—was even better.”

“My backup plan is to have Wran go down to ground level and just kill everybody. If he can clean a wide enough gap in the enemy lines before they get him, we can sneak out.”

“I heard that.” Then Wran considered. “Though I am at least that good.”

Sharr leaned back. “Blast it, Piggy—I’m sorry, I mean Voort—we had him. General Thaal. Recordings of stolen goods. But now … the longer we’re pinned here, the more our evidence evaporates.”

“That’s actually why I hope Myri doesn’t broadcast the evidence. That would cause Thaal to flee, and we might not catch him. I don’t just want him out of business, I want him punished, made an example of. But if he thinks there is no evidence and we can get away, we might have another chance to bag him.”

The sky-ripping noise came again, this time from the east. Voort hunkered down, bracing himself.

The eastern slope of the hill thundered. More stones rained down from above. Then the moment was past.

“You want to cause the general some grief? Maybe leave some more evidence?” Wran had his rifle up again, staring through the scope at the northern artillery unit.

“I’d love to.” Sharr sounded enthusiastic. “How?”

“It’s a long shot, both literally and figuratively. But we’ve been giving them return fire only from the blasters. They’ve got the mobile artillery piece out there at two klicks, and they’re not running the deflectors because they think we’re out of their range. In fact, they’ve got some side panels open so the power plants will run cooler.”

Voort raised his head to look. Though his own scope, he could see that Wran was correct. “Can you make that shot?”

Wran shrugged. “I give it one chance in three.”

“Would it increase your odds to have a spotter?”

Wran glanced at him. “You’re trained in that?”

“Don’t teach your grandfather to root tubers, son.”

Wran grinned. “Two chances in three.”

Voort used his macrobinoculars for his tasks. The distant artillery unit had landed at an angle, its front and left side both visible to the Wraiths. Venting panels were propped open. Through one of them Voort could see components that Trey explained to him—main capacitor, capacitor charger, cooling for the capacitance system. He calculated range with the macrobinocular rangefinder, double-checked it with his blaster rifle scope, returned to the macrobinoculars. “Range to the main capacitor is two point oh oh three four seven klicks at the left edge of the unit, two point oh oh five four four to the right.”

Wran, his eye to his own scope, didn’t move, but he did blink. “Oh oh three four seven? How do you get centimeter readings on that?”

“Measuring by eye. I take an average of the heights of the Pop-Dogs in the immediate vicinity, compare that with the average heights of military men of their respective species—”

“Which you’ve memorized?”

“Which I remember—and compare that to my readings. Then I calculate distances from those Pop-Dogs to the target and adjust for the difference.”

“Will you do my taxes?”

“Wind—wait. You’re firing a laser. You don’t need wind or angle, do you?”

“No.” Wran’s voice became quieter, even silky. “Ready for nonlethal ranging shot.”

“Fire away.”

Though Voort’s macrobinoculars were not as good as Wran’s scope, they gave him a broader and taller view of the target than the scope did. Voort heard Wran breathe out, becoming as silent as space … and then make a tiny noise, a click as his trigger reached the end of its arc.

A small red dot appeared on the target ahead of the open panel. It lasted for just a second. No one down at the artillery unit reacted to it.

Wran remained quieter than a teen returning home after curfew to dark, silent quarters. “I didn’t see that.”

“One point six two meters left, your left, of the forward edge of the main capacitor. And six centimeters high.”

“I read. Compensating.” Wran reached up to adjust dials at the rear of his scope, minute adjustments. Then: “Reacquiring … going live … locking it down.” Again, he breathed out slowly and smoothly, then began easing the trigger back.

Click.

The rifle hummed and its laser discharge flashed instantly from Wran to the distant target.

Voort saw the curved side of the capacitor indent as if hit by a tiny meteorite. Pop-Dogs around the artillery unit turned to look at the open panel. They stared in confusion.

One Pop-Dog shouted. Suddenly he and all those around him were running away from the artillery unit.

They had time to get thirty, forty meters away. Some of them were in the act of throwing themselves to the ground when the unit exploded. Others were caught by the concussive force of the explosion. Fire and smoke roiled up from the artillery piece, propelling much of the top one-third of the vehicle ahead of it.

The instant the visual flash of the explosion occurred, Voort began counting seconds. Just short of six seconds, the boom of the blast reached his ears.

He nodded. “That’s about right.” He turned to Wran. “Great shot.” Then he ducked behind the wall.

“Thank you.”

“Now everyone get under cover.” Sharr did so, turning away from the tableau.

“Hmm?” Wran looked at him. “Why?”

“Because experience shows that military personnel, honest or crooked, become cranky when their toys are taken away, and if it’s from enemy action, they may retaliate.”

“Ah.” Wran settled down behind the wall.

A rain of blasterfire began hammering into the wall.

They endured a stepped-up artillery barrage that lasted an hour. Then it tapered off.

The two Duros endured the siege pretty well. They sat at the center of the Observatory chamber, their backs to the sturdiest stone wall, near the stairwell in case they felt the need to flee downstairs. Turman, lying against the wall nearby, rolled over in restless sleep. Voort spent some time there and decided that the pounding was comparatively endurable at that spot, and the Joyls demonstrated no fear.

They did have questions, Usan especially. “Can they batter their way through the mountain with their weapons?”

Voort shook his head. “Not those weapons, not in the time frame we have to concern ourselves with. They may be trying to beat us up psychologically so we’ll surrender. But they really just need to keep us here a few days. We’d die of thirst.”

“Ah. Far more pleasant.”

“Myri, in her investigations, found out that they have some skyhoppers over at the army base, but if they loft any air support against us, the planetary government and Starfighter Command will notice them and get curious. Which Thaal doesn’t want. And so on. No, their plan is just to wait us out.”

“Ah.” Usan nodded. “You fill me with hope.”

Turman sat up and gestured at Usan like a Sith from a bygone age rousing a dragon to action. “The virtues of irony are only evident when irony itself is. Those who know not the face of Duros grasp not your meaning.”

Voort frowned at him. “Turman, that was almost comprehensible. Are you back with us?”

“I am. Wherever and whoever us is. But I do not wish to stand.” He did still look wobbly.

“Stay where you are. Keep recovering.”

“So, how did your Wraiths find that installation?” Voort kept his face pressed to the small vertical gap in the wall but spoke to Sharr.

They were a level down from the Observatory, in the rubble-strewn cable car receiving chamber. The wreckage of a cable car rested on the floor. What had once been a lifting door of solid stone in the outside wall was now permanently closed, but it had jammed shut with a gap eight centimeters high at the bottom, and it was out through that gap that Voort stared. The chamber was almost as black as a cave now, and Voort’s eyes had adjusted, giving him a good view of the distant Pop-Dogs and artillery emplacements.

Sharr, propped against the wall by the doorway out of the chamber, offered a half cough, half laugh. “We wondered if Thaal was comprehensively crooked, top to bottom. Which would mean stealing everything he could get his hands on. Thaymes worked up some transponders embedded in transparent flexiplast, sticky on one side. We broke into an army receiving warehouse on Coruscant and attached them to bacta casks, among other things. We tracked the signal to several locations where they were supposed to go, including Fey’lya Base … but then we saw signs that too many had been diverted to Ackbar City.”

“Which is why you went there.”

“Which is why we didn’t go there, initially. I’m guessing now that he gave us the order to stay away from Ackbar City because he didn’t want us to bump into you. But when he vanished, we decided to check that lead out. Found a warehouse in Ackbar Base they were staging stolen stuff through. Earlier today we managed to get in there and conceal ourselves in a hauler delivering food and fuel to a mystery destination—that underground site. And thus tonight’s dream date with your Wraiths.”

“They’re good men and women, Sharr.”

“I’m sure they are. How’d you get there?”

“Trey ran a variation on Lara Notsil’s King of the Drlids scam. He didn’t even know about Lara.”

“Punk.”

“Yeah.” Voort pulled back from the gap and looked in the direction of Sharr, though he couldn’t see the man in the darkness. “Come on, you’re the master of psychological warfare. Face Loran, two Wraith Squadrons—why?”

“Not because it would be more efficient this way, obviously.” He sighed. “I can’t believe he’d deliberately set us up for failure. But he didn’t make our lives any easier, and because of that, we’re here. You make sense of it, I’ll call you the master of psychological warfare.” Noises suggested that he was standing up. “Come on. Back to the wall.”

24

A tap on Voort’s shoulder awakened him. He looked around.

He was stretched out on one section of the walkway behind the Weather Walk, his head on Trey’s backpack.

He could dimly make out the features of Trey above him. “Anything new?”

“Signs of dawn in the east. Which makes it your shift.”

“I meant wake me at dawn in a couple of days.”

“Good try.”

Voort sat up.

Thaymes, to Voort’s right, looked his way. “Good news or bad news?”

“Good news.”

“The Pop-Dogs aren’t moving any closer.”

“Bad news?”

“This makes it harder to shoot them.”

A bolt of energy from below hit the rocky ceiling directly above Thaymes. It expired in a loud bang-crack. Stone chips dislodged from the point of impact, superheated, rained down on Thaymes. He yelped and rolled, getting clear of the white-hot debris.

Wran, on the other side of Thaymes, dissolved into silent laughter.

Voort heaved himself partway over the wall. “They’ve crept up to the base of the hill …” He let his eyes and brow show over the wall as he scanned the slope below.

Near the bottom of the stairs, behind the same rock Wran had used to brace his shot against an oncoming speeder, shone a light. It was a glow rod, held to shine up into a face—a Wookiee face, staring up at Voort.

“Huhunna?” Voort pulled back, then looked at Wran. “Your Wookiee’s down there.”

Wran leaned into a gap in the wall at knee height, a hole just larger than his head. He peered down the rocky slope and scanned. “There she is, waving. She’s with what’s-her-name, your commander.”

“Bhindi.” Voort peered downward again. His eyes evidently weren’t as good as Wran’s, but he could see a plate-sized palm waving up at them.

“They’re both behind cover.” Wran paused. “She made it back here through the grain field, but she won’t have enough visual cover climbing the stairs to rejoin us. I’ll bet she wants some covering fire. Can’t tell us on comlinks because of the jamming.” He withdrew from the gap and looked at Voort. “I don’t think Bhindi’s moving. Huhunna’s just waiting there.”

Voort dropped back down and turned toward the doorway into the Observatory. “All guns to the wall!”

Sharr sounded hurt. “I’m supposed to say that.”

“Well, say it.”

“Never mind.”

Voort waited while the Wraiths abandoned their stony beds or explorations of the station’s remote tunnels. They assembled, groggy and hollow-eyed, on the wall. During that time, distant Pop-Dogs began peppering Huhunna’s surroundings with opportunistic blasterfire.

Voort addressed the Wraiths. “In a moment, we’re going to begin providing covering fire. Huhunna and Bhindi are going to come up and join us. Our job is to identify Pop-Dogs firing on them and send them running—or send them to another life. This means not returning fire on those firing at us. Except Wran and me—that’s our job.”

Wran, Thaymes, and Drikall glanced toward Sharr for confirmation. He nodded.

Voort waited until they were all arrayed along the full span of the wall. Then he rose, leaned over the wall, and waved Huhunna up.

Blasterfire began to hit the wall, converging on Voort. He crouched and returned fire. He could no longer see Huhunna, but he could spot emplacements firing on her. So could the other Wraiths, and they rained blasterfire against those sites.

Voort went through the steps again and again. Acquire a target. Check the rangefinder in the scope. Look around the target, gauging the movement of the grain stalks to estimate wind direction and speed. Reacquire the target. Settle, calm, become as still as the stone, breathe out.

Squeeeeeeze …

The other Wraiths fired more often. Voort hit more often. A mixed blessing—he wasted few shots, diminished the numbers of the enemy more rapidly.

But he was killing people, not just making them duck.

He had counted up six kills when Huhunna reached the top of the stairs, carrying Bhindi in her arms like a sleeping child. She hustled through the gap in the wall, moved to the side to be out of the Pop-Dogs’ line of sight, and knelt. She raised her voice in a Wookiee rumble that rose to a high-pitched peak.

Voort did not speak Wookiee, but, like many individuals with wide travel or wartime experience, he knew curse words in a startling number of languages. Curses, requests for food and drink, demands for or offers of surrender, and the word Huhunna had roared: “Medic!”

The smell of burned flesh and incinerated cloth was already forcing its way down Voort’s nostrils.

The Devaronian, Drikall, holstered his blaster pistol and, scrambling on hands and knees, followed Huhunna through the door into the Observatory.

“Everyone else, stay here.” Voort scrambled after the medic. “Wran, direct them, rotate their fire.”

Unbidden, Sharr and Scut followed him, Sharr igniting his glow rod and holding it high so the others could act within its pool of light.

Drikall, standing, peeled off his black tunic, revealing a black undershirt. He wadded the tunic up and set it down on the tile floor, then nodded at Huhunna. She laid Bhindi there, head on the tunic. Bhindi’s eyes were closed.

Drikall knelt beside her and unclipped his medpac from his belt. He spoke as if to a recorder: “Patient is a female human apparently in good physical condition, age forty-five or fifty. We have an abdominal blaster wound, rifle intensity by the look of it.” He glanced up at Huhunna for confirmation, received her nod, and returned his attention to the patient.

With a pair of small shears from the bag, he carefully cut Bhindi’s ambience suit hood away from her face and pressed a small object to the side of her neck. Voort recognized it as a field-grade vital signs monitor. Flexible like a bandage, the size of a large credcoin, it adhered to her skin. Its surface was mostly translucent red flexiplast, and it began to pulse with a glow at the center in the rhythm of Bhindi’s heartbeat—a rhythm that was too slow by far to offer Voort any reassurance.

Bhindi’s ambience suit top was already unsealed. With precision and delicacy, the Devaronian used the shears to cut away the lower portions of her tunic. The action revealed that a portion of her abdomen, to the right of her navel, was covered with a bandage patch; the center of the patch was brown with crusted blood, and the skin around it alternated between healthy pink and burned brown-black. Drikall began a quick but gentle removal of the patch.

Once the patch was set aside, Voort, even with his minimal first-aid skills, could see that the wound was bad—it was broad and black and deep. Though it had been mostly cauterized by the energy discharge of the blaster bolt that had done the damage, there were places where it was still welling with blood. The smell of burned flesh became more intense.

Despite himself and his profession, Drikall winced. “We’ll start with a pain suppressor and a shock blocker. They should … help.” One after another, he pressed two micro-injectors against her neck.

Then he looked up, glancing between Sharr and Voort. “If you want her to survive … we’re going to have to surrender and turn her over to them. Right now. Only a full medlab can do the job. The wound’s too severe.”

Voort and Sharr looked at each other.

“I … heard … that.” Bhindi’s voice was faint and her eyes were still closed, but she was clearly conscious. “You will not do that.”

Voort approached, knelt beside her. “Bhindi …”

“Those are my orders. We know Thaal’s dirty. They know we know. Surrender to save me, and every one of you is dead. Not just me.” Her eyes fluttered open and she looked up at the medic. “What’s your name?”

“Drikall. Drikall Bessarah.”

“That anesthetic is good stuff. I actually don’t feel too bad.” She returned her attention to Voort and Sharr. “Get these kids home safe. I’m transferring command …”

She stopped talking; she just stared into empty air between Sharr and Voort. The monitor on her neck ceased pulsing.

“Bhindi?” Voort fell tears well up. “Bhindi?”

“She’s gone.” Drikall reached up to close her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Huhunna stared up at the ceiling and offered a low, almost musical moan.

“Kark it.” Voort slammed his fist against the floor hard enough to hurt himself. He ignored the pain and stood. He felt himself shaking so badly, he wondered if he could articulate clearly enough for his implant to translate his words.

“Drikall …” Sharr’s voice was raspy, as though his throat had become coated with sand. “Step outside and find out if anyone has any sort of cover, a survival blanket or something. To cover her.”

The Devaronian nodded, walked out into the darkness.

“We need to elect a new leader.” That was Scut. His voice was subdued, even pained.

Those words jarred Voort, forcing him from the nest of his own misery. Images of the other Wraiths ran before his eyes like numbers.

Sharr will be elected. Sharr’s strength is mounting slow, meticulous capers that cause people to doubt their own sanity or their trust in others. Everyone else is too young, too green. Elect any of them to deal with this situation and everybody dies.

Voort found his voice. He turned to stare at Scut, but spoke to everyone. “To hell with that. I’m taking command.”

Scut stared back at the Gamorrean. If ever there had been a time when the preposterous smile on his face did not match his eyes, now was it—from the nose up, he was all sorrow and anger. “No, you are not. Perhaps Sharr will lead. If not, we must elect. Sharr was leader of his team, as Bhindi was of ours. You are just a member. And not fit to lead.”

“War leaders aren’t elected, idiot.” Voort looked at Sharr. “I’m assuming command. You want to take it from me?” Though he had worked with Sharr through much of the Yuuzhan Vong War, though he counted the man as a friend, his tone was now one of pure menace.

Sharr shook his head. “You’re senior in years of experience. And mass.”

“You’ve got that right.”

Drikall returned, Wran’s cloak in his hands. He spread it over Bhindi, covering her from waist to head.

Voort continued. “Everyone, back to what you were doing before. Except you, Scut. You come with me.” Stiff-legged, he turned and marched to the stairs.

Voort entered the cable car receiving room and waited only until Scut stepped through the doorway. Then Voort spun, grabbed Scut by the shoulders, slammed him into the wall, and held him there. “I have had enough.”

Scut’s voice was a little hoarse, but his tone stayed defiant. “I don’t think you have.”

Voort gave him a final shove, then let go, but he did not retreat a centimeter. “Take off that idiotic face. Let me look at your true self. Your Yuuzhan Vong self.”

Scut reached under his ambience suit collar and peeled his merry face away, revealing the hard, angular features and glaring eyes of a Yuuzhan Vong.

Voort enunciated very clearly. “This is a direct order. I want it all. Everything you don’t like about me. Every reason you think I’m not fit to lead. I want every one of those maggots of complaint to spill out of your mouth, and I’m going to crush them under my boots. Start.”

“First, you are a quitter. You quit the Wraiths before. Too sad to continue. Bhindi told me that story. She should never have invited you back. Now she is dead, you will be sad again; you will quit. Again.

“Second, you are an illogical fool.”

“Strange words to hear from a Yuuzhan Vong mouth—your kind has no idea what logic is.”

“There. There!” Scut’s voice rose. “I am Yuuzhan Vong like you are Gamorrean. In part. I have human family, too.”

“Adopted. You had plenty of years before they came along to become twisted, a sociopath.”

“Oh. Well, if I am all Yuuzhan Vong despite how I was reared, you are all Gamorrean. Lazy, stupid, fat, amoral, coarse. Grunt for me, pig-man.”

“Is that the best you have? No, you’re not done yet. Keep going. I’ll know when we’ve gotten to the truth. If there’s any truth in you.”

“Very well.” Scut returned his voice to normal pitch and volume. If being pressed against the wall by Voort, being physically intimidated, was making him uncomfortable, he did not show it. “I knew of you, you personally, from when I was a child. From when I first met my human parents.”

“How?”

“Not important yet. But I knew about the Wraiths. Heroes! They outwit those who enslave and destroy. You think I lie? You lie. Tell me, did you become a teacher because you love it?”

“Because I love it. Yes. Because I needed to turn to the next phase of my life. All Wraiths do that eventually. The ones who survive, anyway.”

“I have met teachers who love teaching. Tell me now, the whole truth like you want from me. When you are through with your students, do they go forth, engines roaring, filled with a love of numbers that you have taught them?”

“Not … many.” Thoughtful, Voort finally took a half step backward.

“Because you have no love to bestow on them. You teach because it doesn’t remind you of what you quit. You teach because it’s a painless way to die.”

Voort felt his fist clench. But he forced it to relax. Somewhere, buried in Scut’s words, there was a kernel of truth. Unlike other instructors, he never had prize students. He never seemed to infect his pupils with the love of the art of numbers.

What did that mean?

Scut continued, relentless. “You are not a fit teammate, much less a leader, because every day you show us that you have let down every teammate who ever worked with you, especially those who died serving with you, and you will let us down the same way.”

“Explain.”

“Because you are not full of life, idiot! You saved, you preserved. My own human father among them. And now, when you are reminded of times gone by, you do nothing but grieve. The ones who have fallen, would they smile to know that all you do is grieve and count your losses? That you dress yourself in their burial shrouds?” Scut took a deep breath. “Bhindi just died at your side. And now you will never speak her name again, any more than you speak the names of those who fell before. Bhindi died knowing that you will not tell happy stories of her, or use her example to inspire. Just like your numbers, you cannot impart love of us.”

Voort felt his anger ebbing. The change was probably more due to adrenaline fading than to Scut’s argument. He injected a little mockery into his next words; his implant, trained to interpret certain vocal traits, did add the appropriate sarcasm to his tone. “I am so very, very sorry I didn’t live up to your expectations.”

“I think you are lying.”

“You mentioned your human father before. We helped him?”

“Long ago. The Joyls’ situation reminds me of how my father met the Wraiths, including you. You saved him. Like Usan Joyl, he was kidnapped by a powerful officer for his skills. The Wraiths rescued him. In an unguarded moment, they spoke frankly to him. He learned some of their names. He learned the name Wraith Squadron.”

Voort snorted. “That wasn’t an unguarded moment. Face Loran used to make a snap judgment about someone the Wraiths had helped. He’d spill a few secrets. Only when that someone had skills or resources the Wraiths might be able to call on later.”

“Oh.” Scut pondered that. “So in an instant, Face understood that my father was trustworthy and useful.”

“Clearly, Face didn’t grasp how faulty your father’s judgment was on certain things.”

Scut let the insult pass. “And Face knew that, over time, stories of the Wraiths would filter out into the wider military and intelligence community. And even elsewhere.”

“Including to smugglers and pirates. Having a fearsome reputation can win battles before they’re fought.”

“Wise.” Scut looked thoughtful. “But more calculating than I would have guessed.”

“And that’s how Face knew about you? He recommended Bhindi recruit you?”

Scut nodded.

“Your father is a xenobiologist, correct?”

“No, that is my mother. My father is a multidisciplinary scientist. Inorganic chemistry, mineralogy, gemology, physics.”

That triggered a distant memory in Voort. He looked more intently at Scut. “His name isn’t Gorsat, then.”

“Gorsat is a Yuuzhan Vong name, one I chose. It is a name not of the class I was born into, so it angers the older warriors to hear it. My father is named Mulus—”

“—Cheems. Of course.” Voort nodded and let his memories float back three decades. “I remember him. I was on that mission. So were Jesmin’s father and Wran’s aunt.” Voort let his voice become more dispassionate. “And so was my best friend. I had no other family, and we were like brothers. He was always playing pranks on me. I always said that I’d get him back, but I never did.” He paused, forcing himself through the quagmire of the next memory. “Sixteen years later, I put a blaster under his chin and burned his brains out.”

Scut’s expression did not change. “I know the story. It was a mercy killing.”

“Yes. But the instant I pulled that trigger, and for the next fifteen years—and still today—there’s been a little voice in the back of my head whispering, You finally got him back. I hate that voice. And since I was stupid enough to let Face recruit me again, there hasn’t been a moment when the presence of the new Wraiths hasn’t reminded me of that instant. So you might think about that the next time you’re tempted to preach to me about finding joy in life and telling funny stories about dead people.”

“You have just admitted you are irrational.” Scut’s stare did not soften. “That was the last maggot of complaint. You have not begun to crush them.”

“I can’t … crush them all.” Oddly, that admission did not disturb Voort as much as he’d thought it would.

“Then you must resign as leader. You cannot lead.”

Voort smiled at him. It was a teeth-baring, tusk-displaying warrior’s expression. “Watch me.”

25

Just past dawn, four more artillery units arrived and settled in to add their strength to the siege. The pounding of the hilltop became more intense.

Trey finished his explorations into the hill’s lower levels. He returned with word of food and supply storage chambers, now empty. He had found corridors that led to chambers that had once held power machinery but did so no longer, and corridors that led nowhere. He had found circular doors in permacrete plugs blocking the way to natural caves; the doors were not locked but the caves did not lead to the mountain slope or some distant exit hole.

Trey had used a rangefinder to gauge the mountain’s exterior dimensions and superimpose a wire frame of that roughly conical shape over the map of the chambers below. In the former cable car chamber, on Trey’s datapad, Voort studied the results.

He pointed at one spot on the mountain’s south slope. “It looks like we have a natural cave here that comes pretty close to the surface.”

Sharr, one of the Wraiths gathered for the meeting, shrugged. “So?”

“So … we came away from the intrusion with a bag full of explosives. Enough, maybe, to breach the cave’s outer wall, creating a hole we could leave through? If we could manage some distraction on the north slope, blow our south exit innocuously …”

Trey gave him a dubious look. “The phrase high explosives and the word innocuously don’t really get along. It would be more likely if we had a really experienced explosives expert and a really good geologist. Plus, the measurements we get from a blaster scope rangefinder to build this diagram are a little chancy.”

Voort fixed him with a stare. “And if I ordered you to do it and make it work?”

“I’d make it work … or die trying. I’d put my credits on die trying.”

Voort made an exasperated noise. “Well, that becomes our backup plan, then.”

Wran frowned. “What’s our primary plan?”

“Wait for Myri to save us.”

“Oh. How reassuring.”

Voort closed Trey’s datapad and returned it to him. “I am reassured. Has anybody on the wall noticed anything to suggest she and Jesmin have been grabbed? Pop-Dogs congregating at a spot out where there’s no soldier emplacement or artillery unit?”

They all shook their heads.

“So she may still be our best chance for relief. Plus, we have two more resources we’re unfamiliar with.”

Trey frowned. “What are they?”

Voort sighed. “Back to the bad-student corner, Trey. The Joyls. Send them in.”

Usan and Dashan joined them, sitting, like the others, on the litter-strewn floor.

Voort spent no time on pleasantries. “Do you two have anything to get us out of here alive?”

Usan shrugged. “Oh, dear. When they ask the hapless for help, it means the helpful have become hapless … Probably not. I don’t know much about this area.”

“But you know Thaal better than any of us.” Voort tried to look approving. That was a sentiment difficult for a Gamorrean to convey facially. “I guess we’ll need you to tell us all you can.”

Dashan was heard to murmur, “In case you die and they get away, they need their facts to survive.”

“Easy, child.” Usan kept his tone calm and melodic. “That human girl who went off on her own mission? The daughter of Wedge Antilles. I doubt these people are of a mind to sacrifice us to lighten their load and just take our knowledge away.”

Dashan’s reply was a sniff.

Usan returned his attention to Voort. “What do you want to know?”

“I understand that you were forging new identity records for Thaal. What is that new identity? Where’s the new him supposed to be from?”

Usan shook his head. “It’s not as easy as that—neither part of your question. I was doing more than creating a file of data to be plugged into some distant records computer. I was creating a new type of new identity, comprehensive, more elaborate perhaps than has ever been done before.”

Thaymes’s eyes gleamed. “How?”

“Multiple stages, multiple levels of deception. False birth, education, and business records, the basics, yes—of course.”

Thaymes, if anything, seemed more delighted. “But handprints, palm prints, retinal identification—”

“Skin prints do grow back, in humans anyway, if abraded away. But what happens if you change relevant genes, a full course of gene therapy, and then abrade them away?”

Thaymes’s eyebrows shot up. “They grow back different?”

Usan nodded. He waited as a series of explosions sounded from outside and shook more pebbles from the ceiling—the latest sweep of artillery hits—then continued. “As for eyes. More problematic. Treat the pupils with special dye to alter the color. And subject each eye, in a series of laser operations, to, well, what I call a re-texturing sequence. Each eye undergoes four operations—”

“Stop.” Even in the glow from Voort’s glow rod, space-taped to the wreckage of the cable car, Sharr was beginning to pale. “Just stop. We get it.”

Thaymes chortled. “Sharr? You? Master of psychological warfare—squeamish about eye penetration?”

“Don’t even say those words.” Sharr glared at him. “I’ve only ever strangled a man to death once, but I was very, very successful at it.”

“Thaymes.” Voort kept his tone light. “Whatever Sharr throws up, you clean up. Please go on, Usan.”

“Also surgeries to eliminate or add distinguishing features, to alter old bone breaks and his dental profile. A comprehensive series of treatments. For speed’s sake, as I was under duress, I integrated dozens of techniques introduced by colleagues or more legitimate medical scientists, and created an entire program for Thaal to experience. But I was never privy to the precise details of the identities Thaal and his loyal soldiers were to experience.”

“And his soldiers.” Voort frowned, puzzled. “How many alternative identities will he be generating?”

“I do not know. I was never privy to that information, either. As many as he wants. He only trusts his Pop-Dogs and a few others, all military or former military.”

“Interesting.” Voort glanced at Trey. “His mistress wasn’t military. Do you remember her name?”

“I ran searches on her.” Trey frowned, thinking back. “Keura something.”

“Keura Fallatte.” Dashan’s voice was raised barely above a whisper. “She was in a cell near ours. For a while. Nice girl. Confused by her imprisonment. Said the general referred to her as a loose end.” Dashan finally met Voort’s eyes. “The general killed her. Shot her himself, in front of us. He told us, ‘This is what I’ll do to someone I love. I did it to attain my objective. Imagine what I might do to someone I find inconvenient.’ ”

Voort struggled for an answer, but could not come up with one. Finally he returned to the original subject. “So the instant Thaal disappears, he’ll begin this transition to his new identity. Will he need you? If we drop hints that you’re where he could find you, would he come for you?”

Usan shook his head. “He’ll send someone to kill me. He already has his experts, his medics, everyone he needs to alter his identity.”

“Commonality.” The one word was spoken by Thaymes.

They waited while another series of explosions rocked the west face of the mountain. Then Voort brushed some pebbles and plaster from his head. “Explain that, Thaymes.”

“He’s changing lots of identities, not just his own. There have to be points in common between some of them, if not all of them. That’s his weakness. If I had to forge, say, forty identicards, and I’m pretty good at that—maybe not as good as Usan here—there would be common elements to their backgrounds.”

Voort looked back at the older Duros. “How about that?”

“He is correct. And, at least in a vague way, there is a profile I established for Thaal’s new identity that he could have used as a template for all the Pop-Dogs.”

“Let’s hear it.”

Usan paused a moment, staring at the wall above and behind Voort. Then he returned his attention to the Gamorrean. “First, the planet the false identity is from will be one that has had a significant catastrophe or disruption in the past. The person’s date of birth will be from the time of the catastrophe or before it. For instance, Coruscant, conquered and transformed by the Yuuzhan Vong less than twenty years ago. Thaal’s own world of Carida. Alderaan, destroyed nearly forty-five years ago. And so on.”

Voort nodded. “The disruption in question accounting for a limited number of records and a limited number of people who might be expected to have known the person. In other words, this identity is set up to withstand more than casual investigation.”

“Correct.” Usan sounded approving. “It will hold up to the most rigorous investigation. Second, the government bureau or other agency that recorded the birth and any other details must not maintain noneditable records or archives. This also goes for academic records, sports achievements, and so on.”

Thaymes brightened. “Meaning that you’re confident that you can crack the security on the editable records … but if those records are backed up in some noneditable way, anyone going back through the archives could spot the discrepancy. So you prevent any discrepancy by choosing only those records that can be altered, no matter how difficult that alteration is.”

“Very good.” Usan looked at his grandson. “Clearly, we have fallen in with scoundrels.”

Dashan nodded. “I feel very comfortable with them. I’d be more comfortable if we weren’t being bombarded.”

“You are wise beyond your years. Third, I told you that the individual receiving the new identity experienced a genetic therapy treatment that resulted in some genetic alteration. Enough to give him a unique genetic numerical identifier, enough to ‘prove’ that he is not who he was before. But it’s still possible for a comprehensive set of laboratory tests, performed on new tissue samples compared with old tissue samples, to establish a link. Therefore all old, pre-change tissue samples must be stolen, destroyed. To prevent such a laboratory comparison.”

Voort considered that. “So if you’ve been hospitalized for an injury, and tissue samples were taken—”

Usan nodded. “They must be eliminated.”

“So tissue-bank thefts or sabotage at various hospitals suggest that they were storing samples from people who later went through the transformation process.” Voort scratched his cheek. “That helps tell us who’s part of the conspiracy … at this end. But not where they go after the change.”

“Wait a moment.” Turman’s eyes widened as if he’d just been splashed with cold water. “Aren’t your family members a type of genetic tissue sample that can be matched to yours? Their own gene structures could be compared with the person who’s received the transformation.”

“Yessss.” Usan hissed out the word. “So you will see a specific set of results from that fact. Pop-Dogs who have no children or other immediate family are more likely to be in the clear. Those who do have blood relations will either take those family members with them into disappearance, if they trust them utterly … or see to it that those family members disappear. Thaal has no immediate family members.”

Turman’s face lost all expression. “And his mistress?”

“She had family.”

“So …” Voort shook his head, unable to arrive at a complete answer. “We might be able to figure out who’s part of his conspiracy by comparing these characteristics of people, especially Pop-Dogs and their family members. But how do we find them, once they’ve fled? Scattered all over the galaxy? And how do we pinpoint which one is Thaal?”

The others fell silent. The walls began to shake from a new artillery pounding. Plaster and stone chips descended upon them from above. Then the pounding ended.

Turman spoke, and his voice was deeper, rougher than usual. “You idiots clearly have no idea what you’re dealing with.”

The others looked at him. Voort leaned toward him. “What?”

Suddenly Turman was on his feet, pacing. His walk was now wrong for his lithe build; he looked as though he were abruptly carrying an extra twenty or thirty kilos of body weight. “I’m not just going to retire, you know. I’ve commanded for decades. I’ve decided whether men and women live or die. You just don’t give that up.”

Trey opened his mouth to respond, but Voort waved him quiet. He gestured for everyone to remain still.

“I will never abandon my leadership role. All my good boys and girls. We’ll build an empire, a financial empire.” Turman looked thoughtful and stared at the near wall as if viewing distant stars through it. “I already have its beginnings, my fleet. I wasn’t just stealing those vessels for their cargo, you know. The vessels, they’re the most valuable part. Why have none of them turned up on the black market, in pirate hands? Because they’re mine. I’m still operating them. My fleet …”

Voort felt bristles rising on the back of his neck. He smoothed them down and spoke directly to Turman. “What about the Empire?”

“For me, it was never about the Empire. It was about me. My fortune. My boys and girls. I’ve been taking ships since the conspiracy started, before there was any chance of it being uncovered.”

“That’s crazy.” Voort forced a little contempt into his voice. “Senator Treen of Kuat was an Empire loyalist. She would never have helped you set up HyperTech just to steal cargo vessels.”

“She thought I was doing something else. She thought … She thought …” Turman wavered. He passed a hand over his eyes, then straightened. He turned an apologetic look on Voort. “I’m sorry. I’ve lost the character.”

“No, no, you did great.” Voort heaved himself to his feet. “It makes sense. They aren’t scattering across the galaxy. Thaal would lose most of his power if they did. They’re going to set up as a unit together somewhere. To run their fleet, maybe as pirates, maybe as legitimate shippers.”

Sharr cleared his throat. “Turman, it’s not necessarily such a good idea to get that deep in the enemy’s mind. Take it from one who knows.”

“But what …” Voort looked among the others. “What was HyperTech doing? Do we have to relocate to Kuat and raid them next?”

“No.” Thaymes’s face lit up. “I know what they were doing.”

They were interrupted by a shout from above, Drikall’s voice. “Something’s happening!”

26

Voort reached the top of the stairs at Apex Level and trotted out to the Weather Walk. Most of the other Wraiths were out there already, heads low, peering out across the grain fields. Voort moved beside Scut and knelt.

Out in the fields, a different artillery unit had taken position beside the burned wreckage that Wran had caused. It fired just as Voort looked at it, and moments later an explosion sounded on the mountain slope dozens of meters above Voort’s head. Stones, some of them the size of airspeeders, rained down past the Weather Walk. Pop-Dog snipers continued to fire occasionally from behind airspeeders, their blasters braced against the vehicles’ sides.

But some of the Pop-Dogs were standing, looking off to the east.

Once the last of the boulders clattered past, Voort heard what the Pop-Dogs had to be hearing: a distant, thunderlike rumble, deep and constant.

Wran, to Voort’s immediate right, gave him a curious look.

“Incoming craft.” Voort leaned farther forward so he could stare to the east. There was nothing to be seen yet. “Not airspeeders. That’s a lot of thrust, but they’re moving subsonic. I suspect atmospheric fighters.”

Wran sighed. “Probably some of those Tee-sixteen skyhoppers the Pop-Dogs use.”

Voort nodded. “Those are definitely Incom four-jay-fours. We are in for a pasting.”

Then he saw them. They must have been traveling at just a few meters above the ground, but now they vectored skyward, two of them, black silhouettes with their wings in a split-X configuration.

Voort yanked himself back and looked at Trey. “Do the Pop-Dogs have X-wings at Fey’lya?”

Trey shook his head. “I don’t think so. Skyhoppers here and at most of their bases, E-wings at a couple of their bases.”

Voort raised his voice so everyone on the walk could hear. “Pack up, we’re about to move out.” He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet. “We’re going to do it, Bhindi. We’re going to get out of here.”

The black X-wings rose to a few hundred meters, leveled off, began a new descent, and opened fire with their quad-linked laser cannons. Red lances of light spattered down on the artillery unit on the field below.

The lead X-wing struck the target with its first salvo, only a handful of laser bursts missing the artillery piece. The unit detonated, leaping into the air, bending in the middle like a quadruped attempting to buck off a rider. Pop-Dogs all around were slammed to the ground by the detonation. Those nearest the artillery unit caught fire, as did the yellow-white grain for meters in every direction.

The wingmate’s salvos were less concentrated. They sprayed along the line of smaller vehicles, chewing through airspeeders, vaporizing speeder bikes. Voort didn’t think a single vehicle along a two-hundred-meter stretch escaped being hit.

The X-wings flashed by, black profiles at almost exactly the altitude of the Weather Walk. Then they were diminishing dots off to the west, banking to the left for a new strafing run.

Voort forced himself to stop bouncing. “Myri came through. Those are StealthXs.”

Scut shot him a confused look. “Jedi stealth X-wings? But we heard them coming.”

Sharr, rising, kept his voice patient. “The pilots are running at full throttle and with baffles off. They’re doing it to panic the enemy. Psychological warfare.”

Voort caught sight of a third flying craft off to the east, a Lambda-class shuttle with its wings down and locked. It was white, but there was a large irregular blotch of sky blue along its port fuselage, doubtless obscuring its registry number and other identifiable details. “A hundred credits says that’s our extraction vehicle. Trey, gather up every gram of explosives we have. When that’s done, Sharr, you lead the others down to the plain. Keep your eyes open for Pop-Dogs hiding in the grain. Trey, rig up a deadman switch, a detonator for the explosives. Then you and Scut come with me.”

The StealthX fighters looped around Mount Lyss again and again. The artillery units were all gone by the end of their first orbit—Voort heard each of them detonate. Subsequent passes eliminated every speeder on the ground and scattered Pop-Dogs in every direction. Scores of fires burned brightly and began spreading across the grain fields.

A kilometer out from the line of destruction, Myri and Jesmin—rumpled, dirty, and flecked with bits of grain—stood.

Myri glanced at her comlink-equipped datapad. “Jamming’s stopped. Call the shuttle to our location, would you?”

“I’m on it.”

Myri triggered her own comlink. “Three to Leader, Three to Leader. I’m pinging you our location. We’re extracting here.”

Thaymes’s voice came back. “I’m Three. And message received. We’re on our way. Who the hell did you call for help, anyway?”

Myri paused while the StealthXs screamed by overhead and a succession of laser hits blanketed all other noise. Then she smiled and answered, a considerable quantity of little girl in her voice. “I called Daddy.” She flipped the datapad shut and looked at Jesmin. “When you’ve lost everything else, you can always count on Daddy.”

Jesmin nodded. “I know that.”

Then Myri frowned. “Why didn’t Bhindi answer?”

Up in the Observatory, Voort knelt beside Bhindi and carefully drew the cloak off her. He stared down into her lifeless face.

His true voice was hoarse. His throat implant ignored the fact, and the Basic words that emerged from his mouth were in an incongruously pleasant tone. “Bhindi, I have to ask one last favor of you. I don’t know where we’re going from here. Taking you along might lead to some of the Wraiths being captured. Leaving you here will mean you’ll be identified and all our identities will eventually be known. Our families would be endangered. I know you understand. I just wish it didn’t have to be this way.”

Voort waited a moment, as if for an answer, but there was none. He rubbed a tear from his eye and looked up at Scut. “Put it on her.”

Scut, features expressionless, leaned over and carefully fitted his smiling neoglith masquer onto Bhindi’s head, tucking her hair up beneath it. He straightened when he was done. Bhindi was now a study in contrasts—a human with a fleshy man’s face and a slender woman’s body, eyes closed as if in sleep but lips upturned in an active smile.

Voort turned his attention to Trey. “Your turn.”

Trey knelt on the other side of the body from Voort. He held a black backpack in both hands. His improvised deadman switch was wired atop it. “This is set for one second.”

Voort nodded.

“My point is, this is kind of chancy. One slip and this whole mountaintop goes up way prematurely. I think you two had better head on downhill while I finish here.”

Voort shook his head. “Scut can go if he wants.”

“I do not.”

Trey depressed the activator button on the deadman switch and held it down with his thumb. “We’re armed. Please lift her.”

Carefully, even tenderly, Voort took Bhindi by both shoulders and lifted, bringing her back up off the floor.

Trey slid the pack beneath her. “Lower her.”

Voort did, releasing her completely only when her full weight was on the floor, the pack, and Trey’s hands.

Trey slowly, carefully slid one hand and then the other from beneath Bhindi. He raised both as if surrendering.

Voort stood and carefully spread Wran’s cloak once again over the upper half of Bhindi’s body. Then he looked at Trey and Scut. “Let’s go.”

The shuttle, its wings rising to their vertical locked position, and the lead X-wing, its S-foils closing, descended to land mere meters apart. The wingmate’s fighter stayed circling at altitude.

The lead X-wing’s pilot popped his canopy, nimbly climbed out of the cockpit, and swung over the edge to drop to the ground. Myri rushed over to embrace him. “You came fast.”

Retired general Wedge Antilles, veteran of both Galactic civil wars and every New Republic or Galactic Alliance war in between, pulled his helmet free and returned the embrace. A lean man, not tall, he had graying hair just slightly shaggier than a military cut. Instead of a traditional orange jumpsuit with black-and-white accessories, he wore an all-black pilot’s suit more appropriate for these X-wings.

He smiled down into his daughter’s face. “It felt like forever. You try borrowing two war machines, a shuttle, and two crazy pilots on short notice. I had to cash in some serious markers.”

She beamed up at him. “It’s not that hard. I just did it.”

“Braggart.” He kissed her, then donned the helmet again and snapped its visor down into place. “I’ve got to get airborne again. Can’t leave Tycho up there all by himself. He gets lonely.”

Myri’s voice turned wistful. “I’ll see you soon.”

Wedge gripped the lip of his cockpit, pulled, and sprang up onto the S-foil, then rapidly climbed back in. “Write your mother.”

Voort, arriving on the heels of Trey and Scut at the extraction site, was twenty meters from the StealthX and the shuttle when he recognized who the departing pilot was. He threw an informal salute. He got an answering wave; then the starfighter’s canopy came down and the fighter began its rise into the air.

Voort lumbered up the boarding ramp of the shuttle behind Scut. He was the last Wraith to board. The others were already strapping themselves into seats. The faces of Jesmin and Myri were rigid with shock. Obviously they’d just learned about Bhindi.

From his seat, Sharr caught Voort’s eye. “I don’t know our pilot.”

“If Wedge Antilles chose him, I’m sure he’s fine, if not great.” But Voort headed forward to the cockpit.

The cockpit door was open, and there was a little patch of red hair to be glimpsed just above the back of the pilot’s seat. No one sat in the copilot’s seat.

“Captain, I’m Voort, and I’m rated on these shuttles.” He leaned over the back of the copilot’s seat and turned to look at the pilot. “So if you need any cockpit help …”

The woman who turned toward him was fine-boned, with delicate features that had been beautiful, as Voort understood human beauty, nearly forty years before and were beautiful still. In fact, laugh lines humanized looks that had once been a little chilly and impersonal. She wore her hair long, with one swaying curl that half obscured her left eye. “Piggy, get your rear end in that seat and strap down.”

“Kirney!” Voort scrambled to comply.

Kirney Slane flipped a switch, and the cockpit and passenger cabin were filled with the whine of the boarding ramp rising. “If you’re on Corellia and you want the best shuttles, the best pilots, and the best prices, who do you comm?”

Voort’s reply was automatic—he’d seen those advertisements. “Donoslane Excursions.”

“Kriffing right you do. We’re lifting without a full preflight, so keep one eye on the diagnostics readouts and the other on the sensor board. Tell me about anything incoming.” She increased power to the repulsors. There was a sudden lurch and they were airborne, the shuttle’s wings gracefully lowering into flight position. “You put the team back together.”

“I didn’t. But … yes. It was done.”

“I saw faces back there I recognize, young faces.” Kirney smoothly transitioned every bit of power toward the thrusters and tilted the shuttle’s nose spaceward. “Piggy, you will not recruit from my children.”

Voort saw the sensor board light up with activity. “Four blips incoming. Sensor returns and speed suggest starfighters or atmospheric fighters. Our escorts are turning to meet them.”

“Skyhoppers out of Fey’lya Base.” Kirney sniffed, a noise of contempt. “What did I just tell you?”

“I do not recruit from your children. This cockpit smells like fur.”

“Shut up. What did I tell you?”

“I do not recruit from your children. How’s Myn?” On the sensor board, the four incoming fighters closed with Wedge and Tycho and suddenly became two.

“Grinning from ear to ear. You know why? Because we have a very profitable business and all our children are alive. What did I tell you?”

“I do not—”

General Stavin Thaal—burly, his hair in a military cut and durasteel gray, his skin burned brown by a lifetime of exposure to summertime drill yards under myriad suns, his blue uniform pressed and crisp—leaned over his field coordinator’s chair, staring over her shoulder at the bank of monitors before her. He sensed her tensing at his proximity—her brown-clad shoulders and the Pop-Dog collar of her shirt rose half a centimeter.

Some monitors showed the ruined fields before Mount Lyss and its meteorological station, fires still burning, artillery units still burning, bodies draped in improvised shrouds. Other monitors, their images bouncing because they were receiving helmet holocam views, showed the points of view of Pop-Dogs ascending the mountain’s stairs.

Thaal spoke into his officer’s ear. “Reorder these views by proximity to the station.”

“Yes, sir.” She hesitated a moment, then blanked one monitor, replacing its images with text. With a series of commands, she brought up the planetary positioning system, then brought up the comlink-transmitted positions of everyone within a klick of the mountain, arranging those names and ranks into a list. She fed in the exact location of the station and sorted the list by proximity to those coordinates. Then she flicked the top twelve results to the right hand of the screen; as she did so, a corresponding holocam view appeared on a different monitor screen.

Thaal nodded. “Not bad. But not perfect. Now figure out how to make the system constantly update the views, reordering them as new signals get closer than old ones.”

“Yes, sir. Shall I subtract overlapping views? So you don’t end up with twelve angles on the same location as troopers congregate there?”

“Good thinking, Lieutenant. Not this time, I want multiple views of where those insurgents were holed up, but figure out how to do it either way.”

Thaal felt some of the tension leave the lieutenant’s shoulders.

On the lead views, the topmost row of monitors, Thaal could see troopers reaching a stony walkway that looked out over the burning plain. They approached a doorway cut into natural stone. A moment later they were through, into a narrow, long chamber, its floor littered with debris doubtless shaken from the ceiling during the artillery pounding.

There was also a body on the floor, slender, its upper portions concealed under a black hip-cloak that would have looked good on General Lando Calrissian.

Several holocam views approached the body. Flicking his attention from monitor to monitor, Thaal could see that six troopers now half surrounded it, five with their rifles trained on it, one reaching to remove the cloak.

This revealed the face of a human man, eyes closed, mouth upturned in a cheerful smile.

Something about that smile sent a chill down Thaal’s spine. He jabbed a finger toward one of the monitors. “Patch me through to that sergeant.”

The lieutenant reached for her keyboard. One of the troopers at the scene prodded the smiling man’s body with a toe, rocking it to one side.

“I have him—” Then the lieutenant fell silent as all twelve monitor views went to static.

Quiet settled on the command center. Officers at nearby consoles stopped what they were doing to look over at the main bank of monitors.

A second later, one by one, the monitor images began to be replaced by new ones, points of view from troopers farther down the mountainside and some down on the plain.

All those holocams were now turned toward the meteorological station, which was obscured by massive clouds of black, red, orange, and yellow, a massive explosion venting from every possible gap in the stone.

And then the rockslides began to hit the leading edge of troopers climbing the stairs. Their points of view suddenly became confused swirls of stone, flesh, and blood. Some of those views winked out as comlinks were destroyed. The surviving views, some of them just showing the blackness viewed by corpses buried in stone, marched toward the top row of monitors and were replaced by views from surviving troopers farther away.

Thaal felt that chill in his spine creep through his entire body.

Aware of the eyes of the Pop-Dog officers in the command center trained on him, he forced himself to speak. “Lieutenant, get more medical resources out there. Rossin, I want that telemetry on the shuttle and the X-wings now. Argast, get me an update on the cosmetic work at Glitterby.” It was hard to talk. A lump had formed in his throat. All those brave, loyal boys and girls …

He received a chorus of Yes, sirs in reply.

Her task done, the lieutenant spoke. “Sir? What are we facing here?”

By rote, the general turned the answer into another exercise. “What do you think we’re facing?”

“I think … that the Quad-Linked Militant Pacifists are a front. A cover story of some sort. For these people.”

“Good. Go on.”

“They have insertion skills. Combat skills. We don’t know yet if those X-wings were actually StealthXs or regular X-wings dressed up to look that way. Their activities in Glitterby Base were … weirdly undisciplined. I think we’re looking at Jedi or Sith.”

“An interesting conclusion. And it matches some of the evidence. But, no.” Stavin shook his head. “They’re commandos. Intelligence field agents. They’re called Wraith Squadron. Their leader, a man named Loran, is dead. Their field leader, now in charge, is someone we thought for more than thirty years was dead. His name is Ton Phanan.” He looked at another officer, a male captain. “You get that, Rossin?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Put all your covert ops resources toward finding Ton Phanan and Wraith Squadron. And kill every last one of them.”

“Yes, sir.”

27

SKIFTER STATION, KURATOOINE, WILD SPACE

Myri stepped aside, pressing herself more firmly into Turman’s side to let the two green-uniformed inspectors pass. Their booted feet thudded up the boxy shuttle’s boarding ramp.

The droid who had been addressing Myri resumed his speech. With limbs like sticks, and head, hands, and feet that swelled into balloon-shaped extremities, the droid looked like he had been designed to be comforting to small children, and the wide, childlike optical sensors that served him as eyes reinforced that impression. “It’s important to understand that, though there are Alliance military bases here, Kuratooine is not a member of the Galactic Alliance. Outside those bases and the embassy, local laws apply. In fact, it’s rumored that with certain of our judges, the phrase You can’t do that to me, I’m an Alliance citizen earns an extra three months of imprisonment.”

Myri sighed as if vexed. She spun in place and threw her arms around Turman’s neck, but she continued speaking to the droid. “We’re on our honeymoon tour, silly. Does anyone ever commit a crime on a honeymoon?”

“Frequently, madame. Usually very thoughtless and foolish crimes. And these honeymooners raise an extra share of public sympathy while being arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned.”

Myri tilted her head back and kissed Turman. He wore an especially kissable face now; his features were human and holodrama-handsome, his hair thick and dark. She tried not to think about the fact that what she was kissing was not his actual face but an organic mask. The thought of it twitching under her lips or opening an eye somewhere caused her to shudder.

She spun again. Turman wrapped his arms around her waist in husbandly fashion. Myri appreciated the contact; this bay, like most chambers separated from the vacuum of space only by an atmosphere barrier of projected energy, was chilly. She faced the droid. “Are they going to take long?”

“As long as it takes, madame. Would you care for a datachip about local history, regulations, and tourist attractions?”

“Give it to Bubbo.” With a tilt of her head, she indicated the Gamorrean porter waiting restlessly on the other side of the boarding ramp. Bubbo shot her a dirty look.

They were in the Arrivals and Customs Bay of Skifter Station, a classic, huge ring-and-spoke satellite orbiting far above the planet of Kuratooine. Fully one-quarter of the outermost ring was devoted to customs and other civilian planetary government functions. Like other ring stations, it did not use artificial gravity—spin imparted a semblance of gravity to the outer edge of the ring. The floor of this bay, gridded off into countless landing and inspection berths, curved gently, bending upward in the distance in either direction like a reverse horizon.

The customs inspectors eventually emerged from the shuttle and presented a tablet, all screen, to Myri and Turman. The taller of the inspectors, a Mon Calamari female whose night-black skin was stippled with old scarring, gave them what was clearly meant to be a friendly look. “All clear. Thank you for not smuggling. Palm print, please.”

Turman placed his palm on the tablet and waited while a light within the device flashed. Myri tried not to appear concerned … and the device faded to blackness. There was no sudden blinking of red text reading, He’s wearing fake skin with a fake print, arrest at once.

The inspector continued, “As soon as we receive payment for your visas, you’ll be clear to go planetside. Welcome to Kuratooine.” With little half bows, she and the human male beside her turned to leave, heading to the next spacecraft in line, an unlikely looking Y-wing of considerable antiquity. The child-friendly droid followed.

Myri let out a slow breath. “I hate that part.”

“But you’re good at it.” Turman released her.

“What I like is the gambling. I can smell the cards from here.”

Voort joined them. “You cannot. And, by the way—Bubbo?”

Myri grinned. “You look like a Bubbo.”

“It’s not the name on my identicard.”

“It could be a nickname.”

Voort moved over to peer out the nearest viewport. Large, with curved corners, it showed Kuratooine, a large disk of blue water and mossy green continents, white at the polar caps and sandy brown at the equator.

Myri joined him. “Very, very pretty. Too pretty for a reptile like the general to be allowed to settle here.”

“We don’t know for certain that this is his destination.” Turman breathed the words into her ear, like an ardent husband whispering sweet nothings. “It’s just our number one choice.”

Myri’s datapad beeped. She pulled it from her pocket and looked at the messages on the screen. “Scut’s portable lab has cleared customs. He’s arranging to get it planetside. Sharr says there are no reports from Vandor-Three of the general going on a long trip, disappearing, anything like that—obviously, he’s pretty confident. And our payment has been confirmed. We’re clear to go down ourselves.”

The Wraiths arrived in twos and threes at their new temporary headquarters, a cluster of old office prefabs on the cliffside overlooking a played-out rock quarry. Situated only twenty klicks from the northeastern edge of Kura City, the property was remote enough to conceal Wraith movements; a deep stand of trees surrounding the cluster of buildings on three sides improved the site’s privacy. The property was also close enough to the city and the army base beyond to be convenient.

Myri, Turman, and Voort were first to arrive, Myri piloting the Concussor’s shuttle, now painted a stylish silver with gold trim. They immediately performed a quick inspection of the site, making sure that it corresponded to the materials they’d been transmitted by the Kuratooine company that managed it.

Scut and Trey were delivered by a commercial airspeeder that also hauled the crate, large as a Wookiee’s coffin, that held Scut’s organic tissue samples and laboratory equipment.

Sharr and Huhunna arrived in a rented airspeeder, a long, black, closed-top vehicle that looked like it had been intended to transport celebrities inconspicuously. Under the rear hatch, its cargo area was filled with food and other supplies they’d bought in a marketplace in Kura City. Trey immediately got to work disassembling and upgrading the vehicle’s thrusters and repulsors.

Thaymes and Drikall arrived on rented speeder bikes. They didn’t immediately come to the cluster of buildings when they arrived. Instead, they roared down into the quarry and chased each other across rough terrain while Voort watched from the clifftop and pondered possible expenses incurred by wrecked swoops and broken bones. But both men and their vehicles reached the buildings intact.

Jesmin and Wran were last, arriving in a large, boxy gray delivery speeder they had purchased. In its spacious rear compartment it carried the “hot box,” the dirty white duraplast shipping crate that had had to be coddled all the way from Corellia, its travels made smooth by the paying of bribes at every transfer and inspection station. Within it were some of Scut’s tissue samples that would displease or even terrify local health authorities, plus a variety of weapons, including Wran’s sniper rifle, that would have caused any peace officers to issue an arrest warrant.

Scut, in his new face—a tall, angular human face with a flat-top hairstyle and an enigmatic little smile—set up his lab in one of the outlying prefabs. Thaymes, assuming computer and comm duties for the team, brought in a compact holoprojector of local manufacture and set it up against one wall of the largest building’s main room, the operations center. Thaymes also set up an elaborate computer-and-communications array in a corner of the same chamber.

Trey, in charge of equipment fabrication and maintenance, took possession of a prefab adjacent to Scut’s lab. When not fine-tuning the vehicles, he also set up an exercise floor in one end of the same building. Huhunna rigged a hammock high in the trees near the buildings and then helped Jesmin hide sensors at critical spots in foliage around the property. Drikall set up a small medical ward, as well as his own quarters, in one of the smaller prefabs, and the others chose rooms in the same building as the ops center for their individual quarters.

By nightfall they were done unpacking and arranging. They gathered in the operations center.

Myri looked around, annoyed. “I know what we forgot. Cookware for the kitchen.”

Jesmin sagged into one of the chairs left behind by the property’s previous operators. “Tomorrow. We can survive on field rations tonight.”

Voort moved along the exterior walls, sliding shutters closed. “This place actually feels weirdly like home.”

Jesmin shook her head. “We haven’t yet put explosives under all the floors to blow the place up when we leave. Then it becomes like home.”

Voort slid the last viewport shut. “You are your father’s daughter.” He turned to Thaymes. “All right. Give me the planetary view.”

Thaymes sat at his computer array and began pressing keys. The holoprojector hummed into life. A glowing image appeared in midair at the center of the room, a globe showing Kuratooine’s continents. Tiny dots orbited above the globe, representing Skifter Station and other artificial satellites. More distantly, two spheres smaller than Kuratooine, the planet’s moons, orbited, sometimes disappearing into an ops center wall and then emerging minutes later from another.

“So we have here a very pretty location where our target may have set up a nest. A nest where he’ll take refuge when he abandons his real identity. Or maybe it’s not here. That’s what we have to find out.” Voort indicated a darker patch on the planet’s surface a bit north of the equator near the center of one of the northern-hemisphere continents. The patch lay between mountains to the immediate west and an enormous lake immediately to the east. “Kura City, which was once just Kura, a mining colony. There were precious metals and gems to be dug out of those nearby mountains, including Black Crest Mountain, just at the city’s western edge, though the original veins were pretty much played out as of fifty years ago. When planets started to fall during the Yuuzhan Vong War, most members of the Kura family died, and the one survivor was right here on Kuratooine. In contrast with a lot of planetary leaders, she put out word immediately that refugees were welcome to settle here. Kuratooine was outside the control of the New Republic, the Empire, and any other planetary alliance, so Dame Kura could get away with imposing some indentured-servitude restrictions on the new settlers … but she was smart, too, giving every settler a fair buyout price after three years of indenture. Immigrants would work hard for three years, save every extra credit they could, get to know the environment, buy out their contracts … and Dame Kura would immediately loan them back their buyout funds so they could buy land.”

Sharr looked impressed. “I get it. So what you end up with is a population of hard workers with long-term financial ties to, and even gratitude toward, the planetary leaders.”

“Correct.” Voort reached down into the bag of field rations and other supplies Huhunna had deposited on the floor. He fetched out a small packet—a self-heating dessert—and tossed it to Sharr. “So today we have a revitalized mining industry, thriving trade, slow but continued immigration, and a growing tourism business. Including Skifter Station and lots of other gambling emporiums groundside.”

“That doesn’t explain the military bases.” Myri dragged one of the newly purchased pillow chairs to a spot against the wall and seated herself.

“Thaymes, give us a closer look at Kura City and its surroundings.” Voort waited until the floating globe transformed itself into a flat map showing just the city, plus a few kilometers of mountains and lake. Now the division between Kura City and the army base just south of it was obvious—the military base’s roads and buildings were arrayed in neat grids compared with the organic sprawl of the civilian city.

Sharr frowned. “We’re in the field now. Shouldn’t it be Three instead of Thaymes?”

Thaymes looked confused. “Am I still Three? Or is Myri Three? Sorry, I meant Other-Three.”

Voort growled. “All right. Obviously, renumbering so soon after we all got numbers established in the first place isn’t working. And saying something like Team One, Wraith Four won’t work. So we’ll do it the way Jesmin’s father used to.” He pointed a finger at himself. “Leader, or Math Boy.” He gestured at Sharr. “Mind Boy. Myri, you’re Gamble Girl.”

It took a couple of minutes. Turman was content with Stage Boy, and Thaymes with Comm Boy. Jesmin and Huhunna both wanted Tree Girl, but Jesmin yielded and accepted Ranger Girl instead. Trey argued that Muscle Boy was too confining, not showing him in comprehensive light, but Myri’s suggestion of Pretty Boy caused him to shut up. Voort assigned the very neutral tag of Lab Boy to Scut, and Drug Boy to Drikall. Wran accepted Gun Boy pending a better suggestion.

“Now.” Voort wiped imaginary sweat from his brow. “Where was I?”

His reward dessert half consumed, Sharr looked up. “How the military bases relate to Doomed Boy.”

“That’s right.” Voort gestured at the army base on the map. “That was old Dame Kura again. She offered the armed services of the Alliance long-term leases on large land grants for a century for the princely sum of one credit. Plus, she or her heirs get to keep any nonmovable improvements when the military forces leave. The armed forces were anxious to accept because Kuratooine is well situated, not a tremendous distance from the Imperial Remnant border, and Dame Kura might make the same offer to the Remnant if the Alliance declined. You’ll recall that the Remnant was doing pretty well at the end of the Yuuzhan Vong War. So we have Rimsaw Station in orbit, shared by the Alliance Navy and Starfighter Command.”

Myri smirked. “So it’s a place of calmness and cooperation, a model of how interservice relations should be conducted.”

Voort gave her a disapproving look. “You’re too young to be such a cynic, Gamble Girl. That’s my job. And then there’s the new army base next to Kura City. Blow it up, Comm Boy.”

Thaymes looked at him, blank-eyed. “Explosives aren’t really my—”

“Expand the image.”

“Sorry.” Thaymes manipulated his controls and the holomap altered again, its lower center stretching to dominate the whole image. Now the base appeared in greater detail, training yards and walkways clearly visible, barracks distinguishable from office and motor pool buildings. Square structures along the perimeter were revealed to be defense and observation towers.

Voort’s gesture took in the entire map. “This is Chakham Army Base. An infantry battalion is stationed here, the Eighty-ninth—five companies of Pop-Dogs, a fact that brought this planet to our attention. The base was built after General Thaal assumed command of the army, another warning flag for us. It’s named for a General Chakham who was one of Thaal’s boosters after he defected from the Empire, but it may be noteworthy that General Chakham’s daughter, Norena, was one of the original Pop-Dogs and is a newly minted general herself. Chakham Base is a test site for new weapons systems being evaluated for possible deployment. The Pop-Dogs there also have starfighters, a small unit of E-wings that are theoretically for training, a fact that annoys Starfighter Command greatly.”

Voort moved a step away from the hologram. “So we started looking at Chakham Base. What did we find? A lot of personal attention from General Thaal. Several original Pop-Dogs were here for the groundbreaking and dedication a few years ago. And if we assume that he uses consistent tactics in his illegal activities, well, right next to the base, between it and the city, is a peak called Black Crest Mountain, which has extensive played-out mines beneath it. Old maps show that some of those tunnels reach as far as the new base south and into the city north.”

Wran looked thoughtful. “Extensive mine works offering a lot of room to store stolen goods intended for the black market.”

Voort reached into the bag for another dessert and tossed it to Wran. “Exactly. The more we look at Kuratooine, the more suspicious it becomes. Then there’s Usan Joyl’s new-identity profile. This world has a lot of settlers from destroyed or badly disrupted worlds. It’s a tourist world, so the local government is used to bending regulations and looking the other way when enough credits are handed around. Local people are used to seeing unfamiliar faces. Comm Boy has verified that planetary government records here are replicated across a standard number of archival machines but are theoretically editable.”

Sharr frowned. “How about HyperTech? Any connection with HyperTech Industries of Kuat?”

Voort shrugged. “We have no way of knowing if any of the armed forces sites here have HyperTech equipment installed. The odds say probably so.”

Sharr frowned. “I wish …” He selected a folding chair for himself and pulled it out of its wrappings. He unfolded it and sat on it backward, leaning forward against its backrest. “I wish we knew whether the situation with HyperTech was connected with this whole mess.”

“We do.” Voort nodded toward Thaymes. “Comm Boy figured it out just minutes before we left Vandor-Three. Things were confused during the extraction so he told me about it afterward, once we were on Corellia. Comm Boy, give me the graphic I asked for.”

The view of Chakham Base faded, replaced by a three-dimensional rendering of the HyperTech corporate logo, a black field with the company’s name made up of what looked like stars being stretched horizontally, an artistic interpretation of what bridge crews saw when jumping to lightspeed. “It wouldn’t make sense for every HyperTech hypercomm unit to have ended up on a hijacked cargo vessel.” Voort went on. “The ‘coincidence’ would have been noted a lot sooner. Which means that other units, plenty of them, have been manufactured, bought, and sent safely to buyers, including our armed forces. And when did this start?”

“We know they won the military contract before the Lecersen Conspiracy was detected.” Sharr’s frown deepened. “Before there was any hint the conspiracy would ever be detected. So if HyperTech is connected with the conspiracy, it was set up to achieve the conspiracy’s goals, not Thaal’s personal goals.”

“Correct.” Voort seemed to be in full professorial form now, pacing back and forth, making eye contact with one Wraith after another as if imparting a mathematics lesson. “We have to assume that they set the company up with one goal, which wouldn’t logically have involved hijacking cargo vessels, and that Thaal somehow subverted the company for his own goals—with hijacking cargo vessels definitely consistent with his black-market operations. But what was the original use of the company? Remember, it had to involve helping the conspirators fold the Alliance into the Empire as a subject state. Remember, too, they underbid other military contractors supplying hypercomm units of a certain size. They may be running the company at a loss to do so.”

“Oh. Oh!” Excited, Myri began bouncing in her chair. “I know. The hypercomm units are sabotaged.”

Voort reached into the bag and came up with another dessert, but he held on to it. “Sabotaged how?”

Myri frowned. “Not to fail at a critical time. Not enough units are HyperTech, so a failure like that wouldn’t cripple Alliance communications …” Then she smiled. “They’re sampling all transmissions. Compacting, encrypting, transmitting them to a central location. Put enough analysts on all that traffic, and you get an ever-improving view of Alliance defenses, fleet movements, secret operations …”

Voort threw her the dessert. “That’s it exactly. It would have to be very, very subtle sabotage. Probably not mechanical defects. Instead, we’d be talking about built-in coding that works with the specific architecture of HyperTech’s computer hardware. Put the same special coding in other hardware, nothing bad happens. Nothing to detect.”

Sharr’s eyes widened. “This would have given the conspiracy a critical military weakness to exploit. And it still gives Thaal something very valuable he can sell. Maybe not to Imperial Head of State Reige, but there are a lot of Moffs who would pay for it. Other enemies of the Alliance might as well—crime cartels, for example.”

“He’d make a fortune.” Trey sounded awed. “V—Math Boy, this is more important than just General Thaal’s corruption. We have to report it right now.”

Voort shook his head. “We’ll report it later. We’re going to bag HyperTech and General Thaal.”

“Not if we all get killed.” Trey didn’t keep the dismay out of his voice. “Not if we end up like … like One.”

“Even if we do.” Voort turned to Myri. “Gamble Girl, I have a file with all the pertinent information and speculation we have on HyperTech. I want you to get it to your father by the same backchannel methods you used to call him to Vandor-Three. If we stop communicating, he’s to get the data into the right hands.”

Myri nodded. “For that, I get an extra dessert.”

“Done.”

“Thank you, Dessert Boy. Now all we have to do is not die.”

Voort finally sat, settling in on one of the older chairs near Jesmin. “What we’re here for is to find out if this is the place Thaal intends to disappear to. We’re under time pressure, though we don’t know quite what our deadline is. At any moment, because of triggers we can’t yet guess at, Thaal might decide to disappear, begin the identity transformation process, and head to his new home. If he does, if we don’t find him before he’s gone through the process, we’ll have a very hard time proving that his new identity is General Stavin Thaal. We still don’t have a good idea of why he hasn’t done it yet.”

Wran caught his eye. “His wife. Their divorce proceedings. She’s a loose end.”

Voort shook his head. “I think, to him, that loose end is tied up. He shut off her ability to get at those assets, so he can take whatever he wants and disappear. The divorce proceedings will conclude in his absence. No loose ends.” He frowned, staring off into nothingness. “Why hasn’t he begun the transformation? It will be hell to prove …” His voice trailed off. “Hell to prove …”

The others stared at him.

“Math Boy?” Myri tried to keep worry out of her voice.

But Voort didn’t reply.

“Math Boy? Leader? Voort?” Myri stood and moved up to Voort. “Are you all right?”

He looked up at her, his motion so sudden, his expression so savage that she jumped back.

He stood again, and it seemed that he’d gained centimeters in height during his brief mental lapse. “Why not yet. Of course. Hell to prove. Of course.”

Sharr turned to stare accusingly at Drikall. “You didn’t dart him, did you?”

The Devaronian shook his head. “I was hoping you’d say he did this sort of thing all the time.”

“Never in the years I worked with him.”

Voort spun in place, his gaze falling on each Wraith in turn. His movement was almost balletic. “Thaal has given us a superweapon.”

“Good …” Myri tried not to sound dubious.

Voort ended his spin looking at her. “It doesn’t matter if Kuratooine was his intended destination. We need to bring him here, right now. And here we’ll point his superweapon at him and pull the trigger. Boom!” He threw up his arms, enhancing his shout. Myri stepped away from him.

Voort ignored her. “Orders. Scut.”

Turman offered him a stage whisper: “Lab Boy.”

“Lab Boy. I need a neoglith masquer simulating Thaal’s face. And something I suspect will be much harder. A full-body neoglith suit for Turman.”

Scut frowned and his new human face lost its smile. “What species?”

“A new species! Relate it genetically to an indigenous Kuratooine life-form if you can; otherwise something from a nearby system. I want examiners to poke him, prod him, scan him, and say This is new.”

“Understood.” Scut didn’t sound like he understood a bit of it.

“And … gems. Do you think your father would be willing to do us a favor, no questions asked?”

Scut nodded. “I know he would.”

“I’ll tell you later. Witnesses! We’ll need witnesses. And … an air skirmish, draw them in. Who’s the best pilot among you?”

The other Wraiths looked at one another. Myri, Sharr, and Jesmin raised their hands. Jesmin saw Myri’s hand up; she lowered her own.

Sharr looked Myri’s way. “I think this one is mine. I’ve been piloting since Gamble Girl was seven.”

Her return smile was deceptively sweet. “I’ve been piloting since I was seven. I’m not as good as Daddy or my sister Syal … but I’ll vape you.”

Sharr rolled his eyes. “We’ll let the simulators settle it.”

“No.” Voort pointed at Myri. “Gambler will be my wingmate. Mind Boy, I need you to go back to Coruscant.”

“I just got here!”

“Pack light. You’ll be coming right back.” Voort looked around. “Comm Boy, find out if the mine under Black Crest Mountain is his black-market base. If it’s not, find out where that base is. And where its topside exit is. Drug Boy, they’ll send Pop-Dogs. I want something debilitating for them, like a tear gas. Some sort of precipitating dust would be better than gas—it’d be better if the wind didn’t immediately blow it all over our witnesses. Muscle Boy, fabricate us some explosives. We can always use explosives, we’re the Wraiths. Oh, and we need starfighters. Make it X-wings. Everybody, work together to figure out if he has a local mistress.” Voort looked among them and took a deep breath. “And smile. We have him. We have General Thaal.”

28

SAGEOVAL’S DECOM MISSION TRANSPORT YARDS, KURATOOINE

Turman’s handsome-husband face wore an expression of mild curiosity. “What do you think? Buy them or steal them?”

He, Voort, Myri, Trey, and Thaymes stood on one landing field of the broad, mostly outdoor business just north of Kuat City, not far from their quarry. This particular lot was thick with decommissioned military vehicles. Some were early-production-run vehicles that had failed to impress the soldiers testing them—proof-of-concept repulsortanks, armored personnel carriers with side armor panels that now looked like they’d been chewed to pieces by insects, airspeeders with slots in the beds for modular systems that never made the grade.

And there were starfighters from the orbital base. Some were old and so worn that their lift wings drooped. Others, though, belonged to designs that were simply being phased out over time, such as the four classic Incom T-65 X-wings the Wraiths stood beside.

Voort looked at Trey, who had his head in an open panel on the side of the fuselage. “Muscle Boy. You’re sure about these two?”

“Huh?” Trey withdrew his head to look at Voort. “Oh. Yes.” He pulled the panel shut. “They need lots of work but are in good shape. Lasers and deflectors functional. Proton torpedo tubes removed, of course, since civilians can’t own proton torpedoes. Yes, I can get these two combat-ready in short order. The others, too … but I’d need six months and a beautiful Twi’lek assistant to fix them.”

Voort thought it over. “I’d like to steal them …”

Myri brightened.

“But that would be one caper too many, I think. Our resources are stretched thin as it is. And this would be something the local authorities would look into. We can’t afford to drop too many flags.” Voort put additional meaning into those words. The others nodded.

A few meters away, the salesman who had conducted them here brightened at the Wraiths’ suddenly affirmative body language. He was a rotund Besalisk dressed in an expensive suit and a ruffled silk bib, and his upper left arm and lower right arm old-fashioned mechanical prosthetics. Now he turned a smile that was both friendly and excessively confident on the Wraiths.

Voort clapped Turman’s back. “Go get him.”

“And what do I use for credits?”

“The Concussor shuttle.”

Myri offered an obviously fake pout. “Aww. My honeymoon shuttle?”

Voort shrugged. “In exchange for two X-wings.”

Myri clapped her ersatz husband on the back. “Go get him.”

Turman walked off to begin the struggle with his new opponent.

Voort turned his attention to Thaymes. “All right, you. You’ve been grinning like one of Lab Boy’s masquers since we left the ops center. Out with it.”

Thaymes gave the others a conspiratorial look. “Admire me, praise me. I’ve just confirmed that Kuratooine is Thaal’s intended getaway home. And I know his new identity. Thadley Biolan.”

Voort frowned; not that anyone but Myri could really interpret the expression. “Haven’t I heard that name since we’ve been here?”

Thaymes nodded. “One of about a thousand entrepreneurs who show up in business reports and investor profiles. He leases cargo vessel berths on Ruby Habitat up in orbit. Like a lot of rich people who don’t want to get their children kidnapped, he avoids the press, and there aren’t many stills or recordings of him, but I found a few.” He opened his datapad, whose screen already showed a still image.

It was a man, very solidly built in shape but with a frame that looked like fat would settle on him quickly if he took to idleness. His skin was yellow, his eyes black, his forehead unlined. Thick hair and a black beard and mustache made it hard to guess what his shaven features would look like, but Voort could easily picture Thaal’s face under all that hair.

Voort rubbed his chin. “So his altered genetic profile will include genes for yellow skin. Which would be much less painless than getting a full-body tattoo job.”

Myri shuddered, doubtless contemplating the pain induced by a tattooing effort like that. “Was this still taken on Kuratooine?”

“No.” Thaymes sounded confident. “Unless it was three years ago when they broke ground for the new base, I don’t think he’s ever been here.”

She stared at him. “Then why do you think here’s his destination? I bet he’s leased or bought properties all over the galaxy.”

“It was Face’s report on the mistresses. I ran data on them and his wife Zehrinne through some heavy-duty comparison programs, and I got what they had in common.” Thaymes swept his finger across the screen, and the image changed to that of a woman’s face.

From Trey’s intake of breath, Voort concluded that she was a stunner. A red-skinned Twi’lek woman, head tilted a little down as she faced the holocam, she seemed to stare right at Voort. There was the faintest curve of a smile to her lips, and her eyes promised passion and maybe danger. The top of a deeply V-necked white tunic could be glimpsed at the bottom of the still image.

Trey shook his head. “Even her earlobes are beautiful. Who is she?”

“Koy’tiffin. Twi’lek actress born about sixty years ago. Early in her career she did the usual range of beautiful-Twi’lek holodrama roles—slave dancers, hopeful young entertainers, fatal females. Later she concentrated more on stage work. Still acts. Now look. Here’s Zehrinne Thaal at age twenty.” He flipped to a new still.

It showed the former model as a very young woman, her hair long and unstyled, her eyes guileless. Her facial resemblance to Koy’tiffin was startling. “And here again, Cadrin Awel and Keura Fallatte.” He flipped to two more stills, one of an outdoorsy blond human woman and one of a dark-skinned human girl wearing a mischievous grin. Both had cheekbones, lips, eye shape and spacing that resembled those of the Twi’lek star. “Thaal is one of those men who falls in love with an image and selects only women who match it … and only for as long as they match it.”

Myri sniffed. “And throws them away when the resemblance is no longer as sharp.”

“So I ran an image search for women, apparent age eighteen to twenty-five, whose facial structure was like Koy’tiffin’s. I prioritized by places Thaal had personally visited in recent years and by the planets we suspected of being his destination. And here was my number one hit.” He flipped past Keura Fallatte.

The new image was motion, not still, and showed a lovely longhaired brunette woman, human and apparently in her late teens, garbed in a sparkly sleeveless party gown, incongruously holding a stringed acoustic instrument and concentrating as she played what looked like an intricate instrumental piece. Her surroundings suggested she was onstage under nighttime skies. No sound emerged from the datapad to tell Voort what the musical piece was.

“Her name is Ledina Chott. From here on Kuratooine, a local celebrity. Age eighteen. She’s a singer of popular music. Gossip reporters on Kuratooine’s news feeds say that in the last few months she’s been receiving a lot of presents and communications from a wealthy shipping tycoon, a mystery man she’s never met in person. That’s when I began concentrating on shipping tycoons with local interests, and the facial profiler partially matched Thaal with Thadley Biolan.”

“Good work.” Voort studied the image of Ledina Chott. The clip started over. “We need to be sure. Muscle Boy, you and Ranger Girl need to break into her quarters, find and copy any transmissions ‘Thadley’ has sent her. We’ll study them. Get to know this new identity a little better.”

Trey grinned, the expression broad.

“But you can’t leave behind any holocams to spy on her.”

“Oh.” Trey sobered.

Turman rejoined them. “He wants to see the shuttle.”

Late that evening, after the sun had gone down and the moons were in ascension, shining down on Kuratooine’s surface, after most of the Wraiths had retired for the evening to individual pursuits, Voort rapped on the door to Scut’s lab.

“Come.” Scut’s voice was as neutral as usual.

Voort entered, the top step of the small set of duraplast-and-wood stairs creaking under his feet. Beyond the door was a small, deceptively innocent social room, and the door beyond that led into the laboratory. Voort walked through.

The lab occupied most of the building. Side shelves held transparisteel containers, large and small, holding tissue samples, and bins on two of the three large tables bubbled and slurped with chunks of what looked like skin or meat floating in fast-growth liquid environments. The place smelled as appetizing as the Hutt space station Voort had recently visited.

Scut, not wearing his human disguise, stood beside the third table. On it lay a body that looked like a corpse that had been hollowed out and allowed to deflate. The skin was reddish brown with short, spiky extrusions that did not look particularly sharp but did seem to have a defensive function. The elbows, the kneecaps, and the knuckles on hands and feet had sharper spurs projecting from them. The forehead featured hornlike extrusions that looked dangerous.

The face—Voort had never seen its like. Two eye sockets were set deep under a massive supraorbital ridge. There was no nose; directly beneath the eyes was the lower jaw, broad and massive, with lips that were segmented plates. Toothlike ridges of blood red were visible behind them. The head looked just large enough to contain a human-sized skull.

Voort looked the body up and down. “This is the final form of the suit?”

Scut tugged at the thing’s chest. It split open along a vertical seam that had been impossible to see before. It ran from the creature’s neck to where the navel would be on a human. The seam opened with a moist noise.

Not looking at Voort, Scut leaned down, his head entering the empty chest cavity. He looked back and forth. His voice was hollow inside the cavity as he answered. “Not quite the final version. It conforms to Turman’s dimensions, but I’m having trouble stabilizing its life cycle. This one will live only two days or so. If you must have a week, I must make more modifications.” He withdrew and finally looked at Voort. “It shares thirty-eight percent of its genes with one of Kuratooine’s ocean crustaceans. Genes I haven’t worked with before. It’s tricky.”

“I believe you.”

“I have been here all afternoon and evening. What news is there?”

“Muscle Boy and Ranger Girl got back with the Thadley Biolan recordings. They’re studying those. Thaymes has found out a few things about Biolan. Supposed to have been a citizen of Alderaan, but grew up shipboard and built his own fleet of cargo vessels plying Rim space and the Unknown Regions. A good fit for Usan’s new-identity profile.”

“Ah.” Scut released the creature’s body. The seam began to close, starting at the bottom and working its way up, as if the gap were a quickly regenerating wound. “You are not here to talk about the suit.”

“No, I’m here to talk about our upcoming action. About you causing the deaths of all the Wraiths.”

Scut looked skyward, a here we go again gesture. “Because I am Yuuzhan Vong. Because we are all destroyers, ravagers, and monsters.”

“No, actually. Because you don’t support me as Wraith Leader.” Voort looked around for a chair, saw none. He leaned against a wall and tried to look nonchalant. “You think I’m unfit to lead. Meaning that you’ll be questioning every one of my orders in the field. Which can result in a mistake in our very complicated timing, or a miscommunication of new orders, or a last-second decision to refuse to do part of your job.”

“I cannot just set aside my own judgment.” Scut returned his attention to the neoglith masquer suit, watching it seal itself.

“So you think your judgment may be superior to mine.”

Scut shrugged. “I know it is.”

“And the fact that your father arrives in two days is kicking your protective instinct up to maximum power. Scut, I’ve got to prove to you that I’m right and you’re wrong. If I don’t, the probability that you’ll do something that gets some of us killed increases exponentially.”

Scut stood silent, staring at Voort with his blank features and black Yuuzhan Vong eyes. “I will admit, this sounds different from your usual ravings.”

“It is different. But here, just to make you feel more at home, I’ll throw in something familiar to you. You were correct on Vandor-Three. I hate your kind.”

“I know.” Scut moved to another table. There a white metal tub held a quantity of reddish liquid. Scut dipped his hands into the stuff, spread it liberally on his bare arms up to his elbows. It did not flow or drip off his skin. “This is a neutralizing agent. It cancels the digestive juices that coat the inside of the Embass prototype.”

“The inside where Turman would be?”

“Yes. Another problem I am working on. Figuring out how to modify the design so Turman will not be digested.”

Voort snorted. “Back to the subject. When you were still with the Yuuzhan Vong, when you were a Shamed One, were you afraid for your kind? Afraid that they would become extinct?”

“No.”

“And when you were with the Cheems family?”

“No …” Scut’s voice sounded thoughtful. “They kept me away from much of the war news. I simply studied. And I have seen your hatred of my kind before. My parents lost many friends when they adopted me.”

“Scut, I was in the war. Not on the front lines—often behind them. Sometimes breaking into the Yuuzhan Vong’s weird complexes. Seeing how they dealt with captured populations. Seeing how they twisted the worlds they conquered. Then I’d get back to safety, just beyond the front lines, and see all that fear and resoluteness and pain on the faces of the people of the New Republic. People who did think not only that they were going to die, soon, in agony, but that their whole civilization would die. That not only would they, individually, not be remembered, but that nothing would—nothing they grew up with, nothing they loved and admired. All gone forever.”

Scut began peeling the gel off his arms. It came off like two gloves. He held them over a silver cylinder; its top surface irised open, then closed once he’d dropped the gloves within. “After the war, I learned from my parents that they had those feelings. They insulated me and their other children, my human brother and sisters, from them.”

Voort nodded. “So that was five years of my life. Years in which I lost friends and watched the universe I knew being eaten away as if by a cancer. The only being I really ever acknowledged as my family died during that time.”

“This was the one called Runt?”

Voort nodded. “So is it any wonder that when I think of the Yuuzhan Vong, I find myself in the middle of all those thoughts, those memories?”

“No. No wonder. I do not judge you for that. But you are irrational. And irrationality kills people in this trade. So Bhindi told me, and so I have heard from many stories.”

“Ah.” Voort stood away from the wall. “Good. Which gets us to what I wanted to talk about. You would follow Bhindi but not me. Correct?”

“Correct.”

“Despite the fact that her own irrationality got someone killed in the time since you joined the Wraiths?”

Scut frowned. The Yuuzhan Vong brow was already a brooding type; when he frowned, he looked like a judge ready to issue a death sentence. “You think she somehow caused Face Loran’s death?”

“No. Her own.”

“This is—what does Sharr call it? Transference. In your mind, you transfer your own bad trait to another.”

“Bhindi was my friend.” Even though the human voice issued by the throat implant remained pleasant, Voort’s true voice, under it, turned heavy. “I loved and respected her. But I’ve been thinking about this since you and I talked on Vandor-Three, and it’s clear that she made a series of bad, irrational mistakes that led to her death. She would have doomed the mission here on Kuratooine the same way … and you’re not experienced enough to understand that.”

“I want fresh air.” Scut moved past him and headed to the door. “Convince me.”

Outside, they took a walk along the treeless strip of land immediately around the buildings. Far overhead, just moving away from the face of the larger moon, a tiny spoke-and-ring shape, Skifter Station, drifted serenely.

Voort watched it as he walked. “You see her mistakes in several of her decisions. The Concussor. We could have prepared a dozen different offenses that would have given us a fighting chance if we chose or needed to fight. Sure, we didn’t want to kill any innocent Alliance military personnel. But it could have been a Pop-Dog transport coming after us. It could have been Thaal, admitting guilt and just begging for a missile strike. We weren’t prepared for any aggressive action. We were prepared only to cut and run. Why?”

Scut shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“The answer was in one of the last things she said. Here, I’ll try again. All six of you going into that Pop-Dog base on Vandor-Three. That was a mission for Jesmin and Trey alone. Or Jesmin and Turman. Instead, five Wraiths went down into the installation. Which, as Trey puts it, dropped more security flags, which eventually tipped off the Pop-Dogs and sent us running. Why did Bhindi do that?”

“I still don’t know.” But Scut now sounded curious.

“Fleeing toward Mount Lyss, we had an improvised plan. Jesmin conducted Myri out of the comm-jamming zone so she could get us some backup. Good idea, ultimately successful. Bhindi went with Huhunna to take out the closest pursuit and provide an ongoing distraction. Was Bhindi the best choice to be on that action?”

“No.” Scut frowned. “But she couldn’t necessarily know who would be best because she didn’t know Sharr’s Wraiths. So, like you asking who is the best pilot, she should have asked who is best in fieldwork. It should have been Wran. Or you, with your experience. Bhindi was perhaps the worst choice.” He sounded startled with the realization.

Voort changed direction, turning them so they would not walk to the very edge of the cliff overlook. “So. What was Bhindi’s irrationality?”

It took Scut a few moments to answer. “Almost her dying words. Get these kids home safe.”

“Good. Correct. Sometime in the last few years she must have lost something, some objectivity about putting people at risk, especially the young. I bet she jumped at the chance to put Wraith Squadron together again. It was a chance to get back in the game. To, I don’t know, prove that the unit should never have been disbanded. But the new team she assembled, most of its members so young, tripped that overprotective instinct. Kids. She was unwilling to put kids in harm’s way, and when there was no other choice, she put herself in harm’s way instead. And died.”

“I … think you may be correct.”

“And I’m the only one both experienced and objective enough to have seen it.” Voort heaved a sigh. “And even I didn’t see it in time. I was too out of practice, too far removed from the mindset.”

“Can you put the kids in harm’s way? As Bhindi could not?”

“I almost wish the answer was no. But it’s yes. I can. We have a job to do. We have to take Thaal down. It’s another mercy killing. We’re going to kill what Thaal has become so he can’t kill others with his betrayal.”

“Very well.” Scut nodded. He stopped where he was and peered into the black gulf that was the rock quarry in shadow. “I will … give you a chance. I will support you as leader.”

Voort stopped, too. “Thank you.”

“But understand something.” Scut kicked a pebble. It flew out over the cliff edge. Two seconds passed before it clattered on stones far below. “I have heard my father’s story of his meeting with the Wraiths since childhood. He knew their objective was the destruction of an admiral and a biological warfare facility. They used my father to achieve it … but saved him in so doing. They did not have to. Perhaps it cost them extra effort to do it that way.”

“It did.”

“And still they saved him. That was on my mind as I grew up. I never met anyone who had been on that operation. Then I was recruited by Bhindi and heard that I would finally meet one, the Gamorrean-who-talks.” He stopped speaking for a moment, evidently sorting his thoughts. “I am offtrack. What I mean is, I will hold you to the standards of those Wraiths.”

“Fair enough.” Then Voort felt a wave of something like dizziness as bits of Scut’s speech broke apart, forming up in his mind like columns of numbers. They added together into a sum he could understand.

… heard … story of … Wraiths since childhood …

… on my mind as I grew up …

… never met … the Gamorrean-who-talks …

Voort’s stomach lurched. He bent over, put his hands on his knees, drew in a couple of shaky breaths.

“Voort?”

“It’s nothing.”

Voort remembered Scut’s eyes from every time the Yuuzhan Vong had stared at Voort. They had been hard and flat and full of hatred. Voort had seen them as a Yuuzhan Vong’s eyes. But in the fifteen years after that war had ended, he had seen eyes like those many, many times, not on Yuuzhan Vong.

Students. Defiant, resentful, eloquently stating with their stares, You don’t have the right to keep me here and tell me what to do.

Scut had joined the Wraiths to be like the heroes of his childhood stories and even meet them.

Voort had been one of his heroes.

Voort had been a hero to somebody.

And Voort had looked Scut straight in the eye and told him he was a monster.

“Voort?”

“It’s nothing. Just one of the side effects of getting older.” Voort straightened. “Thanks for your support, Scut.”

“You are welcome.”

“And, Scut?”

“Yes?”

Voort held out his hand. “Welcome to Wraith Squadron.”

29

Well before the two X-wings reached Tildin, Kuratooine’s smaller and more desolate moon, the enemy starfighters overtook them.

First they were distant blips on the sensor board, moving along the flight path of the X-wings, mere hundreds of kilometers behind. Then they crept near enough for the sensors to identify them by class. Finally they were close enough, only a few klicks back, that the astromechs’ visual sensors could capture images to show Myri and Voort.

Myri glanced at the image on her screen. The starfighter creeping up behind her looked very much like what would result if an X-wing with strike foils open in attack position mysteriously lost its top two foils. What was left was a nose assembly and fuselage very much like an X-wing’s, with only two wings in open and down locked position.

It was an E-wing. It was painted brown and had a distinctive set of stylized triangular teeth painted across the nose in white.

Pretending she had just noticed her follower for the first time, Myri clicked her comm board. “Hey, sweetheart, it looks like we have company.”

Voort’s implant voice responded. His Gamorrean grunts were not audible beneath it. “We could use some recordings of our practice runs. Let’s ask them if they’ll help.”

Then Myri’s comm board popped and a male voice, louder than Voort’s only because the other pilot was almost bellowing, came across it. “Unknown flight approaching Tildin, identify yourself at once.”

“Unknown?” Myri let her voice climb into an angry squeak. “We filed a flight plan with Rimsaw Station and Kura City Flight Control. And we had to fill out different forms for each one!”

“But you didn’t file with us. I say again, identify yourself. We have a lock on you.” It was true; Myri’s sensor board showed that her pursuer had a sensor lock, suitable to launch either laser or missile attack, on her X-wing.

Voort was next, sounding ridiculously meek. “Maybe we’d better do what they say, dear.”

“Oh, all right. Bully.” Myri switched to internal comm and spoke to her R2 unit, a flaking gray thing barely brought back to functionality by Trey. “Fuzzy, transmit Packet One to Sith-for-brains back there.” Then she switched back to a broadcast channel and her sweeter voice. “I’m Rima Farstar and the fellow behind me in the silly costume is Matran Farstar, and we’re doing some practice run on your moon for a holodrama I intend to make when the rest of the backers give me the money they promised but haven’t yet transferred. We’ve been here for days and days, but the money still isn’t here yet, my actors are bored—”

“Say again. Did you say costume?”

“Did I? Oh, yes. Matran’s costume. He can barely see out of the head! He’s going to crash into the side of a crater because he can’t see, I swear.”

“Maintain your course and speed. I’m coming up for a visual.”

Myri smiled. “A visual what? Visual is an adjective, you know. It can’t just float around by itself like an asteroid. It needs a what-do-you-call-it, a noun. I know this because I had to learn all about adjectives and nouns so I could write the script.”

“Maintain comm silence.”

Myri suspected that the pilot wanted to add, Or I’ll kill you. But that would not have been a suitable threat. It might be recorded and presented at a complaint hearing. Apparently, even a Pop-Dog knew better than to utter it.

The lead E-wing rapidly closed the distance between the two flights. It came up behind Voort’s X-wing, positioning itself behind and above in classic dogfight laser-attack position. It maintained that position for about thirty seconds, then accelerated and repeated the process with Myri.

She loosened her seat restraints, twisted around so she could look back at the E-wing pilot, waved, and blew him a kiss.

“Rima Farstar.” The pilot sounded pained. “Confirm that there is a Gamorrean piloting the second X-wing.”

“I don’t have to maintain comm silence anymore?”

“No! Confirm … species of your wingmate.”

“Oh, he’s human. That’s his costume. I’m surprised I forgot to mention his costume. He can barely see out through the eyeholes in the mask, you know.” Myri faced forward again and tightened her straps. “It’s a heavy, sweaty, gross costume. Don’t you know the Legend of the Flying Pig? That’s also the name of my script.”

“Negative.”

“Negative. Oooh, I love that word. I’ll have to use it. No, this was from a long, long time ago. In the war against the Empire. People started seeing a Gamorrean pilot. What a great story! So I thought, this needs to be a holodrama. Or a holocomedy. I’m still not sure which. I’ve written it both ways. What do you think?”

“You’re clear to continue.” The E-wing abruptly banked, a hard maneuver for such a peaceful situation. His wingmate banked to join him on the return flight to Kuratooine.

Myri watched them depart, her smile replaced by a hard stare. She switched her comm board to transmit on very low power on a little-used frequency, encrypted. “Did you hear all that? They have no jurisdiction in this area; it’s a Starfighter Command issue. They didn’t even identify themselves. They had no right. They are rodents, just like they’re named for!”

“Keep your mind on the exercise, Gambler.” Voort’s voice was now matter-of-fact.

“I just want to smash them. They shouldn’t have licenses to pilot a hovering snack stand.”

Tildin was entirely devoid of other spacecraft when they arrived. There was a sensor station on the side facing Kuratooine, but at Voort’s direction Myri led the way to the far side. It was half in shadow and half in sunlight.

Voort chose a stretch of lunar surface several hundred kilometers long in the sunlight. “This exercise will be all terrain-following mode. We’re going to need to be very good at that for the Skifter Station run.”

“And what do I get if I’m better than you?”

“Enough cute talk, Gambler. This is deadly serious.”

Myri sobered. “Yes, sir.”

“But good work scamming those Pop-Dogs.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Planetside, on a low hard-rock mountain at the western edge of where Chakham Base bordered on Kura City’s south end, two Pop-Dog troopers, one human and one Quarren, both female, examined the small hypercomm antenna inset into a patch of stony, treeless ground. The antenna, a durasteel-mesh bowl ten meters across, was now decorated with a fallen tree. Small by the standards of the forest verge surrounding the antenna, this tree had evidently been uprooted by one stiff wind too many. The dead tree lay half in, half out of the depression.

A maintenance droid, barely waist-high to a human, its head a round vertical plate with a single optical sensor, lay under the tree trunk just where it touched the stone rim around the antenna. Pinned, the droid flailed, its metal arms clanking against the stone. A series of musical notes that might have been pleas for help or droid curses emerged from its vocal synthesizer.

The Quarren trooper laughed. The sound, filtered through the nest of tentacles over her mouth, was muted and rubbery. “That explains the interference.”

The human trooper shook her head, clearly saddened by the futility of dealing with droids. She stooped, getting her arms under the tree trunk, and lifted. The tree rose only half a meter, but the droid was able to scramble free. He stood, pointed accusingly at the tree, and continued his harangue.

The Quarren gestured to catch the droid’s attention. “What happened?”

The droid put his hands where hips would be on a human and turned his harangue on the Quarren.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” she asked.

The human assumed an expression of disbelief. “What does he mean, he doesn’t know?”

The Quarren shrugged. “He says he was headed up here from the droid access tunnel. He was still fifty or sixty meters downslope when he experienced an emergency shutdown. He woke up under the tree.”

The human rolled her eyes. “Here’s what probably happened. He came up here, the tree fell on him, and he reinitialized. When he was online again, his memories were cross-linked or corrupted.”

“That’s probably it.”

“Come on, give me a hand. The tree’s still too heavy for the droid.”

Together, they dragged the tree completely clear of the antenna depression. Throughout, the droid offered counterproductive advice and complaints about the troopers’ interpretation of events.

Then the Pop-Dogs left, the droid stomping along behind them, all three crushing fallen leaves underfoot with the stealth and grace of drunken banthas.

Two minutes passed, then Jesmin stood, letting the synthcloth blanket and the leaves spread across it slip to the ground.

Huhunna, beside her, also rose. She offered a single word: “Kreekkraakkruump.” The word was onomatopoeia, the Wookiee sound of someone falling through a succession of tree branches before hitting the ground—hence, a klutz.

Jesmin, whose own command of Wookiee was pretty good, grinned and responded in the same language. “Yes. Kind of like listening to a construction droid learning to tiptoe.”

“But you were right.” Huhunna’s words, echoing softly off tree trunks, would sound to most people like a distant animal growl of warning.

Jesmin nodded. “Abandoned mines closed for safety reasons don’t usually have hypercomms, droid workers, or Pop-Dog guards. This is the place.” She looked northeast. Through the trees, some of Kura City’s few skytowers could be glimpsed in the distance. “Over there somewhere will be the old entrance to the mine. Probably not as sealed off as people think.” She turned to the southeast. Chakham Base lay in that direction, though it could not be seen for the trees. “And I’m betting there’s another entrance down there.”

Huhunna rumbled her reply: “Let’s finish this operation and get off this world of spindly little trees.”

“They’re not that spindly. Come on.”

30

Voort and Myri brought their starfighters in on a slow, tediously lethal approach to the Wraiths’ base of operations. They descended on repulsors to land in the quarry. It took a few minutes to extract their astromechs, Fuzzy and the dented black R5 unit Voort called Dustbin, and cover the starfighters with large sheets of tan flexiplast. They loaded themselves and the droids onto the railed open-air turbolift that had been original equipment when the quarry was a going concern. It rose, clanking, to clifftop level.

The two Wraiths, still clad in orange-and-white X-wing pilots’ gear, their helmets in hand, walked into the main building—and a storm of activity.

Overhead in the ops room was a hologram of the Kura City–Chakham Base boundary. Huhunna had her hand up in the image as if grasping a low mountain at the western edge of the boundary.

Jesmin looked up as Voort and Myri entered. “That’s their base. We’re working on the accesses.”

Voort nodded. “Excellent. Muscle Boy, kiss their hands.”

Trey, sprawled in a puffed chair, ignored him. “You’ll need a case for the jewels.”

Voort waved his comment away. “I want a crystal case. Not your department. I want you up on Skifter Station as soon as possible to plant the sensor disruptors on the exterior. And what about proton torpedoes?”

Trey shook his head. “Not likely. But I can attach new hardpoints to the S-foils and put together some rocketry for them.”

“That’ll have to do.” Voort caught sight of Drikall. “Drug Boy! Can you mess up Turman’s vital signs?”

“Of course.” The medic smiled, showing an impressive array of sharp teeth. “What would you like? Tachycardia a specialty.”

Turman looked up from his own chair, his expression alarmed. “Wait a minute—”

“Don’t worry about it.” Thaymes looked back and forth from his monitor screen to the hologram Huhunna continued to poke at. “I’ve recoded a child’s noisemaker. Tack it to the inside of the Embass suit and it’ll make Turman sound like he has two heartbeats. You want three? I can give him three heartbeats.”

Drikall looked betrayed.

From the adjoining room, the combined kitchen and dining space that Wran had dubbed the Catastrophic Mess, came Scut’s voice: “Do not drug the Clawdite. No good can come of it.”

Then someone emerged from the Mess—not Scut, but a lean human man now in the shadowy halfway zone between middle age and old age. His hair was white but not yet thin, and his suit, silver-gray and in a contemporary Coruscant style, was well fitted and clean. He emerged holding out a hand toward Voort. “Professor. So good to see you again.”

“Doctor Cheems.” Voort shook his hand. “How was your shuttle flight?”

“Tedious, thank you. And call me Mulus. Please.”

“I’m Voort. Are you all settled in?”

“And on the job. Come, I’ll show you.” Mulus led the way back to the Mess.

The dining table was almost covered in diagrams, machinery halfway through fabrication, various hand and blaster weapons. At one end rested a device that could have been a pistol-grip soldering iron if the barrel were a heating element instead of a tiny transparent dish. Beside it were several small duraplast boxes filled with what looked like precious and semiprecious stones, some cut and faceted, some rough.

Mulus seated himself beside the pistol-grip tool. Voort took the chair next to him, and the other Wraiths gathered around, some standing.

“So.” Mulus held up one box of uncut stones. “Assorted samples of Kuratooine stones that Viull acquired for me.”

“Viull …” Voort frowned. “Oh, you mean Scut.”

Mulus glared at his Yuuzhan Vong son. “You know your mother hates that nickname.”

Scut shrugged, smiled. It was an odd expression on a Yuuzhan Vong face.

“Anyway.” Mulus set the box down. “Standard distribution of gemstones for a world of this type. Kuratooine sapphires are especially appreciated. Though I really like the amber found here.”

Voort shook his head. “Amber won’t work for us. It’s organic. We need mined, inorganic stones.”

“Pity. I’ll have to take some amber home.” Mulus set the box down. “But, to the point, if you’re going to convince people—what did you call them?” He looked at Scut.

“The marks.”

“If you’re going to convince the marks that they’re seeing gems mined and crafted in absolute isolation, hitherto completely unknown, you have two basic approaches. You need either a material they’ve never seen before or a crafting technique they’ve never seen before. To have both would be even more convincing, of course. Materials they’ve never seen before are tricky, because either you have to have actually found materials no one has ever seen before …” His voice trailed off and he waited for a response.

The Wraiths shook their heads.

“Blast. I was hoping you’d thrill me. Or you use something created in a laboratory. And that’s tricky, too. Such a material would have to have been developed in secret. No published descriptions of the stuff to thrill fellow gemologists or justify the government grant money. You can see how that would be rare. As you probably know, scientists in a specific field tend to know what others are doing. Clearly, what we need to overcome this problem is more startlingly rich mad scientists, and I’d like to apply for that job.”

“Father.” Scut sounded impatient. “Few of us have much more than a century to live, and you’re off on one of your tangents.”

“Oh. Sorry. And even if you had a helpful mad scientist, some artificial gem production techniques reveal themselves under the microscope.”

“So the other approach—” Trey looked like he was struggling to remember. “You said, crafting techniques no one’s seen before.”

“Correct. There I think I can help you. Over the years, I’ve developed several sonic devices whose purpose is cutting gems. In the right hands, they’re better than cutting them physically. In the wrong hands, you end up with a small pile of pretty but valueless gemstone chips.”

Voort frowned. “These devices are commercially available?”

“Oh, yes. In fact, sales of and training on the Cheems Sonic Chisels are paying for a lot of my in-name-only retirement.”

“My point is, they’re well known and won’t fool anybody.”

Cheems smiled. “But they’re not the only sonic gem-shaping technology I’ve invented. There’s another that I’m still fooling around with. I don’t know if there’ll be a market for the results. You take a sonic chisel apparatus with micrometer positioning control and a fractal mathematical set for guidance and let them loose on a gemstone. Here, I’ll show you.” He opened another box, removed from it a small object wrapped in black velvet, and extracted the object. “Does anyone but my boy here know anything about gems?”

Myri raised a hand. “I can spot lots of kinds of fakes.” At Voort’s confused look, she explained. “Any gambling environment, people try to pass off fake jewelry as valuable. So they can stay in a game or pay off debts.”

Cheems passed the object to her. He also handed her an optical device, a small single-eye scanner.

She held the first item up so it was fully in the light from the overhead glow rods. It looked to Voort like a sprig from a bush. There was a main stem two centimeters long, with tiny branchlike extrusions radiating from it at random intervals and in random directions. It was red, a creamy hue.

“It looks and weighs kind of like coral.” Myri sounded thoughtful.

Cheems shook his head. “Ah, but it’s a Hapan form of ruby.”

“And it looks organic, like coral.” Myri held it under Cheems’s optic. “Interesting. Under magnification, you can see the facets. Thousands and thousands of them.” She handed the two objects to Jesmin, sitting beside her. “I really haven’t seen anything like it.”

Cheems beamed. “No one has. Except Viull, and my wife, who has several pieces. But she’s helping orchestrate my grand debut of the technique by keeping them to herself, never wearing them in public, until I’m ready to have a showing. The beauty of the technique is that flawed stones yield results as beautiful as flawless. Cracks and imperfections become part of the final design …”

Voort watched the gem as it was handed around the table. “Scut, the Embass suit. Could it incorporate some of those pieces as decoration? As if the Embass people practiced self-modification like the Yuuzhan Vong.”

Scut considered. “That would be beautiful. And yes. I can do that.”

“It’s not your top priority. Keeping the suit from digesting Turman is still number one.”

Turman jerked up from looking at the gem. “What?”

“And the Thaal masquer—also more important.”

Scut nodded. “Decorations will be priority three, then.”

“Digest me?”

Voort returned his attention to Cheems. “This is definitely what we want. You can perform the technique with what we have here?”

“With what I brought with me. Though anyone working with me will need total isolation ear protection.”

“We’ll get it. Mulus, thanks for coming. You may end up helping save a lot of lives.”

Cheems beamed. “Just paying back a favor.”

A day later, they had more answers.

Thaymes, digging through old, offline geological surveys made before the planet had a name, found sonic interpretation maps of caves below the Chakham Base property. Some were deep and seemed to have no access to the surface. Others, closer to ground level, had openings at base level. A few of those entrances were located in stands of woods well away from the base’s buildings.

Trey, tracing some of the cave and tunnel passageways on Thaymes’s monitor with his finger, nodded. “Since it doesn’t have to be a very big explosives package, I think we can get it pretty deep.”

Voort looked between him and the map. “Not so deep the base seismographs won’t detect it.”

“Oh, they’ll detect it.”

“The crawler has to be the very first thing ready, then.”

Trey nodded. “Boom.”

“And the Thadley Biolan recorded messages to Ledina Chott—you’ve been studying them? Can you do it?”

Off duty after a day of serving drinks at a bar frequented by Pop-Dogs, Turman sat, weary, in an operations center chair beside Voort’s.

Voort didn’t look up. He continued studying the diagrams Jesmin had given him earlier in the day. They showed a large building housing water pumps. Jesmin had said the building was in the northwest quadrant of Chakham Base, on the lowest slope of Black Crest Mountain. One diagram, which Jesmin had admitted was partly theoretical, showed a concealed turbolift shaft that supposedly descended to the old mine works beneath the mountain and its surroundings. “Stage Boy. How’s that all-liquid diet working for you?”

Turman groaned. The sound went on awhile. He paused for a breath. “I’m not here to talk about that. It’s Ledina Chott.”

“Thaal’s next mistress, unless we get to him first. What about her?”

“Just recently the Pop-Dogs have received orders, unofficial orders, about her. She’s off-limits. Word has filtered down to the rank and file that the Pop-Dogs, to a man and woman, are supposed to be respectful and very, very hands-off if they ever encounter her. It’s also considered good luck to scare off anyone else showing interest in her. This is as of just a few weeks ago.”

“Soon, soon, soon … He’ll be abandoning Thaal and becoming Thadley very soon now.” Voort sounded almost smug.

“Thaal’s operating procedures are changing. He killed his last mistress just to make a point. What if he approaches Ledina Chott and she refuses him?” Turman looked distressed. “Is she safe?”

“I don’t know.” Voort set the diagrams aside. “We can’t cover every eventuality with eleven Wraiths. You can’t be there to protect her. You’re more important somewhere else.”

“I know.” Turman rose. “I just wanted someone to complain to.”

The next morning, Huhunna and Jesmin delivered a package to within ten meters of the army base’s forest-side sensor fence.

Behind a tree, they removed the package’s contents from the bag that held it.

It was a droid of sorts. A lozenge half a meter long, it was fitted with a score of articulated durasteel legs radiating from all along its body and in all directions. There were green globes housing optical sensors at either end of the body.

Jesmin twisted one of the optical sensors until it clicked into place. The droid went active, standing up on a few of its limbs. It oriented itself, facing its distant destination. Unfortunately, there was a tree only centimeters away, blocking its path.

It looked the tree up and down, then turned to the left and began what, to Jesmin, looked like the slowest walk in history toward the sensor fence.

Huhunna heaved a sigh, then spoke in Wookiee. “Too slow. Nothing will want to eat something that smells like that, but something may come along and want to play with it. And will wreck it. It needs to move faster.”

“No, any faster and the motion detectors would pick it up. At this speed, it looks like static display on the sensor screens. And once it’s ten meters past the fence, it can pick up speed.”

Huhunna just stared after it, shaking her head, her expression sorrowful.

Back in the operations center, Trey watched the occasional burst-transmitted holocam images from the slow-moving droid. Occasionally he’d run through the entire visual recording at high speed, which made it look like the droid was moving at a normal rate while windblown leaves and insects flashed past at supersonic speed.

Long after Jesmin and Huhunna returned, the image showed the droid entering a surface-level cleft in a small hillside. The holocam view cycled unsuccessfully through standard optical mode, infrared mode, and light-gathering mode, then clicked on and stayed on motion-detector mode. Now detection of air movements allowed the droid to build up a three-dimensional diagram of the series of cracks, caves, and tunnels it was navigating.

Eventually Trey stopped receiving new signals. “It’s too deep for the comm signals to get through.” He rose and began assembling his pack. “So it’s Skifter Station and more sabotage for me. How are you going to get Stage Boy on base?”

Jesmin glanced at Huhunna. “We put Stage Boy in a bag to prevent him picking up any forensic evidence. Then we go through the trees, bridging gaps with an old-fashioned cord-and-grapnel rig, which Huhunna is a genius at using, until we’re past the perimeter defenses. I break trail, and Huhunna does the heavy lifting.”

Trey hefted his pack. “Tell Turman you heard that the shellfish the suit’s based on adapts for survival by modifying itself to digest new food types introduced into its environment.”

Jesmin grinned. “That’s the dark side of the Force talking through you.”

“I suspect the dark side is more fun. ’Night.”

“Good luck.”

Voort and Turman stared down at the body Turman was about to wear. The Embass suit, the final version of the full-sized neoglith masquer, lay on Scut’s laboratory table, the vertical slit in its chest and the emptiness beyond the eye sockets indicating that it was not truly alive.

Except that it was. Voort was certain he could see it breathing. He offered Turman a sympathetic look. The Clawdite was about to crawl into a liner bag of living tissue that had been engineered from a crustacean’s stomach. And he was going to live there for days.

Turman turned to Voort. “I once swore—swore—I would never again play ridiculous-looking monsters while wearing cumbersome full-body suits.”

Voort snorted. “Just remembered that, did you?”

“Just made it up. I’m still looking for a way out of this.”

“Get in, Stage Boy, and you get one year of me telling all the ladies that you’re the bravest man I ever met.”

Turman’s expression graduated from tension to resignation. He nodded. “You’ve discovered my weakness. Every actor needs validation. And reviews.” He took a deep breath, then stepped up on the crate Scut had set beside the table to facilitate his climb.

He wore only a kilt, of a material Scut swore would not irritate the masquer’s stomach lining—undyed suede leather. As Scut held the edges of the suit’s chest cavity open, Turman stepped up on the table, then, a brief flicker of distaste crossing his features, put his foot into the suit.

It took several minutes and help from both Scut and Voort. Turman had to sit in the chest cavity and gradually ease his legs into the suit’s leg channels, stretching the fleshy suit lining to conform to his body contours as he did. Then he leaned back, unenthusiastic, and repeated the process with the arms.

Scut grabbed the suit’s jaw and pulled, firmly and steadily. After a few seconds, with a slurping, ripping noise, the head split open, seams appearing that ran from behind the jaw and up to the temples. The action opened the head cavity.

Turman leaned back, lowering his head inside. “Ever since I stepped into this thing, every second of my life has been more disgusting than the last.”

Scut smiled. “And you are not even done yet.” From opposite sides of the table, he and Voort shoved the chest seam closed. “How is it?”

Turman grimaced. “Like putting on an ambience suit that someone has poured warm butter into. But it occurs to me that if you could add a vibrator function, you could sell three trillion of these.”

“I will consider that. Hands?”

Turman raised the Embass suit’s hands. He flexed its fingers. Then he did it again, making the gestures seem spastic, jerky, insectile. “Its own muscles are helping.”

“You will want those muscles for walking.” Scut checked along the entire length of the chest seam, making sure it was correctly aligned and once again invisible. “Otherwise you will tire fast. And remember, in about two days the masquer will start to die. That might take two more days, or four. The enzymes used to accelerate its growth to this stage can’t be neutralized, and its body mass doesn’t carry enough nutrients to keep it alive for long.”

“I know, I know. And spray it down frequently with water, and keep it out of direct sunlight.” Turman sounded miserable.

Voort moved up to the head. He fitted a compact headset to Turman’s true head, carefully positioning the earplugs, affixing the mike to the corner of Turman’s lip with a dab of sticky gel. He looked at Scut. “Turman’s skin needs oxygen, right? The masquer provides that?”

“Oxygen?” Scut looked stricken. “I forgot that part.”

Voort and Turman both looked at him.

“Kidding. Yes, the lining brings oxygen—the surrounding atmosphere, actually—to his skin and carries toxins away from it. Instead of digesting him.” Scut took hold of the suit’s open skull. “Ready?”

“No.”

Scut lowered the skull into place.

This version of the Embass suit’s head was somewhat different from the previous one Voort had seen. The eye sockets were a trifle smaller, fitted more precisely to Turman’s facial dimensions, and a film of red tissue covered them, transforming Turman’s eyes into reddish orbs. More red film crept into place across Turman’s lips and jawline, transforming them into what looked like odd inner-mouth organs of indeterminate function.

Two horns of Mulus’s fractal-coral ruby protruded from the forehead, decorative but menacing.

Turman spoke. “It’s clinging to my jaw.” As he spoke, the suit’s mouth moved realistically. “And my eyeballs—that red coating is touching them.”

Scut smiled again. “Good. Everything is working correctly.”

Voort tried to make his voice soothing. “The effect is very realistic.”

“I think I’m going to throw up.”

Scut’s good cheer did not falter. “You can! The mouth will admit whatever you decide to purge. But you’ve been on a liquid diet for days, so it won’t be very interesting.”

Voort put his hand under Turman’s back, preparing to lift. “While he decides how to tell us he hates us, let’s get him on his feet.”

They did. Turman spent a few minutes adapting the body language he’d been developing for the last week—an extension of the movements of his hands, it was jerky and twitchy, definitely non-mammalian—to the limitations imposed by the suit. He also tottered a bit until he mastered the art of balancing on alien feet.

Finally he turned to Voort and Scut. “I am more panicky, claustrophobic, and revolted than I have ever been in my life. But I’m ready.”

31

“Boring detail.” The Pop-Dog corporal, a dark-skinned human, stopped at the fork in the forest trail and looked in both directions. He could see little but the hard-packed soil trail; the trees met overhead, permitting only slivers of moonlight to reach the ground. He raised his blaster rifle to his shoulder and repeated his scan, this time peering through its scope. His augmented vision showed everything ahead in shades of gray, but there was still nothing interesting to see, only tree trunks, tree roots, stones. “They ought to import some regular army pukes to pull details like this.”

“Oyah.” The private, redheaded, freckled, rawboned, looked exactly like what he was, a rube from a backrocket planet trying, and failing, to acquire a veneer of experience and sophistication while serving in the army. “Better, even. Convicts.” He mimicked the corporal’s action, scanning the surroundings through his blaster scope. As his barrel aim swung across the corporal, the corporal ducked.

Once the barrel was past, the corporal rose. “Let me get this straight. You’d put blasters in the hands of convicts so they could do the dirty work of the base.”

“Oyah. They’d suffer more than they do lying around in jail all day, living off my taxes.”

The corporal’s jaw worked. No words emerged.

He was saved from answering. A crackling noise from down the right fork in the trail drew his attention—feet walking on dried leaves. “Come on.”

Quiet compared with their quarry, the two trotted along the trail, slowing every twenty or thirty meters to get a better estimate of the walker’s location. After three such stops, the corporal pointed the private toward a tree, then concealed himself behind another. He put his finger on the button that would activate the glow rod located under his rifle barrel—it would shine where the barrel was pointed, blinking a prospective target in light conditions like these.

The crunching noise approached, resolved itself into heavy footsteps as well as crackling leaves.

Then a shape, bulky, its body language strange even in this darkness, stepped out on the trail.

The corporal aimed and triggered his light. “Don’t move!”

In the glow stood a … thing. Taller than a normal human, shorter than an average Wookiee, it had rough, reddish brown skin that looked rigid, massive jaws, eyes that gleamed with an evil redness. Red, too, were the small, strangely delicate horns that protruded from its brow. In its left hand it carried a square object, glittering. Its right hand was raised and open, palm toward the corporal, in what the corporal hoped was a gesture of peace. The creature wore no garments.

Then the private’s light came on, shining right into the corporal’s eyes. “Don’t move!”

“Blast it, shut that off!”

“Oyah. Sorry, Corporal.” The light went out again.

The reddish creature still stood in the corporal’s light, unmoving.

“State your name and your purpose!”

“Me, Corporal?”

“You, shut up.” The corporal felt his blood pressure rise to a dangerous level. He returned his attention to the creature. “State your name and your purpose.”

Finally it answered, its voice shrill, garbled, alien. “Stayte joor nayme mand joor pyurpose.”

The corporal breathed just a touch easier. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem hostile and was trying to communicate. Maybe it was just an Outer Rim visitor who’d gotten drunk and decided to wander around nude on the army base. He’d call in the situation. In half an hour this wouldn’t be his problem anymore.

He wondered if he could give the private to the base police and keep the alien as his partner.

He hit his comlink with his thumb. “Patrol Six to command, we have a situation.”

Colonel Gidders, a Bothan whose fur was gradually shifting from a gray of youth to the gray of age, stared unblinkingly at the hologram of General Thaal. Around the colonel were the light-and-sound dampening wall and ceiling tiles of a dedicated holocomm chamber. “I’ve had a team of specialists working with it, on it, all this time.”

General Thaal, shown standing before a galactic map with blinking situation lights at several star systems, looked like he felt much less weary than the colonel. It was morning, Fey’lya Base time. “What are your findings?”

“It allowed us to obtain some tissue samples with our micro-extractors, so we’ve done some preliminary genetic work on what we obtained. It’s definitely related, distantly, to a local aquatic species, but it’s unprecedented in the planetary fossil record. The creature is very intelligent and has learned three or four hundred Basic words in just the hours it’s been here. It can string simple sentences together. Our xenolinguistics expert has worked with it to make some determinations of its role and mission.”

“Which are?”

“To act as ambassador—it likes the term embassy that climbs—with the new species here, us. It says its kind sleeps in the deep caves but will awaken soon. It awoke because of some sort of fault-line slippage we detected fifteen hours ago. The creature brought a present for our king-warlord, whom I have explained is you.”

“Yes.” Now Thaal showed additional interest. “I’ve looked at the scans you sent of the gems in that casket. Interesting.”

“The casket itself seems to have been shaped by the same technique, but it’s only rock crystal.”

“All right. Show him in.”

Colonel Gidders gestured. The door at the back of the chamber slid open. The creature, flanked by two Pop-Dog sergeants, entered, his walk jerky and spasmodic.

The colonel gestured between the creature and the general. “King-Warlord Stavin the First, I present Embassy-Who-Climbs.”

The general bowed. “I am honored.” His words sounded more perfunctory than anything else.

Embassy-Who-Climbs walked, twitching, past the colonel to the general’s image. He reached for it, his hand passing within the hologram. “Glitter.” His voice was less shrill than it had been hours earlier, but it still sent a chill up the colonel’s spine.

“Yes.” The colonel resigned himself to another slow struggle to communicate. “A glittering image. The king-warlord sees and hears you through the glitter.”

The creature withdrew a step. “We sleep. Stavin-First spawn come. We wake. Share or eat?”

Thaal looked blankly at the colonel.

“He means we’ve settled on their world while they hibernated belowground. What do we do now—share the world and its bounty, or eat one another? Meaning wage war.”

“Oh.” Thaal didn’t bother to restrain a brief chortle. “What do they taste like?”

“Sir …”

Thaal looked at the creature. “Share, of course. Peace is what we want above all. Peace and mutual respect.”

The creature rocked forward and backward, a crude simulation of a human nod. “Share. Arrrrrt.” It turned back toward the door. Past the two sergeants, just in the doorway, a dark-haired woman in medical whites waited. At the creature’s look, she moved forward and handed Embassy-Who-Climbs a crystalline case, twenty centimeters long, ten wide and deep.

The creature held up the case and lifted its lid. It opened as if hinged; the colonel could see, and again admire, the intricacy of the slots and projections along one edge that fitted into each other, allowing the lid to behave like a hinged component.

The creature displayed the organic-looking gems, red and blue and green, within. “Arrrrrt. For king-warlord. More below to share.”

Thaal’s eyes widened just a little. “How much more?”

The creature paused. Its head twitched from side to side, its jaw vibrating. Then it answered. “Cave. This cave.”

Thaal looked blank again.

The colonel cleared his throat. “I think he means he could fill a cave the size of the holocomm chamber with the gems.”

The creature listened to the colonel’s words. “Ten of ten cave.”

The colonel’s eyebrows rose. “Twenty caves this size?”

“Ten of ten! Ten of ten!”

The woman who’d brought the case interrupted. “He means one hundred, Colonel. Ten times ten. Or perhaps several hundred. We’re still working on the concept of plurals. I think he indicates them with body twitches, but we’re not there yet.”

“Hundreds of caves this size full of art.” Thaal looked as though he were struggling to shake off the effects of a stun bolt.

“Ten of ten for king-warlord. More not for king-warlord. What arrrrrt for me and me-spawn?”

“Oh. Yes, of course.” Thaal clearly had to switch mental gears. “For you we have spice and sweetblossom. Brandy. Dancing pit droids and the most sordid Hutt melodramas. We’ll let you sample a thousand arts and tell us what you like best, and we’ll give you that and more.”

Embassy-Who-Climbs performed his nod again. “Must not glitter. Must smell to share.”

Thaal looked at the linguist.

She shrugged. “Trade talks must be conducted in person.”

The creature rocked in affirmation. “Yesssss. Smell to share. Embassy-Who-Climbs and King-Warlord Staaaaavin-First.”

“How inconvenient.” Thaal took a deep breath. “Colonel, prepare for a surprise inspection by the Chief of the Army.”

“Yes, King-Warlord.”

Thaal grinned. “King-Warlord will smell you soon, Embassy-Who-Climbs. Soon.”

“Sooooon.”

After the sergeants and linguist escorted the creature away, Thaal became businesslike. “You think the underground slippage you mentioned will wake others of his kind?”

“He indicated so, yes. My scientists speculate that the slippage may somehow have been part of a life-cycle event. He wakes up first, emerges as a scout. Then the others begin to awake. Tens of tens of tens of tens is what he told me.”

“Tens of thousands.” Stavin rubbed his chin, thinking. “Well, maybe we can drop some barrels of targeted toxin down in their caves. Wipe them all out cleanly. Get your people to work on that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

Trey had invented it, the game of Backstop, and tonight the Wraiths played it on a patch of grassy soil down in the quarry. Each wore a stretchy black nightsuit and carried a toy laser pistol that fired a harmless beam of light.

Trey was the first Controller. He held a large screen-only datapad and used the on-screen controls to command a floating droid. Round and glowing, the size of a human head, it drifted up to chest height in the middle of the wide circle the Wraiths formed.

Trey set the timer for sixty seconds. He put his finger on the floating ball controller, knowing that the first twitch that set the ball into motion would also start the countdown. “Ready … go.” He sent the ball into flight.

As he maneuvered the ball, guiding it through a spinning, diving, zigzagging route that still stayed within the circle of Wraiths, they began to fire. Tally-marks began to appear beside names listed along the right side of the datapad screen.

Each time a Wraith’s shot hit the ball, the ball made a noise, a musical thunk. Other hits, badly aimed ones, yielded a different sound, a musical thoooo that sounded like a droid, suddenly de-powered, sitting down for an unexpected nap.

The last second counted down. The ball stopped glowing and came to a dead stop. Trey raised his voice. “Round One done. Your results …” He scanned the list of names, which was sorted by score. “Wran, you disgust me. Ten shots, eight hits, no tragedies. Voort and Myri tie for second place with twelve shots, four hits, no mistakes each. Drikall and Scut, you each had three hits on the ball and none against your fellows, but Drikall, you shot thirteen times and Scut ten, so Scut wins the tiebreaker … Jesmin, one shot, one hit on the ball, none on any of us. Are you not feeling well?”

There was no answer from the darkness.

“Jesmin?”

“One shot, one kill.” Jesmin’s response was a whisper breathed in Trey’s right ear. “That’s the Ranger way.”

Trey jumped with her first word. “Not funny. Well, maybe a little funny. Thaymes, you make us all proud: Sixteen shots, no hits on the ball, and you killed me, Drikall, and Jesmin, and Voort twice, for a total score of negative ten.”

Thaymes’s voice floated out of the darkness. “Thank you all. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

Trey handed the datapad to Jesmin. “Your round.”

But the screen blanked, showing a sensor view of the quarry and a kilometer around it. A blinking green dot approached the quarry property.

Voort stepped up to take a look, then checked his chrono. “That’ll be Sharr … probably. Everybody get topside.”

Sharr paid the driver, took his bag, and waited until the speeder had lifted off and gotten half a klick away before he mounted the short step to the main building and the ops center.

The main room was empty of Wraiths. He shut the outer door and stood in the doorway, puzzled.

“It’s him.” The voice was Trey’s but muffled, and it came from a blank spot on the floor. A square of flooring a meter on a side, its seam invisible, lifted and tilted back on hinges. Trey stood up out of the hole beneath.

The door into the Catastrophic Mess slid up and the Wraiths filed out. All wore nightsuits. Voort spoke first. “Welcome back. Don’t unpack: you’re going to Chiss space.”

Sharr sagged. “Tell me you’re joking.”

“I’m joking. Sit. Eat. Drink. Report.”

Sharr settled into a chair, pointed to where Trey was stepping out of the hidey-hole. “That’s new.”

Trey shut the hatch. Again it became an innocuous part of the floor. “I can’t leave any device, vehicle, or construction unchanged. You know that.” He and the others took seats.

Sharr rubbed his face as if to scrub a thick layer of tiredness away. “You want the good news or the bad news?”

Voort snorted. “You know our traditions. Lead off with the bad.”

“General Thaal knows it’s Wraith Squadron.”

All the others leaned forward.

Voort’s eyes widened. “Say again?”

“While I was on Coruscant acquiring the package, I did a little sniffing around. You know, checking into how much of a trail we might have left without meaning to. And I found out that, quietly but very persistently, General Thaal is looking for Wraith Squadron. I was actually queried, a comm message sent to my home. An army investigator asked, politely, if I’d had any contact with certain individuals since the unit was dissolved three years ago. He apparently bought into the notion that I was indeed retired and making my living writing the ‘What’s Wrong With You?’ quizzes.”

“So if he didn’t suspect you …” Voort rubbed his jaw. “He was only looking for Bhindi’s team.”

“Not even that.” Now Sharr let a bewildered smile cross his face. “When I dug into it, I found out that they’re looking … for a third Wraith unit.”

Thaymes put his face in his hand. “My head hurts. Please hammer a nail into my skull. To release the pressure.”

Voort kept his tone light and pleasant. “Ah. And who is in this third Wraith unit?”

“Well, there’s a Defel named Queevar.”

Voort shook his head. “I’ve never heard of—him? Her?”

“Her. Female name. Then there was a manumitted destroyer droid, pre–Clone Wars era, named Impaler.”

Scut jerked, surprised. “That’s a freakish coincidence.” He frowned. “When I was first taken in by my human parents, they gave me something to help me get over my fear of machinery. It was a toy droid in the form of a destroyer. It chased stinging insects out of my room. And it would impale bits of litter on its claw-spikes and take them to the waste bin. I called it Impaler.”

Voort’s expression grew blank. “Sharr, if this is a joke …”

“No joke. Jokes around here usually involve stealing your clothes. You’re still dressed. No, there’s a real, ongoing investigation by the army, and a big one. Anyway, also in this Wraith Squadron, there’s a bounty hunter named Zilaash Kuh.”

“Wait a minute.” Jesmin looked as startled as Scut had. “I’m Zilaash Kuh. Or I was, for a couple of years. It’s a cover identity.”

“Well, this cover identity is supposed to be a woman who trained as a Jedi until she was kicked out because they discovered she was only masquerading as a human. She was Anzati.”

Jesmin looked appalled. “A brain eater?” Then her expression cleared. “Actually, that would explain a lot. That’s a good addition to her background.”

“But the kicker …” Sharr returned his attention to Voort. “… is the unit’s leader. A man thought dead for decades. Now more machine than man. Doctor Ton Phanan.”

“Not possible.” Voort shook his head vehemently. “Ton Phanan is dead.”

“Who?” Thaymes looked as though he were falling behind in the day’s school lesson and beginning to panic.

Voort explained. “One of the original Wraiths, back when we were with Starfighter Command. Back when Myri’s dad was still in charge. Ton was our first medic. He died on a mission.”

Sharr shrugged. “Did you see him die, Voort? Did you see his body?”

“No, only Face did.”

“Could he still be alive?”

“Sure. If Face lied to us all those years ago. If he maintained the ruse all this time to preserve Ton as—as an asset of some sort.” Voort shook his head. “Or this could be a ruse on Thaal’s part, an effort to draw out Scut or Jesmin by using details only they would react to. Or some other sort of disinformation. Maybe we can use it ourselves.”

“Well, that’s all my bad news.” Sharr pointed skyward. “The package is installed at Skifter Station.”

Trey nodded. “I know, I installed it myself.”

“Not your package. My package from Coruscant. And she wants to help. And … what was the last thing? Oh, yes. General Thaal’s here. His troop transport docked at the naval station as I was coming in to Skifter Station.”

“That was fast.” Voort whistled appreciatively. “He must really want those gems.”

“What’s been happening here while I’ve been gone? In addition to Trey making a very nice hole in the floor.”

Trey glowered. “I got us three droids today. Really banged up, just as ordered. I’m working on fixing two of them now. The third one’s a loss.”

“Turman’s in position.” Voort gestured at Jesmin. “Huhunna’s on watch duty now. Jesmin will be relieving her in an hour.”

“Jesmin and I found the civilian exit from the Black Crest Mountain mines.” Thaymes sounded pleased with himself. “It wasn’t at the site of the old mine exit, which really is all sealed over. It’s a few hundred meters farther into the city, in an army-surplus business and warehouse. It’s on the plaza surrounding Old Kura Courthouse Square.”

“Plaza.” Sharr raised an eyebrow. “That’s … actually good, isn’t it?”

Voort nodded. “When it comes time for witnesses, we’ll have them by the hundreds. And there’s room in the plaza and on the courthouse lawn to land the starfighters. Sharr, our number one goal is accomplished—getting all the elements into place.”

“Good.” Sharr smiled. “Now we just have to live through triggering all of them.”

32

CHAKHAM ARMY BASE

General Thaal suppressed the impulse to grimace as he shook the alien’s hand. They hadn’t told him that the creature … smelled. From its mouth issued a faint but inescapable odor—sweetness, rotting. Thaal just gulped down a touch of nausea and continued speaking. “I hear you have made remarkable strides with our language just in the time I’ve been traveling.”

“It is … my gift.” Embassy-Who-Climbs shook the general’s hand. “An Embassy is spawned with that gift. A Render is spawned with savage claws and jaws. A Tapper has spikes that cut stone.”

“Your jaws aren’t savage?”

“Mine—small.”

Thaal kept himself from shuddering. “Well. Formalities are called for. As King-Warlord of the Galaxy, I accept you as ambassador of all your race, and wish prosperity and peace on your kind. Speaking of prosperity …” He held out a hand. An aide placed a rolled piece of flimsi in it. Thaal presented it to Embassy-Who-Climbs. “This is the deed to the world of Bastion, one of my many worlds, for your own king-warlord. He may find it to be a charming world to visit. I hear its cavern systems are lovely. He may reshape it to please himself and find many colonies there for his own glory.”

Embassy-Who-Climbs bowed. “I will convey it to him when the first Lifters come with his gifts for you.”

As he left the negotiations room, the alien’s crystalline box of jewels in his hands, Thaal smiled. He kept his voice low so that only his aide could hear him. “Pretty good day so far.”

“Pretty good, General.”

“Wouldn’t Head of State Reige be startled if he ever found I just gave away his capital?”

The aide kept his face straight. “Yes, General.” But Thaal suspected that he heard the man snicker.

TIARA RIDGE ESTATES, NORTHWEST OF KURA CITY

She let the door slide closed behind her, shutting out everything that did not belong in the sanctuary of her new home.

Ledina Chott leaned back against the outer door and looked down at herself. The white dress she wore, which had been crisp and almost incandescent this morning, now drooped a bit. A day’s worth of public appearances had left the cloth sagging like her energy, and the garment bore purple-blue smears where an overenthusiastic little girl had hugged her with food-stained hands.

But Ledina smiled and kicked off her shoes. After two short years of fame and wealth, she still wasn’t used to them yet. She hoped she never would be. Or ever too jaded to delight a small child with food-stained hands.

She moved forward through her entry hall toward the social room. “Twelve-String? What’s for dinner?”

Her droid house manager did not answer.

She moved into the social room. Two stories high and larger than the house where she’d spent her entire childhood, it was filled with expensive furniture. Its walls were decorated with holos from some of her concerts. She’d have preferred holos of some of the singers and actors she liked, but her publicist had wanted it this way, so visitors to her home would be reminded of nothing but Ledina Chott.

“Hello, Ledina.” The voice was not Twelve-String’s—it was deep, raspy, male.

Startled, Ledina whipped around. Her visitor stood in the hallway leading to the bedrooms. Burly, with yellow skin and dark hair and beard, he leaned against one stone wall with a nonchalance that suggested he was in his own home. He wore casual clothes in white and tan that would be appropriate to a day sailing; Ledina recognized the maker’s mark on the breast and knew that this one ensemble was worth a new speeder bike.

She thought about turning, bolting for the front door … but then she recognized her visitor. “Oh! Thadley Biolan. In person. You startled me.”

“I’m so sorry.” He moved forward, extended a hand. “Your droid let me in. I’m so delighted to meet you at last.”

She gave him her hand, expecting him to shake it, but he leaned over and kissed it like an old-fashioned courtier. She withdrew it, hoping she hadn’t actually snatched it back. “I’m the one who should be sorry. You’ve caught me right after a day of publicity. I’m a mess.”

“Nonsense. You’re … beautiful.”

“Let me get you a drink. Twelve-String.”

“He said something about power fluctuations. Perhaps he’s having them diagnosed.”

“She.”

“Yes, I meant she.” Thadley turned away, surveying the room. He smiled as he saw the crystalline glow rod housing, all flowing bars in different colors, atop one end table. “Ah! I see you enjoyed the moodsetter enough to display it.”

“I’ve appreciated all your gifts. Thank you so much.” Ledina forced a note of gratitude into her voice. She had appreciated the gifts and the messages of praise for her music. But meeting him in person was not turning out to be what she had expected. She was … unsettled. “I need to find Twelve-String. Give her a talking-to about not being on hand.”

“No, no.” He spun to face her again, the smile never leaving his face. “I’ve traveled thousands of light-years to see you. Just arrived earlier today. Please, talk with me for five minutes. I have a business proposition for you.”

“Business.” She felt a touch of relief. “Of course. But I should get my manager on the comm to listen in. So you won’t have to repeat anything to her later.”

“Oh, it’s so simple, there’ll be no problem remembering the terms I’m offering.” He shrugged. “I want you to sign a personal services contract with me. Five standard years, renewable by me if I wish. Salary, whatever I choose to give you.”

Hoping she was as innocuous as she’d been taught to be, Ledina used her thumb to depress the band inset in the ring she wore on her right hand. Then she spun and ran for the door.

The door ahead snapped open before she was close enough to trigger its sensor. In the doorway stood two men, their uniforms brown, their collars decorated with stylized teeth.

She turned rightward and dashed toward the hallway Thadley had emerged from.

Another uniformed man, stepping out from the shadowy interior of her music room, caught her around the waist and lifted her. He ignored her kicks and ineffectual blows, carrying her back to Thadley.

Thadley sighed. “Clearly, negotiations are going to take a while.” He scratched at his beard. “And blast this thing.” Irritated, he tugged at his sideburn, then peeled the beard and mustache entirely away from his face, revealing tanned skin, the color of Ledina’s own, beneath. Thin streamers of transparent adhesive stretched between beard and skin; he began rubbing them away.

Ledina stared at him, confusion crowding out the fear for just a second. “You’re that general. You were on the news today.” Then she felt a sting, as if from an angry insect, in her left shoulder. She twisted in time to see a uniformed woman with muddy brown hair and dull eyes withdraw an injector from her arm.

“No!” Ledina kicked at the man holding her, lashed out at the woman with the injector. She connected, but the strength was already fading from her limbs. Dizziness swept over her, followed by a murky darkness.

One Pop-Dog trooper struggled to hoist Ledina onto his shoulder.

Thaal offered the man a mildly disapproving stare. “Careful, Lieutenant. She’s delicate. She’s an artist.” He finished rubbing the adhesive from his face and handed the false beard to another trooper. “Her ring is an emergency beacon. Switch it off. Let’s go.” He led the way to the door and out into the night.

Two hours later, the man with the yellow skin, dark hair, and beard sat in the rear seat of the expensive airspeeder while his driver walked the half block back from Ledina Chott’s home. There, Kura City Guard speeders were situated with their lights flashing all around the home, and cordons had been strung so no one could step onto the property without the guards’ leave. The man with the beard felt a stab of worry. This was not good.

His driver returned and slid behind the controls. “She’s been taken.”

“Taken? Who took her?”

“Unknown. I dropped some credits and think I got some real answers, but they know very little. It happened a few hours ago. The housekeeper droid apparently took a scrambler hit and saw nothing. There’s no sign of violence and there was no ransom note left behind. She broadcast a brief panic signal, but it went out after less than a minute.”

The man with the beard sat back, stunned. “Back to the base. We have to figure out what’s happened here.”

33

WRAITH HEADQUARTERS

Midmorning the next day, Voort, dressed again in his orange X-wing fighter pilot jumpsuit, began dispatching Wraiths from their operations center.

He heard Huhunna roar off on the larger swoop. She’d be joining Jesmin, forming Team Shellfish. The two of them would be making their last insertion into Chakham Base.

There was a metallic slam as Scut finished loading the delivery speeder. In moments the Yuuzhan Vong appeared in the doorway, then nimbly navigated among all the remaining Wraiths as they packed their bags, donned disguises, checked the charges on their blaster rifles and pistols.

Scut stood before Voort. “What’s our motto?”

“What do we blow up first?”

“The other one. Good news and bad news.”

“Stang.” Partway through sealing up his too-tight black boots, Voort slumped. “Bad news first.”

“I just heard from the commercial managers of the courthouse plaza. There was a mistake and the space for our tent was rented to someone else. A souvenir seller.”

“A mistake?”

“Clearly, the mistake was that the souvenir seller came to them with more money than what we paid. The plaza managers have refunded our money with insincere apologies. But the souvenir booth is already set up.”

Voort sighed. “Can we get any other spot in the plaza this late?”

“Yes. I secured us a spot at the edge. But the first bad news leads to more bad news.”

Irritated, Voort resumed sealing up his second boot. “Spill it.”

“Our scapedroid reported early to the location I gave it yesterday. It didn’t realize that the souvenir stand was not us. The stand operator told it that its services were not needed. So it returned to its dispatcher and was given another assignment.”

Voort growled and stood. “And how about securing us another scapedroid?”

“None available.”

“Blast it. I’m going to strafe that souvenir stand.” This was indeed bad news. A scapedroid, in this case a Model V37 Ambassador, was a humanoid droid whose entire torso and head area was replaced by a large monitor or holoprojector. Skittish negotiators would send scapedroids to a parley site and speak to one another through the safe telepresence functions offered by the droids. The Wraiths needed their scapedroid to foster an illusion and escape with their identities intact.

Voort got to work donning his other gear. “Well, we’re just going to have to improvise. Get us a new scapedroid.”

“I have tried. There is none closer than orbit, and all are engaged. This is a small world. There are only three onplanet.”

“Scut—I’m about to go get shot at. You have to fix this.”

Scut threw up his hands. “I am not complaining. I am not shirking duty. But I have to manage the changing booth. Timing there is very complicated.”

“I’ll take the changing booth.” Mulus Cheems, the only island of calm in the room, rose from his chair. “I know your equipment, son. I know your procedures.”

“No, Father. This is dangerous work.”

“Oh, yes. I should let my son run off to do dangerous work while I sit here watching holodramas.” Mulus moved up to stand beside Scut and Voort. “Viull, I think I would very much like to pay back the debt I owe the Wraiths.”

“That’s what I’m doing!”

Mulus smiled but shook his head. “You can help them all you want and it will never diminish my debt. Wait until you’ve incurred a debt of your own. Then you’ll know what I’m talking about.” He looked at Voort. “Sign me up, Professor.”

Voort considered, then nodded. “Scut will show you what goes with who. The first sign of trouble you see or hear, you lie down on the ground and stay there.”

“Father …” Scut leaned forward, pleading.

Mulus leaned forward, too, and touched his forehead to his son’s. “At a certain point, Viull, you’ll learn that you just can’t keep protecting your parents from themselves. Parents are wild, hormone-addled, uncontrollable creatures. As you’ll understand someday when you’re a parent.”

Voort was struck by the two men’s identical poses. In age, height, mass, and skin color they were different, but their postures were identical.

Scut finally lowered his eyes and nodded.

Voort waved to get their attention. “Scut. The good news? There was some, correct?”

“Team Oversight is ready.”

“Then get going.” Voort watched as Scut, Mulus, Thaymes, and Wran—now in burgundy clothes and a new hip-cloak—left.

Drikall, wearing a Pop-Dog sergeant’s uniform, watched them go. “I hate last-minute changes.”

“Get used to them.” That was Trey, standing beside him, in a blue Galactic Alliance Army general’s uniform, a headset on his head instead of a hat. “How’s the package?”

Drikall looked baffled. “Your package on Skifter Station, Sharr’s package on Skifter Station, or our package here?”

“Here.”

“Fine. In the speeder. The repulsor cart’s loaded in back.”

Trey turned to Voort. “Leader, we have to come up with better ‘package’ designations.”

“Agreed. Next time.”

Trey took off his headset and put it in a pocket. He hefted his neoglith masquer. “Speaking of which, Mind Boy reports he and his package are boarding to leave the station.”

“I hear you.” Voort hefted his helmet.

Trey donned the neoglith masquer. Drikall helped him fit it and shove its trailing edges down under the uniform’s collar. When they were done, Trey was an identical image of General Stavin Thaal.

General Thaal picked up and donned his hat. “Team Enemy Mine ready.”

“Get going. Good luck.”

When the two of them were gone and the sound of their airspeeder had retreated in the distance, comparative silence descended over the operations center. Only Voort and Myri were left, both in X-wing pilots’ gear. Myri’s hair was now a virtual match in color for Mulus’s coral-cut sapphires.

Myri lifted her helmet. “Team Rage ready.”

“Let’s get ’em, Antilles.”

She grinned.

But once they were down in the quarry, standing beside their X-wings, Myri hesitated. “We don’t know that they’re inner-core Pop-Dogs.”

Voort finished with the portable frame and winch he’d used to lower his astromech into position behind the cockpit. Myri’s was already in place. “Meaning that we’re about to go up and shoot at people who might not know that they’re serving a traitor.”

Myri nodded, her eyes miserable.

Voort wheeled the frame away. “Well, now you’re at that point. A point your father doubtless hit when he was younger than you, just joining the Rebel Alliance. The point where you ask yourself, Can I kill someone I’m not sure is guilty?”

“You’ve been waiting for this, haven’t you?”

Voort nodded. “Ever since I realized how meticulous you were about making sure your blaster was always set on stun. And now you’re stuck with lasers and missiles, and they can’t be set on stun.”

She leaned heavily against the S-foil of her X-wing. “Maybe you could have warned me.”

“Maybe thinking about it for days would have made you neurotic.” Voort moved to the nose of his starfighter, patted it as if it were a riding animal. “Myri, I might be able to do this mission myself. Odds are kind of long, but I might be able to. Or we could summon Sharr back, rusty as he is behind the controls, and let Mulus tend his package. But I think you can do this, because you’re your father’s daughter, and because you’ve grown up knowing that a warrior like your dad sometimes has to face an honorable enemy. An enemy whose only fault is that he’s working at cross-purposes with you, and if you don’t fight him until he falls, very bad things will result. Which is the situation here.”

“I guess it is.”

“You have to keep this in mind: you have to win.”

She gave him a slow, miserable nod.

“So?”

She sighed and put on her helmet. She snapped the visor down over her eyes and added the helmet’s final, nonregulation element, a veil of black, clinging synthsilk over her lower face.

“Good.” Voort donned his own helmet and veil. Then, awkward, he climbed onto the strike foil and into his cockpit.

They lifted off, crested the quarry clifftop, and headed southward over the property at an altitude of two meters.

They observed local speed regulations. Other speeder pilots, less conscientious, passing them at higher speeds, pointed at the two beautifully restored antique X-wings with hand-built missiles bolted onto their strike foils, and at the two veiled pilots.

Voort and Myri stayed in the main airspeeder lanes all the way into Kura City’s south side, creating no sensor blip that would cause a suspicious traffic warden to challenge them. But then they were at the city limits again and pointed toward Chakham Base.

Voort clicked his comm board over to the main Wraith channel. “Rage One to Team Enemy Mine, Team Shellfish. We are a go. I say again, we are a go.”

Trey was clearly in character when he answered. He spoke in General Thaal’s gravelly tones. “Enemy Mine, understood. Go get ’em, soldier.”

Jesmin replied in a whisper. “Shellfish here. Understood.”

Voort switched back to the subfrequency he and Myri shared. “Rage One to Rage Two. We’re going in.”

Lying prone on his cot in the room he had been given, Turman heard the distinctive triple click over his headset. Then it came again.

He sat upright and stood. The nurse, a male Chadra-Fan, looked over in concern. “Are you all right?”

“Sunlight. Embassy-Who-Climbs needs sunlight.” Turman’s throat was hoarse from performing the rough Embassy-Who-Climbs voice for days.

“No, no. You said sunlight would hurt you.” The nurse rose, tilting back to stare up at his much taller patient.

“Before, yes. Now, need sun. Life cycle demands.”

“I need to comm the front office for permission.”

Turman raised his hand as if pointing at Kuratooine’s star. “Sun!” Then he brought his fist down on the Chadra-Fan’s head. The durable exoskeleton of his hand cracked down on the small humanoid’s skull with a meaty thump. The man collapsed to the floor, his comlink clattering down beside him.

Turman grimaced. Getting on his feet, swinging that blow had been difficult. The neoglith suit was weaker, much weaker. The thing was dying.

He waited a second to see if Pop-Dogs would come bursting in through the door.

None did. That was great news. It meant that, as they had across the last couple of days, the soldiers believed in Embassy-Who-Climbs’s passiveness and cooperativeness. They didn’t always have a guard in front of his door, relying on the nurse to warn them of trouble.

That, and one other thing. The door didn’t open for Turman as he approached it. But he punched the keypad with one oversized, hard-shelled finger, using the nurse’s code, which he had spent considerable time and effort to observe while pretending to be asleep. The door slid aside.

In a back hall of a minor function building well away from the main base facilities, Embassy-Who-Climbs went tiptoeing toward the building’s rear door.

“I wish Muscle Boy were here.” Jesmin, aggrieved, bent over the building’s rear door handle, a bar meant to be depressed. There was clearly security on the door—multiple contact points of metal extended from the frame to touch others on the door. The security was more extensive than Jesmin was comfortable with.

Beside her, keeping watch all around, Huhunna rumbled a reply in Wookiee. “Let’s just blast it.”

“What?” Jesmin looked at her.

Huhunna gestured all around. To their right, southward, were empty drill yards. Leftward, more of the same. Ten meters behind them was the start of the closest thick stand of trees. There was no one to be seen. The voices of Pop-Dogs practicing close-order marching drills sounded far away.

Huhunna hefted her bowcaster and gave Jesmin a significant look.

“Oh, all right.” Jesmin pocketed her electronics bypass tool and took a couple of steps back. “Go ahead.”

Huhunna fired. The bowcaster bolt hit the door beside the lock and detonated, charring the door metal. The lock and the left portion of the opening bar disintegrated. Huhunna grabbed the door well away from the superheated portion and shoved it open.

Embassy-Who-Climbs stood there. He put his hands on his hips as if indignant. “Klutz.”

The building alarm sounded.

They sprinted—tottered very quickly, in Turman’s case—into the woods as other alarms on the base began wailing.

They got only deep enough into the trees that the building was no longer in sight. Then Turman stopped. He reached up and ripped open his alien mask so the others could see his real face, which was flushed red and sweating. He yanked at his chest, splitting it open, and tore himself free from the suit’s interior. As he emerged, so did a sweet, sickly odor of rotting sea life. Jesmin and Huhunna took several steps back.

Shaking himself free of the suit’s legs, Turman advanced on them. His body glistened from sweat and whatever the suit’s interior had secreted on him. His eyes were wild, and his words emerged in a scream: “Get me to a sanisteam!”

“Time to leave, Stage Boy. This way.” Jesmin pointed northward and led the way, trying to keep well ahead of the funk that surrounded Turman.

“A pool. A waterfall. An acid bath! Sandpaper! Get me clean!”

Drikall unloaded the folding hover cart from the back of the speeder, set it up, and activated it. Then he carried the unconscious Ledina Chott from the backseat and stretched her out atop the cart. He shook a blanket over her, covering her from head to foot.

Only then did Trey, imperious in his General Thaal garb, exit the vehicle. “Did you switch on her ring?”

“I remembered.”

The main doors into the building were several meters away, directly under the sign that read MAJOR SAVING’S ARMY SURPLUS. But Trey marched to an unmarked side door made of transparisteel. Through it he could see a small office, a hallway leading from it deeper into the building, a muscular young man with close-cut brown hair lounging in a desk chair.

Trey schooled his features—Thaal’s features—into an expression of disapproval. He hammered on the door. The man behind the desk looked over, then stood so fast it looked as though he came up off the floor.

He opened the door. “General!”

“It’s bad, son, very bad.” Trey waved Drikall forward. The Devaronian came forward, pushing the hover cart. “That body—do you know Private Zizbisterling?” Trey stood in the doorway, keeping it open, as Drikall pushed the cart through.

“No, sir.”

“Well, she’s dead now, so you’re never going to. You hear the alarms?”

The man cocked his head. Though not loud at this distance, the wailing alerts from the base were indeed audible. The man’s face went blank. “Sir, are we under attack?”

“Hell, yes. Take us down immediately.”

“Yes, sir!” The ostensible clerk half saluted, remembered that this was not the right protocol, and dashed into the hallway. Trey and Drikall followed.

As they moved along a back corridor flanked by storerooms, well behind the clerk, Drikall leaned forward to stage-whisper to Trey, “Nice improvisation on the alarm thing.”

“There weren’t supposed to be sirens yet. I didn’t know what else to say.”

“No, I meant it. Nice improv.”

The false clerk led them into a side room that was far too large and empty for its evident purpose—an unmanned comm center with one large computer-communications unit and a single chair. As soon as the door was closed, the clerk hammered on the undecorated back wall. It was a distinctive series of taps.

The wall slid aside, revealing a chamber of similar size. But this one had durasteel-mesh walls showing rock walls and steel support pillars beyond. It was a freight lift car.

They moved onto the car. Trey turned to the clerk. “I need you to come with us.”

Baffled, the clerk joined them. He hit a button on the front wall control panel, and the wall-door closed. He hit another and they began their descent. “General, if I may ask—”

The body on the hover cart moaned and stirred.

The clerk looked at her blanket-shrouded body, his eyes wide.

Trey opened his own eyes wide, as well. “A miracle! Sergeant, you know what to do.”

Drikall drew his blaster and shot the clerk at point-blank range. The stun bolt took the man in the chest. He slammed back into the metal-mesh wall and slumped.

Thaal turned to the controls. “Long way down. We have a few seconds.” He whipped the blanket off Ledina, revealing her to be wearing the same dress in which she’d been kidnapped. Her eyes were closed but she was fitful, her head now turning as she struggled to awaken. “How much time, Drug Boy?”

“A few minutes. I can give her a stimulant.”

“No, don’t worry about it.” Trey looked up and noted the location of the lift car’s roof access hatch.

Two seconds later the lift came to a stop. The shaft’s back wall and the car’s rear metal-mesh wall rose.

Just beyond them was a stony tunnel that ran off into dimness in the distance. Along its floor ran a metal rail. The stone ceiling had wires stretched along it, with glow rod coils every five meters. Standing right at the door was a dark-furred Bothan woman in a Pop-Dog corporal’s uniform. Her eyes widened and she saluted. “General!”

Drikall shot her.

34

CHAKHAM BASE COMMAND CENTER

“Captain?”

The officer of the day, a human whose burly body and bald head suggested that he might be a missile in disguise, looked to the officer at the sensor board. “What is it?”

“We have two new transponder signals. A kilometer out and closing. The craft themselves are not on the sensors. I think they’re at ground level. They’re now sending standard starfighter transponder data. Their designations are Phanan One and Phanan Two.”

“Phanan—sound a general alert.”

“We’re already on general alert, sir.”

It was true—the alarms had begun when the building confining Embassy-Who-Climbs had been breached. The wails continued even now. The base was already in turmoil.

“Alert the wall towers—”

Two X-wing starfighters, painted in classic gray, roared past the command center’s south-facing viewport. The officer of the day caught a glimpse of white helmets with black veils concealing the pilots’ features.

Voort checked his sensor board, made sure he was correctly oriented toward their first target.

There it was, straight ahead. Just past the first stand of trees was the small-craft spacefield, one good-sized hangar in brown and a paved landing square. Arrayed on the square were two rows of four E-wings in Pop-Dog colors and a military shuttle. Men and women ran toward the starfighters on the ground.

“One to Two. I’m to starboard.”

“Rage Two, aye.”

Voort drifted rightward and triggered his lasers. Red beams slashed down into the right-hand row of starfighters, riddling them, punching through canopies and fuselages. One exploded less than a second after Voort passed it. Pop-Dogs turned to run the other way.

Voort heard Myri’s laserfire and the distinctive sound of lasers chewing up metal. Then the two X-wings were past and out over more trees.

Voort banked and came around again. Myri stayed on his wing. Once the landing field was directly ahead, Voort could see that all four of his targets were now burning wreckage. So were the shuttle and one of Myri’s E-wing targets.

“Two, we need to pick off one more. If I miss, it’s yours.”

“Yes, sir.”

Voort lined up a careful shot on the E-wing nearest the shuttle and fired a burst at it. He saw the beams converge on its fuselage. The craft seemed to implode, then exploded.

“Confirmed kill, One.”

“Second target, then.” Voort banked and headed for the distant north end of the base.

Distant to one traveling on foot, that was. The water-pumping station, screened on three sides by trees and on the fourth by a mountain slope, was in view within moments.

Voort sent his starfighter into a climb. It started out steep, then went vertical. He rolled axially so his belly now faced west, his canopy east, and Black Crest Mountain to the north was off his right S-foils. On his sensor board he saw Myri hanging tight just to port. “Fall in behind, Two. I’m breaking trail; you’re dropping the first load.”

“Two here is Two obeying.”

“You’re fired.” At a couple of kilometers’ altitude, Voort sent his starfighter into a loop. In moments he was headed straight down, pointed at the pumping station. Myri continued her climb for the moment, getting a few seconds’ separation between herself and Voort.

Voort fired. His lasers hit the pumping station and all around it, a wild scattering of shots compared with the precision he’d demonstrated against the E-wings. He continued firing as the ground and pumping station grew larger with startling speed.

There was a purpose to his sloppiness. Pop-Dogs, three of them, ran out of the increasingly riddled pumping station.

Voort pulled out at two hundred meters and checked his sensors. There seemed to be nothing in the air that hadn’t been there before—normal airspeeder traffic off in the civilian lanes.

He watched Myri descend. She came down at the same vertical angle he had chosen. Voort tensed—not from worry over Myri’s skill as a pilot, but from worry about the barely tested rocketry bolted to her wings.

At half a klick, she fired. A gout of flame lanced down from her starboard wing. A fraction of a second later she fired again, and her port-side rocket launched. Both devices flashed down to ground level on columns of fire.

The first rocket hit the station’s roof and detonated. The second shot through the center of the fireball. The fireball got bigger.

Voort took a recon pass over the target. He couldn’t see anything through the smoke cloud, but his sensors showed that the hole in the pumping station went a long way down—a hundred meters at least.

He sent his starfighter into another climb. “Direct hit, Two. And the shaft is open. I’m going to drop my load for luck.”

“I’m covering you.”

At two klicks up, he started his second loop and began one last descent, straight toward the smoke cloud. Sensors still showed a deep hole ahead. His targeting bracket locked on the shaft’s bottom and he launched both rockets. Then he leveled off.

Myri swung into position off his port wing. She waited until the sound of the twin detonation reached them before she spoke. “I think they’ll be taking the stairs from now on.”

“I think you’re right. Next stop, Skifter Station. Not too fast, now.”

They sent their X-wings into a steep climb.

The technician from the security firm waved unnecessarily as the two Kura City Guard speeders crested the old courthouse building, descended, and came in for a landing in the lot just outside Major Saving’s Army Surplus. City guards piled out of the two vehicles—two investigators in civilian dress, two uniformed troopers in riot gear.

The investigators, a Mon Calamari man and a human woman, stepped forward. The senior of the two, the Mon Cal, looked the security technician over. “You’re Yinkle?”

“Yes, sir. I—”

“Funny name, Yinkle.”

Yinkle tried not to grit his teeth. “I know. I’ve heard that all my life. I—”

The Mon Cal indicated himself. “Detective Sergeant Husin.” He gestured at his partner. “Detective Biller.”

“Yes. Hello.” Impatient, Yinkle held up his datapad, which showed a map of this sector of the city with a line transcribed on it. “The client’s rescue transmitter was activated when she was grabbed last night, but it switched off right away. Then it went live again just a few minutes ago. Right here where I’m standing. The track of its movements says it went right in that door.”

The Mon Cal gave him a hard, emotionless stare. “This had better not be a mistake.”

“It’s not.” Yinkle was diverted by the distant sound of explosions to the south, clearly audible over the ongoing wail of alarms. Moments later everyone in the lot could see smoke climbing above Black Crest Mountain—and two X-wing starfighters, climbing much faster, headed for space. “Interesting day we’re having.”

“Army business. Not our problem. Come on.” The Mon Cal led the way to the door into the army-surplus store.

There was no one in the open office area beyond the door, but a short, burly woman arrived at a full run in response to the Mon Cal’s hammering knock. Frowning, she looked harassed. Her eyes opened even wider as she saw the uniformed troopers. “Can I, uh, help you?”

The Mon Cal displayed his identicard, emblazoned with the seal of the city guard. “We have no search warrant. But we’re invoking act thirteen, paragraph six of the Uniform Planetary Code. We have compelling reason to believe that there is a crime in progress and lives are in danger.”

“Stay here. Let me call my supervisor.” The woman reached for the door controls.

The Mon Cal stepped into the doorway.

The door shut anyway, slamming him into the jamb. Yinkle saw that the man was pinned, helpless, and under his arm could see the woman run to the office desk and reach into a drawer.

The human detective, stooping to see between the Mon Cal’s legs, aimed a blaster pistol and fired. Her shot, not a stun bolt, took the woman in the ribs. She collapsed, a hold-out blaster dropping from her nerveless fingers.

The Mon Cal grunted, grabbed the doorjamb with big finny hands, and heaved. The door mechanism whined; then flames erupted from the very top and bottom of the door, where actuators would be located. The door slammed open and stayed that way.

The Mon Cal glanced at his partner. “I owe you a drink. Call in for an ambulance and backup. Yinkle, I’m willing to concede that something may be wrong here.”

“Thank you.”

Tracing the line on the datapad map, Yinkle led them down the hall from which the woman had emerged. At the end were double doors; the transparent panels in them showed warehouse beyond. But Yinkle indicated a door to the left just before that point.

The door opened into a spacious, empty computer center.

The Mon Cal gave Yinkle a dubious look. “Your map may be off.”

“No, sir.”

The back wall of the room, seemingly ordinary and featureless, shot up. Beyond it was a lift car with metal-mesh walls, rough stone visible beyond them.

On the floor of the lift car lay two bodies, a man and a woman in the uniforms of Pop-Dogs from the base, and on a hover cart lay a third body—Ledina Chott.

The Mon Cal looked at Yinkle again. “That your client?”

“Yes.”

“Well done.” He looked at the Pop-Dogs and sighed. “I hate making big discoveries. They don’t usually end well.”

Ledina came to full consciousness, her body jerking in fear reaction, but the man leaning over her looked thin and harmless, not military at all. Above his head was a sound-dampening ceiling.

Groggy, Ledina looked at him. “Where am I?”

“You’re in a store. Your captors brought you here. My name is Kadd Yinkle. I’ve saved you.”

“Yinkle?” She frowned, trying to think. “That’s a funny name.”

He sighed and put his head in his hands. “Anyway, the others have gone down to scope out whatever’s below us. All the city guards you’ll ever want to see are headed this way, so you’re safe.” He looked up and gave her a reassuring stare. “No more unpleasant surprises for you.”

The back wall of the room shot up, revealing rough-walled lift shaft … and no lift. Ledina and Yinkle stared at it.

From a point above the door, two figures swung down and landed on the floor just inside the room. Both were men clad head to toe in black stretch material. Their hoods concealed their features, but the bigger one looked human, and the shape of the other one’s head, horns protruding through the stretch cloth, suggested he was Devaronian.

Yinkle moved around to stand between Ledina and the intruders. “I’m putting you two under citizen’s arrest.”

They hurried forward, flanked him, passed by him on either side, and rushed out the door.

Yinkle looked down at Ledina. “Well, I could have tackled them, of course. But my primary mission here is to protect you.”

Out in the speeder, Trey discarded his hood, replaced his headset, and pulled on a gold-and-black jacket. Now, from the waist up, no longer clad in a skintight nightsuit, he would look normal to anyone viewing him through the vehicle’s viewports.

Off in the distance to the east he could see oncoming airspeeders in city guard colors, blue and red. He put his own speeder into motion, cruising slowly away from the vicinity of the storefront, putting the large redstone courthouse between him and the oncoming guards.

Drikall pulled his own hood free and donned blue medical scrubs. “You realize we’re already here. At the plaza. We can’t afford to get too far away.”

“But we have to break line of sight between us and anyone who might connect us with the surplus business. We do that as many times as is feasible before we get to our second station. Didn’t you know that?”

“Well, I’m kind of new to all this. Mostly, I drug people. It’s what I’m good at. Which is why I’m confused as to why, when we’re about to prove that Thaal is guilty of so much, we also had to frame him for a crime he didn’t commit. The kidnapping of Ledina Chott.”

Trey guided the speeder down a side landspeeder lane, then turned to circle the block. “We don’t care if he’s convicted for the kidnapping, and he probably won’t be. But, first, given what he did to his last mistress, and the fact that he was showing a lot of interest in Ledina, by us kidnapping her, we may have prevented him from kidnapping her. Or worse.”

“A preemptive felony.”

“There you go. And in kidnapping a celebrity with some interplanetary fame, we have ensured that the civilian news will hear about Thaal and that civilian authorities will launch their own investigations. Not to mention the musicians’ union. You don’t want to mess with the musicians’ union.”

“Really?”

“No, I’m kidding. What are they going to do, serenade you to death?”

A few hundred meters away, Huhunna, Jesmin, and Turman—now wrapped in a simple gray robe and wearing sandals—boarded the Wraiths’ delivery speeder.

The tall cargo compartment was now divided into two sections, forward and rear, by a thick black curtain. Thaymes sat in the forward section in a side-mounted seat with computer and comm gear packed tightly around him, a headset on his head. He looked relieved when they entered. “You’re late.”

Jesmin smirked. “We had to run Turman through an airspeeder wash. Without benefit of airspeeder. He was a biohazard.”

Thaymes glanced back at the curtain shielding the rear compartment. “Well, at least I don’t have to wear that new masquer, which I would have if you’d been a minute later.”

Turman’s hands came up as if he intended to strangle Thaymes. Huhunna wrapped an arm around him, held him still.

Jesmin moved back to the side door. “What do I need to know before I go out there?”

“Lots of city guards on hand. The relays are working fine—the enemy would need a comm genius, like me, to track these broadcasts. Lab Boy’s still setting up the replacement for the scapedroid at the confrontation point. Muscle Boy reports, ‘Kidnapping is thwarted.’ There are two E-wings closing in on Leader and Gambler, intending to kill them. And Stage Boy needs to get into his next outfit right now.”

Jesmin nodded. “Sounds like business as usual.”

Several hundred kilometers up, in her cramped personal quarters in the Starfighter Command portion of Rimsaw Station, Colonel Kadana Sorrel heard the medium-priority tone sound on her intercom. She brushed a lock of brown hair out of her eyes and set down the object in her hands—an actual bound book, one of her few personal indulgences. She activated the intercom. “Sorrel here.”

“Colonel, we have a sort of strange transmission standing by for you … if you want to take it.” The speaker, her on-duty communications officer, sounded more puzzled than he usually did. “It’s a civilian who won’t identify himself, says he’s going to shake the armed services here until they crack, but it’s nothing personal.”

“It’s not my husband again, another of his jokes?”

“Not … this time.”

“Sure. Put him on. I could use a laugh.” She turned toward the monitor on her wall. “Face mode, please.”

The holocam in her monitor buzzed as it adjusted depth of field. Now her caller would see only her face and not realize that she was lounging in her bunk, out of uniform.

An image materialized on her monitor. It, too, showed only a face. A man’s face, lean and angular. The entire left half of his head was covered by a durasteel-gray shell, and his whole jaw was a prosthetic in an identical color. A gold mechanical eye gleamed in the left side of his face and his right eye was blue. His hair was a solid white and his expression registered somber intensity. “Colonel Sorrel?”

“I am. And you are?”

“You wouldn’t know my name. I’ve been dead longer than you’ve been alive. But I’m comming you with a warning.”

“A threat, you mean.”

“No, a warning. I’m trying to help you. I’d send a warning to General Thaal, too, if I could. But he’s already dead.”

The colonel leaned forward. “All right. Let’s hear it.”

35

Voort kept his eye on the sensor board. Skifter Station was close ahead, visible to the naked eye, its independently spinning concentric rings glowing in traditional white against the backdrop of space. Also nearby were two E-wings, coming up fast from behind. There was constant chatter on the comm frequencies, civilian and military authorities demanding that Phanan One and Phanan Two take up orbit well away from any other craft and wait for the authorities to arrive.

“Second act, Two. You ready?”

“I’m doing my hair.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” The first laser blast from the pursuers flashed past Voort, then past Skifter Station ahead. “Idiots!”

“We need to vape them fast, One.”

Voort put a bit more effort into his evasive maneuvering. “Stand by to break.”

Their pursuers drew close and began unloading short, disciplined bursts of laserfire at the two Wraiths. But as they neared Skifter Station, as their greater proximity made it more likely that any missed shot might hit the habitat, they left off firing.

Voort and Myri shot through the large gaps between rings and spokes. Voort broke to starboard, Myri to port. One E-wing followed each of them. Now they edged even closer.

Seeing an opportunity, Voort threw all discretionary power into reverse thrust and dropped about fifty meters of relative altitude. His enemy, caught off guard, rocketed past. With no space station in the background, Voort took his shot, but the E-wing pilot was canny enough to go evasive the instant he passed the Wraith. The burst of laserfire went wide.

Voort began a tight loop back toward the station. On his sensors, he saw Myri doing the same, headed toward the far side of the habitat. Her E-wing enemy remained on her tail.

Voort approached the outermost ring of the station and oriented himself so that its outer edge was beneath him, as though he were performing terrain-following flying just over the surface of a very small moon. Without gravity to pull at him, it was a tricky maneuver, contrary to pilots’ instincts, like constantly following a planetary surface as it dropped away ahead. On the opposite side of the ring, Myri was doing the same … and heading straight for Voort.

Voort’s enemy swung into line right behind him, at a higher relative altitude.

Voort almost smiled. There it was, pilot’s training and instincts—and the Wraiths playing them like a musical instrument. A combat pilot in a close dogfight preferred to be above and behind his target, utilizing the visual and psychological advantage that position offered. With most starfighter designs, the enemy couldn’t shoot backward. But now, for just one confused moment, there was no way the Pop-Dog could fire on Voort. Any miss would plow into the civilian space station. Any hit might send the X-wing into that habitat.

The sensor board showed the energies of Myri’s and her pursuer’s thrusters on an incoming arc. Now it was up to Trey—the work Trey had done days earlier, planting a sensor jammer up here on the station’s surface. “Activate Snowfall!”

His R5 unit, Dustbin, tweetled an affirmative.

The main sensor screen fuzzed and went to static. Now all four starfighter pilots were flying blind—blind except for their own eyes.

Numbers, fractions of a second, spun down in Voort’s head. “Two—now!”

Ahead, the incoming E-wing crested the false horizon of the station ring, visible before Myri’s X-wing was in sight because of its greater relative altitude. Voort fired and yanked the control yoke to port.

At the same moment, Myri, unseen beyond the curve of the ring but able to see Voort’s pursuer, fired and yanked her control yoke.

The two X-wing laser blasts, angled upward, could not hit the station ring. But they did hit their intended targets. Voort glimpsed the bright flash of vehicle-grade metal composites being incinerated by quad-linked lasers. “Vape one.”

“Vape two, Leader.”

“Well done.” Voort banked toward Kuratooine’s surface and Myri slid into place off his wing.

As they cleared the zone of Trey’s jamming, Voort’s sensors resolved back into crisp images. Skifter Station spun serenely, undamaged. Two small masses hurled away from it on straight-line courses, one of them expanding as a cloud of debris, the other in one piece but apparently out of control. That E-wing, Voort’s target, suddenly became two objects as the pilot ejected. There was no survivor from Myri’s target.

“You all right, Two?”

“Holding it together with space tape and spit, One.”

The woman in the piloting compartment of the general’s speeder was probably a starfighter jockey with limited chauffeuring experience. Her quick, minute course adjustments kept jerking Thaal and the captain in the rear compartment back and forth. Thaal decided not to criticize her now. The woman would kill for him if he ordered her to.

The captain, on the other hand, looked like he didn’t have the guts to kill a game fowl to feed his troops. Offering bad news had made him wince again and again.

He offered more. “They began a search right away for the alien, what’s-his-name.”

“Embassy-Who-Climbs. He’s from this planet and we’re not, so technically we’re the aliens. Have they found him?”

“Yes, sir … dead.”

“Dead, how?” Thaal’s mind flashed on tremendous volumes of gems that might never see the sunlight.

The captain’s voice fell to a whisper, the tone of a child telling ghost stories. “They say he’d been ripped open from inside. His internal organs, his brains, his eyes—all gone. And whatever did it to him is still on the loose. Maybe still on the base, waiting to attack.”

Thaal stared hard at the captain. “You weren’t ever in a combat unit, were you, son?”

“No, sir. Comms. Then public relations.”

“I can tell. Well, find the parasite and kill it. Now, back to the X-wing assault. You’re sure they read Phanan.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What are our losses?”

“Colonel Gidders’s shuttle. Six E-wings on the ground and two in space. One pilot dead, one suffering exposure from going extravehicular. And the base-side access shaft to the mine is destroyed. They targeted it specifically.”

Thaal felt anger swelling up inside him. “Wraith Squadron.”

“Sir?” The pilot glanced over her shoulder at the general. “We’re getting word that the civilian authorities are at the Kura City mine access. In force. Facts are sketchy.”

“Head for that access, Lieutenant. I’ll put my foot on that situation personally, before it turns into a problem.”

“Yes, sir.”

Voort and Myri reached groundside before the flight of starfighters from Rimsaw Station, now visible on their sensors, came within visual range. The X-wing pilots switched off their transponders and returned to terrain-following mode, joining ordinary airspeeder traffic en route to the courthouse plaza.

Ahead, the distinctive three-story redstone courthouse building came into view. Lights blinked from in front of the nearby army-surplus business facing the plaza—city guard airspeeders, a dozen at least, plus medical speeders.

The open-air market in the plaza itself was almost deserted. A large crowd of pedestrians had accumulated near those vehicles.

Voort slapped the side of his helmet. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

“What is it, One?”

“I missed a variable! Of course word might leak out that it was Ledina Chott being rescued from the army-surplus place. And of course people would congregate there. All our witnesses. Stupid. Fire me, Two, and take over.”

“I can’t. You fired me first.”

They came in for a landing on the lawn of the courthouse, almost unnoticed. Voort reactivated his transponder, then issued Dustbin a command that would initiate a memory wipe in the R5 unit. In her starfighter, Myri was doing the same with her transponder and her R2. The memory wipes were an unfortunate but necessary precaution—now no investigator could obtain information about Voort or Myri from their astromechs.

Their black airspeeder glided across the lawn to set down just ahead of them. Voort swung down from his cockpit, saw Myri was down already, and sprinted for the speeder. He and Myri boarded from either side into the back compartment.

Trey accelerated away from the starfighters. He glanced back at Voort. “Where to, Leader?”

“Very funny.” Voort was too tense to feel amused. “Give me the bad news first.”

Trey shook his head. “I have no bad news.”

“There’s always bad news.”

Drikall turned to answer that. “Despite an emergency scrubbing and some potent industrial deodorants, Stage Boy smells really bad.”

“If that’s the worst thing we’re facing, we’re doing great. For once.”

They pulled up beside a tent at the very edge of the open market. The tent, decorated with broad green and white vertical stripes, had a sign out front reading: YOUR FUTURE REVEALED. A smaller sign, handwritten, tacked beneath it, read: CLOSED FOR MEAL. WE PREDICT YOU WILL RETURN IN ONE HOUR.

Voort made sure his veil was still in place, then exited the speeder. He took a look around. He could see stalls and ground-vehicle trailers with hucksters in them, but no customers. He ducked as if to avoid the attention of the hucksters and followed Myri into the tent. “At least we have some witnesses to our arrival.”

She sealed the flap behind them. “Of course the sellers wouldn’t leave their goods.”

Inside the tent were tables with costume pieces atop them, chairs, two immobile droids—dressed in X-wing pilots’ uniforms and veiled helmets—and Mulus. He rose and beamed at them. “Welcome to the changing booth. Are we go on my decoys?”

“We are go.” Voort dropped his helmet in one chair, sat in another, and unsealed his boots.

Mulus held up a comlink and moved to the tent flap. He unsealed the flap and pressed a button on the comlink.

The two droids jerked into awareness and walked toward the flap. The more slender one immediately began speaking in the distinctive tones of a protocol droid. “As I was saying, we can only imagine what things taste like, but—oh, thank you, sir—but I think that properly cleaned oceanside sand looks scrumptious. Golden, gleaming sand.” The two of them passed through the flap. “Don’t you? Oh, dear, we seem to be clothed. I wonder how that happened?”

Mulus sealed the flap.

Voort tossed his boots aside and stood. He began to shed his pilot accoutrements. “Where’s Lab Boy?”

“Getting final preparations done on the new scapedroid. He’s obliged a mobile waste droid to be fitted with a comm-equipped projector, bought in this very market, atop it. I helped him subvert the droid. Poor boy’s helpless with electronics.” He picked up the generously cut porter’s jumpsuit from the table beside him. “Your disguise.”

“Forget it. We’ve got to lure back all the witnesses. The only way a porter can do that is by exploding. Ledina Chott stole our witnesses. Ungrateful girl.” Voort unzipped his orange jumpsuit and stepped out of it, leaving him clad only in a black nightsuit.

“Well, we did kidnap her.” Mulus dropped the porter’s jumpsuit back on the table. “How are you going to get the witnesses back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Speaking of Lab Boy, I think I deserve a Boy name for this operation.”

Myri, now also down to her nightsuit, paused by a large box full of droid parts. “Gem Boy.”

“I like it.”

“Help her get suited up, Gem Boy.” Instead of going out the front, Voort moved to the back tent wall, felt around until he found the rear exit Trey had prepared, and unsealed the slit. He stepped through into the market, and the slit sealed behind him.

He saw Scut immediately. The Yuuzhan Vong, wearing his human face with the flat-top hairstyle, was at the center of the market, working on his improvised scapedroid. The droid, chest-high, looked as though it could accommodate quite a lot of waste. New brackets on the top held a good-sized holoprojector and an auxiliary pack.

Voort trotted over. “Is it ready to go?” He looked around, fretful. In the skies to the east were numerous inbound dots—starfighters.

Scut shook his head. “I bought the holoprojector new. Its internal power pack has never been charged before. It’s charging now. But it’ll be a couple of minutes before it’ll allow power through to the projector—”

“Never mind the explanation.” Voort gestured to the distant crowd around the army-surplus business. “We have to lure them back here right now.” Something caught his eye, a long black airspeeder, Galactic Alliance and army flags rippling from atop its front panels. It glided at ground level toward the crowd. “Thaal’s here. We’re almost out of time. He didn’t even see the X-wings!”

Scut straightened, glanced at Voort. “Father lost your porter costume?”

“Father’s doing fine. Think.”

“You think. I build meticulously. I’ve never improvised.”

Voort growled. He took a look around, assessing resources.

Stalls and trailers selling goods—meat rolls, jewelry, entertainment recordings, products with Ledina Chott’s face on them among the other recordings. A big stall selling souvenirs—from the spot the Wraiths had rented. Voort considered setting it on fire. A raised octagon of natural wood five meters across with three buskers, street musicians, all of them human and professionally pretty, playing for credcoins, now just talking among themselves because there was no one to listen. A new-model speeder bike in red with a salesman standing, helpful and hopeful, beside it. A gleaming gold protocol droid, a black courier’s bag hung on a strap over her shoulder, wandering aimlessly, apparently enjoying the weather.

In a place like this, Face Loran had evidently killed two dangerous men, improvising the kills. Voort’s mind flailed around for the inspiration that clearly came so easily to Face. He withered inside.

Then numbers clicked into place in his head. Decibel levels. Ticket sales reported for Ledina Chott’s upcoming concert. Voort turned to look at the musicians.

He held out a hand to Scut. “Give me a credcard. One with a thousand on it at least.”

Without looking up from his droid work, Scut passed him a credcard.

Voort approached the musicians. They were human—two men, one woman, all dressed in a wild diversity of colorful garments like space vagabonds. All three were dark-haired and very pale-skinned; perhaps they were indeed travelers who seldom set foot planetside. Around the woman’s neck was a strap, holding before her a bank of small percussion heads. One man carried a stringed instrument; the other had a keyboard hung from a neck strap.

Voort stopped before them. “Excuse me.”

They left off their conversation to look at him, surprised. The keyboardist answered. “You’re a talking Gamorrean.”

“I know that. All Gamorreans talk, actually. I’m the only one who speaks comprehensible Basic. I speak more languages than you three have arms and legs. But that’s not important right now. Can you get a lot of volume out of those instruments?”

The one with the stringed instrument grinned. “We can blow you right out of your body stocking.”

“That was on my mind, actually. Run this.” He held out the credcard.

The keyboardist took it, plugged it into a slot on his keyboard, and eyed the number that popped up on the keyboard’s little screen. He opened his mouth to tell Voort the number.

Voort cut him off. “I know what’s on it. Now you do, too. You can have it, the whole amount. If you’ll do everything I say for the next fifteen minutes.”

The strings player shrugged, agreeable. “Do we call you Master?”

“Sure. Clear the stage. Stand here.”

They leapt to obey. Voort took the stage, standing at its center. “Crank your volume to max and keep it there. I doubt you’ll get a disturbing-the-peace citation, but if you do, that card will cover the fine without looking any smaller. I want music. Dance music. I want it to sound like a jungle full of passion. Woodwinds and drums.”

“Yes, Master.” The keyboardist looked at the others and adjusted a slider bar to maximum output. “ ‘Torrid Yavin.’ One, two, three—”

On ‘four’ they launched into a ragged but spirited rendition of the backbeat-driven dance mix that had been popular a dozen years before on Coruscant, an anthem for the rebuilding of the world. Voort, surprised by the sheer volume their portable instruments put out, took an involuntary step back.

Then he started dancing.

He began with humanoid-figure hieroglyphics from Ziost. He well remembered the images from the scientific journals. Every four beats, he assumed a pose simulating one of those eerie ideograms. He knew his black nightsuit would accentuate his poses, make him stand out more.

All around the plaza, heads began turning toward him.

Then starfighters began to land on the courthouse lawn.

36

The nervous captain reached Thaal’s viewport. Thaal opened it for the man. “Well?”

The captain had to speak up in order to be heard over the musical din now erupting from the stage at the center of the plaza. “It’s not good. They found the access to the storage center. And—”

“One more hesitation and I bust you to enlisted man.”

“Sir, they found Ledina Chott in the lift. She’d been drugged and brought here.”

Thaal felt his heart sink. “The Wraiths again.”

“It’s time to run for it, sir.”

Thaal thought it over. If he left now, he could be Thadley Biolan in his suite in minutes. Colonel Gidders could do damage control, blame everything on the missing General Thaal. But Gidders didn’t have the full resources of the army behind him. Thaal needed those resources to find the Wraiths, to stamp them out.

“Captain, Lieutenant, it’s time to choose sides.” Thaal let a hard tone creep into his voice. The pilot turned in her seat to look back at him.

“Gidders is a good soldier. Blame for the operation under Black Crest is going to fall on him. I’m going to make his time in prison short and pleasant, and when he gets out he’s going to be a rich man. To accomplish all this, we have to hang together. I need to know you’re on my team. Everyone on my team has a golden future in front of him, but sometimes it’s hard going. Are you with me?”

The driver nodded at once. “Yes, sir.”

The captain gulped but nodded. “I’m your man, General.”

“Good. Captain, use your public relations skills and this credcard.” Thaal passed him the card. “Get back in there and start spreading funds around. And information. Information that my inspection here was to check into rumors about Colonel Gidders. He’s been under suspicion for some time for trafficking in the black market.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sir?” The lieutenant pointed out the back viewport. Thaal twisted to look.

A flight of starfighters was in the process of landing on the courthouse lawn. Thaal saw stubby A-wing interceptors, E-wing escorts, a bulbous Aleph with its trailing thruster extensions, all in Starfighter Command gray.

And they were coming to ground around two X-wings that waited, their canopies up, on the lawn.

Thaal jammed his head out through the viewport. “Sorrel doesn’t have any X-wings up at her base. Does she?”

“No, sir.” The driver leaned out her own viewport. “And those have add-on hardpoints on their S-foils. Not regulation. Those are the ones that strafed the base.”

“The Wraiths are here! In the mine, or watching. And we’re going to find them and kill them.”

There were more starfighters circling overhead, and Thaal now saw a shuttle descending—one with a Starfighter Command colonel’s insignia on the side. “Stang, Sorrel’s here. I’ve got to send her packing. Captain, put a layer of permacrete on the situation inside. Lieutenant, with me.” He exited his vehicle and hurried toward the courthouse lawn.

He got there just as the shuttle was landing. He positioned himself near the starboard boarding door. The boarding ramp, unfolding from the side, narrowly missed his foot.

Colonel Sorrel was the first to descend. Thaal offered her a neutral look. “Kadana. You don’t need to be here.”

She flashed him a smile without any warmth. “Two mystery X-wings and two of Gidders’s roving flyboys, as usual overstepping their bounds, buzz the civilian station, and it’s somehow not my business? General, the secret to telling jokes is to make them funny first.” She reached ground level and looked around. “We followed the X-wings’ transponder signals here. This is now a Starfighter Command jurisdiction incident. I’ve already cleared that with the planetary government.”

“Blast it, Kadana, they didn’t just buzz my base. They destroyed a training squadron. Killed one of my pilots.”

Kadana nodded absently. Troopers—a naval boarding party from the look of them—were descending behind her and lining up on the grass. She gestured to get their officer’s attention. “Spread out through the plaza. Look for X-wing pilots and anyone suspicious.”

Thaal forced himself not to sputter. “You brought the navy in on this?”

“And my own military police. General, it’s a new era of interservice cooperation here on Kuratooine.” She set out, her stride long and fast, toward the plaza. “What is that racket?”

For a moment, Thaal reconsidered his aide’s recommendation. A quick walk back to his speeder would result in his safety.

No, he needed to see bound Wraiths, whatever they were, in front of him experiencing interrogation. In fact, Colonel Sorrel should be there beside them, strapped down and anticipating the end of her life for defying him.

Thaal set out after her.

He activated his comlink. “Chakham Command Center, this is General Thaal. I want a full company of troopers here, at the Old Kura City Courthouse Plaza … place … whatever it’s called … to take charge of a situation. Ten minutes. Light a fire under their butts.”

Voort danced as an audience of zero onlookers became a line of people, then deepened into a crowd.

An enthusiastic crowd. As he ran through a full-length version of the Twi’lek Strutters’ Night, some onlookers began clapping in time.

He decided to reward them. He grabbed the torso of his nightsuit and yanked. The whole nightsuit—like so many Wraith garments, a breakaway design—came off in his hands, leaving him in dark undershorts and socks. He spun the garment over his head as he strutted, then threw it into the crowd. He launched into a set of muscleman flexes punctuated by fanny-wiggles.

It was working. Onlookers were still arriving, some of them at a run. The musicians were in their groove now, jamming with the skill of long experience. Voort had caught his own rhythm, old moves coming back to him.

And now pilots and troopers were streaming his way.

Voort began to feel something strange within him, something he hadn’t felt in years.

He was … enjoying himself.

He began a series of provocative belly-rolls. Some in the crowd, ladies especially, offered a ragged cheer.

Thaymes grinned at what he was seeing on the monitor. “Stage Boy.”

“Time for me to go on again?” Turman was still behind the black curtain.

“No. The general’s headed toward the confrontation point.”

“All by himself?”

“He’s following the colonel. I think you convinced her.”

“Of course I convinced her. I can convince any woman of anything.”

“Not when you smell like that.”

Turman took a couple of seconds to answer. “I’d kill you if you weren’t right.”

Just as Thaal caught up to Colonel Sorrel, not far from the edge of the crowd watching the nearly naked Gamorrean, a Starfighter Command military policeman approached Sorrel from the side. He saluted. “We found the pilots, Colonel. Two droids, one protocol, one a heavyweight hauler.”

Before the colonel could answer, Thaal offered a growled reply. “They’re decoys, idiot. Protocol droids don’t fly starfighters or shoot at people.”

Colonel Sorrel shot him an amused glance, then returned her attention to the MP. “The general knows all about decoys, Corporal. Detain the droids but continue your search.”

“Yes, Colonel.” He fled the general’s presence.

“I can’t think with that racket going.” Thaal left the colonel’s side and shoved his way through the crowd, up to the musicians. “Stop playing!”

They looked at him blankly.

“Stop. Playing.” Stang! It would not do to pull out his hold-out blaster and shoot them, not even a little.

Someone in the crowd bellowed loud enough that Thaal could hear him: “Hey, Lieutenant Joykill, move along.” Others laughed.

But the musicians ceased playing.

The Gamorrean onstage, now covered in sweat, stopped dancing. He glared down at Thaal and spoke, raising his voice so all in the crowd could hear him. “What’s the problem? Don’t you support the fine arts?”

Startled, Thaal almost took a step back. “You’re a talking Gamorrean.”

The dancer threw his hands up and looked skyward as if imploring Skifter Station for intervention. “Why doesn’t anybody think I know that?” He stared down at the general. “I’m Professor Voort saBinring, late of Ayceezee Public College.”

“You need—”

“But you can call me Piggy. Everybody calls me Piggy.”

“You need to shut—”

“I’m a war veteran here on my first vacation in years. And I’ve just made my professional dancing debut!”

The crowd cheered.

Now the Gamorrean turned to the crowd and raised an arm in celebration. “Kura City audiences are the best audiences in the city!”

The crowd cheered again. Then the cheer tapered off as the onlookers tried to figure out what he’d said.

Thaal jabbed a finger at the dancer. “One more word out of you and I’ll bury you up to your neck in my drill yard.” He turned away from the stage and took a deep breath.

Now, with the music cut off, at last he could think again.

His pilot sidled up. “Sir, the troopers are inbound from the base.”

He nodded and rubbed at his temples. “Good, good.”

Colonel Sorrel and two of her MPs joined him. Sorrel gave him an admonishing look. “He was pretty good. For a Gamorrean.”

“I don’t care. Colonel, I need you to do me a favor. In that spirit of interservice cooperation you mentioned. I’ll count you as a personal friend and ally for the rest of my military career if you do. Just take your people out of here. I’ll take charge of this situation. Do it for the sake of my dead pilot.”

“General Stavin Thaal.” The voice was very loud, amplified. Thaal turned to look. So did the military personnel and civilians all over the plaza. Even the droids turned to look.

A squat droid rolled toward the general—a large mobile waste bin with some machinery on top. Above the droid floated a holographic image, that of a man.

Part of a man. The only portions of him that were human were his white hair and the right side of his face, one blue eye staring unblinking at Thaal. The rest of his head was mechanical. Below his face Thaal could glimpse the top of a Starfighter Command uniform, its cut and design four decades old.

Colonel Sorrel looked at the general. “Friend of yours?”

He shook his head. “This man is named Phanan. He was mutilated in the war against the Empire. He faked his death a long time back. Recently he’s been … stalking me.”

His pilot interposed herself between the droid and the general and drew her blaster. She took aim at the droid’s wheels. “It might be carrying explosives.”

“We’ll find out.” Sorrel gestured to a couple of MPs. When the droid came to a stop in front of the pilot, they approached, scanners in hand. Both looked over at the colonel and shook their heads. But the pilot resolutely stayed in the way.

“Every word the general says is true!” The hologram offered a partial smile. Only his right upper lip was flesh, so it was only a quarter smile. “Except for one thing. He calls himself Stavin Thaal … but he lies. Stavin Thaal is dead. Colonel, you must take this imposter into custody.”

Thaal felt a little trickle of worry. He kept it from his face. “Lieutenant, shut that thing down.”

The pilot took aim at the holoprojector.

One of the MPs lashed out, his rifle butt connecting with the lieutenant’s wrist. The blaster dropped from her hand. She clutched at her wrist, then looked back at the general for orders.

“Like I said.” Colonel Sorrel’s voice was artificially sweet. “This is a Starfighter Command jurisdiction.”

“That just ended your career.” The general became aware that onlookers, made nervous by the MP’s attack, were beginning to edge away. “All right, Lieutenant. We’re going back to the base. We’ll let the colonel play like she’s in charge during her last day as an officer.” He turned and immediately bumped into a gold protocol droid.

Rocked by the impact, she clutched at him for support. “Oh, I say, my apologies.”

He gave her a shove. She fell, landing on the pavestones, careful to keep from crushing her courier’s pouch beneath her. “Oh, my. Clearly one apology is not enough.”

In the distance, Thaal could see the first speeder carrying his Pop-Dogs inbound. A few seconds of stalling and they would be here, a more potent force than Sorrel’s MPs. Nothing Phanan could say would endanger his exit.

So Thaal turned back to his accuser. “Show yourself, Phanan. If you think I’m an imposter, despite the fact that I have to go through security screenings every day, you just step right up to my face and prove it.”

“I think I can clear this up.” The voice was female, pleasant, and very familiar to Thaal.

He spun. Ahead of him, moving through the crowd, a wrap of synthfur in gold around her shoulders, was his wife. She smiled and waved.

“Zehrinne?” Confusion and relief replaced the sense of worry. “What are you doing on Kuratooine?” When she reached him, Thaal embraced her.

“I’m here for the gambling. Skifter Station’s reputation has reached all the way to Coruscant.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, gave his cheek a kiss. “But maybe I should denounce you. Revenge for divorcing me.”

“Not funny.”

“No, I suppose it’s not.” Zehrinne’s voice trailed off and she stared intently into his face. She cupped his jaw with her hand.

Then she broke away. “This is not my husband. He’s wearing false eye lenses and makeup.” She took another step back, shock on her face. “What have you done with my husband?”

Thaal spun in the direction of his speeder as if he intended to walk away. But in turning he noted the position of every naval trooper and Starfighter Command MP near him. And of Colonel Sorrel. And Zehrinne.

Then he turned back toward his wife. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

Zehrinne shrugged, dropping for a bare second the pretense that she was afraid and shocked.

Colonel Sorrel took a step forward. “General, I need to take you into custody pending—”

Thaal reached into the coat pocket where his holdout blaster rested. Wouldn’t the colonel and his lovely traitor of a wife be startled when he drew, aimed, and discharged it right into their faces.

37

On a distant rooftop, stretched out under a canopy of flexiplast matching the roof’s protective surface, Wran stared through his scope at the four oncoming Pop-Dog personnel transport speeders. They were inbound from the south and had rounded the eastern slope of Black Crest Mountain moments before.

Mostly Wran stared at their undersides. The speeders were well up in the air, exposing the repulsors and thrusters lining their bellies.

He zeroed in on the lead vehicle’s main repulsorlift unit, kept his aim on it, and fired.

His laser shot hit the unit, pierced it. He saw surprise on the distant face of the pilot. The speeder continued forward, its flight speed undiminished, but it nosed over into a too-rapid descent.

“Comm, Gun. One down.” He switched his aim to the second speeder.

Thaymes’s voice whispered from his earpiece: “Gun, Comm. I read.”

The other three trooper carriers went evasive, banking and losing altitude, their pilots hoping to take cover behind intervening buildings. The maneuvers were sharp, catching some of the Pop-Dogs off guard; Wran saw three spill over the side of his new target.

He fired. A black hole appeared in the side armor shielding the motivators of his new target. He fired twice more, creating two more holes, before his laser rifle whined at him to indicate it was recharging.

His second target continued its controlled descent as if undamaged. Troopers in the bed opened fire on Wran’s position—on the entire top floor of the building beneath him, in fact. But then the starboard side of the speeder, the side he’d perforated, dipped as though the repulsorlifts there had failed. The vehicle went from horizontal to vertical in an instant, pitching everyone but the strapped-in pilot free. Then it went upside down as it dipped beneath the buildings two streets over.

Wran heard a crash from the vicinity of his first target, followed by the sound of metal crumpling from the direction of his second.

He looked around. No other transport speeders were in sight. They’d gone below cover. “Comm, Gun. Two got by me.”

“Understood. Team Shellfish, you’re up. Gun, they may be gunning for you. Get clear.”

“I hear that.”

The third transport rose like a submersible vessel cresting the ocean’s surface as it came over the lip of Wran’s building. Even before it leveled off into horizontal flight the vengeful Pop-Dogs in the back began pouring blasterfire into the canopy erected at the far edge. The canopy jittered and rattled as it was burned into a crisp black ruin.

The transport came to a stop a few meters away. Two Pop-Dogs leapt off, landing in a crouch on the roof, and ran up to the canopy. One covered it while the other yanked it clear. The others took aim.

But there was nothing beneath.

Their own engines kept them from hearing, from reacting in time, as two speeder bikes crested the same roof edge they had just crossed. The two speeder bikes flashed by overhead, piloted by a blond human woman and a cream-brown Wookiee female.

Each of them dropped something as she passed overhead, a globe that fell into the speeder’s passenger bed.

Veteran Pop-Dogs dived away. Others, quicker to act than to think, aimed after the speeder bikes. One got off a first shot that missed the blond woman by a dozen meters.

Then the globes detonated, filling the air with unhealthy-looking yellow gas. It spread across the roof, coating the Pop-Dogs all around.

Rugged men and women who’d been trained to kill began coughing, clutching their eyes.

Two hundred meters away, the distance increasing, the blond woman spoke into her headset mike. “Ranger to Comm. Third speeder down. Location of fourth unknown.”

“I read.”

“Tell Drug Boy good work.”

There was no weapon in Thaal’s pocket. He groped for it, startled, for a moment.

It couldn’t be gone. In the minutes since the last time he’d felt it, he’d performed no physical activity that could have dislodged it. And no one had been close enough to him to–

That protocol droid.

He ran. He slammed Colonel Sorrel out of the way and headed toward the oncoming Pop-Dog transports—They were gone.

No, one was still incoming. Almost at ground level, it rounded a street corner and headed toward him.

There was a familiar poomp sound from the interior of a black speeder parked nearby. Thaal could only watch as the grenade, fired from a military-issue blaster rifle, arced toward the transport speeder, hit the pavement in front of it, and exploded into an immense yellow cloud. Unable to maneuver in time, the transport flew through it. It emerged with its surfaces and passengers all tinged yellow. The passengers began curling into balls, clutching their eyes, heaving.

Thaal watched as, its pilot temporarily blind, the speeder sailed past him, heading in a curved, erratic course toward the starfighters in front of the courthouse.

Footsteps behind him, shouts to stop—Thaal turned toward the nearest vehicle, a red speeder bike with a human salesman standing protectively nearby.

Thaal hit the alarmed-looking man, knocking him out of the way, and started up the swoop. It roared into life, its too-powerful engines perfect for testosterone-addled boys and middle-aged men.

Then Thaal felt the sting in his neck.

He ignored it and revved the thrusters.

Tried to, anyway. His hands stayed clutched, unmoving, on the control bars. His feet would not budge from the pedals. The speeder bike rose a meter into the air and began a slow, slow drift forward, pushed along only by a light breeze.

Colonel Sorrel drew alongside, pacing him at a slow walking speed. “Pending a full investigation into these events.”

The crude scapedroid pulled up to Thaal’s right, opposite her. “You will find his tan skin is makeup. Beneath, he’s a more yellow color. The lenses he wears on his eyes match Thaal’s retinal prints, but his true eyes do not. Textured false skin on his hands and feet bears Thaal’s prints, but Thadley Biolan’s prints lie beneath.” Ton Phanan shook his head. “I don’t know how long Stavin Thaal has been dead … but it’s clear this man killed him long, long ago.” Then the image of Ton Phanan winked out.

Trey, in the front seat of the black speeder, set his blaster rifle aside. “Nice shot.”

Drikall put his dart rifle away. “I thought so.”

“No, I meant me.” Trey started up the speeder and headed away from the plaza. “But you get points for brewing up a good tear gas.”

“Thank you for your unstinting praise.”

“Tear gas that I fired, with consummate accuracy …”

“You’re ruining it for me.”

In minutes it was done. Civilians crowded around the drifting speeder bike an MP held in place. Others waited for the inert improvised scapedroid to start talking again. More MPs and Kura City Guards arrived and argued with one another about who should be arresting whom. General Thaal remained sitting, paralyzed, on the swoop he’d intended to ride to freedom. Colonel Sorrel took a dampened rag to his cheek, wiping away tan makeup to reveal yellower skin beneath. Zehrinne Thaal stayed nearby, answering investigator questions, wearing an expression of intermixed anxiety and disinterest.

Two blocks away, Voort, wrapped in a traveler’s cloak, boarded the delivery speeder.

Thaymes looked up and smiled as he entered. “We’re extracting?”

“We’re extracting.”

“Stage Boy, it’s curtain call.”

The black curtain was swept away. Ton Phanan stood on the other side, in the black-lined rear of the compartment, and stared imperiously at the other two.

Then he pulled his face off, revealing Turman’s features beneath. “I need a bath.”

“You do, in fact.” Thaymes hit a comm preset. “Comm Boy to all boys and girls. We are extracting. Don’t talk to strangers on your way back. Don’t accept candy.”

A narrow viewport into the front compartment slid open. Sharr peered back through it. “Say, Leader. What happened to your clothes?”

“Shut up.” Voort took a seat back in the black-lined mini studio Turman had been using.

“You lost them again?”

“Leader to Mind Boy, shut up. You know I took them off dancing.”

“So you stole your own clothes this time.”

Voort sighed. “Yes, and I’ll get myself back someday.”

Scut, Mulus, and the gold protocol droid boarded. Scut and Mulus took seats. The droid pulled her faceplate away, revealing the features of Myri. “It’s impossible to sit down in this thing.”

Turman gave her a look that included no sympathy. “Lean against the back panel. Don’t fall down when we decelerate.”

Myri reached into her black courier’s pouch and pulled out a small blaster pistol. “Anyone for a souvenir? The last blaster General Thaal will ever own.”

Thaymes looked interested. “What do you want for it?”

“An X-wing.”

“Forget it.”

“We’ll get you out of that.” Scut rose and began disassembling Myri’s exterior plates.

Mulus gave Voort a pleading look. “Now can you help me understand what just happened?”

Voort nodded. “I was confused for a long time. I didn’t understand why Thaal didn’t break and run to begin his transformation process. It clearly would take weeks or months, a time frame in which he’d be vulnerable to capture and discovery. Then I realized—he already had. Months ago. He’d been wearing makeup and traditional appliances to fool security measures while, underneath, he already was Thadley Biolan.”

Mulus’s eyes lit up. “Ahhh. So at any point, he could take off his disguise and it would be impossible to prove he was the traitorous General Thaal.”

“So we brought him here and gave him reasons to stay Thaal—greed for your gems, then a need for revenge against ‘Ton Phanan.’ On and on until we had everything set up and he couldn’t get away.”

The vehicle rocked a little, then Wran appeared in the front viewport beside Sharr. “Leader. What happened to your clothes?”

Voort reached forward and slid the viewport closed.

Sharr slid it open again. “The other speeder and the speeder bikes are here.”

Voort leaned back, interlacing his fingers behind his head. “Wraiths, let’s fly.” Then he looked skyward, though he had no idea whether Vandor-3 was in the direction of his stare. “All right, Bhindi. Now we’ve won.”

38

CORUSCANT

It was one of the most secure buildings on Coruscant. Shaped and colored like a hard-boiled egg cut lengthwise, it stretched the distance of two city blocks. Its every window was made of ship’s armor-grade transparisteel. Its every entrance was under the constant scrutiny of a droid guard working from one of its three security command centers.

So when the squat redheaded man in the Alliance general’s uniform finished with the three-stage process to give him admittance to his own quarters, it was not odd that he looked a touch surprised to see a dead man in his social chamber, drinking his wine.

The redheaded man paused as if collecting his thoughts while the door slid shut behind him. “General Loran.”

Face Loran, dressed from neck to foot in his usual black, set his wineglass aside on an end table. “General Maddeus.”

Borath Maddeus, head of Galactic Alliance Security, moved cautiously into his own home. “I thought you were dead. I’m very pleased to be wrong for once.”

“You didn’t really.”

Maddeus grinned, the expression broad across his face. “Well, I worried that this time it might be true. Your speeder explodes spectacularly, there’s genetic evidence of you all over the wreckage, your whole family disappears …” He moved to sit on the sofa situated at a right angle to Face’s. “What on nine ice worlds happened that day?”

“Three assassins. Two followed me into a marketplace, and I dealt with them. I got back to my speeder, got in, and asked my onboard droid brain if the vehicle had been tampered with. Turned out it had, so I did something that would have gotten me in deep trouble with my wife if it had turned out not to be a bomb. I cut myself and bled all over the controls and pilot’s seat.”

“Hence the genetic evidence.”

“Correct. I instructed the droid brain to wait one minute and then take off, fly to the nearest landing location up the avenue, and land, a task simple enough for its piloting functions to handle. I knew where the killers’ speeder had landed, so I assumed I was under observation from that position, and I slid out the viewport on the opposite side of my speeder. I figured if it was a bomb, it would detonate within seconds, while if it was a tracking or eavesdropping device, the killers’ speeder would remain in place long enough for me to creep close enough to get good identification details off it.”

“And it took off, and exploded, without you.” Maddeus nodded, approving.

“The killers’ speeder took off, and I spent the next few minutes comming my home and two or three people I’d seen recently in order to give them a heads-up.” Face’s voice turned grim. “The third killer went to my quarters. Broke in as slickly as I broke in here and confronted my wife in our bedroom, where she was packing to leave. She shot him, a twin burn to the gut. He took a while to die. She said he kept murmuring.”

“Begging for mercy?”

“Complaining that he couldn’t find a Wookiee. I assume he was in shock.” Face shrugged. “We disposed of the body, Wraith-style, and went into hiding. So I could carry out the final phases of my investigation on Coruscant.”

Maddeus patted his breast pocket. “I have the official reports from Colonel Sorrel and others. They have some crazy details. Such as the fact that a Ton Phanan led the Wraiths. But no Wraiths have reported to me.”

“They reported to me, once I let them know I was still alive. And Ton Phanan didn’t report to you since he’s been dead for decades.”

“He really is dead.”

Face nodded.

“So who were your agents in the field?”

“I’ll get to that. We have a new problem.” Face took a deep breath. “Here’s the bad news. Though General Stavin Thaal is currently shown as being in detention in an Alliance Security holding facility, he has, in fact, recently escaped. I intend to find him and recapture him today.”

Maddeus’s face hardened into a mask of disbelief and disapproval. “You’re joking.”

“Not at all.”

Maddeus rose and fished his comlink out from a trouser pocket. “I’ll get a direct, live holocam feed of his cell. We’ll see about this.”

“Don’t bother.” Face rose, too. “You know he escaped, because you helped him escape. General, I accuse you of being a member of the so-called Lecersen Conspiracy. Don’t reach for any other devices, as I’ll have to assume you’re going for a weapon.”

Maddeus stared at his uninvited guest. Cold anger crept into his voice. “You know, Face, I’d heard that it was hard to stay friends with you. Now I find it’s true.”

“You want to hear my presentation? I spent all morning working on it.”

“Please.” Maddeus sat again.

Face began walking, pacing back and forth a few steps in front of his host’s sofa. “You’ve been in Intelligence for about thirty years. It’s hard to find out many details of your career—your official record is full of redacted details. Not surprising. Mine’s like that, too. Anyway, among the redacted details are what you were doing throughout the Yuuzhan Vong War.”

“I was building resistance cells on conquered and endangered worlds. Everyone knows that.”

“Yes! But which worlds, and when?” Face stopped his lateral pacing and turned toward Maddeus. “Not on Coruscant. My old friend Baljos, who was here, coordinating the resistance, would have told me. But you were nearby … You’re not in their official histories because, like most Intelligence officers, you prefer not to be chronicled. And you were never in the army, so you aren’t on their official roster. But when Coruscant was about to fall, and then-Colonel Thaal floated the idea of setting up a resistance unit on Vandor-Three, you got behind the idea. Volunteered to help him set it up. I’m not speculating here—some of the old Pop-Dogs on Kuratooine are beginning to answer pointed questions. You’re an honorary Pop-Dog, and Thaal owes a lot of his hero status to you. And he returned the favor by pushing hard for you to be the head of GA Security when it was time to sweep Belindi Kalenda off to obscurity.”

Maddeus fingered his comlink. His face was impassive.

Face resumed his pacing. “No answer? No denial? Of course you won’t admit to anything. I might be recording. Anything you say might lead to your conviction. As you wish. Where was I? Oh, yes, appointment to head of GA Security. Thaal knew that you and he were two of a kind, greedy pragmatists, so it didn’t offend you at all when he offered to bring you into the Lecersen Conspiracy. Betray the Alliance, get a fat fee—say, a small planet, or a small continent on a rich planet, or whatever—for the simple task of betraying the Galactic Alliance. To a new Empire or the highest bidder.”

Maddeus finally spoke. “How much of this bizarre theory have you discussed with others?”

Face stopped, turned back toward Maddeus, and barked out a laugh. “Here’s where you’re hoping I’ll say, No, I’ve naïvely kept all these facts to myself so that if I can be eliminated, you can go on as before. General, I have full reports waiting on distant computers that will transmit if I fail to report in. And my wife knows. You know what she’ll do if you try something with me? She’ll go up in an X-wing and burn you to a cinder. And she’ll let our daughter handle the trigger. Good practice for a sixteen-year-old girl. It’s over, General. We found the special shipping crates HyperTech used to transport hypercomm units—with the coffin-sized shielded compartment in them, where your agent rode with anesthetic gas grenades. We found Thaal’s private moon where the captured crews of all those hijacked ships have been serving as slave labor. Colonel Gidders on Kuratooine didn’t take well to having Thaal lay the blame at his feet, so he’s telling everything he knows, including special smuggling favors that could only have come about with the help of the head of Galactic Alliance Security. You’re finished.”

“Are you done with your speculating?”

“Am I?” Face looked as though he were thinking it over. “No, not quite. We were just at the point where you turn traitor. Later, when the conspiracy is revealed, you realize that you and Thaal haven’t been outed by your surviving fellow conspirators. But you have to make sure that you’re safe. So you call me in. You say, I have some misgivings about General Thaal. Look into it, will you? The idea being that if there’s anything to find, I’ll find it. But if I don’t find anything, you and Thaal are as free as hawk-bats. And about as pretty. Where was I? Oh, yes. You were nice enough to give me a yacht, the Quarren Eye, with one of those compromised HyperTech hypercomm systems installed in it. I didn’t know for sure it was compromised, at first. But I’d never trust a comlink someone else handed to me, even if it’s wrapped up in a yacht. So what I did was form two Wraith groups, gave them nonoverlapping assignments, didn’t tell them about each other, while I sent you reports describing a third group made up of dead and fictitious Wraiths. And then …”

Face paused for dramatic effect. “I’m assuming that you hadn’t told Thaal you were doing this. And at some point you did. He’s not as subtle as you are, so he made arrangements to wipe out the Wraiths, me first. Assassins come after me and I go into hiding. Search orders, implicitly kill orders, go out for the Wraiths whose names have only ever been mentioned across the yacht’s hypercomm. And so I knew I had you. But in the first couple of days I was making sure my family wouldn’t be found out, one of my two real teams, following up on an investigation I’d told them to ignore, met the other one.” He shook his head, his expression rueful. “With sad results. Sadder for Thaal, though, in the long run. A vengeful Wraith is a very effective Wraith.”

Maddeus’s voice emerged as a grumble. “I didn’t see that coming. The diverse Wraith units. That was a good tactic, Face. And you found us out.”

Face’s eyebrows shot up. “That was a confession. Oh, sacred day. I really am recording, you know.”

Maddeus shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Even if you’re transmitting live, I can kill you and get out of this complex by routes you’re unaware of. I have safe houses, alternative identities, just like you. You’ve cost me a lot of money, Face, but not my freedom.”

Face put on a mocking expression. “You know, killing me is the first part of that equation, and the hardest to accomplish. I can have my blaster in hand a lot faster than you can grab yours.”

“My blaster’s already in hand.”

Face started to reply, but was interrupted by a noise—the clearing of a throat behind him. Slowly, he turned to look.

At the near end of the darkened hallway stood the silhouette of a burly man holding a blaster pistol. The man silently stepped forward. His face, coming into the glow rod light, was that of Stavin Thaal—rather, of the post-transformation Thadley Biolan. He wore civilian clothes, casual striped prints in red and yellow suited to an offworld tourist. He did not look happy.

Face raised his hands and turned back to look at Maddeus. “Oh.” He chewed on his inner cheek for a moment. “Oops. The safe house where you were hiding him was here, wasn’t it?”

“One floor down. With my personal security station, which is crewed around the chrono.” Maddeus held up his comlink. “I activated it—a casual button-press of a preset while I was fidgeting—and alerted my personal security crew.” Now he spoke into it. “Seal all exits from my quarters except the access to your station. Exterior holocams and security alerts set for maximum paranoia. We may be visited in a few minutes.”

The voice that responded was buzzy but distinct: “Yes, sir.”

Maddeus stood. “Stavin and I are going to leave now, Face. They’ll find your body when they break in. Your wife can go up in as many X-wings as she likes. She’ll never know where to shoot. Stavin, shoot him. Then we can go out and kill your wife if you like.”

The former head of the army took a step into the social room, coming fully into the light. “I don’t really want to.”

“What?”

“I don’t … I don’t feel well.” Thaal reached up to his neckline, tugged … and his facial features and hair peeled away, revealing a different man. He was far younger than Thaal, pleasant-looking, smiling. “Now I feel better.”

Face lowered his hands. “Surprise.”

Hours later, the sun was just cresting the nearest wall of skytowers when Face Loran walked, jauntily, from the main entrance to the vast, circular Senate Building, seat of Galactic Alliance government.

Thirteen people waited for him, seated on stone benches a hundred meters out in the plaza. Face waved and headed their way, navigating through pedestrian cross-traffic. He sometimes skipped like a child when he had an open stretch of permacrete before him.

He wrapped himself around his wife and daughter, then turned toward the others. “I can’t believe you waited all this time.”

Myri looked forlorn. “We were bored. Nobody was shooting at us. So we came here.”

Piggy nodded. “It’s the boss’s duty to entertain us. You’ve let us down.”

“Well, I’ll entertain you now. Where are the speeders?”

Sharr perked up. “Should I steal us some?” At Face’s arched eyebrow, he relented. “They’re this way.” He led the Wraiths westward across the plaza.

“So.” Face took a look around, making sure that no other pedestrians were close enough to hear, pausing when any stranger momentarily moved too close. “After a full night of briefing and debriefing and explaining, I spent a couple of hours telling Chief of State Dorvan what we’ve been up to. I left out lots of details. Like your names.”

Dia, tucked under his arm, looked up at him. “And?”

“And he offered me a desk job.”

She smiled. “Head apologist for the Chief of State?”

“Head of Galactic Alliance Security.”

“Excellent.” That was Trey, and Face felt thumps against his back, pats of congratulation.

Dia made her face stern. “If you take it, you have to treat it as a desk job. No shooting. No personal spying.”

He leaned to kiss her. “You’re the only one I want to spy on.”

“Deal.”

“And I plan to accept the job. Now that I know my wife won’t burn me to a cinder.”

“Bhindi would be pleased.” Sharr’s voice was suddenly just a touch hoarse. “The way it ended. A venomous reptile rooted out from a position of high influence.”

Myri sounded matter-of-fact. “Piggy getting back in dancing shape. She’d like that, too.”

Drikall sounded more cheerful. “Jesmin has the monkey-lizard of her black-market investigation off her back.”

Thaymes cocked his head, thinking. “Zehrinne Thaal gets her ‘dead husband’s’ possessions. And things of Thadley Biolan’s she can prove were Thaal’s. A blow for vengeful discarded wives everywhere.”

Piggy summed it up. “Not a bad set of results for Wraith Squadron’s last hurrah.”

“About that …” Face fell silent as they passed through the plaza’s western exit arch, between two uniformed security troopers. “Keep it up, guys. I’m your new boss. Just saying.” When the Wraiths were far enough away, he continued. “This wasn’t a Wraith Squadron mission. Wraith Squadron ceased to be when it was decommissioned three years ago.”

“True.” Jesmin looked unconcerned.

“This was an action by a group of concerned civilians who never revealed who they were.” They moved onto the ramp up to the next level of pedestrian walkways, and Face continued. “As such, it doesn’t have to be your last hurrah.”

The Wraiths looked at one another. Suspicious, Scut, in his flat-top human face, frowned at Face. “What exactly are you saying?”

“I’m saying that every intelligence agency has some unofficial elements. Of course, they aren’t part of the agency budget, so they have to raise their own revenues.”

Adra gave her father a concerned look. “Dad, should I be hearing any of this?”

“Of course not. Where was I? So a certain amount of theft and illicit trade is part of the job description. Reporting directly to me, of course.”

Wran thumped Piggy on the back. “Voort’s the boss.”

“Call me Piggy. And I’m just a mathematics professor. And part-time dancer.”

Huge hairy paws fell on Piggy’s shoulders and he was spun around to face Huhunna. She seized his hands, held his right hand elevated and placed his left on her hip, then spun him away ahead on the walkway in a smooth gliding motion.

Face blinked after them. “I didn’t know she could ballroom dance. Odd for a Wookiee.”

Jesmin nodded. “We still have some things to learn about each other. I suggest we buy some breakfast and get started.”

Scut glared at her. “Buy breakfast?”

“All right, steal it.”

The Yuuzhan Vong nodded, mollified. “That’s better.”

Myri stared after Piggy and Huhunna as they danced. “Well, that’s new.”

Face glanced her way. “What is?”

“He’s smiling.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks go to:

My editor, Shelly Shapiro; Jennifer Heddle and Leland Chee of Lucas Licensing;

My agent, Russell Galen;

My eagle-eyes, Kelly Frieders, Roxanne Quinlan, Luray Richmond, Janine K. Spendlove, and Sean Summers; and Michael A. Stackpole, for setting the X-Wing novel series in motion all those years ago.

ALSO BY MICHAEL A. STACKPOLE

THE WARRIOR TRILOGY

Warrior: En Garde

Warrior: Riposte

Warrior: Coupé

THE BLOOD OF KERENSKY TRILOGY

Lethal Heritage

Blood Legacy

Lost Destiny

Natural Selection

Assumption of Risk

Bred for War

Malicious Intent

Grave Covenant

Prince of Havoc

Ghost War

THE FIDDLEBACK TRILOGY

A Gathering Evil

Evil Ascendant

Evil Triumphant

Eyes of Silver*

Dementia

Wolf and Raven

Once a Hero*

Talion: Revenant*

STAR WARS® X-WING SERIES

Rogue Squadron*

Wedge’s Gamble*

The Krytos Trap*

The Bacta War*

Isard’s Revenge*

Star Wars®: I, Jedi*

Star Wars®: Dark Tide

Star Wars®: Onslaught

Star Wars®: Ruin

THE DRAGONCROWN WAR CYCLE

The Dark Glory War*

Fortress Draconis*

When Dragons Rage*

The Grand Crusade*

THE AGE OF DISCOVERY

A Secret Atlas*

Cartomancy*

*published by Bantam Books

ALSO BY AARON ALLSTON

STAR WARS: NEW JEDI ORDER SERIES

Rebel Dream

Rebel Stand

STAR WARS: LEGACY OF THE FORCE SERIES

Betrayal

Exile

Fury

STAR WARS: FATE OF THE JEDI SERIES

Outcast

Backlash

Conviction

STAR WARS: X-WING SERIES

Wraith Squadron

Iron Fist

Solo Command

Starfighters of Adumar

Mercy Kill

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

MICHAEL A. STACKPOLE is an award-winning author, editor, game and computer game designer. As always, he spends his spare time playing indoor soccer and now has a new hobby, podcasting. Mike will publish A New World, the sequel to Cartomancy, this July, and is currently at work on ideas for a half-dozen other novels.

To learn more about Mike’s podcasting, please visit www.tsfpn.com (the website of The SciFi Podcast Network).

AARON ALLSTON was the New York Times bestselling author of thirteen Star Wars novels, as well as the Doc Sidhe novels, which combine 1930s-style hero-pulps with Celtic myth. In addition to being a writer, he was a longtime game designer, and in 2006 he was inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design (AAGAD) Hall of Fame. Aaron Allston died in 2014.

www.aaronallston.com
www.archerrat.com

STAR WARS—LEGENDS

What is a legend? According to the Random House Dictionary, a legend is “a nonhistorical or unverifiable story handed down by tradition from earlier times and popularly accepted as historical.” Merriam-Webster defines it as “a story from the past that is believed by many people but cannot be proved to be true.” And Wikipedia says, “Legends are tales that, because of the tie to a historical event or location, are believable, though not necessarily believed.” Because of this inherent believability, legends tend to live on in a culture, told and retold even though they are generally regarded as fiction.

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a legend was born: The story of Luke Skywalker and his fellow heroes, Princess Leia and Han Solo. Three blockbuster movies introduced these characters and their stories to millions of people who embraced these tales and began to build upon them, as is done with myths everywhere. And thus novels, short stories, and comic books were published, expanding the Star Wars universe introduced in the original trilogy and later enhanced by the prequel movies and the animated TV series The Clone Wars. The enormous body of work that grew around the films and The Clone Wars came to be known as The Expanded Universe.

Now, as new movies, television shows, and books move into the realm of the official canon, The Expanded Universe must take its place firmly in the realm of legends. But, like all great legends, the fact that we can’t prove the veracity of every detail doesn’t make the stories any less entertaining or worthy of being read. These legends remain true to the spirit of Star Wars and in that way are another avenue through which we can get to know and understand our beloved heroes in that galaxy far, far away.

—Del Rey Books, May 2014

Turn the page or jump to the timeline of Star Wars Legends novels to learn more.

1

SCRAMBLE LINE ENCRYPTED

STAND BY STAND BY

GEONOSIS FORWARD CONTROL TO FLEET SUPPORT, ORD MANTELL.

PREPARE TO RECEIVE CASEVAC TRANSPORT. MED TRIAGE TEAM ESTIMATE SERIOUS INJURIES, TWELVE THOUSAND, REPEAT TWELVE THOUSAND. WALKING WOUNDED EIGHT THOUSAND, REPEAT EIGHT THOUSAND. ETA TEN HOURS. LOGISTICS PRIORITY FOR BACTA TANK SUPPORT TEAMS.

PREP FOR SEVENTY-TWO THOUSAND COMBAT-FIT TROOPS, REPEAT SEVENTY-TWO THOUSAND, PENDING REDEPLOYMENT. PRIORITY WEAPONS SUPPORT FOR COMMANDO UNITS.

THAT IS ALL. OUT.

Republic assault ship Implacable: inbound for extraction from Geonosis. Stand by.

Republic Commando 1136 studied every face in line waiting to board the gunships.

Some were helmeted, and some were not, but—one way or another—they all had his face. And they were all strangers.

“Move it,” the loadmaster shouted, gesturing side-to-side with one outstretched arm. “Come on, shift it, people—fast as you can.” The gunships dropped down in clouds of dust and troopers embarked, some turning to pull comrades inboard so the ships could lift again quickly. There was no reason to scramble for it. They’d done it a thousand times in training; extraction from a real battle was what they’d prepared for. This wasn’t a retreat. They’d grabbed their first victory.

The gunships’ downdraft kicked the red Geonosian soil into the air. RC-1136—Darman—took off his helmet and ran his gauntlet carefully across the pale gray dome, wiping away the dust and noting a few scrapes and burn marks.

The loadmaster turned to him. He was one of the very, very few outsiders whom Darman had ever seen working with the Grand Army, a short, wrinkled Duros with a temper to match. “Are you embarking or what?”

Darman continued wiping his helmet. “I’m waiting for my mates,” he said.

“You shift your shiny silver backside now,” the loadmaster said irritably. “I got a schedule.”

Darman carefully brought up his knuckle plate just under the loadmasters’s chin, and held it there. He didn’t need to eject the vibroblade and he didn’t need to say a word. He’d made his point.

“Well, whenever you’re ready, sir,” the Duros said, stepping back to chivy clone troopers instead. It wasn’t a great idea to upset a commando, especially not one coming down from the adrenaline high of combat.

But there was still no sign of the rest of his squad. Darman knew that there was no point in waiting any longer. They hadn’t called in. Maybe they had comlink failures. Maybe they had made it onto another gunship.

It was the first time in his artificially short life that Darman hadn’t been able to reach out and touch the men he had been raised with.

He waited half a standard hour more anyway, until the gunships became less frequent and the lines of troopers became shorter. Eventually there was nobody standing on the desert plain but him, the Duros loadmaster, and half a dozen clone troopers. It was the last lift of the day.

“You better come now, sir,” the loadmaster said. “There’s nobody unaccounted for. Nobody alive, anyway.”

Darman looked around the horizon one last time, still feeling as if he were turning his back on someone reaching out to him.

“I’m coming,” he said, and brought up the rear of the line. As the gunship lifted, he watched the swirling dust, dwindling rock formations, and scattered shrinking patches of scrub until Geonosis became a blur of dull red.

He could still search the Implacable. It wasn’t over yet.

The gunship slipped into the Implacable’s giant docking bay, and Darman looked down into the cavern, onto a sea of white armor and orderly movement. The first thing that struck him when the gunship killed its thrusters and locked down on its pad was how quiet everyone seemed.

In the crowded bay full of troopers, the air stank of sweat and stale fear and the throat-rasping smell of discharged blaster rifles. But it was so silent that if Darman hadn’t seen the evidence of exhausted and injured men, he’d have believed that nothing significant had happened in the last thirty hours.

The deck vibrated under the soles of his boots. He was still staring down at them, studying the random patterns of Geonosian dust that clung to them, when an identical pair came into view.

“Number?” said a voice that was also his own. The commander swept him with a tally sensor: he didn’t need Darman to tell him his number, or anything else for that matter, because the sensors in the enhanced Katarn armor reported his status silently, electronically. No significant injury. The triage team on Geonosis had waved him past, concentrating on the injured, ignoring both those too badly hurt to help and those who could help themselves. “Are you listening to me? Come on. Talk to me, son.”

“I’m okay, sir,” he said. “Sir, RC-one-one-three-six. I’m not in shock. I’m fine.” He paused. Nobody else was going to call him by his squad nickname—Darman—again. They were all dead, he knew it. Jay, Vin, Taler. He just knew. “Sir, any news of RC-one-one-three-five—”

“No,” said the commander, who had obviously heard similar questions every time he stopped to check. He gestured with the small bar in his hand. “If they’re not in casevac or listed on this sweep, then they didn’t make it.”

It was stupid to ask. Darman should have known better. Clone troopers—and especially Republic commandos—just got on with the job. That was their sole purpose. And they were lucky, their training sergeant had told them; outside, in the ordinary world, every being from every species in the galaxy fretted about their purpose in life, searching for meaning. A clone didn’t need to. Clones knew. They had been perfected for their role, and doubt need never trouble them.

Darman had never known what doubt was until now. No amount of training had prepared him for this. He found a space against a bulkhead and sat down.

A clone trooper settled down next to him, squeezing into the gap and briefly clunking a shoulder plate against his. They glanced at each other. Darman rarely had any contact with the other clones: commandos trained apart from everyone, including ARC troopers. The trooper’s armor was white, lighter, less resistant; commandos enjoyed upgraded protection. And Darman displayed no rank colors.

But they both knew exactly who and what they were.

“Nice Deece,” the trooper said enviously. He was looking at the DC-17: troopers were issued the heavier, lower-spec rifle, the DC-15. “Ion pulse blaster, RPG anti-armor, and sniper?”

“Yeah.” Every item of his gear was manufactured to a higher spec. A trooper’s life was less valuable than a commando’s. It was the way things were, and Darman had never questioned it—not for long, anyway. “Full house.”

“Tidy.” The trooper nodded approval. “Job done, eh?”

“Yeah,” Darman said quietly. “Job done.”

The trooper didn’t say anything else. Maybe he was wary of conversation with commandos. Darman knew what troopers thought about him and his kind. They don’t train like us and they don’t fight like us. They don’t even talk like us. A bunch of prima donnas.

Darman didn’t think he was arrogant. It was just that he could do every job a soldier could be called upon to do, and then some: siege assault, counterinsurgency, hostage extraction, demolitions, assassination, surveillance, and every kind of infantry activity on any terrain and in any environment, at any time. He knew he could, because he’d done it. He’d done it in training, first with simunition and then with live rounds. He’d done it with his squad, the three brothers with whom he’d spent every moment of his conscious life. They’d competed against other squads, thousands just like them, but not like them, because they were squad brothers, and that was special.

He had never been taught how to live apart from the squad, though. Now he would learn the hardest way of all.

Darman had absolute confidence that he was one of the best special ops soldiers ever created. He was undistracted by the everyday concerns of raising a family and making a living, things that his instructors said he was lucky never to know.

But now he was alone. Very, very alone. It was very distracting indeed.

He considered this for a long time in silence. Surviving when the rest of your squad had been killed was no cause for pride. It felt instead like something his training sergeant had described as shame. That was what you felt when you lost a battle, apparently.

But they had won. It was their first battle, and they had won.

The landing ramp of the Implacable eased down, and the bright sunlight of Ord Mantell streamed in. Darman replaced his helmet without thinking and stood in an orderly line, waiting to disembark and be reassigned. He was going to be chilled down, kept in suspended animation until duty called again.

So this was the aftermath of victory. He wondered how much worse defeat might feel.

Imbraani, Qiilura: 40 light-years from Ord Mantell, Tingel Arm

The field of barq flowed from silver to ruby as the wind from the southwest bent the ripening grain in waves. It could have been a perfect late-summer day; instead it was turning into one of the worst days of Etain Tur-Mukan’s life.

Etain had run and run and she had nothing left in her. She flung herself flat between the furrows, not caring where she fell. Etain held her breath as something stinking and wet squelched under her.

The pursuing Weequay couldn’t hear her above the wind, she knew, but she held her breath anyway.

“Hey girlie!” His boots crunched closer. He was panting. “Where you go? Don’t be shy.”

Don’t breathe.

“I got bottle of urrqal. You want to have party?” He had a remarkably large vocabulary for a Weequay, all of it centered on his baser needs. “I fun when you get to know me.”

I should have waited for it to get dark. I could influence his mind, try to make him leave.

But she hadn’t. And she couldn’t, try as she might to concentrate. She was too full of adrenaline and uncontrolled panic.

“Come on, you scrag-end, where are you? I find you …”

He sounded as if he was kicking his way through the crop, and getting closer. If she got up and ran for it, she was dead. If she stayed where she was, he’d find her—eventually. He wasn’t going to get bored, and he wasn’t going to give up.

“Girlie …”

The Weequay’s voice was close, to her right, about twenty meters away. She sipped a strangled breath and clamped her lips shut again, lungs aching, eyes streaming with the effort.

“Girlie …” Closer. He was going to step right on her. “Gir-leeeeee …”

She knew what he’d do when he found her. If she was lucky, he’d kill her afterward.

“Gir—”

The Weequay was interrupted by a loud, wet thwack. He let out a grunt and then there was a second thwack—shorter, sharper, harder. Etain heard a squeal of pain.

“How many times have I got to tell you, di’kut?” It was a different voice, human, with an hard edge of authority. Thwack. “Don’t—waste—my—time.” Another thwack: another squeal. Etain kept her face pressed in the dirt. “You get drunk one more time, you go chasing females one more time, and I’m going to slit you from here to—here.”

The Weequay shrieked. It was the sort of incoherent animal sound that beings made when pain overwhelmed them. Etain had heard too much of that sound in her short time on Qiilura. Then there was silence.

She hadn’t heard the voice before, but she didn’t need to. She knew exactly who it belonged to.

Etain strained to listen, half expecting a heavy boot to suddenly stamp on her back, but all she could hear was the swish and crunch of two pairs of feet wading through the crop. Away from her. She caught snatches of the fading conversation as the wind took it: the Weequay was still being berated.

“… more important …”

What was?

“… later, but right now, di’kut, I need you to … okay? Or I’ll cut …”

Etain waited. Eventually all she could hear was the breath of the wind, the rustling grain, and the occasional fluting call of a ground-eel seeking a mate. She allowed herself to breathe normally again, but still she waited, facedown in ripe manure, until dusk started to fall. She had to move now. The gdans would be out hunting, combing the fields in packs. On top of that, the smell that hadn’t bothered her while she was gripped by terror was starting to really bother her now.

She eased herself up on her elbows, then her knees, and looked around.

Why did they have to manure barq so late in the season anyway? She fumbled in the pockets of her cloak for a cloth. Now if only she could find a stream, she could clean herself up. She pulled a handful of stalks, crushed them into a ball, and tried to scrape off the worst of the dung and debris stuck to her.

“That’s a pretty expensive crop to be using for that,” a voice said.

Etain gulped in a breath and spun around to find a local in a grubby smock scowling at her. He looked thin, worn out, and annoyed; he was holding a threshing tool. “Do you know how much that stuff’s worth?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. Sliding her hand carefully inside her cloak, she felt for the familiar cylinder. She hadn’t wanted the Weequay to know that she was a Jedi, but if this farmer was considering turning her in for a few loaves or a bottle of urrqal, she’d need her lightsaber handy. “It was your barq or my life, I’m afraid.”

The farmer stared at the crushed stalks and the scattered bead-like grains, tight-lipped. Yes, barq fetched a huge price in the restaurants of Coruscant: it was a luxury, and the people who grew it for export couldn’t afford it. That didn’t seem to bother the Neimoidians who controlled the trade. It never did.

“I’ll pay for the damage,” Etain said, her hand still inside the cloak.

“What were they after you for?” the farmer asked, ignoring her offer.

“The usual,” she said.

“Oh-ah, you’re not that good looking.”

“Charming.”

“I know who you are.”

Oh no. Her grip closed. “You do?”

“I reckon.”

A little more food for his family. A few hours’ drunken oblivion, courtesy of urrqal. That was all she was to him. He made as if to step closer and she drew her arm clear of her cloak, because she was fed up with running and she didn’t like the look of that threshing tool.

Vzzzzzmmmm.

“Oh, great,” the farmer sighed, eyeing the shaft of pure blue light. “Not one of you lot. That’s all we need.”

“Yes,” she said, and held the lightsaber steady in front of her face. Her stomach had knotted, but she kept her voice under control. “I am Padawan Etain Tur-Mukan. You can try to turn me in, if you want to test my skill, but I’d prefer that you help me instead. Your call, sir.”

The farmer stared at the lightsaber as if he was trying to work out a price for it. “Didn’t help your Master much, that thing, did it?”

“Master Fulier was unfortunate. And betrayed.” She lowered the lightsaber but didn’t cut the beam. “Are you going to help me?”

“We’re going to have Ghez Hokan’s thugs all over us if I—”

“I think they’re busy,” Etain said.

“What do you want from us?”

“Shelter, for the moment.”

The farmer sucked his teeth thoughtfully. “Okay. Come on, Padawan—”

“Get used to calling me Etain, please.” She thumbed off the lightsaber: the light died with a ffumm sound, and she slipped the hilt back inside her cloak. “Just to be on the safe side.”

Etain trailed after him, trying not to smell herself, but it was hard, nauseatingly hard. Even a scent-hunting gdan wouldn’t recognize her as a human. It was getting dark now, and the farmer kept glancing over his shoulder at her.

“Oh-ah.” He shook his head, engaged in some internal conversation. “I’m Birhan, and this is my land. And I thought you lot were supposed to be able to use some sort of mind control tricks.”

“How do you know I haven’t?” Etain lied.

“Oh-ah,” he said, and nothing more.

She wasn’t going to volunteer the obvious if he hadn’t spotted it for himself. A disappointment to her Master, she was clearly not the best of the bunch. She struggled with the Force and she grappled with self-discipline, and she was here because she and Master Fulier happened to be nearby when a job needed doing. Fulier never could resist a challenge and long odds, and it looked as if he’d paid the price. They hadn’t found his body yet, but there had been no word from him, either.

Yes, Etain was a Padawan, technically speaking.

She just happened to be one who was a breath away from building permadomes in refugee camps. She reasoned that part of a Jedi’s skill was the simple use of psychology. And if Birhan wanted to think the Force was strong in her, and that there was a lot more behind the external shell of a gawky, plain girl covered in stinking dung, then that was fine by her.

It would keep her alive a little longer while she worked out what to do next.

Fleet Support, Ord Mantell, barrack block 5 Epsilon

It was a waste, a rotten waste.

RC-1309 busied himself maintaining his boots. He cleaned out the clamps, blowing the red dust clear with a squirt of air from the pressure gun. He rinsed the liners and shook them dry. There was no point being idle while he was waiting to be chilled down.

“Sergeant?”

He looked up. The commando who had walked in placed his survival pack, armor, and black bodysuit on the bunk opposite and stared back. His readout panel identified him as RC-8015.

“I’m Fi,” he said, and held out his hand for shaking. “So you lost your squad, too.”

“Niner,” RC-1309 said without taking the proffered hand. “So, ner vod—my brother—you’re the sole survivor?”

“Yes.”

“Did you hold back while your brothers pressed on? Or were you just lucky?”

Fi stood there with his hands on his hips, identical to Niner in every way except that he was … different. He spoke a little differently. He smelled subtly different. He moved his hands … not like Niner’s squad did, not at all.

“I did my job,” Fi said carefully. “And I’d rather be with them than here … ner vod.“

Niner considered him for a while, and went back to cleaning his boots. Fi put his kit in the locker beside the bunks, then swung himself up into the top rack in one smooth motion. He folded his arms under his head very precisely and lay staring up at the bulkhead as if he were meditating.

If he had been Sev, Niner would have known exactly what he was doing, even without looking. But Sev was gone.

Clone troopers lost brothers in training. So did commandos. But troopers were socialized with whole sections, platoons, companies, even regiments, and that meant that even after the inevitable deaths and removals during live exercises, there were still plenty of people around you whom you knew well. Commandos worked solely with each other.

Niner had lost everyone he had grown up with, and so had Fi.

He’d lost a brother before—Two-Eight—on exercise. The three survivors had welcomed the replacement, although they had always felt he was slightly different—a little distant—as if he had never quite believed he’d been accepted.

But they performed to expected levels of excellence together—and as long as they did, their Kaminoan technicians and motley band of alien instructors didn’t seem to care how they felt about it.

But the commandos cared. They just kept it to themselves.

“It was a waste,” Niner said.

“What was?” Fi said.

“Deploying us in an operation like Geonosis. It was an infantry job. Not special ops.”

“That sounds like criticism of—”

“I’m just making the point that we couldn’t perform to maximum effectiveness.”

“Understood. Maybe when we’re revived we’ll be able to do what we’re really trained for.”

Niner wanted to say that he missed his squad, but that wasn’t something to confide in a stranger. He inspected his boots and was satisfied. Then he stood up and spread his bodysuit flat on the mattress and checked it for vacuum integrity with the sweep-sensor in his glove. It was a ritual so ingrained in him that he hardly thought about it: maintain boots, suit, and armor plates, recalibrate helmet systems, check heads-up display, strip down and reassemble DC-17, empty and repack survival pack. Done. It took him twenty-six minutes and twenty seconds, give or take two seconds. Well-maintained gear was often the difference between life and death. So was two seconds.

He closed the top of his pack with a clack and secured the seal. Then he checked the catches that held the separate ordnance pack to see that they were moving freely. That mattered when he needed to jettison explosive materials fast. When he glanced up, Fi was propped on one elbow, looking down at him from the bunk.

“Dry rations go on the fifth layer,” he said.

Niner always packed them farther down, between his spare rappelling line and his hygiene kit. “In your squad, maybe,” he said, and carried on.

Fi took the hint and rolled over on his back again, no doubt to meditate on how differently things might be done in the future.

After a while he started singing very quietly, almost under his breath: Kom’rk tsad droten troch nyn ures adenn, Dha Werda Verda a’den tratu. They were the wrath of the warrior’s shadow and the gauntlet of the Republic; Niner knew the song. It was a traditional Mandalorian war chant, designed to boost the morale of normal men who needed a bit of psyching up before a fight. The words had been altered a little to have meaning for the armies of clone warriors.

We don’t need all that, Niner thought. We were born to fight, nothing else.

But he found himself joining in anyway. It was a comfort. He placed his gear in the locker, rolled onto his bunk, and matched note and beat perfectly with Fi, two identical voices in the deserted barrack room.

Niner would have traded every remaining moment of his life for a chance to rerun the previous day’s engagement. He would have held Sev and DD back; he would have sent O-Four west with the E-Web cannon.

But he hadn’t.

Gra’tua cuun hett su dralshy’a. Our vengeance burns brighter still.

Fi’s voice trailed off into silence the merest fraction of a section before Niner’s. He heard him swallow hard.

“I was up there with them, Sarge,” he said quietly. “I didn’t hang back. Not at all.”

Niner closed his eyes. He regretted hinting that Fi might have done anything less.

“I know, brother,” he said. “I know.”

THE OLD REPUBLIC
(5,000–33 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

Long—long—ago in a galaxy far, far away … some twenty-five thousand years before Luke Skywalker destroyed the first Death Star at the Battle of Yavin in Star Wars: A New Hope … a large number of star systems and species in the center of the galaxy came together to form the Galactic Republic, governed by a Chancellor and a Senate from the capital city-world of Coruscant. As the Republic expanded via the hyperspace lanes, it absorbed new member worlds from newly discovered star systems; it also expanded its military to deal with the hostile civilizations, slavers, pirates, and gangster-species such as the slug-like Hutts that were encountered in the outward exploration. But the most vital defenders of the Republic were the Jedi Knights. Originally a reclusive order dedicated to studying the mysteries of the life energy known as the Force, the Jedi became the Republic’s guardians, charged by the Senate with keeping the peace—with wise words if possible; with lightsabers if not.

But the Jedi weren’t the only Force-users in the galaxy. An ancient civil war had pitted those Jedi who used the Force selflessly against those who allowed themselves to be ruled by their ambitions—which the Jedi warned led to the dark side of the Force. Defeated in that long-ago war, the dark siders fled beyond the galactic frontier, where they built a civilization of their own: the Sith Empire.

The first great conflict between the Republic and the Sith Empire occurred when two hyperspace explorers stumbled on the Sith worlds, giving the Sith Lord Naga Sadow and his dark side warriors a direct invasion route into the Republic’s central worlds. This war resulted in the first destruction of the Sith Empire—but it was hardly the last. For the next four thousand years, skirmishes between the Republic and Sith grew into wars, with the scales always tilting toward one or the other, and peace never lasting. The galaxy was a place of almost constant strife: Sith armies against Republic armies; Force-using Sith Lords against Jedi Masters and Jedi Knights; and the dreaded nomadic mercenaries called Mandalorians bringing muscle and firepower wherever they stood to gain.

Then, a thousand years before A New Hope and the Battle of Yavin, the Jedi defeated the Sith at the Battle of Ruusan, decimating the so-called Brotherhood of Darkness that was the heart of the Sith Empire—and most of its power.

One Sith Lord survived—Darth Bane—and his vision for the Sith differed from that of his predecessors. He instituted a new doctrine: No longer would the followers of the dark side build empires or amass great armies of Force-users. There would be only two Sith at a time: a Master and an apprentice. From that time on, the Sith remained in hiding, biding their time and plotting their revenge, while the rest of the galaxy enjoyed an unprecedented era of peace, so long and strong that the Republic eventually dismantled its standing armies.

But while the Republic seemed strong, its institutions had begun to rot. Greedy corporations sought profits above all else and a corrupt Senate did nothing to stop them, until the corporations reduced many planets to raw materials for factories and entire species became subjects for exploitation. Individual Jedi continued to defend the Republic’s citizens and obey the will of the Force, but the Jedi Order to which they answered grew increasingly out of touch. And a new Sith mastermind, Darth Sidious, at last saw a way to restore Sith domination over the galaxy and its inhabitants, and quietly worked to set in motion the revenge of the Sith …

If you’re a reader new to the Old Republic era, here are three great starting points:

• The Old Republic: Deceived, by Paul S. Kemp: Kemp tells the tale of the Republic’s betrayal by the Sith Empire, and features Darth Malgus, an intriguing, complicated villain.

• Knight Errant, by John Jackson Miller: Alone in Sith territory, the headstrong Jedi Kerra Holt seeks to thwart the designs of an eccentric clan of fearsome, powerful, and bizarre Sith Lords.

• Darth Bane: Path of Destruction, by Drew Karpyshyn: A portrait of one of the most famous Sith Lords, from his horrifying childhood to an adulthood spent in the implacable pursuit of vengeance.

Read on for an excerpt from a Star Wars Legends novel set in the Old Republic era.

CHAPTER 1

Shigar Konshi followed the sound of blasterfire through Coruscant’s old districts. He never stumbled, never slipped, never lost his way, even through lanes that were narrow and crowded with years of detritus that had settled slowly from the levels above. Cables and signs swayed overhead, hanging so low in places that Shigar was forced to duck beneath them. Tall and slender, with one blue chevron on each cheek, the Jedi apprentice moved with grace and surety surprising for his eighteen years.

At the core of his being, however, he seethed. Master Nikil Nobil’s decision had cut no less deeply for being delivered by hologram from the other side of the galaxy.

“The High Council finds Shigar Konshi unready for Jedi trials.”

The decision had shocked him, but Shigar knew better than to speak. The last thing he wanted to do was convey the shame and resentment he felt in front of the Council.

“Tell him why,” said Grand Master Satele Shan, standing at his side with hands folded firmly before her. She was a full head shorter than Shigar but radiated an indomitable sense of self. Even via holoprojector, she made Master Nobil, an immense Thisspiasian with full ceremonial beard, shift uncomfortably on his tail.

“We—that is, the Council—regard your Padawan’s training as incomplete.”

Shigar flushed. “In what way, Master Nobil?”

His Master silenced him with a gentle but irresistible telepathic nudge. “He is close to attaining full mastery,” she assured the Council. “I am certain that it is only a matter of time.”

“A Jedi Knight is a Jedi Knight in all respects,” said the distant Master. “There are no exceptions, even for you.”

Master Satele nodded her acceptance of the decision. Shigar bit his tongue. She said she believed in him, so why did she not overrule the decision? She didn’t have to submit to the Council. If he weren’t her Padawan, would she have spoken up for him then?

His unsettled feelings were not hidden as well as he would have liked.

“Your lack of self-control reveals itself in many ways,” said Master Nobil to him in a stern tone. “Take your recent comments to Senator Vuub regarding the policies of the Resource Management Council. We may all agree that the Republic’s handling of the current crisis is less than perfect, but anything short of the utmost political discipline is unforgivable at this time. Do you understand?”

Shigar bowed his head. He should’ve known that the slippery Neimoidian was after more than just his opinion when she’d sidled up to him and flattered him with praise. When the Empire had invaded Coruscant, it had only handed the world back to the Republic in exchange for a large number of territorial concessions elsewhere. Ever since then, supply lines had been strained. That Shigar was right, and the RMC a hopelessly corrupt mess, putting the lives of billions at risk from something much worse than war—starvation, disease, disillusionment—simply didn’t count in some circles.

Master Nobil’s forbidding visage softened. “You are naturally disappointed. I understand. Know that the Grand Master has spoken strongly in favor of you for a long time. In all respects but this one do we defer to her judgment. She cannot sway our combined decision, but she has drawn our attention. We will be watching your progress closely, with high expectations.”

The holoconference had ended there, and Shigar felt the same conflicted emptiness in the depths of Coruscant as he had then. Unready? High expectations? The Council was playing a game with him—or so it felt—batting him backward and forward like a felinx in a cage. Would he ever be free to follow his own path?

Master Satele understood his feelings better than he did. “Go for a walk,” she had told him, putting a hand on each shoulder and holding his gaze long enough to make sure he understood her intentions. She was giving him an opportunity to cool down, not dismissing him. “I need to talk to Supreme Commander Stantorrs anyway. Let’s meet later in Union Cloisters.”

“Yes, Master.”

And so he was walking and stewing. Somewhere inside him, he knew, had to be the strength to rise above this temporary setback, the discipline to bring the last threads of his talent into a unified design. But on this occasion, his instincts were leading him away from stillness, not toward it.

The sound of blasterfire grew louder ahead of him.

Shigar stopped in an alley that stank like a woodoo’s leavings. A swinging light flashed fitfully on and off in the level above, casting rubbish and rot in unwanted relief. An ancient droid watched with blinking red eyes from a filthy niche, rusted fingers protectively gathering wires and servos back into its gaping chest plate. The cold war with the Empire was being conducted far away from this alley and its unhappy resident, but its effects were keenly felt. If he wanted to be angry at the state of the Republic, he couldn’t have chosen a better place for it.

The shooting intensified. His hand reached for the grip of his lightsaber.

There is no emotion, he told himself. There is only peace.

But how could there be peace without justice? What did the Jedi Council, sitting comfortably in their new Temple on Tython, know about that?

The sound of screams broke him out of his contemplative trance. Between one heartbeat and the next he was gone, the emerald fire of his lightsaber lingering a split instant behind him, brilliant in the gloom.

Larin Moxla paused to tighten the belly strap on her armor. The wretched thing kept coming loose, and she didn’t want to take any chances. Until the justicars got there, she was the only thing standing between the Black Sun gangsters and the relatively innocent residents of Gnawer’s Roost. It sounded like half of it had been shot to pieces already.

Satisfied that nothing too vulnerable was exposed, she peered out from cover and hefted her modified snub rifle. Illegal on Coruscant except for elite special forces commandos, it featured a powerful sniper sight, which she trained on the Black Sun safehouse. The main entrance was deserted, and there was no sign of the roof guard. That was unexpected. Still the blasterfire came from within the fortified building. Could it be a trap of some kind?

Wishing as always that she had backup, she lowered the rifle and lifted her helmeted head into full view. No one took a potshot at her. No one even noticed her. The only people she could see were locals running for cover. But for the commotion coming from within, the street could have been completely deserted.

Trap or no trap, she decided to get closer. Rattling slightly, and ignoring the places where her secondhand armor chafed, Larin hustled low and fast from cover to cover until she was just meters from the front entrance. The weapons-fire was deafening now, and screaming came with it. She tried to identify the weapons. Blaster pistols and rifles of several different makes; at least one floor-mounted cannon; two or three vibrosaws; and beneath all that, a different sound. A roaring, as of superheated gases jetting violently through a nozzle.

A flamethrower.

No gang she’d heard of used fire. The risk of a blaze spreading everywhere was too high. Only someone from outside would employ a weapon like that. Only someone who didn’t care what damage he left in his wake.

Something exploded in an upper room, sending a shower of bricks and dust into the street. Larin ducked instinctively, but the wall held. If it had collapsed, she would have been buried under meters of rubble.

Her left hand wanted to count down, and she let it. It felt wrong otherwise. Moving in—in three … two … one …

Silence fell.

She froze. It was as though someone had pulled a switch. One minute, nine kinds of chaos had been unfolding inside the building. Now there was nothing.

She pulled her hand in, countdown forgotten. She wasn’t going anywhere until she knew what had just happened and who was involved.

Something collapsed inside the building. Larin gripped her rifle more tightly. Footsteps crunched toward the entrance. One set of feet: that was all.

She stood up in full view of the entrance, placed herself side-on to reduce the target she made, and trained her rifle on the darkened doorway.

The footsteps came closer—unhurried, confident, heavy. Very heavy.

The moment she saw movement in the doorway, she cried out in a firm voice, “Hold it right there.”

Booted feet assumed a standing position. Armored shins in metallic gray and green.

“Move slowly forward, into the light.”

The owner of the legs took one step, then two, revealing a Mandalorian so tall his helmeted head brushed the top of the doorway.

“That’s far enough.”

“For what?”

Larin maintained her cool in the face of that harsh, inhuman voice, although it was difficult. She’d seen Mandalorians in action before, and she knew how woefully equipped she was to deal with one now. “For you to tell me what you were doing in there.”

The domed head inclined slightly. “I was seeking information.”

“So you’re a bounty hunter?”

“Does it matter what I am?”

“It does when you’re messing up my people.”

“You do not look like a member of the Black Sun syndicate.”

“I never said I was.”

“You haven’t said you aren’t, either.” The massive figure shifted slightly, finding a new balance. “I’m seeking information concerning a woman called Lema Xandret.”

“Never heard of her.”

“Are you certain of that?”

“I thought I was the one asking questions here.”

“You thought wrong.”

The Mandalorian raised one arm to point at her. A hatch in his sleeve opened, revealing the flamethrower she’d heard in action earlier. She steadied her grip and tried desperately to remember where the weak points on Mandalorian armor were—if there were any …

“Don’t,” said a commanding voice to her left.

Larin glanced automatically and saw a young man in robes standing with one hand raised in the universal stop signal.

The sight of him dropped her guard momentarily.

A sheet of powerful flame roared at her. She ducked, and it seared the air bare millimeters over her head.

She let off a round that ricocheted harmlessly from the Mandalorian’s chest plate and rolled for cover. It was hard to say what surprised her more: a Jedi down deep in the bowels of Coruscant, or the fact that he had the facial tattoos of a Kiffu native, just like she did.

Shigar took in the confrontation with a glance. He’d never fought a Mandalorian before, but he had been carefully instructed in the art by his Master. They were dangerous, very dangerous, and he almost had second thoughts about taking this one on. Even together, he and a single battered-looking soldier would hardly be sufficient.

Then flame arced across the head of the soldier, and his instincts took over. The soldier ducked for cover with admirable speed. Shigar lunged forward, lightsaber raised to slash at the net that inevitably headed his way. The whine of the suit’s jetpack drowned out the angry sizzling of Shigar’s blade as he cut himself free. Before the Mandalorian had gained barely a meter of altitude, Shigar Force-pushed him sideways into the building beside him, thereby crushing off the jet’s exhaust vent.

With a snarl, the Mandalorian landed heavily on both feet and fired two darts in quick succession, both aimed at Shigar’s face. Shigar deflected them and moved closer, dancing lightly on his feet. From a distance, he was at a disadvantage. Mandalorians were masters of ranged weaponry, and would do anything to avoid hand-to-hand combat except in one of their infamous gladiatorial pits. If he could get near enough to strike—with the soldier maintaining a distracting cover fire—he might just get lucky …

A rocket exploded above his head, then another. They weren’t aimed at him, but at the city’s upper levels. Rubble rained down on him, forcing him to protect his head. The Mandalorian took advantage of that slight distraction to dive under his guard and grip him tight about the throat. Shigar’s confusion was complete—but Mandalorians weren’t supposed to fight at close quarters! Then he was literally flying through the air, hurled by his assailant’s vast physical strength into a wall.

He landed on both feet, stunned but recovering quickly, and readied himself for another attack.

The Mandalorian ran three long steps to his right, leaping one-two-three onto piles of rubbish and from there onto a roof. More rockets arced upward, tearing through the ferrocrete columns of a monorail. Slender spears of metal warped and fell toward Shigar and the soldier. Only with the greatest exertion of the Force that Shigar could summon was he able to deflect them into the ground around them, where they stuck fast, quivering.

“He’s getting away!”

The soldier’s cry was followed by another explosion. A grenade hurled behind the escaping Mandalorian destroyed much of the roof in front of him and sent a huge black mushroom rising into the air. Shigar dived cautiously through it, expecting an ambush, but found the area clear on the far side. He turned in a full circle, banishing the smoke with one out-thrust push.

The Mandalorian was gone. Up, down, sideways—there was no way to tell which direction he had chosen to flee. Shigar reached out through the Force. His heart still hammered, but his breathing was steady and shallow. He felt nothing.

The soldier became visible through the smoke just steps away, moving forward in a cautious crouch. She straightened and planted her feet wide apart. The snout of her rifle targeted him, and for a moment Shigar thought she might actually fire.

“I lost him,” he said, unhappily acknowledging their failure.

“Not your fault,” she said, lowering the rifle. “We did our best.”

“Where did he come from?” he asked.

“I thought it was just the usual Black Sun bust-up,” she said, indicating the destroyed building. “Then he walked out.”

“Why did he attack you?”

“Beats me. Maybe he assumed I was a justicar.”

“You’re not one?”

“No. I don’t like their methods. And they’ll be here soon, so you should get out of here before they decide you’re responsible for all this.”

That was good advice, he acknowledged to himself. The bloodthirsty militia controlling the lower levels was a law unto itself, one that didn’t take kindly to incursions on their territory.

“Let’s see what happened here, first,” he said, moving toward the smoke-blackened doorway with lightsaber at the ready.

“Why? It’s not your problem.”

Shigar didn’t answer that. Whatever was going on here, neither of them could just walk away from it. He sensed that she would be relieved not to be heading into the building alone.

Together they explored the smoking, shattered ruins. Weapons and bodies lay next to one another in equal proportions. Clearly, the inhabitants had taken up arms against the interloper, and in turn every one of them had died. That was grisly, but not surprising. Mandalorians didn’t disapprove of illegals per se, but they did take poorly to being shot at.

On the upper floor, Shigar stopped, sensing something living among the carnage. He raised a hand, cautioning the soldier to proceed more slowly, just in case someone thought they were coming to finish the job. She glided smoothly ahead of him, heedless of danger and with her weapon at the ready. He followed soundlessly in her wake, senses tingling.

They found a single survivor huddled behind a shattered crate, a Nawtolan with blaster burns down much of one side and a dart wound to his neck, lying in a pool of his own blood. The blood was spreading fast. He looked up as Shigar bent over him to check his wounds. What Shigar couldn’t tourniquet he could cauterize, but he would have to move fast to have any chance at all.

“Dao Stryver.” The Nautolan’s voice was a guttural growl, not helped by the damage to his throat. “Came out of nowhere.”

“The Mandalorian?” said the soldier. “Is that who you’re talking about?”

The Nautolan nodded. “Dao Stryver. Wanted what we had. Wouldn’t give it to him.”

The soldier took off her helmet. She was surprisingly young, with short dark hair, a strong jaw, and eyes as green as Shigar’s lightsaber. Most startling were the distinctive black markings of Clan Moxla tattooed across her dirty cheeks.

“What did you have, exactly?” she pressed the Nautolan.

The Nautolan’s eyes rolled up into his head. “Cinzia,” he coughed, spraying dark blood across the front of her armor. “Cinzia.”

“And that is …?” she asked, leaning close as his breathing failed. “Hold on—help’s coming—just hold on!”

Shigar leaned back. There was nothing he could do, not without a proper medpac. The Nautolan had said his last.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You’ve no reason to be,” she said, staring down at her hands. “He was a member of the Black Sun, probably a murderer himself.”

“Does that make him evil? Lack of food might have done that, or medicine for his family, or a thousand other things.”

“Bad choices don’t make bad people. Right. But what else do we have to go on down here? Sometimes you have to make a stand, even if you can’t tell who the bad guys are anymore.”

A desperately fatigued look crossed her face, then, and Shigar thought that he understood her a little better. Justice was important, and so was the way people defended it, even if that meant fighting alone sometimes.

“My name is Shigar,” he said in a calming voice.

“Nice to meet you, Shigar,” she said, brightening. “And thanks. You probably saved my life back there.”

“I can’t take any credit for that. I’m sure he didn’t consider either of us worthy opponents.”

“Or maybe he worked out that we didn’t know anything about what he was looking for in the safehouse. Lema Xandret: that was the name he used on me. Ever heard of it?”

“No. Not Cinzia, either.”

She rose to her feet in one movement and cocked her rifle onto her back. “Larin, by the way.”

Her grip was surprisingly strong. “Our clans were enemies, once,” Shigar said.

“Ancient history is the least of our troubles. We’d better move out before the justicars get here.”

He looked around him, at the Nautolan, the other bodies, and the wrecked building. Dao Stryver. Lema Xandret. Cinzia.

“I’m going to talk to my Master,” he said. “She should know there’s a Mandalorian making trouble on Coruscant.”

“All right,” she said, hefting her helmet. “Lead the way.”

“You’re coming with me?”

“Never trust a Konshi. That’s what my mother always said. And if we’re going to stop a war between Dao Stryver and the Black Sun, we have to do it right. Right?”

He barely caught her smile before it disappeared behind her helmet.

“Right,” he said.

RISE OF THE EMPIRE
(33–0 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

This is the era of the Star Wars prequel films, in which Darth Sidious’s schemes lead to the devastating Clone Wars, the betrayal and destruction of the Jedi Order, and the Republic’s transformation into the Empire. It also begins the tragic story of Anakin Skywalker, the boy identified by the Jedi as the Chosen One of ancient prophecy, the one destined to bring balance to the Force. But, as seen in the movies, Anakin’s passions lead him to the dark side, and he becomes the legendary masked and helmeted villain Darth Vader.

Before his fall, however, Anakin spends many years being trained as a Jedi by Obi-Wan Kenobi. When the Clone Wars break out, pitting the Republic against the secessionist Trade Federation, Anakin becomes a war hero and one of the galaxy’s greatest Jedi Knights. But his love for the Naboo Queen and Senator Padmé Amidala, and his friendship with Supreme Chancellor Palpatine—secretly known as the Sith Lord Darth Sidious—will be his undoing …

If you’re a reader looking to jump into the Rise of the Empire era, here are four great starting points:

• Labyrinth of Evil, by James Luceno: Luceno’s tale of the last days of the Clone Wars is equal parts compelling detective story and breakneck adventure, leading directly into the beginning of Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith.

• Republic Commando: Hard Contact, by Karen Traviss: The first of the Republic Commando books introduces us to a band of clone soldiers, their trainers, and the Jedi generals who lead them, mixing incisive character studies with a deep understanding of the lives of soldiers at war.

• Death Troopers, by Joe Schreiber: A story of horror aboard a Star Destroyer that you’ll need to read with the lights on. Supporting roles by Han Solo and his Wookiee sidekick, Chewbacca, are just icing on the cake.

• The Han Solo Adventures, by Brian Daley: Han and Chewie come to glorious life in these three swashbuckling tales of smuggling, romance, and danger in the early days before they meet Luke and Leia.

Read on for an excerpt from a Star Wars Legends novel set in the Rise of the Empire era.

MURKHANA. FINAL HOURS OF THE CLONE WARS

Dropping into swirling clouds conjured by Murkhana’s weather stations, Roan Shryne was reminded of meditation sessions his former Master had guided him through. No matter how fixed Shryne had been on touching the Force, his mind’s eye had offered little more than an eddying whiteness. Years later, when he had become more adept at silencing thought and immersing himself in the light, visual fragments would emerge from that colorless void—pieces to a puzzle that would gradually assemble themselves and resolve. Not in any conscious way, though frequently assuring him that his actions in the world were in accord with the will of the Force.

Frequently but not always.

When he veered from the course on which the Force had set him, the familiar white would once again be stirred by powerful currents; sometimes shot through with red, as if he were lifting his closed eyes to the glare of a midday sun.

Red-mottled white was what he saw as he fell deeper into Murkhana’s atmosphere. Scored to reverberating thunder; the rush of the wind; a welter of muffled voices …

He was standing closest to the sliding door that normally sealed the troop bay of a Republic gunship, launched moments earlier from the forward hold of the Gallant—a Victory-class Star Destroyer, harried by vulture and droid tri-fighters and awaiting High Command’s word to commence its own descent through Murkhana’s artificial ceiling. Beside and behind Shryne stood a platoon of clone troopers, helmets fitting snugly over their heads, blasters cradled in their arms, utility belts slung with ammo magazines, talking among themselves the way seasoned warriors often did before battle. Alleviating misgivings with inside jokes; references Shryne couldn’t begin to understand, beyond the fact that they were grim.

The gunship’s inertial compensators allowed them to stand in the bay without being jolted by flaring antiaircraft explosions or jostled by the gunship pilots’ evasive maneuvering through corkscrewing missiles and storms of white-hot shrapnel. Missiles, because the same Separatists who had manufactured the clouds had misted Murkhana’s air with anti-laser aerosols.

Acrid odors infiltrated the cramped space, along with the roar of the aft engines, the starboard one stuttering somewhat, the gunship as battered as the troopers and crew it carried into conflict.

Even at an altitude of only four hundred meters above sea level the cloud cover remained dense. The fact that Shryne could barely see his hand in front of his face didn’t surprise him. This was still the war, after all, and he had grown accustomed these past three years to not seeing where he was going.

Nat-Sem, his former Master, used to tell him that the goal of the meditative exercises was to see clear through the swirling whiteness to the other side; that what Shryne saw was only the shadowy expanse separating him from full contact with the Force. Shryne had to learn to ignore the clouds, as it were. When he had learned to do that, to look through them to the radiant expanse beyond, he would be a Master.

Pessimistic by nature, Shryne’s reaction had been: Not in this lifetime.

Though he had never said as much to Nat-Sem, the Jedi Master had seen through him as easily as he saw through the clouds.

Shryne felt that the clone troopers had a better view of the war than he had, and that the view had little to do with their helmet imaging systems, the filters that muted the sharp scent of the air, the earphones that dampened the sounds of explosions. Grown for warfare, they probably thought the Jedi were mad to go into battle as they did, attired in tunics and hooded robes, a lightsaber their only weapon. Many of them were astute enough to see comparisons between the Force and their own white plastoid shells; but few of them could discern between armored and unarmored Jedi—those who were allied with the Force, and those who for one reason or another had slipped from its sustaining embrace.

Murkhana’s lathered clouds finally began to thin, until they merely veiled the planet’s wrinkled landscape and frothing sea. A sudden burst of brilliant light drew Shryne’s attention to the sky. What he took for an exploding gunship might have been a newborn star; and for a moment the world tipped out of balance, then righted itself just as abruptly. A circle of clarity opened in the clouds, a perforation in the veil, and Shryne gazed on verdant forest so profoundly green he could almost taste it. Valiant combatants scurried through the underbrush and sleek ships soared through the canopy. In the midst of it all a lone figure stretched out his hand, tearing aside a curtain black as night …

Shryne knew he had stepped out of time, into some truth beyond reckoning.

A vision of the end of the war, perhaps, or of time itself.

Whichever, the effect of it comforted him that he was indeed where he was supposed to be. That despite the depth to which the war had caused him to become fixed on death and destruction, he was still tethered to the Force, and serving it in his own limited way.

Then, as if intent on foiling him, the thin clouds quickly conspired to conceal what had been revealed, closing the portal an errant current had opened. And Shryne was back where he started, with gusts of superheated air tugging at the sleeves and cowl of his brown robe.

“The Koorivar have done a good job with their weather machines,” a speaker-enhanced voice said into his left ear. “Whipped up one brute of a sky. We used the same tactic on Paarin Minor. Drew the Seps into fabricated clouds and blew them to the back of beyond.”

Shryne laughed without merriment. “Good to see you can still appreciate the little things, Commander.”

“What else is there, General?”

Shryne couldn’t make out the expression on the face behind the tinted T-visor, but he knew that shared face as well as anyone else who fought in the war. Commander of the Thirty-second air combat wing, the clone officer had somewhere along the line acquired the name Salvo, and the sobriquet fit him like a gauntlet.

The high-traction soles of his jump boots gave him just enough added height to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Shryne, and where his armor wasn’t dinged and scored it was emblazoned with rust-brown markings. On his hips he wore holstered hand blasters and, for reasons Shryne couldn’t fathom, a version of the capelike command skirt that had become all the rage in the war’s third year. The left side of his shrapnel-pitted helmet was laser-etched with the motto LIVE TO SERVE!

Torso markings attested to Salvo’s participation in campaigns on many worlds, and while he wasn’t an ARC—an Advanced Reconnaissance Commando—he had the rough edges of an ARC, and of their clone template, Jango Fett, whose headless body Shryne had seen in a Geonosian arena shortly before Master Nat-Sem had fallen to enemy fire.

“Alliance weapons should have us in target lock by now,” Salvo said as the gunship continued to descend.

Other assault ships were also punching through the cloud cover, only to be greeted by flocks of incoming missiles. Struck by direct hits, two, four, then five craft were blown apart, flaming fuselages and mangled troopers plummeting into the churning scarlet waves of Murkhana Bay. From the nose of one gunship flew a bang-out capsule that carried the pilot and co-pilot to within meters of the water before it was ripped open by a resolute heat seeker.

In one of the fifty-odd gunships that were racing down the well, three other Jedi were going into battle, Master Saras Loorne among them. Stretching out with the Force, Shryne found them, faint echoes confirming that all three were still alive.

He clamped his right hand on one of the slide door’s view slots as the pilots threw their unwieldy charge into a hard bank, narrowly evading a pair of hailfire missiles. Gunners ensconced in the gunship’s armature-mounted turrets opened up with blasters as flights of Mankvim Interceptors swarmed up to engage the Republic force. The anti-laser aerosols scattered the blaster beams, but dozens of the Separatist craft succumbed to missiles spewed from the gunships’ top-mounted mass-drive launchers.

“High Command should have granted our request to bombard from orbit,” Salvo said in an amplified voice.

“The idea is to take the city, Commander, not vaporize it,” Shryne said loudly. Murkhana had already been granted weeks to surrender, but the Republic ultimatum had expired. “Palpatine’s policy for winning the hearts and minds of Separatist populations might not make good military sense, but it makes good political sense.”

Salvo stared at him from behind his visor. “We’re not interested in politics.”

Shryne laughed shortly. “Neither were the Jedi.”

“Why fight if you weren’t bred for it?”

“To serve what remains of the Republic.” Shryne’s brief green vision of the war’s end returned, and he adopted a rueful grin. “Dooku’s dead. Grievous is being hunted down. If it means anything, I suspect it’ll be over soon.”

“The war, or our standing shoulder-to-shoulder?”

“The war, Commander.”

“What becomes of the Jedi then?”

“We’ll do what we have always done: follow the Force.”

“And the Grand Army?”

Shryne regarded him. “Help us preserve the peace.”

Murkhana City was visible now, climbing into steep hills that rose from a long crescent of shoreline, the sheen of overlapping particle shields dulled by the gray underbelly of the clouds. Shryne caught a fleeting glimpse of the Argente Tower before the gunship dropped to the crests of the frothing waves and altered course, pointing its blunt nose toward the stacked skyline and slaloming through warheads fired from weapons emplacements that lined the shore.

In a class with Mygeeto, Muunilinst, and Neimoidia, Murkhana was not a conquered planet but a host world—home to former Senator and Separatist Council member Passel Argente, and headquarters of the Corporate Alliance. Murkhana’s deal makers and litigators, tended to by armies of household droids and private security guards, had fashioned a hedonistic domain of towering office buildings, luxurious apartment complexes, exclusive medcenters, and swank shopping malls, casinos, and nightclubs. Only the most expensive speeders negotiated a vertical cityscape of graceful, spiraling structures that looked as if they had been grown of ocean coral rather than constructed.

Murkhana also housed the finest communications facility in that part of the Outer Rim, and was a primary source of the “shadowfeeds” that spread Separatist propaganda among Republic and Confederacy worlds.

Arranged like the spokes of a wheel, four ten-kilometer-long bridges linked the city to an enormous offshore landing platform. Hexagonal in shape and supported on thick columns anchored in the seabed, the platform was the prize the Republic needed to secure before a full assault could be mounted. For that to happen, the Grand Army needed to penetrate the defensive umbrellas and take out the generators that sustained them. But with nearly all rooftop and repulsorlift landing platforms shielded, Murkhana’s arc of black-sand beach was the only place where the gunships could insert their pay-loads of clone troopers and Jedi.

Shryne was gazing at the landing platform when he felt someone begin to edge between him and Commander Salvo, set on getting a better look through the open hatch. Even before he saw the headful of long black curls, he knew it was Olee Starstone. Planting his left hand firmly on the top of her head, he propelled her back into the troop bay.

“If you’re determined to make yourself a target, Padawan, at least wait until we hit the beach.”

Rubbing her head, the petite, blue-eyed young woman glanced over her shoulder at the tall female Jedi standing behind her. “You see, Master. He does care.”

“Despite all evidence to the contrary,” the female Jedi said.

“I only meant that it’ll be easier for me to bury you in the sand,” Shryne said.

Starstone scowled, folded her arms across her chest, and swung away from both of them.

Bol Chatak threw Shryne a look of mild reprimand. The raised cowl of her black robe hid her short vestigial horns. An Iridonian Zabrak, she was nothing if not tolerant, and had never taken Shryne to task for his irascible behavior or interfered with his teasing relationship with her Padawan, who had joined Chatak in the Murkhana system only a standard week earlier, arriving with Master Loorne and two Jedi Knights. The demands of the Outer Rim Sieges had drawn so many Jedi from Coruscant that the Temple was practically deserted.

Until recently, Shryne, too, had had a Padawan learner …

For the Jedi’s benefit, the gunship pilot announced that they were closing on the jump site.

“Weapons check!” Salvo said to the platoon. “Gas and packs!”

As the troop bay filled with the sound of activating weapons, Chatak placed her hand on Starstone’s quivering shoulder.

“Use your unease to sharpen your senses, Padawan.”

“I will, Master.”

“The Force will be with you.”

“We’re all dying,” Salvo told the troopers. “Promise yourselves you’ll be the last to go!”

Access panels opened in the ceiling, dropping more than a dozen polyplast cables to within reach of the troopers.

“Secure to lines!” Salvo said. “Room for three more, General,” he added while armored, body-gloved hands took tight hold of the cables.

Calculating that the jump wouldn’t exceed ten meters, Shryne shook his head at Salvo. “No need. We’ll see you below.”

Unexpectedly, the gunship gained altitude as it approached the shoreline, then pulled up short of the beach, as if being reined in. Repulsorlifts engaged, the gunship hovered. At the same time, hundreds of Separatist battle droids marched onto the beach, firing their blasters in unison.

The intercom squawked, and the pilot said, “Droid buster away!”

A concussion-feedback weapon, the droid buster detonated at five meters above ground zero, flattening every droid within a radius of fifty meters. Similar explosions underscored the ingress of a dozen other gunships.

“Where were these weapons three years ago?” one of the troopers asked Salvo.

“Progress,” the commander said. “All of a sudden we’re winning the war in a week.”

The gunship hovered lower, and Shryne leapt into the air. Using the Force to oversee his fall, he landed in a crouch on the compacted sand, as did Chatak and Starstone, if less expertly.

Salvo and the clone troopers followed, descending one-handed on individual cables, triggering their rifles as they slid to the beach. When the final trooper was on the ground, the gunship lifted its nose and began to veer away from shore. Up and down the beach the same scenario was playing out. Several gunships failed to escape artillery fire and crashed in flames before they had turned about.

Others were blown apart before they had even offloaded.

With projectiles and blaster bolts whizzing past their heads, the Jedi and troopers scurried forward, hunkering down behind a bulkhead that braced a ribbon of highway coursing between the beach and the near-vertical cliffs beyond. Salvo’s communications specialist com-linked for aerial support against the batteries responsible for the worst of the fire.

Through an opening in the bulkhead hastened the four members of a commando team, with a captive in tow. Unlike the troopers, the commandos wore gray shells of Katarn-class armor and carried heftier weapons. Hardened against magnetic pulses, their suits allowed them to penetrate defensive shields.

The enemy combatant they had captured wore a long robe and tasseled headcloth but lacked the sallow complexion, horizontal facial markings, and cranial horns characteristic of the Koorivar. Like their fellow Separatists the Neimoidians, Passel Argente’s species had no taste for warfare, but felt no compunction about employing the best mercenaries credits could buy.

The burly commando squad leader went immediately to Salvo.

“Ion Team, Commander, attached to the Twenty-second out of Boz Pity.” Turning slightly in Shryne’s direction, the commando nodded his helmeted head.

“Welcome to Murkhana, General Shryne.”

Shryne’s dark brows beetled. “The voice is familiar …,” he began.

“The face even more so,” the commando completed.

The joke was almost three years old but still in use among the clone troopers, and between them and the Jedi.

“Climber,” the commando said, providing his sobriquet. “We fought together on Deko Neimoidia.”

Shryne clapped the commando on the shoulder. “Good to see you again, Climber—even here.”

“As I told you,” Chatak said to Starstone, “Master Shryne has friends all over.”

“Perhaps they don’t know him as well as I do, Master,” Starstone grumbled.

Climber lifted his helmet faceplate to the gray sky. “A good day for fighting, General.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Shryne said.

“Make your report, squad leader,” Salvo interrupted.

Climber turned to the commander. “The Koorivar are evacuating the city, but taking their sweet time about it. They’ve a lot more faith in these energy shields than they should have.” He beckoned the captive forward and spun him roughly to face Salvo. “Meet Idis—human under the Koorivar trappings. Distinguished member of the Vibroblade Brigade.”

“A mercenary band,” Bol Chatak explained to Starstone.

“We caught him … with his trousers down,” Climber continued, “and persuaded him to share what he knows about the shoreline defenses. He was kind enough to provide the location of the landing platform shield generator.” The commando indicated a tall, tapered edifice farther down the beach. “Just north of the first bridge, near the marina. The generator’s installed two floors below ground level. We may have to take out the whole building to get to it.”

Salvo signaled to his comlink specialist. “Relay the building coordinates to Gallant gunnery—”

“Wait on that,” Shryne said quickly. “Targeting the building poses too great a risk to the bridges. We need them intact if we’re going to move vehicles into the city.”

Salvo considered it briefly. “A surgical strike, then.”

Shryne shook his head no. “There’s another reason for discretion. That building is a medcenter. Or at least it was the last time I was here.”

Salvo looked to Climber for confirmation.

“The general’s correct, Commander. It’s still a medcenter.”

Salvo shifted his gaze to Shryne. “An enemy medcenter, General.”

Shryne compressed his lips and nodded. “Even at this point in the war, patients are considered noncombatants. Remember what I said about hearts and minds, Commander.” He glanced at the mercenary. “Is the shield generator accessible from street level?”

“Depends on how skilled you are.”

Shryne looked at Climber.

“Not a problem,” the commando said.

Salvo made a sound of distaste. “You’d trust the word of a merc?”

Climber pressed the muzzle of his DC-17 rifle into the small of the mercenary’s back. “Idis is on our side now, aren’t you?”

The mercenary’s head bobbed. “Free of charge.”

Shryne looked at Climber again. “Is your team carrying enough thermal detonators to do the job?”

“Yes, sir.”

Salvo still didn’t like it. “I strongly recommend that we leave this to the Gallant.”

Shryne regarded him. “What’s the matter, Commander, we’re not killing the Separatists in sufficient numbers?”

“In sufficient numbers, General. Just not quickly enough.”

“The Gallant is still holding at fifty kilometers,” Chatak said in a conciliatory tone. “There’s time to re-con the building.”

Salvo demonstrated his displeasure with a shrug of indifference. “It’s your funeral if you’re wrong.”

“That’s neither here nor there,” Shryne said. “We’ll rendezvous with you at rally point Aurek-Bacta. If we don’t turn up by the time the Gallant arrives, feed them the building’s coordinates.”

“You can count on it, sir.”

REBELLION
(0–5 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

This is the period of the classic Star Wars movie trilogy—A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi—in which a ragtag band of Rebels battles the Empire, and Luke Skywalker learns the ways of the Force and must avoid his father’s fate.

During this time, the Empire controls nearly the entire settled galaxy. Out in the Rim worlds, Imperial stormtroopers suppress uprisings with brutal efficiency, many alien species have been enslaved, and entire star systems are brutally exploited by the Empire’s war machine. In the central systems, however, most citizens support the Empire, weighing misgivings about its harsh methods against the memories of the horror and chaos of the Clone Wars. Few dare to openly oppose Emperor Palpatine’s rule.

But the Rebel Alliance is growing. Rebel cells strike in secret from hidden bases scattered among the stars, encouraging some of the braver Senators to speak out against the Empire. When the Rebels learn that the Empire is building the Death Star, a space station with enough firepower to destroy entire planets, Princess Leia Organa, who represents her homeworld, Alderaan, in the Senate and is secretly a high-ranking member of the Rebel Alliance, receives the plans for the battle station and flees in search of the exiled Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Thus begin the events that lead her to meet the smuggler and soon-to-be hero Han Solo, to discover her long-lost brother, Luke Skywalker, and to help the Rebellion take down the Emperor and restore democracy to the galaxy: the events of the three films A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.

If you’re a reader looking for places to jump in and explore the Rebellion-era novels, here are five great places to start:

• Death Star, by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry: The story of the construction of the massive battle station, touching on the lives of the builders, planners, soldiers, and support staff who populate the monstrous vessel, as well as the masterminds behind the design and those who intend to make use of it: the Emperor and Darth Vader.

• The Mandalorian Armor, by K. W. Jeter: The famous bounty hunter Boba Fett stars in a twisty tale of betrayal within the galactic underworld, highlighted by a riveting confrontation between bounty hunters and a band of Hutts.

• Shadows of the Empire, by Steve Perry: A tale of the shadowy parts of the Empire and an underworld criminal mastermind who is out to kill Luke Skywalker, while our other heroes try to figure out how to rescue Han Solo, who has been frozen in carbonite for delivery to Jabba the Hutt.

• Tales of the Bounty Hunters, edited by Kevin J. Anderson: The bounty hunters summoned by Darth Vader to capture the Millennium Falcon tell their stories in this anthology of short tales, culminating with Daniel Keys Moran’s elegiac “The Last One Standing.”

• Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, by Matthew Stover: A tale set shortly after the events of Return of the Jedi, in which Luke must defeat the flamboyant dark sider known as Lord Shadowspawn while the pilots of Rogue Squadron duel his servants amid tumbling asteroids.

Read on for an excerpt from a Star Wars Legends novel set in the Rebellion era.

1

FLIGHT DECK, IMPERIAL-CLASS STAR DESTROYER STEEL TALON, POLAR ORBIT, PLANET DESPAYRE, HORUZ SYSTEM, ATRIVIS SECTOR, OUTER RIM TERRITORIES

The alert siren screamed, a piercing wail that couldn’t be ignored by any being on board with ears and a pulse. It had one thing to say, and it said it loud and clear:

Scramble!

Lieutenant Commander Villian “Vil” Dance came out of a deep sleep at the blaring alarm, sat up, and leapt from his rack to the expanded metal deck of the Ready Room quarters. Save for the helmet, he already wore his space suit, one of the first things an on-call TIE pilot learned to do was sleep in full battle gear. He ran for the door, half a step ahead of the next pilot to awaken. He grabbed his headgear, darted into the hall and turned to the right, then sprinted for the launching bay.

It could be a drill; there had been plenty of those lately to keep the pilots on their toes. But maybe this time it wasn’t. One could always hope.

Vil ran into the assembly area. A-grav on the flight deck was kept at slightly below one g, so that the pilots, all of whom were human or humanoid, could move a little faster and get to their stations a little sooner. The smell of launch lube was acrid in the cold air, and the pulsing lights painted the area in bright, primary flashes. Techs scrambled, getting the TIE fighters to final-set for takeoff, while pilots ran toward the craft. Vil noticed that it was just his squad being scrambled. Must not be a big problem, whatever it was.

Command always said it didn’t matter which unit you got. TIE fighters were all the same, down to the last nut and bolt, but even so, every pilot had his or her favorite ship. You weren’t supposed to personalize them, of course, but there were ways to tell—a scratch here, a scuff mark there … after a while, you got to where you knew which fighter was which. And no matter what Command said, some were better than others—a little faster, a little tighter in the turns, the laser cannons a hair quicker to fire when you touched the stud. Vil happened to know that his assigned ship this rotation was Black-11, one of his favorites. Maybe it was pure superstition, but he breathed just a little easier, knowing that particular craft had his name on it this time around.

The command officer on deck, Captain Rax Exeter, waved Vil over.

“Cap, what’s up? Another drill?”

“Negative, Lieutenant. A group of prisoners somehow managed to take over one of the new Lambda-class shuttles. They’re trying to get far enough away to make the jump to hyperspace. That isn’t going to happen on my watch. The ID codes and tracking will be in your fighter’s computer. Don’t let ’em get away, son.”

“No, sir. What about the crew?” Vil knew the new shuttles carried only a pilot and copilot.

“Assumed dead. These are bad guys doing this, Dance—traitors and murderers. That’s reason enough to cook them, but we do not want them getting away to tell anybody what the Empire is doing out here, do we?”

“No, sir!”

“Go, Lieutenant, go!”

Vil nodded, not bothering to salute, then turned and ran. As he did, he put his helmet on and locked it into place. The hiss of air into his face was metallic and cool as the suit’s system went online. It felt very comforting. The vac suit’s extreme-temp-resistant weave of durasteel and plastoid, along with the polarizing densecris helmet, were the only things that would protect him from hard vacuum. Suit failure could make a strong man lose consciousness in under ten seconds, and die in under a minute. He’d seen it happen.

TIE fighters, in order to save mass, had no defensive shield generators, no hyperdrive capability, and no emergency life-support systems. They were thus fragile, but fast, and that was fine with Vil. He’d rather dodge enemy fire than hope it would bounce off. There was no skill in piloting some lumbering chunk of durasteel; might as well be sitting with your feet up at a turbolaser console back on the ship. Where was the fun in that?

The TIE tech had the hatch up on Black-11 as Vil arrived at the gantry above the ship. It was the work of an instant to clamber down and into the fighter’s snug cockpit.

The hatch came down and hissed shut. Vil touched the power-up stud, and the inside of the TIE—named for the twin ion engines that drove it—lit up. He scanned the controls with a quick and experienced eye. All systems were green.

The tech raised his hand in question. Vil waved back. “Go!”

“Copy that, ST-One-One. Prepare for insertion.”

Vil felt his lips twitch in annoyance. The Empire was determined to erase all signs of individuality in its pilots, on the absurd theory that nameless, faceless operators were somehow more effective. Thus the classification numbers, the anonymous flight suits and helmets, and the random rotation of spacecraft. The standardizing approach had worked reasonably well in the Clone Wars, but there was one important difference here: neither Vil nor any other TIE pilot that he knew of was a clone. None of the members of Alpha Squad had any intention of being reduced to automata. If that was what the Empire really wanted, let them use droid pilots and see how well that worked.

His musing was interrupted by the small jolt of the cycling rack below the gantry kicking on. Vil’s ship began to move toward the launching bay door. He saw the tech slip his own helmet on and lock it down.

Already the bay pumps were working full blast, depressurizing the area. By the time the launch doors were open, the air would be cycled. Vil took a deep breath, readying himself for the heavy hand of g-force that would push him back into the seat when the engines hurled him forward.

Launch Control’s voice crackled in his headphones. “Alpha Squad Leader, stand by for launch.”

“Copy,” Vil said. The launch doors pulled back with tantalizing slowness, the hydraulic thrum of their movement made audible by conduction through the floor and Black-11’s frame.

“You are go for launch in five, four, three, two … go!”

Outside the confines of the Star Destroyer, the vastness of space enveloped Lieutenant Vil Dance as the ion engines pushed the TIE past the last stray wisps of frozen air and into the infinite dark. He grinned. He always did. He couldn’t help it.

Back where I belong …

The flat blackness of space surrounded him. Behind him, he knew, the Steel Talon was seemingly shrinking as they pulled away from it. “Down” and to port was the curvature of the prison planet. Though they were in polar orbit, Despayre’s axial tilt showed more of the night side than day. The dark hemisphere was mostly unrelieved blackness, with a few lonely lights here and there.

Vil flicked his comm—though it came on automatically at launch, a good pilot always toggled it, just to be sure. “Alpha Squad, pyramid formation on me as soon as you are clear,” he said. “Go to tactical channel five, that’s tac-fiver, and log in.”

Vil switched his own comm channel to five. It was a lower-powered band with a shorter range, but that was the point—you didn’t want the enemy overhearing you. And in some cases, it wasn’t a good idea for the comm officer monitoring you back on the base ship to be privy to conversations, either. They tended to be a bit more informal than the Empire liked.

There came a chorus of “Copy, Alpha Leader!” from the other eleven pilots in his squad as they switched over to the new channel.

It took only a few seconds for the last fighter to launch, and only a few more for the squad to form behind Vil.

“What’s the drill, Vil?” That from Benjo, aka ST-1-2, his second in command and right panelman.

“Alpha Squadron, we have a Lambda-class shuttle captured by prisoners. They are running for hyper. Either they give up and come back, or we dust ’em.”

“Lambda-class? That’s one of the new ones, right? They have any guns?”

Vil sighed. That was Raar Anyell, a Corellian like Vil himself, but not somebody you’d want to hold up as a prime example of the human species. “Don’t you bother to read the boards at all, Anyell?”

“I was just about to do that, sir, when the alarm went off. Was looking right at ’em. Had the latest notices right in my hand. Sir.”

The other pilots laughed, and even Vil had to grin. Anyell was a foul-up everywhere except in the cockpit, but he was a good enough pilot that Vil was willing to give him some slice.

His sensor screen pinged, giving him an image of their quarry. He altered course to intercept.

“Anybody else behind on his homework, listen up,” he said. “The Lambda-class shuttle is twenty meters long, has a top speed of fourteen hundred g, a Class-One hyperdrive, and can carry twenty troops in full battle gear—probably a couple more convicts in civvies.

“The ship carries three double-blaster cannons and two double-laser cannons. It can’t accelerate worth a wheep and it turns slower than a comet, but if you get in its sights, it can blow you to itty-bitty pieces. It would be embarrassing to have to inform your family you got shot apart by a shuttle, so stay alert.”

There came another chorus of acknowledgments:

“Copy, sir.”

“Yes, sir!”

“No sweat.”

“Anyell, I didn’t hear your response.”

“Oh, sorry, sir, I was taking a little nap. What was the question?”

Before the squad commander could reply, the shuttle suddenly loomed ahead. It was running as silently as possible, with no lights, but as its orbit brought it across the terminator and out of Despayre’s night side, the sunlight struck rays from its hull.

“There is our target, four kilometers dead ahead. I want a fast flyby so they can see us, and then I want a fountain pattern dispersal and loop, two klicks minimum distance and bracket, one, four, four, and two, you know who you are. I’ll move in close and have a word with whoever they have flying the stolen spacecraft.”

Benjo: “Aw, Lieutenant, come on, let us have a shot, too.”

“Negative. If you had a clue about the vessel, I might, but since you’re just as likely to shoot each other as the quarry, you’ll hold the bracket.”

More acknowledgments, but without much enthusiasm. He couldn’t blame his squad—they hadn’t had any action except drills since they’d been assigned to this project—but his secondary goal was to bring all his men back alive. The primary, of course, was to accomplish their mission. He didn’t need a squad for this; any fighter pilot worth his spit should be able to deal with a lumbering shuttle, even one with the new-vehicle smell still in it. The Lambda’s delta vee wasn’t all that efficient, but with constant drive it could get above the solar plane and far enough out of the planet’s gravity well to engage its hyperdrive fairly soon—and once it was in the chute, they’d never find it.

But that wasn’t going to happen.

The pyramid-shaped formation zipped past the fleeing shuttle, close enough for Vil to see the pilot sitting in the command seat. He didn’t look surprised, of course—he would have seen them coming on the sensors. But he couldn’t outrun them, couldn’t dodge, and no way could he take out a full squad of TIE fighters even if he was the best gunner who’d ever lived, not in that boat. And anyway, Vil wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to try.

The squad flowered into the dispersal maneuver as ordered, looping out and away to their assigned positions, angled pressor beams in their arrays providing maneuverability. Vil pulled a high-g tight turn and came around to parallel the shuttle a few hundred meters away, slightly above it. He watched the wing turrets closely. As soon as they started to track him, he jinked to port, then to starboard, slowed, then sped up. They tried to keep up with him, but they were a hair too slow.

Vil toggled to a wide-band channel. They’d hear this back in the Destroyer, he knew.

“Attention, shuttle RLH-One. Turn the craft around and proceed immediately to Star Destroyer Steel Talon’s tractor beam range.”

There was no answer; nothing but the slight hiss of the carrier.

“Shuttle craft, do you copy my transmission?”

Another pause. Then: “Yeah, we hear you, rocketjock. We aren’t of a mind to do that.”

Vil looked at his control panel. They were two minutes away from Minimum Safe Distance—the point far enough from Despayre where they could safely attempt the jump to lightspeed. Jump too close to a planet’s gravity well and the shift would tear the vessel apart. If the guy he was talking to had enough skill to fly the shuttle, he’d know that. His control panel would tell him when he reached MSD, and then it would be over. Lieutenant Dance would have failed a mission, for the first time.

Never happen, he thought. “Turn it around, or we will fire,” he said.

“You’d do that? Just blow us apart? Essentially murder fifteen men—and two women? One of them is old enough to be your granny. You can live with that?”

He was stalling for time, Vil knew. The beings on that shuttle were bad enough to have been sent to the galaxy’s number one prison planet, and the Imperial courts didn’t bother to do that with petty thieves or traffic violators. His granny hadn’t robbed any banks or killed anybody. Not that he knew of, anyway.

“Shuttle pilot, I say again—”

Vil saw the port turret on the shuttle open up. He cut across the craft’s flight path, angling away aft as the starboard gun began firing. He hit his thrusters full, coming up in a half loop and twisting away from the incoming laserfire.

Even a good gunner couldn’t have spiked him at this angle, and these guys weren’t anywhere close to good enough. Still, the pulsed incandescent beams came close.

“Lieutenant—!” That from Benjo.

“Hold your position, Alpha Squad, there’s no problem here.” Cool and calm. Like discussing what they might be having for dinner.

He zipped Black-11 out of range.

The clock was running down. Less than a minute to MSD.

“Last chance, shuttle. Turn it around. Now.”

In answer, the pilot pulled the shuttle topward so his gunners could get a better angle. They started shooting again.

The shots were wild, but there was always a chance a stray beam could hit you, even by accident. And wouldn’t that be a glorious end to an unblemished career? To be killed by a convict on a milking shuttle?

Enough of this. Vil hit the drive controls and damped the thrust to zero. Then he pushed the throttles to full, angled to port and topside, did a roll and loop, and came around, driving at the shuttle amidships.

He pressed the fire-control button.

Black-11 spat twin laser bolts from the low-temp tips—blip-blip, blip-blip, blip-blip—

Vil Dance was a better-than-average shooter. The bolts ripped into the shuttle, chewed it up, and as he overflew and peeled away to starboard-downside, the Lambda blew apart, shattering into at least half a dozen large pieces and hundreds of smaller ones amid a cloud of flash-frozen air, liquid, and debris.

And pinwheeling bodies.

Vil switched back to tac-five. “Anyell, Lude, move in and check for survivors.” He kept his voice calm, emotionless, no big deal. His pulse was racing, but they didn’t have to know that. Let them think his heart pumped liquid oxy.

“None of ’em were wearing suits, Lieutenant,” Lude said a moment later. “No survivors. Too bad about that brand-new ship.”

“Good hit, Vil,” Benjo said. “Congratulations.”

Vil felt a warm glow of satisfaction. It had been a good hit. And they had been firing at him, so it wasn’t like shooting yorks in a canister. It had been a righteous response.

He switched back to the main op-chan. “Fighter Control, this is ST-One-One, Lieutenant Vil Dance of TIE fighter Alpha Squadron. Mission accomplished. You might want to send out a recovery vessel to pick up the pieces.”

“Copy, ST-One-One,” said Captain Exeter. “Good job.”

“Thank you, sir. Let’s return to base, Alpha Squad.”

Vil smiled as he waited for his team to form up again. This was the best job in the galaxy, being a fighter pilot. He couldn’t imagine a better one. He was young, not even twenty-five yet, and already a legend among his peers—and among the ladies as well. Life was good.

As they started for the Destroyer, Vil saw in the distance the frame of the gigantic battle station that was being built in planetary orbit. They were a hundred kilometers away from the structure, and it was still skeletal, its interior construction only just begun, but even so, it looked impossibly huge at this distance. It was to be the size of a small moon when it was finished, dwarfing the largest Star Destroyer.

Incredible to think about. And if he kept racking up missions like the one just completed, there was a very good chance that he would be assigned as unit commander on board the new station.

He led his squad back to the equatorial launching bay. Looking at the awe-inspiring base, he felt a surge of pride in the Empire, and a feeling of gratitude at being a part of the Tarkin Doctrine’s glorious mission. There was no official appellation or designation, other than battle station, that he knew of for the Grand Moff’s vision, but there was a name for it that everybody he knew, officers and enlisted alike, used.

They called it the Death Star.

THE NEW REPUBLIC
(5–25 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

The destruction of the second Death Star and the death of Emperor Palpatine—the climactic conclusion of Return of the Jedi—has shaken the Empire to its core. While the remnant of the loyal Imperials settles in for a long, drawn-out last stand, the victorious Rebel Alliance and its supporters found a galactic governing authority they name the New Republic. Troops and warships are donated to the cause, as New Republic military leaders forge plans to seize Imperial fortress worlds, invade the Core Worlds, and retake Coruscant itself. Eventually, the Imperial Remnant is pushed back to a small part of the Outer Rim, and the New Republic is finally able to focus on restoring just and democratic government to the galaxy.

At last the heroes of the Rebellion are free to pursue their own lives. Han and Leia marry … but before the birth of their twins, Jacen and Jaina, the galaxy is once again torn asunder by war, as the Imperial forces—under the control of military mastermind Grand Admiral Thrawn—step up their campaign of raids against the New Republic. Even after Thrawn is defeated, the Imperial forces forge on, harrying the New Republic and Luke’s nascent Jedi academy—the start of Luke’s dream to rebuild the Jedi Order from the ground up. Plagues, insurrections, and rogue warlords add to the chaos and push the New Republic back a step for every two steps it takes forward in its quest for peace and prosperity for all. Meanwhile, Leia becomes Chief of State of the New Republic, and the Solos’ third child, a boy they name Anakin, after his grandfather, is born; Luke has met Mara Jade, a secret dark side apprentice to the Emperor whom he helps bring into the light, and the two subsequently fall in love and marry.

Finally, after a series of further setbacks and plots against the young galactic government and Luke’s Jedi, a peace treaty formally ends the long conflict between the New Republic and the remnants of the Empire. The events of these years are the answer to the question … “What happened after the movies?”

If you’re a reader looking to dive into the New Republic era, here are three great starting points:

• X-Wing: Rogue Squadron, by Michael A. Stackpole: A taste of life at the edge, Rogue Squadron and the subsequent X-Wing novels bring to life Wedge Antilles and his brave, sometimes rambunctious fellow pilots in fast-paced adventures that switch smoothly and easily between entertaining repartee and tense battlefield action.

• Heir to the Empire, by Timothy Zahn: The book that reintroduced a generation of fans to Star Wars is full of the elements that made the movies great—space battles, intriguing villains, and derring-do.

• Before the Storm, by Michael P. Kube-McDowell: With a harder sci-fi edge to Star Wars, this novel features the classic heroes Han, Luke, and Leia, and explores everything from military forensics to the nature of the Force.

Read on for an excerpt from a Star Wars Legends novel set in the New Republic era.

CHAPTER

1

Slowly, silently, its lights a faint glitter of life amid the darkness, the Imperial Star Destroyer Chimaera glided through space.

Empty space. Oppressively dark space. Long, lonely light-years from the nearest of the tiny islands that were the star systems of the galaxy, drifting at the edge of the boundary between the Outer Rim worlds and the vast regions of territory known as Unknown Space. At the very edge of the Empire.

Or rather, at the edge of the pitiful scraps of what had once been the Empire.

Standing beside one of the Chimaera’s side viewports, Admiral Pellaeon, Supreme Commander of the Imperial Fleet, gazed out at the emptiness, the weight of all too many years pressing heavily across his shoulders. Too many years, too many battles, too many defeats.

Perhaps the Chimaera’s bridge crew was feeling the weight, too. Certainly the sounds of activity going on behind him seemed more muted than usual today. But perhaps it was merely the effect of being out here, so far from anywhere at all.

No, of course that had to be it. The men of the Chimaera were the finest the Fleet had to offer. They were Imperial officers and crewers, and Imperials didn’t give up. Ever.

There was a tentative footstep at his side. “Admiral?” Captain Ardiff said quietly. “We’re ready to begin, sir.”

For a moment Pellaeon’s mind flashed back ten years, to another very similar moment. Then, it had been Pellaeon and Grand Admiral Thrawn who’d been here on the Chimaera’s bridge, watching the final test of the prototype cloaking shield Thrawn had recovered from among the Emperor’s trophies inside Mount Tantiss. Pellaeon could remember the excitement he’d felt then, despite his misgivings about the insane Jedi clone Joruus C’baoth, as he watched Thrawn single-handedly breathing new life and vigor back into the Empire.

But Mount Tantiss was gone, destroyed by agents of the New Republic and C’baoth’s own madness and treason. And Grand Admiral Thrawn was dead.

And the Empire was dying.

With an effort, Pellaeon shook the shadows of the past away. He was an Imperial officer, and Imperials didn’t give up. “Thank you,” he said to Ardiff. “At your convenience, Captain.”

“Yes, sir.” Ardiff half turned, gestured to the fighter coordinator in the portside crew pit. “Signal the attack,” he ordered.

The officer acknowledged and gestured in turn to one of his crewers. Pellaeon turned his attention back to the viewport—

Just in time to see eight SoroSuub Preybird-class starfighters in tight formation roar in from behind them. Cutting tight to the Chimaera’s command superstructure, they passed over the forward ridgeline, raking it with low-power blaster fire, then split smoothly out in eight different directions. Corkscrewing out and forward, they kept up their fire until they were out of the Star Destroyer’s primary attack zone. Then, curving smoothly around, they swung around and regrouped.

“Admiral?” Ardiff prompted.

“Let’s give them one more pass, Captain,” Pellaeon said. “The more flight data the Predictor has to work with, the better it should function.” He caught the eye of one of the crew pit officers. “Damage report?”

“Minor damage to the forward ridgeline, sir,” the officer reported. “One sensor array knocked out, leaving five turbolasers without ranging data.”

“Acknowledged.” All theoretical damage, of course, calculated under the assumption that the Preybirds were using full-power capital-ship turbolasers. Pellaeon had always loved war games when he was younger; had relished the chance to play with technique and tactics without the risks of true combat. Somewhere in all those years, the excitement had faded away. “Helm, bring us around twenty degrees to starboard,” he ordered. “Starboard turbolasers will lay down dispersion fire as they make their next pass.”

The Preybirds were back in tight formation now, once again approaching their target. The Chimaera’s turbolasers opened up as they came, their low-level fire splattering across the Preybirds’ overlapping deflector shields. For a few seconds the opponents traded fire; then, the Preybirds broke formation again, splitting apart like the fingertips of an opening hand. Twisting over and under the Chimaera, they shot past, scrambling for the safety of distance.

“Damage report?” Pellaeon called.

“Three starboard turbolaser batteries knocked out,” the officer called back. “We’ve also lost one tractor beam projector and two ion cannon.”

“Enemy damage?”

“One attacker appears to have lost its deflector shields, and two others are reading diminished turbolaser capability.”

“Hardly counts as damage,” Ardiff murmured. “Of course, the situation here isn’t exactly fair. Ships that small and maneuverable would never have the kind of shields or firepower we’re crediting them with.”

“If you want fairness, organize a shockball tournament,” Pellaeon said acidly. “Don’t look for it in warfare.”

Ardiff’s cheek twitched. “I’m sorry, sir.”

Pellaeon sighed. The finest the Imperial Fleet had to offer … “Stand by the cloaking shield, Captain,” he ordered, watching the faint drive glows as the Preybirds regrouped again in the distance. “Activate on my command.”

“Yes, Admiral.”

There was a sudden flare of drive glow, partially eclipsed by the Preybirds themselves, as the enemy kicked into high acceleration. “Here they come,” Pellaeon said, watching as the single glowing dot rapidly resolved itself into eight close-formation ships. “Lock Predictor into fire control. Stand by cloaking shield.”

“Predictor and cloaking shield standing by,” Ardiff confirmed.

Pellaeon nodded, his full attention on the Preybirds. Nearly to the point where they’d broken formation last time … “Cloaking shield: now.”

And with a brief flicker of bridge lighting, the stars and incoming Preybirds vanished as the cloaking shield plunged the Chimaera into total darkness.

“Cloaking shield activated and stabilized,” Ardiff said.

“Helm, come around portside: thirty degrees by eight,” Pellaeon ordered. “Ahead acceleration point one. Turbolasers: fire.”

“Acknowledged,” an officer called. “Turbolasers are firing.”

Pellaeon took a step closer to the viewport and looked down along the Chimaera’s sides. The faint blasts of low-level fire were visible, lancing a short distance out from the Star Destroyer and then disappearing as they penetrated the spherical edge of the Star Destroyer’s cloaking shield. Blinded by the very device that was now shielding it from its opponents’ view, the Chimaera was firing wildly in an attempt to destroy those opponents.

Or perhaps not quite so wildly. If the Predictor worked as well as its designers hoped, perhaps the Empire still had a chance in this war.

It was a long time before the Chimaera’s turbolasers finally ceased fire. Far too long. “Is that it?” he asked Ardiff.

“Yes, sir,” the other said. “Five hundred shots, as pre-programmed.”

Pellaeon nodded. “Deactivate cloaking shield. Let’s see how well we did.”

There was another flicker from the lights, and the stars were back. Mentally crossing his fingers, Pellaeon peered out the viewport.

For a moment there was nothing. Then, from starboard, he spotted the approaching drive glows. Seven of them.

“Signal from Adversary Commander, Admiral,” the comm officer called. “Target Three reports receiving a disabling hit and has gone dormant; all other targets have sustained only minimal damage. Requesting orders.”

Pellaeon grimaced. One. Out of eight targets, the Chimaera had been able to hit exactly one. And that great feat had required five hundred shots to achieve.

So that was that. The wonderful Computerized Combat Predictor, touted by its creators and sponsors as the best approach to practical use of the cloaking shield, had been put to the test. And to be fair, it had probably done better than simple random shooting.

But it hadn’t done enough better. Not nearly enough.

“Inform Adversary Commander that the exercise is over,” Pellaeon told the comm officer. “Target Three may reactivate its systems; all ships are to return to the Chimaera. I want their reports filed within the next two hours.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m sure they’ll be able to improve it, Admiral,” Ardiff said at Pellaeon’s side. “This was just the first field test. Surely they’ll be able to improve it.”

“How?” Pellaeon retorted. “Train the Predictor to be omniscient? Or simply teach it how to read our enemies’ minds?”

“You only gave it two passes to study the targets’ flight patterns,” Ardiff reminded him. “With more data, it could have better anticipated their movements.”

Pellaeon snorted gently. “It’s a nice theory, Captain, and under certain controlled situations it might even work. But combat is hardly a controlled situation. There are far too many variables and unknowns, especially considering the hundreds of alien species and combat styles we have to contend with. I knew from the beginning that this Predictor idea was probably futile. But it had to be tried.”

“Well, then, we just have to go back to mark zero,” Ardiff said. “Come up with something else. There have to be practical uses for this cloaking shield device.”

“Of course there are,” Pellaeon agreed heavily. “Grand Admiral Thrawn devised three of them himself. But there’s no one left in the Empire with his military genius.”

He sighed. “No, Captain. It’s over. It’s all over. And we’ve lost.”

For a long moment the low murmur of background conversation was the only sound on the bridge. “You can’t mean that, Admiral,” Ardiff said at last. “And if I may say so, sir, this is not the sort of thing the Supreme Commander of Imperial forces should be talking about.”

“Why not?” Pellaeon countered. “It’s obvious to everyone else.”

“It most certainly is not, sir,” Ardiff said stiffly. “We still hold eight sectors—over a thousand inhabited systems. We have the Fleet, nearly two hundred Star Destroyers strong. We’re still very much a force to be reckoned with.”

“Are we?” Pellaeon asked. “Are we really?”

“Of course we are,” Ardiff insisted. “How else could we be holding our own against the New Republic?”

Pellaeon shook his head. “We’re holding our own for the simple reason that the New Republic is too busy right now with internal squabbling to bother with us.”

“Which works directly to our advantage,” Ardiff said. “It’s giving us the time we need to reorganize and rearm.”

“Rearm?” Pellaeon threw him a quizzical frown. “Have you taken even a cursory look at what we’re working with here?” He gestured out the viewport at the Preybirds, disappearing now beneath the edge of the Chimaera’s hull as they headed for the Star Destroyer’s hangar. “Look at them, Captain. SoroSuub Preybirds. We’re reduced to SoroSuub Preybirds.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the Preybirds, sir,” Ardiff said stubbornly. “They’re a quite capable midsize starfighter.”

“The point is that they’re not being manufactured by the Empire,” Pellaeon said. “They’re being scrounged from who knows where—probably some fringe pirate or mercenary gang. And they’re being scrounged precisely because we’re down to a single major shipyard and it can’t keep up with demand for capital ships, let alone starfighters. So tell me how you plan for us to rearm ourselves.”

Ardiff looked out the viewport. “It’s still not yet over, sir.”

But it was. And down deep, Pellaeon was sure Ardiff knew it as well as he did. A thousand systems left, out of an Empire that had once spanned a million. Two hundred Star Destroyers remaining from a Fleet that had once included over twenty-five thousand of them.

And perhaps most telling of all, hundreds of star systems that had once maintained a cautious neutrality were now petitioning the New Republic for membership. They, too, knew that the outcome was no longer uncertain.

Grand Admiral Thrawn could perhaps have breathed the remaining sparks into an Imperial victory. But Grand Admiral Thrawn was gone.

“Have the navigator plot a course for the Bastion system, Captain,” Pellaeon said to Ardiff. “Send transmissions to all the Moffs, instructing them to meet me at Moff Disra’s palace. We’ll leave as soon as the Preybirds are aboard.”

“Yes, Admiral,” Ardiff said. “May I tell the Moffs what the meeting is about?”

Pellaeon looked out the viewport at the distant stars. Stars that the Empire had once called theirs. They’d had so much … and somehow it had all slipped through their fingers. “Tell them,” he said quietly, “that it’s time to send an emissary to the New Republic.

“To discuss the terms of our surrender.”

CHAPTER

2

The Millennium Falcon’s console gave a final proximity beep, jolting Han Solo out of a light doze. Uncrossing his arms, he stretched tired muscles and gave the displays a quick look. Almost there. “Come on, Chewie, look alive,” he said, giving the Wookiee beside him a couple of quick slaps with the back of his fingertips.

Chewbacca came awake with a jolt, rumbling a question. “We’re here, that’s what,” Han told him, widening his eyes a second to clear them. Getting a grip on the hyperdrive levers, he watched the timer count down. “Stand by the sub-light engines. Here we go.”

The counter went to zero, and he eased the levers forward. Outside the Falcon’s canopy, the mottled sky of hyperspace turned to starlines, which collapsed into stars, and they were there. “Right on target,” he commented, nodding toward the bluish-red planetary half circle ahead of them.

Beside him, Chewbacca growled. “Yeah, well, it’s always crowded around Iphigin,” Han said, eyeing the hundreds of tiny drive glows moving around the planet like some crazy multrille dance. “Main transfer point for this sector and at least two others. Probably why Puffers set up the meeting for here—you don’t start shooting if some of your own stuff might get in the way.”

Chewbacca growled in annoyance. “Well, excuse me,” Han apologized sarcastically. “President Gavrisom, then. Didn’t know you were such a big fan.”

There was a beep from the comm. Slapping a massive hand at the switch, Chewbacca roared out an acknowledgment.

“Hey, Chewie,” Luke Skywalker’s voice came over the speaker. “You’re right on schedule. The Falcon must be running smoothly for a change.”

“Nothing broken but the comm switch,” Han grumbled, throwing a scowl at the Wookiee. “Chewie just tried to flatten it. Where are you, Luke?”

“Just coming in nightside,” Luke said. “What’s wrong with Chewie?”

“Nothing much,” Han said. “Small difference of political opinion, that’s all.”

“Ah,” Luke said knowingly. “Been calling President Gavrisom ‘Puffers’ again, have you?”

“Now, don’t you start,” Han growled, glaring at the comm speaker.

Chewbacca rumbled a question. “Well, for one thing, he never seems to do anything except talk,” Han said.

“That’s what Calibops are best at,” Luke pointed out. “Face it, Han: words are the tool of the task these days.”

“I know, I know,” Han said, making a face. “Leia’s been pounding it into me forever.” His voice drifted into an almost unconscious parody of his wife’s. “We’re not the Rebel Alliance anymore, with a handful of people running the whole show. We’re negotiators and arbitrators and we’re here to help system and sector governments be all nice and friendly to each other.”

“Is that really the way Leia put it?”

“So I paraphrased a little.” Han frowned out the Falcon’s canopy, glanced back at his displays. “Is that you in the X-wing?”

“That’s me,” Luke confirmed. “Why? You think I’ve forgotten how to fly one?”

“No, I just thought you usually used one of the academy’s Lambda shuttles these days.”

“That’s because I’m usually flying with other people,” Luke said. “Students and such. Artoo was with me on Yavin doing some data sifting, so when your call came we just hopped in the old snubfighter and headed out. What’s this all about?”

“What’s it always about at this end of the Core?” Han countered sourly. “The Diamala and Ishori are at it again.”

Luke sighed, a faint hiss on the speaker. “Let me guess. Commerce and resource-sharing dispute?”

“Close,” Han said. “This time it’s shipping security. The Diamala don’t like having to rely on local patrol ships when they’re coming into Ishori ports. The Ishori, on the other hand, don’t want armed Diamala ships coming into their systems.”

“Sounds typical,” Luke said. “Gavrisom have any ideas on how to solve this one?”

“If he did, he didn’t mention them,” Han said. “He just called me on Wayland and said to flare it on over here. Help them be all nice and friendly to each other, I guess.”

“Gavrisom asked you to arbitrate?”

Han pursed his lips. “Well … not exactly. He kind of thinks Leia’s here with us.”

“Ah.”

“Look, Luke, I am official liaison to the Independent Shippers Association,” Han reminded him testily. “It’s not like I haven’t done this sort of thing before. And Leia hasn’t had any kind of real vacation in a long time—she and the kids need some time off together. And just for once, I’m not going to let her get dragged away on some stupid diplomatic thing, especially when she’s supposed to be on a leave of absence. She deserves better.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Luke conceded. “It’s not like her last few times away from the Presidency have been exactly restful. Though personally, I can’t imagine Wayland being very high on anyone’s list of resort spots.”

“You’d be surprised,” Han said. “It’s not like when we went tromping through the forest on the way to Mount Tantiss. Not with all the Noghri who’ve settled there.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Luke said. “So what can I do to help?”

“I’ve got a plan worked out,” Han said. “You know how Diamala get when they think: all icy calm and unemotional, right? Well, that’s kind of like your deep Jedi stuff, so you can go talk to their delegation. The Ishori are just the opposite—they can’t discuss anything without getting all worked up and screaming their heads off at each other.”

“But they don’t mean anything by it,” Luke put in. “It’s all hormonal—a ‘fight or think’ response, I think it’s called.”

“Yeah, I know, I know,” Han said, feeling a flicker of annoyance at the lecture. Jedi Master or not, Luke still didn’t have half of Han’s experience in flying around the galaxy and dealing with other species. “Point is, they can shout all they want without bothering a Wookiee any. So Chewie will talk to their group. Then the three of us get together, we come up with a fix, and we’re done.”

“It’s an inventive approach—I’ll give it that much,” Luke said, his tone thoughtful. “Personally, I’d still rather have Leia here. She’s got a genuine gift for conciliation.”

“All the more reason for us to take this one for her,” Han said darkly. “The way things are going out there, Gavrisom and the High Council could have her running around stomping out these scrub fires for the rest of her life.”

“The New Republic does seem to be having more than its share of growing pains,” Luke agreed soberly. “Maybe it’s a normal adjustment to the collapse of Imperial domination.”

“That, or what’s left of the Empire is stirring the soup,” Han said with a grimace. “Come on, let’s get down there. The sooner we get started, the sooner we can go home.”

They put down in a double-sized docking bay that had been cleared for them in the capital city’s north spaceport complex. Han and Chewbacca were standing at the foot of the Falcon’s landing ramp, talking to a triad of white-maned Diamala, as Luke maneuvered his X-wing to an only slightly out-of-practice landing.

And even before he cut the repulsorlifts, he could sense that there was trouble.

“You stay with the ship, Artoo,” he ordered the droid as he popped the canopy and took off his flight helmet. “Keep an eye on things, okay?”

Artoo gave an affirming warble. Dropping his helmet and gloves onto the seat, Luke vaulted lightly over the X-wing’s side to the ground and walked over to the group waiting by the Falcon. The three Diamala, he noted uneasily, were watching him closely … and their expressions did not strike him as particularly friendly.

“Greetings,” he said, nodding politely, as he reached Han’s side. “I’m Luke Skywalker.”

The Diamal standing closest to Han stirred. “We greet you in return, Jedi Master Skywalker,” he said, his voice flat and emotionless, his leathery face unreadable. “But we do not welcome you to this conference.”

Luke blinked. He glanced at Han, caught the tightness in the other’s face and thoughts, then looked back at the Diamal. “I don’t understand.”

“Then I will make it clearer,” the alien said, his left ear twitching once. “We do not wish you to be part of these negotiations. We do not intend to discuss any of this matter with you. We would prefer, in fact, that you leave this system entirely.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Han put in. “This is my friend, all right? I asked him here, and he’s come a long way to help.”

“We do not wish his help.”

“Well, I wish it,” Han shot back. “And I’m not going to tell him to leave.”

There was a moment of awkward silence. Luke kept his eyes on the Diamala, wondering if he should unilaterally solve the disagreement by simply leaving. If they really didn’t want him here …

The head Diamal twitched an ear again. “Very well,” he said. “The Jedi Master may stay. But only as your adviser, to be absent from actual negotiations. The Diamala will not discuss these matters in his presence.”

Han grimaced, but he nodded. “If that’s the way you want it, fine. Why don’t you show us to our quarters, and we’ll get started.”

The Diamal gestured, and one of his companions handed Chewbacca a datapad. “You have been given a suite in the spaceport control complex,” he said. “The map will show you the way. The Ishori are already assembled in the meeting chamber. We will begin when you are ready.”

In unison, the three aliens turned and headed across the landing bay toward one of the stairways leading out. “Well, that was interesting,” Luke said quietly as he watched them go. “Any idea what that was all about?”

“Yeah,” Han said. “Well, sort of.”

“Sort of? What does that mean?”

Han threw Luke a sideways look, his expression and thoughts both oddly troubled. “Look, let’s forget it for right now, okay? They don’t—well, they don’t like you. Just leave it at that.”

Luke gazed at the backs of the departing Diamala, watching their shimmering manes fluttering slightly in the breeze. He didn’t have to leave it at that, of course; he could stretch out right now with the Force and draw out the necessary knowledge. Surely whatever the problem was had to be some kind of misunderstanding, and he could hardly help clear it up unless he knew what it was. Yes, that was what he should do.

And yet …

He looked at Han. Han was looking back at him, the troubled expression still on his face. Perhaps wondering if Luke would do exactly that.

No. As Han had asked, he would let it go. For now. “All right,” he said. “What’s the new strategy?”

“Chewie and me’ll handle the talks,” Han said, turning to face the Wookiee. Even with his expression hidden, there was no mistaking the flicker of quiet relief in his emotional state. “If you don’t mind waiting until we’re finished, maybe you can help us figure out how to settle the deal.”

“Sure.” Luke looked in the direction the Diamala had gone. “He said I could be your adviser. So I guess I’ll advise.”

He looked back to find Han studying his face. “You don’t like this, do you?” the older man said.

Luke shrugged. “Well, it’s not exactly the high point of my day,” he conceded. “It’s always a little embarrassing to offer to help someone and get turned down. But I suppose a little embarrassment never hurt anyone.”

“Yeah,” Han said. “Sometimes it even helps.”

It was, Luke thought, a rather odd thing to say. But before he could ask about it, Han had stepped to Chewbacca’s side and taken the datapad the Diamal had given him. “You figured out where we’re supposed to go?” he asked.

The Wookiee rumbled an affirmative, pointing a shaggy finger at the datapad display. “Yeah, okay,” Han said, handing the datapad back. “Lead the way.” He threw Luke a lopsided grin. “There’s nothing like a Wookiee to get people to move out of the way.”

“You realize there’s one other possibility,” Luke said quietly as they set off across the docking bay. “They may be trying to split us up for some kind of attack.”

Han shook his head. “I don’t think that’s it.”

“I’d still like to keep an eye on your meetings,” Luke persisted. “I should be able to follow your presence from wherever they put us. That way, I can get there right away if you need me.”

“Just my presence, though, right?”

Luke frowned at him. “Of course. I wouldn’t try to read your mind without permission. You know that.”

“Yeah,” Han said. “Sure.”

As it turned out, it wasn’t necessary for Luke to use the Force in order to keep track of the proceedings. Their Iphigini hosts had somehow learned about the restrictions the Diamala had put on his attendance, and by the time Han and Chewbacca began the negotiations they had a monitor line set up between Luke’s suite and the conference room, allowing him to directly watch the meeting.

It took him two hours to realize that the talks were getting nowhere. It was another hour before Han came to the same conclusion. Or at least was willing to admit it out loud.

“They’re crazy,” Han growled, tossing a handful of datacards onto a low center table as he and Chewbacca joined Luke in the suite. “The whole bunch of them. Completely crazy.”

“I wouldn’t say crazy,” Luke told him. “Stiff-faced stubborn, maybe, but not crazy.”

“Thanks,” Han growled. “That’s real helpful.”

Chewbacca rumbled a warning. “I am not losing my temper,” Han informed him stiffly. “I am under perfect control.”

Luke looked at his friend, carefully hiding a smile. It was like the old Han again, the brashly confident smuggler he and Obi-Wan had first met back in the Mos Eisley cantina. Charging cheerfully into unknown situations, and more often than not finding himself up to his neck in trouble. It was nice to know that even as a respectable family man and responsible official of the New Republic, Han hadn’t lost all of the recklessness that had once driven his friends almost as crazy as it had the Imperials. Up to his neck in trouble was where Han functioned best. Perhaps, through sheer habit, it was where he was most comfortable.

“All right,” Han said, dropping into a chair across the table from Luke. “Let’s think this through. There’s got to be a way out.”

“How about trying a third-party approach?” Luke suggested. “Maybe the New Republic could run security for Diamalan freighters when they’re in Ishori systems.”

Chewbacca rumbled the obvious problem. “Yes, I know we don’t have a lot of ships to spare,” Luke said. “But the High Council ought to be able to scrounge up something.”

“Not enough to do any good,” Han said, shaking his head. “The Diamala do an awful lot of shipping, and I don’t think you realize how thin our hardware is spread out there.”

“It would still be cheaper in the long run than whatever it would cost to pull the Diamala and Ishori apart if they start shooting at each other again,” Luke argued.

“Probably,” Han conceded, toying with one of the datacards. “Problem is, I don’t think the Diamala would accept the offer even if we had the ships to spare. I don’t think they’re ready to trust anyone else with their security.”

“Not even the New Republic?” Luke asked.

Han shook his head, his eyes darting surreptitiously to Luke’s face for a moment, then just as quickly shifting away. “No.”

Luke frowned. In that moment he’d caught another flicker of the same troubled mood he’d felt back by the Falcon. “I see.”

“Yeah,” Han said, all brisk business again. “Anybody got any other ideas?”

Luke glanced at Chewbacca, searching for a diplomatic way to say this. But there really wasn’t one. “You know, Han, it’s not too late to bring Leia in on this. We could call Wayland and ask the Noghri to bring her here.”

“No,” Han said firmly.

Chewbacca growled agreement with Luke. “I said no,” Han repeated, glaring at the Wookiee. “We can handle this ourselves.”

There was a trill from the console built into the table. Luke looked at Han, but he was still engaged in a glaring contest with Chewbacca. Reaching out with the Force, he keyed the switch. “Skywalker,” he said.

On the hologram pad in the middle of the table the quarter-sized image of a young Iphigini appeared, his braided lip-beard not quite covering up the throat insignia of the Iphigin Spaceport Directorate. “I apologize for disturbing your deliberations, Jedi Skywalker,” he said, his voice far more melodious than the craggy face and physique would have suggested. “But we’ve received notification from New Republic Commerce that a Sarkan freighter is on its way here under a Customs Red alert.”

Luke looked at Han. Customs Red: a warning that there was illegal and highly dangerous cargo aboard. “Did Commerce identify the captain and crew?”

“No,” the Iphigini said. “A follow-up transmission was promised, but it has not yet arrived. The suspect freighter is already approaching Iphigin, and we have dispatched the bulk of our inner-system customs frigates and patrol craft to intercept. It was thought that as New Republic representatives, you and Captain Solo might wish to observe the procedure.”

There was a sudden change in Han’s emotions. Luke looked over, to see his friend gazing thoughtfully off into space. “We appreciate the invitation,” he said, looking back at the hologram. “At the moment, though—”

“Where’s this Sarkan coming in from?” Han interrupted.

“Sector Three-Besh.” The Iphigini’s image was replaced by a schematic of Iphigin and the space around it. A red dot blinked a few degrees off a line connecting Iphigin to its sun; nearly twenty blinking green dots were converging on it from the planet and nearby space. “As you can see, we have attempted to send a force adequate to overcome any resistance.”

“Yeah,” Han said slowly. “And you’re sure it’s a Sarkan?”

“Its transponder ID has been checked,” the Iphigini told him. “The ship itself is a Corellian Action-Keynne XII, rarely seen in this part of the Core except under Sarkan authority.”

Luke whistled soundlessly. He’d been given a tour of an Action-Keynne XII once, and had come away thoroughly impressed by both the touches of inner luxury and the multiple tiers of outer weaponry. Designed to transport the most valuable of cargoes, it very nearly qualified as a capital warship.

Which was probably why the Iphiginis were sending so many ships to intercept it. If its captain decided not to cooperate, the Iphiginis were in for a fight.

“Sounds like a Sarkan, all right,” Han agreed, his voice a little bit too casual. “You go ahead and do your intercept. Maybe we’ll come up later and have a look.”

“Thank you, Captain Solo,” the Iphigini said. “I will alert the officials that you will be joining them. Farewell.”

The hologram vanished. “Don’t count on it,” Han muttered, gathering up the datacards from where he’d tossed them on the table and thumbing rapidly through them. “Chewie, get over to that console—see if you can pull up a full listing of the traffic pattern out there.”

“What’s going on?” Luke asked, frowning at Han and trying to read his mood. Suddenly all the earlier frustration was gone, leaving a sort of sly excitement in its place. “You know who the smuggler is?”

“He’s not a smuggler,” Han said. He found the card he was looking for and slid it into his datapad. “You got it, Chewie? Great. Punch it into the hologram pod over here.”

Chewbacca growled acknowledgment, and a more complete Iphigin schematic appeared over the table. Han peered at it, then looked down at the datapad in his hand. “Great. Okay, come here and give me a hand with this.”

“What is it?” Luke asked.

“This is the ground station list and the orbit data for their Golan I Defense Platform,” Han told him, waving the datapad as Chewbacca lumbered to his side again. “Let’s see …”

For a minute the two huddled close together, peering alternately at the hologram and Han’s datapad and conversing in low tones. Luke studied the schematic, watching the color-coded freighters and other ships moving in and out and wondering what this was all about.

“Okay,” Han said at last. “That’s where they’ll come in. So all we need to do is sit somewhere in the middle of that cone and wait. Great. Get down to the Falcon and get ’er ready. I’ll be right there.”

Chewbacca rumbled an acknowledgment and headed out the door at a fast Wookiee trot. “Do I get to know what’s going on?” Luke asked.

“Sure,” Han said, gathering up the datacards and packing them away again. “We’ve got pirates on the way.”

“Pirates?” Luke blinked. “Here?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“I didn’t think pirate gangs operated this far into the Core, that’s all,” Luke said. “So the Sarkan is just a feint?”

“Yeah,” Han said, getting to his feet. “Only he doesn’t know it. It’s an old trick: you call an alert on some ship coming in sunside, then hit a nightside target while Customs is busy half a planet away. The only tricky part is making sure the ground and orbit defenses can’t get to you. Plus figuring out how to fake the alert in the first place. Come on, let’s go.”

“Shouldn’t we alert the Iphigini first?” Luke asked, reaching for the comm.

“What for?” Han said. “You and Chewie and me ought to be able to handle it.”

“What, a whole pirate gang?”

“Sure, why not? The only gangs working this sector are small ones—two or three ships, tops.” Han’s lip twitched. “Actually, you probably won’t even need us.”

“I appreciate your confidence,” Luke said icily. “But I’d just as soon not take them all on myself, thank you.”

Han held up his hands. “Hey. No offense.”

“None taken.” Luke gestured to the hologram and the patrol ships weaving their net around the incoming Sarkan freighter. “And I still think we ought to call in the Iphigini.”

“We can’t,” Han said. “The pirates probably have a spotter already here. Any sign of an alert, and they’ll just call off the raid. We’d end up looking stupid, and Diamalan opinion of the New Republic would sink a little deeper. The High Council will have my hide if that happens.”

Luke sighed. “Things were a lot easier when Alliance military activity wasn’t always getting tangled up in politics.”

“Tell me about it,” Han growled. “Look, we’ve got to get going. You in or out?”

Luke shrugged. “I’m in,” he said, pulling out his corn-link. “Artoo?”

• • •

THE NEW JEDI ORDER
(25–40 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

A quarter century after A New Hope and the destruction of the Death Star, the galaxy is free of wide-scale conflicts—but the New Republic must contend with many regional brushfires. And Luke Skywalker’s Jedi Order faces its own growing pains: Some New Republic officials want to rein in the Jedi, leading Luke to wonder if the Jedi Council should be restored.

On the planet Rhommamool, Leia Organa Solo, Mara Jade Skywalker, and Jaina Solo meet with a mysterious rabble-rouser named Nom Anor. Anor rejects Leia’s diplomatic entreaties, but she’s more disturbed by what she finds when she reaches out to him in the Force: nothing. It’s as if he isn’t there.

Anor is a secret agent of the Yuuzhan Vong, powerful warriors from another galaxy who regard technology as blasphemous, relying on biological constructs to serve as their starships, weapons, and communicators. Long ago, a devastating war destroyed much of the Yuuzhan Vong’s galaxy and cut them off from the Force, sending their clans across the intergalactic void in search of a new home. Now they are at the edge of the Star Wars galaxy, ready to invade.

As head of the New Jedi Order, Luke is central to the galaxy’s defense; Leia’s skills as a former Chief of State and respected political adviser are also called on. The five-year war shakes the galaxy to its foundations. Technologically advanced worlds within the Yuuzhan Vong invasion corridor are subjected to the newcomers’ biotechnology and altered into strange hybrids combining what they had been with the new Yuuzhan Vong ecosystem. Entire species are enslaved—or eradicated. The New Republic is ill prepared to meet the extragalactic threat, with regional rivalries, political dissension, and concern over the Imperial Remnant limiting the effectiveness of its military response. Wrangling in the Senate snarls the war plans, as do disagreements between planetary fleets and armies, while assassination and war thin the ranks of the New Republic’s leaders. Officers and pilots who battled for so long against the Empire, such as Admiral Ackbar and Wedge Antilles, work feverishly to figure out how to outmaneuver their new enemies.

The invasion sorely challenges the Jedi, as well. Some take it upon themselves to meet the Yuuzhan Vong threat head-on, disdaining foot-dragging by politicians—and some of those skirt the dark side of the Force, giving in to their anger and fear as the Yuuzhan Vong ruin worlds and lives. The Yuuzhan Vong come to recognize the Jedi as the biggest threat to their plans, and begin hunting them down using New Republic traitors and bioengineered killers. At the forefront of the war against the Jedi are the Solo children—now teenagers and Jedi Knights in their own right. By the time the war is over, the Solo family will never be the same again.

The other heroes of the Rebellion, too, face personal struggles and tragedies. Luke fears for the life of his wife, Mara—infected with a Yuuzhan Vong–engineered disease—and for that of his newborn son, Ben, hunted by the Jedi’s enemies. Han and Leia’s losses are even harder to bear, as their oldest friends and children risk everything to stop the Yuuzhan Vong.

If you’re a reader looking to explore the epic tale of the Yuuzhan Vong war and the era of Luke’s New Jedi Order, the best place to start is with the first book in the series:

• The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime, by R. A. Salvatore: The first novel in the series introduces the pitiless Yuuzhan Vong and immediately makes clear that the heroes of the Rebellion are in mortal danger.

Read on for an excerpt from a Star Wars Legends novel set in the New Jedi Order era.

ONE
Fraying Fabric

It was too peaceful out here, surrounded by the vacuum of space and with only the continual hum of the twin ion drives breaking the silence. While she loved these moments of peace, Leia Organa Solo also viewed them as an emotional trap, for she had been around long enough to understand the turmoil she would find at the end of this ride.

Like the end of every ride, lately.

Leia paused a moment before she entered the bridge of the Jade Sabre, the new shuttle her brother, Luke, had built for his wife, Mara Jade. Before her, and apparently oblivious to her, Mara and Jaina sat comfortably, side by side at the controls, talking and smiling. Leia focused on her daughter, Jaina, sixteen years old, but with the mature and calm demeanor of a veteran pilot. Jaina looked a lot like Leia, with long dark hair and brown eyes contrasting sharply with her smooth and creamy skin. Indeed, Leia saw much of herself in the girl—no, not girl, Leia corrected her own thoughts, but young woman. That same sparkle behind the brown eyes, mischievous, adventurous, determined.

That notion set Leia back a bit, for she recognized then that when she looked at Jaina, she was seeing not a reflection of herself but an image of the girl she had once been. A twinge of sadness caught her as she considered her own life now: a diplomat, a bureaucrat, a mediator, always trying to calm things down, always working for the peace and prosperity of the New Republic. Did she miss the days when the most common noise around her had been the sharp blare of a blaster or the hiss of a lightsaber? Was she sorry that those wild times had been replaced by the droning of the ion drives and the sharp bickering of one pride-wounded emissary after another?

Perhaps, Leia had to admit, but in looking at Jaina and those simmering dark eyes, she could take vicarious pleasure.

Another twinge—jealousy?—caught her by surprise, as Mara and Jaina erupted into laughter over some joke Leia had not overheard. But she pushed the absurd notion far from her mind as she considered her sister-in-law, Luke’s wife and Jaina’s tutor—at Jaina’s own request—in the ways of the Jedi. Mara was not a substitute mother for Jaina, but rather a big sister, and when Leia considered the fires that constantly burned in Mara’s green eyes, she understood that the woman could give to Jaina things that Leia could not, and that those lessons and that friendship would prove valuable indeed to her daughter. And so she forced aside her jealousy and was merely glad that Jaina had found such a friend.

She started onto the bridge, but paused again, sensing movement behind her. She knew before looking that it was Bolpuhr, her Noghri bodyguard, and barely gave him a glance as he glided to the side, moving so easily and gracefully that he reminded her of a lace curtain drifting lazily in a gentle breeze. She had accepted young Bolpuhr as her shadow for just that reason, for he was as unobtrusive as any bodyguard could be. Leia marveled at the young Noghri, at how his grace and silence covered a perfectly deadly fighting ability.

She held up her hand, indicating that Bolpuhr should remain out here, and though his usually emotionless face did flash Leia a quick expression of disappointment, she knew he would obey. Bolpuhr, and all the Noghri, would do anything Leia asked of them. He would jump off a cliff or dive into the hot end of an ion engine for her, and the only time she ever saw any sign of discontentment with her orders was when Bolpuhr thought she might be placing him in a difficult position to properly defend her.

As he was thinking now, Leia understood, though why in the world Bolpuhr would fear for her safety on her sister-in-law’s private shuttle was beyond her. Sometimes dedication could be taken a bit too far.

With a nod to Bolpuhr, she turned back to the bridge and crossed through the open doorway. “How much longer?” she asked, and was amused to see both Jaina and Mara jump in surprise at her sudden appearance.

In answer, Jaina increased the magnification on the forward screen, and instead of the unremarkable dots of light, there appeared an image of two planets, one mostly blue and white, the other reddish in hue, seemingly so close together that Leia wondered how it was that the blue-and-white one, the larger of the pair, had not grasped the other in its gravity and turned it into a moon. Parked halfway between them, perhaps a half a million kilometers from either, deck lights glittering in the shadows of the blue-and-white planet, loomed a Mon Calamari battle cruiser, the Mediator, one of the newest ships in the New Republic fleet.

“They’re at their closest,” Mara observed, referring to the planets.

“I beg your indulgence,” came a melodic voice from the doorway, and the protocol droid C-3PO walked into the room. “But I do not believe that is correct.”

“Close enough,” Mara said. She turned to Jaina. “Both Rhommamool and Osarian are ground based, technologically—”

“Rhommamool almost exclusively so!” C-3PO quickly added, drawing a scowl from all three of the women. Oblivious, he rambled on. “Even Osarian’s fleet must be considered marginal, at best. Unless, of course, one is using the Pantang Scale of Aero-techno Advancement, which counts even a simple landspeeder as highly as it would a Star Destroyer. Perfectly ridiculous scale.”

“Thank you, Threepio,” Leia said, her tone indicating that she had heard more than enough.

“They’ve both got missiles that can hit each other from this close distance, though,” Mara continued.

“Oh, yes!” the droid exclaimed. “And given the proximity of their relative elliptical orbits—”

“Thank you, Threepio,” Leia said.

“—they will remain within striking distance for some time,” C-3PO continued without missing a beat. “Months, at least. In fact, they will be even closer in two standard weeks, the closest they will be to each other for a decade to come.”

“Thank you, Threepio!” Mara and Leia said together.

“And the closest they have been for a decade previous,” the droid had to slip in, as the women turned back to their conversation.

Mara shook her head, trying to remember her original point to Jaina. “That’s why your mother chose to come out now.”

“You’re expecting a fight?” Jaina asked, and neither Leia nor Mara missed the sparkle in her eye.

“The Mediator will keep them behaving,” Leia said hopefully. Indeed, the battle cruiser was an impressive warship, an updated and more heavily armed and armored version of the Mon Calamari star cruiser.

Mara looked back to the screen and shook her head, unconvinced. “It’ll take more than a show of force to stop this catastrophe,” she replied.

“Indeed, it has been escalating, by all reports,” C-3PO piped up. “It started as a simple mining dispute over mineral rights, but now the rhetoric is more appropriate for some kind of a holy crusade.”

“It’s the leader on Rhommamool,” Mara remarked. “Nom Anor. He’s reached down and grabbed his followers by their most basic instincts, weaving the dispute against Osarian into a more general matter of tyranny and oppression. Don’t underestimate him.”

“I can’t begin to give you a full list of tyrants like Nom Anor that I’ve dealt with,” Leia said with a resigned shrug.

“I have that very list available,” C-3PO blurted. “Tonkoss Rathba of—”

“Thank you, Threepio,” Leia said, too politely.

“Why, of course, Princess Leia,” the droid replied. “I do so like to be of service. Now where was I? Oh, yes. Tonkoss Rathba of—”

“Not now, Threepio,” Leia insisted, then to Mara, she added, “I’ve seen his type often.”

“Not like him,” Mara replied, somewhat softly, and the sudden weakness in her voice reminded Leia and Jaina that Mara, despite her nearly constant bravado and overabundance of energy, was seriously ill, with a strange and thankfully rare disease that had killed dozens of others and against which the best doctors in the New Republic had proven completely helpless. Of those who had contracted the molecular disorder, only Mara and one other remained alive, and that other person, being studied intently on Coruscant, was fast dying.

“Daluba,” C-3PO went on. “And of course, there was Icknya—”

Leia started to turn to the droid, hoping to politely but firmly shut him up, but Jaina’s cry stopped her abruptly and swung her back to face the screen.

“Incoming ships!” Jaina announced, her voice full of surprise. The telltale blips had appeared on her sensor viewer as if from nowhere.

“Four of them,” Mara confirmed. Even as she spoke, the warning buzzers began to go off. “From Osarian.” She turned her curious expression up to Leia. “They know who we are?”

Leia nodded. “And they know why I’ve come.”

“Then they should know to leave us alone,” Jaina reasoned.

Leia nodded again, but understood better. She had come to the system not to meet with the Osarians—not at first, at least—but with their principal rival, Nom Anor, the cult figure stirring up trouble on Rhommamool. “Tell them to back off,” she instructed Mara.

“Politely?” Mara asked, smiling, and with that dangerous twinkle in her eyes.

“New Republic shuttle,” a halting voice crackled over the comm. “This is Captain Grappa of Osarian First-Force.”

With a flick of a switch, Mara put an image of the captain on the viewscreen, and Leia sighed as the green skin, spiny head ridge, and tapirlike snout came into view.

“Wonderful,” she remarked sarcastically.

“The Osarians have hired Rodians?” Jaina asked.

“Nothing like a few mercenaries to quiet things down,” Leia replied dryly.

“Oh, dear me,” C-3PO remarked, and he shuffled aside nervously.

“You come with us,” Grappa insisted, his multifaceted eyes sparkling eagerly. “To Osa-Prime.”

“Seems the Osarians want to talk with you first,” Mara said.

“They’re afraid that my meeting with Nom Anor will only heighten his stature, both among the Rhommamoolians and throughout the sector,” Leia reasoned, a notion not without credence, and one that she had debated endlessly before making the decision to come here.

“Whatever the reason, they’re closing fast,” Mara replied. Both she and Jaina looked to Leia for instructions, for while the Jade Sabre was Mara’s ship, this was Leia’s mission.

“Princess Leia?” an obviously alarmed C-3PO asked.

Leia sat down in the chair behind Mara, intently studying the screen, which Jaina had switched back to a normal space view. The four approaching fighters were clearly visible.

“Lose them,” she said determinedly, a request that neither of the pilots needed to hear twice. Indeed, Mara had been eager to put the shuttle, with its powerful twin engines and state-of-the-art maneuvering systems, through a real test.

Green eyes sparkling, smile wide, Mara reached for the controls, but then retracted her hands and put them on her lap. “You heard her, Jaina,” she said.

Jaina’s mouth dropped open; so did Leia’s.

“You mean it?” Jaina asked.

Mara’s only reply was an almost bored expression, along with a slight yawn, as if this whole thing was no big deal, and certainly nothing that Jaina couldn’t easily handle.

“Yes!” Jaina whispered, clenching her fists, wearing a smile nearly wide enough to take in her ears. She rubbed her hands together, then reached out to the right, rolling her fingers over the floating-ball control of the inertial compensator. “Strap in,” she ordered, and she dialed it down to 95 percent, as fighter pilots often did so that they could gain a tactile feel to the movements of their ships. Reading the g’s, Jaina had heard it called, and she always preferred flying that way, where fast turns and mighty acceleration could push her back in her seat.

“Not too much,” Leia said with concern.

But her daughter was in her element now, Leia knew, and she’d push the shuttle to its limits. Leia felt the lean as Jaina veered right, angling away from the approaching ships.

“If you run, we shoot you down!” came the uneven voice of Grappa.

“Z-95 Headhunters,” Mara said derisively of the closing craft, an antiquated starfighter, and she flipped off the comm switch and looked back at Leia. “Can’t shoot what you can’t catch,” she explained. “Kick them in,” she added to Jaina, motioning to the primary thrusters, thinking that a burst of the powerful engines would shoot the Jade Sabre right past the befuddled Rodians and their outdated starfighters.

Even as she spoke, though, two more blips appeared on the sensors, streaking out from the shadows around Rhommamool, angling right in line with the Jade Sabre.

“Mara,” Leia said with concern. At that, Mara did reach for the controls. But only for a moment, and then she looked Jaina right in the eye and nodded for the young woman to proceed.

Leia lurched forward in her seat, held back only by the belt, as Jaina reversed throttle and kicked the etheric rudder right. There came a metallic thump behind them—C-3PO hitting the wall, Leia guessed.

Even as the Jade Sabre came to a sudden halt, nose turned starboard, Jaina pumped it out to full throttle and kicked the rudder back to the left, then hard right, fishtailing the ship about in a brutal one-eighty, then working the rudder hard and somewhat choppy in straightening out her direct retreat. As they turned, a laser cannon blast cut across their bow.

“All right, the first four are on our tail,” Mara instructed calmly. The Jade Sabre jolted, hit aft, a blow the shields easily held back.

“Try a—” Mara started to say, but she lost the words, and nearly her lunch, as Jaina pulled a snap roll right, and then another right behind it.

“Oh, we’ll be killed!” came C-3PO’s cry from the doorway, and Leia managed to turn her head to see the droid leaning in against the metal jamb, and then to see him fly away, with a pitiful cry, as Jaina kicked the etheric rudder again, putting the ship into another sudden fishtail.

A pair of Headhunters streaked past the viewscreen, but just for a split second, for Jaina vectored away at a different angle, and at single-engine full throttle, pressing Leia back in her seat. Leia wanted to say something to Jaina then, some words of encouragement or advice, but found her words stuck in her throat. And not for any g forces.

It was the sight of Jaina, the fire in her brown eyes, the determined set of her jaw, the sheer concentration. At that moment, Leia knew.

Her daughter was a woman now, and with all the grit of her father and mother combined.

Mara glanced over her right shoulder, between Jaina and Leia, and both followed her lead long enough to see that two of the initial four had altered course accordingly and were fast closing, laser cannons blasting away.

“Hold on,” a confident Jaina warned, and she pulled back the stick, lifting the Jade Sabre’s nose, then shoved it forward, dropping the shuttle into a sudden, inverted loop.

“We’re doomed!” C-3PO cried from the hallway—the hallway ceiling, Leia knew.

Halfway around, Jaina broke the loop with a snap roll, then kicked her into a fishtail and a barrel roll, bringing her about to nearly their original course, but with the initial four behind them. Now she did kick in both ion drives, as if to use sheer speed to split the gap between the two incoming fighters.

Both angled out suddenly, then turned back in, widening that escape route but giving them a longer shooting angle at the shuttle, and an easier turn to pursue.

“They’re good,” Mara warned, but, like Leia, she found her words lost in her throat, as Jaina, teeth gritted to fight back the g’s, reversed throttle.

“Princess—” The plaintive cry from the corridor ended abruptly in a loud crash.

“Coming in hot!” Mara cried, noting the fighter fast approaching to port.

Jaina didn’t, couldn’t even hear her; she had turned inward now, was feeling the Force coursing through her, was registering every movement of her enemies and reacting instinctively, playing the game three moves ahead. Before Mara had even begun to speak, Jaina had hit the forward attitude adjustment jets, lifting the nose, then she pumped the throttle and kicked the rudder, lifting the Jade Sabre and bringing her nose about to starboard, to directly face the other incoming Headhunter.

And that eager Rodian did come in at them, and hard, and the Jade Sabre’s defensive array screeched and lit up, warning of a lock-on.

“Jaina!” Leia cried.

“He’s got us!” Mara added.

But then the closer ship, coming from port, passed right under the Jade Sabre, and Jaina fired the repulsorlifts, bouncing the Jade Sabre up and sending the poor Headhunter into a wild, spinning roll.

The closing ship from starboard let fly its concussion missile, but it, and the Headhunter, zipped right underneath the elevated Jade Sabre.

Before the three women could even begin to catch their breath, another ship streaked in, an X-wing, the new XJ version of the starfighter, its own laser cannons blasting away from its wingtips. Not at the Jade Sabre, though, but at the Headhunter that had just gone past.

“Who is that?” Leia asked, and Jaina, equally curious, brought the Jade Sabre about hard.

The Headhunter snap-rolled left and dived, but the far superior X-wing stayed on her, lasers scoring hit after hit, depleting her shields and then blasting her apart into a million pieces.

“A Jedi,” Mara and Jaina said together, and Leia, when she paused to collect the Force sensations about her, concurred.

“Fast to the Mediator,” Leia instructed her daughter, and Jaina swung the Jade Sabre about yet again.

“I didn’t know there were any Jedi in the sector,” Leia said to Mara, who could only shrug, equally at a loss.

“Another one’s out,” Jaina informed them, watching the blips on her sensor screen. “And two others are vectoring away.”

“They want no part of a Jedi showing a willingness to shoot back,” Mara remarked.

“Maybe Rodians are smarter than I thought,” Leia said dryly. “Smooth it out,” she instructed her daughter, unbuckling and climbing unsteadily to her feet.

Jaina reluctantly dialed the inertial compensator back to full.

“Only one pursuing,” Jaina informed them as Leia made her way to the door.

“The X-wing,” Mara added, and Leia nodded.

In the hallway outside the bridge, Leia found C-3PO inverted and against the wall, his feet sticking up in the air, his head crunched forward so that his chin was tight against his chest.

“You have to learn to hold on,” Leia said to him, helping him upright. She glanced across the way to Bolpuhr as she spoke, to find the Noghri still standing calmly in the exact spot she had assigned him.

Somehow, she wasn’t amazed.

Jaina took the Jade Sabre at a swift but steady pace toward the distant Mediator. She checked often for pursuit, but it quickly became obvious that the Rodians in their outdated Headhunters wanted no part of this fight.

Leia rejoined them a short while later, to find Jaina in complete control and Mara resting back in her seat, eyes closed. Even when Jaina asked her aunt a question about docking procedures, the woman didn’t respond, didn’t even open her eyes.

“They’ll guide you in,” Leia interjected, and sure enough, a voice from the Mediator crackled over the opened comm, giving explicit directions for entry vector.

Jaina took her in, and Jaina took her down, easily—and after the display of flying she had just given them out with the Headhunters, Leia wasn’t the least bit surprised by her ability to so smoothly tight-dock a ship as large as the Jade Sabre.

That final shudder as Jaina eased off the repulsorlifts and settled the shuttle onto the docking bay floor stirred Mara from her rest. She opened her eyes and, seeing where they were, rose quickly.

And then she swayed and seemed as if she would fall.

Leia and Jaina were there in an instant, catching and steadying her.

She regained her balance and took a deep breath. “Maybe next time you can dial down the inertial compensator to ninety-seven instead of ninety-five,” she said jokingly, straining a smile.

Jaina laughed, but Leia’s face showed her deep concern. “Are you all right?” she asked.

Mara eyed her directly.

“Perhaps we should find a place where you can rest,” Leia said.

“Where we all can rest,” Mara corrected, and her tone told Leia to back off, a reminder that Leia was intruding on a private place for Mara, a place she had explicitly instructed all of her friends, even her husband, not to go. This disease was Mara’s fight alone, to Mara’s thinking, a battle that had forced her to reconsider everything she thought about her life, past, present, and future, and everything she thought about death.

Leia held her stare for a moment longer, but replaced her own concerned expression with one of acceptance. Mara did not want to be coddled or cuddled. She was determined to live on in an existence that did not name her disease as the most pressing and important facet of her entire life, to live on as she had before, with the illness being relegated to the position of nuisance, and nothing more.

Of course, Leia understood it to be much more than that, an internal churning that required Mara to spend hours and tremendous Force energy merely holding it in check. But that was Mara’s business.

“I hope to meet with Nom Anor tomorrow,” Leia explained, as the three, with C-3PO and Bolpuhr in tow, headed for the lower hatch, then moved down to the landing bay. A contingent of New Republic Honor Guard stood waiting there, along with Commander Ackdool, a Mon Calamarian with large, probing eyes, a fishlike face, and salmon-colored skin. “By all reports, we should all be rested before dealing with him.”

“Believe those reports,” Mara said.

“And first, it seems I get to meet with our savior Jedi,” Leia added dryly, looking back behind the Jade Sabre to see the X-wing gliding in to rest.

“Wurth Skidder,” Jaina remarked, recognizing the markings under the canopy on the starfighter.

“Why am I not surprised?” Leia asked, and she blew a sigh.

Ackdool came over to them, then, and extended his formal greetings to the distinguished guests, but Leia’s reaction set him back on his heels—indeed, it raised more than a few eyebrows among the members of the Mediator’s Honor Guard.

“Why did you send him out?” Leia snapped, motioning toward the docking X-wing.

Commander Ackdool started to answer, but Leia continued. “If we had needed assistance, we would have called for it.”

“Of course, Princess Leia,” Commander Ackdool said with a polite bow.

“They why send him out?”

“Why do you assume that Wurth Skidder flew out at my command?” the cool Commander Ackdool dared to respond. “Why would you assume that Wurth Skidder heeds any order I might give?”

“Couple o’ ridge-head parachutes floating over Osarian, if those Rodians had any luck,” came the singsong voice of Wurth Skidder. The cocky young man was fast approaching, pulling off his helmet and giving his shock of blond hair a tousle as he walked.

Leia stepped out to intercept him and took another quick step for no better reason than to make the Jedi stop short. “Wurth Skidder,” she said.

“Princess,” the man replied with a bow.

“Did you have a little fun out there?”

“More than a little,” the Jedi said with a wide grin and a sniffle—and he always seemed to be sniffling, and his hair always looked as if he had just walked in from a Tatooine sandstorm. “Fun for me, I mean, and not for the Rodians.”

“And the cost of your fun?” Leia asked.

That took the smile from Wurth Skidder’s face, and he looked at Leia curiously, obviously not understanding.

“The cost,” Leia explained. “What did your little excursion cost?”

“A couple of proton torpedos,” Wurth replied with a shrug. “A little fuel.”

“And a year of diplomatic missions to calm down the Osarians,” Leia retorted.

“But they shot first,” Wurth protested.

“Do you even understand that your stupidity likely escalated an already impossible situation?” Leia’s voice was as firm and cold as anyone present had ever heard it. So cold, in fact, that the always overprotective Bolpuhr, fearing trouble, glided closer to her, hanging back just behind her left shoulder, within fast striking distance of the Jedi.

“They were attacking you,” Wurth Skidder retorted. “Six of them!”

“They were trying to bring us down to Osarian,” Leia harshly explained. “A not-so-unexpected response, given my announced intentions here. And so we planned to avoid them. Avoid! Do you understand that word?”

Wurth Skidder said nothing.

“Avoid them and thus cause no further problems or hard feelings,” Leia went on. “And so we would have, and we would have asked for no explanations from Shunta Osarian Dharrg, all of us pretending that nothing had ever happened.”

“But—”

“And our graciousness in not mentioning this unfortunate incident would have bought me the bargaining capital I need to bring some kind of conciliation from Osarian toward Rhommamool,” Leia continued, anger creeping in thicker with each word. “But now we can’t do that, can we? Now, so that Wurth Skidder could paint another skull on the side of his X-wing, I’ll have to deal with an incident.”

“They shot first,” Wurth Skidder reiterated when it became apparent that Leia was done.

“And better that they had shot last,” Leia replied. “And if Shunta Osarian Dharrg demands reparations, we’ll agree, with all apologies, and any monies to be paid will come from Wurth Skidder’s private funds.”

The Jedi squared his shoulders at the suggestion, but then Leia hit him with a sudden and devastating shot. “My brother will see to it.”

Wurth Skidder bowed again, glared at Leia and all around, then turned on his heel and walked briskly away.

“My apologies, Princess Leia,” Ackdool said. “But I have no real authority over Jedi Skidder. I had thought it a blessing when he arrived two weeks ago. His Jedi skills should certainly come in handy against any terrorist attempts—and we have heard rumors of many—against the Mediator.”

“And you are indeed within striking distance of surface missiles,” C-3PO added, but he stopped short, this time catching on to the many disapproving looks that came his way.

“I did not know that Jedi Skidder would prove so …” Ackdool paused, searching for the right word. “Intractable.”

“Stubborn, you mean,” Leia said. As they all started away, Leia did manage a bit of a smile when she heard Mara behind her tell Jaina, “Maybe Nom Anor has met his match.”

C-9PO, a protocol droid, its copper coloring tinged red from the constantly blowing dusts of Rhommamool, skittered down an alley to the side of the main avenue of Redhaven and peeked out cautiously at the tumult beyond. The fanatical followers of Nom Anor, the Red Knights of Life, had gone on the rampage again, riding throughout the city in an apparent purge of landspeeders on their tutakans, eight-legged lizards with enormous tusks that climbed right up past their black eyes and curled in like white eyebrows.

“Ride the beasts given by Life!” one Red Knight screamed at a poor civilian as the wrinkled Dressellian merchant was dragged from the cockpit and punched and pushed to the ground.

“Perversion!” several other Red Knights cried in unison. “Life-pretender!” And they set upon the landspeeder with their tubal-iron pummelstaves, smashing the windshield, bashing in the side moldings, crushing the steering wheel and other controls, even knocking one of the rear drive’s cylindrical engines from its mounts.

Satisfied that the craft was wrecked beyond repair, they pulled the Dressellian to his feet and shoved him to and fro, warning him to ride creatures, not machines—or, better still, to use the legs that nature had provided and walk. Then they beat him back down to the ground and moved on, some climbing back atop the tutakans, others running beside.

The landspeeder continued to hover, though it had only a couple of repulsors still firing. It looked more like a twisted lump of beaten metal than a vehicle, tilting to one side because of the unequal weight distribution and the weakened lift capacity.

“Oh, dear me,” the protocol droid said, ducking low as the contingent stormed past.

Tap, tap, tap came the ringing of metal on metal against the top of the droid’s head. C-9PO slowly turned about and saw the fringe of the telltale black capes, and the red-dyed hides.

With a screech, the droid stood up and tried to run away, but a pummelstave smashed in the side of his leg and he went facedown in the red dust. He lifted his head, but rising up on his arms only gave the two Red Knights a better handhold as they walked past, each scooping the droid under one shoulder and dragging him along.

“Got a Ninepio,” one of the pair called out to his lizard-riding buddies, and a cheer went up.

The doomed droid knew the destination: the Square of Hopeful Redemption.

C-9PO was glad that he wasn’t programmed to experience pain.

* * *

“It was a stupid thing to do,” Leia said firmly.

“Wurth thought he was helping us,” Jaina reminded, but Leia wasn’t buying that argument.

“Wurth was trying to find his own thrills,” she corrected.

“And that hotshot attitude of his will reinforce the ring of truth to Nom Anor’s diatribes against the Jedi,” Mara said. “He’s not without followers on Osarian.” As she finished, she looked down at the table, at the pile of leaflets Commander Ackdool had given them, colorful propaganda railing against the New Republic, against the Jedi, and against anything mechanical and technological, and somehow tying all of these supposed ills to the cultural disease that engulfed the society of the planet Osarian.

“Why does Nom Anor hate the Jedi?” Jaina asked. “What do we have to do with the struggle between Osarian and Rhommamool? I never even heard of these planets until you mentioned that we’d be coming here.”

“The Jedi have nothing to do with this struggle,” Leia replied. “Or at least, they didn’t until Wurth Skidder’s antics.”

“Nom Anor hates the New Republic,” Mara added. “And he hates the Jedi as symbols of the New Republic.”

“Is there anything Nom Anor doesn’t hate?” Leia asked dryly.

“Don’t take him lightly,” Mara warned yet again. “His religious cry to abandon technology and machines, to look for truth in the natural elements and life of the universe, and to resist the joining of planets in false confederations resonates deeply in many people, particularly those who have been the victims of such planetary alliances, like the miners of Rhommamool.”

Leia didn’t disagree. She had spent many hours before and during the journey here reading the history of the two planets, and she knew that the situation on Rhommamool was much more complicated than that. While many of the miners had traveled to the inhospitable red planet voluntarily, there were quite a number who were the descendants of the original “colonists”—involuntary immigrants sent there to work the mines because of high crimes they had committed.

Whatever the truth of the situation, though, Leia couldn’t deny that Rhommamool was the perfect breeding ground for zealots like Nom Anor. Life there was tough—even basics like water could be hard to come by—while the prosperous Osarians lived in comfort on white sandy beaches and crystal-clear lakes.

“I still don’t understand how any of that concerns the Jedi,” Jaina remarked.

“Nom Anor was stirring up anger against the Jedi long before he ever came to Rhommamool,” Mara explained. “Here, he’s just found a convenient receptacle for his wrath.”

“And with the Jedi Knights scattered throughout the galaxy, and so many of them following their own agendas, Nom Anor might just find plenty of ammunition to add to his arguments,” Leia added grimly. “I’m glad that my brother is thinking of reestablishing the Jedi Council.”

Mara nodded, but Jaina seemed less convinced. “Jacen doesn’t think that’s such a good idea,” she reminded her mother.

Leia shrugged. Her oldest son, Jaina’s twin, had indeed expressed serious doubts about the course of the Jedi Knights.

“If we can’t bring some sense of order to the galaxy, particularly to isolated planets like Osarian and Rhommamool, then we’re no better than the Empire,” Mara remarked.

“We’re better than the Empire,” Leia insisted.

“Not in Nom Anor’s eyes,” Jaina said.

And Mara reiterated her warning to Leia not to take the man lightly. “He’s the strangest man I ever met,” she explained, and given her past exploits with notorious sorts like Jabba the Hutt and Talon Karrde, that was quite a statement. “Even when I tried to use the Force to gain a better perspective on him, I drew …” Mara paused, as if looking for some way to properly express the feeling. “A blank,” she decided. “As if the Force had nothing to do with him.”

Leia and Jaina looked at her curiously.

“No,” Mara corrected. “More like he had nothing to do with the Force.”

The perfect disconnected ideologue, Leia thought, and she expressed her feelings with a single sarcastic word: “Wonderful.”

He stood on the platform surrounded by his fanatical Red Knights. Before him, ten thousand Rhommamoolians crowded into every open space of the great public square of Redhaven, once the primary trading spaceport of the planet. But those facilities had been leveled in the early days of the uprising, with the Rhommamoolians declaring their independence from Osarian. And more recently, since the coming of Nom Anor as spearhead of the revolution, the place had been renamed the Square of Hopeful Redemption.

Here, the citizens came to declare freedom from Osarian.

Here, the followers came to renounce the New Republic.

Here, the believers came to renounce the Jedi.

And here, the fanatics came to discredit progress and technology, to cry out for a simpler time, when the strength of a being’s legs, and not the weight of his purse, determined how far he could travel, and the strength of his hands, and not the weight of his purse, allowed him to harvest the gifts of nature.

Nom Anor loved it all, the adulation and the fanatical, bordering on suicidal, devotion. He cared nothing for Rhommamool or its inhabitants, cared nothing for the foolish cries for some ridiculous “simpler time.”

But how he loved the chaos his words and followers inflicted upon the order of the galaxy. How he loved the brooding undercurrent of resentment toward the New Republic, and the simmering anger aimed at the Jedi Knights, these supercreatures of the galaxy.

Wouldn’t his superiors be pleased?

Nom Anor flipped his shiny black cape back from his shoulder and held his fist upraised into the air, drawing shrieks of appreciation. In the center of the square, where once had stood the Portmaster’s Pavilion, now was a huge pit, thirty meters in diameter and ten deep. Whistles and whines emanated from that pit, along with cries for mercy and pitifully polite words of protest—the voices of droids collected by the folk of Rhommamool and dropped into the hole.

Great cheers erupted from all corners of the square as a pair of the Red Knights entered from one avenue, dragging a 9PO protocol droid between them. They went to the edge of the pit, took up the poor 9PO by the arms and the legs, and on a three-count, launched him onto the pile of metal consisting of the astromech and mine-sniffer droids, the Redhaven street-cleaner droids, and the personal butler droids of the wealthier Rhommamoolian citizens.

When the hooting and cheering died down, Nom Anor opened his hands, revealing a single small stone. Then he clenched his fist again, squeezing with tremendous power, crushing the stone in his grasp so that dust and flecks of rock splinters slipped out the sides.

The signal to begin.

As one the crowd surged forward, lifting great chunks of stone, the debris from the wreckage of the pavilion. They came to the edge of the pit one after another and hurled their heavy missiles at the pile of droids.

The stoning went on for the rest of the afternoon, until the red glare of the sun thinned to a brilliant crimson line along the horizon, until the dozens and dozens of droids were no more than scrap metal and sparking wires.

And Nom Anor, silent and dignified, watched it all somberly, accepting this great tribute his followers had paid to him, this public execution of the hated droids.

LEGACY ERA
(40+ YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

The Yuuzhan Vong have been defeated, but the galaxy has been slow to recover from their depredations, with powerful worlds chafing at the economic burdens and military restrictions put upon them by the nascent Galactic Alliance, once-powerful species seeking to rise again, newly prosperous worlds testing their influence, and long-buried secrets coming to light. The result of all this instability is civil war. Faced with a Galactic Alliance that has fallen away from its values, Luke and the Jedi Order must decide where their loyalties lie—and so, too, must the heroes of the Rebellion.

While hostilities spread across the Core Worlds, lurking in the shadows is a Sith adept who wastes no time in taking advantage of the galactic chaos to wage a very personal war against the Skywalkers and the Solos. Luke will face terrible loss, Han and Leia will be tested as never before, and their daughter, Jaina, will learn just what it means to fulfill her destiny as “the Sword of the Jedi.” And even as the Galactic Alliance pulls the galaxy back from the brink of total disaster, the Skywalker–Solo clan will never be the same again.

The mop-up is difficult. Luke Skywalker is exiled from Coruscant, and while he and his son, Jedi Knight Ben Skywalker, set out on a quest to discover what caused such darkness to befall the galaxy and their family, Han and Leia are left to raise their granddaughter, Allana, and help shepherd the government back into some semblance of order. But little do any of them know that a long-lost tribe of Sith is making its way toward the Core, determined to fulfill their destiny of dominance over the galaxy … and that both Sith and Jedi are about to run headlong into a terrifying creature of untold Force abilities and an insatiable appetite for power …

If you’re a reader new to the Legacy era, here are four great starting points:

• Legacy of the Force: Betrayal, by Aaron Allston: The first in the nine-book Legacy of the Force series, setting the stage for galactic civil war and a fall to darkness.

• Millennium Falcon, by James Luceno: Han Solo’s famous freighter becomes a character in her own right as Han, Leia, their granddaughter Allana, and the droid C-3PO set out on an adventure that brings to light the ship’s colorful, mysterious past.

• Crosscurrent, by Paul S. Kemp: A remnant of the Old Republic comes into Luke Skywalker’s time in a tale of insane clones and time-traveling Jedi and Sith.

• Fate of the Jedi: Outcast, by Aaron Allston: The nine-book Fate of the Jedi series blasts off with the new adventures of Luke and Ben Skywalker—Jedi Master and apprentice, father and son—in search of answers to a terrifying question.

Read on for excerpts from Star Wars Legends novels set in the Legacy era.

chapter one

CORUSCANT

“He doesn’t exist.” With those words, spoken without any conscious thought or effort on his part, Luke Skywalker sat upright in bed and looked around at the dimly illuminated chamber.

There wasn’t much to see. Members of the Jedi order, even Masters such as Luke, didn’t accumulate much personal property. Within view were chairs situated in front of unlit computer screens; a wall rack holding plasteel staves and other practice weapons; a table littered with personal effects such as datapads, notes scrawled on scraps of flimsi, datachips holding reports from various Jedi Masters, and a crude and not at all accurate sandglass statuette in Luke’s image sent to him by a child from Tatooine. Inset into the stone-veneer walls were drawers holding his and Mara’s limited selection of clothes. Their lightsabers were behind Luke, resting on a shelf on the headboard of their bed.

His wife, Mara Jade Skywalker, had more personal items and equipment, of course. Disguises, weapons, communications gear, falsified documents. A former spy, she had never given up the trappings of that trade, but those items weren’t here. Luke wasn’t sure where she kept them. She didn’t bother him with such details.

Beside him, she stirred, and he glanced down at her. Her red hair, kept a medium length this season, was an unruly mess, but there was no sleepiness in her eyes when they opened. In brighter light, he knew, those eyes were an amazing green. “Who doesn’t exist?” she asked.

“I don’t know. An enemy.”

“You dreamed about him?”

He nodded. “I’ve had the dream a couple of times before. It’s not just a dream. It’s coming to me through currents in the Force. He’s all wrapped up in shadows—a dark hooded cloak, but more than that, shadows of light and …” Luke shook his head, struggling for the correct word. “And ignorance. And denial. And he brings great pain to the galaxy … and to me.”

“Well, if he brings pain to the galaxy, you’re obviously going to feel it.”

“No, to me personally, in addition to his other evil.” Luke sighed and lay down again. “It’s too vague. And when I’m awake, when I try to peer into the future to find him, I can’t.”

“Because he doesn’t exist.”

“That’s what the dream tells me.” Luke hissed in aggravation.

“Could it be Raynar?”

Luke considered. Raynar Thul, former Jedi Knight, presumed dead during the Yuuzhan Vong war, had been discovered a few years earlier—horribly burned during the war, mentally transformed in the years since through his involvement with the insectoid Killik race. That transformation had been a malevolent one, and the Jedi order had had to deal with him. Now he languished in a well-protected cell deep within the Jedi Temple, undergoing treatment for his mental and physical afflictions.

Treatment. Treatment meant change; perhaps, in changing, Raynar was becoming something new, and Luke’s presentment pointed toward the being Raynar would someday become.

Luke shook his head and pushed the possibility away. “In this vision, I don’t sense Raynar’s alienness. Mentally, emotionally, whoever it is remains human, or near human. There’s even the possiblity that it’s my father.”

“Darth Vader.”

“No. Before he was Darth Vader. Or just when he was becoming Vader.” Luke’s gaze lost focus as he tried to recapture the dream. “What little of his face I can see reminds me of the features of Anakin Skywalker as a Jedi. But his eyes … as I watch, they turn a molten gold or orange, transforming from Force-use and anger …”

“I have an idea.”

“Tell me.”

“Let’s wait until he shows up, then crush him.”

Luke smiled. “All right.” He closed his eyes and his breathing slowed, an effort to return to sleep.

Within a minute the rhythm of his breathing became that of natural sleep.

But Mara lay awake, her attention on the ceiling—beyond it, through dozens of floor levels of the Jedi enclave to the skies of Coruscant above—and searched for any hint, any flicker of what it was that was causing her husband worry.

She found no sign of it. And she, too, slept.

ADUMAR

The gleaming pearl-gray turbolift doors slid open sideways, and warm air bearing an aroma that advertised death and destruction washed over Jacen Solo, his cousin Ben Skywalker, and their guide.

Jacen took a deep breath and held it. The odors of this subterranean factory were not the smells of corrupted flesh or gangrenous wounds—smells Jacen was familiar with—but those of labor and industry. The great chamber before them had been a missile manufacturing center for decades, and no amount of rigorous cleaning would ever be quite able to eliminate the odors of sweat, machine lubricant, newly fabricated composite materials, solid fuel propellants, and high explosives that filled the air.

Jacen expelled the breath and stepped out of the turbolift, then walked the handful of steps up to the rail overlooking the chamber. He walked rapidly so that his Jedi cloak would billow a little as he strode, so that his boot heels would ring on the metal flooring of this observation catwalk, and so his apprentice and guide would be left behind for a moment. This was a performance for his guide and all the other representatives of the Dammant Killers company. Jacen knew he was carrying off his role quite well; the company officials he’d been dealing with remained properly intimidated. But he didn’t know whether to attribute his success to his bearing and manner, his lean, brooding, and handsome looks, or his name—for on this world of Adumar, with its history of fascination with pilots, the name of Jacen’s father, Han Solo, went a very long way.

His guide, a slender, balding man named Testan ke Harran, moved up to the rail to Jacen’s right. Contrasting with the dull grays and blues that were common on this factory’s walls and its workers’ uniforms, Testan was a riot of color—his tunic, with its nearly knee-length hem and its flowing sleeves, was the precise orange of X-wing fighter pilot uniforms, though decorated with purple crisscross lines breaking it down into a flickering expanse of small diamond shapes, and his trousers, belt, and scarf were a gleaming gold.

Testan stroked his lustrous black beard, the gesture a failed attempt to conceal the man’s nervousness. Jacen felt, rather than saw, Ben move up on the other side of Testan.

“You can see,” Testan said, “ar workars enjoy very fan conditions.”

Ben cleared his throat. “He says their workers enjoy very fine conditions.”

Jacen nodded absently. He understood Testan’s words, and it had taken him little time to learn and understand the Adumari accent, but this was another act, a ploy to keep the Adumari off-balance. He leaned forward to give the manufacturing floor below his full attention.

The room was large enough to act as a hangar and maintenance bay for four full squadrons of X-wing snubfighters. Tall duracrete partitions divided the space into eight lanes, each of which enclosed an assembly line; materials entered through small portals in the wall to the left, rolled along on luminous white conveyor belts, and eventually exited through portals on the far right. Laborers in gray jumpsuits flanked the belts and worked on the materials as they passed.

On the nearest belt, immediately below Jacen, the materials being worked on appeared to be compact visual sensor assemblies. The conveyor belt brought in eight such units and stopped. Moving quickly, the laborers plugged small cables into the units and turned to look into monitors, which showed black-and-white images of jumpsuited waists and worker hands. The workers turned the units this way and that, confirming that the sensors were properly calibrated.

One monitor never lit up with a view from the sensor. The worker on that unit unplugged it and set it on a table running parallel to the conveyor belt. A moment later, the other workers on this section unplugged their sensor units and the conveyor belt jerked into motion again, carrying the remaining seven units to the next station.

One lane over, the conveyor belt remained in constant motion, carrying sensor unit housings along. The workers on that belt, fewer in number than the sensor testers, reached out occasionally to turn a housing, to look inside, to examine the exterior for cracks or warping. Some workers, distributed at intervals along the line, rapped each housing with a small rubber-headed hammer. Jacen assumed they were listening for a musical tone he could not possibly hear at this distance over the roar of noise from the floor.

Another lane away from him, the workers were clad not in jumpsuits but in full-coverage hazardous materials suits of a lighter and more reflective gray than the usual worker outfit. Their conveyor belt carried white plates bearing irregular balls the size of a human head but a nearly luminous green. The belt stopped as each set of eight such balls entered the lane, giving the workers time to plunge needlelike sensors into each ball. They, too, checked monitors for a few seconds before withdrawing the needles to allow the balls to continue on. Jacen knew that poisonous green—it was the color of the high explosive Adumari manufacturers used to fabricate the concussion missiles they exported.

While Jacen made his initial survey, Ben kept their guide occupied. “Do you wax your beard?” he asked.

“I do not.”

“It just seems very shiny. Do you oil it?”

Testan’s voice was a little more irritated in tone. “I do not oil it. I condition it. And I brush it.”

“Do you brush it with butter?”

Jacen finally looked to the right, past Testan and at his cousin. Ben was thirteen standard years of age, not tall but well muscled, with a fine-featured freckled face under a mass of flame-red hair. Ben turned, his face impassive, to look at Jacen, then said, “The Jedi Knight acknowledges that this factory seems to meet the minimum, the absolute minimum, required safety and comfort standards of a Galactic Alliance military contractor.”

Jacen nodded. The nod meant Good improvisation. He was exerting no Force skill to communicate words to Ben; Ben’s role was to pretend to act as his mentor’s translator, when his actual function was to convince the locals that adult Jedi were even more aloof and mysterious than they had thought.

“No, no, no.” Testan drew a sleeve over his brow, dabbing away a little perspiration. “We are wall above minimam standards. Those duracrete barriars? They will vent any explosive farce upward, saving the majority of workars in case of calamity. Workar shifts are only two-fifths the day in length, unlike the old days.”

Ben repeated Testan’s words, and Jacen shrugged.

Ben imitated his motion. The gesture caused his own Jedi robe to gape open, revealing the lightsaber hanging from his belt.

Testan glanced at it, then looked back at Jacen, clearly worried. “Your apprentice—” Unsure, he looked to Ben again. “You are very young, are you not, to be wearing such a weapon?”

Ben gave him a blank look. “It’s a practice lightsaber.”

“Ah.” Testan nodded as though he understood.

And there it was. Perhaps it was just the thought of a thirteen-year-old with a deadly cutting implement at hand, but Testan’s defenses slipped enough that the worry began to pour through.

It was like the game in which children are told, “For the next hour, do not think about banthas.” Try as they might, they would, within minutes or even seconds, think about a bantha.

Testan’s control finally gave way and he thought about the banthas—or, rather, a place he wasn’t supposed to go, even to think about. Jacen could feel Testan try to clamp down on the thought. Something in the increased potency of that worry told Jacen that they must be nearer to the source of his concern than during previous parts of their factory tour.

When Testan turned back, Jacen looked directly at him and said, “There is something here. Something wrong.” They were the first words he’d spoken in Testan’s presence.

Testan shook his head. “No. Evrything is fan.”

Jacen looked past him, toward the wall to the far right of the chamber. It was gray and regular, a series of metal panels each the height of a man and twice as wide stacked like bricks. He began a slow, deliberate scrutiny, traversing right to left. His gaze swept the walls, the assembly lines, the elevated observation chamber directly opposite the turbolifts by which they had entered, and continued along the wall to the left.

As his attention reached the middle of the left wall, along the observation balcony, he felt another pulse of worry from Testan. Ben cleared his throat, a signal; the boy, though nowhere near as sensitive in the Force as Jacen, had gotten the same feeling.

Jacen set off along the balcony in that direction. This time the ringing of his boots and billowing of his cloak were a side effect of his speed rather than an act.

“You wish to see the observation chambar?” Testan hurried to keep up. His anxiety was growing, and there was something within it, like a shiny stone at the bottom of a murky pond.

Jacen reached into that pond to draw out the prize within.

It was a memory of a door. It was broad and gray, closing from above as men and women—in dark blue jumpsuits, the outfits of supervisors in this facility—scurried out ahead of its closing. When it settled in place, it was identical to the wall panels Jacen saw ahead of him in the here and now.

Jacen glanced over his shoulder at Testan. “Your thoughts betray you.”

Testan paled. “No, there is nothing to betray.”

Jacen rounded the observation balcony corner, took a few more steps, and skidded to a halt in front of one of the wall sections.

It was here. He knew because he could feel something beyond.

Conflict. He himself was there, fighting. So was Ben. It was a faint glimpse of the future, and he and his apprentice would be in peril beyond.

He jerked his head toward the wall.

Ben brought out his lightsaber and switched it on. With a snap-hiss sound, its blue blade of coherent energy extended to full length.

Ben plunged the blade into the wall panel and began to drag it around in a large circle.

Testan, his voice pained, said, “He told us it was a practice weapon.”

Jacen gave him an innocent look. “It’s true from a certain point of view. He does practice with it.” In his nervousness, Testan didn’t seem to notice that Jacen was understanding him clearly now.

Ben completed his circle and gave the meter-and-a-half-high section he’d outlined a little kick. It fell away into a well-lit chamber, clanging on the floor beyond; the edges still glowed with the heat the lightsaber had poured into them.

Ben stepped through. Jacen ducked to follow. He heard Testan muttering—doubtless an alert into a comlink. Jacen didn’t bother to interfere. They’d just been within clear sight of hundreds of workers and the observation chamber. Dealing with Testan wouldn’t keep the alarm from being broadcast.

The room beyond Ben’s improvised doorway was actually a corridor, four meters wide and eight high, every surface made up of the same dull gray metal rectangles found in the outer chamber, greenish white light pouring from the luminous ceiling. To the left, the corridor ended after a few meters, and that end was heavily packed with tall plasteel transport containers. They were marked DANGER, DO NOT DROP, and DAMMANT KILLER MODEL 16, QUANTITY 24.

To the right, the corridor extended another forty meters and then opened up; the rail and drop-off at the end suggested that it opened onto another observation balcony above another fabrication chamber.

Now making the turn from the balcony into the corridor and running toward them were half a dozen troops armed with blaster rifles. Their orange jumpsuits were reminiscent of X-wing pilot uniforms, but the green carapace armor over their lower legs, torsos, lower arms, and heads was more like stormtrooper speeder bike armor painted the wrong color.

And then behind the first six troops came another six, and then another eight …

Jacen brought his lightsaber out and snapped it into life; the incandescent green of his blade was reflected as highlights against the walls and the armor of the oncoming troops. “Stay behind me,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” Ben’s sigh was audible, and Jacen grinned.

The foremost trooper, who bore gold bars on his helmet and wrists, shouted, his voice mechanically amplified: “Stop whar you are! This saction is restricted!”

Jacen moved forward at a walk. He rotated his wrist, moving his lightsaber blade around in front of him in a pattern vaguely reminiscent of butterfly wings. He shouted back, “Could you speak up? I’m a little deaf.”

Ben snickered. “Good one.”

“You may not entar this saction!”

They were now twenty meters from the ranks of troopers ahead.

Jacen continued twirling his blade in a practice form. “Fewer people will be hurt if you just get out of my way.” It was a sort of ritual thing to say. Massed enemy forces almost never backed down, despite the reputation of the Jedi—a reputation that became more widespread, more supernatural, with each year the Jedi prospered under Luke Skywalker’s leadership.

The phrase was ritual in another way, too. Once upon a time, Jacen would have felt tragedy surround him when his actions resulted in the deaths of common soldiers, common guards. But over time he’d lost that sense. There was a wearying inevitability to leaders sending their troops to die against more powerful enemies. It had been happening as long as there were violent leaders and obedient followers. In death, these people became one with the Force, and when Jacen had accepted that fact, his sense of tragedy had largely evaporated.

He took another two steps and the trooper commander called, “Fire!”

The troopers began firing. Jacen gave himself over to the Force, to his awareness of his surroundings, to his sudden oneness with the men and women trying to kill him.

He simply ignored most of the blaster bolts. When he felt them angling in toward him, he twirled his lightsaber blade in line and batted them away, usually back toward the crowd of troopers. In the first few seconds of their assault, four troopers fell to blasts launched by their friends. The smell of burned flesh began to fill the corridor.

Jacen felt danger from behind; felt Ben react to it. Jacen didn’t shift his attention; he continued his march forward. He’d prefer to be able to protect the inexperienced youth, but the boy was good at blaster defense practice. Hard as it was to trust a Jedi whose skills were just developing, he had to. To teach, to learn, he had to trust.

Jacen intercepted the next blaster shot that came his way and batted it toward the trooper commander. It struck the man in the helmet and caromed off, burning out against the ceiling; a portion four meters square of the ceiling’s illumination winked out, darkening the corridor. The commander fell. The shot was probably not fatal—protected by his helmet, the man would have forehead and scalp burns, probably a concussion, but he was unlikely to die.

The strategy had its desired effect. The troopers saw their commander fall. They continued firing but also exchanged looks. Jacen never broke pace, and a trooper with silver stripes on his helmet called “Back, back.” In good order, the troopers began a withdrawal.

Behind him, Jacen heard more blasterfire and the distinctive zap of a lightsaber blade intercepting it, deflecting it. Within the flow of the Force, Jacen felt a shot coming in toward his back, felt it being slapped aside, saw and felt it as it hit the wall to his right. The heat from the shot warmed his right shoulder.

But the defenders continued their retreat, and soon the last of them was around the corner. Jacen’s path to the railing was clear. He strode up to it.

Over the rail, a dozen meters down, was another assembly-line pit, where line after line of munitions components was being assembled—though at the moment all the lines were stopped, their anonymous jumpsuited workers staring up at Jacen.

Jacen’s movement out of the corridor brought him within sight of the orange-and-green defenders, who were now arrayed in disciplined rows along the walkway to Jacen’s left. As soon as he reached the railing they opened fire again. Their tighter formation allowed them to concentrate their fire, and Jacen found himself deflecting more shots than before.

He felt rather than saw Ben scoot into position behind him, but no blaster bolts came at him from that direction. “What now?” Ben asked.

“Finish the mission.” Jacen caught a too-close bolt on his blade near the hilt; unable to aim the deflection, he saw the bolt flash down into the assembly area. It hit a monitor screen. The men and women near the screen dived for cover. Jacen winced; a fraction of a degree of arc difference and that bolt could have hit an explosives package. As inured as he was to causing death, he didn’t want to cause it by accident.

“But you’re in charge—”

“I’m busy.” Jacen took a step forward to give himself more maneuvering and swinging space and concentrated on his attackers. He needed to protect himself and Ben now, to defend a broader area. He focused on batting bolt after bolt back into the ranks of the attackers, saw one, two, three of the soldiers fall.

There was a lull in the barrage of fire. Jacen took a moment to glance over his shoulder. Ben stood at the railing, staring down into the manufacturing line, and to his eye he held a small but expensive holocam unit—the sort carried by wealthy vacationers and holocam hobbyists all over the galaxy.

As Jacen returned his attention to the soldiers, Ben began talking: “Um, this is Ben Skywalker. Jedi Knight Jacen Solo and I are in a, I don’t know, secret part of the Dammant Killers plant under the city of Cartann on the planet Adumar. You’re looking at a missile manufacturing line. It’s making missiles that are not being reported to the GA. They’re selling to planets that aren’t supposed to be getting them. Dammant is breaking the rules. Oh, and the noise you’re hearing? Their guys are trying to kill us.”

Jacen felt Ben’s motion as the boy swung to record the blaster-versus-lightsaber conflict.

“Is that enough?” Ben asked.

Jacen shook his head. “Get the whole chamber. And while you’re doing it, figure out what we’re supposed to do next.”

“I was kind of thinking we ought to get out of here.”

With the tip of his lightsaber blade, Jacen caught a blast that was crackling in toward his right shin. He popped the blast back toward its firer. It hit the woman’s blaster rifle, searing it into an unrecognizable lump, causing her green shoulder armor momentarily to catch fire. She retreated, one of her fellow soldiers patting out her flames. Now there were fewer than fifteen soldiers standing against the Jedi, and their temporary commander was obviously rethinking his make-a-stand orders.

“Good. How?”

“Well, the way we came in—no. They’d be waiting for us.”

“Correct.”

“And you never want to fight the enemy on ground he’s chosen if you can avoid it.”

Jacen grinned. Ben’s words, so adult, were a quote from Han Solo, a man whose wisdom was often questionable—except on matters of personal survival. “Also correct.”

“So … the ends of those assembly lines?”

“Good. So go.”

Jacen heard the scrape of a heel as Ben vaulted over the rail. Not waiting, Jacen leapt laterally, clearing the rail by half a meter, and spun as he fell. Ahead of and below him, Ben was just landing in a crouch on the nearest assembly line, which was loaded with opalescent shell casings. As Jacen landed, bent knees and a little upward push from the Force easing the impact, Ben raced forward, reflexively swatting aside the grasping hand of a too-bold line worker, and crouched as he lunged through the diminutive portal at the end of the line.

Jacen followed. He heard and felt the heat of blaster bolts hitting the assembly line behind him. He swung his lightsaber back over his shoulder, intercepting one bolt, taking the full force of the impact rather than deflecting the bolt into a neighboring line.

No line workers tried to grab him, and in seconds he was squeezing through the portal.

GALACTIC ALLIANCE DIPLOMATIC SHUTTLE, HIGH CORUSCANT ORBIT

One by one, the stars overhead began to disappear, swallowed by some enormous darkness interposing itself from above and behind the shuttle. Sharply pointed at its most forward position, broadening behind, the flood of blackness advanced, blotting out more and more of the unblinking starfield, until darkness was all there was to see.

Then, all across the length and breadth of the ominous shape, lights came on—blue and white running lights, tiny red hatch and security lights, sudden glows from within transparisteel viewports, one large rectangular whiteness limned by atmosphere shields. The lights showed the vast triangle to be the underside of an Imperial Star Destroyer, painted black, forbidding a moment ago, now comparatively cheerful in its proper running configuration. It was the Gilad Pellaeon, newly arrived from the Imperial Remnant, and its officers clearly knew how to put on a show.

Jaina Solo, sitting with the others in the dimly lit passenger compartment of the government VIP shuttle, watched the entire display through the overhead transparisteel canopy and laughed out loud.

The Bothan in the sumptuously padded chair next to hers gave her a curious look. His mottled red and tan fur twitched, either from suppressed irritation or embarrassment at Jaina’s outburst. “What do you find so amusing?”

“Oh, both the obviousness of it and the skill with which it was performed. It’s so very, You used to think of us as dark and scary, but now we’re just your stylish allies.” Jaina lowered her voice so that her next comment would not carry to the passengers in the seats behind. “The press will love it. That image will play on the holonews broadcasts constantly. Mark my words.”

“Was that little show a Jagged Fel detail?”

Jaina tilted her head, considering. “I don’t know. He could have come up with it, but he usually doesn’t spend his time planning displays or events. When he does, though, they’re usually pretty … effective.”

The shuttle rose toward the Gilad Pellaeon’s main landing bay. In moments, it was through the square atmosphere barrier shield and drifting sideways to land on the deck nearby. The landing place was clearly marked—hundreds of beings, most wearing gray Imperial uniforms or the distinctive white armor of the Imperial stormtrooper, waited in the bay, and the one circular spot where none stood was just the right size for the Galactic Alliance shuttle.

The passengers rose as the shuttle settled into place. The Bothan smoothed his tunic, a cheerful blue decorated with a golden sliver pattern suggesting claws. “Time to go to work. You won’t let me get killed, will you?”

Jaina let her eyes widen. “Is that what I was supposed to be doing here?” she asked in droll tones. “I should have brought my lightsaber.”

The Bothan offered a long-suffering sigh and turned toward the exit.

They descended the shuttle’s boarding ramp. With no duties required of her other than to keep alert and be the Jedi face at this preliminary meeting, Jaina was able to stand back and observe. She was struck with the unreality of it all. The niece and daughter of three of the most famous enemies of the Empire during the First Galactic Civil War of a few decades earlier, she was now witness to events that might bring the Galactic Empire—or Imperial Remnant, as it was called everywhere outside its own borders—into the Galactic Alliance on a lasting basis.

And at the center of the plan was the man, flanked by Imperial officers, who now approached the Bothan. Slightly under average size, though towering well above Jaina’s diminutive height, he was dark-haired, with a trim beard and mustache that gave him a rakish look, and was handsome in a way that became more pronounced when he glowered. A scar on his forehead ran up into his hairline and seemed to continue as a lock of white hair from that point. He wore expensive but subdued black civilian garments, neck-to-toe, that would be inconspicuous anywhere on Coruscant but stood out in sharp relief to the gray and white uniforms, white armor, and colorful Alliance clothes surrounding him.

He had one moment to glance at Jaina. The look probably appeared neutral to onlookers, but for her it carried just a twinkle of humor, a touch of exasperation that the two of them had to put up with all these delays. Then an Alliance functionary, notable for his blandness, made introductions: “Imperial Head of State the most honorable Jagged Fel, may I present Senator Tiurrg Drey’lye of Bothawui, head of the Senate Unification Preparations Committee.”

Jagged Fel took the Senator’s hand. “I’m pleased to be working with you.”

“And delighted to meet you. Chief of State Daala sends her compliments and looks forward to meeting you when you make planetfall.”

Jag nodded. “And now, I believe, protocol insists that we open a bottle or a dozen of wine and make some preliminary discussion of security, introduction protocols, and so on.”

“Fortunately about the wine, and regrettably about everything else, you are correct.”

At the end of two full standard hours—Jaina knew from regular, surreptitious consultations of her chrono—Jag was able to convince the Senator and his retinue to accept a tour of the Gilad Pellaeon. He was also able to request a private consultation with the sole representative of the Jedi Order present. Moments later, the gray-walled conference room was empty of everyone but Jag and Jaina.

Jag glanced toward the door. “Security seal, access limited to Jagged Fel and Jedi Jaina Solo, voice identification, activate.” The door hissed in response as it sealed. Then Jag returned his attention to Jaina.

She let an expression of anger and accusation cross her face. “You’re not fooling anyone, Fel. You’re planning for an Imperial invasion of Alliance space.”

Jag nodded. “I’ve been planning it for quite a while. Come here.”

She moved to him, settled into his lap, and was suddenly but not unexpectedly caught in his embrace. They kissed urgently, hungrily.

Finally Jaina drew back and smiled at him. “This isn’t going to be a routine part of your consultations with every Jedi.”

“Uh, no. That would cause some trouble here and at home. But I actually do have business with the Jedi that does not involve the Galactic Alliance, at least not initially.”

“What sort of business?”

“Whether or not the Galactic Empire joins with the Galactic Alliance, I think there ought to be an official Jedi presence in the Empire. A second Temple, a branch, an offshoot, whatever. Providing advice and insight to the Head of State.”

“And protection?”

He shrugged. “Less of an issue. I’m doing all right. Two years in this position and not dead yet.”

“Emperor Palpatine went nearly twenty-five years.”

“I guess that makes him my hero.”

Jaina snorted. “Don’t even say that in jest … Jag, if the Remnant doesn’t join the Alliance, I’m not sure the Jedi can have a presence without Alliance approval.”

“The Order still keeps its training facility for youngsters in Hapan space. And the Hapans haven’t rejoined.”

“You sound annoyed. The Hapans still giving you trouble?”

“Let’s not talk about that.”

“Besides, moving the school back to Alliance space is just a matter of time, logistics, and finances; there’s no question that it will happen. On the other hand, it’s very likely that the government would withhold approval for a Jedi branch in the Remnant, just out of spite, if the Remnant doesn’t join.”

“Well, there’s such a thing as an unofficial presence. And there’s such a thing as rival schools, schismatic branches, and places for former Jedi to go when they can’t be at the Temple.”

Jaina smiled again, but now there was suspicion in her expression. “You just want to have this so I’ll be assigned to come to the Remnant and set it up.”

“That’s a motive, but not the only one. Remember, to the Moffs and to a lot of the Imperial population, the Jedi have been bogeymen since Palpatine died. At the very least, I don’t want them to be inappropriately afraid of the woman I’m in love with.”

Jaina was silent for a moment. “Have we talked enough politics?”

“I think so.”

“Good.”

HORN FAMILY QUARTERS,
KALLAD’S DREAM VACATION HOSTEL,
CORUSCANT

Yawning, hair tousled, clad in a blue dressing robe, Valin Horn knew that he did not look anything like an experienced Jedi Knight. He looked like an unshaven, unkempt bachelor, which he also was. But here, in these rented quarters, there would be only family to see him—at least until he had breakfast, shaved, and dressed.

The Horns did not live here, of course. His mother, Mirax, was the anchor for the immediate family. Manager of a variety of interlinked businesses—trading, interplanetary finances, gambling and recreation, and, if rumors were true, still a little smuggling here and there—she maintained her home and business address on Corellia. Corran, her husband and Valin’s father, was a Jedi Master, much of his life spent on missions away from the family, but his true home was where his heart resided, wherever Mirax lived. Valin and his sister, Jysella, also Jedi, lived wherever their missions sent them, and also counted Mirax as the center of the family.

Now Mirax had rented temporary quarters on Coruscant so the family could collect on one of its rare occasions, this time for the Unification Summit, where she and Corran would separately give depositions on the relationships among the Confederation states, the Imperial Remnant, and the Galactic Alliance as they related to trade and Jedi activities. Mirax had insisted that Valin and Jysella leave their Temple quarters and stay with their parents while these events were taking place, and few forces in the galaxy could stand before her decision—Luke Skywalker certainly knew better than to try.

Moving from the refresher toward the kitchen and dining nook, Valin brushed a lock of brown hair out of his eyes and grinned. Much as he might put up a public show of protest—the independent young man who did not need parents to direct his actions or tell him where to sleep—he hardly minded. It was good to see family. And both Corran and Mirax were better cooks than the ones at the Jedi Temple.

There was no sound of conversation from the kitchen, but there was some clattering of pans, so at least one of his parents must still be on hand. As he stepped from the hallway into the dining nook, Valin saw that it was his mother, her back to him as she worked at the stove. He pulled a chair from the table and sat. “Good morning.”

“A joke, so early?” Mirax did not turn to face him, but her tone was cheerful. “No morning is good. I come light-years from Corellia to be with my family, and what happens? I have to keep Jedi hours to see them. Don’t you know that I’m an executive? And a lazy one?”

“I forgot.” Valin took a deep breath, sampling the smells of breakfast. His mother was making hotcakes Corellian-style, nerf sausage links on the side, and caf was brewing. For a moment, Valin was transported back to his childhood, to the family breakfasts that had been somewhat more common before the Yuuzhan Vong came, before Valin and Jysella had started down the Jedi path. “Where are Dad and Sella?”

“Your father is out getting some back-door information from other Jedi Masters for his deposition.” Mirax pulled a plate from a cabinet and began sliding hotcakes and links onto it. “Your sister left early and wouldn’t say what she was doing, which I assume either means it’s Jedi business I can’t know about or that she’s seeing some man she doesn’t want me to know about.”

“Or both.”

“Or both.” Mirax turned and moved over to put the plate down before him. She set utensils beside it.

The plate was heaped high with food, and Valin recoiled from it in mock horror. “Stang, Mom, you’re feeding your son, not a squadron of Gamorreans.” Then he caught sight of his mother’s face and he was suddenly no longer in a joking mood.

This wasn’t his mother.

Oh, the woman had Mirax’s features. She had the round face that admirers had called “cute” far more often than “beautiful,” much to Mirax’s chagrin. She had Mirax’s generous, curving lips that smiled so readily and expressively, and Mirax’s bright, lively brown eyes. She had Mirax’s hair, a glossy black with flecks of gray, worn shoulder-length to fit readily under a pilot’s helmet, even though she piloted far less often these days. She was Mirax to every freckle and dimple.

But she was not Mirax.

The woman, whoever she was, caught sight of Valin’s confusion. “Something wrong?”

“Uh, no.” Stunned, Valin looked down at his plate.

He had to think—logically, correctly, and fast. He might be in grave danger right now, though the Force currently gave him no indication of imminent attack. The true Mirax, wherever she was, might be in serious trouble or worse. Valin tried in vain to slow his heart rate and speed up his thinking processes.

Fact: Mirax had been here but had been replaced by an imposter. Presumably the real Mirax was gone; Valin could not sense anyone but himself and the imposter in the immediate vicinity. The imposter had remained behind for some reason that had to relate to Valin, Jysella, or Corran. It couldn’t have been to capture Valin, as she could have done that with drugs or other methods while he slept, so the food was probably not drugged.

Under Not-Mirax’s concerned gaze, he took a tentative bite of sausage and turned a reassuring smile he didn’t feel toward her.

Fact: Creating an imposter this perfect must have taken a fortune in money, an incredible amount of research, and a volunteer willing to let her features be permanently carved into the likeness of another’s. Or perhaps this was a clone, raised and trained for the purpose of simulating Mirax. Or maybe she was a droid, one of the very expensive, very rare human replica droids. Or maybe a shape-shifter. Whichever, the simulation was nearly perfect. Valin hadn’t recognized the deception until …

Until what? What had tipped him off? He took another bite, not registering the sausage’s taste or temperature, and maintained the face-hurting smile as he tried to recall the detail that had alerted him that this wasn’t his mother.

He couldn’t figure it out. It was just an instant realization, too fleeting to remember, too overwhelming to reject.

Would Corran be able to see through the deception? Would Jysella? Surely, they had to be able to. But what if they couldn’t? Valin would accuse this woman and be thought insane.

Were Corran and Jysella even still at liberty? Still alive? At this moment, the Not-Mirax’s colleagues could be spiriting the two of them away with the true Mirax. Or Corran and Jysella could be lying, bleeding, at the bottom of an access shaft, their lives draining away.

Valin couldn’t think straight. The situation was too overwhelming, the mystery too deep, and the only person here who knew the answers was the one who wore the face of his mother.

He stood, sending his chair clattering backward, and fixed the false Mirax with a hard look. “Just a moment.” He dashed to his room.

His lightsaber was still where he’d left it, on the nightstand beside his bed. He snatched it up and gave it a near-instantaneous examination. Battery power was still optimal; there was no sign that it had been tampered with.

He returned to the dining room with the weapon in his hand. Not-Mirax, clearly confused and beginning to look a little alarmed, stood by the stove, staring at him.

Valin ignited the lightsaber, its snap-hiss of activation startlingly loud, and held the point of the gleaming energy blade against the food on his plate. Hotcakes shriveled and blackened from contact with the weapon’s plasma. Valin gave Not-Mirax an approving nod. “Flesh does the same thing under the same conditions, you know.”

“Valin, what’s wrong?”

“You may address me as Jedi Horn. You don’t have the right to use my personal name.” Valin swung the lightsaber around in a practice form, allowing the blade to come within a few centimeters of the glow rod fixture overhead, the wall, the dining table, and the woman with his mother’s face. “You probably know from your research that the Jedi don’t worry much about amputations.”

Not-Mirax shrank back away from him, both hands on the stove edge behind her. “What?”

“We know that a severed limb can readily be replaced by a prosthetic that looks identical to the real thing. Prosthetics offer sensation and do everything flesh can. They’re ideal substitutes in every way, except for requiring maintenance. So we don’t feel too badly when we have to cut the arm or leg off a very bad person. But I assure you, that very bad person remembers the pain forever.”

“Valin, I’m going to call your father now.” Not-Mirax sidled toward the blue bantha-hide carrybag she had left on a side table.

Valin positioned the tip of his lightsaber directly beneath her chin. At the distance of half a centimeter, its containing force field kept her from feeling any heat from the blade, but a slight twitch on Valin’s part could maim or kill her instantly. She froze.

“No, you’re not. You know what you’re going to do instead?”

Not-Mirax’s voice wavered. “What?”

“You’re going to tell me what you’ve done with my mother!” The last several words emerged as a bellow, driven by fear and anger. Valin knew that he looked as angry as he sounded; he could feel blood reddening his face, could even see redness begin to suffuse everything in his vision.

“Boy, put the blade down.” Those were not the woman’s words. They came from behind. Valin spun, bringing his blade up into a defensive position.

In the doorway stood a man, middle-aged, clean-shaven, his hair graying from brown. He was of below-average height, his eyes a startling green. He wore the brown robes of a Jedi. His hands were on his belt, his own lightsaber still dangling from it.

He was Valin’s father, Jedi Master Corran Horn. But he wasn’t, any more than the woman behind Valin was Mirax Horn.

Valin felt a wave of despair wash over him. Both parents replaced. Odds were growing that the real Corran and Mirax were already dead.

Yet Valin’s voice was soft when he spoke. “They may have made you a virtual double for my father. But they can’t have given you his expertise with the lightsaber.”

“You don’t want to do what you’re thinking about, son.”

“When I cut you in half, that’s all the proof anyone will ever need that you’re not the real Corran Horn.”

Valin lunged.

The STAR WARS Legends Novels Timeline

BEFORE THE REPUBLIC 37,000–25,000 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

25793 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

Dawn of the Jedi: Into the Void

OLD REPUBLIC 5000–67 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

Lost Tribe of the Sith: The Collected Stories

3954 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

The Old Republic: Revan

3650 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

The Old Republic: Deceived

Red Harvest

The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance

The Old Republic: Annihilation

1032 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

Knight Errant

Darth Bane: Path of Destruction

Darth Bane: Rule of Two

Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil

RISE OF THE EMPIRE 67–0 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

67 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

Darth Plagueis

33 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

Darth Maul: Saboteur[*]

Cloak of Deception

Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter

Maul: Lockdown

32 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

STAR WARS: EPISODE I: The Phantom Menace

Rogue Planet

Outbound Flight

The Approaching Storm

22 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

STAR WARS: EPISODE II: Attack of the Clones

22-19 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

The Clone Wars: Wild Space

The Clone Wars: No Prisoners

Clone Wars Gambit

Stealth

Siege

Republic Commando

Hard Contact

Triple Zero

True Colors

Order 66

Shatterpoint

The Cestus Deception

The Hive[*]

MedStar I: Battle Surgeons

MedStar II: Jedi Healer

Jedi Trial

Yoda: Dark Rendezvous

Labyrinth of Evil

19 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

STAR WARS: EPISODE III: Revenge of the Sith

Kenobi

Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader

Imperial Commando: 501st

Coruscant Nights

Jedi Twilight

Street of Shadows

Patterns of Force

The Last Jedi

10 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

The Han Solo Trilogy

The Paradise Snare

The Hutt Gambit

Rebel Dawn

The Adventures of Lando Calrissian

The Force Unleashed

The Han Solo Adventures

Death Troopers

The Force Unleashed II

REBELLION 0–5 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

Death Star

Shadow Games

STAR WARS: EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE

Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina

Tales from the Empire

Tales from the New Republic

Winner Lose All[*]

Scoundrels

Allegiance

Choices of One

Honor Among Thieves

Galaxies: The Ruins of Dantooine

Splinter of the Mind’s Eye

Empire and Rebellion: Razor’s Edge

3 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

STAR WARS: EPISODE V: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

Tales of the Bounty Hunters

Shadows of the Empire

4 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

STAR WARS: EPISODE VI: RETURN OF THE JEDI

Tales from Jabba’s Palace

The Bounty Hunter Wars

The Mandalorian Armor

Slave Ship

Hard Merchandise

The Truce at Bakura

Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor

NEW REPUBLIC 5–25 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

X-Wing

Rogue Squadron

Wedge’s Gamble

The Krytos Trap

The Bacta War

Wraith Squadron

Iron Fist

Solo Command

The Courtship of Princess Leia

A Forest Apart[*]

Tatooine Ghost

The Thrawn Trilogy

Heir to the Empire

Dark Force Rising

The Last Command

X-Wing: Isard’s Revenge

The Jedi Academy Trilogy

Jedi Search

Dark Apprentice

Champions of the Force

I, Jedi

Children of the Jedi

Darksaber

Planet of Twilight

X-Wing: Starfighters of Adumar

The Crystal Star

The Black Fleet Crisis Trilogy

Before the Storm

Shield of Lies

Tyrant’s Test

The New Rebellion

The Corellian Trilogy

Ambush at Corellia

Assault at Selonia

Showdown at Centerpoint

The Hand of Thrawn Duology

Specter of the Past

Vision of the Future

Scourge

Fool’s Bargain[*]

Survivor’s Quest

NEW JEDI ORDER 25–40 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

Boba Fett: A Practical Man[*]

The New Jedi Order

Vector Prime

Dark Tide I: Onslaught

Dark Tide II: Ruin

Agents of Chaos I: Hero’s Trial

Agents of Chaos II: Jedi Eclipse

Balance Point

Recovery[*]

Edge of Victory I: Conquest

Edge of Victory II: Rebirth

Star by Star

Dark Journey

Enemy Lines I: Rebel Dream

Enemy Lines II: Rebel Stand

Traitor

Destiny’s Way

Ylesia[*]

Force Heretic I: Remnant

Force Heretic II: Refugee

Force Heretic III: Reunion

The Final Prophecy

The Unifying Force

35 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

The Dark Nest Trilogy

The Joiner King

The Unseen Queen

The Swarm War

LEGACY 40+ YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

Legacy of the Force

Betrayal

Bloodlines

Tempest

Exile

Sacrifice

Inferno

Fury

Revelation

Invincible

Crosscurrent

Riptide

Millennium Falcon

43 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

Fate of the Jedi

Outcast

Omen

Abyss

Backlash

Allies

Vortex

Conviction

Ascension

Apocalypse

X-Wing: Mercy Kill

45 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

Crucible

*An eBook novella

What’s next on
your reading list?

Discover your next
great read!

Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.

Sign up now.